W DO
YOU I
N
#1 October 2014
N?
Top 50 Most Interesting Players
30 TEAM PREVIEWS
Letter From Coach Nick BBallBreakdown.com | 1
Foreword - Letter from Coach Nick
Foreword - Letter from the Editor
Each year, as October starts, everybody gets excited over the anticipation of a new season. Whether it’s to worship their team’s ensconced star, see which rookie will break out, or what skill their favorite role player added to their game, the amount of excitement tends to stay fairly consistent.
We present this eBook today as an introduction. I, Mark, am joined by a whole host of contributing talent in launching the new writing portal for the BBALLBREAKDOWN brand. We present this 2014/15 NBA season preview free to all as a means of introducing ourselves and our work to the project and to the BBALLBREAKDOWN audience.
But this year is different. I know that people always see “this” year as different, but I truly mean that and I’ll tell you why: As a triangle offense coach dedicated to upholding Tex Winter’s golden principles of offense, it’s impossible to suppress the energy bubbling to the surface when I think of all the teams that will use either the pure triangle or many of its principles in its attack: New York Knicks - Phil Jackson and Derek Fisher installed the true triangle (I saw JR Smith come around a weakside screen and catch and shoot! Gorgeous!!) Golden State Warriors - Steve Kerr is using many of its principles he learned playing in the triangle for the Bulls Denver Nuggets - Brian Shaw (another former player who excelled with it) in Denver, will use the triangle’s high post action Los Angeles Lakers - Byron Scott comes home to Los Angeles to run the triangle’s cousin the Princeton offense Cleveland Cavaliers - David Blatt uses Princeton principles Sacramento Kings - Mike Malone has been busy drilling facets of the Triangle, Princeton, and Spurs Motion San Antonio Spurs - Gregg Popovich borrowed two main actions of the triangle in Pinch Post and Corner Option. Never before have so many NBA teams embraced the read and react ideals of the Triangle, and I savor the thought of all these offenses wreaking havoc on opposing defenses with purposeful play, short and quick passing, and open shots all over the court. While the offense had gone through the wilderness of bad press and front office stigmatism, its reputation has come out stronger than ever, as coaches have demystified its intricacies and found players willing to embrace it. But that’s not the only reason for my palpable excitement. For the first time in our 4 year existence, BBALLBREAKDOWN will have a real, living and breathing website with fantastic contributors and a top Editor in Chief in Mark Deeks to live right alongside our video analysis. The website will influence the video side, and vice versa, elevating everyone’s game and creating the first stop of your day for the latest in depth NBA analysis. One of the tenants to the triangle offense is that you are able to pass to any of your 4 teammates at any time, and I cannot wait to begin passing the ball around the BBALLBREAKDOWN court of basketball analysis.
As Coach Nick explained above, BBALLBREAKDOWN is hereby undergoing a massive relaunch. Everything as you already knew it remains – the YouTube channel, of course, is not going anywhere. Yet now, there will also be a web site to accompany the video channel, specialising in the same sort of content for which the video content is long since established. It is to be of the same high standards, the only difference being the medium via which it is delivered. To that end, I and a team of writers hereby join Coach Nick at BBALLBREAKDOWN’s new writing hub, where we will begin realising our ambitions. As the new editor in chief, I have requirements and expectations. I require that we as a team provide only quality coverage. Nothing superfluous, purposeless or done for the purposes of ensuring maximum web traffic stats. Our goal is not to add meaningless asides and arbitrary opinions to prevailing discourse. Our mantra is to present only in-depth NBA analysis, for nothing less than this befits the way BBALLBREAKDOWN has been built. I require us to engage with the readership who want those same exact things in their website. I require us to meet the highest editorial standards, to always further the conversation and enhance the understanding, and to challenge any misguided beliefs within the wider NBA media so as to best deal with the esoterica and endless detail that makes this beautiful game what it is. And I expect us to meet those requirements. Our plans for the website are not limited to the mere written word. We have creative visions far beyond just writing our thoughts and some facts down, via all manner of media, encompassing all features and tools we can envisage. As long, of course, as they all adhere to the self-imposed high standards of quality. ‘Quality’ is of course a vague concept, as is depth. Yet we have a clear vision of what it means, and we wish only to deal in it. BBALLBREAKDOWN is already synonymous with this because of the tireless work of Coach Nick in building it. The job now for myself and this team of contributors is to compliment and advance that very reputation. We’re in. Mark Deeks
You In?
2 | BBallBreakdown.com
BBallBreakdown.com | 3
Table Of Contents (Clickable) Summertime Was Kind To The Hawks
Durant And Thunder Hoping For Improved Performance
Crucial Re-building Steps Made by Celtics In Summer
The Orlando Magic Swung Big; Will They Miss?
Once Again, Brooklyn Undergoes Summer Changes
Long-Term Thinking Once Again The Topic In Philly
The Hornets In Effect, Looking Like A Playoff Team
Tough Summer Turned Nice For Phoenix At Last Minute
Bulls Fix Shooting Woes, Look To Contend
Blazer Core Back Again To Make Noise
Cleveland’s Slam Dunk Summer
Kings Look To Gay & Cousins To Lead Young Group
Dallas Hope Upgrades Will Prolong Nowitzki’s Career
NBA Champs Looking For Franchise-first Repeat
The Nuggets Hope Crowded Back-Court Will Be An Asset
Raptors Open Wallet, Gets Key Contributors Back
Outside Shooting Woes A Thing Of The Past In Detroit
Jazz Believes In Own Future, Commits To Hayward
Warriors Hope To Make Leap To Title Contention This Year
Experience Of Pierce Could Drastically Improve Wizards
Rockets Look To Overcome Poor Summer
Top 50 Most Interesting Players
Pacers Still Digesting Nightmare Off-Season
Predictions
New Owner Ends Turmoil In Clipper-land
Acknowledgements The Writers
Lakers Looking Ahead To Return Of Kobe Bryant Grizzled And Old, But Not Down For The Count Miami Mourns The Loss Of LeBron; Re-tools Roster Arrival Of Kidd & Parker Signals Big Changes Minnesota Not Mourning Lost Love Pelicans Putting All Eggs In The Basket Of Anthony Davis The Knicks Look Beyond This Year, Gambling On Anthony 4 | BBallBreakdown.com
BBallBreakdown.com | 5
Summertime Was Kind To The Hawks The Hawks are flying again, led by Al Horford, Jeff Teague, and Mike Budenholzer, the buzz is back in Atlanta! By Mark Deeks, Matthew Hochberg, Morten Jensen and Bryan Toporek
6 | BBallBreakdown.com
Mark Deeks - Far removed from the days of Mike Woodson’s predictable isolation-and-switch schemes, the Hawks now have Mike Budenholzer, who has nuanced the offense and utilised the tools available to him. Without anyone who can consistently get beyond the first line of the defense with ease, create their own shot off of the dribble or, sans Kyle Korver, consistently get open off the ball, Atlanta’s playbook of backpicks and side pick and rolls gets good looks to good scorers with a tremendous and refreshing sense of unselfishness. And with the additions of Kent Bazemore and Thabo Sefolosha to shore up the lack of man to man defensive guards, and the return of Al Horford giving them their only plus rim protector back, the roster gives Budenholzer more to work with on the defensive side of the court now too.
keep them in when other team’s stars do the same. This ultimately undercuts the current incarnation of the Hawks and makes them eminently beatable in a playoff series, and having taken no huge steps to alleviate either of these concerns in the offseason, the long term prognosis for Atlanta is a tough one. [If they knew they needed an extra scorer and an extra rim protector, for example, as indeed they do, they probably should have just kept Lou Williams and Lucas Nogueira.]
What Atlanta do not have is much depth. This was evidenced by the Horford injury – without him, Pero Antic became a crunch time player, and Mike Scott, useful though he is offensively, was now the seventh man. They also continue to lack that star who can carry the team for stretches of games and
Matthew Hochberg - After an unproductive summer to help the product on the court and a tumultuous one in the front office, it is time to focus on the Atlanta Hawks – the basketball team.
Nevertheless, barring injury or implosion, this Hawks team is a good one. They are smart, diverse and sufficiently to be the mid to low playoff seed that no other team will want to face. And due to the high IQ nature in which they play, they will be fun to watch doing it too.
Aside from the facts that the team is currently up for sale and there are
many who are calling on General Manager Danny Ferry to be fired after his racist remarks, the Hawks had a relatively quiet few months. Their biggest offseason move was acquiring Thabo Sefolosha, a defensive-minded three-point threat who certainly has game, but is not the ideal guy to be the highlight of an offseason. The big man twosome of Paul Millsap and Al Horford will lead the team, with significant help from Jeff Teague in the backcourt. Free agent pickups such as Kent Bazemore and re-signed Mike Scott are respectable rotational players who can productively contribute. Al Horford and all of his 6-10, 250-pound frame will be counted on to both physically and emotionally guide the team, attempting to improve the squad on the court and heal them off of it due to their tainted image. Although the 28-year-old played in just 29 games last season because of injury, Horford was averaging career-highs in points (18.6), field-goal percentage (56.7) and blocks (1.5). He has clearly come into his own and is playing his BBallBreakdown.com | 7
Atlanta Hawks Adreian Payne, Thabo Sefolosha, Kent Bazemore, Dexter Pittman, Jarell Eddie
In
Drafted Adreian Payne (15th, signed) and Walter Tavares (43rd, unsigned). Acquired the rights to Lamar Patterson (48th, unsigned) for a future second round pick. Draft Night
30th June: Traded Lou Williams and the rights to Lucas Nogueira to Toronto in exchange for John Salmons.
Lou Williams Gustavo Ayon Cartier Martin Out
own and is playing his prime, but will it be enough to lead the Hawks to the playoffs? They will get close, but fall short in Hawks fashion.
big men, as well as rookie Adreian Payne, who actually may step back outside the long line himself, as he did at Michigan State.
Morten Jensen - The Hawks may have struggled somewhat in the regular season, but turned up in the style for last year’s playoffs, in which their longrange game puzzled Indiana enough to force a final seventh game.
Bryan Toporek - Anyone sleeping on the Atlanta Hawks in 2014-15 is making a grave mistake. Atlanta nearly orchestrated a first-round playoff upset over the top-seeded Indiana Pacers without the services of their best player, Al Horford, who played only 29 games before suffering a season-ending pectoral injury.
This season, the Hawks will undoubtedly build off that success, and likely utilize the three-point line to a much greater success, as it’s effectiveness was apparent against the Pacers in a playoff setting. The return of Al Horford should naturally also be noted. After playing just 29 games last season, Horford will look to re-establish himself as one of the premier big men in the league, and help create a tremendously physical imposing front-court duo alongside Paul Millsap. Finally, Kyle Korver is still there to be the main threat from the outside, and his presence should present major floor-spacing for the aforementioned 8 | BBallBreakdown.com
With Horford back in the fold this season, there’s little reason to expect a regression from this three-pointhappy squad. The only key contributor the Hawks lost this summer was Lou Williams, but the additions of Thabo Sefolosha and Kent Bazemore should help compensate for Sweet Lou’s departure. The darling of 2013 summer league, Dennis Schroeder, could also be poised to take a major step forward as a sophomore after playing little more than spot minutes during his rookie season. The real strength of this team lies in its bigs, and the rich only got richer this
summer. Atlanta used the 15th overall pick to draft Michigan State power forward Adreian Payne, who drilled 42.3 percent of his 104 three-point attempts as a senior this past season. During the Hawks’ media day, Horford described Payne as “explosive” and “a special athlete,” per Chris Vivlamore of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He’ll be a perfect fit for head coach Mike Budenholzer’s system, which emphasized three-point shooting from all five spots on the court once Horford went down for the year. Sophomore center Pero Antic could miss some time early in the year due to a broken nose suffered in training camp, but the sweet-shooting 7-footer will be back in time for when games really start to matter. Paul Millsap, meanwhile, is entering a contract year, giving him millions of reasons to dominate.
Trade
15th July: Traded the draft rights to Sofoklis Schortsanitis (34th, 2003, unsigned) to Oklahoma City in exchange for a signed and traded Thabo Sefolosha (three years, $12 million), cash and the draft rights to Giorgis Printezis (58th, 2007, unsigned).
10th July: Waived John Salmons. 15th July: Acquired Thabo Sefolosha via sign and trade (three years, $12 million) along with cash and the draft rights to Giorgis Printezis in exchange for the draft rights to Sofoklis Schortsanitis. Free Agency
22nd August: Re-signed Shelvin Mack to a three year, $7.3 million contract. 25th August:Re-signed Mike Scott to a three year, $10 million contract.
Salary Link
10th September: Re-signed Elton Brand to a one year, $2 million contract. Signed Kent Bazemore to a two year, $4 million contract. 29th September: Signed Dexter Pittman and Jarell Eddie to unguaranteed one year minimum salary contracts.
The Hawks, who finished fifth in made three-pointers last season, have a real shot to lead the league from beyond the arc this coming year. That’s going to make them a nightmare matchup for any foe that dares to underestimate them.
BBallBreakdown.com | 9
Crucial Re-building Steps Made by Celtics In Summer During the course of summer, the Boston Celtics made considerable strides in gathering fresh talent. By Torkil Bang, Mark Deeks, Jeff McMenamin, and Michael Pina
Torkil Bang - GM Danny Ainge had a busy summer: First he tried to catch the big white whale – no offense meant, Kevin Love – and when that failed, he went after smaller fish, and landed a boatful.
they have expiring contracts to match salaries. The young players still need to break out to become truly valuable, but that might happen even this season for some of them (Sullinger Olynyk, Zeller and maybe Smart).
Last season in Boston was a lost case in many ways: The only All Star on the team was out most of the season, the roster was terribly unbalanced and head coach Brad Stevens was a rookie. The Celtics didn’t really need to tank to be a bad team under those conditions. If basketball was as simple as calculus, the additions and subtractions the Celtics have made, should put them in competition for a playoff spot: Rondo is half a year further removed from his ACL injury, the roster is better balanced this season, and coach Stevens has enough NBA experience to make adjustments to his system.
The Celtics’ biggest needs are still a rim protector and a wing scorer, who can be the go-to-guy. Green tried to be the latter last season, but he has never shown that consistency, that you ask of the go-to-guy. Zeller might be a short time solution at the center spot, but so far he projects to be a career backup big man.
But most importantly: The Celtics have assets to make a big splash, in case another star player becomes available. They have more than a handful of young quality players on rookie scale contracts, they have more draft picks than any other team in the league, and 10 | BBallBreakdown.com
So if a star wing or center becomes available during the season, look for the Celtics to make a bid. They simply have assets to burn, much like the Rockets had a couple of seasons ago. Mark Deeks - It has been another offseason of ‘consolidation’ and ‘asset management’ for Boston, and yet not all of the assets have even been managed. Rajon Rondo is not seemingly in the Celtics long term plan, yet he also has
no short term value. Injured, out of spotlight, declined and incredibly scrutinised, Rondo is something of a fallen star, whose value is diminished and whose contract is expiring. If indeed he is still considered the (or a) point guard for the future, he will now have to do alongside and in tandem with lottery pick Marcus Smart, whose lack of jumpshot surely prohibits the two ever working together well. Smart, surely, is a big part of the long term plan, thereby ensuring that Rondo, surely, cannot be. The long term plan is not obvious at the moment, though. Rondo and Smart do not figure to reconcile well together, and nor do Smart and the ball dominant incomer Evan Turner. Alongside those three, Boston offers a couple of occasionally explosive scorers who need almost all of it setting up for them (Marcus Thornton and James Young), a guard they just gave $32 million to who needs to find minutes amongst all ofo the above (Avery Bradley), some decent offensive bigs who do not protect the paint (Brandon Bass, Jared Sullinger, Tyler Zeller and Victor Faverani), and wherever Jeff Green fits into that.
BBallBreakdown.com | 11
Boston Celtics Evan Turner, Marcus Thornton, Tyler Zeller, Christian Watford, Dwight Powell, Erik Murphy, Rodney McGruder, Tim Frazier, Marcus Smart, James Young
In
Drafted Marcus Smart (6th, signed) and James Young (17th, signed).
Draft Night
Keith Bogans, Chris Babb, Chris Johnson, Jerryd Bayless, Kris Humphries Out
In theory, a Smart/Bradley long term backcourt is a tremendous defensive pairing, that, when paired with Jeff Green’s complimentary offense, Young’s potential and whichever of the bigs they opt to keep alongside the bizarre but pliable Kelly Olynyk, creates something of a foundation. It is however a foundation devoid of much star power and needing big infusions of talent still, whilst having too many decent incumbent players to be too terrible in the interim. Boston, then, remain in asset accumulation mode. And if you read that as “an awkward upcoming season with a busy trade deadline and about 25-33 wins”, I would have to agree. Jeff McMenamin - The Celtics took several big steps in their rebuilding process this offseason, taking Marcus Smart and James Young in the first round of the 2014 NBA draft as well as signing a few solid bench pieces in Marcus Thornton, Evan Turner and Tyler Zeller. Suddenly, they could have more of a formidable team in a weak Eastern Conference than many expected this season. Above all else, the health of point guard 12 | BBallBreakdown.com
Rajon Rondo is the team’s biggest concern. Rondo is expected to miss the next two months as he recovers from a broken hand injury, but he hasn’t ruled out the possibility of playing on opening night. Rondo averaged 11.7 points and 9.8 assists last season in just 30 games. He sat out the majority of the season as he recovered from a partially torn ACL in his right knee. He hasn’t played in over 60 games since the 2010-11 season. If the Celtics look to have success next season, he must be in the lineup. Rondo’s surrounding cast consists of shooting guard Avery Bradley, small forward Jeff Green, power forward Brandon Bass and likely a center by committee between Jared Sullinger and Kelly Olynyk. Smart, Young, Thornton, Turner, Zeller and Gerald Wallace figure to see a good share of minutes as well. The biggest strength of this team is in its guard play and ball handlers. They’ll have trouble against bigger teams, but as long as Rondo is healthy they should see an increase in wins next season.
25th September: Traded Keith Bogans to Cleveland in exchange for John Lucas, Erik Murphy, Dwight Powell and Malcolm Thomas. Waived Chris Babb, Chris Johnson and Christian Watford.
for celebration. Instead, they were smacked in the face by the realities of an NBA rebuild; it’s often long, always arduous, and the expectation of turning things around overnight are totally unrealistic. But life goes on. What the Celtics do have is a franchise point guard in his prime (Rajon Rondo), several undeveloped assets who may be able to someday function in a stabilized core (Marcus Smart, Avery Bradley, Jared Sullinger, Kelly Olynyk, James Young), a young, brilliant head coach, one of the smartest and savviest front offices in the league, and an incomparable bevy of future first-round draft picks.
Trade
10th July: Traded a future conditional second round pick to Cleveland in exchange for Marcus Thornton from Boston, and Tyler Zeller and a first round pick from Cleveland.
10th June: Joel Anthony opted in. 15th July: Re-signed Avery Bradley to a four year, $32 million contract. Free Agency
Salary Link
18th July: Signed and traded Kris Humphries (three years, partially guaranteed $13,320,000) to Washington in exchange for a protected future second round pick. 20th August: Signed Tim Frazier, Rodney McGruder and Christian Watford to unguaranteed one year minimum salary contracts. 29th September: Waived John Lucas and Malcolm Thomas. Signed Christian Watford to an one year minimum salary contract. Signed Evan Turner to a two year, $6.7 million contract.
How those positive elements help in the 2014-15 season is unclear. If the team hangs onto Rondo (which is likely), they may just have enough top to bottom talent to garner an eighth seed in the playoffs. It’s unlikely, sure, but this year’s roster is noticeably better than the mostly Rondo-less one from a year ago.
Michael Pina - The Boston Celtics did not get a superstar this summer. There were no fireworks or reasonable cause BBallBreakdown.com | 13
Once Again, Brooklyn Undergoes Summer Changes It was another summer of change for the Nets who gained an experienced head coach in form of Lionel Hollins. By John Daigle, Mark Deeks, and Matthew Hochberg
John Daigle - With great power comes great responsibility, and really, the Nets franchise failed to deliver on both accounts. Say what you will about their late surge into the postseason – and quite frankly, say it loudly, because it truly was an unorthodox thing of beauty – but the questions that initially surrounded Brooklyn didn’t exactly fade with the sixth seed. After all, the acquirement of Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, and Jason Terry (among others) spelled “Championship or Bust” and, as you already know, only one came to fruition. Of course, those weren’t the only issues. The argument against their age proved valid. While Pierce remained his reliable self, Garnett disappeared and all but required an APB put out midseason. Terry lost his minutes to Alan Anderson… read that first part again…and Deron Williams, well, let’s just say the Trade Machine deleted his name. All that, and we haven’t even begun discussing Brook Lopez. These problems weren’t directly correlated to age, but nonetheless, they certainly didn’t help. Of course, every issue listed above wasn’t an argument to begin with. 14 | BBallBreakdown.com
Decline? Sure. It was always on the table. But a 10-21 start to the year really set this team apart. And when everything appeared bleak, and nothing could possibly get worse, Jason Kidd simply took off his tie, refused to so much as look at a razor, inserted anyone shorter than 6-feet at center, and watched his defense consistently gamble for turnovers. It was unconventional, if not carnal, but dammit if it didn’t breathe life into a much maligned organization. Suddenly, a 10-3 January turned into a 7-5 February, which then became a 12-4 March and, VOILA!: the 2013 Brooklyn Nets. Fortunately, that chain of events is a thing of the past and isn’t likely to rear its head, if only because it’s impossible. Kidd forced his way out of town, Pierce followed I-95 S until he reached Washington, Terry was released, Shaun Livingston opted to play elsewhere, and Garnett has returned to simply cash that final $12 million dollars and wave. The Nets are back at square one, whether they planned it or not. Lopez is healthy, but really, this team
once again waits for Deron Williams. No, not that Williams. What Brooklyn truly soughts is the same Williams that sat down two years ago and inked a five-year, $98 million dollar extension. It might be out of the realm of possibility, but that is the Williams they need. You know, more like a rich man’s version of Deron Williams. (Thinking…) Be careful what you wish for, I guess. Mark Deeks - Brooklyn went all in year as much as they could, and had little to show for it. With Paul Pierce walking in free agency to Washington, they now have even less to show for it. They now even have something of a youth moment going on. They were not given much of a choice but to do so. The Nets have lost a significant amount of talent, and, in Shaun Livingston, they lost the role player who salvaged their season. Livingston’s stabilising, unselfish influence balanced a team with little balance, who played wing players as power forwards, who missed their only consistent interior threat for most BBallBreakdown.com | 15
Brooklyn Nets Bogdan Bogdanovic, Markel Brown, Cory Jefferson, Jerome Jordan, Willie Reed, Sergey Karasev, Jarrett Jack
In
Draft Night
Shaun Livingston, Marcus Thornton, Jason Collins, Andray Blatche, Paul Out Pierce
of the season, whose season hinged far too much on the fortunes of Andray Blatche, a player seemingly now not even able to commandeer a minimum salary. Both Livingston and Jason Collins are gone now, and who knows how close Sergey Karasev can come to replacing the role playing facets they brought. The Nets were never especially well balanced last year, yet they are really imbalanced now. So what happens now? Does Deron Williams get regenerated? Probably not. Does Joe Johnson lead the team anywhere? It would be a first. Does Kevin Garnett round the returning Brook Lopez into a more complete player who inherits the desire and ability to compliment his own offensive brilliance with at least defensive mediocrity? It needs to happen. Does the aging, slowing, unathletic remainder of the rotation have enough to counteract all that he and the sluggish backcourt take away? It seems unlikely. Nevertheless, in having Lopez back, the Nets have something. They have the best big man scoring talent in the game, a brilliant player however deeply flawed he is, a halfcourt option on every 16 | BBallBreakdown.com
trip on a team that just lost two of them. With Miles Plumlee and Bogdan Bogdanovic, they have some youth to at least enjoy and plan the development of. And they still have enough talent to make the playoffs again. Whatever that is worth. Matthew Hochberg - The Brooklyn Nets face uncertainty heading into the 2014-15 NBA season. Following Jason Kidd’s controversial exit from the team, Lionel Hollins was brought in to build on last season’s success, in which Brooklyn finished as the sixth-seed in the Eastern Conference and advanced to the second-round of the Playoffs. The former Grizzlies head coach is expected to bring a sense of toughness to the squad, which they have appeared to lack in previous seasons.
together since teaming up with the Nets, but when on the floor together, can provide one of the best one-two punches in the league. As the quarterback on the court, Williams is arguably the team’s most imperative piece. The 30-year-old – who was battling ankle injuries during last season – clearly faced struggles in his game, which was highlighted in the playoffs. After surgery this summer and an apparent new mindset, the success of the 2014-15 Nets greatly depends on their $100 million man. The development of Mason Plumlee after his surprising summer with Team USA combined with the additions of Jarett Jack and Bojan Bogdanovic will help the Nets secure a playoff spot for the third consecutive season.
Trade
Acquired the rights to Markel Brown (#44, signed) from Minnesota in exchange for cash. Acquired the rights to Xavier Thames (#59, unsigned) from Toronto in exchange for cash. Acquired the rights to Cory Jefferson (#60, signed) from Philadelphia in exchange for cash.
10th July: Traded Marcus Thornton to Boston, and the righs to both Ilkan Karaman and Edin Bavcic to Cleveland, in exchange for Jarrett Jack and Sergey Karasev from Cleveland.
24th June: Andrei Kirilenko opted in. 30th June: Alan Anderson and Andray Blatche opted out. Free Agency
15th July: Re-signed Alan Anderson to a two year, $2,609,545 contract. 22nd July: Signed Bogdan Bogdanovic to a three year, $10,276,530 contract.
Salary Link
11th September: Signed Jerome Jordan to an unguaranteed one year minimum salary contract. 17th September: Signed Hamady N’Diaye to an unguaranteed one year minimum salary contract. 19th September: Voided Hamady N’Diaye’s contract. 25th September: Signed Willie Reed to an unguaranteed one year minimum salary contract.
Although the play of Paul Pierce, Shaun Livingston and Andray Blatche will certainly be missed after their departures, the idea of a rejuvenated Deron Williams and a healthy Brook Lopez is exciting. The point guard-center duo have played in just 100 of 245 possible games BBallBreakdown.com | 17
The Hornets In Effect, Looking Like A Playoff Team The Hornets are back in Charlotte, and likewise is the hope for an entertaining, and winning, team. By Torkil Bang, Mark Deeks, and Bryan Toporek
Torkil Bang - Last year’s Bobcats were one of the few Eastern Conference teams that somewhat exceeded expectations. Especially star center Al Jefferson surprised by not only carrying the heaviest load on offense, but also anchoring one of the best defenses in the league. That earned him a well-deserved selection to the All-NBA Third Team. He made his three years/40.5 million dollars deal from last summer look like an absolute bargain. And he is still only 29 years old. But it’s a new season, Charlotte are now the second incarnation of the Hornets, and they have acquired one of the bigger free agents from this summer in Lance Stephenson. Stephenson has proven himself as a very good two-way player, and he adds both three point shooting and playmaking skills to a team, that really can use them, considering that the other starting wing Michael Kidd-Gilchrist has yet to establish any kind of offensive game. Stephenson comes with a couple of question marks, though: Can he control 18 | BBallBreakdown.com
his antics – like blowing in LeBron James’ ear and trash talking – and keep his focus on the game itself? And can he thrive outside of the Indiana organization? If things go well for him, he could be looking at a breakout season. Charlotte entered last season’s playoffs as the seventh seed in the East. It will be hard for them to improve enough to gain home court advantage, since the Southeast Division right now is the toughest division in the Eastern Conference. Miami and Washington definitely have better rosters than Charlotte, and Atlanta with Al Horford back also looks like a possible playoff team. Mark Deeks - Steve Clifford did wonders with the Bobcats last year, and now he tackles a Hornets team with more talent to work with. He turned a Bobcats unit filled with few players who individually could be considered great defenders, and turned them into a disciplined, hard-working defensive unit who set the benchmark for the franchise’s success with their committed, hardy, heady defensive intensity. Whether Lance Stephenson and
P.J. Hairston choose to buy into this remains to be seen. Lance has his moments, but as with all facets of his game, he is inconsistent – good Lance plugs in on defense and is a slightly gamesmanshippy pest, while bad Lance chases the ball and the stats, casts up bad shots and does not chase down his assignments. How he even fits on the court with the sneaky good Gerald Henderson also remains to be seen. Hairston echos many of these traits, and while Marvin Williams will buy in, Marvin Williams is a very average player with a bad back and no clearly defined position (defends the three scores from the four). The loss of Josh McRoberts also, and also Anthony Tolliver should not be underestimated – a Bobcats team that badly needed spacing, shooting and scoring is now a Hornets team that still will, more indeed than ever. And with his passing and athleticism, McRoberts was much more than that. Lance’s bull-in-a-china-shop transition game nevertheless immediately adds much more of a transition game than Clifford has ever had before. If he can drag Michael Carter-Williams down BBallBreakdown.com | 19
Charlotte Hornets Noah Vonleh, Justin Cobbs, Brian Qvale, Jason Maxiell, Dallas Lauderdale, Brian Roberts, Lance Stephenson, P.J. Hairston, Marvin Williams
In
Chris Douglas-Roberts, D.J. White, Brendan Haywood, Anthony Out Tolliver, Luke Ridnour. Josh McRoberts
the court with him, even better. The Hornets added a near all-star talent where previously they had none, and added some youth and depth in the process. The depth chart is now grossly imbalanced and the lack of outside shooting a significant concern, but the first year of the new Hornets era ought be another playoff-bound one. Bryan Toporek - The days of the Charlotte Hornets being an Eastern Conference punchline have come and gone. They slightly overpaid Al Jefferson during the 2013 offseason, but he rewarded their faith by leading them to their second-best finish in the past decade, averaging a mammoth 21.8 points and 10.8 rebounds per game. That surprising success in 2013-14 helped convince Lance Stephenson to join the Hornets during free agency this offseason, signing a team-friendly three-year, $27 million deal with a team option in Year 3. The structure of that contract should have Stephenson on his best behavior, which is crucial for a guy who finished fourth in the league last season in technical fouls (14). If “Good Lance” shows up—the one 20 | BBallBreakdown.com
who led the league with five triple-doubles last year—the Hornets have a real chance to make some noise as a dark-horse contender in the East. The addition of Stephenson should lead to a career year for fourth-year floor general Kemba Walker, who averaged 17.7 points, 6.1 assists and 4.2 rebounds per game last year with nary an offensive threat alongside him in the backcourt. Stephenson’s ability to play on the ball will help create offensive opportunities for Walker, as he’ll be much more free to curl around screens and cripple opponents with lethal drives to the basket. The loss of Josh McRoberts in free agency can’t be glossed over—his passing ability at the 4 was a key linchpin of last year’s Charlotte squad—but second-year big man Cody Zeller and rookie Noah Vonleh will help compensate for McBob’s absence. Zeller was a revelation at Vegas Summer League, averaging 15.7 points per game on 58.6 percent shooting, while Vonleh is a raw-but-terrifyingly-talented prospect.
com—as its backbone. If Stephenson breathes some life into the Hornets’ 24th-ranked offense, the Hornets could be a two-way threat poised to stage a major playoff upset or two this spring.
