There’s no reason to sugarcoat it: the Senior Men’s National Team the United States sends to China for the FIBA World Cup next month isn’t going to be the Dream Team, or the Redeem Team, or even nearly as good as the squad we’ll send to the Olympics in 2020. After a number of high-profile names took themselves out of consideration, either for personal or business reasons, the resulting group of sixteen players still vying for a spot on the final 12-man roster is an eclectic mix of third-tier stars, young bucks trying to establish themselves, and high-end role players. And with a variety of international squads deploying more NBA-caliber talent than ever before, the possibility of an embarrassing defeat for Team USA is more realistic than it has been in some time.
Thing is, I’m not that worried. This year’s team won’t have the brightest stars, but it is not a star-less roster either, and if new coach Gregg Popovich and his brain trust get the rest of the picks right and get everyone to buy into a defined role, there’s reason to hope the whole could end up greater than the sum of the parts.
Those parts are certainly a bit disparate. After Marvin Bagley III recently left Team USA training camp, the sixteen remaining candidates are: Kemba Walker, Marcus Smart, Jaylen Brown, Jayson Tatum, De’Aaron Fox, Harrison Barnes, Kyle Kuzma, Brook Lopez, Khris Middleton, Myles Turner, Mason Plumlee, Joe Harris, Donovan Mitchell, Kyle Lowry, P.J. Tucker, and Derrick White. So which twelve should go to China next month, and how should they be deployed to give Team USA the best chance of continuing its international dominance? Let’s break it down.
THE ROSTER
Starting Five:
PG: Kemba Walker
SG: Donovan Mitchell
SF: Jayson Tatum
PF: Khris Middleton
C: Myles Turner
Bench:
Wing: Jaylen Brown
Guard: De’Aaron Fox
Big: P.J. Tucker
Big: Brook Lopez
Guard: Kyle Lowry
Guard: Marcus Smart
Wing/Big: Kyle Kuzma
I’ve been watching USA Basketball for most of 30 years at this point, and I’ve learned a few things about what kinds of NBA guys are successful in the FIBA game. First and foremost: you don’t need a lot of bigs, and the ones you do need don’t have to be traditional post-up brutes. The true interior lunks mostly get swallowed up by the zone principles and more cramped spacing, somewhat similar to the college game in that respect. You want guys who can protect the rim, ideally shoot a respectable percentage from outside, and are mobile enough to corral water bug point guards coming off screens. With Turner, Lopez, and Tucker, they would have enough of a combination of those traits (even if Lopez isn’t a particularly adept defender in space, his shooting and rim protection make up the difference), and they’re all low-usage enough they wouldn’t be siphoning off too many possessions from the real scorers. There’s an argument for Mason Plumlee’s energy and athleticism, but I trust Tucker as much or more to be the “dirty work” guy, and he comes with the bonus of a credible outside shot (36% career from the NBA 3-point line).
I mention the NBA line because the shorter FIBA 3-point line acts as both a blessing and a curse. Sure, it’s generally easier to make a shot from just over 22 feet away than it is from 23’9″, but the trade-off is the amount of space to operate the offense sacrifices when all ten bodies are packed in slightly closer to the hoop. Passing and driving lanes are smaller, and the defense doesn’t have to close out as far to shooters, so dishes have to be on-time and on-target. The best way to combat the more cramped geometry of the floor in the half court is to have quick point guards who can break down the initial defense and draw a lot of attention. Thankfully, this otherwise odd roster is blessed with two such players: Walker and Fox. Kemba stands out as the likely “alpha” and crunch-time assassin on this year’s team, and we should be in good hands, even if he isn’t the sexiest name to fill the role in Team USA annals (Jordan, Kobe, LeBron, Durant, among others). Fox was recently promoted from the Select Team (as I expected he would be, given my sky-high projection of his talent), and he should be a lock for the final roster and significant playing time. [Kyle Lowry is still recovering from thumb surgery and his availability is in doubt. I suspect he’ll be on the team, but he could take on more of an off-ball role, so he may not impact Fox’s court time as much as one might initially think.] Both point guards will help to unlock space in the set offense, and to push the pace in transition, which will help maximize Team USA’s biggest advantage: size and athleticism on the wing.
Most competitive international teams can more or less match us with skilled bigs and quick guards, but no other country on Earth can duplicate the sort of force we can bring to bear on the wing, even when we send our “B” squad. Part of the reason not to load up on big men is because those roster spots can instead be used on big, strong wings who can shoot, handle, defend, and get out on the break. The other teams are simply not equipped to withstand the pressure this type of player puts on them at both ends. Playing a fast, full court game is to our advantage every single time, and while the current options on the wing aren’t exactly the all-world destroyers of past tournaments, there should be more than enough to get the job done. I suspect Mitchell will be the breakout player of the tournament with his explosive, end-to-end athleticism, but Tatum, Brown, Middleton, and Kuzma will all dine on a steady diet of easy looks as well.
[I’d be OK with substituting Barnes for Kuzma (or Lowry/Smart if one of them can’t go) because he offers better shooting and defense, but he’s just such an uninspiring option. I’m no Kuzma stan, but chances are good he’ll thrive in an environment where he can run up and down for limited minutes. Same with Derrick White, who won’t take anything off the table in a small 3-and-D role if Lowry or Smart should have to bow out. Since White is not a household name and plays in San Antonio, the perception would be his selection amounts to nepotism, but he would be a fine bench option.]
Some will argue Joe Harris should be included to give the lineup one true sniper (he led the league at 47.4% from three last season and won the Three-Point Shootout at All-Star Weekend), and it’s a valid point. But as constructed, there is already shooting up and down the roster (depending how you feel about Fox’s burgeoning stroke and Smart’s possible outlier last season), so stocking up on defense and athleticism should convey a greater benefit. Yes, it seems crazy Team USA would need to make strategic sacrifices of any kind, but the summer of 2019 is a crazy time, so here we are. Again, I wouldn’t have beef with Harris replacing Kuzma, but we’re picking nits now, and I have a sneaking suspicion Kuz is going to end up on the roster one way or another. Lakers Exceptionalism infects everything.
This roster construction represents a solid mix: veterans and youth, shooting and defense, playmaking and athleticism. They would be able to play fast, defend aggressively, and get out on the break — the hallmarks of all the best American squads — without losing the ability to generate quality looks in isolation when required. Rebounding will likely be an issue against countries with a lot of size up front, but if it’s the price of getting the track meet we’re looking for, then so be it. As Tyler Durden so succinctly put it: “You wanna make an omelet, you gotta break some eggs.”
There’s been a lot of hand-wringing over who isn’t going to China, how it impacts the culture of Team USA going forward, and what it means to represent one’s country in the age of player empowerment and load management. It’s all fair. But life happens while you’re busy making other plans, and the absence of the top-billed stars may allow Jerry Colangelo, Coach Pop, and crew to stumble into a new winning formula: instead of stacking stars and hoping they play nice, create a more organic hierarchy by surrounding a few ball dominant guys with elite role players who are used to sacrificing for the greater good.
The flow of a basketball game means there are certain sets of responsibilities which have to be accounted for, outside of simply putting the ball in the hoop. The best teams assign those responsibilities to players whose talent and attitude most consistently align with their roles. The more talented iterations of Team USA have often had a stilted, “my turn, your turn” vibe to them, with minimal ball movement and an overall lack of cohesion. Sure, talent generally wins out, and even great players know to whom they should defer in the biggest moments. But basketball teams need role players. So maybe, just maybe, it will turn out to be a good idea to have your role players, you know, actually BE role players.
Perhaps I’m retconning the entire process which led us to this semi-motley crew, and the usual lack of continuity Team USA faces combined with a lower overall level of talent will be this edition’s undoing. But if all the pieces somehow fit together and this team plays truly beautiful basketball on the way to another title, there will be some difficult decisions to make when the Olympics roll around next year. And in the meantime, if everyone actually hates superteams as much as they claim to, maybe it will be fun to root for a team that’s not such an overwhelming favorite for once.
You go to war with the army you have, not the army you wish you had. And our armies (basketball and otherwise) are not in the business of losing, so this team isn’t going to roll over just because it doesn’t consist of twelve superstars. Play great defense, force turnovers, push the pace, move the ball, and hit enough open shots. The rest will take care of itself.
Let’s go, Team USA.
[Update: Kyle Lowry has since confirmed his injury will keep him out of the World Cup and he has withdrawn his name from the player pool. Marcus Smart remains day-to-day.]
SUMMER LEAGUE PERFORMANCES IN VEGAS can be, for lack of a better word, a mirage. [I’ll show myself out.] Every year, there are random dudes who come out of the woodwork and catch fire to an unsustainable degree for a couple weeks before immediately receding back to the margins of the professional basketball world. These fluky breakouts are always fun, but the negative effect of them is the proliferation of the idea that Summer League is nonsense and what a guy does there basically can’t matter.
