NBA champions are being denied by teams designed to beat them

The downside of winning an NBA title is that other teams will build their own teams to stop you. For the Boston Celtics and Denver Nuggets, the anti-champions strategies worked perfectly.

After the New York Knicks lost in the second round of the playoffs last season, their focus wasn't on the Indiana Pacers team that had just defeated them. Instead, they focused on stopping the 2024 champion Celtics, who tore through the playoffs with a team built around two All-
Star wings and a big man in Kristaps Porzingis who could block shots and make three-pointers.

The Knicks made a series of moves designed to thwart the Celtics, starting with their trade for defensive ace OG Anunoby during the 2023-24 season. Then they traded five first-round picks to the Brooklyn Nets for another elite defensive wing, Mikal Bridges. Finally, New York swapped Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo to the Minnesota Timberwolves for its own sweet-shooting center, Karl-Anthony Towns.

The result? The Knicks had a big lead down the stretch of Game 4 and were poised to take a 3-1 series lead before Jayson Tatum's torn Achilles domed the Celtics. But the biggest factor was the Knicks remaking themselves as the Celtics' Kryptonite.

The Nuggets suffered a similar fate after their 2023 title. Former team president Tim Connelly left for the Minnesota Timberwolves a year before the Nuggets won it all, and proceeded to build a new team to stop his old team. Connelly traded for center Rudy Gobert to go along with Karl-Anthony Towns and Naz Reid, giving the Wolves three big men to take turns on Jokic. He also traded for Nickeil Alexander-Walker and Mike Conley to help counter Jamal Murray.

The result was a seven-game second-round exit in 2024, followed by a seven-game second-round exit this year to the Oklahoma City Thunder, who also added Jokic-stoppers in Isaiah Hartenstein and Alex Caruso in the summer.

You don't just get the Larry O'Brien Trophy when you win an NBA title. You also get a big target on your back.