Draft Night
Drafted Noah Vonleh (9th, signed), Shabazz Napier (24th) and Dwight Powell (45th). Traded the rights to Napier to Miami in exchange for the rights to P.J. Hairston (26th, signed), Semaj Criston (55th) and a 2019 second round pick. Traded the rights to Criston to Oklahoma City in exchange for cash.
13th July: Traded Scotty Hopson to New Orleans in exchange for cash. Trade
30th June: Josh McRoberts opted out. 10th July: Signed Gordon Hayward to a four year, $62,965,420 offer sheet. Free Agency
12th July: Utah matched Hayward’s offer sheet. Traded Brendan Haywood and the rights to Dwight Powell (45th) to Cleveland in exchange for Scotty Hopson and cash. 16th July: Signed Marvin Williams to a two year, $14 million contract.
Salary Link
18th July: Signed Lance Stephenson to a three year, $27,405,000 contract. 23rd July: Signed Brian Roberts to a two year, $5,586,940 contract. 25th July: Re-signed Jannero Pargo to a guaranteed one year minimum salary contract. 22nd September: Signed Justin Cobbs, Dallas Lauderdale and Brian Qvale to unguaranteed one year minimum salary contracts. 26th September: Signed Jason Maxiell to an unguaranteed one year minimum salary contract.
Charlotte will likely continue relying on its defense—the Hornets ranked sixth in defensive rating last year, per NBA. BBallBreakdown.com | 21
Bulls Fix Shooting Woes, Look To Contend After struggling from long-range, the Bulls acquired several shooters, and looks to gain from the return of Derrick Rose. By Mark Deeks, Morten Jensen, and Bryan Toporek
Mark Deeks - As backup plans go, Chicago did all right for themselves. Losing nobody of note except D.J. Augustin – Carlos Boozer by this point is a replacement level player – the Bulls added depth all over and much more offensive talent to a team previously lacking in creators, and that is even before the return of Derrick Rose.
22 | BBallBreakdown.com
Butler and Taj Gibson to create a very balanced, extremely strong line-up.
Notwithstanding the Rose question – whose prognosis, impossible to project, underscores everything else that could possibly matter for the Bulls – Chicago added diversity, talent, depth and offense. They particularly needed the latter two. With the additions of Nikola Mirotic and Pau Gasol – who hopefully are both aware that they are not scheduled to receive a single crunch time minute this season – Chicago variegates a playbook that too often hitherto depended upon not especially open elbow jumpshots around screens. Doug McDermott can shoot, score and effortlessly get open to do both.
There is, however, one drawback. Barring a career rejuvenation from Aaron Brooks in the manner of Augustin and Nate Robinson before him – he suggested in the final few months of last season with the Nuggets that there may indeed still be a spark in the fire that just needs a log thrown on it – the Bulls do still only have Rose who can penetrate the first line of the defense without a screen. They do still only have that one dynamic half court offensive presence, and given the predictability that ensues with this, it could be the Achilles heel to an otherwise plausible NBA finals run. San Antonio managed without this, but San Antonio did so with endless floor spacing and an unselfish system. Chicago took steps towards having the playing personnel to do this, yet it remains to be seen if Tom Thibodeau – the same man calling for the elbow jumpers – can adopt it.
All of these offensive weapons theoretically intermix with ease, and join the returning Rose, the brilliant Joakim Noah and the elite defense of Jimmy
Morten Jensen - It’s almost impossible to overstate just how much Chicago struggled offensively last season when matched up against teams with
size and speed. Obviously, the lack of Derrick Rose didn’t help their cause, but even so, the team simply didn’t have the volume of offensive players available to make any dent in the damage. That’s why they went into this summer with a mind of fixing their offensive woes. Drafting Doug McDermott was the first such move in finding a player who can be relied upon to contribute scoring-wise, and they even backed that up with Cameron Bairstow who averaged over 20 points for New Mexico last season. Bairstow won’t play, but he represents the change in philosophy going into this summer. In free agency, the Bulls made some strong moves after losing out on Carmelo Anthony. While he may be 34, Pau Gasol will help bolster that frontline, and provide a scoring element not much seen from Chicago’s big men. Adding to Gasol will be Aaron Brooks, a former Most Improved Player award winner who averaged near 20 a game for Houston five years ago. But at the end of the day, everyone knows what the main question is for BBallBreakdown.com | 23
Chicago Bulls Pau Gasol, Nikola Mirotic, Aaron Brooks, E’Twaun Moore, Kim English, Ben Hansbrough, Solomon Jones, Doug McDermott, Cameron Bairstow
In
Carlos Boozer, Lou Amundson, Mike James, Ronnie Brewer, Jimmer Out Fredette, D.J. Augustin, Greg Smith
these Bulls, and that’s if Derrick Rose is healthy and ready to ascend back to top of the NBA totem pole. After having missed the most of two seasons, the best anyone can do at this stage is make an educated guess on Rose’s chances of reaching an elite level. For the sake of the Bulls, and the NBA as a whole, there is a lot of optimism and support directed Rose’s way, which is understandable given that the former MVP was one of the most electrifying players in the game, just two and a half years ago. If Rose can return at a level not quite as the superstar we all remember, that may be enough for these Bulls given that Joakim Noah officially reached stardom last season, winning Defensive Player Of the Year, and being named to the All-NBA first team. He, and fellow big man Taj Gibson, will lead the Bulls’s defense, which is once again expected to be in the top three, if not the best, in the NBA thanks in large part to head coach Tom Thibodeau, who has failed to be a top five defense just once (2012/2013 season) during his fouryear tenure with the Bulls organization. 24 | BBallBreakdown.com
Bryan Toporek - Once again, the Chicago Bulls’ season comes down to the health of Derrick Rose. If the 2011 Most Valuable Player can avoid a season-ending injury for the first time in three years, Chicago will have the inside track to serving as the Cleveland Cavaliers’ biggest obstacle in the Eastern Conference. If not…LeBron and the Cavs should have little trouble waltzing into the Finals, playoff inexperience be damned. Rose shook off some of the rust from his long layoff during the FIBA World Cup this summer, where he showed flashes of his old self at time. Unfortunately, he mostly looked like a player who hadn’t played much competitive basketball in the past 18 months, going 15-of-59 from the field (25.4 percent) during the tournament. The Bulls don’t necessarily need Rose to be in MVP form on Day 1, but they won’t get deep into the playoffs if his shooting funk lingers throughout the year.
the Creighton sharpshooter who finished fifth all-time on the NCAA’s scoring list, which gives them an offensive threat they sorely lacked last year. They also inked Pau Gasol and Aaron Brooks in free agency, and finally brought over Nikola Mirotic, the No. 23 overall pick from 2011, from Real Madrid. The Bulls may lack the star power up top to rival the Cavs, but their depth is virtually unparalleled in the East. Head coach Tom Thibodeau has no excuse to ride his starters into the ground this season, as Chicago goes a legitimate 10 deep. If Thibs can coax solid defensive performances from Gasol and McDermott, the Bulls could wind up with the league’s best D this season. The question remains: Can Rose avoid another calamitous injury? Only time will tell.
Draft Night
Trade
Drafted Jusuf Nurkic (16th), Gary Harris (19th) and Cameron Bairstow (49th, signed). Traded the rights to Nurkic and Harris, along with a future second round pick, to Denver in exchange for the rights to Doug McDermott (11th, signed) and Anthony Randolph.
14th July: Traded Greg Smith to Dallas in exchange for the rights to Tadia Dragicevic (53rd, 2008, unsigned). Traded Anthony Randolph, two future second round picks and cash to Orlando in exchange for the rights to Milovan Rakovic (60th, 2007, unsigned).
15th July: Waived Carlos Boozer via the amnesty provision. Waived Lou Amundson, Mike James and Ronnie Brewer.
Free Agency
18th July: Re-signed Kirk Hinrich to a two year, $5,586,940 contract. Signed Pau Gasol to a three year, $22,346,280 contract. Signed Nikola Mirotic to a three year, $16,631,175 contract. 22nd July: Signed Aaron Brooks to a guaranteed one year minimum salary contract.
Salary Link
18th September: Signed E’Twaun Moore to a partially guaranteed two year minimum salary contract. 22nd September: Re-signed Nazr Mohammed to an unguaranteed one year minimum salary contract. 26th September: Signed Kim English, Solomon Jones and Ben Hansbrough to unguaranteed one year minimum salary contracts.
Luckily, Chicago brought in some serious reinforcements over the summer to help ease Rose’s return. The Bulls traded two mid-first-round picks on draft night for the rights to Doug McDermott, BBallBreakdown.com | 25
Cleveland’s Slam Dunk Summer No team improved its roster more than the Cavaliers, seeing the return of LeBron James, and welcoming Kevin Love. By Torkil Bang, Mark Deeks, and Bobby Karalla
Torkil Bang - It is way too early to pass judgement, but it looks like the Cavaliers got it right for their second time around with LeBron James.
than 20 years experience and tons of success as a coach in Europe, there is no doubt that this is his biggest task so far.
A team with Kyrie Irving, Dion Waiters, Kevin Love and whoever wins the center spot has so much more star power than any team, LeBron ever played with in Cleveland before. Any of the above mentioned players have the ability to take over a game, which means that James won’t have to carry the team on his back every single game.
Blatt has introduced a Princeton-inspired read-and-react-offense that requires a lot of ball and player movement, which has been a weakness in Cleveland the last few seasons. The players should be able to adapt, and according to their reactions during training camp, they are very positive about it.
With a star-studded cast like this, the big question will always be, whether they can play together as a team. This has previously been a big issue for Irving and Waiters, who got on edge with each other in 2012-2013, and both of them have been accused of being selfish. It seems like both players have grown a bit, and Irving was actually complimented for his maturity while playing for Team USA this summer.
(Check out Coach Nick’s breakdown)
A lot of pressure will be on head coach David Blatt. He enters his first season in the NBA with pretty heavy expectations and even though he has more 26 | BBallBreakdown.com
The main problem for the team will, at least initially, be defense. There is no obvious anchor on the team, and Waiters, Irving and Love aren’t exactly known as defensive specialists. James will probably need to take the role as defensive leader, but that’s always more difficult for a perimeter defender than a big man. The key will be oncourt communication and that’s a habit that needs to be hammered into the players’ heads. Mark Deeks - Going forward long term,
Cleveland needs to not overdo it. Miami overdid it – they traded away a huge amount of picks in order to be able to overpay role players, whom they then gave up more future picks in order to dump the salaries of, and undid all their good 2010 work with providing so little reinforcement for it in the years hence. Long term, Cleveland must be wary of the same trappings. That is the future, however. This is now. Right now, Cleveland has almost all of what they need. Almost. They need much better rim protection. They need to figure out how to reconcile the back court of Irving and Waiters, both on the floor and in the locker room. They need to maximie Kyrie’s effectiveness off the ball, because while he is not going to be used like Damon Jones out there, he will inevitably get fewer touches. And they need to find a defensive unit built around more than an aged and much declined Shawn Marion (who will struggle to finds minutes anyway), an aged and declined Anderson Varejao, and, if we are honest, a slightly declined defensively LeBron James. BBallBreakdown.com | 27
Cleveland Cavaliers LeBron James, Kevin Love, Shawn Marion, Mike Miller, James Jones, Chris Crawford, Shane Edwards, Stephen Holt, Alex Kirk, A.J. Price, Lou Amundson, Joe Harris, Brendan Haywood
In
Carrick Felix, Anthony Bennett, Jarrett Jack, Sergey Karasev, Tyler Out Zeller, C.J. Miles, Spencer Hawes, Luol Deng, Alonzo Gee, Scotty Hopson
What they do have is a coach who will demand it all on that end. Defensive effort often does a good job of masking defensive ability, in the right scheme. What they likely do not yet have is the personnel who can win it all. This is not the quite the team that will win the Cavaliers the title. It is, however, most of it. They are favourites for the East and can be highly justifiably said to be the favourites for it all. We will know the answer to that question much better come February, by which time they need to have made more tweaks. Bobby Karalla - Let’s face it: We’ll be comparing this year’s Cavaliers squad to the 2010-11 Miami Heat team every step of the way. If they get off to a fast start? They’re better and LeBron is a genius! If they get off to a slow star? They’re the same and LeBron is a fool! This will be The Year of the Narrative for Cleveland. Be ready for it. Similarities or not, Cleveland is in a situation similar, if not more favorable, to the one Miami was in four seasons ago. The nice way to characterize the conference is to call it middle-heavy. So long as LeBron and Kevin Love stay healthy, Cleveland will win a ton 28 | BBallBreakdown.com
of games and probably find itself in the Conference Finals after 10 playoff games. Quality wins out in the playoffs, and the Cavs have a lot more of it than most any other team in that conference — including the in-division rival Chicago Bulls, who will be much more reliant on good health and fortune this season than their juggernaut counterpart. To say Cleveland will sleepwalk through the conference is unfair, though a severely tired/resting/bored 2013-14 Heat club essentially did just that last season en route to its fourth consecutive Finals. All indications are that James is just as good now as he was 365 days ago, so the results should be the same; predicting anything but a Finals berth for this team is simply the wrong way to go. The definition of insanity, after all, is doing the same thing again and again but expecting a different result. LeBron goes to the Finals. That’s just what he does. The Cavaliers might take a couple dozen games to gel, but look at their competition. Cleveland doesn’t just hit the lottery in May: The Cavs will hit the
Drafted Andrew Wiggins (1st) and Joe Harris (33rd, signed).
Draft Night
Trade
10th July: Traded Jarrett Jack & Sergei Karasev to Brooklyn, and Tyler Zeller & a future first round pick to Boston, in exchange for the rights to Ilkan Karaman (57th, 2012, unsigned) and Edin Bavcic (56th, 2006, unsigned) from Brooklyn & a future conditional second round pick from Boston. 11th July: Traded Alonzo Gee to New Orleans in exchange for a future protected second round pick.
lottery every time they take the floor and see their opponent across the gym. It’s better to be lucky than good, but the Cavaliers are both.
10th July: Signed Kyrie Irving to a five year maximum value contract extension.
Free Agency
11th July: Signed LeBron James to a two year, $42,217,798 contract.
Salary Link
5th August: Signed Mike Miller to a two year, $5,586,940 contract. Signed James Jones to a guaranteed one year minimum salary contract.
12th July: Traded Scotty Hopson and cash to Charlotte in exchange for Brendan Haywood and the draft rights to Dwight Powell (45th). 22nd July: Traded Carrick Felix, a 2015 second round pick and cash to Utah in exchange for John Lucas, Malcolm Thomas and Erik Murphy. 23rd August: Traded Andrew Wiggins, Anthony Bennett and a 2015 first round pick to Minnesota in exchange for Kevin Love.
11th August: Signed Alex Kirk to a partially guaran25th September: Traded Malcolm Thomas, teed two year minimum salary contract. John Lucas, Erik Murphy, Dwight Powell and 9th September: Signed Shawn Marion to a guaran- two future second round picks to Boston in exchange for Keith Bogans and two future teed one year minimum salary contract. conditional second round picks. Waived Chris Crawford. 10th September: Signed Chris Crawford to a partially guaranteed two year minimum salary 27th September: Traded Keith Bogans and a contract. future second round picks to Philadelphia in 26th September: Signed Lou Amundson and A.J. exchange for a future conditional second round Price to unguaranteed one year minimum salary pick. contracts. 28th September: Signed Shane Edwards and Chris Crawford to unguaranteed one year minimum salary contracts. 30th September: Signed Stephen Holt to an unguaranteed one year minimum salary contract. BBallBreakdown.com | 29
Dallas Hope Upgrades Will Prolong Nowitzki’s Career While Dallas didn’t get Carmelo Anthony, they did acquire Chandler Parsons who will absorb much responsibility. By John Daigle, Mark Deeks, and Bobby Karalla
John Daigle - The Dallas Mavericks didn’t have to reload, but they clearly weren’t thinking along those lines. After all, this is the same team that gave the soon-to-be champs a run for their money, and they did it with, arguably, a lesser group of players. Still, that didn’t stop them from firing the first shot of the offseason, acquiring Tyson Chandler and Raymond Felton for Jose Calderon and other notables. The deal led to numerous reactions, but more importantly, one in particular. They now had the task of replacing Calderon, an elite shooter in his own right. Even if you were to chalk his spot-induced accuracy up to nothing more than a gimmick, his above average shooting from beyond the arc was one of the best; think the most prolific fire-breather, or the world’s greatest juggler, or the finest Spanish ham merchant. He was always an efficient mid-range shooter (career 45%), but the Mavericks utilized his long-range strengths to the fullest. Sprinkle in the absence of Vince Carter and suddenly, Dallas was responsible for replacing a whopping 42% of their three-point production from the year prior. But as they 30 | BBallBreakdown.com
continued to revamp, their direction became a bit more clear. Felton initially garnered very little attention, and understandably given his 39% shooting last season. But being only one-year removed from a field goal percentage of 42%, his 55.2 eFG% from beyond the arc showed success given the opportunity. Furthermore, Felton shot 42% from the corner over the past three seasons, meaning, if anything, his services render to a specific need. Then came their assertive wooing of Chandler Parsons, who was signed to essentially take over for Shawn Marion. Some choose to look at how he was used in Houston, but make no mistake, Dallas sought an all-around option. Lest we forget, the former Rockets forward scored 322 points on 462 drives to the basket just last year. Jameer Nelson, Richard Jefferson, and Al-Farouq Aminu soon followed and suddenly, the 395 made three-pointers that had collectively departed became 450, all in a matter of weeks. There’s probably a more touted group of play-
ers in the West (Clippers, anyone?), but they don’t have Dirk Nowitzki, and they sure as hell don’t have Rick Carlisle at the helm. As previously mentioned, this is the same team that took the likes of DeJuan Blair and Jae Crowder and had them methodically switching during pick-and-rolls in a must-win situation. Results are nigh given the circumstance. And now, Dallas welcomes a few new players that cater to their only needs. The Mavericks didn’t have to reload, but apparently, they didn’t see it that way. Mark Deeks - Dallas turned pretty much the whole darned thing over again, still in search of anything resembling a future championship level core. All the while, Dirk Nowitzki gets older and is less likely to ever be a part of it. Such constant upheaval can be dangerous, but this offseason, the Mavericks did a pretty decent job. Chandler Parsons is overpaid, but for a sufficiently short period of time for it to not matter too much, especially in light of upcoming salary cap spikes. He compliments Monta Ellis for a strong BBallBreakdown.com | 31
Dallas Mavericks Chandler Parsons, Jameer Nelson, Doron Lamb, Charlie Villanueva, Tyson Chandler, Raymond Felton, Al-Farouq Aminu, Ivan Johnson, Richard Jefferson, Eric Griffin, Greg Smith
In
DeJuan Blair, Wayne Ellington, Shane Larkin, Jose Calderon, Out Sam Dalembert, Shawn Marion, Vince Carter
offensive duo that somewhat offsets the loss of Calderon’s spacing while adding an extra playmaking dimension to a team that previously had Shawn Marion in this spot of the rotation. Dallas should have one of the better offensive units in the league, with spacing, playmaking and efficiency, and certainly better balance. No half court holes any more, in theory. Defensively, all concerns are valid. None of the point guard trio of Raymond Felton, Jameer Nelson and Devin Harris is good on that end any more, and this is not the same Tyson Chandler that helped win Dallas a title. Indeed, it is probably only about 60% of it. Bench big men Brandan Wright and Greg Smith are talented scorers – especially the fiercely unique and unheralded Wright – but both struggle defensively, as will the Mavericks in general for paint protection. Richard Jefferson adds nothing on this end, and although Al-Farouq Aminu is a sneaky good pick-up for defense at the forward positions, he will not play the big minutes required to change much on that end. All of which makes for an unfinished product, of course. But they got good players at pretty good prices, an overall success 32 | BBallBreakdown.com
of an offseason that could see them go one round further this time. Bobby Karalla - Dirk Nowitzki is happy. That isn’t to say The World’s Most Laid-Back, Low-Maintenance Superstar is usually unhappy, but the truth is ever since the Mavericks chose against re-signing Tyson Chandler, you could sense a small amount of friction between the German and the Dallas brass. (Even describing it as “small” is an overstatement.) But Chandler is back and so, too, is Nowitzki, after signing the type of contract that confirms what we’ve already known about him for quite a while. A happy Dirk is a good Dirk, and man, does he have a lot to be happy about. Aside from getting to play with his buddy Chandler again, his other buddy Chandler (Parsons) is in town, too. Monta Ellis, to whom Nowitzki recently gave credit for “reviving” his career, is still there. The Mavs’ starting five is as good on paper as anyone’s. Their coach is as good as anyone’s. Even their chances are as good as anyone’s, but therein lies the problem: In the West, everyone has good chances. Therefore,
None
Draft Night
Trade
no one has good chances. The wise would say proper expectations for a team with four All-Star-caliber starters is a trip to the Conference Finals. This, however, is the West, a conference packed with 11 playoff teams but only eight spots for them. Barring significant injury(s), Dallas will make the playoffs, but that’s all we know. Could this team make it to the Finals? Sure. Could this team lose in the first round to Memphis, Portland, Houston, Phoenix, Golden State, or even possible surprises New Orleans and Denver? Absolutely — and that’s assuming Dallas will avoid the Spurs, Thunder, and Clippers in round one. Expectations are difficult, but that’s fine with the Mavs, a team owned by a businessman whose mantra is “there is one champion and 29 teams who finish tied for last.” This team’s coach believes the same. So does its happy superstar. All that matters is the result. The result of this offseason was good. All that’s left is to see what happens next.
10th June: Exercised Jae Crowder’s team option.
25th June: Traded Sam Dalembert, Jose Calderon, Shane Larkin, Wayne Ellington and two second round picks to New York in exchange for Tyson Chandler and Raymond Felton. 14th July: Traded the rights to Tadija Dragicevic (53rd, 2008) to Chicago in exchange for Greg Smith. 16th July: Signed and traded DeJuan Blair (three year, partially guaranteed $6 million) to Washington in exchange for the rights to Emir Preldzic (57th, 2009, unsigned).
10th July: Signed Chandler Parsons to a three year, $46,084,500 offer sheet. Free Agency
13th July: Houston declined to match Chandler Parson’s offer sheet. 14th July: Re-signed Dirk Nowitzki to a three year, $25 million contract.
Salary Link
17th July: Re-signed Devin Harris to a partially guaranteed four year, $16,563,384 contract. 18th July: Signed Rashard Lewis and Richard Jefferson to guaranteed one year minimum salary contracts. Signed Eric Griffin to a partially guaranteed three year minimum salary contract. 22nd July: Voided the contract of Rashard Lewis. 24th July: Signed Jameer Nelson to a two year, $5,586,940 contract. 28th July: Signed Al-Farouq Aminu to a guaranteed two year minimum salary contract. 29th July: Signed Ivan Johnson to a partially guaranteed two year minimum salary contract. 3rd September: Re-signed Bernard James to a guaranteed one year minimum salary contract. 22nd September: Signed Doron Lamb to an unguaranteed one year minimum salary contract. 23rd September: Signed Charlie Villanueva to an unguaranteed one year minimum salary contract.
BBallBreakdown.com | 33
The Nuggets Hope Crowded Back-Court Will Be An Asset Denver not only upgraded their roster this summer, but will get several key players back from injuries this season. By Mark Deeks, Kevin Ferrigan, and Bobby Karalla
Mark Deeks - With few free agents, Denver kept together pretty much the entirety of their team from last season, with one noticeable upgrade – Arron Afflalo back in to vastly upgrade over Randy Foye. Afflalo is a better shooter, a better scorer, a better creator, and gives a ball handling option on a team that was so short of them last year that they felt they had to trade for Aaron Brooks. He should slot in at starting shooting guard immediately, and immediately the team is improved. Denver’s depth is a virtue, and they will need it if they suffer injuries like they did last season. Indeed, they perhaps have too much of it – although the Doug McDermott deal was a big gain in assets, if any team did not need to turn one guaranteed contract into two, it was the Nuggets. However, all of Danilo Gallinari, JaVale McGee, Nate Robinson, Ty Lawson and J.J. Hickson should be back now, albeit perhaps with minute limits early. There will need to be time to blood in a new cohesive group who due to these injuries have still not played all that much together. But if Brian Shaw can identify his best rotation early, accept the value of small ball 34 | BBallBreakdown.com
lineups and run and gun more with a team built to do so, this Nuggets team could crescendo nicely by year’s end. This team should run. With that many options and that much athleticism, they really ought to do, and always should have done. They lack for star power, but there should be 110 points in any given night with this lineup. The Nuggets of last year trailed the field and trailed quite badly, but there were many mitigating circumstances involved. With better help, and a change of philosophy from Brian Shaw to better suit what he has at his disposal, the Nuggets might play their way in. In the East, they could win 50. In the West…..well, if they do miss, they could be this year’s version of last year’s Suns. Kevin Ferrigan - The Nuggets fancy themselves a playoff team this upcoming season, but, well, they more than likely won’t be. That’s as much a function of playing in the absolutely loaded Western Conference as anything, but it’s also a bit to do with their lack of top end talent. Ty Lawson is the team’s MVP and
while the diminutive lead guard is an offensive dynamo and pace-pusher par excellence, he’s not the sort of near league MVP level talent that the Nuggets would need to drag the rest of their mediocre roster into the playoffs in the insanely difficult Western Conference. There are some other pieces of note. Kenneth Faried was impressive in his international basketball debut, contributing all over the floor as Team USA cruised easily to a gold medal in the FIBA World Cup. It’s important to note, though, that Faried had a massive athleticism advantage against his FIBA opponents, which he simply does not have in the NBA. That athleticism gap allowed Faried to be a plus defensively for Team USA, while as an NBA power forward he is generally overmatched on that end. Faried also has a limited offensive skill set and no real ability to score outside the paint – a killer in the modern NBA, with its focus on floor-spacing. Denver also added shooting guard, and former Nugget, Arron Afflalo a long limbed, 3 point marksman with some BBallBreakdown.com | 35
Denver Nuggets Jusuf Nurkic, Gary Harris, Arron Afflalo, Jerrelle Benimon, Marcus E. WIlliams, Erick Green, Alonzo Gee
In
Draft Night
Evan Fournier, Anthony Randolph. Aaron Brooks, Jan Vesely Out
ability to score off the bounce to boot. Afflalo also has a reputation as a defensive stopper, though, it’s almost always been unwarranted. He was a roughly average defensive player his rookie season, a big feat as rookies generally are bad on defense, and the reputation stuck, despite his defensive decline nearly every season. Afflalo marks an improvement over Evan Fournier, but it’s an incremental one, and ultimately, it’s unlikely that he moves the needle enough to change the Nuggets much from their 36 win total of last season. Bobby Karalla - Fun-loving basketball is good basketball. That’s not the kind Denver played last season. Injuries, of course, played a part, as did a coaching change. But there are many reasons to feel good about this year’s Nuggets club, and only one that will make you feel bad. Ty Lawson is the best. So is Kenneth Faried (who just signed on to be the best for another five seasons, at $60 million). We’ve seen what they can do when the reins are loosened. Let’s keep ‘em that way. Arron Afflalo is back, too, and Danilo Gallinari is healthy. Even Nate Robinson is ready to rock. Let 36 | BBallBreakdown.com
these guys run up-and-down. Let them play fast. Let them play the way they should be playing. Please. Problem is the fun Nuggets are going to be playing 50-win teams once or twice a week every week from now until April. Denver is going to need to play ridiculously well to make the playoffs in the West this season, a conference in which almost every team, top-to-bottom, markedly improved from last season to this one. The Nuggets obviously fall into that group; after hurting for shooters last season, reacquiring Afflalo bolsters the perimeter and Gallo’s return from injury does the same. Will those additions be the difference between winning 30-something and 40-something games? Will 40-something even get you into the playoffs this season? The answer to both questions is a firm “I don’t know!!!!!!” and that’s not great news for Denver.
keeping an eye on, as well; it’s silly to look too far into international success, but Faried enjoyed a fine summer with Team USA. The immediate future might not be shade-requiring levels of bright, but there’s certainly hope in Denver, and that’s more than you could say last season.
Drafted Doug McDermott (11th), Nikola Jokic (41st) and Roy Devyn Marble (56th). Traded the rights to McDermott along with Anthony Randolph to Chicago in exchange for the rights to Jusuf Nurkic (16th, signed), Gary Harris (19th, signed) and a future second round pick.
27th June: Traded Evan Fournier and the rights to Roy Devyn Marble to Orlando in exchange for Arron Afflalo. Trade
23rd June: Darrell Arthur and Nate Robinson opted in. 24th July: Signed Erick Green to a partially guaranteed three year minimum salary contract. Free Agency
15th August: Signed Jerrelle Benimon to a partially guaranteed two year minimum salary contract. 23rd September: Signed Marcus E. Williams to an unguaranteed one year minimum salary contract.
Salary Link
30th September: Signed Alonzo Gee to an unguaranteed one year minimum salary contract. 6th October: Signed Kenneth Faried to five-year, $60 million contract extension.
Still, at their core, the Nuggets are going to play an entertaining brand of basketball this season and if nothing else will be watchable simply because Lawson is such an electric player. He’s awesome. Measuring Faried’s growth on the interior is something worth BBallBreakdown.com | 37
Outside Shooting Woes A Thing Of The Past In Detroit The Detroit Pistons spent this summer finding shooters, and getting Stan Van Gundy on board to lead the team. By Mark Deeks, Kevin Ferrigan, and Bobby Karalla
Mark Deeks - Stan Van Gundy inherited a mess and, as of right now, still has one. The trio of Josh Smith, Greg Monroe and Andre Drummond does not work, does not nearly work, and yet is back again. And the prognosis is a bizarre one. Drummond is untouchable, Smith is undesirable on that contract, and Monroe – seemingly the most movable of the three – found he had no market. So an awkward truce persists, and “awkward” is an apt term for the upcoming Pistons season. At this point, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope could (or perhaps should) be an important X Factor. After Chauncey Billups went down, this time for good, and Kyle Singler continued to struggle with the speed of the NBA game, KCP received plenty of opportunity at the shooting guard spot down the stretch of the season. And he failed in it, struggling worse than Singler, looking lost offensively, and only enjoying occasional moments defensively. Caldwell-Pope could be the best non-big man defender on the roster, and, having been a top 10 pick only a year ago, needs a chance at redemption.
