A few talented player remain available, but top options like Brandon Jennings and Nikola Pekovic are restricted free agents likely to end up back with their original team. The major moves have already been made, so it's time to grade the Winners and Losers of the off-season.
Winners
The Rockets had been stockpiling assets for years, hoping to cash in for a franchise player. They accomplished that goal last summer by acquiring James Harden from the Thunder, but that was only step one. That was enough to push them from the lottery to postseason, but to be a true contender they needed to pair Harden with another star. Now they have done that, by adding Dwight Howard.
Howard is coming off his worst season in the past 7 years, but was hampered by injuries and struggled to fit into the Lakers system. He still has the skills to be an elite big man on both sides of the floor and potentially is the biggest difference maker to switch addresses this summer. Sure, he's caused a lot of headaches and embarrassed himself for his flip-flopping antics and backstabbing, but with the security of a new max contract easing his mind, that hopefully won't be a big concern. At least not in the short term. The bigger concern is that a big reason why Howard felt he never fit in with the Lakers is because he hated their style of offense. Someone should have signed him up for a League Pass subscription so that he could have actually watched some of the Rockets games last year. That might have clued him in to the fact that Houston plays with a very similar style. Howard claims his preference is to park himself in the post, despite the fact that there are few big men that can match his ability to dive to the hoop off of a pick-and-roll and Harden is one of the best at facilitating those sets. That combination could be nearly unstoppable if Howard would only realize it. Otherwise, Houston may find themselves needing to change their style and pace to conform to Howard's wishes, which wouldn't allow them to utilize the best talents of his teammates.
LA Clippers
They accomplished their primary goal of keeping Chris Paul in town. It's unclear how close they ever were to actually losing him, especially once the idea of teaming with Howard began to look like more of a pipe dream, but it must have been a huge relief to finally see him sign his name on the dotted line. Losing CP3 would have been a huge blow to a franchise that had finally stepped out of the Lakers shadow to claim some respectability.
Luring Doc Rivers away from Boston played a role in Paul's decision to stay and the coaching upgrade will help in the postseason, but there were more moves made by the Clippers to improve last year's squad. With Paul locked up, there was no reason to pay Eric Bledsoe the big contract he will inevitably get as a restricted free agent next year, so they cashed in that trade chip in a three team sign-and-trade for JJ Redick and Jared Dudley. Both come with reasonable contracts and add some much needed shooting and floor spacing. Low cost signings of Matt Barnes and Darren Collison could prove to be a steal and add depth. It may not be the drastic upgrades they hoped for when they dreamed of Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce joining their former coach in LA, but it still improves a team near the top of the list of contenders out West.
Brooklyn Nets
Speaking of those former Celtics, the Nets shocked the league with a blockbuster trade that brought KG, Pierce and Jason Terry to Brooklyn in exchange for a deflated basketball, some used head bands and a half empty bottle of Gatorade. They even got to unload Gerald Wallace's awful contract in the deal! They may have mortgaged their future by giving up three future unprotected draft picks and compiling a roster of high priced veterans on the downside of their careers, but when you're owned by a Russian billionaire desperate to be relevant and willing to pay an enormous tax bill to do it, it's time to go into win-now mode. That's what the Nets have done.
They also managed to steal Andrei Kirilenko for the mini-mid level exception. There are a lot of executives around the league scratching their heads at that one, considering Kirilenko had already turned down better offers and claimed he wouldn't play for the full mid-level amount. Clearly his ties to the Nets owner, dating back to his days playing for the Russian team Prokhorov owned at the time, were a big factor in this bargain.
These moves look great on paper, but it remains to be seen if this actually makes them better. Will KG's health hold up now that he's another year older? How will players like Pierce and Joe Johnson co-exist when they have such similar styles? The Nets could be this year's super team that takes the league by storm or they could be a collection of talent that just doesn't mesh well and becomes a flop - you know, like last year's Lakers. Even in a best case scenario, they still aren't better than Miami. I'm not sure I'd even put them ahead of Indiana, or a Bulls team that gets a healthy Derrick Rose back. For all their efforts, they may end up still in the 4th seed in the East. Oh well, at least they should move ahead of the Knicks.
Atlanta Hawks
I'm not sure what Jedi mind trick GM Danny Ferry used to get Paul Milsap to agree to a 2 year, $19 million deal, but that has to be the biggest bargain of the summer. Considering his former teammate in Utah, Al Jefferson, got paid more than twice as much, despite Milsap arguably being the better all-around player, this was quite a coup for Atlanta. He fills the void left by Josh Smith's departure at a fraction of the cost.
They matched an offer sheet for Jeff Teague to keep their promising young point guard in town and re-signed Kyle Korver. Four years may be too long to commit to a 32 year old role player, but his best (only?) asset is his shooting, which should age just fine. They also added Elton Brand to take some of the backup big man minutes. He brings size, toughness and defense, while allowing Al Horford to shift to his preferred power forward spot when they share the court.
Cleveland Cavaliers
The Cavs took on the riskiest free agent in Andrew Bynum, who missed all of last season with knee troubles. When healthy, Bynum is one of the most dominating big men in the league. The problem is, he's rarely healthy, having only once played more than 65 games in a season during his 8 year career (granted one of those was a lockout shortened season where he did play 60 games). However, the contract is structured where the Cavs aren't really taking that big of a risk. The 2 year, $24.8 million deal is is fully unguaranteed for the second year and only half his salary is guaranteed in the first year. If Bynum breaks down again, Cleveland can still back out at the cost of only about $6 million. If he bounces back with another All-Star caliber season then he's a huge bargain and another potential piece to lure LeBron James back home next summer.
