I’ve been cooling my heels on vacation the last couple of weeks, so I thought I’d gather most of my current thoughts together in one post. This seemed like the way to do it.
Here comes the red pencil:
Houston Rockets: A
Key additions: Tracy McGrady, Juwan Howard, Bob Sura, Tyronne Lue
Key subtractions: Steve Francis, Cuttino Mobley, Kelvin Cato, Scott Padgett
The Rockets wrapped up their ‘A’ early, when they successfully traded three overpaid guys for NBA Superstar Tracy McGrady. This was a heist of such magnitude that Orlando GM John Weisbrod (the “Hockey Guy”) will probably never escape it; twenty years from now, ESPN5 will be calling his nursing home, asking whether he’s available for a roundtable discussion with Ryan Leaf.
Rockets’ management spent the rest of the summer proving they are still incompetent, and as a result the team has no interior defense beyond Yao, and Bob Sura is the closest thing they’ve got to a quality PG. Because of that, Houston probably won’t improve in the standings this year, but as long as McGrady and Yao stay healthy, the Rockets will have plenty of chances to fix their problems down the line. Somewhere in Montana, Phil Jackson is smirking in anticipation…
Utah Jazz: A-
Key additions: Carlos Boozer, Mehmet Okur, Kirk Snyder, Kris Humphries
Key subtractions: Greg Ostertag
The team had a decent draft, but surprisingly, the Jazz had more success in free agency than anyone, which is saying something when you consider the team’s checkered history with free agents. In addition to signing Boozer and Okur, they were able to retain Carlos Arroyo and Gordon Giricek; that’s a pretty nice supporting cast to supplement the team’s underrated star, Andrei Kirilenko. Matt Harpring should be back this year, too.
Boozer escaped from infamy in Cleveland to the big money and obscurity of Utah. I’m tickled whenever I hear that he’s the ‘new Malone’, because Boozer is much more of a poor man’s Charles Barkley: great rebounder, solid scorer, and stone-cold awful on defense. Okur was a jack-of-all-trades for Detroit early last season; his inability to get along with Larry Brown may hint at the possibility of trouble with his new coach, who’s similarly old-school in temperament. Snyder and Humphries are great athletes and individual scorers who will probably see minimal time on the court as rookies.
The Jazz’ weak spot last season was their journeyman frontcourt, but now, after spending $118 million and a lottery pick on the problem, their weakness is…still the frontcourt, actually. The strength of the West’s power forwards is such that Boozer ranks near the bottom among starters there. Okur ranks higher among the conference’s centers, but his lack of size and inconsistent help defense would seemingly make him a poor fit next to Boozer; off the bench, Humphries is almost certainly the weakest defender of all. The Jazz’ hopes of advancing in the playoffs (if they make it) probably rest on the brittle feet of backup C and forgotten man Curtis Borchardt.
Utah outperformed expectations last year, to put it mildly; there’s no guarantee the team will improve its record this year despite their bonanza. The big question is whether Jerry Sloan can get the new acquisitions to put down their paychecks and buy into the team’s system, particularly on defense; if the new guys are hacking and undercutting opponents by December, the Jazz might wind up winning 50.
San Antonio Spurs: B
Key additions: Brent Barry, Beno Udrih
Key subtractions: Hedo Turkoglu
The Spurs cemented their status as championship favorite this summer, holding on to Bruce Bowen and RFA Manu Ginobili and addressing their clutch-shooting deficiency by signing the league’s most efficient perimeter player, Brent Barry. All three players are well worth what they’ll be receiving, although Barry might diminish to Steve Kerr status by the last year of his contract.
Why only a B, then? I guess I still can’t get over the team’s failures last year, when they had the unprecedented opportunity to build a dynasty through free agency: with a championship team’s three-player core on the books for a total of $15m and no overpaid garbage, they had nearly two max contracts worth of cap space. Two years later, the Spurs have no more cap space and no more championships; they lost Stephen Jackson—a young, quality swingman—by lowballing him at the negotiating table; and their entire free agent “haul” consists of the aging Brent Barry and the mediocre Rasho Nesterovic.
When you consider that they had a legit chance to sign Jermaine O’Neal and rebuild the Twin Towers, and they punted it so they could put a contract in front of Nesterovic on the first day of free agency…it’s hard not to be disappointed in their front office, that’s all. Even a year later.
Phoenix Suns: B
Key additions: Steve Nash, Quentin Richardson, Steven Hunter, Jackson Vroman
Key subtractions: Antonio McDyess, Jahidi White
It’s hard to fault the Sarver Suns in their initial run at free agency. While the Nash and Richardson signings have been rehashed on this board ad infinitum, we can generally agree that the players themselves seem good enough to be worth their new contracts, which is quite an accomplishment given the market and the Suns’ desperation. (If they hadn’t signed anybody, the team’s useful cap space would have diminished by next summer, and vanished entirely the year after.)