38 | BBallBreakdown.com
However, Van Gundy’s offseason moves seem rather to prioritise upgrading KCP from the outside rather than entrusting him with the same responsibility. Jodie Meeks cashed in on his career season and will inevitably get many shooting guard minutes, while Caron Butler was also overpaid to provide whatever it is he provides. Leader-like catch and shoot threes, mainly. The Pistons’s roster and depth charts are no less cluttered than before. The same problems remain, merely adorned with some patch-up jobs that ultimately do not fix the biggest problems. What Detroit did at least do was address the lack of outside shooting from the guard and wing positions. This alone will not fix the problems with the Smith/Monroe/Drummond trio, nor will it do much to improve the defense (any upgrades on Will Bynum’s porous defense are offset by the addition of the mediocre wing defenders). It might, however, make for better complimentary pieces left over once a solution to the trio’s dilemma is found. That is to say, once Monroe is traded.
Kevin Ferrigan - The Detroit Pistons of 2013-14 seemed like a science experiment gone wrong. They added the talented, but poor-shooting Josh Smith and Brandon Jennings to a team whose two best players and assets – Greg Monroe and Andre Drummond – were players who did not space the floor. To top it off, Monroe plays the same power forward position that Smith is most ideally suited to play. Placing Monroe and Smith together forced Smith into more minutes on the wing, which only encouraged his worst tendenciesnamely, shooting and missing long jumpers. Enter Stan Van Gundy, after a front office and coaching house-cleaning. Van Gundy is a great coach and has experience building a working offense around a defensive beast of a center with the ability to clean the glass like mad, like Andre Drummond, as he did in Orlando with Dwight Howard and a rotating cast of 4 floor-spacers. Detroit signed shooters Jodie Meeks, Caron Butler, and DJ Augustin this offseason. Those three figure to open things up offensively a bit.
BBallBreakdown.com | 39
Detroit Pistons D.J. Augustin, Caron Butler, Jodie Meeks, Aaron Gray, Spencer Dinwiddie, Cartier Martin, Josh Bostic, Brian Cook, Hasheem Thabeet, Lorenzo Brown.
In
Peyton Siva, Josh Harrellson, Chauncey Billups, Rodney Stuckey, Charlie Out Villanueva.
On the down side, Monroe, frustrated with the presence of Josh Smith on the team and the less-than-max offers he received as a restricted free agent from Detroit and elsewhere, has elected to play this season on the qualifying offer, making himself an unrestricted free agent at the end of the season. It’s possible, then, to envision Detroit moving the talented young big man before the trade deadline, or, perhaps dealing Josh Smith to appease Monroe. Trading Smith would be a greater challenge given his struggles last season and with his value seemingly at a nadir.
do with what will happen of off it. Greg Monroe is playing out his one-year qualifying offer with Detroit, making him potential trade bait every second of every day between now and March. Yes, Monroe is sadly a victim of basketball’s evolution — package him in a time machine and send him to Rick Adelman circa 2001 and there’d be a very happy head coach in Sacramento — which to a degree makes him less valuable. But I truly believe that in the right system Monroe could be a valuable piece, whether it’s as a starter or off the bench.
Either way, something will likely need to be done, because the major pieces here still don’t fit and while the additional shooters are nice, they are rotational players and not the big talents. It’ll be fascinating to see how SVG manages the situation.
But there’s the rub. What, exactly, is “right” for a player like Monroe? He’s a big man who doesn’t quite play like one, but he also can’t shoot the three. He’s not an excellent rebounder, and he’s not going to protect the rim at an elite level. He’s a “pretty good at everything but not great at anything” kind of guy. For $5 million a year — his current salary — that’s a bargain. Loads of teams could use him. Start with the Oklahoma City Thunder and work your way down. Hell, I’m sure Gregg Popovich could carve out a niche for the Georgetown alum in San Antonio.
Bobby Karalla - Josh Smith jumpers, Andre Drummond offensive rebounds, Brandon Jennings threes. So it goes. The Pistons are predictable. The most compelling Pistons storyline this season has less to do with what will happen on the floor and more to 40 | BBallBreakdown.com
Sill, what would those clubs have to give up in order to acquire Monroe? Would it be a fair deal? Would the big man pledge to stay with that team in the future? These are all questions that could get in the way of a trade, but they’re not big enough to rule anything out. Monroe is the first player of his kind that I can remember in a while, taking the qualifying offer instead of inking something long-term or simply walking away. If there’s one arc to follow this season, with this team, it’s that one.
Drafted Spencer Dinwiddie (38th, signed).
Draft Night
None
Trade
24th June: Jonas Jerebko opted in. 30th June: Declined Chauncey Billups’s team option. Free Agency
Salary Link
14th July: Signed Jodie Meeks to a three year, $18,810,000 contract. Waived Peyton Siva and Josh Harrellson. 15th July: Signed D.J. Augustin to a two year, $6 million contract. Signed Caron Butler to a partially guaranteed two year, $9 million contract. 6th August: Signed Cartier Martin to a guaranteed two year minimum salary contract. 18th August: Signed Aaron Gray to a guaranteed two year minimum salary contract. 3rd September: Re-signed Greg Monroe to a one year, $5,479,935 contract. 22nd September: Signed Lorenzo Brown to an unguaranteed one year minimum salary contract. 23rd September: Signed Hasheem Thabeet to an unguaranteed one year minimum salary contract. 24th September: Signed Josh Bostic to an unguaranteed one year minimum salary contract. 25th September: Signed Brian Cook to an unguaranteed one year minimum salary contract.
BBallBreakdown.com | 41
Warriors Hope To Make Leap To Title Contention This Year After several years of winning basketball, the Warriors hope to build on their success, and rise to the top. By Ben Dowsett, Morten Jensen, and Bobby Karalla
Ben Dowsett- As a young, exciting franchise on the upswing, the Warriors appear on paper to be right on schedule. There haven’t been many unexpected developments – a coaching move from Mark Jackson to Steve Kerr is a change, albeit far from a surprising one after Jackson all but showed himself the door late last year. Each of the roster’s eight leaders in minutes played last year will return to the fold, with depth wing Shaun Livingston the only major addition. Why, then, do there seem to be so many lingering questions in Golden State? There was a scent of simmering discontent lingering from Jackson’s slightly unpleasant departure, one that grew to a full-blown stench when the Warriors engaged in an ultimately unsuccessful Kevin Love pursuit, potentially involving Klay Thompson, that seemed to leave no one happy (well, except people in Cleveland). Other blips on the radar also emerged, from uncertainty surrounding Thompson’s upcoming contract situation to a more recent series of partially self-induced questions regarding Kerr’s planned rotation and schemes. 42 | BBallBreakdown.com
Don’t confuse these issues with any proximity to a panic button, though. The Dubs still boast a starting backcourt that combined for 42 percent 3-point shooting on a ridiculous 1,150 attempts. They retain a solid (if overpaid and somewhat injury-prone) frontcourt anchored by Andrew Bogut and David Lee, plus several above-average defenders including Thompson, Bogut, Andre Iguodala and Draymond Green. And whatever Kerr’s offseason perception issues, he remains an immensely well-respected basketball mind with a pedigree that lends itself to success. They’ll expect to better a 51-win year with a talented roster heavy on continuity. But this is the West, where nothing is given; complacency is a recipe for disaster. There could be more variability here than some might assume, and how any turmoil is handled internally is one of several intriguing subplots surrounding the Dubs this year.
arguably the best offensive lead guard in the NBA currently, and is quicky catching “greatest shooter of all-time” praise from the public, despite being just 26. He’s not just a tremendously gifted shooter, but is an elite scorer and rapidly improving as a floor leader. In a tough Western Conference, he’s hangin tight with the best of them, and seems to be fueled by the playoff atmosphere. With that in mind, the Warriors are now primed to throw their name into the elites of the league, even if their head coach is a rookie.
Morten Jensen - This is a big year for the Warriors collectively, and for Stephen Curry individually.
Steve Kerr, a man with five rings and intimate knowledge of the triangle offense, is now heading the helm of these Warriors, and knows a thing or two about that three-point line. If anything, Kerr is likely to further increase the amount of long range looks next year, which could catapult Curry into very rare air, which is him gunning for the never-done-before 300 three-pointers made in a single season.
The sweet-shooting point guard is
This may sound trivial and not of utter BBallBreakdown.com | 43
Golden State Warriors Shaun Livingston, Brandon Rush, Mitchell Watt, James Michael McAdoo, Aaron Craft, Justin Holiday, Leandro Barbosa, Jason Kapono
In
None
Draft Night
Hilton Armstrong, Jordan Crawford, Jermine O’Neal, Steve Blake Out
importance, but given that Harrison Barnes, David Lee, and Andre Iguodala are still lurking around, having that sort of zone buster racking up the long balls is exactly what these Warriors need to cement themselves as championship contenders. Spacing is key, no one provides it better than Golden State, with the lone candidate being San Antonio. Curry’s ability to have opposing defenses turn their heads and over-commit to his placement, is a hugely underrated tool that Steve Kerr will no doubt understand to properly utilize. Bobby Karalla - Here’s to hoping Steve Kerr brings the Triangle to Oakland. Just think about it. It could work, right? It would work, right? The Warriors start three perimeter players, all of whom can shoot. Two are very good passers. David Lee can pass on the inside. Andrew Bogut is no doubt good enough. The Warriors aren’t exactly ready-made for the system, but the case could be made that Golden State is better equipped to run Phil Jackson’s system than the team over which Jackson currently presides. 44 | BBallBreakdown.com
Kerr’s first crack at coaching isn’t going to leave much room for error, either. That’s the thing. The Warriors have made the playoffs a couple years in a row, but that’s not good enough. This is an exciting team with high aspirations, not the kind of environment a rookie coach wants to struggle in. It would make sense, then, that the new coach would want to install a system he knows inside and out. Kerr is a heady guy who’s been in a lot of different situations — everywhere from Jackson’s creativity-encouraging Triangle to Gregg Popovich’s slow-down, Duncan-centric offense of the early 2000s. You’ve got to believe he can evaluate talent, and it’s pretty obvious where Golden State’s strengths lie. Steph Curry in space is one of the league’s most lethal threats, and no system creates space for its stars better than the Triangle. Kerr could tell you that.
None
Trade
mentor Jackson is all too familiar with this question — it can’t be too difficult… right? 10th July: Signed Shaun Livingston to a partially guaranteed three year, $16,631,175 contract. 22nd July: Signed Brandon Rush to a guaranteed two year minimum salary contract. Free Agency
30th July: Waived Hilton Armstrong. 2nd September: Signed Mitchell Watt, James Michael McAdoo and Aaron Craft to partially guaranteed one year minimum salary contracts.
Salary Link
8th September: Signed Justin Holiday to a partially guaranteed one year minimum salary contract. 10th September: Signed Leandro Barbosa to a partially guaranteed one year minimum salary contract. 3rd October: Signed Jason Kapono to an unguaranteed one year minimum salary contract.
Whichever direction he chooses to go schematically will make comparisons to Mark Jackson pretty easy. Jackson lacked in Xs and Os but made up for it with motivation. Kerr will need to excel in both areas to excel in Golden State, but with top players as talented as the ones he will be coaching — and his BBallBreakdown.com | 45
Rockets Look To Overcome Poor Summer It wasn’t the summer they had hoped for in Houston, losing Chandler Parsons, and failing to acquire Chris Bosh. By John Daigle, Mark Deeks, and Michael Pina
John Daigle - Inexplicable, shocking, heartless, ingenious … all terms that could be used to describe the Rockets approach to the offseason. As if allowing Chandler Parsons to test the market wasn’t enough, James Harden then came out and proclaimed he and Dwight Howard as the cornerstones of the franchise, simultaneously labeling Parsons as a piece. The thing is, he wasn’t too far off. The 6’9 forward was exactly that, albeit an above average one. As a piece though, Houston should have been able to turn right around and replace him with someone of equal value.
46 | BBallBreakdown.com
leaving an abundance of available cap space. As the clock ticked, however, Morey found himself staring down the barrel of a potential max-offer for Chris Bosh, all the while attempting to work the numbers in order to match Parsons from the Mavericks. The rest is history as both dominoes fell in opposite directions. Instead, the Rockets enter the season with the acquisitions of the aforementioned Ariza, Jason Terry, Alonzo Gee, Joey Dorsey, Jeff Adrien, and Troy Daniels.
Whether it was planned or a last-minute option is now irrelevant. The fact remains Trevor Ariza eventually signed, adding an additional layer – or, in the case of Houston, the first step – of perimeter defense. What lies behind Ariza, however, remains the real issue.
In review, you could probably throw a couple of those names on the Sixers and not tell the difference. But really, this brings up the question no one is asking: is MoreyBall the worst method of business? I mean, catering to superstars is one thing. In fact, it’s a common practice around the league. But after six long seasons, what has MoreyBall taught us, if anything?
Daryl Morey initially had requested Parsons to refrain from signing any offers, abiding to hand him an extension and, in turn, fit him alongside one final piece. He then took the initiative to swap Jeremy Lin and Omer Asik for nothing,
My first thought is of course it’s a factor given it’s the exact practice that recruited both Harden and Howard. But what about those surrounding “pieces”, as it were? Is there an unwritten cost to publicly treating your surrounding
cast as an afterthought? And in the end, where does that get you? Into the postseason? Past the first round? Not yet, at least. That much I know. Houston undoubtedly has enough in place to make the tournament. In fact, I’d go a step further and confidently claim they’ll land that all-encompassing third superstar sooner rather than later. But once again: what’s the endgame, and where does this get you? For now at least, it doesn’t appear very far. Mark Deeks - In trying to make their team better, Houston made their team worse. Being overfiddly with Chandler Parsons’s contract – and for no good reason – saw them lose their third best player, and replace him with a worse third best player, when the intent was always to significantly improve the calibre of their third best player (ideally by bumping one of the top two down a spot). A saving grace, however, is the retention of Terrence Jones. Lost amongst all the negative analysis of the flaws of BBallBreakdown.com | 47
Houston Rockets Clint Capela, Nick Johnson, Trevor Ariza, Jason Terry, Jeff Adrien, Ish Smith, Joey Dorsey, Tarik Black, Akil Mitchell, Kostas Papanikolau.
In
Drafted Clint Capela (25th, signed) and Nick Johnson (42nd, signed). Acquired the rights to Alessandro Gentile (53rd, unsigned) from Minnesota in exchange for cash. Draft Night
Chandler Parsons, Jeremy Lin, Omer Asik, Jordan Hamilton, Omri Casspi Out
the James Harden and Dwight Howard pairing, the handwringing of the woefully misplayed Chandler Parsons situation, and the well documented expense and nuances of the Jeremy Lin and Omer Asik contracts, Jones snuck far too easily under the radar last season, a season in which he frankly became really quite good. Jones has a way to go, particularly defensively. In last year’s playoffs, LaMarcus Aldridge abused Jones like he was not there, and he may as well not have been. His man to man defense and positioning need to improve quite substantially, and whilst just about big enough for the power forward spot, Aldridge demonstrated the ease with which bigger opponents handle him. But on the offensive end, Jones’s shotmaking talents around the basket and his handle are extremely rare and refined skills in a 22 year old power forward. He averaged 12 and 7 and very few people noticed. That is the sign of a key cog. Houston lost Parsons by overleveraging themselves to get position for a third star. But let Jones keep developing the way he is, and they probably would 48 | BBallBreakdown.com
have had one anyway. On offense, at least. If Houston are about as good next season as they were last, a very conceivable scenario, Jones will be just as much of why as Ariza will be, if not moreso. Michael Pina - The Rockets enter this season crawling out of a summer that wasn’t what they hoped, but also isn’t the worst thing in the world. Championship expectations still exist. They lost Chandler Parsons, Jeremy Lin, and Omer Asik. The latter two were inconstant contributors last season, but Parsons’ varied skill-set spruced up an offense that tended to stall out in the half-court. He is very good and will be missed. But instead of crying over spilt milk, Daryl Morey quickly replaced Parsons with Trevor Ariza, a 3-and-D swingman who shot 40.7 percent from deep—on a career-high 442 attempts—with the Washington Wizards last season. Parsons is unquestionably the better player, but as the superior defender coming in at half the price, Ariza should give Houston’s greatest weakness a boost. He’ll fit beside Dwight Howard and James Harden, which is all that
14th July: Traded Omer Asik, Omri Casspi and cash to New Orleans in exchange for Alonzo Gee, Scotty Hopson and a future first round pick from New Orleans, and a signed and traded Trevor Ariza (four years, $32,000,002) from Washington. Re-signed Troy Daniels to a guaranteed two year minimum salary contract.
really matters. Speaking of those two, Houston’s franchise-carrying duo should be better in their second season as teammates. Their chemistry will improve, which should have a positive effect on how they run a pick-and-roll together, and where they position themselves on the floor when the other has the ball (it took some time for Dwight to realize he can’t clog the paint when Harden takes off on a one-man fast break last season). The roster isn’t perfect, though, and it’s still unclear whether Isaiah Canaan can run the second unit, Troy Daniels can carry over his status as one of the D-League’s most prolific three-point shooters, or if Donatas Motiejunas/ Terrence Jones can threaten defenses with an outside shot and develop into dependable two-way players.
Trade
13th July: Traded Jeremy Lin, a future first round pick and a future protected second round pick to L.A. Lakers in exchange for the rights to Sergei Lischuk (49th, 2004, unsigned).
17th September: Traded Alonzo Gee and Scotty Hopson to Sacramento in exchange for Jason Terry and two future second round picks.
30th June: Declined Chandler Parsons and Troy Daniels’s team options. Francisco Garcia opted out. 17th July: Signed Jeff Adrien to a guaranteed one year minimum salary contract. Free Agency
Salary Link
18th July: Signed Ish Smith to a guaranteed one year minimum salary contract. Signed Joey Dorsey to a guaranteed two year minimum salary contract. 27th August: Signed Tarik Black to a partially guaranteed two year minimum salary contract. 25th September: Signed Akil Mitchell to a partially guaranteed two year minimum salary contract. 27th September: Signed Kostas Papanikolau to a two year, $9,388,730 contract. Re-signed Francisco Garcia to a guaranteed one year minimum salary contract.
But Morey has trade chips, which means trades will be made. Don’t be surprised if a stud free agent-to-be, like Goran Dragic or Paul Millsap (both fit Houston’s system like a glove), is acquired in February. BBallBreakdown.com | 49
Pacers Still Digesting Nightmare Off-Season Losing your superstar to injury, and your young developing wing-player to free agency, proves a major blow to Pacers. By Torkil Bang, Mark Deeks, and Ben Dowsett
Torkil Bang - From contenders to lottery team in one horrific off-season? This could be the case for the Indiana Pacers. One of the Las Vegas sportsbooks, Westgate SuperBook predicts the Pacers at 32.5 wins, way out of the playoffs. This might sound unreasonable, but consider that they lost their two biggest scoring threats during the summer, Lance Stephenson to free agency and almost-superstar Paul George to a gruesome injury at the Team USA training camp. And it’s not like the Pacers were killing it on offense before. The replacement for Stephenson is Rodney Stuckey who over the last couple of seasons dropped out of the starting lineup in Detroit. If Stuckey comes back to form, he might pick up some of the scoring slack, but he is not a good three-point shooter, and that is a huge problem for a team, that doesn’t excel in this area. Stuckey isn’t the twoway player Stephenson is either. Paul George says that he might be back this season. That could happen, but he will probably not be on top of his game until next season. 50 | BBallBreakdown.com
An underrated aspect is the loss of Danny Granger. At the time it didn’t look like a terrible idea to move the former star of the team, who had been reduced to first player of the bench. But the end of last season and the playoffs showed that he probably ment more for the team balance than just his onfloor production. The enigma on the team is center Roy Hibbert. He has the tools to become Defensive Player Of the Year. He makes a lot of defensive plays and alters other teams’ offense by his mere presence in the paint. But he has shown mental lapses and was highly inconsistent last season. He and the Pacers need a bounce-back season. He worked with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in the off-season and hopefully for him an improved game in the post will put him back on track. When you look at the roster now, it’s remarkable that they actually reached contender status over the last couple of seasons. Kudos to coach Frank Vogel, but he will have his hands full this season.
Mark Deeks - Indiana are in an extremely uncomfortable place. They were all in, set up to win it all without ever having the talent to do it. Then last year they imploded and the whole thing looked dishevelled. And then when Paul George broke his leg, they found themselves in purgatory – a team built to win now that cannot do so, that cannot also do much else. Losing the two best offensive creators they have to injury and free agency and replacing them only with off-ball shooters and athletes leaves an already depleted offensive team positively destitute. The Pacers will now have to squeeze out more offense from David West (a specialist in long twos and post ups from way too far away), the notoriously soft Roy Hibbert, and the ill-fitting point guard duo of George Hill and Rodney Stuckey, for the vast majority of their offense. The players who are good on offense are not the same players who are good on defense, and Indiana is mired in role players with no one to play roles for. This season, frankly and obviously, will be very difficult to stomach.
BBallBreakdown.com | 51
Indiana Pacers C.J. Miles, Damjan Rudez, Shayne Whittington, Rodney Stuckey, C.J. Fair, Adonis Thomas, Arinze Onuaku, Chris Singleton
In
Drafted Louis Labeyrie (57th). Traded his rights to New York for cash.
Draft Night
Rasual Butler, Andrew Bynum, Evan Turner, Lance Stephenson Out
That, though, is not the point. To preview one season of Indiana basketball overlooks a worrying prognosis for the future. With scant little opportunities for internal growth and few assets to work with, Indiana’s future may be bleaker still. With this in mind, Indiana should view this season as one in which, no matter what happens out there, they should take (and search for) every opportunity to better their future. If they do so, this will of course impact upon their performance this season, which roughly projects at the moment to be somewhere between a low playoff seed and .300 ball. Whether they go this route or not is another matter – it would be a very un-Pacerlike thing to do. What, though, is the alternative? The Pacers, built on toughness and defense, were already losing both of these things and somewhat imploding. They then lost their two best talents. It, whatever ‘it’ was, is over. The lottery probably awaits, and if it does not, it should do. At the very least, play Rudez, play Copeland, space the floor, and see what happens. Ben Dowsett - Had one spoken to 52 | BBallBreakdown.com
a Pacers fan at the turn of the 2014 new year, a ceiling for optimism would have been close to nonexistent. At 25-6, with a defense on pace to be the league’s stingiest in a decade and a rising superstar in Paul George entering the early MVP conversation, the sky seemed the limit. Best-case scenario: topple the Heat and begin a multi-year run of Eastern dominance with a couple titles sprinkled in. Worst-case scenario? Just about everything since. Indiana stumbled to end the season, limped to an Eastern Finals matchup with Miami that ended in familiar frustration, and had to deal with all sorts of discontent (both rumored and actual) in the early summer months. And then on August 1st came the fatal blow, a gruesome leg injury to George that’s expected to sideline him all of the upcoming year.
a strange locker room dynamic that’s slowly developed, and is being frequently floated as a trade candidate. A team that was already lacking in creative talent will badly struggle to score the ball. It’s hard to believe, but if strange recent comments from forward David West are taken at face value, one of last year’s early title contenders could already be considering blowing things up. It mightn’t be necessary – the East is weak, and solid coaching from Frank Vogel plus a patchwork offense with West as a fulcrum could challenge for a bottom-four playoff seed. But the outlook is grim; if karma truly exists, this is a franchise long overdue for a stroke or two of good fortune.
30th June: Traded Lou Williams and the rights to Lucas Nogueira to Toronto in exchange for John Salmons. Trade
2nd July: Signed Shayne Whittington to a partially guaranteed one year minimum salary contract.
Free Agency
11th July: Re-signed Lavoy Allen to a guaranteed one year minimum salary contract. Signed C.J. Miles to a four year, $17,955,350 contract. Signed Damjan Rudez to a three year, $3,438,500 contract. 21st July: Signed Rodney Stuckey to a guaranteed one year minimum salary contract.
Salary Link
3rd September: Signed C.J. Fair, Adonis Thomas and Arinze Onuaku to unguaranteed one year minimum salary contracts. 5th September: Signed Chris Singleton to an unguaranteed one year minimum salary contract.
What remains is a shell of a Pacers team that, not nine months ago, aspired to take the league by storm. Lance Stephenson is gone, and CJ Miles, while a good shooter, will struggle to replace his varied skill set. Roy Hibbert, seemingly a lock for DPOY much of last year (he didn’t win), has embodied BBallBreakdown.com | 53
New Owner Ends Turmoil In Clipper-land After ridding themselves of Donald Sterling, the Clippers can now look ahead to a long season of on-court focus. By Mark Deeks, Kevin Ferrigan, and Seth Partnow
Mark Deeks - If the Clippers are to be any better than they were last season, it might only be slightly, depending on how good of learners they are as a group. Improvements were not necessarily recruited. On talent alone, Spencer Hawes is certainly the upgrade over Ryan Hollins, and he gives the Clippers a highly talented backup big man option where previously there stood so few. Hawes’s passing and jumpshot expand any playbook, and his defensive deficiencies, while profound, are mitigated by the limited minutes he will play if everyone is healthy. However, so will his offensive strengths. And the team with so little rim protection outside of DeAndre Jordan that is also so reliant on he and Blake Griffin for rebounds did little to assuage these concerns. In a sense, Ekpe Udoh might be just as useful. Jordan Farmar mirrors Darren Collison in production if not entirely in style, and although C.J. Wilcox was probably the right pick, he probably takes Reggie Bullock’s minor spot in the rotation, not Jared Dudley’s. The Clippers limited themselves to upgrading or replacing 54 | BBallBreakdown.com
the seventh, eighth and eleventh men in the rotation, when depth was not the biggest concern in the first place. Nevertheless, with plenty of talent and a coach they like playing for, the plan is the same. The worry is that so, too, are the holes. The wing defense is not good enough – Wilcox can only help here if he gets playing time, a tough ask with the return of J.J. Redick – the offense still hugely reliant upon Chris Paul, the overall outside shooting somewhat mediocre, and the interior defense shaky behind Jordan. However, it is OK to be reliant upon your stars if said stars deliver. The Clippers will be hoping for much of the same as last season, barring the collapses that cost them a conference finals berth in their series versus the Thunder. No transaction could rectify that. They will be hoping some battle scars will. And they might be right. Kevin Ferrigan - The Clippers were the league’s second best squad last season over 82 games, but they were a flawed club with very little in the way of big man depth. They appear to have
addressed that problem by adding stretch center Spencer Hawes and a bargain-priced backup rim protector in Ekpe Udoh. Jared Dudley has been exiled after a rather poor season on the wing. The rest of the important players have returned. J.J. Redick is healthy. Generally, the vibes are good. The Clippers big 3 of Chris Paul, Blake Griffin, and DeAndre Jordan is formidable enough to expect them to be in the mix for one of the top 4 records out West again this year. The trouble for the Clips is that it’s unlikely that Oklahoma City, the team which eliminated them from the playoffs, suffers the same number of injuries that they did last season, particularly to Russell Westbrook whose absences are almost certainly the reason OKC was not the West’s second best regular season team in 2013-14. Additionally, the Spurs are still lingering and should be just as dangerous as always. In order for Lob City to be able to surpass either the Spurs or the Thunder and make it to the Finals, Blake Griffin will likely need to make yet another leap from the ranks of the league’s BBallBreakdown.com | 55
Los Angeles Clippers C.J. Wilcox, Spencer Hawes, Jordan Farmar, Chris Douglas-Roberts, Ekpe Udoh, Jared Cunningham, Joe Ingles.
In
Drafted C.J. Wilcox (28th, signed.)
Draft Night
Jared Dudley, Darren Collison, Danny Granger, Ryan Hollins. Out
superstars to a legitimate top 5 player. Some will tell you Blake is already there, but they’re wrong and the difference is a big reason the Clippers were just not quite good enough this summer to beat out the Thunder. It also didn’t help that DeAndre Jordan, the 3rd wheel of the Clippers was badly outplayed by the Thunder’s 3rd star, Serge Ibaka. The depth LA added this offseason will undoubtedly help, but ultimately, whether they’re hoisting the Larry O’Brien trophy will depend on the improvement of their two star big men. Seth Partnow - 2014-15 is most likely the “or bust” season for the Clippers. If that seems like and unfair amount of pressure to heap on a franchise just emerging from the long and noxious shadow of Donald Sterling, well, there it is. The clock is likely ticking on Chris Paul as an elite player. Blake Griffin is probably approaching his very peak as his skills continue to improve while his athleticism is yet to begin to decline. DeAndre Jordan will be a free agent in 2015. The franchise is not blessed 56 | BBallBreakdown.com
with any young prospects of note, has already traded away it’s 2015 and 2017 first rounders and has no ability to package any other firsts in a deal by virtue of the protections on the 2017 pick. In other words, their core is in place, this is their squad, and it’s not getting any younger. Meanwhile, teams like New Orleans, Phoenix and even Utah are on the rise, while Oklahoma City and the reigning champion Spurs were already better. So for the Clippers, at least the current Paul/Griffin/Jordan incarnation, if not now, when? For that to happen, several things are going to have to align. The first is obviously health. This holds true for every team, of course. But Paul’s style of feints, bumps and sudden stops has contributed to an increasing number of nicks, bumps and bruises, including a bad knee, a wonky shoulder and so on. Second, continued internal improvement, especially from Jordan. His defense improved markedly over the course of 2013-14, and that trend needs to continue. More importantly, he needs to progress enough on the offensive end so that small-ball isn’t an attractive option for teams in the play-
offs. Golden State had their greatest success in the last season’s first round by forcing Jordan off the floor. Third, they need supporting contributions, most likely from J.J. Redick. With the guile of Paul and power of Griffin, this should not be the well below-average three-point shooting team they were a year ago. If it doesn’t happen this year, the team’s title chance will recede right alongside the afterglow of Sterling’s ouster, leaving fond memories mixed with bittersweet thoughts of what could have been.
