I think all it says a few things about society. First, labor has secure more rights over the last two generations and it's far less likely that people stay in the same job for their whole career. The NBA is a microcosm of that. Second, social media has allowed us to "know" far more people than we used to know. For example, I think I knew you a little bit at Wake and I can't remember your name, but we've "known" each other on these boards for over 20 years. The same applies for athletes. In the past, player movement was about winning and salary but now it's about personalities and we have access to that. Third, we live in a 24 hour, 7 day a week, 365 day a year news culture. The NBA needs to sustain interest from mid-June to the end of October. The draft, free agency, summer league, etc serve that purpose.
The biggest thing it says about the NBA is that the NBA is a dynasty league. Every season maybe 3-5 teams have a chance at winning the championship at best and one of them always wins. Been that way as long as I can remember. So the quest is to become one of those teams. That's more likely to happen in the offseason than the regular season. Has a team ever become a championship contender in the regular season? Occasionally. But the story is more likely to be teams that were thought to be contenders falling off rather than the reverse.
Another thing is homecourt advantage doesn't matter nearly as much as it used to. Whether it's because teams travel in luxury or they can find randos on the road using Tinder instead of going to the club (reference a great article from a few years ago), for the top teams, the regular season is all about securing homecourt advantage. The Raptors won the last three games in Oracle. The home team only won 2 games out of 6.
I think it's premature to call this the end of the Warriors dynasty, too. KD is gone and Klay will be out for a long stretch. But I think the Warriors still ahve a contender and if they can plan to be without KD, they'll still be in good shape.