I think we can also agree that Nash and Richardson are poor fits for the team’s needs, as free agents go. Nash is a win-now player, playing for a team that’s building toward a point years in the future; Richardson duplicates the contributions of the team’s main strength last season, its athletic and talented young swingmen. When you consider that the Suns gave up chances to go after Mehmet Okur and Erick Dampier to sign Nash and Richardson, I think you can legitimately question whether they went overboard in their pursuit of value over need, even given the NBA’s horror stories on the subject.
There’s a little irony in looking at the team’s subtractions and realizing their current needs are a backup PF and a center, but I don’t think McDyess and White were the answer. (Not that anybody can see what the answer is going to be now, mind you.)
The Suns also signed Steven Hunter to a minimum contract. The best thing I can think to say about Hunter is that he’s still young, but what do you expect for the minimum? Teaching a dumb player to be smart is tough work—not as tough as teaching a short player to be tall, but not easy. Fortunately, the Suns are only expecting Hunter to compete for backup minutes at center, along with Maciej Lampe and Shawn Marion.
The Suns gave up their draft pick for a future Chicago Bulls pick. Obviously, that part of the offseason gets an ‘incomplete’.
As a result of this summer’s moves, the Suns are finally good enough and talented enough again to be back in their old rut, trying to decide between playing small ball with good players and regular-sized ball with not-so-good players. We all know there’s no solution to this, but I’m comforted by the idea that the Suns didn’t screw themselves over trying to escape the almost-inevitable; there might be future opportunities to fix the team up right, through trade or the draft, and that wasn’t a given at the start of the offseason. It would be nice if the Suns can make the playoffs while we’re waiting, of course.
Memphis Grizzlies: B
Key additions: Brian Cardinal
Key subtractions: none
Memphis didn’t improve themselves much in free agency, but it’s hard not to admire Jerry West’s technical proficiency: identifying the few difference-makers in a weak FA market and snapping up one of them with his MLE; beating back the reluctant suitors for RFA Stromile Swift while continuing to dangle him as a S&T piece in trade talks; keeping Jake Tsakalidis locked in his basement until October while searching for a cheap upgrade; etc.
West’s problem is that teams won’t deal with him anymore, especially after the Drew Gooden/Mike Miller trade, where Orlando seemed like such a clear winner at the outset. He’s in a better position than ever to fleece that first sucker, though. (Is that John Paxson I hear knocking?)
Denver Nuggets: B-
Key additions: Kenyon Martin
Key subtractions: Chris Anderson, Rodney White?
The Nuggets were prime candidates for a Suns-style “back into the abyss” season—last year, they benefited from Marcus Camby’s miraculous health, Anthony’s grudging willingness to accept a limited role as a rookie, and plenty of luck and momentum besides, and still barely made the playoffs. This year, they’ve got a coach on the hot seat, a year-older-and-more-brittle Camby, and looming chemistry problems as Melo looks to take over…
Signing K-Mart put that to rest, of course. Denver will be a better team now, and will probably have a slightly better record; their frontcourt is among the league’s deepest and best, and with the momentum from Martin’s signing, they should continue to hold one of the league’s biggest home-court advantages. The Nuggets still need a SG, but quality SGs are not impossible to acquire, even with an MLE, so that shouldn’t kill their future prospects.
The closer I look, though, the less I like the K-Mart deal for the Nuggets. My problem is, the Nuggets punted all of their high risk/high reward assets in the deal—they traded their lightly-protected Clippers pick, and they can now write off any hope of having future cap space, or seeing a Tskitishvili break-out.
What that means is that what you see with the Nuggets right now is pretty much what you’re going to get. And what that is, is a future starting lineup of Nene at C, K-Mart, Melo, Andre Miller, and a decent-quality SG to be named later—which doesn’t scream “championship” to me, or even softly whisper the possibility. Nene and Martin are both undersized at their future positions, and Miller vs. Melo looks like a long-term issue, but most of all I don’t think there’s enough talent there to ever beat a championship-caliber team.
It looks to me like Denver would have been better off taking the big slide, firing their coach, and having Anthony get used to the idea that winning in the NBA is difficult and requires sacrifices. Instead, after a long and painful (and nearly successful) rebuilding process, Kiki Vandeweghe panicked and sold out a year or two early.
I could be wrong, of course, and Denver did improve themselves significantly in the short term, so I bumped them up to a B-. If I were being really honest here, I'd probably have them down with the Lakers...
Dallas Mavericks: B-
Key additions: Erick Dampier, Jason Terry, Jerry Stackhouse, Devin Harris, D.J. Mbenga, P. Podkolzine
Key subtractions: Steve Nash, Antawn Jamison, Antoine Walker, Eduardo Najera
A busy offseason for the Mavericks—more so than usual, even. The team lost three of its five veteran cornerstones and its only glue guy, but added a top-5 draft pick and a ‘real’ center.
I guess it’s possible to frame Dallas’ offseason as the shocking departure of Steve Nash and a bunch of subsequent trades to try and recover from that loss, but that’s not really the way it went down. The first Mavericks move was the Jamison trade, which is a good deal from a value perspective (as were all of the Mavs’ trades this summer) but only makes sense from a strategic viewpoint if the team is blowing up and starting over.