Trade
26th August: Traded Jared Dudley and a conditional future first round pick to Milwaukee in exchange for Carlos Delfino, Miroslav Raduljica and a conditional future second round pick.
29th June: Waived Willie Green. 30th June: Danny Granger, Darren Collison and Glen Davis opted out. Free Agency
10th July: Signed Spencer Hawes to a four year, $22,652,350 contract. Signed Jordan Farmar to a two year, $4,247,465 contract. 18th July: Re-signed Glen Davis to a guaranteed one year minimum salary contract.
Salary Link
29th August: Waived Carlos Delfino and Miroslav Raduljica. 3rd September: Signed Chris Douglas-Roberts and Ekpe Udoh to guaranteed one year minimum salary contracts. 12th September: Re-signed Hedo Turkoglu to a guaranteed one year minimum salary contract. 17th September: Signed Jared Cunningham to an unguaranteed one year minimum salary contract. 24th September: Signed Joe Ingles to an unguaranteed one year minimum salary contract.
BBallBreakdown.com | 57
Lakers Looking Ahead To Return Of Kobe Bryant The L.A. Lakers might not be projected to be an elite team this season, but they will still enjoy Kobe’s return. By Kevin Ferrigan, Morten Jensen, and Seth Partnow
Kevin Ferrigan - Kobe Bryant is back! That’s the good news. The rest of the picture, though, is pretty grim. The Lakers are going to be a very, very bad basketball team this season. Only the Sixers are likely to be worse, and they want to lose. Rookie big man Julius Randle ought to get all the minutes he can handle, because the other power forward option is Carlos Boozer, who barely belongs in the league anymore, given the degree to which his offensive game has shriveled paired with his always laughably porous defense. Whether Randle gets those minutes, with the old-school Byron Scott at the helm, is probably a different matter. Speaking of laughing, there will be plenty of opportunities for the rest of the country to laugh at the Lakers. Despite their woeful roster, L.A. will be on national television for an absurd 20 games. So everyone will be treated to heavy dose of “Swaggy P” Nick Young launching absurd shots, Kobe launching those same shots to greater effect, Carlos Boozer shouting as a form of defense, and Steve Nash wondering 58 | BBallBreakdown.com
how it is that this is how his illustrious career ends.
nasty spell that included a torn Achilles and a knee injury in consecutive years.
That’s not to say this is a roster totally without talent. Ed Davis, Jordan Hill, Ryan Kelly, and the aforementioned Randle could make for a decent enough big man rotation, were it not for the presence of Carlos Boozer mucking things up. Jeremy Lin is a solid player, if overmatched as a starter. Nick Young is occasionally effective, though never as much as he thinks he is. Kobe is still a very good, though no longer great, player.It’s possible to imagine a great coach cobbling something halfway respectable out of this mess, but the track record suggests that Byron Scott is just not that guy. It’s a shame, because Mike D’Antoni, the coach the Lakers fired in favor of Scott, is almost certainly better suited to the task. But knowing the Lakers’ luck, they’ll bottom out and land star big man Jahlil Okafor is next year’s NBA draft.
The 36-year old remains competitive as ever, but there’s no guarantee his body can keep up after missing most of last year, and with that mileage.
Morten Jensen - Lakers fans are hyped, and that’s not because of the acqusition of Carlos Boozer. Kobe Bryant will make his return after a
Kobe undoubtedly hates that line of thinking, which he should, and will give the Lakers all he’s got this year. Due to that, there are going to be times where he’ll get upset, considering the roster around him. Boozer, Jeremy Lin, Nick Young, and the rest of Kobe’s teammates are hard-working guys, but flawed. Most of them simply doesn’t come close to having the same talent level as Bryant, and he’ll scorn them for it. Thankfully, rookie forward Julius Randle will get a proper NBA education with Bryant around. The skilled big man, who resembles Zach Randolph in playing style, will learn immediately what kind of work ethic is required to make it in the pro’s, and should Kobe take him under his wing, Randle will for sure see his development speed up. BBallBreakdown.com | 59
Los Angeles Lakers Adreian Payne, Thabo Sefolosha, Kent Bazemore, Dexter Pittman, Jarell Eddie
In
Drafted Julius Randle (7th, signed). Acquired the rights to Jordan Clarkson (46th, signed) from Washington in exchange for cash. Draft Night
Lou Williams Gustavo Ayon Cartier Martin Out
All in all, these Lakers are looking at beyond this year, much in the same way as the New York Knicks. They, meaning the front office, do not expect great things this year - even if Kobe does - and are banking on 2015 or 2016 to make a push forward through free agency, given their success in luring stars to Los Angeles.
rated, non-defending stat-grabbing bigs (Carlos Boozer) with a bright-lights name with an onerous contract to boot in Jeremy Lin. Add to this the competitive sociopathy of Kobe Bryant and the fun-sponge drill-sergeantry of new coach Byron Scott, and this team will not only be bad, it won’t even be bad in entertaining ways.
That’s why the team will market not themselves this year, but Kobe. Or, the return of Kobe rather. They understand the product might suffer, especially if Steve Nash goes down with a bad back once again.
As maligned as Mike D’Antoni was for last season’s performance, the team won’t make in to New Years without a slew of “at least we were fun last year” columns and commentaries from followers of the team. The defense will be no better (Scott has experimented with Lin at small forward in training camp, a ghastly idea in all respects), and with the passing talents of Kendall Marshall and Pau Gasol moved on, the offense will likely be the worst sort of “pound it inside until Kobe decides to iso” slog.
And should Mr. Bryant defy the odds, and return to an elite level, the Lakers PR department will be standing by. Seth Partnow - The Lakers (again) missed out on adding anything in the way of marquee players (again) over the summer of 2014. At some point, the blind faith that simply being the “Lakers” and having the draw of Los Angeles will ensure success will wear off. But it hasn’t yet. Instead, the Lakers have been assembled out of the parts of a second-rate fantasy team. Unrepentant chuckers (Nick Young), over60 | BBallBreakdown.com
Even the pieces of the hoped-for-future will struggle to find a place. Julius Randle is stuck in a crowd among the bigs. Given Scott’s extreme “old school” style, his opportunities will be limited. Second round pick Jordan Clarkson looked tantalizing in Summer League, but he too is largely blocked from
Trade
13th July: Traded the rights to Sergei Lischuk (49th, 2004) to Houston in exchange for Jeremy Lin, a future first round pick and a future protected second round pick.
rotation minutes. Essentially, this will be 82 games of marking time, counting down the clock until Kobe’s contract runs out and the team can pursues the next batch of “future Lakers” in free agency.
30th June: Nick Young opted out. 17th July: Claimed Carlos Boozer off of amnesty waivers (one year, $3,251,000) from Chicago. Free Agency
18th July: Waived Kendall Marshall. 21st July: Re-signed Ryan Kelly to a two year, $3,374,250 contract. Re-signed Nick Young to a four year, $21,326,174 contract.
Salary Link
23rd July: Re-signed Jordan Hill to a two year, $18 million contract. Signed Ed Davis to a guaranteed two year minimum salary contract. 25th July: Re-signed Xavier Henry to a one year, $1,082,000 contract. 28th July: Re-signed Wesley Johnson to a guaranteed one year minimum salary contract. 22nd September: Signed Wayne Ellington to an unguarantteed one year minimum salary contract. 23rd September: Signed Jeremy Tyler, Roscoe Smith, Keith Appling and Jabari Brown to unguarantteed one year minimum salary contracts. 24th September: Signed Ronnie Price to an unguarantteed one year minimum salary contract.
BBallBreakdown.com | 61
Grizzled And Old, But Not Down For The Count They may be old and lack explosiveness, but the Grizzlies are still one of the toughest teams in the league. By Mark Deeks, Ben Dowsett, and Kevin Ferrigan
Mark Deeks - I am worried about the Grizzlies. This is, or at least has been, the best team the franchise has ever experienced. But its shelf life is either over, or very soon about to be. Zach Randolph declined last year in a way that probably will not be reversible. Less effective than ever around the rim, both in terms of finishing and offensive rebounding. It is difficult if not impossible to believe these things will ever come back. The decline of Tony Allen, subtle yet palpable, could well go the same way – the duo, it must be remembered, are a combined 66 years old. The Grizzlies of course have talent outside of Zach and Tony, but no more than they have done previously. The additions of Vince Carter and Jordan Adams do not rectify their wing rotation’s superfluousness and lack of star power, but merely add to it. They only replace the two pleasant surprises of the on-court product last year, Mike Miller and James Johnson. The decent to good Grizzlies who needed something big to fight their through the brutal Western conference and the 62 | BBallBreakdown.com
powerhouse Southwest division have not done so, and while they could well be the NBA’s twelfth best team, that could also well be merely good for a tenth seed. Amidst all this, Marc Gasol’s free agency looms large. And if he goes, it is indeed over. Memphis cannot hang Gasol’s hat purely on Mike Conley, because as good as Mike Conley has become, he will not carry this franchise. Signing the second wind of Vince Carter speaks to an understanding of the importance of as much short term success as possible, but it alone is not going to ensure it. This could be a 45 win ninth or tenth seeded team. If it is, what then? Ben Dowsett - Will this finally be the year the Grizzlies put it all together? Memphis’ role come playoff time is a well-rehearsed one at this point: never the favorite, perennially considered the dangerous, grit-and-grind underdog no one wants to play. There have been a number of close calls along the way, including last year’s first round near-upset of Oklahoma City and their
advancement all the way to the Western Finals the previous year before an eventual loss to the mighty Spurs. They seem poised to occupy a similar role again, though the details of their offseason may raise the ceiling just a little. Vince Carter is on board on a friendly salary, and could be a slight overall upgrade on departing Mike Miller. Tony Allen, Courtney Lee, Quincy Pondexter, and incoming first round pick Jordan Adams round out a solid supporting wing unit, and the foundational trio of Marc Gasol, Zach Randolph, and Mike Conley is back with yet another year together under their belts. Can they ride their continuity and avoid enough bad luck to challenge the West’s elite contenders? Gasol’s untimely injury early last season threw a wrench in things, and may have cost the Griz a few vital wins that would have led to a first-round matchup with Los Angeles or Houston, two teams that looked quite beatable at the time. Randolph’s suspension for Game 7 in OKC was another bit of misfortune, the sort Memphis will hope doesn’t repeat – or at least will perhaps befall less BBallBreakdown.com | 63
Memphis Grizzlies Jordan Adams, Jarnell Stokes, Vince Carter, Patrick Christopher, Luke Hancock, Earl Clark, Kalin Lucas, Michael Beasley, Hassan Whiteside
In
Drafted Jordan Adams (22nd, signed). Acquired the rights to Jarnell Stokes (35th, signed) from Utah in exchange for a future second round pick. Draft Night
Jamaal Franklin, Ed Davis, Mike Miller, James Johnson Out
vital cogs in the machine. Shooting will surely remain hard to come by, but if Memphis can get another start-to-finish DPOY-caliber season like 2012-13 from Gasol, continued bullish production from Randolph (both are in contract years) and more steady excellence from Conley, they could again be a scary notion come the postseason. Kevin Ferrigan - Let’s get this out of the way: Memphis is absolutely stacked. Lead by the league’s best two-way center, Marc Gasol, and its most under-appreciated lead guard, Mike Conley, these Grizzlies have loads of talent. How good are they? Last year in the brutal Western Conference, they won 50 games despite being without their best player, Gasol, for over a quarter of the season (23 games). Over the summer, they added Vince Carter, a legitimate 6th Man of the Year contender last season, and a dangerous enough shooter to crack open some spacing for the Grizzlies normally claustrophobic offense, with its focus on dominating in the paint, forsaking all else. Nabbing Carter on a small deal 64 | BBallBreakdown.com
was one of the low-key moves that could legitimately swing the Western Conference playoffs next summer. The former offensive superstar still has enough in the tank to be a positive presence on both ends and certainly presents opponents with more to worry about offensively than Tony Allen. Memphis also managed to land two players in the draft who have better odds than most rookies at contributing from day one. Jarnell Stokes is a long-armed monster with NBA-level strength and the ability to contribute as a glass-eater from day one, giving the aging Zach Randolph the opportunity to catch some rest. Jordan Adams was one of the most underrated guard prospects in this year’s draft, though he’ll find it harder to find minutes on this Grizzlies squad than his fellow rookie with veterans Carter, Tony Allen, and Courtney Lee all standing in his way. Lee and Carter give the Grizzlies options they didn’t have last season, wings who can spread the floor while not surrendering much defensively.
None
Trade
of Marc Gasol to health. They are this writer’s favorite sleeper title contender. Keep your eye on them. Mark Deeks: It’s fair to say me and Kevin disagree.
27th June: Zach Randolph opted in. 30th June: Signed Zach Randolph to a two year, $20 million extension. Free Agency
12th July: Signed Vince Carter to a partially guaranteed three year, $12,264,057 contract. 13th July: Re-signed Beno Udrih to a partially guaranteed two year, $4,247,465 contract.
Salary Link
24th July: Signed Patrick Christopher to an unguaranteed one year minimum salary contract. 31st August: Waived Jamaal Franklin. 2nd September: Signed Luke Hancock to an unguaranteed one year minimum salary contract. 15th September: Signed Earl Clark to an unguaranteed one year minimum salary contract. 16th September: Signed Kalin Lucas to an unguaranteed one year minimum salary contract. 24th September: Signed Michael Beasley and Hassan Whiteside to unguaranteed one year minimum salary contracts.
The Grizzlies figured to be improved on both ends next year, both due to their acquisitions on the wing and the return BBallBreakdown.com | 65
Miami Mourns The Loss Of LeBron; Re-tools Roster The Heat acted quickly this summer, when LeBron decided to leave, signing Luol Deng, and re-signing Chris Bosh. By Mark Deeks, Matthew Hochberg, Morten Jensen, and Jeff McMenamin
Mark Deeks - When Miami lost LeBron, they honoured their commitments to Danny Granger and Josh McRoberts, and then worked the cap so as to also squeeze in a big name free agent, Luol Deng. They brought back Chris Bosh, Dwyane Wade and others, and put together a reasonably decent Eastern conference team. There is some nobility and honour to be found in taking this route, I suppose. There is not, however, much joy to be found in it. Miami’s best three players now are two incredibly worn down wing players and a big man who readily confesses to feeling the need to slim down in order to combat the advances of age. One of their key offseason acquisitions (Granger) has big concerns over his knee’s health, and at point guard, they have three backups. Josh McRoberts needs to prove he can live up to the paycheck, Chris Andersen needs to stave off his decline, and it is too late for Udonis Haslem to stave off his. Miami’s depth is extremely shallow, and with the age and mileage of the core, they will need it. There is enough talent to be a decent 66 | BBallBreakdown.com
team, but absolutely everything is a question, and a big question at that. LeBron leaving really was as decimating as it sounds. By the end of his time with the Heat, Miami relied upon him just as much as the pre-2011 Cavaliers ever did. And the unpleasant side effect of that is Miami is left with very little salvation, both short and long term.
able team that can make some noise come playoff time.
The Heat could stay healthy, win 48, and enjoy a reasonably successful season. Or they could not stay healthy, win 32, and wonder why they bothered trying to win 48. The first will leave an anticlimactic after taste anyway, because if they could not win with LeBron, they certainly cannot win without him. And the second is even more unsavoury, for it has not even the genuinely soothing feeling of watching more wins than losses to accompany it. A bad year awaits regardless of how good it is.
The biggest question mark of the season, however, is Dwyane Wade. The Heat-lifer is no longer the superstar of old, but as he has proven before, can still play at an elite-level when healthy.
Matthew Hochberg - LeBron James left Miami and there is absolutely no player – or players – who can replace the game’s best player. Despite this, the Heat did recover well considering the big loss and are still certainly a respect-
Pat Riley wasted no time sulking over LeBron’s exit but instead, signed Luol Deng to bring one of the league’s best wing-players to South Beach. Miami also brought in Josh McRoberts and Danny Granger as solid contributors.
The other leg of the remaining Big Three is Chris Bosh, who signed a fiveyear $118 million mega-deal to spurn Houston and stay in Miami. He has added more facets to his game since coming to Miami four years ago after already being one of the NBA’s top big men in Toronto, where he averaged at least 22 points and 10 rebounds in three out of his last four seasons there. No, the Heat will not compete for a championship this season but they have remained relevant, something Cleveland was unable to do after James BBallBreakdown.com | 67
Miami Heat Shabazz Napier, Danny Granger, Josh McRoberts, Luol Deng, Shawne Williams, Reggie Williams, Tyler Johnson, Khem Birch, Shawn Jones, Andre Dawkins, Chris Johnson, Shannon Brown, James Ennis
In
LeBron James, Michael Beasley, Greg Oden, Rashard Lewis, Ray Allen, Out Shane Battier, James Jones, Toney Douglas
came to Miami in 2010. It would have been impossible to fully-recover after No. 23 left, but Riley and Co. did still make the right moves. Morten Jensen - Losing a star hurts. Losing LeBron James is franchise death. However, Pat Riley and the MIami Heat found their footing quickly after the punch to the gut, and snagged Luol Deng in free agency, while preventing Chris Bosh from signing in Houston, by handing him $118 million. Now, there’s a risk involved in paying Bosh that amount. He’s been the third offensive option for four years, meaning Miami could risk seeing a longer development curve for him to return to his former offensive volume, like he had in his Toronto days. Bosh, while ultra talented and by far a much smarter player by now compared to four years ago, has settled for long-range shots in recent years, and will need to get re-aclimated to playing near the basket, and doing more of the dirty work. In particular, Bosh will need to get on the glass more frequently, and become the 10-11 rebounds a night 68 | BBallBreakdown.com
guy he used to be. Thankfully, Deng will help in that department, seeing as the long small forward has always been an elite rebounder for his position, as well as a hard-nosed defender. Deng now becomes the third option for Miami, a role he flourished in back with Chicago when playing alongside a healthy Derrick Rose, and Carlos Boozer. Pending the health of Dwyane Wade, which is one of the biggest question marks going into this season, Deng could bounce back from his horrid Cavaliers cameo, and return to near All-Star form. Jeff McMenamin - The loss of LeBron James is obviously going to hurt a lot for the 2014-15 Heat, but don’t think an organization which has reached the NBA Finals in each of the past four seasons is going to keel over and die. Make what you will about age and health, but a core of Dwayne Wade, Chris Bosh and Loul Deng is still going to win you some basketball games. Surrounding the new big three are a few scrappy veterans and intriguing prospects. Mario Chalmers, Chris Anderson and Udonis Haslem have a
ton of NBA experience and have played on the biggest stage. Josh McRoberts, Norris Cole and Danny Granger figure to see some action this year as well. Shabazz Napier, drafted in 2014, and James Ennis, drafted in 2013, are already being looked at as valuable pieces to the future success of the Heat. If Wade or Deng miss any time due to injury this season, expect these two to step in and see a major increase in minutes. Napier averaged 18 points, 5.9 rebounds and 4.9 assists last year for the National Championship winning UConn Huskies. Ennis played in Australia last year in the NBL, averaging 21.2 points, 7.1 rebounds and 2.1 assists on his way to be coming the leagues MVP. Both will at least provide a much needed lift offensively off the bench for the Heat this season. The Heat will likely struggle in the beginning of the year to adjust to James not being a part of the offense anymore, but barring any serious injuries, they should easily be a playoff team by the end of the season.
Free Agency
Draft Night
None
Trade
24th June: LeBron James exercised his early termination option.
30th July: Re-signed Chris Bosh to a five year, $118,705,300 contract.
28th June: Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh exercised their early termination options.
1st August: Signed Shawne Williams to a partially guaranteed two year minimum salary contract.
30th June: Chris Andersen and Udonis Haslem opted out. Salary Link
Draft night: Drafted P.J. Hairston (26th) and Semaj Criston (55th). Traded the rights to both, along with a future second round pick, to Charlotte in exchange for the rights to Shabazz Napier (24th, signed).
14th July: Signed Josh McRoberts to a four year, $22,652,350 contract. Signed Danny Granger to a two year, $4,247,465 contract. Re-signed Mario Chalmers to a two year, $8.3 million contract. 15th July: Re-signed Dwyane Wade to a two year, $31.125 million contract. Re-signed Chris Andersen to a two year, $10.375 million contract. Signed Luol Deng to a two year, $19,866,073 contract. Signed James Ennis to a partially guaranteed three year minimum salary contract. 18th July: Re-signed Udonis Haslem to a two year, $5,586,940 contract.
6th August: Signed Tyler Johnson to a partially guaranteed two year minimum salary contract. 12th August: Signed Reggie Williams to an unguaranteed one year minimum salary contract. 27th August: Signed Shannon Brown to an unguaranteed one year minimum salary contract. 12th September: Signed Khem Birch to a partially guaranteed two year minimum salary contract. 23rd September: Signed Shawn Jones and Andre Dawkins to unguaranteed one year minimum salary contracts. 26th September: Signed Chris Johnson to an unguaranteed one year minimum salary contract. BBallBreakdown.com | 69
Arrival Of Kidd & Parker Signals Big Changes The Bucks decided to go all-in on Jason Kidd, after landing Duke phenom Jabari Parker in the draft. By Mark Deeks, Jeff McMenamin, and Michael Pina
Mark Deeks - Milwaukee is the rare example of the team that was standout dreadful by accident, and needs to deliberately be stand-out dreadful to get out of it. The fan base has said they have the patience to do this, as have the owners. Their mostly quiet offseason so far seems to accord with this. And, rare as it is, this inactivity is for once a good thing. The Bucks have pieces to work with. Jabari Parker is a tremendous talent, Brandon Knight is a better player than is often assumed, John Henson’s stat-heavy ways are alluring and rare, and Nate Wolters and Khris Middleton emerged as decent role playing talents. But ultimately, the short and long term futures hinge on Giannis Antetokounmpo and Larry Sanders. Giannis, as covered below, is a fascinatingly unprojectable individual who was the saving grace of last year. Sanders, meanwhile, is the embodiment (and a large part of the reason for) the demise. The toxicity and lack of pride that devalued Milwaukee last year emanated in large part from Sanders’s petulance and unreliability, which affected everyone on the court, especially him. 70 | BBallBreakdown.com
Sanders has DPOY potential if he wants to realise it, and apparently he stopped wanting to realise it after he got paid. With the extension kicking in this summer, Sanders needs to start wanting it again, if only because he will need another contract another day. The aim for this season, then, is salvation, redemption and consolidation. Forget the wins. The team ironically has enough talent to get some wins in the one year they should not want them. They just need to make it better. Redeem Sanders. Redeem O.J. Mayo. Redeem Ersan Ilyasova, if only for trade value. In fact, redeem everyone’s trade value. Redeem a future of winning more than 50 games. Redeem the deer, the pride of Bucks basketball. Lose on purpose if you have to, just this once. Jeff McMenamin - The Bucks are filled with arguably the most young talent in the NBA heading into next season. The question is whether or not they can display that talent on the court or if they’ll experience growing pains again, much like their 2013-14 campaign. A young core of Giannis Antetokounmpo, Jabari Parker, Brandon Knight and a healthy
Larry Sanders should be frightening to any team facing the Bucks this season. New coach Jason Kidd will have the assignment of creating an offensive scheme that works for the team, which averaged just 95.5 points per game in 2013-14. The Bucks young core won’t be the only producers this season, they have a pretty solid surrounding cast in O.J. Mayo, Ersan Ilyasova, John Henson, Jerryd Bayless and Zaza Pachulia. Injuries saddled the Bucks team chemistry and production last season, but expect to see a stronger and healthier squad take the court this year. They will definitely out-perform their lousy 15-67 record last year. They’ll be a fringe playoff team in the Eastern Conference and have a few surprise victories against the league’s best teams along the way. Michael Pina - Instead of continuing a depressing cycle of propping themselves up as first-rounder fodder, the Milwaukee Bucks are finally entering year one of a legitimate rebuild. Hurray! BBallBreakdown.com | 71
Milwaukee Bucks Jabari Parker, Damien Inglis, Johnny O’Bryant, Kendall Marshall, Jerryd Bayless, Jared Dudley, Micheal Eric, Elijah Millsap
In
Draft Night
Ramon Sessions, Carlos Delfino, Miroslav Raduljica, Ekpe Udoh, Jeff Adrien Out
What makes things more exciting is they already have at least one (but maybe two?) baby on board with AllStar potential (Jabari Parker), and an intriguing, new head coach (that’s a compliment!). People will talk about the Bucks and watch their games, and that’s nothing to sneeze at when Las Vegas has your over/under win total at 24.5 (second lowest in the league). Expectations are still low, as they should be. But this team is finally on the right track, finally fighting the good fight and making smart basketball decisions. The secret best part of it all, though, is the Bucks have nearly all the pieces in place to one day wake up as a truly soul-crushing defensive unit.
From there, doing anything against Jon Henson’s octopus arms is no walk in the park, and the Scottie Pippen comparisons for Giannis Greek Freak give Milwaukee a potential pad lock on the perimeter. Brandon Knight’s 6’7” wingspan rounds it all out up top. The Bucks are far from where they want to be, but this roster has potential, resembling the Indiana Pacers of a few years ago.
Trade
Drafted Jabari Parker (2nd, signed), Damien Inglis (31st, signed), Johnny O’Bryant (36th, signed) and Lamar Patterson (48th). Traded Patterson’s rights to Atlanta in exchange for a future second round pick.
26th August: Traded Carlos Delfino, Miroslav Raduljica and a future conditional second round pick to L.A. Clippers in exchange for Jared Dudley and a future conditional first round pick.
20th July: Claimed Kendall Marshall off of waivers. 31st July: Signed Jerryd Bayless to a two year, $6 million contract. Free Agency
23rd September: Signed Micheal Eric and Elijah Millsap to unguaranteed one year minimum salary contracts.
Salary Link
Let’s start at the bottom with Larry Sanders, a forgotten defensive presence who does to shots near the rim what impatient children do to bubble wrap. Sanders is a legitimate anchor coming off a catastrophic year of being a human, but he’s still only 25 years old, with Defensive Player of the Year aspirations. Milwaukee also has him locked into a four-year, $44 million deal that kicks in this season. The most important puzzle piece is in place. 72 | BBallBreakdown.com
BBallBreakdown.com | 73
Minnesota Not Mourning Lost Love Losing a player of Kevin Love’s caliber is never easy, but the return Minnesota received helped improve the recovery. By Mark Deeks, Morten Jensen, and Jeff McMenamin
Mark Deeks - As ridiculous as it is to say of an offseason in which they lost their clearcut best player, this has been one of the best offseasons Minnesota has had in ages. In returning both Thad Young and Andrew Wiggins – plus whatever salvation there can be for Anthony Bennett, who should at least get somewhere approaching a rebounding Rodney Rogers at some point – Minnesota can look forward finally, looking forward positively to a future rather than looking forward only to the day it was inevitably going to go wrong. That day has passed, the return for Love was good, and the rebuild, ugly as it is as a general concept, can at least begin. Wiggins, Young, Ricky Rubio, draftee Zach Lavine and Corey Brewer should be running this ball. Nikola Pekovic likely will not make it over halfcourt when they do, but that is OK – Gorgui Dieng will. There will be many, many ugly halfcourt sets from a badly spaced team yet to establish a hierarchy. But the transition and the projectable defense – Dieng’s fantastic help D, Rubio’s pesky persistence, Young’s 74 | BBallBreakdown.com
versatility and Wiggins’s lock down potential – make for a rebuild worth monitoring, and which might not take all that long. All any of this will do, of course, is mire them at the bottom of the conference. But that too is OK. Get players learning the roles they need to be learning, pile up the talent, try not to alienate it this time, and the future is suddenly bright again. Although the playoffs are of course almost certainly out of reach, this Wolves team has enough talent that it will not be a 2014 Bucksian-style basement dweller, and enough promise at every position to be worth the patience that the enthusiasm of youth will demand. This will be a watchably unsuccessful season, and in the bizarro world of the NBA, that is not a bad place to be on occasion. Morten Jensen - I’ll make a bold statement: This year’s Timberwolves might be better than last year’s version. The scoring is more spread out, the responsibility is shared, and not carried by one player, there should be a level of cohesiveness present, not seen earlier,
and, of course, there’s the “Just how good is this Andrew Wiggins?” factor. Right off the bat, it should be noted that Minnesota’s offense this year will start off as being a three-headed monster in form of Kevin Martin, Nikola Pekovic, and Thaddeus Young. Those three will carry the scoring load, until Andrew Wiggins is ready to take on more of an offensive responsibility. Should the young Canadian be ready for such a task at an early stage, the Timberwolves will have four guys in their line-up who can put some points on the board, which will leave defenses scrambling. Defensively, Minnesota doesn’t project to be any worse than last year, and may even be better assuming Gorgui Dieng sees an increase in minutes off the bench. Overall, Minnesota is a weird team this year. They could win 40+ or completely fall through and win in the late 20’s, though the educated guess is somewhere in the middle.
BBallBreakdown.com | 75
Minnesota Timberwolves Anthony Bennett, Andrew Wiggins, Thaddeus Young, Bradly Heslip, Kyrylo Fesenko, Zach Lavine, Glenn Robinson Jr, Mo Williams
In
Kevin Love, Luc Richard Mbah A Moute, Alexey Shved, Dante CunningOut ham, Othyus Jeffers
Jeff McMenamin - This offseason, the Timberwolves were able to flip All-Star forward Kevin Love for the top pick in the 2014 NBA draft, Andrew Wiggins, an intriguing forward in Anthony Bennett, who was the top pick in 2013, and the ever-hustling veteran Thaddeus Young. Along with draft selection Zach Lavine, the Timberwolves will be one of the most exciting teams to watch in 2014-15 — definitely worthy of an NBA League Pass subscription. The Wolves will be led by point guard Ricky Rubio, who is a dazzling passer with a high basketball IQ. He averaged 9.5 points, 4.2 rebounds, 8.6 assists and 2.3 steals last season and those numbers could increase further now that he has such an athletically stacked lineup alongside of him on the fast break.
Draft Night
Trade
Drafted Zach Lavine (13th, signed), Glenn Robinson Jr (40th, signed), Markel Brown (44th) and Alessandro Gentile (53rd). Traded the rights to Brown to Minnesota in exchange for cash. Traded the rights to Gentile to Houston in exchange for cash.
