While the idea of superstars teaming up wasn't invented by then-Boston Celtics general manager Danny Ainge in 2007, his moves to trade for Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett to team with Paul Pierce spawned the age of the superteam. Dwyane Wade admitted Garnett's Celtics were the primary motivation for LeBron James famously taking his talents to South Beach in 2010.
Since then, other high-profile trios have tried and failed to duplicate what Boston and the Miami Heat did in the late aughts and early 2010s. The Boston trio of Garnett, Pierce and Allen won an NBA championship in the first year of their collaboration and returned to the NBA Finals in 2010 before Allen left for South Beach in free agency in 2012, Garnett and Pierce were traded to the Brooklyn Nets the following summer.
Dwyane Wade tells Kevin Garnett the Celtics motivated the formation of the Miami Big 3
During a 2019 interview on TNT, Dwyane Wade made no attempt to be coy with Kevin Garnett about what motivated Wade to help recruit LeBron James and Chris Bosh to the Miami Heat.
"Y'all were the sole reason we got together," Wade told Garnett. "We can't compete with Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen, (Rajon) Rondo."
The Heat had won their first NBA title in 2006 but experienced a rebuild on the fly when needing to replace aging Shaquille O'Neal, Gary Payton, Jason Williams and Alonzo Mourning. Two years after winning the championship, Miami won just 15 games. They returned to the playoffs in 2009 and in 2010 faced the Celtics in the first round.
"When we met y'all in the playoffs, we felt we were prepared and ready, " Wade said of Boston's five-game victory in that 2010 series.
The Miami Heat ruled the Eastern Conference with their dynamic trio
In the summer of 2010, Dwyane Wade accepted a slightly below-max contract to remain with the Miami Heat while LeBron James and Chris Bosh took similar deals to leave the Cleveland Cavaliers and Toronto Raptors, respectively. The Celtics had been the bane of James' existence with the Cavaliers, beating Cleveland in the second round in both 2008 and 2010.
The Miami Big 3 lasted four seasons and reached the NBA Finals in each of them, winning back-to-back titles in 2012 and 2013 and losing in 2011 and 2014 before James opted out of his contract to return to the Cavs, where he played in the next four NBA Finals, all against the Golden State Warriors. Cleveland won the franchise's first championship in 2016 and lost in 2015, 2017 and 2018.
Other teams explored the Big 3 concept after the Heat but never reached the same level of success.
Other Big 3s proved difficult to build and never produced the same results
The Los Angeles Lakers brought in Dwight Howard and Steve Nash to team with Kobe Bryant for the 2012-13 season. Nash was limited to 50 games because of the nerve problem that eventually ended his career, Howard and Bryant did not mesh well and Kobe ended up tearing his Achilles' tendon late in the season.
The Lakers won 45 games and were swept by the San Antonio Spurs in the first round. Howard was traded to the Houston Rockets the next summer while Nash played in only 15 more games before eventually retiring in March 2015.
In 2018, the Philadelphia 76ers swung an early-season trade to bring in Jimmy Butler from the Minnesota Timberwolves to team with Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons. That team lost to the Toronto Raptors in the second round. Butler left for the Heat after the season.
The biggest obstacle to building a Big 3 has been, of course, salary-cap limitations. The Brooklyn Nets signed marquee free agents Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving in 2019 and in the COVID-19-shortened 2020-21 campaign, acquired James Harden from the Rockets.
Due to health problems and Irving's COVID-19 vaccination decision, the trio played in just 16 games together before Harden forced a trade to the 76ers in February 2022. The three stars were 13-3 together but never advanced past the second round in 2021.