Looking at all the moves together, two points occur to me:
1. The Mavericks have given in to their hubris, thinking they can keep turning losers with talent into valuable role players. It worked two years ago with Van Exel, and they had a 50% success rate last year (Jamison was the success story, Walker the failure), but this year they’ve added three of them—Stackhouse, Terry and Dampier—and they’re relying on Terry and Dampier to start, too. I don’t like those odds.
2. This is no longer a Don Nelson team; Nelson’s good teams played outside-in on offense, and this team doesn’t have the shooters to do that. I would be surprised if Nelson is still coaching the team in 2005.
IMO the Mavericks are going to miss the playoffs this year; they’ve got enough talent to get in, but the chemistry is gone, and they still don’t have enough defense. I think they’re doing the right thing in the long term, though, by dumping the Nelson system and attempting to put a more conventional team around Nowitzki, so they get a B- just like the Nuggets.
Minnesota Timberwolves: B-
Key additions: none
Key subtractions: none
The Timberwolves didn’t make themselves better, now or in the future. But they didn’t screw up a good thing, either, despite the expense. The Wolves shape up as San Antonio’s main rival in the West now, and they could easily win the title this season…as long as they can keep Sam Cassell and Troy Hudson healthy at the same time.
Kevin Garnett should be rested and recharged after skipping the Olympics.
L.A. Clippers: C
Key additions: Shaun Livingston, Kerry Kittles
Key subtractions: Quentin Richardson
It’s hard to know what’s up with the Clippers. After decades of stubbornly refusing to take risks to try and compete, David Stern reworks the CBA, with the main goal seemingly being to allow the Clips to compete without taking any risks. And now, suddenly, the Clippers seem to be taking baby steps…toward changing their approach. What gives? (IMO what gives is that Mike Dunleavy has been given a certain degree of decision-making power, but why did Donald Sterling agree to that?)
It looks as though the Clippers are going to be using their entire cap now instead of holding at the 75% minimum, and they might make a serious effort to compete in the UFA market instead of sticking to signing scrubs and matching RFA contracts. By leaving Q-Rich on the table, despite a contract that was tailor-made for them to match, the Clips said that they think they can get something even better in the FA market next year: certainly a more optimistic outlook than you’d expect from them, given their history.
Kerry Kittles is better than Q this year—a better fit for their team, at least; they have plenty of post presence already, and they were missing the high-percentage shooting and quick-footed defense that Kittles should provide. The Clips might regret letting Q go by next summer, but we’ll have to wait to find out for sure.
The team handled the draft in typical Clippers style, at least; they have no qualms about filling their needs instead of trying to identify the BPA. (I actually like Shaun Livingston, based on what little I know about him.) They had a typical Clippers dive at the end of last season, too. Nice to know things aren’t changing too much over there.
Sacramento Kings: C-
Key additions: Greg Ostertag, Kevin Martin, Ricky Minard, David Bluthenthal
Key subtractions: Vlade Divac, Anthony Peeler, Gerald Wallace
I don’t see it mentioned very often, but the Kings seem to be operating on a strictly limited budget. The result is a fairly constant turnover of their bench, and this year Vlade Divac learned that there’s a big difference between being a Kings starter and being their 7th man: the 7th man is always the guy wearing a name tag.
Greg Ostertag is the Kings’ new backup center—possibly the only spot available to him where he’d be significantly younger and cheaper than the former incumbent was. Darius Songiala was re-signed to back up Chris Webber, which is a meaningful position now that the team doesn’t have two centers with high-post skills. Kevin Martin is a Doug Christie type; Christie is making $8m/yr in the second-to-last year of his contract, so he might as well put his house on the market right now.
In the loss column, Gerald Wallace is talented but never found a role to fit into; the player the Kings will miss most is probably Anthony Peeler, since they seem to have come up empty in their search for a cheap, quality veteran SG to step into Jim Jackson’s old shoes. The Kings might wind up using Martin or even second-round pick Ricky Minard to fill those minutes, which is a bad sign for a team that still likes to talk about its championship ‘window’.
The Kings’ real problem is Webber, of course: his huge, untradeable contract, his whiny, fat mouth, and his ruined knee. He’s the reason the team’s ship is sinking, and I’m sure Peja Stojakovic is only the most vocal of the rats who are looking to shove off a year or two before the whirlpool opens. The Maloofs aren’t looking to drop the lifeboats quite yet, though.
Golden State Warriors: D+
Key additions: Derek Fisher, Eduardo Najera, Andris Biedrins, Dale Davis
Key subtractions: Erick Dampier, Brian Cardinal, Nick Van Exel
I was ready to hand the Warriors a big ‘F’ (for Fisher?), just based on the Derek Fisher signing, which was by far the worst signing of the offseason. The worst team in the West handed a massive 6-year MLE contract to a declining, career-backup PG, in order to bask in the reflected glow of his “veteran leadership”—leaving the much younger Brian Cardinal (the team’s MVP last season by several metrics) to sign the exact same deal with another team! The money the Warriors spent to re-sign Adonal Foyle seems crazy enough, but the money they gave to Fisher is utterly indefensible.