23rd August: Traded Kevin Love to Cleveland, and Luc Richard Mbah A Moute and Alexey Shved to Philadelphia, in exchange for Andrew Wiggins and Anthony Bennett from Cleveland and Thaddeus Young fron Philadelphia.
per game last season with the Kansas Jayhawks and Young had a career-high of 17.9 points per game with the Sixers. The rest of the Timberwolves production will come from Nikola Pekovic, Corey Brewer, Kevin Martin, Anthony Bennett, Zach Lavine, J.J. Barea, Gorgui Dieng and Shabazz Muhammad. It will be interesting to see how position battles play themselves out the rest of the season, especially at shooting guard, but it seems like the long-term future of this team will be bright.
22nd July: Re-signed Robbie Hummel to a one year, $880,000 contract. 29th July: Signed Mo Williams to a one year, $3.75 million deal. Free Agency
29th August: Signed Brady Heslip to an unguaranteed one year minimum salary contract. 2nd September: Signed Kyrylo Fesenko to an unguaranteed one year minimum salary contract.
Salary Link
The Timberwolves will definitely lose a few more games then they did a year ago with the loss of Kevin Love, but ultimately they’ll stay competitive in the majority of their games this season.
Defense will continue to be an issue for the team which gave up 104.3 points per game last season, but offensively there shouldn’t be much of a drop with the loss of Kevin Love. Love averaged 26.1 points per game last season, but the team will look to Andrew Wiggins and Thaddeus Young to pick up the slack. Wiggins averaged 17. 1 points 76 | BBallBreakdown.com
BBallBreakdown.com | 77
Pelicans Putting All Eggs In The Basket Of Anthony Davis It’s not yet clear how good the supporting cast of Anthony Davis is, so for now New Orleans will rely on their star big. By Mark Deeks, Morten Jensen, and Michael Pina
Mark Deeks - Anthony Davis is an unstoppable force when he attacks the basket. He is also destined to be the best player in the world some day. And so what New Orleans need to do is do everything possible to facilitate him at whatever he needs facilitating in. They have mostly acted accordingly. Spacing the floor with the returning Ryan Anderson, and putting in the defensive wall of Omer Asik to alleviate him from too much of the interior defensive burden, is precisely what Davis needed to compliment him the frontcourt. Davis’s jumpshot and defensive habits do not quite match the rest of his game yet, but when the team is not overly reliant on them, as they will not now be, he can develop these facets of the game over time. Davis, of course, has plenty of time. And so do the Pellies. But they should also be pretty good immediately. New Orleans still has to figure out their best rotation – putting Tyreke Evans in starting lineup so that he is facilitated by all the talent elsewhere, rather than on the bench where he so often has to carry the team in the absence of it, will 78 | BBallBreakdown.com
be a big help – but even if the cohesiveness is yet to come by after such a myriad of injuries last season, the Pelicans have the talent level now to draw your attention. The thing potentially stopping New Orleans from getting into the playoffs is the numbers game. Most teams in the West are playoff calibre. But this team won 34 games with a boatload of injuries, and with only a sophomore Davis. A sophomore Davis was very good, but this year’s Davis should be fairly ridiculous. If healthy, the Pelicans could approach 50 wins. They might have to just to make it. Morten Jensen - We can talk all day about Anthony Davis, but while his obvious greatness remains a huge asset for New Orleans, it’s his supporting cast that needs to carry his brilliance even further, to become a winning team. Jrue Holiday was injured for the most of last season, and when he did appear he looked nervous and indecisive. However, this is a former All-Star who made the freaking Sixers look halfway decent. Given his age - he’s 24 - there’s a lot of
potential left in the tank, and this year presents the best opportunity to show it. Alongside he and Davis is Tyreke Evans, a guy who five seasons in, is still an enigma. Evans can’t shoot, but he seems to be under the impression that he can, which trickles down issues on the Pelicans’s game plan. To his credit, Evans is downright nasty when going to the rim, where he uses that big frame and quick feet to his advantage. He’s a typical case of a young player having all the tools to be great, but lacking the understanding of how to use them. Ironically, New Orleans acquired a guy who is the exact opposite. Omer Asik will now man the middle, and while his physical limitations are obvious, no one does more with less than Asik, who despite being somewhat slow and not all that agile, always seems to find a way to beat his man to the spot, anyway. Make no mistake about Asik, he is one of the smartest player at the center position in the NBA, and now he’ll help BBallBreakdown.com | 79
New New Orleans Orleans Pelicans Hornets John Salmons, Omer Asik, D.J. Stephens. Kevin Jones, Vernon Macklin, Dionte Christmas, Jimmer Fredette, Russ Smith
In
Traded the rights to Pierre Jackson (43rd, 2013) to Philadelphia for the rights to Russ Smith (47th, signed).
Draft Night
Adreian Payne, Thabo Sefolosha, Kent Bazemore, Dexter Pittman, Jarell Eddie Al-Farouq Aminu, James Southerland, Brian Roberts, Anthony Morrow, Out Jason Smith
Drafted Adreian Payne (15th, signed) and Walter Tavares (43rd, unsigned). Acquired the rights to Lamar Patterson (48th, unsigned) for a future second round pick. 11th July: Traded a future second round pick to Cleveland in exchange for Alonzo Gee. Trade
Lou Williams Gustavo Ayon Cartier Martin pick up tough assignments from Davis, making the young star’s life a little bit easier. Eric Gordon is also still with the team, even if he lately has become the very definition of an average player. Gordon, once an explosive scorer, has yet to regain the scoring touch from earlier in his career, and the Pelicans sorely need it after ranking 29th in three-pointers made and attempted last year. Moving forward, this season will prove a major challenge for Davis’s supporting cast, as the team will find out if they can be relied upon, or if they need to find a new home. Michael Pina - It’s a playoffs-or-bust year for the Pelicans, who continue to build their team under the belief that the NBA won’t exist three years from now. It’s an all-in strategy to place Anthony Davis in a winning atmosphere as quickly as possible, which is admirable, but it remains to be seen whether sacrificing long-term assets for win-now talent like Omer Asik and Jrue Holiday is the right call. Either way, this team has a season to 80 | BBallBreakdown.com
play, and several players on hand are very good, and could easily push New Orleans into the postseason…if they all stay healthy. Holiday isn’t 100 percent back from a leg injury that ended his 2013-14 season, but he will be soon enough—it’ll be wonderful if Holiday is able to assert himself as Davis’ clearcut sidekick. Ryan Anderson is making his back from serious neck surgery, Eric Gordon is forever prone to hurting himself, and Tyreke Evans will probably begin the season sidelined with a hamstring injury. If all three play to the best of their ability, find a suitable role and accept it, the Pelicans will have serious offensive firepower. But where they stand to improve the most is on defense. Davis is a monster, and letting him roam free while Asik assumes the primary responsibilities of a top-notch rim protector could elevate last season’s fifth worst defense into the top-10. Add in the 6’4″ Holiday, who envelopes both backcourt positions with an intimidating wingspan, and the potential for New Orleans’ defense to be even better than its offense is pretty high.
Davis is expected to become an MVP candidate this year, and that sort of leap would mean the Pelicans are primed to break into the postseason. Anything less than that will be disappointing, even though their small forward position is a total question mark, their most notable bench contributors will be Jimmer Fredette and Austin Rivers, and the Western Conference’s competition is brutal. But hey, this team has Davis, which means the main takeaway here is you should watch them play every chance you get.
13th July: Traded cash to Charlotte in exchange for Scotty Hopson. 30thJuly: June:Traded TradedAlonzo Lou Williams and the rights 14th Gee, Scotty Hopto Lucas Nogueira to son and a protected future first round pick to Toronto in exchange for John Houston, along with Melvin ElySalmons. to Washington, in exchange for Omer Asik, Omri Casspi and cash from Houston.
30th June: Anthony Morrow opted out.
FreeAgency Agency Free
Salary SalaryLink Link
19th July:July: Signed Patric Young to a partially guaranteed two year minimum salary contract. 10th Waived John Salmons. 23rd July: Re-signed Darius Miller to a partially guaranteed two year minimum salary contract. Signed 15thJimmer July: Fredette to a guaranteed one year minimum salary contract. Waived Omri Casspi. Acquired Thabo Sefolosha via sign and trade (three years, $12 million) along with cash and the 22nd August: JohnPrintezis Salmonsintoexchange a one year, million contract. draft rightsSigned to Giorgis for$1.5 the draft rights to Sofoklis Schortsanitis. 10th September: 22nd August: Signed Kevin Jones, Vernon Macklin and Dionte Christmas to unguaranteed one yearRe-signed minimumShelvin salary contracts. Mack to a three year, $7.3 million contract. 25th August: Re-signed Mike Scott to a three year, $10 million contract. 1st October: Signed D.J. Stephens to an unguaranteed one year minimum salary contract. 10th September: Re-signed Elton Brand to a one year, $2 million contract. Signed Kent Bazemore to a two year, $4 million contract. 29th September: Signed Dexter Pittman and Jarell Eddie to unguaranteed one year minimum salary contracts.
BBallBreakdown.com | 81
The Knicks Look Beyond This Year, Gambling On Anthony The $124 million investment in Carmelo Anthony raised lots of eyebrows this summer. By Mark Deeks, Matthew Hochberg, and Andrew Unterberger
Mark Deeks - New York kept Carmelo. That bit stayed the same. Everything else either did change, or must yet do. The coach is gone. The point guard is gone. The sole interior defender is gone. The overly aged bench is gone. And supposedly, the isolation-heavy offensive scheme is gone. We await the verdict on that last one. It is the most imperative thing to change, and vital to any level of success the Knicks might find. The ball has to keep moving. There must be much less reliance on individuals – specifically, Carmelo and J.R. Smith – to do it themselves. This is particularly true if Melo really is returning to the small forward spot, thus revoking his mismatch advantage that justified the over-reliance on his individual jumpshot last campaign. The lineup is fairly replete with good shooters now, but they must be utilised, because floor spacing must not just be a decoy. In a weakened East, New York has a chance to make their way back into the playoffs. This is a team still seriously far away from contention, but they are 82 | BBallBreakdown.com
somewhere nearer a happy place now. It could however still be a spectacularly bad defensive campaign – dispirited though he may have been, Tyson Chandler was the Knicks’s only capable paint defender, and yet he has departed in return for an infamously poor point guard defender. Sam Dalembert is not an adequate replacement, for Dalembert will only occasionally burden Chandler’s load, because that is what Dalembert does. No one else in the rotation stands out defensively, neither amongst the acquisitions nor the incumbents, except perhaps the sporadic Iman Shumpert and the very veteran Pablo Prigioni. For all the talk and focus on the implementation of the triangle offense, Derek Fisher had better have brought the defensive acumen too. He does not want to be relying too much on Cole Aldrich straight off the bat. And without much in the way of transition offense on the cards, the new offense will have to work. Matthew Hochberg - The New York Knicks are entering the 2014-15 campaign after a season to forget last
year, missing out on the playoffs and becoming the butt of memes and GIFs all over the blogosphere. The deal for Andrea Bargnani did not work out, J.R. Smith regressed after promising play and it seemed as though everyone was focused on Carmelo Anthony’s impending free agency. While the Knicks are still far from resembling anything close to a well respected playoff contender, they are on the right path to becoming the team that won the Atlantic Division in 2013. Phil Jackson was brought in by criticized owner James Dolan to take New York out of the bottom-half of the Eastern Conference, which appears will once again have teams under .500 that make the playoffs. The new President of Basketball Operations wasted no time this summer, resigning Carmelo Anthony, sneaking into the second-round of June’s Draft and upgrading at the point guard position by dealing for Jose Calderon. The product on the floor will revolve around Anthony, the self-proclaimed “underrated superstar” who signed a five-year, $124 million contract to BBallBreakdown.com | 83
New York Knicks Jose Calderon, Sam Dalembert, Shane Larkin, Cleanthony Early, Jason Smith, Quincy Acy, Travis Outlaw, Travis Wear, Langston Galloway, Orlando Sanchez.
In
Shannon Brown, Lamar Odom, Tyson Chandler, Raymond Felton, Jeremy Out Tyler, Kenyon Martin, Toure Murry
remain in New York. The 30-year-old does not have much more, if any more help than last season and thus will have to continue his elite play on the offensive end to give his team any chance of making the playoffs. He was virtually unstoppable last season, averaging 27.4 points on better than 45 percent shooting from the field. Aside from ‘Melo, guards J.R. Smith, Iman Shumpert and Tim Hardaway Jr. will all have to step, with the former needing a season similar to his in 2013 in order to get the bad taste out of his mouth from last season and get full support from both the New York fans and, more importantly, Phil Jackson. The latter two are still young with a lot of upside who have the ability to potentially become breakout players on both ends of the floor. Andrew Unterberger - The Knicks’ offseason was a resounding success merely by virtue of not being a complete catastrophe. They acquired draft picks, and they used them. They pinned down a new coach. They didn’t find a way to trade their remaining future assets for Andrea Bargnani for a second time. And second-most-importantly 84 | BBallBreakdown.com
to not pulling off another Bargs trade, they kept Carmelo Anthony in the fold for the foreseeable future. By James Dolan standards, this summer was basically the Miami Heat in 2010 for the New York Knicks. Now, unfortunately, the hard part: Actually making the Knicks a good team again. New York’s talent level is solid, but their roster is among the league’s most formless at the moment. Who’s their starting five? Who’s their second-best guy? What position is Melo playing these days? Is Jeremy Tyler still around, and if not, why not, and since when? The men tasked with figuring all this out seem like they should be up to it–Coach Derek Fisher and president Phil Jackson won five championships together in Los Angeles, albeit with both in very different positions–but neither has been on the job all that long, so an adjustment period should probably be expected, especially as the team embraces the wonder and temptation of that mystical NBA ideology known as the Triangle.
player fit and ability (and running out the clock on certain cap-clogging contracts) than about really challenging for East supremacy. If they cohere quickly enough around a no doubt supremely motivated Anthony, they could challenge for a playoff spot, but in an East suddenly more crowded than many seem to realize, finding themselves on the outside again is a very real possibility. And though that might not be so OK for Melo, who never missed the postseason before last year and isn’t likely enthusiastic about doing so again, that should probably be OK for the Knicks for now.
Drafted Cleanthony Early (34th, signed) and Thanasis Antetokounmpo (51st, unsigned). Acquired the draft rights to Louis Labeyrie (57th, unsigned) from Indiana for cash. Draft Night
Trade
25th June: Traded Tyson Chandler and Raymond Felton to Dallas in exchange for Jose Calderon, Sam Dalembert, Wayne Ellington, Shane Larkin and two future second round picks. 6th August: Traded Jeremy Tyler and Wayne Ellington to Sacramento in exchange for Quincy Acy and Travis Outlaw.
22nd June: Carmelo Anthony exercised his early termination option. Andrea Bargnani and Amar’e Stoudemire declined their early termination options.
Free Agency
11th July: Re-signed Cole Aldrich to a guaranteed one year minimum salary contract. Waived Lamar Odom. 14th July: Re-signed Carmelo Anthony to a five year, $124,064,681 contract.
Salary Link
17th July: Signed Jason Smith to a one year, $3.278 million contract. 23rd July: Waived Shannon Brown. 9th September: Signed Travis Wear and Langston Galloway to partially guaranteed one year minimum salary contracts. 23rd September: Signed Orlando Sanchez to an unguaranteed one year minimum salary contract.
In all likelihood, this ends up a transition season for the ‘Bockers, one more about answering questions about BBallBreakdown.com | 85
Durant And Thunder Hoping For Improved Performance League MVP, Kevin Durant, hopes to add another chapter to his impressive career, by reaching the Finals. By Mark Deeks, Ben Dowsett, and Bryan Toporek
Mark Deeks - Gone are the days of Oklahoma City’s incredibly busy offseasons. They have run out of flexibility, short of roster spots and of money. They do of course try and get creative with their handling of the Josh Huestis and Grant Jerrett situations, but this is now about it.
this for the Thunder. They are reliant upon development from within. Development in the play and production of younger rotation players (Steven Adams, Jeremy Lamb, Andre Roberson, Reggie Jackson), and the battled hardiness of Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant.
A team that is very close to winning it all settled for one in, two out on the wing, an upgrade in depth at the big man positions and an irrelevant improvement at third string point guard. They reasoned that for the same money and same minutes, Anthony Morrow’s shooting had much more value to the team than Thabo Sefolosha’s defense, which is perfectly fine given Thabo’s lacklustre offensive game in the recent past (and the fact that Andre Roberson projects to provide anything Thabo did anyway). The fact that Morrow went for less money than the outgoing Caron Butler is further testament to a solid bit of business. With little to work with outside of the Pau Gasol pipedream, Oklahoma City did well.
Will they actually get this? Possibly. Possibly not. But in Westbrook, Durant and Ibaka, we are talking about 25 and 26 year olds. Most of the rest of the cast is younger than that. The only danger is the upcoming free agency of Durant, that puts something of a time limit on things. But disregarding that as much as possible, Oklahoma City has made one or two small upgrades and is prepared to go at it again with basically the same team. And that might be enough to be the best team in the East.
Nonetheless, it is not any infusion of talent from the offseason that will tip 86 | BBallBreakdown.com
to do so in recent years, and despite coming close on multiple occasions, it’s tough to imagine him getting many more chances without another Finals appearance and perhaps a victory.
P.S. – start Reggie Jackson.
As always, the talent is there, particularly at the top of the rotation. Kevin Durant (29.8, 1st), Russell Westbrook (24.7, 8th), and Serge Ibaka (19.6, 34th) all finished in the league’s top 35 in PER last year, and all three are firmly in their physical peaks. Can Brooks more effectively consolidate their immense skills with a system that’s more than a glorified iso-ball scheme? He’s appeared either incapable or unwilling in the past – three of OKC’s five most used lineups last season posted negative per-possession differentials – and it’s bitten the Thunder in the postseason when they’ve been without a reliable set of counters for defenses that have mostly figured them out.
Ben Dowsett - With yet another summer devoid of anything but small personnel changes, Thunder management has sent a firm message to coach Scott Brooks: these are your pieces, now put them together. He’s struggled
The front office’s thrifty offseason didn’t exactly do him any favors, and the guard/wing rotation could get thin in a hurry. Caron Butler, Thabo Sefolosha, and Derrick Fisher have all departed, with only Anthony Morrow brought BBallBreakdown.com | 87
Oklahoma City Thunder Mitch McGary, Sebastian Telfair, Anthony Morrow, Michael Jenkins, Talib Zanna, Lance Thomas, Richard Solomon.
In
Draft Night
Caron Butler, Hasheem Thabeet, Thabo Sefolosha, Derek Fisher Out
in as of yet to fill some of the void. On the positive side, this will all but force Brooks to utilize Reggie Jackson more frequently, something the numbers say he should have done far earlier. It wouldn’t take anything revolutionary from Brooks to see this team take the final step. The Thunder were quietly ranked fifth in defensive efficiency last season, and Ibaka’s presence should keep them in that territory. The outlines of a window are appearing for this OKC team with KD’s 2016 free agency on the radar, and they’d better get to climbing through it before it’s too late. Bryan Toporek - Two years ago, the upstart Oklahoma City Thunder seemed poised to take over the league. With Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, James Harden and Serge Ibaka in tow, the Thunder’s five-game loss to the Miami Heat in the 2012 NBA Finals wasn’t seen as the end of an era; it was the beginning of a potential dynasty. Two years later, Harden is a Houston Rocket and OKC is fresh off two back-to-back playoff disappointments. Untimely injuries to Westbrook in 2013 and Ibaka this past postseason did the 88 | BBallBreakdown.com
Thunder in, but with Durant only two years away from free agency, the squad can’t endure another sooner-than-expected playoff demise. In all likelihood, the reigning league MVP has been fuming about the San Antonio Spurs’ victory over his squad in the Western Conference Finals, using that fury as fuel to improve his already terrifying repertoire. He’ll enter the season on the shortlist of MVP favorites, fresh off a season where he averaged career bests in points (32.0) and assists (5.5), along with 7.4 rebounds per game.
Drafted Mitch McGary (21st, signed) and Josh Huestis (29th, unsigned). Acquired the rights to Semaj Criston (55th, unsigned) from Charlotte in exchange for cash.
Trade
15th July: Traded the draft rights to Giorgios Printezis (58th, 2007) and a signed and traded Thabo Sefolosha (three year, $12 million) to Atlanta in exchange for the draft rights to Sofoklis Schortsanitis (34th, 2003). Signed Anthony Morrow to a partially guaranteed three year, $10.032 million contract. 26th August: Traded Hasheem Thabeet and cash to Philadelphia in exchange for a protected future second round pick.
poised to once again wind up with one of the best records in the West. As soon as they run into unexpected trouble, however, don’t be surprised if freeagent rumors about Durant’s 2016 decision begin flying.
11th July: Signed Sebastian Telfair to a guaranteed one year minimum salary contract. 15th July: Re-signed Grant Jerrett to a partially guaranteed four year minimum salary contract. Free Agency
29th September: Signed Michael Jenkins, Lance Thomas, Talib Zanna and Richard Solomon to unguaranteed one year minimum salary contracts.
Salary Link
Knee problems limited Westbrook to just 46 games last year, but he’ll enter the 2014-15 season with no major medical concerns looming. And in his absence, Reggie Jackson blossomed into a bona fide complementary offensive weapon, capable of singlehandedly saving the Thunder’s season in Game 4 of their first-round series against the Memphis Grizzlies. If head coach Scott Brooks relents and finally starts his best lineup—namely, one with Steven Adams at the 5 instead of Kendrick Perkins—the Thunder are BBallBreakdown.com | 89
The Orlando Magic Swung Big; Will They Miss? The Magic went very young in the draft, traded away their best wing, and re-committed themselves to their re-build. By Torkil Bang, Mark Deeks, and Andrew Unterberger
Torkil Bang - The Orlando Magic seem to have chosen another season near the bottom of the league and focus on player development. Just look at the free agents, they have acquired: Channing Frye, Luke Ridnour and Ben Gordon. They are all quality players but at this point in their carreer, they can’t be called stars. This screams veteran mentorship. Channing Frye is actually Tobias Harris’ cousin and childhood idol, and they seem to have a close relationship. Luke Ridnour has had that role before in Minnesota, where he mentored Ricky Rubio. Ridnour even has that coolness which Elfrid Payton might lack. Only Ben Gordon doesn’t look like the obvious choice as a mentor, but Orlando Magic has two assistant coaches, who have worked with him before, so they know him on a personal level. And since it will take a while before Magic can contend again, it’s clear that Gordon isn’t in Orlando to get his carreer back on track or go for that championship ring. And he can certainly teach Viktor Oladipo a thing or two about shooting.
90 | BBallBreakdown.com
If you are a Magic fan this season should be very interesting, since several players are looking for a breakout season, just like Nikola Vucevic had last season. And with Arron Afflalo gone, some of the youngsters have to pick up the scoring. For power forward Andrew Nicholson it’s a bit of a do-or-die season. He looked good as a rookie but struggled heavily last season. If he gets back on track, he can go far, but if he gets surpassed by 19 years old rookie Aaron Gordon, it’s hard to see him going anywhere. Point guard Elfrid Payton is an early candidate for Rookie Of the Year – considering that five of the last six ROYs have been point guards. This speaks both of the talent at that position and that it is easier to gain attention, when you have the ball in your hands. And Payton will probably get more touches than any other rookie this season. That is, if he gets enough floor time. Mark Deeks - Orlando had by and large a dreadful offseason. (Who were they
outbidding for Luke Ridnour and Ben Gordon, for example? How can they salary dump Arron Afflalo and then re-invest it all in these two far worse players? How did they trade so much to move up two picks?) But amidst it all, they picked Aaron Gordon. The surprise pick of the top five he may have been, but that stopped mattering the second after he was picked. In Gordon, Orlando has themselves a tremendous athlete, man to man defender and face-up passer, whose uniqueness is a virtue and whose talents are a blessing. The Magic already had an excellent role playing defending/passing/rebounding power forward in Kyle O’Quinn, who, although stronger, more foul prone and a much more consistent shooter at this stage, has nevertheless proven his worth as a quality role player despite Jacque Vaughn’s repeated efforts to play every other candidate possible in front of him. With Gordon and Channing Frye now in the fold with both O’Quinn and the reliably mediocre Andrew Nicholson returning, the Magic have again stockpiled a position while leaving its counterpart – in this case centre – understocked. A bit like the guard spots BBallBreakdown.com | 91
Orlando Magic Channing Frye, Ben Gordon, Luke Ridnour, Roy Devyn Marble, Aaron Gordon, Kadeem Batts, Seth Curry, Drew Crawford, Peyton Siva, Willie Green, Evan Fournier
In
Draft Night
Jameer Nelson, Doron Lamb, Jason Maxiell, Ronnie Price, E’Twaun Out Moore, Arron Afflalo
last year. The confusion of the roster, though, does not negate the potential and talent within it. This is not a finished journey – this is just the beginning of the next stage of it. At this point, however circuitous the route, Orlando have built the young core, with both potential young stars and potential young role players, and complimented it with handy if mediocre veterans to make their upcoming season a meaningful one. The next stage of the journey is to try and win. If they do miss the playoffs, it must not be through treading water. The most important thing for the development of the team going forward is for the games they are playing to matter, to experience winning, to have become ingrained within the youthful foundation the demands of winning. Andrew Unterberger - Timberwolves Southeast? While NBA twitter freaks out about the League Pass potential of Minnesota’s rebuilding wolfpack–the youth, the athleticism, the dunks, dear lord the dunks–the Magic have put together a group that could be just as exciting. With his hops, defensive versatility, high-low passing and ball-handling 92 | BBallBreakdown.com
ability, rookie forward Aaron Gordon was the most fun-to-watch player in college last year, and fellow first-year point guard Elfrid Payton was responsible for more highlights with his pickand-roll mastery than anyone in this year’s Summer League. Joining a roster already knee-deep in first-contract talent–Victor Oladipo, Tobias Harris, Nikola Vucevic, Maurice Harkless–Gordon and Payton could easily elevate the Magic to must-watch LP status. Are the Magic any closer to digging their way out of the post-Dwightmare rut they’ve found themselves in the last few years, though? Hard to say. The new guys should help, but the summer performance of Gordon–who only turned 19 last month–was a sobering reminder of just how far he has to go to be a consistent contributor on the offensive end at the pro level. And though Oladipo improved over the course of his rookie season, he’s still far too loose with the handle and sloppy with the shot selection to be a go-to guy–one of which, by the way, they just lost by trading leading scorer Arron Afflalo to Denver. Points may be hard to come by.
defend, and yeah, they’ll probably dunk every now and then. If all goes according to plan, 2014-15 will be the year that represents the real shift in the team’s culture, as well as making the first overtures towards being competitive again–a path GM Rob Hennigan tried to further nudge the team down by signing floor-stretching big Channing Frye and, uh, reclamation project Ben Gordon. But for the most part, expect a lot more losses next year–just more-enjoyable, less-depressing Ls than the team has had the previous two seasons.
Drafted Aaron Gordon (4th, signed) and Dario Saric (12th). Traded the rights to Saric, a future second round pick and a future protected first round pick to Philadelphia in exchange for the rights to Elfrid Payton (10th, signed).
27th June: Traded Arron Afflalo to Denver in exchange for Evan Fournier and the rights to Roy Devyn Marble (56th, signed). Trade
30th June: Waived Jameer Nelson and Doron Lamb. Claimed Willie Green off of waivers from L.A. Clippers. 2nd July: Waived Ronnie Price. Free Agency
4th July: Waived Jason Maxiell. 11th July: Signed Ben Gordon to a partially guaranteed two year, $9 million contract.
Salary Link
14th July: Signed Channing Frye to a four year, $32 million contract. Traded the draft rights to Milovan Rakovic (60th, 2007) in exchange for Anthony Randolph, two future second round picks and cash. 15th July: Waived Anthony Randolph. 25th July: Signed Luke Ridnour to a partially guaranteed two year, $5.5 million contract. 29th September: Signed Kadeem Batts, Drew Crawford, Seth Curry and Peyton Siva to unguaranteed one year minimum salary contracts.
The new-look Magic will run, they’ll BBallBreakdown.com | 93
Long-Term Thinking Once Again The Topic In Philly For the second year in a row, the Philadelphia 76ers took an injured big man, and left a lot of talent on the floor. By Mark Deeks, Bryan Toporek, and Andrew Unterberger
Mark Deeks - Philadelphia need to implicitly make a promise. They need to promise that, if they do lose, it is not because they, the players and the coaches, did not try to win. It is an awkward and tenuous reconciliation for a front office to deliberately not put together the best team they can to win whilst also demanding those players try their best to do so, but it is necessary not only for the appeasement of the fans – no matter how on board with a tank one is, that patience has limits – but also for the development of the talent. The Sixers will lose regardless. Obviously .They traded away their best player for the third straight season. Their best talent is missing some, most or all the season with injury. Their second best talent is coming back from severe injury. Their third best talent is in Turkey. Their fourth best talent, they talked about trading. A preview of the Sixers is a preview of heavy losses, likely in or around the 60s range, because that is what they want. But not all losses are created equal. The blatant tank is done. These must 94 | BBallBreakdown.com
be productive losses, of a rejuvenated team trying defensively, playing tougher, playing with pride. It is OK to lose if you improve in the process. Michael Carter-Williams must be . And there will be growing pains. There will be cruel and painful moments when it will be hard to keep up the pride and the toughness, knowing it will likely result in a tough loss anyway. But it will be worth it for the glittering moments when the promise all comes together, when the young prospects flourish rather than flounder, and when they come out of this season much better than when they entered it. If the Sixers and Brett Brown achieve it, this really will be the ultimate rebuild. Bryan Toporek - The Sixers are going to suck in 2014-15. Luckily, that’s an intentional choice. General manager Sam Hinkie has stripped this roster bare of established veteran talent, finishing the deed by trading Thaddeus Young to the Minnesota Timberwolves back in August. Amazingly, the longest-tenured Sixer is Arnett Moultrie, the No. 27 pick in the 2012 draft.