But we know this isn’t true, right? There is meaning to be derived from Summer League, if you know where and how to look. There are the untalented try-hards who struggle with the speed and athleticism of the NBA game; they aren’t really worth discussing, but I hope they enjoy their time living abroad. There are the dudes who find their level at Summer League and have those fluky-type performances. Again, nice stories, but teams aren’t looking for them. Then, there’s the cream of the crop, the guys who are clearly better than the environment in which they temporarily find themselves. They look to be a playing a different game than the dregs around them, and it’s safe to assume they won’t be forced to lower themselves to this level of competition in future seasons. I call them the graduates, and they are the focus today. Let’s take a look at some guys who excelled in Summer League play in a way that portends success when the real games begin. And where else to start but with…
Brandon Clarke, Memphis Grizzlies: The MVP of both the Summer League and the Championship was a revelation for the “champion” Grizzlies. Clarke averaged 14.7/ 9.8/ 2.0 and 1.8 blocks per outing on 55% shooting in only 22 minutes per game, but the numbers don’t tell the whole story. His athleticism on the interior and in transition popped off the screen, and he showed a mature feel for the game, improved shooting mechanics, and command of defensive principles. He fell to no. 21 in the draft due to his perceived lack of upside (he’ll be 23 by the time the season starts) and questions about whether he can extend his shooting range, but even if those concerns prove valid, it looks like he is going to make a lot of teams regret passing on him. I look at Clarke and see a rich man’s Kenneth Faried. Brandon is the same type of high-energy, bouncy scorer/rebounder, but with a chance to be a borderline-elite defensive player (very much unlike the Manimal). In 2015-16, Faried averaged 17.7 pts and 12.3 rebs per 36 minutes with Denver in his age-26 season, and that feels like a reasonable statistical floor for prime Clarke. [Pascal Siakam and John Collins both also feel like reasonable comps, though I won’t go so far as the folks likening him to a young Shawn Marion just yet.] The paint is going to be a no-fly zone with the combination of Clarke and Jaren Jackson, Jr., and their offensive games should also mesh well (along with the scoring and playmaking of Ja Morant). It’s impossible to project anything more than a few years down the line in today’s NBA, but the Grizzlies’ future looks phenomenal.
Nickeil Alexander-Walker, New Orleans Pelicans: I have a soft spot for NAW, and having seen him several times in-person at Virginia Tech, I had a sense he was going to be a steal in the draft. After seeing him convincingly prove he is far too good for Summer League, I am happy to have been right. The 6-5 combo guard dazzled with an array of passes and finishes using both hands, wrapping up his four games in Vegas with averages of 24.3 pts, 4.8 rebs, 6.0 asts, and 2.8 stls in 30.5 minutes. He looks like he could battle for early minutes with the Pels, even amid a crowded guard/wing rotation. The marriage of team and player should be a healthy, happy one for a long time. Welcome to NAWlins.
Mitchell Robinson, New York Knicks: It’s not a great sign the Knicks sent most of their projected starting lineup to Vegas and didn’t even do that well, but don’t blame it on second-year big Robinson. He shot an alarming 85% from the field over five games to the tune of 13.8 pts, 10.6 rebs, and 3.8 blocks per contest. He basically had overmatched opponents voiding their bowels at the rim on both ends of the floor, and when dudes who don’t even have contracts are making “business decisions,” you know it’s terrifying. There are legitimate reasons for concern about a number of New York’s young prospects (the good, bad, and ugly of RJ Barrett’s performance is a subject for another day), but they have to feel good knowing nothing about Robinson’s surprising play from last season was a fluke. Dude is gonna stick.
Jarrett Allen, Brooklyn Nets: This one feels unfair, as I could have told you before the games in Vegas began Allen was too good to be playing with all these bottom-feeders. I suppose the Nets just wanted to get him some more game reps and let him stretch his wings a bit as a player, but from what I saw, it appeared he mostly camped out in the paint and yammed on fools who had no chance of stopping him. The Nets would have been better served sending DeAndre Jordan to Summer League, if nothing else just to make him earn every red cent of the blood money he extorted from them as part of landing Kevin Durant. But I digress. Don’t send Jarrett Allen to Vegas anymore, Nets. He’s way too good.
Lonnie Walker IV, San Antonio Spurs: The Spurs’ first-round pick from 2018 suffered through an injury-plagued rookie year and never got a real opportunity to crack the rotation for a playoff team. Now that we’ve seen him healthy, though? Damn, it seems like San Antonio has done it again. The Miami product looks the part of a do-everything shooting guard, with athleticism to spare, nice touch, and the potential to be an elite defender. DeMar DeRozan can opt out of his contract after this season and become an unrestricted free agent, and if Walker can stay healthy and take advantage of additional opportunity, the Spurs might just be OK with letting the 4-time All-Star walk. In any case, San Antonio’s young back court trio of Walker, Dejounte Murray, and Derrick White should bring a scary level of scoring, playmaking, athleticism, and perimeter defense for many years to come. [As an aside, it feels like there are a ton of teams about whom we can make similar pronouncements at this point. It increasingly looks like we are entering a golden age of overall talent in the league. I mean, outside of maybe Charlotte, Washington, New York, Cleveland, and Phoenix, are there any rosters that look legitimately terrible on paper? Basically every other team is blessed with top-line talent, tremendous depth, or a combination of the two.]
Tyler Herro, Miami Heat: A polarizing choice on draft night, it looks as though Kentucky coach John Calipari may have been keeping yet another top prospect under wraps with his star-stacking, egalitarian approach. Herro displayed the shooting touch most expected in Vegas, but he also flashed an advanced off-the-bounce game and more playmaking flair than what we saw at UK. [It’s like Devin Booker deja vu.] I don’t know if it will all translate when the bright lights come on and the defenders are bigger, faster, and stronger, but if the theory of nominative determinism is to be believed, then big things are ahead for Miami’s new folk, erm, favorite.
Anfernee Simons, Portland Trail Blazers: Much like Lonnie Walker, Simons is another 2018 first-round pick who didn’t get much run for a playoff team last year, and also flashed top-shelf athleticism and shot creation against lesser competition in Summer League. “Don’t Call Me Penny” Simons averaged 22.0 ppg on efficient 56% shooting, and along with fellow youngsters Nassir Little and Zach Collins, gives Portland a path to additional stars to flank Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum and/or valuable trade assets to bring in more veteran help. A lot of folks are going to overlook Portland amid the revamped West next season, but don’t be surprised if they are in the mix with the top-tier squads.
Honorable Mentions:
Carsen Edwards, Boston Celtics: He is what he thought he was — an undersized, spark plug bench guard who is going to be a professional bucket-getter and nothing more.
Tony Bradley, Utah Jazz: I don’t know why, I’ve just always liked this guy. He possesses a legit NBA body and athleticism, but it’s taken him some time to come out of his shell as a “raw” talent, so it was refreshing to see him look like more of a real basketball player in Vegas.
Rui Hachimura, Washington Wizards: I’m not super-high on him and feel like he was a bit over-drafted, but to his credit, he came out and looked like an actual talent, averaging 19-and-7 on 50% shooting, albeit in only 3 games. I’m reserving judgment, but it was an encouraging start.
Zhaire Smith, Philadelphia 76ers: You can read a well-written profile of him here. The development of his jumper will determine his ceiling, but damn, the athleticism and defensive potential are real. With all the other assets Philly has burned to assemble the current team, they are going to need him to play a role.
Jaxson Hayes, New Orleans Pelicans: For a guy labeled as a “raw” athlete, he showed a fairly diverse skill set and developing footwork. He’ll have a long way to go to master NBA defensive principles and smooth out the rough edges, but the ingredients are certainly there, and further along than many would have thought at this point. And, umm, not a lot of dudes can do this:
New Orleans has got to be pretty damn pleased with their summer.
Unless there are any more earth-shaking transactions over the next couple weeks — never something we should bet against, given how this offseason has gone so far — the column will be on a brief hiatus, but check back for more great content coming soon. Thanks for reading!
Top Photo Credit: Stephen R. Sylvanie/USA TODAY Sports
WE WERE SO CLOSE. All the big free agent fish had been landed. The Summer League in Vegas is ongoing, but with a number of the big names not playing, it isn’t exactly capturing the basketball zeitgeist. The wave of the 24/7 NBA news cycle had crested and was beginning to recede. All of us were ready for the brief hibernation from the league the dog days of summer typically engender. Then, Daryl Morey decided he’d go ahead and do this to the league:
The news broke Thursday night future Hall of Fame point guards Russell Westbrook and Chris Paul would be swapped, with Oklahoma City also receiving two future protected first-round picks and options on two additional pick swaps from Houston. There are a ton of angles to this thing, but I’ve already written about a bazillion words this week, so I’m going to keep it brief today. Let’s get started.