Unfortunately, the team did enough good things that their offseason wasn’t a complete failure. They managed to trade small for big and get rid of Nick Van Exel at the same time; it looks like they drafted a keeper in Andris Biedrins; and they did well in sticking to their guns until they could improve themselves in a Dampier trade. (Najera is one of the few players who can come close to duplicating what the Warriors got from Cardinal.) And the team still will have more cap space than they can possibly use next summer.
There’s no way the Warriors are getting a ‘C’, though. Calbert Cheaney isn’t going to cut it. ;-)
New GM Chris Mullin brought in a college coach, which is a long-shot (even though Mike Montgomery is one of the few college guys who are young enough, good enough and self-effacing enough to have any chance of transferring their success to the pro level). They’ll be challenging the East’s biggest losers for lottery balls even if Montgomery works out for them.
Los Angeles Lakers: D
Key additions: Lamar Odom, Chucky Atkins, Vlade Divac, Caron Butler, Brian Grant, Chris Mihm, Sasha Vujacic
Key subtractions: Gary Payton, Derek Fisher, possibly Karl Malone…I’m sure I’m forgetting someone…
Most people are giving the Lakers a free pass this summer, because they know that Kobe Bryant made the team choose between him and Shaq; the way I see it, though, management took a championship contender and turned it into a team that won’t be competing for a title in the forseeable future. It’s hard to believe they couldn’t have upped their overall ring prospects by holding firm with Kobe and at least considering the possibility of a S&T.
Instead, the team traded away the league’s best center, essentially for Lamar Odom. (Odom was the only player who immediately benefited from playing on the U.S. national team, since he needed as much service time as possible before returning to his old haunting grounds in L.A.) They also added Brian Grant and his contract in the trade, meaning that the Lakers won’t be able to rebuild for at least the next three years; that was part of their motivation for trading Payton and Rick Fox to Boston for younger mediocrities with longer deals.
Odom graduated from combo forward to PF in Miami; the Lakers’ new starting lineup looks to be Odom and Divac at the power positions, along with Atkins, Kobe and one of the Lakers’ endless supply of disposable swingmen. Two of the other G/Fs will join Grant, Mihm and Vujacic on the second team. If Malone doesn’t return, the new Lake Show might rival the new Suns and the new Mavericks for worst defense among playoff contenders, but they should have enough shooting to clear space for Kobe to work. Bryant himself is probably bulking up right now, preparing to direct his team’s offense—a.k.a. shoot a steady stream of Jordan fallaways—from his new home on the low block.
Rudy Tomjanovich is the new coach; he’ll try to recreate the old Houston magic, from the two teams that stumbled into the playoffs and clutch-shot themselves to championships. Rudy T will find that Kobe is no Olajuwon, either.
Seattle Supersonics: D-
Key additions: Robert Swift, Nick Collison, Danny Fortson
Key subtractions: Brent Barry, Calvin Booth
If a team stands pat when they’re good, they get a B-; if they stand pat when they’re bad, they might get a C-. The Sonics didn’t even do that, losing their glue guy to the Spurs and trading their most respectable center to the Mavericks for the thug, Fortson. They also spent their first-round (lottery) pick on a white, American High School center whom they’d never personally worked out, leaving low-post stud Al Jefferson on the board to do so.
What that means is that 6’9”, 245-lb. Nick Collison will be spending a lot of his rookie year manning the pivot, surrounded by soft perimeter players—who says they don’t play Euro basketball in the NBA? The Sonics will have a puncher’s chance when their jumpers are falling, so they should win just enough games to make sure they won’t get any real help in next year’s draft lottery.
The Sonics have painted themselves into a no-win situation with Ray Allen—they can pay him more than he’s worth (a supermax contract), or they can watch him leave and not be able to sign a quality replacement with the money. They’re probably best off letting Allen go and going into a deep rebuilding phase, a la the post-Jordan Chicago Bulls.
Portland: Incomplete
Key additions: Nick Van Exel, Michael Redd?, Desmond Mason?
Key subtractions: Dale Davis, Zach Randolph?, Derek Anderson?
I was set to give Portland a bad grade, since they seemingly burned their bridges with Darius Miles and Shareef Abdur-Rahim simultaneously, in the process of trying to preserve their cap space for next season. Now they’ve re-signed Miles long-term, though, and there seems to be a trade in the offing.
I’m not sure what to think about the proposed Milwaukee deal just yet, but I’m leaning towards a stance of cautious approval from Portland’s side. They can re-sign Shareef, Theo Ratliff and Michael Redd if they do this, meaning they’re one Ruben Patterson trade away from rehabilitating their image while maintaining a competitive team. The Blazers are also the only team in the league with a history of developing young big men from scratch, so losing Randolph isn’t a franchise killer.
I guess I’ll give them a ‘B’ if the trade goes through, but they’re stuck with the Clippers at ‘C’ if it doesn’t. Re-signing Darius Miles was an important move for them.