Things aren’t as dire as Philly’s likely 2014-15 win-loss record might otherwise indicate, however. Though the Sixers will be lucky to win 20 games this season—USA Today‘s Adi Joseph predicted an 8-74 record for the loveable losers—they’re teeming with tantalizing young talent. Rookie of the Year Michael Carter-Williams earned all the headlines last year, but Nerlens Noel will steal his thunder this time around. Noel missed his entire rookie season to recover from a torn ACL suffered at Kentucky in February 2013, which only increased the anticipation surrounding his debut. He didn’t disappoint at Orlando Summer League, averaging 13.7 points, 5.7 rebounds, 3.0 blocks and 2.3 steals in just 25.3 minutes per game. The Sixers are stuck in a waiting game, as No. 3 overall pick Joel Embiid is likely to miss the season to recover from a foot injury, while No. 12 pick Dario Saric won’t be coming stateside until 201617. This season is all about developing young talent—particularly MCW and Noel—and discovering unheralded bench contributors, much like they did BBallBreakdown.com | 95
Philadelphia 76ers Keith Bogans, Joel Embiid, K.J. McDaniels, Jerami Grant, Chris Johnson, Jakarr Sampson, Ronald Roberts, Alexey Shved, Luc Richard Mbah A Moute
In
Draft Night
Thaddeus Young, James Anderson, Byron Mullens, Adonis Thomas Out
Trade with Hollis Thompson and Henry Sims last season. The long-term future is bright in Philadelphia, but this next year will likely be brutal. At least we’ll have Joel Embiid’s Twitter account to blunt the pain. Andrew Unterberger - Are the 76ers really going to be even worse than they were last year? That’s the prevailing question around the team — beyond whether or not GM Sam Hinkie is gonna single-handedly force changes to the entire lottery process, anyway — as they move into the second season of the post-Doug Collins era. They’ve traded three of their starting five from opening day last year (and waived a fourth), their biggest off-season acquisitions were Luc Richard Mbah a Moute and Alexey Shved (#NBARank: 255 and 264, and even those were both probably way too high), and the two best guys they drafted in June probably won’t play until at least next season. Is there any way this team wins even 19 games next year? Yes, there is. And that’s because even though Philly has a long wait for Joel Embiid and Dario Saric, they’ll still 96 | BBallBreakdown.com
be welcoming two impact rookies in big man Nerlens Noel and wing K..J. McDaniels. Both players are offensively raw, to be charitable, but possess combined powers of destruction on defense enough to build a team identity around. Philly was the worst team in the league on offense last year and figure to be just as bad this season, but they were also a bottom-five D. This year, with Noel playing goalie at the rim and McDaniels flying around the perimeter, they could cause enough havoc and create enough turnovers for the team to steal games just by exhausting and running their opponents of the court. Health is an enormous concern–Noel’s toothpick legs are sure to give Philly fans a heart attack at least every other game this season, and reigning Rookie of the Year Michael Carter-Williams has taken a worryingly long time recovering from offseason shoulder surgery. But in the team’s second year under Brett Brown, and with a roster actually much better-tailored to his “pace and paint” system than last year’s, progress should be made and an identity started to form. The playoffs are an obviously unrealistic goal, but a mere 20 wins isn’t.
Drafted Joel Embiid (3rd, signed), Elfrid Payton (10th), K.J. McDaniels (32nd, signed), Jerami Grant (39th, signed), Russ Smith (47th), Vasilije Micic (52nd, unsigned) and Nemanja Dangubic (54th). Traded the rights to Dangubic to San Antonio in exchange for the rights to Cory Jefferson (60th) and Jordan McRae (58th, unsigned). Traded the rights to Jefferson to Brooklyn in exchange for cash. Traded the rights to Payton to Orlando in exchange for the rights to Dario Saric (12th, unsigned), a future second round pick and a future protected first round pick. Traded the rights to Smith to the rights to Pierre Jackson (43rd, 2013, signed). 23rd August: Traded Thaddeus Young to Minnesota in exchange for Alexey Shved and Luc Richard Mbah A Moute from Minnesota and a future first round pick from Cleveland. 26th August: Traded a protected future second round pick to Oklahoma City in exchange for Hasheem Thabeet and cash. 27th September: Traded a protected future second round pick to Boston in exchange for Keith Bogans and a future second round pick.
10th June: Jason Richardson opted in. Free Agency
30th June: Waived James Anderson. Byron Mullens opted out. 1st September: Waived Hasheem Thabeet.
Salary Link
11th September: Signed Ronald Roberts to a partially guaranteed four year minimum salary contract. 17th September: Signed Jakarr Sampson to a partially guaranteed four year minimum salary contract. 28th September: Claimed Chris Johnson off of waivers from Philadelphia. 29th September: Signed Jerami Grant to a partially guaranteed four year minimum salary contract. 30th September: Signed K.J. McDaniels to an unguaranteed one year minimum salary contract. Waived Pierre Jackson.
BBallBreakdown.com | 97
Tough Summer Turned Nice For Phoenix At Last Minute Eric Bledsoe and Phoenix played chicken for most of the summer, but are now back together for five years. By John Daigle, Mark Deeks, and Seth Partnow
John Daigle - I’m not sure what the Suns originally had in store for their offseason, but I can’t imagine THAT was it. Think about it. Not only were they forced to sit back and watch as a vital part of their offense got (over) paid elsewhere, but they spent an inordinate amount of the summer focusing on their pending negotiations with Eric Bledsoe and agent Rich Paul; and by negotiating, I mean offering a four-year, $48 million dollar deal, only to cave and guarantee a five-year, $70 million dollar months later. Sure, they stepped in and took advantage of the miscommunication between Isaiah Thomas and Sacramento, but at what cost? While talks continue to gravitate towards how their pieces fit, however, the underlying issue is really what’s to come. After all, despite keeping their cheaper assets, future cap room, and bevvy of draft picks in place, the Suns might have bit off more than they can chew. It’s reasonable to think they’re anything but satisfied. But take a moment to look at the roster. Though these things typically qualify as good problems, 98 | BBallBreakdown.com
the Suns have a surplus of serviceable players either seeking new deals or fighting for additional playing time. P.J. Tucker, for example, performed well enough to gain crucial minutes down the stretch. But in the case he continues to execute at a high level, does that usage carry over to this season? Or, is he expected to simply smile and take a backseat? Better yet, what about Markieff Morris and these new “center minutes” emerging from camp? What happens to Miles Plumlee? And don’t even get me started on a back court of Goran Dragic (player option), Gerald Green (contract year), Bledsoe (Dragic money), and Thomas (forced to settle for sixth-man?). Thinking a roster with an average age of 25.6 is driven only by championship aspirations seems more naive than anything. I consider Jeff Hornacek one of the brighter NBA minds, if not innovative, but even this seems like territory he might not be prepared for. Shoe them in if you’d like, but not everyone from the West can qualify for the postseason (trust me, I lobbied for it). Unfortunately, the good problems the Suns are facing might not be that
at all. Mark Deeks - With all the opportunity in the world – three first round picks, an inconceivably large amount of cap space, and plenty of youth to move – Phoenix made one bizarrely easy move to pick up, while leaving other questions unanswered. That might yet be enough to make the next leap. The upstart Suns won plaudits and games last year with an exciting yet well regulated brand of jumpshot-friendly basketball, based around the ball dominance and aggression of Goran Dragic and Eric Bledsoe, complimented by a steady band of young bigs. They struggled at times defensively – starting only two plus defenders in Tucker and Plumlee for much of the season did not help – and particularly fell victim to transition defense, where bad habits and bad communication need to be eradicated. Nevertheless, all the personnel that brought that mostly successful drive-and-kick style is back, ready to take the next step. The scoring and the youth will all stay. So, in all likelihood, will the results of BBallBreakdown.com | 99
Phoenix Suns T.J. Warren, Tyler Ennis, Isaiah Thomas, Anthony Tolliver, Earl Barron, Joe Jackson, Casey Prather, Jamil Wilson, Zoran Dragic
In
Drafted T.J. Warren (14th, signed), Tyler Ennis (18th, signed), Bojan Bogdanovic (27th, unsigned) and Alec Brown (50th, unsigned). Draft Night
Channing Frye, Ish Smith, Dionte Christmas, Leandro Barbosa, Emeka Out Okafor
last year. The addition of Thomas was a significant one, as is the return to full health – hopefully – of Bledsoe, yet the resurgent Frye is a big loss, and the already tough West got no easier. Nevertheless, these Suns are good. Just being as good as they were before, if they manage it, puts the Suns in the 5th through 9th seed ranges. And for a team climbing the ladder, that is a good place to be. Long term, they still need to improve their defense, their rim protection (both cutting off the paint and defending without fouling once the opponent is in it), bolster their star power and improve their late game management. Short term, the same upstart, fun, mostly young and gunning Suns of last year return. A bit less isolation ball would help, and something needs to be done to assuage and offset the loss of the Channing Frye constant pick and pop/ roll option. (Anthony Tolliver just is not as good as this.) For the most part, however, the same offensive weaponry remains, and indeed bolstered by the inclusion of the dynamic and efficient Thomas. That can never be bad, regardless of what Sacramento thought. 100 | BBallBreakdown.com
Seth Partnow - Pat Riley famously described the largest difficulty facing championship teams the year after their victory as “The Disease of More.” Every member of the team, coaching staff and organization has just won a title. Naturally some if not most feel they are due more. Playing time, money, shots, endorsements, special treatment, you name it. While the Phoenix Suns did not win the Larry O’Brien last year (or even make the playoffs for that matter), they might be suffer from the Disease of More’s lesser known cousin, the Disease of Some. Phoenix was one of the real and few feel-good stories from 2013-14. Channing Frye returned from a heart condition. Jeff Hornacek obliterated expectations as a first year coach. Eric Bledsoe started to become the twoway pinballing terror he had always threatened as a Clipper. Most importantly, possibly every rotation player on the roster had a career year, no one more so than Goran Dragic. After being roundly picked to finish as one of the worst few teams in the leagues, the Suns vastly overperformed winning 48 games and barely missing the playoffs.
Now entering this season, everyone involved has tasted some success. But all have sacrificed to a degree. Minutes, shots, contract extensions. Going into this season the demand for those three things far outstrips supply. With at least 11 players vying for rotation slots, many in or approaching contract years, how can last year’s exceptional harmony and cohesion possibly carry forward? The easiest answer is “winning.” If the team does well, even the bitterest malcontent will know better than to rock the boat too much. But if the Suns, as will most likely be the case, regress a little and find themselves bobbing along the edges of the tough Western Conference playoff race, fissures may begin to show. At that point, it becomes a vicious circle, as the desire of each individual to take more than their allocated share causes a decline in play, causing other players to act more selfishly and so on. Without a strong opening six weeks, last season’s feel good story will be nothing but a happy memory.
Trade
11th July: Traded the draft rights to Alex Oriakhi (57th, 2013) to Sacramento in exchange for a signed and traded Isaiah Thomas (four year, $27,000,002).
30th June: Channing Frye opted out. 15th July: Waived Ish Smith. Free Agency
20th July: Signed Anthony Tolliver to a partially guaranteed two year, $6 million contract. 23rd July: Re-signed P.J. Tucker to a partially guaranteed three year, $16.5 million contract.
Salary Link
24th July: Waived Dionte Christmas. 24th September: Signed Earl Barron, Joe Jackson and Casey Prather to unguaranteed one year minimum salary contracts. Signed Eric Bledsoe to a five year, $70 million contract. 26th September: Signed Jamil Wilson to an unguaranteed one year minimum salary contract. 27th September: Signed Zoran Dragic to a two year, $3 million contract. 28th September: Signed Markieff Morris to a four year, $32 million contract. Signed Marcus Morris to a four year, $20 million contract.
BBallBreakdown.com | 101
Blazer Core Back Again To Make Noise After huge seasons from both Damian Lillard and LaMarcus Aldridge, the Blazers hope for a duplicate season. By Mark Deeks, Seth Partnow, and Andrew Unterberger
Mark Deeks - LaMarcus Aldridge’s third or fourth coming out party in last year’s playoffs showed how dynamic of an offensive team the Blazers can be. They are good, they are well coached, they are disciplined, and they are fun while doing it. Terry Stotts has the team spacing the floor and moving the ball in an offensive style not too dissimilar from the one that just won San Antonio a title. In an extremely quiet summer, the Blazers sought to fix two holes that also fit in with this philosophy. Steve Blake replaced Mo Williams at backup point guard, with Blake far more likely to share the ball and share the ball well than Williams, the much more talented scorer. Chris Kaman also comes in to replace no-one (yet superceding Meyers Leonard), providing a bench offensive presence at their position of the weakest depth, and someone whose passing and jumpshot also ties in nicely with the spread floor, pick-and-pop game of Stotts’s. One thing the Blazers have not shored up, however, is the defense. Blake and Kaman are both fairly poor at it – even 102 | BBallBreakdown.com
with Kaman’s occasional spurts of good rim protection, he is particularly slow of foot on the pick and roll defense, an area of the game in which Portland already suffered badly. They also have not eradicated their depth concerns just with these signings, for although the Blazers’s depth of last year was better than the historically bad depth of the year before, it still was not great. The loss of Williams’s scoring, for example, has not been replaced save for the hope that C.J. McCollum can do it. For now, this is fine. They will stay the first or second round playoff calibre team of before, whilst fostering more internal improvement. However, so as to avoid plateauing there for the foreseeable future, strides must be made, as might future significant roster turnover. A treading water type of season then, perhaps. But the second round is a decent place to be doing that. Seth Partnow - The Trail Blazers chances of success turn on some unlikely characters. It’s too much to ask for their splendid starting five to maintain last season’s nearly clean bill of health, as the unit of Damian Lillard,
Wes Matthews, Nic Batum, LaMarcus Aldridge and Robin Lopez was second in the league at 1,373 minutes played together, one of only three lineups in the entire NBA to play over 1,000 minutes. The lack of dependable depth has contributed to disappointing second-halves of each of the last two seasons. Even the first round victory over the floundering Rockets shouldn’t obscure how decidedly average was Portland’s performance post All-Star break. So the team is going to need contributions from other areas. New signings Steve Blake and Chris Kaman might provide some stopgap depth, but both for this season and the franchises longer term viability as a contender, one or probably several of the assembled group of young talents will have to step up. In C.J. McCollum, Thomas Robinson, Meyers Leonard and Will Barton, there is some potential on hand. All are big question marks heading into the season. Neither Leonard or Robinson has show the ability to consistently deliver on their promise. Robinson in particular seems close to his very last chance to BBallBreakdown.com | 103
Portland Trail Blazers Chris Kaman, Steve Blake, James Southerland, Diante Garrett, Darius Morris
In
None
Draft Night
Earl Watson, Mo Williams Out
prove his combination of confidence, energy and athleticism can be married to enough skill and decision-making is worthy of a rotation spot. After a training camp injury, McCollum’s rookie year was largely a lost year. Despite being a lanky and athletic 6’6″, Barton is probably best known for his “trill” fashion sense. The Blazers don’t need any of these players to be stars, or even starter level. Simple, solid dependable production would be sufficient. Not only would it improve the team’s performance when the starters are on the bench, but it would allow those starters more rest. This more than anything else can assist the team in avoiding the by now customary late season degradation in the Rose city. Andrew Unterberger - When your plan for elevating your team from near-contenders to contenders involves two 30-somethings recently seen playing key roles on one of the worst Lakers teams in history, it might be time to come up with a better plan. That’s a pretty uncharitable way to describe the Blazers’ offseason, but 104 | BBallBreakdown.com
it’s hard to know how else to react to the team’s primary summer moves. The Blazers did have arguably their best post-2000 campaign last year, capped with a Damian Lillard all-timer to secure the team’s first playoff series win since the millennium turned, but the Gentleman’s Sweep they suffered at the hands of San Antonio in the semis illustrated the gulf that remained between PDX and the West’s true elite. If GM Neil Olshey and company think the additions of Chris Kaman and Steve Blake are enough to overcome that gulf, they may have another thing coming their way sooner than later.
But without dramatic changes, the team runs the risk of turning into the West’s version of the Hawks–a team just talented enough to consistently make and occasionally win in the playoffs, but one never quite talented enough to crack the conference’s upper echelon. And considering how badly Blake flopped as a playoff contributor for last year’s Warriors, and how long it’s been since Chris Kaman was even in the playoffs, it’s probably safe to say that those aren’t the “dramatic changes” needed to make such a difference.
None
Trade
30th June: Mo Williams opted out. 10th July: Signed Steve Blake to a two year, $4,247,465 contract. Signed Chris Kaman to a partially guaranteed two year, $9,816,000 contract. Free Agency
7th August: Signed James Southerland to an unguaranteed one year minimum salary contract. 11th August: Signed Diante Garrett to a partially guaranteed two year minimum salary contract.
Salary Link
19th August: Signed Darius Morris to an unguaranteed one year minimum salary contract. 29th September: Exercised the team option on Damian Lillard.
Which is not to say that there still isn’t room for optimism in Portland. 23-year-old co-franchise player Damian Lillard is obviously still on the comeup, and the team has no shortage of young lottery picks off the bench–point guard C.J. McCollum, power forward Thomas Robinson, even center Meyers Leonard. Any one of them could ostensibly still have a breakout year in him at some point, which would certainly help the team’s depth, or give them a valuable trade chip to upgrade the roster elsewhere. BBallBreakdown.com | 105
Kings Look To Gay & Cousins To Lead Young Group Sacramento didn’t make a splash this summer, but they’re hoping Rudy Gay and DeMarcus Cousins can carry them. By Mark Deeks, Seth Partnow, and Andrew Unterberger
Mark Deeks - Sacramento lost one of their better players this offseason and could not have seemed less bothered by it. Isaiah Thomas may have been a score first point guard, and they may have considered this a bad thing, but they may not have been right. And if they promptly replace him with two more score first point guards – and despite occasional masquerades as the opposite, that is what Darren Collison and Ramon Sessions are – then it makes less sense. Thomas perhaps was a part of the Kings’s significant defensive problems, which, despite small improvements throughout the year, were why they lost twice as many games as they won. But so will the replacements be. Nik Stauskas is a tremendous offensive talent in most ways – who, not insignificantly, will make Ben McLemore pretty redundant – but he is not likely to be a plus NBA defender. Sessions and Collison are not, either. Nor is the returning Carl Landry. Ryan Hollins will at least add a genuine rim protector, but when the eleventh man is the best incoming defensive piece to your poor defensive unit, you will stay a poor defensive unit. 106 | BBallBreakdown.com
Their biggest weakness – one entire side of the court – has been mostly unaddressed. The Kings, of course, are only partway through the reformation. Yet in this powerhouse Western conference, they are surely far too far short to be in strong playoff contention. It is possible for the stars to align, for the numerous offensive pieces to click, to find the right defensive balance (presumably via an in-season deal) and shore up both the perimeter and interior defensive units, culminating in a legitimate late seed playoff run. But as of today, they enter the season still needing to do all of these things. And somehow they let go one of their better players along the way. Incidentally, this is the year DeMarcus Cousins cracks the All-Star roster. Seth Partnow - It’s a good thing the Kings secured approval for their new stadium last season, as there won’t be much in the way of good feeling surrounding the 2014-15 team. While it was yet another rebuilding season in 2013-14, there was at least visible
building, on the court as well as off. The DeMarcus Cousins, Rudy Gay and Isaiah Thomas trio produced some extremely solid basketball when they were healthy enough to take the floor together. Sadly, after Thomas was allowed to leave for Phoenix despite Sacramento having the leverage of his restricted free agency rights, this season will be more about rebooting than building. Enough has been said about how harmful the downgrade from Thomas to Darren Collison will be and how minuscule the salary cap benefits will be in return so that there is no great need to go into chapter and verse here. Other than to say it was the worst own goal of the NBA summer. In Cousins, the Kings are blessed with an enormous talent, while being burdened by his occasional temperamental nature. How another season treading water or worse affects his relationship with the team, the fans and the city has to be worrisome; Ben McLemore is going to have to show a whole lot more than he has to put butts in seats when the new (publicly funded) palace opens BBallBreakdown.com | 107
Sacramento Kings Ramon Sessions, Omri Casspi, Ryan Hollins, Trey Johnson, David Wear, Deonte Burton, Sim Bhullar, Nik Stauskas, Eric Moreland, Darren Collison
In
Drafted Nik Stauskas (8th, signed).
Draft Night
Travis Outlaw, Quincy Acy, Willie Reed, Isaiah Thomas, Jared CunningOut ham, Aaron Gray, Jason Terry
in a few seasons. Perhaps the team will surprise, with McLemore taking a step forward, Nik Stauskas hitting the ground running and Derrick Williams delivering on some of the promise which made him the second overall pick in 2011. Much more likely is a demonstration that no amount of tweaking the CBA can protect a franchise from struggling irrelevance if the front office decision-making is poor year after year. Andrew Unterberger - Well, they won the Vegas Summer League championship, and no one can take that away from owner Vivek Ranadive and the Sacramento Kings. Ranadive promised the team would soon enough winning the other, slightly more meaningful NBA championship, and to that end this summer, the Kings swapped point guards (Isaiah Thomas for Darren Collison), doubled down on lottery shooting guards (Nik Stauskas, to go with Ben McLemore), and neglected to move a single one of their overpaid, mostly redundant power forwards (Carl Landry, Jason Thompson, Derrick Williams). Hm. Sacramento has shown no shortage of 108 | BBallBreakdown.com
ideas in recent years, certainly. Unfortunately, not all of them are good ones, and a lot of them are somewhat contradictory ones. They seem to be attempting every possible rebuilding strategy all at once–betting on both high-upside projects and productive college players, pouncing on “fallen-angel” type players on the open market and also filling in with established mid-level veterans, attempting to abandon positional fealty while also harping on the need of getting a “true” point guard. Attempting to map out the strategy behind the Kings’ four-year rebuilding plan could probably get you institutionalized in at least 40 states. There’s talent here, of course. Center DeMarcus Cousins is coming off a career year and a breakout international campaign, and the same could be said to a slightly lesser extent for forward teammate Rudy Gay. Stauskas and McLemore both have considerable potential, and if there was ever a time for Williams to prove that his production could ever approach his ceiling, the final year of his contract would be a decent choice. But cohesion and continuity are both absurdly lacking here, and until the team can streamline their vision
Trade
12th July: Signed and traded Isaiah Thomas (four years, $27,000,002) to Phoenix in exchange for the rights to Alex Oriakhi (57th, 2013, unsigned). 6th August: Traded Travis Outlaw and Quincy Acy to New York in exchange for Wayne Ellington and Jeremy Tyler. 17th September: Traded Jason Terry and two future second round picks in exchange for Alonzo Gee and Scotty Hopson.
into something more cogent, contending for Summer League titles is going to have to suffice for now. 23rd June: Rudy Gay opted in. 28th June: Waived Willie Reed. Free Agency
11th July: Signed Darren Collison to a three year, $15,040,677 contract. 29th July: Signed Eric Moreland to a partially guaranteed three year minimum salary contract.
Salary Link
11th August: Signed Deonte Burton to an unguaranteed one year minimum salary contract. 14th August: Signed Sim Bhullar to an unguaranteed one year minimum salary contract. 31st August: Waived Wayne Ellington. 3rd September: Signed David Wear to an unguaranteed one year minimum salary contract. 5th September: Signed Trey Johnson to an unguaranteed one year minimum salary contract. 8th September: Waived Jeremy Tyler. 18th September: Signed Omri Casspi and Ryan Hollins to guaranteed one year minimum salary contracts. 22nd September: Signed Ramon Sessions to a two year, $4,247,465 contract. 23rd September: Waived Scotty Hopson. 25th September: Waived Alonzo Gee. BBallBreakdown.com | 109
NBA Champs Looking For Franchise-first Repeat After winning their fifth ring in 15 years this summer, the Spurs hope to break their non-repeat pattern. By John Daigle, Mark Deeks, and Morten Jensen
John Daigle - By now, you’ve heard this story. You know the Spurs exacted revenge on the Heat, you know they’re each underpaid in comparison to the rest of the league, you know there might not be another franchise to ever accomplish such feats, and you know they’re immortal. I can spend the next hundred-plus words writing them off to no avail, or I can keep their fanbase happy (as if they needed a reason) by simply stating the boring, complacent truth: yep, they’ll contend again. Rinse. Repeat. More impressive was their plan of action in the Finals against the Heat. For instance, who knew Boris Diaw could defend LeBron? And if that weren’t enough, the surgical precision to await and create the perfect shot during each trip down the floor was admirable, if not astonishing. And when it was all said and done, and they accepted the Larry O’Brien wearing 37 different flags, they went out and immediately prepared for another run at it, right? Actually, San Antonio took what scarce cap space they had and dispersed it to the names that got them there. 110 | BBallBreakdown.com
It might not be Pau Gasol – and by the way, every champion for the next five years should promptly thank the basketball-Gods that transaction never occurred – but the ascension and continued development of Kawhi Leonard comes close to any offseason signing. Include Patty Mills and Diaw and really, it was the type of offseason the Spurs had hoped for all along. Opposing teams can attempt to plan for another dose of corner threes and mid-range teardrops, but by the time they catch on, the Spurs will have already added another wrinkle to their game. Leonard will have learned Dirk’s fadeaway and Duncan will have perfected the half-court shot. It’s a vicious cycle, and one that refuses to go away. I mean, if rookie Kyle Anderson morphed into a lesser version of Kevin Durant, would it really shock anyone? It’s all on the table when it comes to San Antonio. So, no. I’m not going to write them off. I’m going to copy and paste this exact paragraph into the next seven e-books, going back only to change a) the name of the team they defeated in the Finals, and b) the next prodigy enlisted to help.
I’ll die before I count out the Spurs again. Happy? Mark Deeks - San Antonio have brought back all but one of the roster with which they finished last season, the lone one being Damion James, who played all of 50 minutes for them. They therefore return the very same team that just won the title, and won it nicely. They do so deliberately because they know they have every look covered, the right mix of age and youth, the right mix of upside and downside. And if the big three do lose a couple of steps, Kawhi Leonard’s continued emergence into stardom has got them covered. They did no tweaking, but there was nothing to tweak. San Antonio’s blend of role players is ideal, and while the loss of Patty Miles smarts, it is only temporary and will not matter once he is back for the playoffs. Boris Diaw returns for his unique brand of everything, Kyle Anderson is brought in as one to whom Boris can impart it, and the shooting depth remains at every position, even going so far as to bring BBallBreakdown.com | 111
San Antonio Spurs Bryce Cotton, Kyle Anderson, Josh Davis, John Holland, JaMychal Green
In
Draft Night
Damion James Out
back the often forgotten Matt Bonner. They found a winning formula, worked, and have stuck with it. And while the rest of the league will obviously be trying to copy it, the Spurs need not change to stay ahead. They can match up with any look, big or small, up tempo or halfcourt, that an opponent can throw at them. And as such, they can match up ideally to exploit any opponent’s weakness too. If they do not repeat as back to back champions, it is not because they were not able to. They are most able to. Indisputably. Morten Jensen - When you really think about it, the Spurs are one Ray Allen three-pointer away from chasing the three-peat. They’ve been consistently good for what seems to be the past 125 years, they’ve won five titles, have one of the best big men to ever lace them up, one of the best coaches ever, and an unselfish supporting cast who flat-out knows the game of basketball. So why exactly should anyone fall into the old thinking of projecting the Spurs as being too old, when it’s just so obvious that they’re not, as they’ve proven in the seven years since that mantra 112 | BBallBreakdown.com
first popped up among NBA fans and writers? No, these Spurs are very much in the conversation for being named Champions once again, hell, maybe even the favorites. The way they beat Miami this past June wasn’t so much a regular ol’ series win, than it was a good old whoppin’ behind the shed. During the summer, the Spurs made sure to get their core back, and otherwise spent their months making “Spurs moves”, which entails for the most part being nowhere near the daily NBA headlines, and improving from within, as was the case of Patty Mills last season. Speaking of Mr. Mills, he’s back for at least another three years, though he’ll miss a large chunk of this season. The Australian sharp-shooter is more than just a spark off the bench, he’s a flat-out nasty scorer who can shoot the three, take the ball to the hole, and create mid-range shots for himself off the bounce. Another three years under Popovich would make Mills primed to a become a starting caliber point guard, and maybe even the replacement for
Drafted Kyle Anderson (30th, signed), Jordan McRae (58th) and Cory Jefferson (60th). Traded the rights to McRae and Jefferson to Philadelphia in exchange for the rights to Nemanja Dangubic (54th, unsigned).
None
Trade
Tony Parker one day. Finally, these Spurs succeeded in re-signing Boris Diaw as well, handing him $28 million over four years. While the internet mafia cried “overpaid”, the deal needs to be viewed in a special light. Diaw, on his own and as an isolated player, is not worth $7 million a year. But on a team where ball-movement, interior passing, and versatilty is the foundation of its core principles? Well, let’s just say that becomes a totally different story.
23rd June: Tim Duncan opted in. 7th July: Signed Bryce Cotton to a partially guaranteed two year minimum salary contract. Free Agency
10th July: Re-signed Patty Mills to a three year, $10 million contract. 12th July: Re-signed Boris Diaw to a partially guaranteed four year, $28 million contract.
Salary Link
17th July: Re-signed Matt Bonner to a guaranteed one year minimum salary contract. 1st August: Signed Tony Parker to a three year, $43,335,939 contract extension. 5th August: Signed JaMychal Green to a partially guaranteed two year minimum salary contract. 25th August: Signed Josh Davis to a partially guaranteed two year minimum salary contract. 26th September: Signed John Holland to a partially guaranteed two year minimum salary contract. Re-signed Aron Baynes to a one year, $2.077 million contract.
