Made to Rule: A Preface

The word Dynasty is a powerful word. What was once a term that described old monarchical families like the Habsburgs, Romanovs, Bourbons and Han is now most frequently used to extol the most laureled sports teams of today. Everybody wants a dynasty. It is the pinnacle of achievement in sport, hallowed territory for every organization that hungers for glory and teems with ambition. It is the ultimate goal for every star athlete, and the sweetest of dreams for supporters everywhere. To see your team take over a league and stay at the top, and rule it as its domain, can only be the ultimate satisfaction.

There have been countless teams that were very good, memorable, great even. But only a handful have been truly all-powerful dynasties, feared by their competition and conquering everything in their path. The Bulls, Patriots, Yankees, Lakers, Cowboys…the list ain’t very long. Like the tides of the sea and snow falling, them winning seemed to embody an inevitable happening of nature.

I have followed sports all my life. Since I was 5 and started playing sports, I have been inspired and fascinated by the world of professional sports and the larger-than-life characters who forge their path before the watchful eyes of millions around the world. To be an athlete performing at the highest level must be a wonderfully exciting thing, but it must also be a morbidly perilous dance. All that hard work: hours, days, years spent perfecting your craft, and all it can take is one bad play at the wrong time to be scorned and discarded by millions.

Like the sword of Damocles, permanence for an athlete is never secure, and always precarious.

Growing up I didn’t understand why people were so hard on successful athletes. I had witnessed the decade-defining dynasty of my favorite football club when still in elementary, but none of the teams I supported in America had won a championship. For me, winning 1 ring made you an immortal, and your career an unquestionable triumph. So seeing athletes like Lebron and Aaron Rodgers be scrutinized for every moment they came up short, even after adding championships to their resume, made no sense to me.

In recent years I have become interested in looking at dynasties past and present. This started during the pandemic in 2020, after the NFL team I support won the Super Bowl and the Last Dance documentary dropped. Watching the journey of those Bulls teams retold every week made me appreciate what a dynasty is, and what it takes to build such a dynastic run. Inevitably I started to compare and project how a Bulls-like run would play out for the Chiefs. How is a dynasty born? How do you build and sustain a dynasty? What is a dynasty in the first place? These are the questions you run into when you delve into the record books of our country’s professional sports leagues.

We are in the most equally balanced moment in the history of sports in our country. Never before has there been more parity in the big 4 professional sports leagues. This means that it’s never been harder to build a dynasty. We will never see the type of dynasty again where the Celtics win 11 rings in 13 years, the type of dominance where the Yankees dominate their sport for decades. This makes the discussion of who can be a dynasty in today’s sports world all the more compelling.

The following series of articles will look at the journeys of three remarkable, but each uniquely flawed, teams that have won multiple championships and sparked relentless dynasty talk in recent years. As well as looking at the stories of the Warriors, Astros, and Chiefs, these articles will look at how a dynasty can rise and fall, and what is keeping organizations such as the Bucks and Nuggets from reaching dynasty status.