There ya go—I hope you don’t feel you wasted your time reading it. I might do an Eastern Conference version if I have the time, and if there’s any interest...
Here comes the red pencil:
Houston Rockets: A
Key additions: Tracy McGrady, Juwan Howard, Bob Sura, Tyronne Lue
Key subtractions: Steve Francis, Cuttino Mobley, Kelvin Cato, Scott Padgett
The Rockets wrapped up their ‘A’ early, when they successfully traded three overpaid guys for NBA Superstar Tracy McGrady. This was a heist of such magnitude that Orlando GM John Weisbrod (the “Hockey Guy”) will probably never escape it; twenty years from now, ESPN5 will be calling his nursing home, asking whether he’s available for a roundtable discussion with Ryan Leaf.
Rockets’ management spent the rest of the summer proving they are still incompetent, and as a result the team has no interior defense beyond Yao, and Bob Sura is the closest thing they’ve got to a quality PG. Because of that, Houston probably won’t improve in the standings this year, but as long as McGrady and Yao stay healthy, the Rockets will have plenty of chances to fix their problems down the line. Somewhere in Montana, Phil Jackson is smirking in anticipation…
Utah Jazz: A-
Key additions: Carlos Boozer, Mehmet Okur, Kirk Snyder, Kris Humphries
Key subtractions: Greg Ostertag
The team had a decent draft, but surprisingly, the Jazz had more success in free agency than anyone, which is saying something when you consider the team’s checkered history with free agents. In addition to signing Boozer and Okur, they were able to retain Carlos Arroyo and Gordon Giricek; that’s a pretty nice supporting cast to supplement the team’s underrated star, Andrei Kirilenko. Matt Harpring should be back this year, too.
Boozer escaped from infamy in Cleveland to the big money and obscurity of Utah. I’m tickled whenever I hear that he’s the ‘new Malone’, because Boozer is much more of a poor man’s Charles Barkley: great rebounder, solid scorer, and stone-cold awful on defense. Okur was a jack-of-all-trades for Detroit early last season; his inability to get along with Larry Brown may hint at the possibility of trouble with his new coach, who’s similarly old-school in temperament. Snyder and Humphries are great athletes and individual scorers who will probably see minimal time on the court as rookies.
The Jazz’ weak spot last season was their journeyman frontcourt, but now, after spending $118 million and a lottery pick on the problem, their weakness is…still the frontcourt, actually. The strength of the West’s power forwards is such that Boozer ranks near the bottom among starters there. Okur ranks higher among the conference’s centers, but his lack of size and inconsistent help defense would seemingly make him a poor fit next to Boozer; off the bench, Humphries is almost certainly the weakest defender of all. The Jazz’ hopes of advancing in the playoffs (if they make it) probably rest on the brittle feet of backup C and forgotten man Curtis Borchardt.
Utah outperformed expectations last year, to put it mildly; there’s no guarantee the team will improve its record this year despite their bonanza. The big question is whether Jerry Sloan can get the new acquisitions to put down their paychecks and buy into the team’s system, particularly on defense; if the new guys are hacking and undercutting opponents by December, the Jazz might wind up winning 50.
San Antonio Spurs: B
Key additions: Brent Barry, Beno Udrih
Key subtractions: Hedo Turkoglu
The Spurs cemented their status as championship favorite this summer, holding on to Bruce Bowen and RFA Manu Ginobili and addressing their clutch-shooting deficiency by signing the league’s most efficient perimeter player, Brent Barry. All three players are well worth what they’ll be receiving, although Barry might diminish to Steve Kerr status by the last year of his contract.
Why only a B, then? I guess I still can’t get over the team’s failures last year, when they had the unprecedented opportunity to build a dynasty through free agency: with a championship team’s three-player core on the books for a total of $15m and no overpaid garbage, they had nearly two max contracts worth of cap space. Two years later, the Spurs have no more cap space and no more championships; they lost Stephen Jackson—a young, quality swingman—by lowballing him at the negotiating table; and their entire free agent “haul” consists of the aging Brent Barry and the mediocre Rasho Nesterovic.
When you consider that they had a legit chance to sign Jermaine O’Neal and rebuild the Twin Towers, and they punted it so they could put a contract in front of Nesterovic on the first day of free agency…it’s hard not to be disappointed in their front office, that’s all. Even a year later.
Phoenix Suns: B
Key additions: Steve Nash, Quentin Richardson, Steven Hunter, Jackson Vroman
Key subtractions: Antonio McDyess, Jahidi White
It’s hard to fault the Sarver Suns in their initial run at free agency. While the Nash and Richardson signings have been rehashed on this board ad infinitum, we can generally agree that the players themselves seem good enough to be worth their new contracts, which is quite an accomplishment given the market and the Suns’ desperation. (If they hadn’t signed anybody, the team’s useful cap space would have diminished by next summer, and vanished entirely the year after.)
I think we can also agree that Nash and Richardson are poor fits for the team’s needs, as free agents go. Nash is a win-now player, playing for a team that’s building toward a point years in the future; Richardson duplicates the contributions of the team’s main strength last season, its athletic and talented young swingmen. When you consider that the Suns gave up chances to go after Mehmet Okur and Erick Dampier to sign Nash and Richardson, I think you can legitimately question whether they went overboard in their pursuit of value over need, even given the NBA’s horror stories on the subject.