BBallBreakdown.com | 113
Raptors Open Wallet, Gets Key Contributors Back The Raptors wanted no part of their players leaving in the open market, and handed out deals to their core guys. By Mark Deeks, Matthew Hochberg, and Jeff McMenamin
Mark Deeks - Much of Toronto’s offseason was spent keeping together what they had. And that is fine. Even though they only had what they had for a few months – and in that time, they still tried their best to trade away what is now considered a crux of what they have, Kyle Lowry – the team they built was sufficiently enticing of a future to merit . And in Bruno Caboclo and Lucas Nogueira, they did take steps to fill their long term needs for a sizeable athletic wing with length and a quality rim protector, even if the short term questions remain. A motivated Kyle Lowry is a fearsome player, and Kyle Lowry often seems fuelled by perceived injustice. Lowry has a knack for perceiving injustice, yet if he has indeed taken the fact he was nearly traded to the Knicks as the proper motivation, he will be a bulldog for the next few years of his prime. Demar Derozan ascended to being one of the best shooting guards in the league, and between the two, the Raptors have assembled a top five NBA back court. Indeed, at every position, there is talent and depth. There is a good deal of cohesion and no obvious holes to fill. 114 | BBallBreakdown.com
Someone, however, has to become a go-to player. Someone has to carry the team for stretches. Someone has to make reliable decisions with the ball. Pragmatically, that player has to be one of Lowry or Derozan, both of whom have struggled out it. Without it, this Raptors team, nice as they are, has apexed. A third seed is quite a nice peak to have, but when there is an unassailable gap between two and third, reform might yet be called for. Matthew Hochberg - The Raptors were one of the league’s pleasant surprises last season, capturing the Atlantic Division title and pushing the Brooklyn Nets to Game 7 of the first-round of the playoffs. After dealing Bargnani for draft picks last summer, General Manager Masai Ujiri was not giving much hope to the fans of Toronto. Yet, after a slow start which prompted a trade of arguably the team’s best player, Rudy Gay, things began to click for them. Led by head coach Dwane Casey and point guard Kyle Lowry, the Raptors ended the season on a 4121 run, turning DeMar DeRozan into a first-time All-Star and eventually
leading to the resigning of both Casey and Lowry. The additions of Lou Williams and Patrick Patterson may not be glamorous, but they are both satisfactory players who can help the Raptors win and secure the Division for the second consecutive season. Williams, who regressed with the Hawks after recovering from a torn ACL, fits well with the Raptors. He will have the opportunity to push the ball up the floor and score in bunches when needed. One of their few weaknesses last season appeared to be their lack of experience, giving up games down the stretch in tight situations. Now, one year older means one year more of more experience, which may help avoid some of the late-game meltdowns that plagued them in the past. Jeff McMenamin - It was a pleasure to watch the Raptors’ rise to relevance in 2013-14 and expect them to continue that success when the NBA season gets underway in just a few weeks. Demar DeRozan and Kyle Lowry are BBallBreakdown.com | 115
Toronto Raptors Greg Stiemsma, Bruno Caboclo, Lucas Nogueira, Jordan Hamilton, Will Cherry, James Johnson, Lou Williams
In
Steve Novak, Julyan Stone, John Salmons, Nando de Colo, Dwight Out Buycks
Drafted Bruno Caboclo (20th, signed), DeAndre Daniels (37th, unsigned) and Xavier Thames (59th). Traded the rights to Thames to Brooklyn in exchange for cash. Draft Night
Trade
30th June: Traded John Salmons and a future second round pick to Atlanta in exchange for Lou Williams and the rights to Lucas Nogueira (16th, 2013, signed). 10th July: Traded Steve Novak and a future second round pick to Utah in exchange for Diante Garrett.
one of the top one-two punches in the league and they have a pretty strong surrounding cast as well. Terrence Ross, Amir Johnson, Jonas Valanciunas, Lou Williams, Landry Fields and Patrick Patterson are all capable of filling up the stat-sheet as well. DeRozan averaged 22.7 points, 4.3 rebounds and four assists on his way to his first All-Star appearance. Many believed that Lowry should’ve also been an All-Star, averaging 17.9 points, 4.7 rebounds and 7.4 assists for the rising squad. So who needs to step up in order for the Raptors to go from being a good team to a great team in the East next season? Jonas Valanciunas would be the first person on that list. He averaged 11.3 points and 8.8 rebounds last season, but after a stellar FIBA World Cup performance this summer with Lithuania much more is expected from the big man this season. He’s a very efficient scorer in the paint who isn’t afraid to draw fouls and he’ll have to continue to improve underneath for the Raptors to take the next step. 116 | BBallBreakdown.com
Lou Williams was an intriguing pickup as well for the team this offseason. Before tearing his ACL in the 2012-13 season, Williams was close to being named the NBA’s Sixth Man of the Year in the lockout-shortened 2011-12 season with the Sixers. Coming into the year fully healthy, Williams will have every opportunity to come off the bench and fill up the box score, much like he did in Philadelphia. He averaged 14.9 points, 2.4 rebounds and 3.5 assists in his final season with the Sixers. The Raptors will improve their record very slightly from a year ago, and until they can add another strong piece to their roster, they won’t be competing for the Conference title anytime soon.
7th July: Waived Julyan Stone. 10th July: Re-signed Kyle Lowry to a four year, $48 million contract. Free Agency
11th July: Re-signed Patrick Patterson to a three year, $18,150,001 contract. 15th July: Re-signed Greivis Vasquez to a two year, $13 million contract. Signed James Johnson to a two year, $5 million contract.
Salary Link
19th July: Waived Diante Garrett. 21st July: Waived Dwight Buycks. 30th July: Signed Will Cherry to a partially guaranteed two year minimum salary contract. 15th August: Signed Jordan Hamilton to an unguaranteed one year minimum salary contract. 3rd September: Signed Greg Stiemsma to a partially guaranteed one year minimum salary contract.
BBallBreakdown.com | 117
Jazz Believes In Own Future, Commits To Hayward After lucking out with Dante Exum in the draft, Utah resigned swingman Gordon Hayward. By Mark Deeks, Ben Dowsett, and Michael Pina
Mark Deeks - The Jazz picked up some assets in free agency, and potentially two core players in the draft. It was a fairly quiet offseason, save for the noise of Gordon Hayward’s new maximum contract – which, while strikingly large for his abilities, is not exactly a hindrance going forward given that Utah were not paying anyone else anyway – but one that saw them make modest to good improvements to an already intriguing core. Dante Exum is still largely an unknown, and ever more a certainty after indifferent at best World Cup and summer league performances. What is known is he has the NBA physical tools, and that his dive cuts off the ball are just as effective – if not moreso at this stage – as his clatters into the defense with it. Utah can utilise this with the passing, vision and playmaking of Hayward and Trey Burke, as well as occasionally Alec Burks. The floor will not be especially well spaced, but that comes with time, and something both Hood and Steve Novak will help with. The size and overall athleticism of the Jazz roster makes for a strong core at every position. One of the guys will need to become a 118 | BBallBreakdown.com
number one option, and the idea of the Exum/Burke backcourt needs a full and frank evaluation, but the Jazz are not, or should not be, looking to tank any longer. It is, of course, going to be mildly impossible to parlay that into a playoffs appearance this season. Not unless the conference boundaries move overnight. But there is a lot to learn and be taught this season to a lot of players worth teaching it to. This is the key and final stepping stone season before conference competitiveness here on out. Or at least, it ought be. Ben Dowsett - Jazz GM Dennis Lindsey said the team “doubled down on youth” this offseason, and he meant it – just one of Utah’s 13 current roster members is over 26, with a whopping 10 at 24 or younger. They did the same at the coaching position, hiring Quin Snyder to replace outgoing Ty Corbin. With all this youth, some just entering or approaching second contract territory, this year will in part be a chance to evaluate which pieces are long term keepers and which are expendable. It’s
unlikely the Jazz challenge for a playoff spot – they were the league’s worst defensive team last year, and even with several expected improvements it’ll be tough to crack this loaded Western picture with so much inexperience on the roster. But don’t sleep on the Jazz as a tough nightly out, even for the league’s better teams. Snyder comes with a strong tactical pedigree, and there’s reason to believe Corbin’s system was a bad fit on both for key pieces like Gordon Hayward, Enes Kanter and Trey Burke. The Jazz will play a motion-oriented offense this year, emphasizing Spurs-style ball movement and a more team-oriented approach. Utah also has to hope shooting additions like Steve Novak and draftee Rodney Hood, along with another year of development elsewhere on the roster plus simple variance, can contribute to raising their figure on uncontested shots from last year’s 40.7 percent, only hundredths better than league-worst Philadelphia (figures per NBA.com SportVU Player Tracking). The year will be about process and development as much as anything, and BBallBreakdown.com | 119
Utah Jazz Dante Exum, Rodney Hood, Steve Novak, Trevor Booker, Carrick Felix, Dee Bost, Jack Cooley, Brock Motum, Kevin Murphy, Toure Murry, Dahntay Jones
In
Diante Garrett, John Lucas, Erik Murphy, Malcolm Thomas, Richard Out Jefferson, Marvin Williams, Brandon Rush
Jazz fans are rightly tempering their expectations as far as the standings go. But the future is bright, and should one or two of Utah’s key young pieces take a leap, a return to playoff contention could be sooner than many would expect.
ually turn into competent NBA players. (Thanks to rookie-scale deals scattered throughout their cap sheet, Utah can potentially enter 2016 with max room and some intriguing youngsters on the roster. They have flexibility, and Favors’ contract is movable.)
Michael Pina - As far as non-contenders headed for the lottery go, the Utah Jazz have as many important questions in need of answering as any team out there. Can Rudy Gobert soak up serious minutes in the rotation? (If yes) is Enes Kanter expendable? What the hell should they do with Alec Burks? Can Trey Burke develop into a serviceable starting point guard? Is Dante Exum the better long-term option? When will it be OK to stop crying about Derrick Favors’ extension? These questions need answers as soon as possible.
Where do the Jazz go from here? Let’s ask a few more questions. Who are the pillars? Who’s inessential? Who can replace who? The road is treacherously bumpy now—Utah had the absolute worst defense in the league last season, as in 30 out of 30 teams—but has the potential to quickly flatten itself out. The players currently on board should all improve this season, though the increments for each will be different, as will the height of their respective ceilings.
Not a question: Right now, Gordon Hayward is set in stone as the team’s go-to scoring option and primary creator, but hopefully he’ll be less stressed out than last year. The gigantic new four-year, $62.9 million contract is, well, gigantic, but Hayward’s a nice building block who should only get better as the pieces around him grad120 | BBallBreakdown.com
Drafted Dante Exum (5th, signed), Rodney Hood (23rd, signed) and Jarnell Stokes (35th). Traded the rights to Stokes to Memphis in exchange for a future second round pick. Draft Night
10th July: Traded Diante Garrett to Toronto in exchange for Steve Novak and a future second round pick. Trade
22nd July: Traded Malcolm Thomas, John Lucas III and Erik Murphy to Cleveland in exchange for Carrick Felix, a 2015 second round pick and cash.
12th July: Matched Charlotte’s four year, $62,965,420 offer sheet to Gordon Hayward. 21st July: Signed Trevor Booker to a partially guaranteed two year, $9.775 million contract. Free Agency
14th August: Signed Dee Bost to a partially guaranteed three year, $2,350,490 contract. 18th August: Signed Jack Cooley to a partially guaranteed three year, $2,350,490 contract.
Salary Link
25th August: Signed Brock Motum to an unguaranteed one year minimum salary contract. Signed Kevin Murphy to a partially guaranteed two year, $1,787,726 contract. 26th August: Signed Toure Murry to a partially guaranteed two year, $2 million contract. 22nd September: Signed Dahntay Jones to an unguaranteed one year minimum salary contract.
This season won’t be a successful one, but that’s fine for the Jazz, so long as their youth movement takes a step in the right direction and new head coach Quin Snyder is more open-minded than the man he replaced.
BBallBreakdown.com | 121
Experience Of Pierce Could Drastically Improve Wizards The Washington Wizards signed Paul Pierce this summer, hoping for a veterean presence to get them over the top. By Torkil Bang, Mark Deeks, and Morten Jensen
Torkil Bang - The Wizards are aiming for the top this season. They might have the best young guard duo in the league – though there are several contenders for this title. Point guard John Wall took his game to another level last season, and shooting guard Bradley Beal was right there with him. This resulted in the Wizards’ first playoff run since 2008, and an invitation to Team USA’s training camp for both. And it’s not like the two have reached their peak yet. This summer Washington lost their starting small forward Trevor Ariza, but his replacement Paul Pierce is still an even better player. Signing Marcin Gortat for five years/60 million dollars was a no-brainer and he is definitely worth the money, but it’s a long-time commitment considering that he is 30 years old. The most remarkable thing about Washington’s turnaround is how it has also transformed a player like John Wall. When the team was filled with immature boneheads, he was right 122 | BBallBreakdown.com
there with them, but as soon as they got rid of the locker room distractions, he started growing as a player. This shows that you can’t just put any player on your team along with your young talents when you are working on player development. If the rest of the players aren’t interested in playing basketball ”the right way”, even young superstuds can develop some very bad habits. But now the Wizards are on the right track, and look to improve over last season’s 45-37 record. They should be able to compete with Miami Heat for the top spot in the Southeast Division. It looks like a close race and the result could easily be decided by the season series between the two teams. Right now Washington has very limited wiggle room to get even better, but they are set up to make a splash in 2016 free agency. And after LeBron James’ return to Cleveland, there has been a lot of speculation about Kevin Durant coming home to Washington if he sours on Oklahoma. It’s way too early to discuss seriously, but it has to be in Washington’s long-
term plans, labeled ”Plan A”. Mark Deeks - This summer, Washington needed to address a lack of depth, especially up front, and address the Ariza question. What they did was get older, more athletic and somewhat superfluous. Without Ariza, the Wizards have big questions on the wings. The incoming Paul Pierce may be heady, but he is 36 years old with 1,300 games played who slipped quite a bit last season. Behind him, Otto Porter thus far has been completely unreliable, and Glen Rice has yet to prove he has talent signficiantly beyond the multiple D-League wing players behind him. And Martell Webster, a very important player last year who adds shooting and efficiency not found elsewhere, is out with injury and already has retirement on the mind. The Wizards also rely heavily on two bigs on the other side of 30 for all of their rim protection – who needs all three of Humphries, Gooden AND Blair? – and once again are due to have no true centres off the bench. And while BBallBreakdown.com | 123
Washington Wizards Kris Humphries, Paul Pierce, DeJuan Blair, Rasual Butler, Xavier Silas, Damion James, Daniel Orton
In
Drafted Jordan Clarkson (46th). Traded his rights to L.A. Lakers in exchange for cash.
Draft Night
14th July: Signed and traded Trevor Ariza (four years, $32,000,002) to Houston in exchange for Melvin Ely from New Orleans.
Trevor Ariza, Chris Singleton, Al Harrington, Trevor Booker Out
Andre Miller was a welcome upgrade to Eric Maynor to finish last season, he turns 39 during the season. A 39 year old guard! Washington will likely make the playoffs. At this point, they are so old that they need to. The duo of John Wall and Bradley Beal should drag them there, because that duo is a mighty fine duo, and for all their years, Nene and Gortat are a mighty fine big man pairing two. Ultimately, though, there exist too many concerns to project a team at the East’s elite. What is their identity? Toughness? Athleticism? Shooting? Defense? Transition game? Consistent half court offense? Which of these is a distinct trait of the Wizards roster? It is not so much a blend of complimentary pieces as it is a jumble of ill-fitting ones. Trailer threes only go so far, and while the Wizards should make the Easten conference playoffs, they are much nearer the Hornets and Hawks than the Bulls. Morten Jensen - If there’s any team in the Eastern Conference who can come out of the gates and surprise everyne by playing .750 ball, it’s the Wizards. 124 | BBallBreakdown.com
That’s not necessarily a projection, but moreso an idea of what could happen if they all hit their stride. Bradley Beal is entering his third season, John Wall is inching closer and closer to being a top five point guard, and now you throw in a veteran in form of Paul Pierce, who can still play, but more importantly, change the culture of the team from the inside. He’s won a ring, and he knows what kind of mental efforts that goes into that. Also a benefit to Washington is their front-line which remains physically imposing. Marcin Gortat, re-signed and ready to roll with $60 million coming in, will alongside Nene help shield off the lane and thus provide the necessarily help defense for when opponents gets the step on Washington’s perimeter. There’s a level of line-up symmetry in Washington these days, that hasn’t been present since the days of Gilbert Arenas, Caron Butler, and Antawn Jamison strolled the Verizon Center. Only, this incarnation might actually turn out to be better, given they each have an area in which they excel at, and clear directions as to what their job is.
Trade
18th July: Traded a protected future second round pick to Boston in exchange for a signed and traded Kris Humphries (three years, partially guaranteed $13,320,000).
Wall, Beal, and Pierce will handle the scoring load. Pierce albeit mostly as a decoy these days, who can drain open shots from downtown. Nene and Gortat will handle the middle, rebound, score off put-backs, set screens, and handle the big man work load. To further improve the on-court product, Washington acquired both DeJuan Blair and Kris Humphries, which might be a bit of an overkill, but who will help out on the boards whenever they’re given minutes. On paper, Washington is one solid trade away from really being intimidating, but pending the development of Beal, they could put the fear into teams by this season.
16th July: Traded the rights to Emir Preldzic (57th, 2009) to Dallas in exchange for a signed and traded DeJuan Blair (three years, partially guaranteed $6 million).
10th July: Re-signed Marcin Gortat to a five year, $60 million contract. 14th July: Re-signed Drew Gooden to a guaranteed one year minimum salary contract. Free Agency
15th July: Signed Paul Pierce to a two year, $10,848,725 contract. 17th July: Signed Kevin Seraphin to a one year, $3,898,693 contract.
Salary Link
28th July: Re-signed Garrett Temple to a guaranteed two year minimum salary contract. 30th July: Waived Melvin Ely. 18th September: Signed Damion James to an unguaranteed one year minimum salary contract. 23rd September: Signed Xavier Silas to an unguaranteed one year minimum salary contract. 26th September: Signed Vander Blue, Rasual Butler and David Stockton tounguaranteed one year minimum salary contracts. 29th September: Signed Daniel Orton to an unguaranteed one year minimum salary contract. 3rd October: Waived David Stockton and Vander Blue.
BBallBreakdown.com | 125
Andrew Unterberger developed and managed the entirety of this section. His dedication and communication was an invaluable piece to the final product.
Top 50 Most Interesting Players
By this point in the preseason, you’ve likely read plenty of rundowns of the best players in the NBA - discussions that are always fun to have, but are too grounded in objective stats and accomplishments to leave much to personal taste or preference. With that an mind, we here at BBallBreakdown have prepared a different kind of countdown; one not of the 50 best players in the NBA, but rather, the 50 players that we’re most looking forward to watching for the upcoming season. Players made our list for any variety of reasons. They could have recently switched teams, they could be an intriguing rookie, or a beloved vet getting close to his last legs. Either way, our rankings were entirely subjective, and some players appeared in individual writers’ top fives, while missing the lists of other writers entirely. This is our take on the 50 most fascinating players for the new season. It’s a different debate than who’s better, but one that we find a little more personal, and maybe a little more interesting. By Torkil Bang, John Daigle, Mark Deeks, Kevin Ferrigan, Morten Jensen, Jeff McMenamin, Seth Partnow, Michael Pina, Bryan Toporek, and Andrew Unterberger - Illustration by David Rappoccio 126 | BBallBreakdown.com
50
49
48
Chris Paul Los Angeles Clippers
Marcus Smart Boston Celtics
Steven Adams Oklahoma City Thunder
Everyone has that popular friend that, when away, you simply spend your time sharing tales of. When their name is overheard, “Hey, remember that time…” and “There was that one time when…” become an obligatory prefix to every following sentence. That’s Paul in a nutshell. Blake Griffin’s ascension into an MVP candidate undeniably helped, but the Clippers finished with the best offensive rating throughout the league for a reason. The one knock on Paul is his mid-season tendency to take plays off, but even so, his Clutch totals have yet to decline. There are certainly those that are more athletic, but good luck finding another point guard you’d prefer with everything at stake.
The rookie guard looks to make an impact from the very start. His development is closely connected to Rajon Rondo, who will either be his mentor in some way or leave the Celtics and thus the point guard spot wide open. Smart has both as a college player and with USA Basketballl – both the U19 and the Select Team – shown that he isn’t afraid of anything. His defense will give him a lot of floor time already this season, but he will need to improve his decision making before he can be an elite point guard.
Everyone’s favorite rookie big-man provocateur made big strides in the playoffs last June, seeing his minutes go up from the regular season and getting anointed (by then-announcer Steve Kerr, at least) as the Thunder’s starting center of the future. He may yet have to wrestle that position from Kendrick Perkins’ cold, dead hands, but he can force the issue with coach Scott Brooks by improving in the pick-androll and staying out of foul trouble, and he could be a difference-maker for the Thunder’s title chances if he does. He’ll be a fascinating watch regardless, but if he holds on to the Selleck ‘stache, he could be 20 spots higher on this list next summer.
47
46
45
Michael Carter-Williams Philadelphia 76ers
Nikola Mirotic Chicago Bulls
Bradley Beal Washington Wizards
Michael Carter-Williams won Rookie of the Year and put up stats in league with Magic Johnson and the Big O in 201314, and yet we’ll still be watching him this season to see if he’s actually good or not. Such is the stigma that comes with piloting a team that loses 26 games in a row, and certainly his turnover rates and shooting percentages were hardly bulletproof as well. MCW has the chance to shut a lot of people up by showing growth this season, playing with a true potential franchise co-anchor (and his own longtime BFF) Nerlens Noel and a roster more built for coach Brett Brown’s speed-and-Doriented style. Or he could regress from his first-year numbers, and prove that 2013 really was just straight-up the worst rookie class in NBA history.
We’ve been hearing about Nikola Mirotic’s impending stateside arrival for so long that it’s impossible to separate the hype that comes merely from him being a so-close-yet-so-far-away commodity for all these years from the hype that’s actually legit. Fran Fraschilla said that the big-man scorer would have been a top-four pick in the 2014 draft--which if true, makes the thought of him being added to an already-contending Chicago squad absurd. But will his game translate? Even if it does, will he get the minutes on the frontcourt-heavy Bulls to show it? Mirotic is far from the highest-ranked rook on our list, but he might be the one whose ability to adjust could most affect this year’s title race.
Beal celebrated his 21st birthday on June 28. That’s right: With two seasons as a starting NBA shooting guard under his belt—the second in which he averaged 17.1 PPG and shot over 40 percent on threes—he’s still only 21 years old. This is frightening. Much is made of what the Wizards can accomplish this year, but on an individual level Beal deserves attention—making his first All-Star and becoming the second best shooting guard in the league are both very real possibilities. Beal’s shooting range and playmaking potential make him a prototypical secondary ball-handler in today’s NBA, and since he’s still half a decade away from reaching his prime, there aren’t ten players in the league Washington would trade him for tomorrow. Beal is real, and his third season will be humongous. BBallBreakdown.com | 127
44
43
42
38
37
36
Doug McDermott Chicago Bulls
Victor Oladipo Orlando Magic
Dion Waiters Cleveland Cavaliers
DeAndre Jordan Los Angeles Clippers
LaMarcus Aldridge Portland Trail Blazers
Larry Sanders Milwaukee Bucks
The Bulls traded two top-twenty picks for the honor of selecting Dougie McBuckets with the 11th pick in last summer’s draft. A high price to pay, but if he delivers as he did at Creighton--or in Las Vegas this summer--the price will be well worth it. McDermott’s otherworldly shooting, his ability to put the ball on the floor and toast smaller defenders in the post, his willingness to get out early on the break and make the extra pass--it’s all pretty exactly what the Bulls offense has been missing in the Rose / Thibodeau era, and it could add a dimension to the Bulls offense that might even make it...fun to watch?? If Thibs doesn’t kill him on defense first, anyway.
If Russell Westbrook was the thesis of the shooting-guard-playing-point experiment, guard Victor Oladipo is the congruent theorem. Sure, he split time handling the ball in the instances Jameer Nelson shared the floor, but the Magic drafted him contingent on his ability to play both positions at a high level. The initial surprise, however, came with his slightly above average defense that will only continue to grow. His mid-range jumper might need some work, but Orlando is most likely satisfied with their hypothesis to date.
Even with the arrivals of LeBron James, Kevin Love, coach David Blatt and legit championship aspirations to Cleveland, Dion Waiters is gonna do his absolute damnedest to make sure he’s not upstaged this season. The third-year shooting guard has already had a busy summer of retweeting stoner salutes to him, navel-gazing over his own past highlights and starting up nonsense about who the best backcourt in the NBA is, so we can only imagine how entertaining he’s gonna be once the season’s underay. If LeBron really did text Dion to “be ready” upon news breaking of his return to Cleveland, we bet Dion shot back with a “You too, homie.”
While Chris Paul and Blake Griffin are the obvious two stars for LA Clippers, De Andre Jordan is the one who has room to grow into a bigger role. Last season he proved that he can stay on the floor for 35+ minutes per game and remain productive on both ends, but he needs to get even better at anchoring the defense. Jordan led the league last season in rebounds, FG% and even eFG% even though he is one of the worst free throw shooters in the league. If he improves his FT% from 40 to over 50, he will be a lot more valuable for his team. Right now he is subject to hack-a-Dray tactics.
LaMarcus Aldridge had the Trail Blazers atop the Western Conference at 31-9 to start last season and at at one point was in conversation to win league MVP. The Trailblazers knocked off Dwight Howard’s Rockets in the first round of the playoffs last season before falling to the Spurs in five games. Aldridge looks to repeat his success of last season and could realistically lead this team to the Western Conference finals. In a contract year, Aldridge will look to add to his numbers of 23.2 points and 11.1 rebounds a game from a year ago in order to get his big payday this season.
Amazing what only a few months can do to perception. In one season, Larry Sanders went from a franchise player cordial enough to give thumbs-up prior to fouling out, all the way to a backup center riddled with character issues. His off-court concerns might be valid, but you don’t just forget how to defend the pick-and-roll and protect the rim at an elite level overnight. Either way, Milwaukee has seen their defense crumble when Sanders rests, so the Bucks had better hope that abrupt $44 million dollar extension draws the Sanders of old.
41
40
39
35
34
33
Danilo Gallinari Denver Nuggets
Carmelo Anthony New York Knicks
Tyson Chandler Dallas Mavericks
DeMar DeRozan Toronto Raptors
John Wall Washington Wizards
Josh Smith Detroit Pistons
In 2011, he was the centerpiece of the Carmelo Anthony trade. In 2014, we don’t know if he can even still be a difference-maker. Gallo is still surprisingly young--he just turned 26 over the summer, his prime years barely underway--and was the top scoring option on a 57-win team 18 months ago. But after an ACL tear ended his ‘12-’13 campaign and some potentially questionable treatment kept him out all of 2013-’14, does Gallinari have enough explosiveness left to be a go-to guy for the Nugs? Denver’s long-shot postseason chances may depend on it.
There’s always something to talk about when it comes to Carmelo Anthony -this season is no different. Under the bright lights of New York City, Anthony will have to backup his claim to be “underrated” and he’ll be center stage for Spike Lee’s new film highlighting Phil Jackson’s triangle offense. The Knicks missed out on the playoffs last season with arguably a better roster than it currently has and Anthony will have to prove he’s worth the $124 million deal he signed this summer by getting the team back to the postseason. Anthony averaged 27.4 points, 8.1 rebounds and 3.1 assists last season and he’ll need to reproduce that output for the team to have a chance this season.
The Mavericks missed out on landing Dwight Howard two summers ago, they settled for a familiar face in Tyson Chandler this offseason who led the Mavs to the promise land in 2011. Chandler is just two years removed from winning Defensive Player of the Year, but injuries ultimately sidelined him for the 2013-14 season. He’ll look to rebound for a franchise he knows all too well. Chandler is on an expiring deal, so Mark Cuban will have the opportunity to see how he performs this season with Dirk Nowitzki, Monta Ellis and newly acquired Chandler Parsons before re-signing him.
Derozan made significant strides this year and has become one of the best shooting guards in the NBA. He has done so while still lacking three point range and, despite noticeable improvements iin his IQ and awareness on that end, without yet playing elite defense. Derozan’s offensive instincts, agility and mid range game make for a pretty unique offensive player, and now, a highly effective one. In an era whereby quality shooting guards are hard to come by, he stands out as interesting.
2013-2014 marked the arrival of John Wall, elilte player. Sort of. While deservedly making his first All-Star game and piloting the Wizards to a surprising first round victory of the Chicago Bulls, it’s hard to avoid thinking Wall should still be better. Though his shooting has improved, especially in catch-and-shoot situations, he relies too much on long two-pointers off the dribble. He too often negates the advantages provided by his explosiveness by operating at only one speed. Whether these are simply kinks to be ironed out as he continues to gain experience or if they are drawbacks which will plague his whole career are the questions lingering over his continued ascension.
Detroit know they have to do something with Smith, yet there is no obvious solution as to what it is. The combination of he, Greg Monroe and Andre Drummond does not work, but, as the three best talents on the team, it will rather have to. Smith, a notoriously bad shooter even more notorious for shooting anyway, is now to be coached and managed by Stan Van Gundy, a man who made his name by utilising stretch fours, and whose summer league roster implies he wants to do so again. So what on earth does this mean for Smith, a man who badly needs the opposite message?
128 | BBallBreakdown.com
BBallBreakdown.com | 129
32
31
30
26
25
24
Ricky Rubio Minnesota Timberwolves
Brook Lopez Brooklyn Nets
Julius Randle Los Angeles Lakers
Klay Thompson Golden State Warriors
Damian Lillard Portland Trail Blazers
Al Horford Atlanta Hawks
The alliance between Rubio and Kevin Love was always uneasy. Especially in Rick Adelman’s offense, which took the ball out of the point guard’s hands more than most, Rubio was often left standing forlorn on the perimeter, dared to shoot. Now, with the reins to the team firmly in his grasp, Rubio has the chance to show whether he’s a top class point guard or simply a flashy show pony. If the rumors of summer work in the weight room are true, he might just be able to turn the corner and break into the elite.
Brooklyn’s new coach Lionel Hollins is already getting into the ear of Lopez and telling him to “toughen up” for the season. That’s easy to say for Hollins, he’s not a seven-footer who has missed 150 games in the past three seasons. Lopez averaged 20.7 points, 6.0 rebounds and 1.8 blocks last season through 17 games, before needing foot surgery to repair a fractured fifth metatarsal in his right foot. He’s known as one of the most versatile scoring big men in the NBA when healthy, and he’ll have the chance to turn the Nets from a good team to an elite team if he can just stay on the court. The Nets finished in a tie for 5th last year in the Eastern Conference at 44-38, if healthy Lopez could propel them to 50 wins.
Is he the next Zach Randolph, or the next Lamar Odom? Is he either? Will we see enough of him to find out? The veteran-hungry Lakers forewent dealing the #7 pick in the draft for immediate help and selected Randle to help rebuild, but then hedged their bets by picking up Carlos Boozer and Ed Davis, potentially burying their frontcourt bridge-to-the-future on the bench. Randle showed enough skill with his post play, passing talents and (admittedly overambitious) ball-handling in Vegas to tantalize Laker fans about his upside, so a couple weeks of losses filled with clanked Boozer 16-footers might end up starting an uprising at Staples Center. Release the Randle, Byron.
Thompson had one hell of a summer. The Warriors steadfastly refused to include him in trade discussions for Kevin Love, speaking to their plan to keep the Splash Brothers united for the long haul. Thompson then justified that faith during his time with Team USA, as he finished second on the team in scoring to James Harden at the FIBA World Cup. During Team USA’s gold-medal run, Thompson drilled 22 of his team-high 53 three-point attempts and racked up seven blocks in nine games, second only to Anthony Davis. Only adding further intrigue to his upcoming season: He’s unlikely to reach an agreement on a contract extension by the Oct. 31 deadline, setting him up to become a restricted free agent next summer.