Once the Thunder traded Paul George for every Clippers’ draft pick not nailed down, it became a fait accompli Westbrook would be next out the door. The question on everyone’s mind was, what is his value? Westbrook’s contract is one of the very worst in the league, a supermax with four years remaining for a 30-year-old point guard with a long history of knee issues who is tremendously reliant on athleticism to be effective. He remains one of the best 10-15 players in the league, but even so, Russ represents a difficult financial, cultural, and strategic fit for nearly every team in the league. On his podcast, ESPN’s Zach Lowe went so far as to say he didn’t think a team trading for Westbrook should include an asset for him; that is, he perceived Westbrook’s trade value as a net negative, and the return should reflect it.
Well, Houston saw it differently. Giving up two first-rounders far enough in the future to where Harden could be in the post-prime phase of his career is a massive risk, and the two pick swaps just feel like OKC GM Sam Presti rubbing it in. Russ is younger and a more valuable player at this moment than CP3, but he also has one additional year on his deal, so Paul represents somewhat of a more movable contract. [More on that in a moment.] For the second time in a week, OKC found a hyper-motivated buyer and extracted a premium, even as they sent out the best player in both deals and kicked off a deep rebuild in the process. Houston’s front office swore up and down the reported issues between Paul and James Harden were a complete fabrication, but seeing the price they paid to separate the two in order to bring in a new star of questionable fit and overall value more or less serves as confirmation something was rotten in their locker room. Perhaps they make the move anyway because they needed to upgrade their talent level and this was about the only way left to do it, but would they have given up so much if they weren’t desperate?
It was reported Miami was part of the trade talks as a destination for both players as well. Allegedly, the teams looked at building a three-way trade which would send Paul to Miami, but couldn’t agree on the parameters, so OKC and Houston went it alone. Miami still appears to be in pursuit of Paul, and Presti may look to re-route the Point God as a separate transaction. This makes a lot of sense for the respective timelines of both Miami and OKC, as the 34-year-old Paul has no business toiling away for a Thunder team in the midst of tearing the building down to the studs, while the Heat are forever star-hunting, damn the torpedoes and luxury tax implications. Miami remains hard-capped, making any deal a financial challenge, but a potential trade would likely center around Goran Dragic’s expiring contract ($19.2 million in ’19-’20), and probably Kelly Olynyk, who is under contract for the next two years with the second year being a player option. The sticking point will probably be Justise Winslow, who would make the deal work financially but is too good of an asset to sacrifice for a contract as lousy as Paul’s. OKC could sweeten the pot with one or more of their bounty of picks, but after sending away all of their best players, they may be hesitant to immediately start dealing from a future which hasn’t even begun yet. In any case, even after everything that’s happened over the last two weeks, the point guard carousel still hasn’t stopped turning, so stay tuned for the next league-shaking transaction.
Houston, as is its custom, is pushing all its chips to the center of the table once again. The financial aspect is hardly worth discussing on their end. Their future is mortgaged even further than it was before, and the gamble will either pay off with a championship, or Daryl Morey will lose his job. There’s no real in-between. From a basketball perspective, it’s a much more fascinating move. Pairing two elite scorers and playmakers (as well as former OKC teammates) in Westbrook and Harden comes with obvious benefits, but the potential pitfalls in terms of fit and chemistry are staggering. The “there’s only one ball” argument is reductive, but redundant skill sets can lead to diminishing returns. And any way you slice it, Usage Rate is a thing that exists, and these two stars are responsible for the two highest single-season Usage Rates in the history of the league. Taking the ball out of either player’s hands will inevitably sap some of their historic production (in terms of pure volume, at least; efficiency may be a different matter), and leaving nothing but scraps for the remaining offensive players can tend to have a deleterious effect on the overall ecosystem. [Think about playing pick-up ball with the most unconscionable gunner you’ve ever encountered. Is it fun playing with him? Do you try as hard when you know you’re never going to touch the ball? Do you press too much on the rare occasion the ball does find you? Now picture that, but with two of those dudes on your team.]
Harden is undoubtedly the better overall player at this phase of each player’s career, so the optimal configuration has the ball in his hands most of the time. Problem is, this puts Russ off-ball, where he is both lackadaisical and the worst high-volume three-point shooter in the history of the NBA, so there are obvious concerns about defenses sagging off him to put more pressure on Harden. The alternative is to have Harden spot up off of Westbrook, which makes some sense because Harden is the superior shooter of the two, but if we’ve learned anything about Houston over the last few years, it’s that their offense is at its best when The Beard is at the controls. Why mothball one of the most effective offenses in history for any reason?
The counter to this argument is Houston has run into problems in the playoffs because opposing defenses figure them out over a long series, so maybe having some counters and different looks would make them a tougher out in the postseason. I suppose it’s possible, but it’s unclear if the juice is worth the squeeze. The other argument for the pairing is, with some of their ballhandling responsibilities sloughed off to the other, maybe both Harden and Westbrook will commit to better defensive effort than they have shown over the last few years. There’s no proof of concept here — remember, these two last played together seven years ago, or roughly three lifetimes in NBA years — but it’s a way to sell the move, if one were so inclined.
Overall, I question the fit, but Houston is better than they were yesterday, I guess? It’s easy to forget the team they already had was a top-tier contender the last few years. They’ve had bad luck and bad timing (and the misfortune to keep running into Golden State), but if you could simulate these past three years a few thousand times on a computer, there are definitely a bunch of times in there where the Rockets win the title, so it’s not like they’re far away or their gambles thus far have been foolish. Do I think this move makes them the favorite? No. The Clippers still hold the distinction until further notice. But they did successfully retool to where they’re still in the game and the locker room should be a more peaceful place, so mission accomplished on that front.
Now for the love of God, can we have some damn peace and quiet?
THE STORY OF THE NBA’S LEAGUE-ALTERING SUMMER OF 2019 ends with Kawhi Leonard, but it also begins with him. Kind of.
Way back in June 2012, in what feels generations ago in NBA time, LeBron James and the Miami Heat — the dominant team of that long-forgotten era — faced off against Kevin Durant and the Oklahoma City Thunder in the NBA Finals. The narrative was pushed by many (including myself) that this was the beginning of the league’s next signature rivalry. In some ways, this proved true. The two super-duperstars did face off three times in the Finals over the ensuing seven seasons, albeit with each player embarking on a highly-publicized change of scenery in between the first and second meetings.
Amid all the shine (and shade) being deservedly thrown at these two, it was easy to miss how Kawhi was quietly, stoically, methodically building his case for entry to the same pantheon of greatness LeBron and KD inhabited. Leonard’s origin story is the 2013 Finals, when at 21 years old, he was given the primary defensive responsibility on peak-of-his-powers LeBron. Even at his absolute apex, King James did not exactly relish the challenge:
While Miami would hold on to win that series in historic fashion, Kawhi and the Spurs would come back to convincingly take the rematch the following season against an aging, fraying Heat team, with Leonard being named Finals MVP amid one of the most beautiful displays of offensive team basketball the league has ever seen. It was Kawhi’s coming-out party, and a sign of things to come, even if we didn’t all quite realize it at the time.
He was named Defensive Player of the Year in 2015, then began to truly put it together offensively the following season. He repeated as DPOY in ’15-’16 but also upped his scoring to 21.2 ppg, garnering his first All-Star appearance, was named First Team All-NBA, and finished 2nd in MVP voting. [Yes, he did not receive a single first-place vote, as this was the season Steph Curry went bonkers and won the award unanimously, but it was impressive nonetheless.] He was even better in ’16-’17, chipping in a 25.5/ 5.8/ 3.5 line on 48/38/88 shooting splits for a 61-win Spurs team. He finished third in MVP voting that year, which went largely unnoticed because of the historic numbers put up by Russell Westbrook and James Harden, and the value debate over those two which ensued. He raised his game yet again in the playoffs that year, averaging 27.7/ 7.8/ 4.6 on otherworldly 53/ 46/ 93 shooting, willing a more limited San Antonio team into the Conference Finals to face the 67-win Warriors’ juggernaut.
He was absolutely torching the Dubs in Game One, leading the Spurs to a 25-point cushion until Zaza Fucking Pachulia undercut him on a jumper and changed the course of NBA history. Durant and the Warriors would go on to easily handle the Kawhi-less Spurs before laying the hammer on LeBron’s Cavs in the Finals, with KD garnering his first ring and Finals MVP. Kawhi, on the other hand, would have his injury linger into the following season, playing only a confusing nine games in ’17-’18 amid unexplained tension between Leonard, the Spurs’ front office, and their training staff. Teammates who practiced and scrimmaged with Kawhi believed he was ready to play, and yet he remained out for long stretches of the season in what some league insiders came to view as Kawhi holding the organization hostage. It was the first time he had been viewed publicly as anything other than the consummate Spur, the quiet, humble superstar forged in the mold of Tim Duncan.