There’s a little irony in looking at the team’s subtractions and realizing their current needs are a backup PF and a center, but I don’t think McDyess and White were the answer. (Not that anybody can see what the answer is going to be now, mind you.)
The Suns also signed Steven Hunter to a minimum contract. The best thing I can think to say about Hunter is that he’s still young, but what do you expect for the minimum? Teaching a dumb player to be smart is tough work—not as tough as teaching a short player to be tall, but not easy. Fortunately, the Suns are only expecting Hunter to compete for backup minutes at center, along with Maciej Lampe and Shawn Marion.
The Suns gave up their draft pick for a future Chicago Bulls pick. Obviously, that part of the offseason gets an ‘incomplete’.
As a result of this summer’s moves, the Suns are finally good enough and talented enough again to be back in their old rut, trying to decide between playing small ball with good players and regular-sized ball with not-so-good players. We all know there’s no solution to this, but I’m comforted by the idea that the Suns didn’t screw themselves over trying to escape the almost-inevitable; there might be future opportunities to fix the team up right, through trade or the draft, and that wasn’t a given at the start of the offseason. It would be nice if the Suns can make the playoffs while we’re waiting, of course.
Memphis Grizzlies: B
Key additions: Brian Cardinal
Key subtractions: none
Memphis didn’t improve themselves much in free agency, but it’s hard not to admire Jerry West’s technical proficiency: identifying the few difference-makers in a weak FA market and snapping up one of them with his MLE; beating back the reluctant suitors for RFA Stromile Swift while continuing to dangle him as a S&T piece in trade talks; keeping Jake Tsakalidis locked in his basement until October while searching for a cheap upgrade; etc.
West’s problem is that teams won’t deal with him anymore, especially after the Drew Gooden/Mike Miller trade, where Orlando seemed like such a clear winner at the outset. He’s in a better position than ever to fleece that first sucker, though. (Is that John Paxson I hear knocking?)
Denver Nuggets: B-
Key additions: Kenyon Martin
Key subtractions: Chris Anderson, Rodney White?
The Nuggets were prime candidates for a Suns-style “back into the abyss” season—last year, they benefited from Marcus Camby’s miraculous health, Anthony’s grudging willingness to accept a limited role as a rookie, and plenty of luck and momentum besides, and still barely made the playoffs. This year, they’ve got a coach on the hot seat, a year-older-and-more-brittle Camby, and looming chemistry problems as Melo looks to take over…
Signing K-Mart put that to rest, of course. Denver will be a better team now, and will probably have a slightly better record; their frontcourt is among the league’s deepest and best, and with the momentum from Martin’s signing, they should continue to hold one of the league’s biggest home-court advantages. The Nuggets still need a SG, but quality SGs are not impossible to acquire, even with an MLE, so that shouldn’t kill their future prospects.
The closer I look, though, the less I like the K-Mart deal for the Nuggets. My problem is, the Nuggets punted all of their high risk/high reward assets in the deal—they traded their lightly-protected Clippers pick, and they can now write off any hope of having future cap space, or seeing a Tskitishvili break-out.
What that means is that what you see with the Nuggets right now is pretty much what you’re going to get. And what that is, is a future starting lineup of Nene at C, K-Mart, Melo, Andre Miller, and a decent-quality SG to be named later—which doesn’t scream “championship” to me, or even softly whisper the possibility. Nene and Martin are both undersized at their future positions, and Miller vs. Melo looks like a long-term issue, but most of all I don’t think there’s enough talent there to ever beat a championship-caliber team.
It looks to me like Denver would have been better off taking the big slide, firing their coach, and having Anthony get used to the idea that winning in the NBA is difficult and requires sacrifices. Instead, after a long and painful (and nearly successful) rebuilding process, Kiki Vandeweghe panicked and sold out a year or two early.
I could be wrong, of course, and Denver did improve themselves significantly in the short term, so I bumped them up to a B-. If I were being really honest here, I'd probably have them down with the Lakers...
Dallas Mavericks: B-
Key additions: Erick Dampier, Jason Terry, Jerry Stackhouse, Devin Harris, D.J. Mbenga, P. Podkolzine
Key subtractions: Steve Nash, Antawn Jamison, Antoine Walker, Eduardo Najera
A busy offseason for the Mavericks—more so than usual, even. The team lost three of its five veteran cornerstones and its only glue guy, but added a top-5 draft pick and a ‘real’ center.
I guess it’s possible to frame Dallas’ offseason as the shocking departure of Steve Nash and a bunch of subsequent trades to try and recover from that loss, but that’s not really the way it went down. The first Mavericks move was the Jamison trade, which is a good deal from a value perspective (as were all of the Mavs’ trades this summer) but only makes sense from a strategic viewpoint if the team is blowing up and starting over.