The up-and-coming best point guard in the league, possibly. Lillard can flat-out shoot the ball, which goes hand-inhand with his ability to attack the rim, or getting himself a high-percentage look from the mid-range area. There’s nowhere this kid can’t go on the floor, as he frequently has opponents scrambling to chase him around. He’s strong enough to drive on larger players and take the contact, he’s quick enough to match speed with smaller guards, and while his defense is notoriously bad at this stage of his career, it’s just his third season, which, coincidentally, is also the year most young players break out big time. How can you not watch that?
The Hawks were a pretty good team last year without Horford, an eighth seed if only with 38 wins. With him back in the fold, they should be even better. Horford, long since a quality interior and perimeter defender and solid rebounder, was in the midst of a career year on offense (18.6ppg) before suffering a pectoral injury. Now entering his prime years, it must be remembered that Horford’s prime years are destined to be really good. And with comeback player of the year potential on a Hawks team no one will want to face, Horford’s return is one to monitor.
29
28
27
23
22
21
James Harden Houston Rockets
Dwyane Wade Miami Heat
Eric Bledsoe Phoenix Suns
Stephen Curry Golden State Warriors
Dante Exum Utah Jazz
Roy Hibbert Indiana Pacers
While his severe lack of defensive know-how went through the media circus over these last few months, the very concept of James Harden was tarnished, and his strengths ignored. So before we complain too much about his rotation pattern, let’s not forget we’re seeing one of the most dynamic offensive wingmen the league has seen in several decades. As a scorer, Harden is arguably the second best we have in the league behind Durant, even ahead of Carmelo and LeBron given he doesn’t share their height or strength (Harden’s plenty strong, but both LeBron and Carmelo are downright nasty in that department). He’ll get you 25 efficient points every night, and put opposing team in foul trouble.
After spending four years as a sidekick to one of the best players in hoops history, Dwyane Wade must now re-assume the responsibilities of a top-15 player. Whether he can or not up for debate, the more significant point is he has no choice: The Heat need the Wade of old. They need efficient 28-point outings on a regular basis. They need 38 minutes per game in all 82 games. They need consistent, tenacious defense. Wade will give them all he has. He’ll force shots, hustle in transition (hopefully), and be the locker-room leader this proud organization so desperately wants him to be. But last year looked like the beginning of the end, and adding responsibility on Wade’s shoulders definitely won’t reverse the process.
Eric Bledsoe has played less than a full season as a starter (78 games in his four NBA seasons), and with his injury history in mind it could spell trouble that he suffered another one in his first season as a full-time starter. The Phoenix Suns’ staff of voodoo doctors are, however, confident that they can keep him on court for the long haul. And if they are right, Bledsoe is one of the most exciting players to watch.
Any time you have to stop and think whether or not you would trade a particular player straight up for anyone, it’s the telling sign of their value. I mean, if LeBron or Durant were dangled, you would, but not before thinking about it, right? That’s now the status that Stephen Curry not-so-subtlety carries. He remains as deadly as they come from behind the arc, simultaneously perfecting his decision-making in the pickand-roll. His frail stature is worrisome but a mere afterthought considering he’s only missed a combined 10 games since ankle surgery ended his 201112 season. As long as Curry is on the floor, he’s a threat, and really, that’s all Golden State is hoping for.
The Jazz don’t need Dante Exum to be an All-Star right away, but they do kinda need him to be one eventually. The littlest-seen, most-enigmatic rookie of this year’s set, Exum produced little in Vegas and even less in Barcelona, but in fleeting moments this summer, Exum has shown the ability to process and react to the NBA game at a speed few in the league (and fewer still in his class) can manage. That quality alone makes him a smart gamble for the Jazz, but both the team and the fanbase will have to be patient with the 19-yearold as his decision-making catches up with his body and his vision. Until then, those fleeting moments should make him a must-watch on their own.
Roy Hibbert spent his summer practicing hook shots and watching ninja movies with legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Will this preparation make him ready to play with consistency and determination? Indiana Pacers will need that with Paul George out for the season and Lance Stephenson gone. Hibbert has the tools to be the Defensive Player Of the Year, but if he struggles on offense and on the boards like he did last season, it could be a long, unwatchable season for Pacers-fans – and everyone else.
130 | BBallBreakdown.com
BBallBreakdown.com | 131
20
19
18
14
13
12
Russell Westbrook Oklahoma City Thunder
Jabari Parker Milwaukee Bucks
Pau Gasol Chicago Bulls
Lance Stephenson Charlotte Hornets
Giannis Antetokounmpo Milwaukee Bucks
Chandler Parsons Dallas Mavericks
Perhaps no player in the game is as polarizing. Most discussion generally centers on the downsides of “letting Russ be Russ.” Do the bouts of maddening shot selection, over-dribbling and tendency to turn games into personal challenges simply come with the territory of such a mercurially talented player? Is he coachable? Is he being coached? Above all, how much does the chaotic electricity he brings to the floor actually contribute to the Thunder winning games? As Westbrook enters his seventh year, these questions are not much closer to being answered than they were in his second.
The new era’s Paul Pierce. Jabari may fancy himself a four, and he wouldn’t necessarily be wrong in thinking this, he still has the old-school game for a small forward like Pierce. He can shoot, he can go into the post, he can put the ball on the deck, and he can attack the basket. Parker ended up in Milwaukee which means he has the green light to do whatever he wants offensively, something which can both benefit and hurt his progression all at the same time. Thankfully, Parker seems like a smart player with a reasonably high IQ of the game, which should further assist his development. The Bucks may not be a very interesting this season, but Jabari will be.
The Spaniard is 34 years old, has played over 1,000 NBA games when you combine regular season and playoffs, with countless of appearances with his national team. You’d figure Gasol was at the very end of his career, but he’s coming off a year in which he averaged almost 17 and 10, and is joining a team considerably more loaded than his former Lakers squad. Gasol will get a chance to pick and choose his spots more carefully in Chicago, turning him into one of the most underrated x-factors in the league. Gasol’s offense injects some versatility into Chicago’s front-court rotation, in which he’ll share minutes with both Joakim Noah and Taj Gibson.
Stephenson has been one of the most enigmatic players in the NBA since joining the league in 2010, and this year figures to be no different. He led the league in triple-doubles last season, but also finished with the fourth-most technical fouls. If he’s able to keep his head on straight, he’s a sensational talent capable of stuffing all columns of a stat sheet, but that’s a big “if.” Due to the structure of the three-year, $27 million contract he signed with the Hornets this summer—the third year is a team option—Stephenson needs to be on his best behavior this year. (No more blowing in opponents’ ears.) If he stays out of trouble, he could help turn Charlotte into a legitimate dark-horse contender in the East.
New Bucks coach Jason Kidd is going to try to play Giannis at point guard. It’s not going to work. But it’s going to happen anyway. And it will happen because of how skilled (if raw) Antetokounmpo is. Giannis is a fascinating individual whom you can project in so many different ways, all of them favourable. He could be anywhere on the sliding scale between Lamar Odom and Nic Batum when all is said and done. He needn’t be a point guard to be both fascinating and outstanding. And through it all, he’s apparently still growing. Watch and marvel.
17
16
15
11
10
Never has such a fuss been made about a soon-26-year-old former second-round pick who’s never averaged 17 points a game, posted a PER over 16 or even won a playoff series. But this is where we’re at with Parsons, now making nearly twice as much money as Dirk Nowtizki on a team with championship aspirations, rivaled only by one of his new teammates for the league’s most swelled-headed second-rounder. Does he deserve all the hubbub? This year, we’re gonna find out, as Parsons officially moves from the “pleasant surprise” portion of his career to the “wait a minute, we’re paying you HOW MUCH?” portion without much of an adjustment period, forced to demonstrate that he can be a core player on a contending team. Skeptical, but absolutely intrigued.
Andre Drummond Detroit Pistons
Kyrie Irving Cleveland Cavaliers
Chris Bosh Miami Heat
Andrew Wiggins Minnesota Timberwolves
Nerlens Noel Philadelphia 76ers
Rajon Rondo Boston Celtics
The Pistons were an abject disaster last year, but second-year man Andre Drummond was the one bright spot in an otherwise dismal season. He finished second in the league in rebounds (13.2) and 10th in blocks (1.62) per game, despite playing the fewest minutes (32.3) of anyone among the top 10 in boards. His free-throw shooting remains a major eye-sore—he knocked down just 41.8% of his attempts from the charity stripe last season—but he was a machine on the offensive glass, snagging 440 boards. (DeAndre Jordan, the next-closest player, grabbed 331.) If new head coach Stan Van Gundy can mold Drummond into a Dwight Howard-esque prospect, the Pistons won’t be a laughingstock for too much longer.
Kyrie oozes pure ability in a way that makes every dribble feel like front row at a private magic show. His offensive repertoire is nearly unparalleled at the NBA’s most loaded position, and at only 22 years old there’s so much room to grow. The buried lede here, of course, is that Irving has two new best friends: LeBron James and Kevin Love. This transforms all those dead-eye three-pointers and his needlecraft handle into stuff that matters. Irving can finally taste the playoffs, and a championship isn’t too far off. With Love and LeBron being their awesome selves and making everyone else’s life that much easier, is this the year Irving sits atop the Best Point Guard Alive throne? It’s definitely something to think about.
Often maligned as being just below the level of LeBron James and Dwyane Wade in the now disbanded Heatles, this season presents a tantalizing opportunity for Bosh to establish, or really re-establish himself as a superstar player. When required to do so by James’ occasional absences, Bosh showed flashes of still having the game to dominate. With Wade’s physical abilities seemingly in the process of inexorable decay due to age and wear, Bosh will have to play at superstar level to prevent a complete collapse in Miami this season.
Expectations couldn’t be much higher for Wiggins heading into the 2014-15 season. As if being the No. 1 overall pick in the most hyped draft class in a decade wasn’t enough, the Minnesota Timberwolves agreed to send All-Star forward Kevin Love to Cleveland in exchange for a package headlined by the former Kansas Jayhawk. Wiggins is considerably more raw than Jabari Parker, the second overall pick from this year’s draft class, but his otherworldly athleticism gives him one of the highest ceilings of any rookie. With Wolves president/head coach Flip Saunders already singing Wiggins’ defensive praises, tracking his development will be one of the biggest storylines throughout the entire NBA this season.
The No. 6 overall pick from 2013 finally makes his NBA debut this October after missing his entire rookie season to recover from a torn ACL. Riding on his not-so-broad shoulders: The Philadelphia 76ers’ entire rebuild. If he goes down with another serious injury, Sam Hinkie’s devious plans go from “crazy like a fox” to just plain crazy. The big man had observers drooling at Orlando Summer League, as he averaged 13.7 points, 5.7 boards, 2.3 steals and 3.0 swats in just 25.3 minutes per game. If he can fortify Philly’s dismal defense— the Sixers hemorrhaged 107.5 points per 100 possessions last season, the fourth-worst mark in the league—he’ll be a Rookie of the Year front-runner.
The league’s most vexing star, Rajon Rondo is also one of its finest pure point guards, most unique talents, and physically toughest people. Despite the Celtics repeatedly denying a desire to trade him, and Rondo repeatedly stating his happiness with Boston, rumors circle both parties daily. All that is boring compared to the fascinating and impossible-to-anticipate on-court performance we’ll see from Rondo throughout the season. Once he returns from a broken hand, it will be our first glimpse of healthy Rondo leading average to below average teammates. He’s by himself now, atop an unimpressive mountain. We’ll see if Rondo can assume a scoring load and elevate everyone’s play around him. And, most importantly, whether Rondo can drag these poor Celtics into the playoffs.
132 | BBallBreakdown.com
9
BBallBreakdown.com | 133
8
7
6
DeMarcus Cousins Sacramento Kings
Kevin Durant Oklahoma City Thunder
Kobe Bryant Los Angeles Lakers
Cousins is more of an apparition than a ball-player. It’s not uncommon to catch him on a 19 rebound night, only to turn the channel the following evening and see him backing down Jimmy Kimmel with a bass drum strapped around his neck. Players typically tend to set lofty goals for themselves, whether it be the scoring title, MVP, etc. But Cousins? A “5 technicals” sign hanging from his locker says it all. Fortunately, Mike Malone and his coaching staff finally caught on last season, seeing his shots within 3-10 feet reach a career-high. And though there are other factors that went into it, his rebounding numbers coincidently skyrocketed, as well. At the least, it’s safe to assume another jump in productivity this season.
Durant won his first MVP award last year, now it’s time to win his first title. The talk of the summer was about LeBron James returning to Cleveland in order to try and bring the city its first title since 1964. In order to extend his own legacy, Durant needs to stop that from happening. The Thunder need to play the Cavs in the finals and the Thunder need to win. Durant has all the talent around him to make it happen and dashing LeBron’s dream of a title in Cleveland would instantly place Durant at the top of the NBA’s best player debate. His 32 points, 7.4 rebounds and 5.5 assists last season was truly amazing and he deserves to add a ring to his resume as well.
The tension of Kobe Bryant’s late career has been created by the ever-widening gulf between what Kobe believes himself capable of, and what he actually still is capable of. Kobe will never not believe that he alone can drag a team of sub-standard teammates to the playoffs, but this may be the season where that position becomes untenable. On his last legs on a likely lottery-bound team, what will it look like when Kobe shoots for 25 a night on a team with no hopes of contention? Will he be able to take it? Will we be able to take it? It’ll be a sad but necessary final chapter in the most compelling NBA story of the early 21st century.
5
4
3
2
1
Kawhi Leonard San Antonio Spurs
Kevin Love Cleveland Cavaliers
Anthony Davis New Orleans Pelicans
Derrick Rose Chicago Bulls
LeBron James Cleveland Cavaliers
The expectations for Kawhi Leonard this year are of superstardom, and the signs point us in that direction. Out-dueling the world’s best player on the league’s grandest stage and winning a Finals MVP award at 22 helps paint a pretty picture, but thanks to typically Spurs minute restrictions, Leonard’s night-to-night production level remains a mystery. Kawhi may not even make his first All-Star team this season, as his value within the context of San Antonio’s scheme rubs out the importance of individual accomplishments. What we want is for Gregg Popovich to unleash this freak of nature on the league for 40 minutes a night, 82 games a year. Hopefully, that starts right now.
Definitely put up or shut up time for the new Cav. Alleged to be a empty stat All-Star on a series of moribund Minnesota teams, Love is suddenly a key cog on the presumptive title faves. How he can adjust his game to a more complimentary role will be fascinating to watch. Does he become almost an afterthought, Chis Bosh-style as LeBron and Kyrie play “my turn-your turn” or will he develop into one of the deadliest off-ball players the game has ever seen, almost a peak-Peja Stojakovic with rebounding?
There is a legitimate chance that Kevin Durant, who will retire as one of the greatest players to ever play, will never be the best player in the league in any individual season. This is because of the rise of Davis, a stupendous talent who was far more unheralded than a player of his ability should have been last season due to the relative obscurity of his team. Davis’s World Cup performances demonstrated the dominance he will bring to the league until further notice. Make sure you watch it this time.
I almost wish I could just type in “Duh!”, but that’d be lazy. However, what hasn’t been written about Rose these days? Coming off two years of injuries to both knees, he seems to have lost no explosiveness, but is possibly still rusty, and maybe he won’t able to ever reach the level he was playing at before? Those are big questions, and on basketball’s biggest stage is where we’ll get our answer. This is without a doubt the ultimate make-or-break year for Derrick Rose, and regardless of the outcome, everyone should, and will, be tuning in to watch.
The best player in the game should always top a list like this, but his “Decision 2.0” definitely added to his legend. LeBron James’ return to Cleveland is both bold and calculated.
134 | BBallBreakdown.com
The big question is whether his new supporting cast is better than the one he left in Miami. If yes, then he might not need to play at MVP level to take his team to the top, but either way he probably will. For the many NBA-fans who despised ”The Decision” in 2010, this is the most exciting season to follow LeBron James in many years.
BBallBreakdown.com | 135
Predictions Who will win the major awards, and who will run away with the Larry O’Brien Championship trophy this season?
136 | BBallBreakdown.com
Torkil Bang
John Daigle
Ben Dowsett
MVP: Kevin Durant DPOY: Anthony Davis 6th Man: Gerald Henderson MIP: Avery Bradley ROY: Nerlens Noel COY: Tom Thibodeau EOY: David Griffin
MVP: LeBron James DPOY: Marc Gasol 6th Man: Thomas Robinson MIP: Larry Sanders ROY: Andrew Wiggins COY: RIck Carlisle EOY: David Griffin
MVP: Kevin Durant DPOY: Anthony Davis 6th Man: David Lee MIP: Jonas Valanciunas ROY: Marcus Smart COY: Mike Budenholzer EOY: Don Nelson
All-NBA First-Team: Kevin Durant LeBron James Joakim Noah Chris Paul Stephen Curry
All-NBA First-Team: Derrick Rose LeBron James Kevin Durant James Harden DeMarcus Cousins
All-NBA First-Team: Stephen Curry Chris Paul Kevin Durant LeBron James Marc Gasol
All-NBA Second-Team: Anthony Davis LaMarcus Aldridge Al Jefferson Kyrie Irving James Harden
All-NBA Second-Team: Chris Paul Kevin Love Stephen Curry Blake Griffin Anthony Davis
All-NBA Second-Team: Russell Westbrook James Harden Kevin Love Anthony Davis Blake Griffin
All-Defensive First-Team: LeBron James Joakim Noah Anthony Davis Avery Bradley Jimmy Butler
All-Defense First-Team: Chris Paul Kawhi Leonard LeBron James Serge Ibaka Anthony Davis
All-Defensive First-Team: Eric Bledsoe Chris Paul Kawhi Leonard Serge Ibaka Anthony Davis
All-Defensive Second-Team: Marc Gasol Michael Kidd-Gilchrist Klay Thompson Derrick Rose Serge Ibaka
All-Defense Second-Team: Derrick Rose Patrick Beverley Kawhi Leonard Joakim Noah Marc Gasol
All Defense Second-Team: Klay Thompson Patrick Beverley Tony Allen Joakim Noah Marc Gasol
All-Rookie First-Team: Elfrid Payton Jabari Parker Andrew Wiggins Norlens Noel Nikola Mirotic
All-Rookie First-Team: Elfrid Payton Marcus Smart Andrew Wiggins Jabari Parker Nerlens Noel
All-Rookie First-Team: Marcus Smart Andrew Wiggins Jabari Parker Nikola Mirotic Nerlens Noel
All-Rookie Second-Team: Marcus Smart Julius Randle Doug McDermott T.J. Warren Jusuf Nurkic
All-Rookie Second-Team: Dante Exum T.J. Warren Doug McDermott Zach LaVine K.J. McDaniels
All-Rookie Second-Team: Elfrid Payton Dante Exum Rodney Hood Julius Randle Aaron Gordon
Eastern Conference Finals: Bulls-Cavs 4-3
Eastern Conference Finals: Cavs over Bulls, 4-2
Eastern Conference Finals: Cavs over Bulls 4-2
Western Conference Finals: Spurs-Thunder 4-1
Western Conference Finals: Mavs over Clippers, 4-2
Western Conference Finals: Thunder over Grizzlies, 4-2
NBA Finals: Spurs over Bulls, 4-2
NBA Finals: Cavs over Mavs, 4-2
NBA Finals: Cavs over Thunder, 4-1 BBallBreakdown.com | 137
Kevin Ferrigan
Matthew Hochberg
Morten Jensen
Bobby Karalla
Jeff McMenamin
Seth Partnow
MVP: Kevin Durant DPOY: Marc Gasol 6th Man: Taj Gibson MIP: Anthony Davis ROY: Nerlens Noel COY: Erik Spoelstra EOY: David Griffin
MVP: LeBron James DPOY: Marc Gasol 6th Man: Vince Carter MIP: Ricky Rubio ROY: Nerlens Noel COY: Erik Spoelstra EOY: David Griffin
MVP: Kevin Durant DPOY: Anthony Davis 6th Man: Taj Gibson MIP: Giannis Antetokounmpo ROY: Jabari Parker COY: Tom Thibodeau EOY: David Griffin
MVP: LeBron James DPOY: Marc Gasol 6th Man: Devin Harris MIP: Anthony Davis ROY Jabari Parker COY: Rick Carlisle EOY: David Griffin
MVP: LeBron James DPOY: Anthony Davis 6th Man: Taj Gibson MIP: Giannis Antetokounmpo ROY: Nerlens Noel COY: David Blatt EOY: David Griffin
MVP: LeBron James DPOY: Serge Ibaka 6th Man: Vince Carter MIP: Ricky Rubio ROY: Nerlens Noel COY: Rick Carlisle EOY: David Griffin
All-NBA First-Team: Kevin Durant LeBron James Marc Gasol Chris Paul Stephen Curry
All-NBA First-Team: LeBron James Kevin Durant Anthony Davis Chris Paul Stephen Curry
All-NBA First-Team: Kevin Durant Russell Westbrook Anthony Davis LeBron James Stephen Curry
All-NBA First-Team: Kevin Durant James Harden Anthony Davis LeBron James Russell Westbrook
All-NBA First-Team: Kevin Durant James Harden Anthony Davis LeBron James Derrick Rose
All-NBA First-Team: Chris Paul Stephen Curry LeBron James Kevin Durant Dwight Howard
All-NBA Second-Team: Russell Westbrook Mike Conley Kawhi Leonard Anthony Davis Joakim Noah
All-NBA Second-Team: Russell Westbrook James Harden Kawhi Leonard Blake Griffin DeMarcus Cousins
All-NBA Second-Team: James Harden Blake Griffin DeMarcus Cousins Kevin Love Chris Paul
All-NBA Second-Team: Stephen Curry Blake Griffin Dwight Howard LaMarcus Aldridge Chris Paul
All-NBA Second-Team: Kobe Bryant Blake Griffin Dwight Howard LaMarcus Aldridge Chris Paul
All-NBA Second-Team: James Harden Russell Westbrook Kevin Love Carmelo Anthony Marc Gasol
All-Defensive First-Team: Eric Bledsoe Tony Allen Andre Iguodala Taj Gibson Marc Gasol
All-Defensive First-Team: Chris Paul Tony Allen LeBron James Taj Gibson Marc Gasol
All-Defensive First-Team: Jimmy Butler Serge Ibaka Anthony Davis LeBron James Chris Paul
All-Defensive First-Team: Andre Iguodala Serge Ibaka Marc Gasol LeBron James Chris Paul
All-Defensive First-Team: Kobe Bryant Serge Ibaka Anthony Davis LeBron James Derrick Rose
All-Defensive First-Team: Chris Paul Eric Bledsoe Serge Ibaka Jimmy Butler Joakim Noah
All-Defensive Second-Team: Ricky Rubio Jimmy Butler Kawhi Leonard Anthony Davis Dwight Howard
All-Defensive Second-Team: Ricky Rubio Lance Stephenson Kawhi Leonard Anthony Davis Dwight Howard
All-Defensive Second-Team: Andre Iguodala Taj Gibson Joakim Noah Kawhi Leonard Rajon Rondo
All-Defensive Second-Team: Kobe Bryant Anthony Davis Tyson Chandler Kawhi Leonard Russell Westbrook
All-Defensive Second-Team: Lance Stephenson Dwight Howard Joakim Noah Kawhi Leonard Chris Paul
All-Defensive Second-Team: Ricky Rubio Mike Conley Jimmy Butler LeBron James Roy Hibbert
All-Rookie First-Team: Nerlens Noel Jabari Parker Andrew Wiggins Marcus Smart Aaron Gordon
All-Rookie First-Team: Jabari Parker Andrew Wiggins Nerlens Noel Dante Exum Aaron Gordon
All-Rookie First-Team: Dante Exum Jabari Parker Andrew Wiggins Julius Randle Nerlens Noel
All-Rookie First-Team: Marcus Smart Jabari Parker Andrew Wiggins Julius Randle Nerlens Noel
All-Rookie First-Team: Elfrid Payton Jabari Parker Andrew Wiggins Julius Randle Nerlens Noel
All-Rookie First-Team: Nerlens Noel Marcus Smart Jabari Parker Andrew Wiggins Aaron Gordon
All-Rookie Second-Team: Doug McDermott Nikola Mirotic Elfrid Payton T.J. Warren Julius Randle
All-Rookie Second-Team: Doug McDermott Nikola Mirotic Nik Stauskas T.J. Warren Julius Randle
All-Rookie Second-Team: Marcus Smart Doug McDermott Noah Vonleh Nik Stauskas Nerlens Noel
All-Rookie Second-Team: Nik Stauskas Doug McDermott Aaron Gordon Elfrid Payton James Young
All-Rookie Second-Team: Dante Exum Doug McDermott Aaron Gordon K.J. McDaniels Jusuf Nurkic
All-Rookie Second-Team: Nik Stauskas Doug McDermott Nick Johnson Dante Exum Julius Randle
Eastern Conference Finals: Bulls over Cavs 4-3
Eastern Conference Finals: Bulls over Cavs, 4-3
Eastern Conference Finals: Cavs defeat Bulls, 4-2
Eastern Conference Finals: Cavs over Bulls, 4-1
Eastern Conference Finals: Cavs defeat Bulls, 4-2
NBA Finals:
Western Conference Finals: Spurs over Thunder 4-2
Western Conference Finals: Thunder over Spurs, 4-2
Western Conference Finals: Spurs defeat Thunder, 4-1
Western Conference Finals: Spurs over Mavs, 4-3
Western Conference Finals: Thunder defeat Clippers, 4-3
NBA Finals: Spurs over Bulls
NBA Finals: Thunder over Bulls, 4-2
NBA Finals: Spurs over Cavs, 4-0
NBA Finals: Spurs over Cavs, 4-2
NBA Finals: Cavs over Thunder, 4-1
138 | BBallBreakdown.com
Spurs over Cavs
BBallBreakdown.com | 139
Michael Pina
Bryan Toporek
Andrew Unterberger
MVP: LeBron James DPOY: Kawhi Leonard 6th Man: Isaiah Thomas MIP: Bradley Beal ROY: Marcus Smart COY: Rick Carlisle EOY: Daryl Morey
MVP: Kevin Durant DPOY: Marc Gasol 6th Man: Ryan Anderson MIP: Terrence Ross ROY: Jabari Parker COY: Tom Thibodeau EOY: David Griffin
MVP: LeBron James DPOY: Serge Ibaka 6th Man: Reggie Jackson MIP: Bradley Beal ROY: Marcus Smart COY: Erik Spoelstra EOY: David Griffin
All-NBA First-Team: Chris Paul James Harden LeBron James Kevin Durant Dwight Howard
All-NBA First-Team Stephen Curry James Harden Kevin Durant LeBron James Anthony Davis
All-NBA First-Team: Russell Westbrook James Harden LeBron James Kevin Durant Kevin Love
All-NBA Second-Team: Stephen Curry Russell Westbrook Kevin Love Blake Griffin Marc Gasol
All-NBA Second-Team Chris Paul Russell Westbrook Carmelo Anthony Blake Griffin DeMarcus Cousins
All-NBA Second-Team: Chris Paul Stephen Curry Carmelo Anthony Anthony Davis DeMarcus Cousins
All-Defensive First-Team: Eric Bledsoe Avery Bradley Kawhi Leonard LeBron James Dwight Howard
All-Defensive First-Team Chris Paul Kawhi Leonard LeBron James Anthony Davis Marc Gasol
All-Defensive First-Team: Chris Paul Derrick Rose Kawhi Leonard LeBron James Serge Ibaka
All-Defensive Second-Team: Chris Paul Klay Thompson Al-Farouq Aminu Serge Ibaka Joakim Noah
All-Defensive Second-Team Patrick Beverley Lance Stephenson Andre Iguodala Serge Ibaka Dwight Howard
All-Defensive Second-Team: Patrick Beverley Lance Stephenson Jimmy Butler Luol Deng Roy Hibbert
All-Rookie First-Team: Marcus Smart Andrew Wiggins Jabari Parker Julius Randle Nerlens Noel
All-Rookie First-Team Marcus Smart Dante Exum Andrew Wiggins Jabari Parker Nerlens Noel
All-Rookie First-Team: Elfrid Payton Marcus Smart Andrew Wiggins Jabari Parker Nerlens Noel
All-Rookie Second-Team: Elfrid Payton Aaron Gordon Dante Exum Nik Stauskas Adreian Payne
All-Rookie Second-Team Elfrid Payton K.J. McDaniels Doug McDermott Julius Randle Aaron Gordon
All-Rookie Second-Team: Doug McDermott T.J. Warren Nikola Mirotic K.J. McDaniels Noah Vonleh
Eastern Conference Finals: Bulls defeat Cavs, 4-2
Eastern Conference Finals: Cavaliers over Bulls, 4-3
Eastern Conference Finals: Cavs defeat Bulls, 4-1
Western Conference Finals: Thunder defeat Rockets, 4-3
Western Conference Finals: Thunder over Spurs, 4-2
Western Conference Finals: Thunder defeat Clippers, 4-2
NBA Finals: Bulls over Thunder, 4-2
NBA Finals: Thunder over Cavaliers, 4-2
NBA Finals: Cavs over Thunder, 4-2
140 | BBallBreakdown.com
BBallBreakdown.com | 141
THE WRITERS Torkil Bang John Daigle Mark Deeks
Acknowledgements This eBook wouldn’t have been possible without a ton of key players. Following is a list of people who either directly, or indirectly, helped piece this together. Imaging: All photos were used through Flickr’s Creative Common license, and to that extent, we’d like to thank Keith Allison, Shinya Suzuki, Rachel Wente-Chaney, Nicholas L.A., Joseph Glorioso, Michigan Go Blog, Danny Bollinger, Joe Bielawa, Adam Glanzman, Michael Tipton, The Daily Sports Herald, and Mark Runyon (from BasketballSchedule.net) for making their images available to the public. Drawing: A special thanks goes out to artist David Rappoccio, who did an amazing sketch for this issue.
Ben Dowsett Kevin Ferrigan Matthew Hochberg Morten Jensen
Bobby Karalla Jeff McMenamin Seth Partnow Michael Pina Bryan Toporek Andrew Unterberger
Lay-out: Philip Johansen provided the detailed lay-out, and designed the visual identity of the eBook. For that, we’re immensely grateful. 142 | BBallBreakdown.com
BBallBreakdown.com | 143