But he wasn’t that guy. He is, and always has been, a ruthless competitor, willing to do anything to put himself in a better position to win. Comparing his exit from San Antonio to Durant’s exodus to Golden State is an interesting exercise in how the prevailing narrative of a player shapes the way we perceive his actions. Kawhi, the quiet, team-first superstar and NBA champion, essentially held up two big middle fingers to one of the most venerated organizations in sports, withholding his services from them for an entire year while still under contract before demanding a trade, and we all basically forget this ever happened. Durant, on the other hand, simply used his well-earned right as a free agent to choose a destination where he felt he had the best chance to win — he was right, by the way — and became the biggest villain the league has seen since LeBron, well, did the exact same thing. When we zoom out to the thousand-foot view of how the league operates (or at least is supposed to operate), how on Earth is what Kawhi did better, and why does he get such a pass for it?
I’m not here to crap on Kawhi for how things played out two years ago. [See?] Rather, I’m merely pointing out how this power-playing, gangster version of him was always in there, but circumstances and his utterly inscrutable nature allowed it to slide under the radar. He has been under our noses all this time, but we do not know him, and thus, we could not have known what was coming this week.
We often talk about LeBron being a “shadow GM” for whichever franchise he is playing for, but holy shit, did Kawhi just out-LeBron LeBron. First, he forced his way out of San Antonio and depressed his own trade value — whether purposely or not — which allowed him to go to a fully-stocked team which he could lead to a championship. Actually going and winning said championship — you know, kind of an important part of the equation — and ending yet another dynasty along the way rendered him a “made man” in Toronto, creating an environment where he could do absolutely anything he wanted in free agency and not take any shit for it.
What came next was THE masterstroke of the player empowerment decade. [You know, the one LeBron kicked off with his power move to Miami.] Again, we know very little about Kawhi as a person, but we know he has always wanted to return to his Southern California roots and play for an L.A. team. We know from reports that the Clippers had been following him around, playing a not-so-secret game of footsie with him throughout last season. We know the Clippers front office is whip-smart under the ownership of Steve Ballmer and has made a ton of shrewd personnel moves to set up this summer, but we also know the Lakers, for all their incompetence and disarray, have LeBron and Anthony Davis on their roster. So many assumed Kawhi would either stay in Toronto to run back the championship squad, or go to the Lakers and form the biggest Big Three the league had ever seen.
But Kawhi, the unknowable superstar, had other ideas. In retrospect, it appears he knew what he wanted all along, and the whole “Kawhi Watch 2019” was really just him buying time to engineer the trade which would bring Paul George along with him to L.A. [With the happy side effect of tying up the Lakers’ sloppily obtained cap space for several days as all the other big names fell off the board.] We don’t know what his actual level of involvement in the mechanics of the trade were (more on this in a bit), but somehow, with no leaks and no fanfare, Kawhi manufactured a situation where he is now the alpha dog for a deep, versatile team which will go into the year as the favorite to win the title, in the city where he wanted to live, and he completely fucked over the Lakers (and his biggest individual rival) in the process. Humans can’t beat computers at chess anymore. Checkmate and what it do, baybeeee?
From an on-court perspective, the roster Kawhi and the Clips’ front office (jointly?) engineered looks like a nightmare. There’s no other way to put it: the Clippers sold the damn farm to bring in Paul George. They had no choice because it meant the difference between getting both PG and Kawhi or getting neither of them. No matter the cost, you make that move every time. They gave up Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, a young, smart, skilled point guard with length who tops out as a multi-time All-Star. They also threw in the final year of Danilo Gallinari’s contract, who was quietly excellent last season even as he suffered yet another injury late in the year. Leave it right there, and OKC got a decent haul, considering the circumstances. But then came the picks. Oh, the picks. L.A. sent out three of their own unprotected firsts, along with two unprotected pick swaps, AND two first-rounders they had obtained from Miami. [One is an unprotected pick they got in the Tobias Harris trade and the other is a lottery-protected one they picked up for absorbing Moe Harkless in a four-way trade this week. Harkless will probably be a useful low-exposure bench player for them, so this one doesn’t qualify as too much of a loss.] So, depending how things play out, OKC could end up with as many as SEVEN first-rounders from the deal, along with a really good, young player on a cheap contract, and a valuable expiring trade chip. It’s rare when you can say that the team trading away the superstar “won” the trade, and it’s true in this case, yet both teams would absolutely pull the trigger again on it in a heartbeat.
Sure, the Clippers paid 200 cents on the dollar for George, a guy who is coming off surgeries on both shoulders, by the way. The difference between their move for PG and the Lakers’ all-in trade for Davis is this: the Clips didn’t give away everything. The Lakers left their roster and cupboard of picks completely bare for the next half-decade. After completing the trade, they really only had three bankable NBA players on their roster. [Granted, two of those guys are LeBron James and Anthony Davis, but still, it’s a bit of a problem.] Having to wait out Kawhi, coming up empty, and then scrambling to sign a bunch of veteran dingleberries (plus Danny Green, who is useful) left them with a strange, potentially ill-fitting roster that may struggle to defend, particularly at the point of attack.
The Clips look to have no such issues. Despite having no first-round picks until well after Southern California falls off the U.S. and into the ocean due to climate change, they are still left with a deep, talented roster outside of the top two guys that should be able to play any style of basketball an opponent throws at them. All great teams need an identity, and this squad should have no problem establishing one as a long, tenacious, lock-down defensive force, especially at the guards and wings. They could use more rim protection, but they may not need a whole lot when they can deploy Kawhi, George, and Pat Beverley to put the clamps on all of the opposing team’s ballhandlers. It’s not hyperbole to say there hasn’t been a perimeter defensive trio this dominant since the days of Jordan, Scottie Pippen, and Ron Harper during the Bulls’ second three-peat.
They look just as tough on the other end. George is the perfect complementary star to Kawhi’s iso-heavy brilliance, and they’ll also have the spot-up shooting of Beverley and second-year sniper Landry Shamet (seriously, why in the hell did Philly give him away in the Harris deal??), as well as the pick-and-roll artistry of the Lou Williams/Montrezl Harrell combo coming off the bench. They have Ivica Zubac back on an affordable contract to provide muscle against traditional centers, along with spot minutes from Harkless, JaMychal Green, and Rodney McGruder, and possible improvement (or useful trade chips) in promising youngsters Jerome Robinson and Sindarius Thornwell. It’s a testament to the masterful job the Clippers’ brass has done over the last couple years that they can send out a metric shit-ton of assets for George and still have such a deep, complete team with which to surround their two new stars right off the bat. In addition, outside of Harrell (who they’ll likely re-sign with a fat pay raise next summer using his Bird Rights), all of the key players are signed for multiple seasons and the roster isn’t even that expensive. And should the Disease of More kick in at some point, it’s not like Steve Ballmer isn’t rich (and crazy) enough to swallow a bunch of luxury tax. Kneel before the altar of Jerry West, bitches.
Lawrence Frank, Doc Rivers, and Jerry West | Basketball Insiders
It’s a new league in the wake of Kawhi’s machinations, along with Golden State’s rapid descent from perennial title favorite to Western Conference also-ran. The beauty of what Leonard pulled off is had he gone to the Lakers, we would have simply replaced one unfairly stacked mega-team with another. Instead, we’re left with this gorgeously balanced, wide-open league, the likes of which we haven’t seen in at least a decade. [The Ringer’s resident stat nerd, Zach Kram, does a nice job breaking down the league’s newfound parity, and how it stacks up historically, here.] This brave, new competitive world may not turn out to be a boon for TV ratings — the league has historically done the best when there are one or two dominant teams — but it is going to be a night-in, night-out joy for us hardcore basketball dorks.
This is about more than the Battle for L.A. With the presumed demise of the Warriors’ dynasty, a number of other teams have joined the dogfight at the top of the league. Let’s talk about them!
Brooklyn Nets: It seems crazy I haven’t yet mentioned the team which landed two of the top three free agent targets of the summer, in Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving. KD probably won’t play next season as he recovers from his tragic Achilles’ tear, and Kyrie is a damn weirdo with the potential to kill the carefully crafted chemistry the Nets’ franchise has fostered over the last few years. Both these things are a bit of a buzzkill, but setting those aside, we’re basically looking at Clippers East, especially considering the symmetry of what both teams did to the traditional “big brothers” in their respective cities.
The Nets can bank on internal improvement from their remaining young-ish core (Caris LeVert, Spencer Dinwiddie, Joe Harris, Jarrett Allen), and assuming he doesn’t tear the locker room apart from the inside, Kyrie is an upgrade over D’Angelo Russell in a pure basketball sense. The team will be competitive this season, and if Durant returns as at least 85% of the player he was before, they become an Eastern Conference heavyweight in ’20-’21. [As a side note, the 4-year/$40 million deal they gave to DeAndre Jordan was some NONSENSE. I get it’s the cost of landing Durant — he and DJ are long-time friends — but four years? Really?? Did they SEE DJ play the last couple years? He’s basically washed right now, and if it were me, I’d clearly rather have Jarrett Allen on the court over him at any given time. In four years? Jesus Christ. I predict “DeAndre Jordan stretch provision” will be the top Google search in Brooklyn before New Year’s.]