Looking at all the moves together, two points occur to me:
1. The Mavericks have given in to their hubris, thinking they can keep turning losers with talent into valuable role players. It worked two years ago with Van Exel, and they had a 50% success rate last year (Jamison was the success story, Walker the failure), but this year they’ve added three of them—Stackhouse, Terry and Dampier—and they’re relying on Terry and Dampier to start, too. I don’t like those odds.
2. This is no longer a Don Nelson team; Nelson’s good teams played outside-in on offense, and this team doesn’t have the shooters to do that. I would be surprised if Nelson is still coaching the team in 2005.
IMO the Mavericks are going to miss the playoffs this year; they’ve got enough talent to get in, but the chemistry is gone, and they still don’t have enough defense. I think they’re doing the right thing in the long term, though, by dumping the Nelson system and attempting to put a more conventional team around Nowitzki, so they get a B- just like the Nuggets.
Minnesota Timberwolves: B-
Key additions: none
Key subtractions: none
The Timberwolves didn’t make themselves better, now or in the future. But they didn’t screw up a good thing, either, despite the expense. The Wolves shape up as San Antonio’s main rival in the West now, and they could easily win the title this season…as long as they can keep Sam Cassell and Troy Hudson healthy at the same time.
Kevin Garnett should be rested and recharged after skipping the Olympics.
L.A. Clippers: C
Key additions: Shaun Livingston, Kerry Kittles
Key subtractions: Quentin Richardson
It’s hard to know what’s up with the Clippers. After decades of stubbornly refusing to take risks to try and compete, David Stern reworks the CBA, with the main goal seemingly being to allow the Clips to compete without taking any risks. And now, suddenly, the Clippers seem to be taking baby steps…toward changing their approach. What gives? (IMO what gives is that Mike Dunleavy has been given a certain degree of decision-making power, but why did Donald Sterling agree to that?)
It looks as though the Clippers are going to be using their entire cap now instead of holding at the 75% minimum, and they might make a serious effort to compete in the UFA market instead of sticking to signing scrubs and matching RFA contracts. By leaving Q-Rich on the table, despite a contract that was tailor-made for them to match, the Clips said that they think they can get something even better in the FA market next year: certainly a more optimistic outlook than you’d expect from them, given their history.
Kerry Kittles is better than Q this year—a better fit for their team, at least; they have plenty of post presence already, and they were missing the high-percentage shooting and quick-footed defense that Kittles should provide. The Clips might regret letting Q go by next summer, but we’ll have to wait to find out for sure.
The team handled the draft in typical Clippers style, at least; they have no qualms about filling their needs instead of trying to identify the BPA. (I actually like Shaun Livingston, based on what little I know about him.) They had a typical Clippers dive at the end of last season, too. Nice to know things aren’t changing too much over there.
Sacramento Kings: C-
Key additions: Greg Ostertag, Kevin Martin, Ricky Minard, David Bluthenthal
Key subtractions: Vlade Divac, Anthony Peeler, Gerald Wallace
I don’t see it mentioned very often, but the Kings seem to be operating on a strictly limited budget. The result is a fairly constant turnover of their bench, and this year Vlade Divac learned that there’s a big difference between being a Kings starter and being their 7th man: the 7th man is always the guy wearing a name tag.
Greg Ostertag is the Kings’ new backup center—possibly the only spot available to him where he’d be significantly younger and cheaper than the former incumbent was. Darius Songiala was re-signed to back up Chris Webber, which is a meaningful position now that the team doesn’t have two centers with high-post skills. Kevin Martin is a Doug Christie type; Christie is making $8m/yr in the second-to-last year of his contract, so he might as well put his house on the market right now.
In the loss column, Gerald Wallace is talented but never found a role to fit into; the player the Kings will miss most is probably Anthony Peeler, since they seem to have come up empty in their search for a cheap, quality veteran SG to step into Jim Jackson’s old shoes. The Kings might wind up using Martin or even second-round pick Ricky Minard to fill those minutes, which is a bad sign for a team that still likes to talk about its championship ‘window’.
The Kings’ real problem is Webber, of course: his huge, untradeable contract, his whiny, fat mouth, and his ruined knee. He’s the reason the team’s ship is sinking, and I’m sure Peja Stojakovic is only the most vocal of the rats who are looking to shove off a year or two before the whirlpool opens. The Maloofs aren’t looking to drop the lifeboats quite yet, though.
Golden State Warriors: D+
Key additions: Derek Fisher, Eduardo Najera, Andris Biedrins, Dale Davis
Key subtractions: Erick Dampier, Brian Cardinal, Nick Van Exel
I was ready to hand the Warriors a big ‘F’ (for Fisher?), just based on the Derek Fisher signing, which was by far the worst signing of the offseason. The worst team in the West handed a massive 6-year MLE contract to a declining, career-backup PG, in order to bask in the reflected glow of his “veteran leadership”—leaving the much younger Brian Cardinal (the team’s MVP last season by several metrics) to sign the exact same deal with another team! The money the Warriors spent to re-sign Adonal Foyle seems crazy enough, but the money they gave to Fisher is utterly indefensible.