They also added Jarrett Jack, who was in the running for 6th man of the year last season. He'll provide the Cavs with a trustworthy ball handler off the bench, who can also play alongside Kyrie Irving to let him play off the ball more - similar to how he was used in crunch time with Stephen Curry in Golden State last year.
Golden State Warriors
The Warriors were up against the tax line, even after losing key players in Jarrett Jack and Carl Landry to free agency. Yet they still managed to improve by pulling off a sign-and-trade deal for Andre Iguodala in exchange for some dead weight contracts (Andris Biedrins, Richard Jefferson, Brandon Rush) and some late draft picks (first rounders in 2014 and '17 that are unlikely to be in the lottery, plus second rounders in '16, '17 and '18). It's a lot to give up long term, given the value of draft picks in today's NBA, but short term it exchanges some spare parts for an All-Star caliber player who happens to be one of the best wing defenders in the league.
Losers
I thought about putting Boston in the winners column - no, not because I'm a homer - because I believe they are doing the right thing for the future of the franchise by blowing things up now. In the short term though, it could be ugly. I suspect that's what they are hoping for, given the loaded draft class that is coming up that may contain several franchise players. As difficult as it was to say good-bye to legends like KG and Pierce, it will have been worth it if they find their next franchise player in the lottery. The problem is, depending on how quickly Rajon Rondo returns from his ACL injury, there may still be enough talent on this roster to prevent them from sinking to a bottom five team. That says as much about the number of truly terrible teams in the league as it does about the C's roster. Unless they get lucky in the lottery, their chances of winning the Riggin for Wiggins sweepstakes is a long shot.
The trade does set them up with three future unprotected picks, which could hold a lot of value once the Nets aging roster falls apart in a couple years. They are also valuable trade assets that could be used in future deals. The same can be said for some of the expiring deals Boston gets back from the Nets, including Kris Humphries and Keith Bogans.
LA Lakers
The Lakers are in a similar position as Boston, where they aren't currently good enough to be a playoff team, but depending on how soon Kobe Bryant returns, they might not be bad enough to win the lottery. They may secretly consider themselves winners for losing Dwight Howard for all the drama he caused, but from a talent standpoint, the Lakers have taken a step back. They are hoping to wait it out this year and enter next summer with a boatload of cap room in a summer when LeBron James or Carmelo Anthony may be available, but in the meantime they should be bottoming out by trading assets like Pau Gasol and telling Kobe to take his time coming back. Instead, they are adding guys like Chris Kaman and Nick Young to multi-year deals, while Kobe is setting the goal of being ready to start the season and claiming he won't be taking a pay cut after his contract expires (good luck with that, considering no other team can pay him $30 million per year, so why should the Lakers?).
Denver Nuggets
Their GM won executive of the year and then fled to Toronto. Their coach won Coach of the Year, then days later was fired. Then one of their best players jumped ship in free agency to the team that upset them in last year's postseason. Add to that the fact that they have no idea when Danillo Gallinari will return from an injury suffered late last season and it's safe to say the Nuggets have had a pretty terrible off-season.
Charlotte Bobcats
Al Jefferson is a terrific low post scorer and great rebounder, but he's awful on the defensive end. At $13.5 million per season on a three year deal, the Bobcats are drastically overpaying for what they will get out of a one-way player like Jefferson. Then again, it's the Bobcats, so they pretty much need to overpay to acquire anyone with talent. At some point the franchise needs to start winning more games so that future free agents will consider them as a destination and so that the development of their young players isn't derailed by all the constant losing. Jefferson will help with that improvement. They just may have picked the wrong year to do it. Jefferson doesn't make them a playoff contender, so now they are just a bad team instead of a historically bad team. They still have a long way to go to be a contender, but adding Big Al might knock them out of the tanking race for one of the top picks in next year's draft.
Utah Jazz
It's no surprise that they allowed Al Jefferson and Paul Milsap to leave as free agents considering Derrrick Favors and Enes Kanter are waiting in the wings to take over the starting spots. They could have kept one of those guys to leave themselves with some depth, but more surprising is that if they weren't going to bother to re-sign either of them then they should have traded them at some point in the past year. They didn't even work out a sign-and-trade for either of them, so they get nothing in return aside from cap space. In order to meet the league's minimum salary floor they had to take on Golden State's garbage contracts. The trade netted them some future draft picks that could help, but in the short term they are clearly in tanking mode. They have some promising young talent on the roster, but when Gordon Hayward is your go to scorer, your offense is going to struggle.
Dallas Mavericks
After winning a title in 2011, the Mavs allowed Tyson Chandler to walk away because they felt taking a step back at the time would set them up to land a bigger fish down the line. Despite clearing out cap space, Dallas has whiffed in free agency again. They have about $34 million in salary coming off the books after this season, when the contracts of Dirk Nowitzki, Shawn Marion and Vince Carter expire. With Dirk claiming he's willing to re-sign at a discount, they could have set themselves up for some serious cap space next summer. Which is why it doesn't make much sense that they would sign long term deals with Jose Calderon and Monta Ellis that cut into that space. Those guys aren't helping them compete in a crowded Western Conference this season and may limit their options next summer when they try to reload in a better free agency class for one more run with Dirk.
Detroit Pistons
Josh Smith is a very good player, I just don't like the fit in Detroit. A front line of Smith, Greg Monroe and Andre Drummond could be great defensively, but will be horrific on the offensive end. None of them can shoot from outside the paint, which will either make spacing a critical issue or encourage Smith to wander outside to launch three's and long two point jumpers. He has a tendency to want to shoot them, but the problem is he has a long track record of not being very good at hitting those shots. It also means poor shooters like Will Bynum and Rodney Stuckey probably can't start in the backcourt, so they may be forced to rely far too much on 37 year old Chauncey Billups. They'll soon learn he's no longer the same guy that led them to a title nearly a decade ago.
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