In any case, Brooklyn’s haul (and the Knicks’ failure) would have been THE story of free agency had the Kawhi Coup not taken place, so we shouldn’t give it short shrift. After emerging from the Long Night, the Nets are in the Game of Thrones now; they either win or they die.
Utah Jazz: Every NBA nerd is contractually obligated to say he loves what Utah did this summer. I get it. This take is already so cold it’s approaching zero Kelvin. But I do love what they did! They acquitted themselves phenomenally well in the Mike Conley trade — especially considering what other stars are going for at present — and followed it up by fortifying their lineup with outstanding fits in Bojan Bogdanovic and “Easy” Ed Davis. They get docked slightly for signing Jeff Green, though at least they didn’t pay him much or give up anything for him like everyone else did over the years. I even kinda like taking a flier on Emmanuel Mudiay, who has been a disappointment but has shown some progress and could be a solid buy-low, post-hype sleeper-type guy. [Yes, I had to do some serious mental gymnastics to get there, but let’s just go with it.] They have Royce O’Neale as a solid, tough-minded defensive wing, and Dante Exum is actually a useful third guard when he can string a few healthy games together.
In the aggregate, the Jazz lost nothing about what made them dominant defensively, and the additions of Conley and Bogdanovic (along with moving Donovan Mitchell off the ball a bit more) will make their offense far more dynamic and give Rudy Gobert way more space to roll to the rim. Short of Mitchell making a massive leap, do they have the top line talent to rule the West? Probably not. But it is impossible to knock the way they’ve gone about putting together a deep, talented, cohesive roster without being able to lure top free agents. Terrific job.
Philadelphia 76ers: I don’t have the slightest idea if this team will work, and yet paradoxically, it still feels like one of the two best teams in the East this year. Turning Jimmy Butler into Josh Richardson in one of the more complicated sign-and-trades in recent memory was an under-the-radar win for Philly, as Richardson should give them 90% of Butler’s production at a fraction of the cost and none of the headaches. They are going all-in on a wildly disruptive amount of size and length, and it’s not the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard. The size they had with last year’s team gave the Raptors the most trouble they encountered during their run to the title, and the Sixers will be even bigger this year. It’s hard to quibble with the addition of Horford, especially with the amount of trouble he’s given Joel Embiid over the last couple years. [If you can’t beat ’em, sign ’em?] Four years and as much as $109 million is a lot for a guy who already has twelve seasons and nearly 30,000 total minutes (regular season plus playoffs) on his odometer, but few big men can impact the game in as many ways as Big Al, and his game should age well. Insurance for Joel Embiid isn’t the worst thing in the world either, given his history of injury and conditioning issues, so the potential redundancy could turn out to be a boon.
Maxing out Tobias Harris is an overpay, but much like Milwaukee with Khris Middleton, Philly had no way of replacing his production, so they just had to swallow hard and hope he’s more impactful without Butler around soaking up wing possessions. Ben Simmons still can’t shoot as far as we know, and if the hothouse of the playoffs again reduces him to a baseline dunker spot guy/versatile defender, the max extension he just signed could end up looking borderline toxic sooner rather than later. The loss of J.J. Redick to New Orleans hurts, but GM Elton Brand did a good job fortifying the bench to create some semblance of depth which they lacked last season. This is a fascinating team in ’19-’20.
Indiana Pacers: It still feels like the Pacers are a step below true contention, but much like Utah, they have done a fantastic job rounding out their roster without the ability to land elite free agents. They paid a heavy price to acquire restricted free agent Malcolm Brogdon (4-years/$85 million plus a protected first and two seconds to Milwaukee in the sign-and-trade), but he’s a perfect back court complement to Victor Oladipo, whenever he returns. Indy also nabbed Jeremy Lamb on a below-market contract to replace some of the production they lost with Thad Young and Bojan Bogdanovic. They seem to think they can play a twin towers lineup with both Myles Turner and Domantas Sabonis — I am skeptical — but if it doesn’t work out, they should have the ability to flip one of the two for a real forward who can goose their scoring and spacing. [Absconding with T.J. Warren for nothing from Phoenix’s incompetent front office counts as a win, but he may not be the answer in the starting lineup.] A team which might not be done, and could be really interesting if things coalesce.
Beyond the teams who pushed their chips in for immediate contention, there are also a number of franchises who did big things this summer to position themselves for the future and give their fans hope where none may have previously existed. Here’s some shine for the rebuilders and the up-and-comers:
New Orleans Pelicans: It took a big stroke of lottery luck to be in this position (Zion plus all the future assets in the known universe), but at the same time, the new basketball Grand Poobah in New Orleans, David Griffin, has done a masterful job so far in maximizing the return for Anthony Davis under difficult circumstances, extracting additional draft capital from Atlanta, picking smart, complementary players to go with Zion, and making shrewd free agency moves. It’s almost as if he’s helmed a team before which was organized around a hyper-athletic, freight train forward.
He’s taking all the best concepts for building around LeBron — add shooting, rim protection, and secondary playmaking — and allowing it to incubate on what will end up a super-fun, lightning-fast paced team. Adding J.J. Redick and Derrick Favors were low-risk, high-upside moves, and it gives them the “adults in the room” young teams often need to maintain a professional culture. Jrue Holiday and Lonzo Ball now make up the best defensive back court this side of San Antonio, Brandon Ingram should be a nice fit alongside Zion, rookie Jaxson Hayes is dunking all over unsuspecting fools at Summer League, and Nickeil Alexander-Walker is coming into the perfect ecosystem for his development. They’re going to have a deep bench — I kind of like both Kenrich Williams and Frank Jackson — and if a couple of the young guys develop a little quicker than anticipated (or, you know, at all, in the case of Ball and Ingram), then there’s a feisty, competitive team here in the near term.
It’s tough to imagine it amounts to a playoff outfit this season in the ever-brutal West, but if ownership gets antsy about the timeline, Griff can always bump it up by dealing for a veteran upgrade from his treasure trove of picks and young players. In the end, it will come down to if Zion is the generational supernova we all think he will be, and they may have to settle for the title of “League Pass darlings” in ’19-’20, but the sky is the limit now for this franchise.
Oklahoma City Thunder: It feels strange to lump the Zombie Sonics in this category following a decade of playoff runs, but after being strong-armed into dealing Paul George by our new robot overlord Kawhi, it seems like the closest fit for them. First, there are a lot of angles to this thing, and a lot of directions it could go. But it’s important to start here: as much as GM Sam Presti may have been blindsided by PG’s trade request, at some level deep down, he had to be thanking his lucky stars. As shrewd and opportunistic as Presti has been during his OKC tenure, he was stuck. He built a top-heavy roster which was trapped in luxury tax hell and yet still had no chance to compete for titles. It was a terrible place to be, and the PG situation (and the resulting cornucopia of assets he was able to extort from the Clippers) ended up being his “Get Out of Jail Free” card.
Now, he has options. They could simply roll out the ball with the roster they have, even if they may have to give up another player/pick to get under the luxury tax. A core of Westbrook-SGA-Gallinari-Adams-Schroder is at least competitive, and even if they were to fall out of the playoffs, the new, flattened lottery odds offer some potential consolation. They could also retool around Westbrook if they so choose. Adams and Schroder probably have negative trade value due to their contracts, but some combination of SGA, Gallo, and some of those picks they just received could net a hefty return. The nuclear option — and the one now being bandied about in the media — is to ship out Westbrook and enter into a full-on rebuild. The logistics of trading Russ are difficult. His contract is an albatross, even as he remains one of the best fifteen players in the world.
The most logical fit, ever hungry for star power, is Miami, but any potential deal comes with several pitfalls. First, the Heat are hard-capped this season, meaning they cannot take in a single penny more in salary than they send out in any trade. This doesn’t jibe well with OKC as a trade partner, since as previously discussed, they will be looking to get off money in virtually any deal. It would likely require re-routing assets through a third team, which is certainly doable but creates additional complications. The second issue is Presti may be hesitant to deal Westbrook to Miami in the first place. Two of the picks in the PG deal originally belonged to Miami (an unprotected 2021 first and a lottery-protected 2023 first), so by bolstering the Heat’s roster, OKC could be actively devaluing its own future assets. It’s hard to see a deal getting done, which is a shame because the combination of Jimmy Butler, Russ, and the Heat’s organizational culture seems like a potent mix, at least on paper.
