CLEVELAND -- In the eyes of many, when LeBron James took his talents to South Beach eight summers ago, he created the NBA's first modern super team.
But according to James, he only formed his faction with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh on the Miami Heat to combat the league's original super team: the late-2000s Boston Celtics.
"In my first stint [in Cleveland], I just didn't have the level of talent to compete vs. the best teams in the NBA, let alone Boston," James said on Thursday. "When you look at [Rajon] Rondo and K.G. [Kevin Garnett] and Paul [Pierce] and Ray [Allen], you knew they were great basketball players, but not only great basketball players, but their minds were in it too."
The term "super team" was brought up a lot on Thursday, mere hours after James' Cleveland Cavaliers fell down 0-3 in the NBA Finals to the league's latest -- and perhaps greatest -- collection of talent, the Golden State Warriors. Meanwhile, the Big Three James formed when he returned to Cleveland four years ago barely remains, with Kyrie Irving now in Boston and James and Kevin Love's futures with the Cavs very much in question beyond this series.
Ironically, it was the Cavs who figured they would be the hunted, with Golden State serving as little more than a promising collection of young talent four years ago. But in the time since then, Stephen Curry has won two MVP awards, Draymond Green has emerged as arguably the top defensive player in the league and Klay Thompson has found his footing as a perennial All-Star.
And all of that was before the Warriors added former MVP and 4-time league scoring champ Kevin Durant to a team that won 73 regular season games before blowing a 3-1 series lead to the Cavs in the 2016 NBA Finals.
But after bouncing back to beat Cleveland in five games in last season's Finals, Golden State is now one win away from its third championship in four seasons. And with the Warriors showing no signs of slowing down, that's left James -- and the rest of the NBA, for that matter -- merely playing catch up.
"That's the challenge in this league," James said. "I think every GM and every president and every coaching staff is trying to figure out how they can make up the right matchups to compete for a championship and win a championship."
For the Cavs, the bigger challenge might be convincing James Cleveland is a place he can still do just that should he opt out of his contract and become a free agent this summer. Despite having not even played all that poorly in these Finals, the Cavs still find themselves facing an 0-3 series deficit, with even James acknowledging his team is at a talent disadvantage.
"From a talent perspective, if you're looking at Golden State from their top five best players to our top five players, you would say they're stacked better than us," he said. "Let's just speak truth."
Perhaps the more alarming reality for Cleveland is that after four straight runs to the Finals, the Cavs are short on assets and shorter on cap space to improve their roster. Truth be told, it's not all that dissimilar from the situation he found himself in when he headed to Miami in 2010.
Now eight years older and three rings richer, it's plausible the 4-time MVP could make his decision this summer based on more than just basketball reasons. James, however, hardly sounds like someone ready to move his quest for championships down his priority list.
"How do you put together a group of talent but also a group of minds to be able to compete with Golden State, to be able to compete for a championship?" he asked rhetorically. "That's what GMs and presidents and certain players -- it's not every player. Every player does not want to -- sad to say, but every player doesn't want to compete for a championship and be in a position where every possession is pressure."