Unfortunately, the team did enough good things that their offseason wasn’t a complete failure. They managed to trade small for big and get rid of Nick Van Exel at the same time; it looks like they drafted a keeper in Andris Biedrins; and they did well in sticking to their guns until they could improve themselves in a Dampier trade. (Najera is one of the few players who can come close to duplicating what the Warriors got from Cardinal.) And the team still will have more cap space than they can possibly use next summer.
There’s no way the Warriors are getting a ‘C’, though. Calbert Cheaney isn’t going to cut it. ;-)
New GM Chris Mullin brought in a college coach, which is a long-shot (even though Mike Montgomery is one of the few college guys who are young enough, good enough and self-effacing enough to have any chance of transferring their success to the pro level). They’ll be challenging the East’s biggest losers for lottery balls even if Montgomery works out for them.
Los Angeles Lakers: D
Key additions: Lamar Odom, Chucky Atkins, Vlade Divac, Caron Butler, Brian Grant, Chris Mihm, Sasha Vujacic
Key subtractions: Gary Payton, Derek Fisher, possibly Karl Malone…I’m sure I’m forgetting someone…
Most people are giving the Lakers a free pass this summer, because they know that Kobe Bryant made the team choose between him and Shaq; the way I see it, though, management took a championship contender and turned it into a team that won’t be competing for a title in the forseeable future. It’s hard to believe they couldn’t have upped their overall ring prospects by holding firm with Kobe and at least considering the possibility of a S&T.
Instead, the team traded away the league’s best center, essentially for Lamar Odom. (Odom was the only player who immediately benefited from playing on the U.S. national team, since he needed as much service time as possible before returning to his old haunting grounds in L.A.) They also added Brian Grant and his contract in the trade, meaning that the Lakers won’t be able to rebuild for at least the next three years; that was part of their motivation for trading Payton and Rick Fox to Boston for younger mediocrities with longer deals.
Odom graduated from combo forward to PF in Miami; the Lakers’ new starting lineup looks to be Odom and Divac at the power positions, along with Atkins, Kobe and one of the Lakers’ endless supply of disposable swingmen. Two of the other G/Fs will join Grant, Mihm and Vujacic on the second team. If Malone doesn’t return, the new Lake Show might rival the new Suns and the new Mavericks for worst defense among playoff contenders, but they should have enough shooting to clear space for Kobe to work. Bryant himself is probably bulking up right now, preparing to direct his team’s offense—a.k.a. shoot a steady stream of Jordan fallaways—from his new home on the low block.
Rudy Tomjanovich is the new coach; he’ll try to recreate the old Houston magic, from the two teams that stumbled into the playoffs and clutch-shot themselves to championships. Rudy T will find that Kobe is no Olajuwon, either.
Seattle Supersonics: D-
Key additions: Robert Swift, Nick Collison, Danny Fortson
Key subtractions: Brent Barry, Calvin Booth
If a team stands pat when they’re good, they get a B-; if they stand pat when they’re bad, they might get a C-. The Sonics didn’t even do that, losing their glue guy to the Spurs and trading their most respectable center to the Mavericks for the thug, Fortson. They also spent their first-round (lottery) pick on a white, American High School center whom they’d never personally worked out, leaving low-post stud Al Jefferson on the board to do so.
What that means is that 6’9”, 245-lb. Nick Collison will be spending a lot of his rookie year manning the pivot, surrounded by soft perimeter players—who says they don’t play Euro basketball in the NBA? The Sonics will have a puncher’s chance when their jumpers are falling, so they should win just enough games to make sure they won’t get any real help in next year’s draft lottery.
The Sonics have painted themselves into a no-win situation with Ray Allen—they can pay him more than he’s worth (a supermax contract), or they can watch him leave and not be able to sign a quality replacement with the money. They’re probably best off letting Allen go and going into a deep rebuilding phase, a la the post-Jordan Chicago Bulls.
Portland: Incomplete
Key additions: Nick Van Exel, Michael Redd?, Desmond Mason?
Key subtractions: Dale Davis, Zach Randolph?, Derek Anderson?
I was set to give Portland a bad grade, since they seemingly burned their bridges with Darius Miles and Shareef Abdur-Rahim simultaneously, in the process of trying to preserve their cap space for next season. Now they’ve re-signed Miles long-term, though, and there seems to be a trade in the offing.
I’m not sure what to think about the proposed Milwaukee deal just yet, but I’m leaning towards a stance of cautious approval from Portland’s side. They can re-sign Shareef, Theo Ratliff and Michael Redd if they do this, meaning they’re one Ruben Patterson trade away from rehabilitating their image while maintaining a competitive team. The Blazers are also the only team in the league with a history of developing young big men from scratch, so losing Randolph isn’t a franchise killer.
I guess I’ll give them a ‘B’ if the trade goes through, but they’re stuck with the Clippers at ‘C’ if it doesn’t. Re-signing Darius Miles was an important move for them.
There ya go—I hope you don’t feel you wasted your time reading it. I might do an Eastern Conference version if I have the time, and if there’s any interest...