Other teams looking to make a splash could get in on the action, such as Orlando, Charlotte, or Minnesota, but I struggle to see Russ being pleased with getting shipped to any of those locations. It’s hard to believe a team could have difficulty extracting commensurate value for a guy who was the MVP of the league just two years ago, but this is the world now. The supermax giveth, and the supermax taketh away.
It will be fascinating to see which direction they go, but it’s safe to say OKC probably isn’t done dealing. They just sent useful big man Jerami Grant to Denver to shed a bunch of luxury tax payments, and any one of Russ, SGA, Gallo, or Adams could be next out the door. Stay tuned.
Atlanta Hawks:Slowly and methodically, GM Travis Schlenk is building an interesting young team in Atlanta. While it was costly in terms of assets, the Hawks moved up in the draft and nabbed the two big wings they had targeted, Virginia’s De’Andre Hunter and Duke’s Cam Reddish. I am higher on Hunter than Reddish, but putting the two alongside the existing young core of Trae Young, John Collins, and Kevin Huerter provides the outline of a powerhouse team a couple years down the road. It’s likely to be a slow burn, but the East is always looking for new teams to step into the void — see Brooklyn and Orlando last season — and it’s not as though the Southeast Division isn’t eminently winnable. Heads-up for a breakout season from Collins this year, by the way.
Memphis Grizzlies: Losing franchise icon Mike Conley hurts, but damn, they didn’t waste any time constructing a killer young core in Memphis. Jaren Jackson, Jr., Ja Morant, and Brandon Clarke (who inexcusably fell to no. 21 in the draft) all look like studs who perfectly complement each other, and they will have plenty of time to grow together before they become too expensive. Like Atlanta, the results are going to trail the process by a couple years, but this group has the potential to be special.
Chicago Bulls: It feels unnatural to praise the Bulls’ frequently inept front office, but it kinda seems like they’ve figured it out, I guess? Taking on Otto Porter’s gargantuan contract was a worthwhile gamble, and they’ve done a nice job getting value out of the draft over the last few years. Lauri Markkanen, Wendell Carter, Jr., and rookie Coby White are all promising (along with second-round pick Daniel Gafford, who I’ve liked so far in Summer League, for what it’s worth), and they actually signed good players in free agency in Thad Young and Tomas Satoransky (the “adults in the room” for this team). The young guys will need to both stay healthy and accelerate their development, and Zach LaVine will need to stop being such an inveterate gunner, but there’s a path to the playoffs now for this team, and that qualifies as a massive improvement in the post-Tom Thibodeau era.
We haven’t even discussed a number of teams who will be in the mix, competitively and transactionally, this coming season, such as Milwaukee, Houston, Denver, Portland, Toronto, and Boston, which is a good indicator of just how deep and well-rounded the league has suddenly become. [Also, pour one out for Sacramento, who probably thought they had a reasonable path to the Pacific Division title this year until the Lakers, Clippers, and Warriors all made their moves. #Kangz forever.] The overall talent pool has been deepening for several years now, and all it took was one wild summer of player movement for it to be dispersed in a way which could shape the competitive balance of the league for years to come. For all those folks out there who, for years, complained about how the league was too predictable and the outcome was predestined: this is what you say you wanted. Now shut the fuck up and enjoy it.
It’s not all roses and sunshine for the league, of course. The issue of tampering came to the forefront in free agency this summer, and it’s something the league will have to wrestle with in the next CBA. For the most part, there appears to be a “wink, wink, nod, nod” type of attitude towards negotiating with free agents before the June 30th signing period begins, and I’m not particularly concerned about that aspect of it. Once the Finals are over, does it really matter? Having more information with which to construct a team’s draft strategy isn’t necessarily a bad thing, either. The trouble comes with teams (and other players) tampering with guys who are still under contract for multiple years, and the Paul George deal may end up being the tipping point as far as the league is concerned. We all know these dudes talk to each other — going all the way back to the Heatles conspiring during the ’08 Olympics in Beijing — and there is enough plausible deniability that it will never be enforceable, but come on: Kawhi Leonard had to have tampered with Paul George. The result is a relatively happy one (in case, for some reason, you skipped all of the words prior to this sentence), but the league can’t be pleased with the process. When the next CBA comes up for negotiation, you can bet what happens with the tampering rules is going to be a point of contention. The owners could just decide to de-claw the rule completely and say “fuck it, anything goes,” or they could go the other way and try to use it as leverage to soften or eliminate guaranteed contracts. The players’ union would never go for it in a million years, and it would blow to smithereens the relative labor prosperity the league has enjoyed for the majority of the decade, but it’s something to keep in mind.
With that said, all in all this has to be considered a joyous time to be a fan of the league. I’ve often preached taking the long view as the Warriors’ dynasty ran its course, and not to compare their dominance to a river of shit-smelling foulness, but much like Andy Dufresne, now we’ve come out clean on the other side. Hallelujah.
Being an informed modern fan of the NBA involves cultivating an understanding of (and opinions on) two interrelated but fundamentally distinct facets of the league. The first is the game of NBA basketball as it takes place on the floor. The second, which a great many fans pay more attention to than the games themselves, is the business of team-building. With the games concluded, the championship decided, and the draft in the rear view, it is now time for the business of the league to come to the forefront. The landscape has already been altered dramatically over the last two-plus weeks — injuries to KD and Klay Thompson, the Raptors’ first title, the Anthony Davis trade, and Zion being drafted — but these changes may pale in comparison to the seismic shifts we are about to see over the next several days. Before the wild spending spree begins, let’s discuss some of the key questions which will shape the free agency period, starting with the big picture.
Have teams learned the lessons of 2016? The historic cap spike of 2016, largely driven by the NBA’s massive new TV deal, had front offices falling all over themselves to light cap space on fire, often to disastrous effect. The spike shaped the league’s on-court reality — it gave Golden State the necessary cap room to sign Durant, for one — but it also locked a number of teams into grim financial situations for which the only remedy was time.
Well, time has passed. Most of the egregious deals handed out during the orgiastic summer of 2016 have either run out or are set to expire in 2020. After the two resulting summers of relative austerity in 2017 and 2018, there is once again a glut of cap space around the league. Based on the projected cap figure of $109 million for ’19-’20, teams have an estimated $474 million in cap space to dole out, which doesn’t even account for the amount they will spend over the cap to retain their own free agents via Bird Rights.
Logic would dictate teams will remember the pain from getting locked into cap-crippling long-term deals in 2016 and adjust course, but if we’ve learned anything over the years, it’s that this is NOT a logical league. The conditions on the ground could also exacerbate the temptation to get silly once again. With Golden State falling from its perch atop the league and all the roster shakeups set to happen (a full 40 percent of the league’s players become free agents at 6 PM ET Sunday), a larger-than-normal number of franchises may conclude they are only a move or two away from becoming the next Toronto and overspend accordingly to try to make it happen. The Lakers and Jazz already made their all-in moves with the AD and Mike Conley trades, respectively. They may not be done, and a number of other challengers to the throne will soon emerge as well.
Realistically, there were always going to be enough “haves” at the top of the market to take the big names off the board, but whether or not the spending again rises to the level of Greek tragedy depends on the teams at the other end of the spectrum. The error in judgment which drove a lot of the reckless spending in 2016 came from teams who misunderstood their position within the league hierarchy and competitive cycle. These squads (cough, Lakers, cough), unable to land the marquee free agents, instead overpaid for players they sold to their fans as the missing piece(s), when in fact they were mostly just roster flotsam clogging up their cap and preventing them from making better moves to return to contention. [To wit: the cap penalty for Luol Deng, waived via the stretch provision after the disastrous 4-year/$72M contract they handed him in 2016, is now the longest-tenured Laker, and will still be clogging their cap sheet and making it more difficult to fortify their pencil-thin roster all the way through 2022. Brutal.]
In 2019, with the power of hindsight, will these teams in the middle and bottom of the league realize they shouldn’t blow their cap space just because they can? Will they hesitate in giving out long-term deals to maintain future flexibility in trades and free agency? Or will all that sweet, sweet cap space burn holes in their pockets once again? If nothing else, it’s probably safe to assume the Timofey Mozgovs and Ian Mahinmis of the world won’t get $64 million deals this time around. The league just has a better sense of what types of players it values now, and they ain’t it, chief. But once we hit around July 5th and all the big names have been scooped up, don’t be surprised if shit starts to go haywire again. [Seriously, when you see the notification come across your phone saying Terrence Ross got like $55 million, remember we had this talk.]
Does anyone have a chance at Kawhi besides the Raptors and Clippers? The short answer is “probably not.” The Lakers maintain they will pursue the Finals MVP, but their path to max cap space remains somewhere between “murky” and “no fucking way,” and there is no reason to suspect Kawhi, at the absolute apex of his value, will have any interest in accepting either a financial discount or a secondary/tertiary role. Both New York teams have ample cap space and Brooklyn at least has an intriguing basketball situation (lol Knicks), but the lure of the Big Apple doesn’t appear to be all that enticing to Kawhi. As inscrutable as he is about most everything, the one consistent thing we know about him is his affection for his native Southern California and his desire to play there at some point. The Clippers’ pitch centers around a well-run organization in the city he wants to live — the Lakers can only offer him one of those two things — and a balanced roster just screaming for a unifying superstar to slot everyone into his proper role. Adding Kawhi (along with retaining useful free agents Pat Beverley and Ivica Zubac, ideally) and doing nothing else instantly transforms the Clips from playoff cannon fodder to serious contender. Beyond that, if they could find a taker for the final year of Danilo Gallinari’s contract (which probably wouldn’t be too difficult; he’s excellent when healthy and they have plenty of assets to attach as sweeteners), they have a reasonable path to another max slot. [Media reports have linked them to Al Horford, a pairing which would be an absolute nightmare defensively. The other alternative would be to load up on big wings, throwing offers at any one of Jimmy Butler, erstwhile Clipper Tobias Harris, or Khris Middleton. They could be really scary next year if things break right.]
Of course, all of the L.A. speculation relies on Kawhi deciding the grass is greener there, which is a somewhat difficult argument to make when the yard he’s currently inhabiting has the Larry O’Brien trophy sitting in the middle of it. It’s important to remember that NO reigning Finals MVP has ever switched teams in the history of the league. [FWIW, MJ retired in ’98 after the Bulls won their sixth title, so I’m mincing words a bit here. Whatever. It’s my column.] I’m not saying this necessarily matters to Kawhi or informs his legacy in any way, but it’s a useful piece of context. Toronto (and Canada as a whole) has done everything it can do to prove they will put Kawhi in the best possible position to succeed, and they can offer him an extra year and some additional dollars as a kicker. [He would max out at 5 years and approximately $190 million with Toronto, vs. 4-years/$140 million anywhere else.] The other option would be for Kawhi to opt for a LeBron/Durant-style “one-and-one” deal (essentially a two-year deal where the second year is a player option), but as I’ve written previously, he may be justifiably hesitant to go this route after witnessing first-hand what happened to KD, and how it has cast uncertainty onto the entire trajectory of his career. There is value in certainty and stability, even if the world is his oyster at this specific moment. [The counter to this argument is that all indications are KD is still going to get a max deal despite the catastrophic injury. So the risks may be mitigated when you’re a two-time Finals MVP and one of the very best players in the world.]
I can’t pretend to know Kawhi’s thought process (which seems to be the way he likes it), but he’ll be a national hero in Canada forever no matter what he does, so he may see this as a golden opportunity to exercise control over his own destiny and make his way to his desired location without having to suffer any of the Durant-esque P.R. bullshit. For most of the all-time greats, “free” agency is anything but, so it’s a rare thing to be afforded this chance. Political capital can’t sit in a bank, collecting interest; you either spend it or squander it.
VCG Photo
Will the second- and third-tier stars take the cash or the chance at a fresh start? The top tier of free agents, in spite of all that’s happened recently, remains Kawhi, KD, and Kyrie Irving. Their decisions will likely be the first big dominoes to fall and provide a framework for the rest of the signings to follow. Next will come the complementary stars, the guys teams won’t want to build around but may see as the final pieces in their championship puzzles: Jimmy Butler, Kemba Walker, Al Horford, Tobias Harris, Khris Middleton, Nikola Vucevic, and D’Angelo Russell (who is restricted but would likely be available if Kyrie signs with Brooklyn). Based on how loose teams could get with their cap space, all of these players may be in line for max deals (or close to it), even if none of them are exactly no-brainers. Chances are their incumbent teams are prepared to back up the Brink’s truck (with the possible exceptions of Horford and Russell, because Kyrie), and the answer won’t be the same for everyone, but we’re about to collect a lot of data about what matters more to the modern NBA star: cash and continuity or true professional agency.
Kemba will be the most compelling test case here. Since he’s eligible for the supermax extension with Charlotte, he would be leaving over $80 million on the table to go elsewhere for a chance at a title. It would seem crazy to most of us, but at a certain point, the sums of money are all so large it kind of ceases to matter, an unintended consequence the NBA may have to wrestle with in its next round of CBA negotiations. It’s basically Dave Chappelle explaining the difference between $10 million and $50 million, only with even more abstractly massive dollar figures:
Most of the media chatter suggests Middleton will stay with the Bucks on a 5-year max deal ($190 million) or something in the neighborhood. [Yes, this is probably a gigantic overpay, but Milwaukee doesn’t have much choice. They have no means of replacing his production, and if it takes dipping into the luxury tax to both keep a championship roster together and appease Giannis — now the MVP of the freaking league, as you may recall some incredibly prescient and attractive analyst predicting way back in the preseason — long-term, then so be it.] The Celtics have been linked to both Walker and Vucevic, though they would only have the cap space for one or the other. Where Horford goes will be fascinating; he truly could be the missing piece for a contender, and rumors are he will command something in the range of four years/$112 million. [Big Al would be 16 seasons deep by the conclusion of said contract, so even someone as “safe” as Horford carries some risk.]
With so much cap space floating around, someone will certainly throw a max offer at Butler, even if Philly hesitates to do so. Rumors are swirling connecting Jimmy Buckets to Houston, an arrangement which would require a sign-and-trade similar to what they pulled with Chris Paul two summers ago. I already discussed both Butler and Harris as it pertains to the Clippers and their pursuit of Kawhi, but chances are both guys will have a number of suitors, and with J.J. Redick also being an unrestricted free agent, there is a doomsday scenario where the Sixers burned all of their assets and are left with nothing but Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons. Very little is certain this summer, but we can be sure it’s sphincter-clenching time in Philadelphia.
How teams value Vucevic will also tell us a lot about the free agent market and the state of the league. Word on the street is the 28-year-old Vooch will settle in around the 4-year/$100 million mark. Orlando has sworn up and down throughout the process they intend to retain Vucevic, who extended his range out to the three-point line this season and subsequently earned his first All-Star nod. However, the Magic already have a ton of resources dedicated to their front court, with Mo Bamba, Jonathan Isaac, Aaron Gordon, and newly-drafted Chuma Okeke in the fold. The decision on whether or not to throw a big offer Vooch’s way (and whether or not he accepts it) represents a major fork in the road for a franchise which finally began to emerge from the NBA’s untouchable class last season, in large part thanks to the play of Vucevic himself.
Even so, it’s fair to ask what the ceiling is for a team with him as the centerpiece (or one of them). He’ll be just shy of 33 by the end of the deal, and even though this newfound shooting stroke gives him a ton of value at the 5, he’s never been a particularly stout defender. If the solution is to essentially alternate Vooch and Bamba for offense and defense, respectively, that’s not a viable long-term approach. Throw in the way his presence could hamstring the development of the aforementioned young bigs, and the Magic, in ways they would never admit publicly, have to be seriously asking themselves if the juice is worth the squeeze. Perhaps if Isaac develops into a versatile, Giannis-like defensive presence at the 4, then there’s a road map to a workable front line pairing with Vooch, but that sure seems like it’s a long ways off, and the time to get maximum value from Vucevic is now. The night has been dark and full of terrors for Orlando, but even with day seemingly breaking, there are still no easy answers for them.
With Mike Conley being traded to Utah, the number of potential suitors for D’Angelo Russell’s services diminished by one. Indiana has been floated as a possible destination, but they seem locked in on Ricky Rubio, for whatever reason. Minnesota and Dallas are both possibilities, but let’s be honest here. Chances are, DLo is going to end up in the one location that will have us all shaking our heads when we hear the news: the Los Angeles Lakers. Nothing would be more quintessentially Lakers than giving away a talented, young player as a means to create cap space, only to later use their cap space to sign the exact same player, except now they’ve lucked into a better, more mature version of him after Brooklyn did the heavy lifting of developing him into an All-Star. It would be the ultimate endpoint of the “bad process, good result” M.O. which permeates their entire organization in the post-Jerry Buss era. Plus, for all of GM Rob Pelinka’s bungling of their cap space as a result of the AD trade, Russell’s max deal would inherently come in at a lower salary figure than would a deal for an older star, so the pathway to having enough space to sign Russell is much more linear than it would be for one of the Kawhi/Kemba/Kyrie types. Luck tattooed to their asses, I tell you.
[It would also be appropriate to include Klay Thompson in this section, though all signs point to Golden State eventually ponying up a five-year max offer to keep him in the Bay Area. Despite his ACL tear in the Finals, it would be insane for them not to pay that man his money.]
[One dark horse team to watch when it comes to these secondary stars is New Orleans. While it appears they are content to take the slow and steady approach to team-building around Zion, they have somewhere near max cap space right now and could easily pivot into “Hey, let’s contend right now because we still have a bazillion draft picks going forward so what’s the difference” mode if they so chose. How many games do they win next season if they were to add, say, Horford to what they already have? Fifty? I have no idea where this Pelicans thing is going over the next few years, but it’s going to be fucking wild.]
Which role players could turn out to be difference-makers? Time for the lightning round:
Dewayne Dedmon: A guy who has mostly been trapped on garbage teams, he could be a really useful backup big/spot starter on a contender. He moves well on switches, defends the rim, and spaces the floor (38.2% from three on 3.4 attempts per game last season), while never clamoring for a bigger role. He may not be getting a lot of media attention, but the word is a number of teams are all over him.
Thad Young: He’s a known commodity at age 31, but that commodity is really useful! Young, as he has always been, remains a versatile defender, a low-usage, low-mistake offensive Swiss Army knife, a solid veteran locker room presence, and a juuuust good enough outside shooter (34.9% from deep last year) to make defenses respect his gravity at the 4. Can he be the third option on a contender? Of course not. But as a team’s fifth-best guy? Rock solid. Utah feels like a natural fit for him.
Richaun Holmes: Something of a personal crusade for me. I’ve just always liked this dude’s game, and I’ve never been able to figure out why a team won’t give him a consistent role. Holmes plays with a relentless energy and athleticism, and he’s a little more skilled than you would think. He can eat up minutes at both the 4 and 5, and he won’t cost much. Someone give this man a real shot!
Taj Gibson: Yeah, I know there’s no real upside at this point with him. It just feels like he should still be playing meaningful playoff minutes for someone instead of staring in disbelief as another defensive breakdown by Towns or Wiggins leads to a layup. A “16-game guy” who could be had on the cheap.
DeMarcus Cousins: This feels like cheating, of course, but what on Earth kind of deal is Boogie going to get this summer? There is simply no way for a team to know if they are going to get the borderline unplayable version of him from the Finals or something closer to his earlier All-Star form. Teams may read a bit too much into how his rehab year with Golden State went down and be scared off, and if no real market emerges yet again, he could turn out to be a steal.
Jeremy Lamb: It feels like he’s been in the league forever, but Lamb is only 27, and he quietly had his best season as a pro last year in Charlotte. He has the length to be a switchable defender, hits catch-and-shoot threes at a solid rate, and has some juice as a secondary playmaker. Dudes who were written off too quickly early on in their careers and then begin to put it all together as they reach their primes tend to be good buy-low investments, and Lamb fits the bill here.
Rondae Hollis-Jefferson: RHJ is perceived as something of a disappointment to this point in his career, but I believe this is in large part because he’s been misused. At 6’7″ and 217 lbs, Hollis-Jefferson has the body of a wing, but he’s really an undersized big man. He can’t shoot — AT ALL — but he’s still a tremendous athlete and a hellacious defender, and only 24 years old. He may never be a plus on offense, but if a team could pair him with another front court bench player who can shoot but perhaps has some deficiencies on defense, there may still be something there.
Darren Collison: No flash, no frills, just a solid veteran. If the point guard carousel stops and Collison is left without a starting gig, he instantly becomes one of the most competent third guards in the league, a role for which he is probably better suited and could be had at something of a discount.
Which restricted free agents could teams be looking to poach? Putting in offers on other teams’ restricted free agents is risky business because in most cases, if the player is worthwhile, the offer will get matched, and it ties up the offering team’s cap space for those critical few days while the incumbent decides. That said, if a suitor is willing to overpay, they can sometimes hold the matching team’s feet to the fire and force them into a tough decision. We already discussed the politics surrounding D’Angelo Russell’s situation, but here are a few more RFAs teams may be sniffing around:
Malcolm Brogdon, Milwaukee Bucks: What happens with Brogdon is going to be fascinating. He is clearly one of the league’s elite role players, and maybe Milwaukee will just swallow hard and pay whatever it takes to retain him. But boy, are they going to feel a financial pinch if they elect to keep all of Middleton, Brogdon, and Brook Lopez. It’s a virtual lock someone is going to throw out an offer sheet in the neighborhood of 4-years/$80 million for Brogdon, and we won’t have to wait long to get a definitive answer about how far Bucks’ ownership will go to keep a championship core around Giannis. Buckle up for this one.
Tomas Satoransky, Washington Wizards: This may be a case of the other front offices smelling blood in the water. Sato, 27, has developed into a quality player. He’s an underrated playmaker with an advanced feel for the game. He has the length to guard multiple positions and has worked to become a solid spot-up shooter. He has assumed a number of different roles and been effective in all of them. Any number of teams could use his skill set. Remember, the Wiz still do not have a permanent GM in place, and they currently have about $65 million committed to their “starting” back court his year (quotation marks because $37.8 million of that is going to John Wall, who will not play in ’19-’20). They may be hesitant to throw more long-term money at another guard, even one who would prove useful in Wall’s stead this season. Indiana, Boston, Dallas, Orlando, and Miami could all be teams with some interest in Satoransky.
Tyus Jones: I may be the last one still occupying Tyus Island, but I feel as though we’ve given up on him prematurely. He’s a bit undersized, and his shooting has yet to come around, but he’s still only 23 years old, and both the analytics and eye test show me a guy who is always making positive contributions to his team without sucking up much usage. There’s a place for that guy in the league, especially on a team with a ball-dominant wing or combo forward, and it doesn’t appear as though Minnesota is likely to value him too highly. Seems like a classic buy-low opportunity.
Ivica Zubac: I suspect the Clippers’ sharp front office won’t be asleep at the wheel on this one and will match nearly any offer, but it only takes one asshole to do something crazy. Every time I watch this guy play, I am perplexed by how continually overlooked he is. Zubac is really good! His style is a bit retrograde in the modern game and he needs shooting around him to thrive, but he consistently does traditional big man things well and makes a positive contribution when he’s on the floor. He rarely shoots from beyond ten feet, but he’s also only 22 years old, so his game still has plenty of room to expand over time. A team in the lower echelon of the league could do a lot worse than using some of its mostly meaningless cap space on a guy like Zubac. If nothing else, a big offer sheet could force the Clippers into a more difficult financial position. Sometimes the gamesmanship is the point.
Delon Wright: I’m tempted to just copy and paste most of the Satoransky section, but my loyal readers deserve better than that. Much like Sato, Wright is another long guard who knows what the hell he’s doing and could help a lot of teams if he weren’t trapped in a rebuild. Memphis may want to keep him around to act as the adult in the room for their ultra-promising core of young cubs, but a mentor role can only be worth so much, and I have to imagine they have a threshold number in mind.
Terry Rozier: Again, what happens with Rozier will largely depend on how the Kyrie-Kemba-Russell game of musical chairs shakes out because there could be a scenario where the Celtics need him to be their starter next year. In any case, Boston may have soured on Scary Terry to a degree, as he spent much of the past unpleasant year grousing about his reduced role. Another team might see him as a starter and thus overlook this bright red flag, but with the glut of quality point guards in the league today (and how many of them are also free agents), who would that team be?
Kristaps Porzingis: Just kidding. Cubes and Dallas will take good care of the Lativian Gangbanger.
Enjoy the absurdity everybody, and check back next week for a breakdown of all the insane piles of cash being thrown around!
Top Photo Credit: John E. Sokolowski/USA TODAY Sports
With an historic/entertaining/catastrophic NBA Finals and an (eventual) AD-to-Hollywood trade barely in the rearview, the bat-shit crazy, 24/7/365 NBA calendar now shifts to the 2019 NBA Draft (Thursday, 7 PM ET, ESPN). The stage is set for a roller coaster evening in Brooklyn. The conventional wisdom has held that this draft starts (or ends, depending on your perspective) at no. 4, with New Orleans holding the pick (and most everything else) previously owned by the Lakers after the top trio of Zion Williamson, Ja Morant, and R.J. Barrett go 1-2-3 to New Orleans, Memphis, and New York, respectively. Even this is in flux, however, as there have been reports over the last couple days of a number of teams, including the Pelicans, making overtures to move up into either the no. 2 or no. 3 spot. [It’s pretty safe to say no. 1 is staying put.]
Morant has been considered the solid no. 2 pick throughout the pre-draft process, but we seem to be seeing a late surge in public support for Barrett as a bunch of NBA execs ask themselves, “Wait, a preternaturally gifted, 6’7″ wing scorer who was the no. 1 prospect in the country? Am I overthinking this?” I suspect Memphis will stay put and select Morant, in large part because they now have to address their point guard position (more on that in a moment). But here’s the thing: everything that follows could, and probably will be, completely wrong. This draft is going to be bonkers. So, taking it all with a Bol Bol-sized grain of salt, let’s talk about some story lines heading into the night, along with some things I hope to see.
A number of stars could be on the move. With Golden State’s dynasty being snapped out of existence as if by Thanos, along with the uncertainty surrounding Kawhi Leonard’s next move, the competitive landscape of the league is more wide-open than it has been in a really long time. And after watching Toronto cash in on some ultra-ballsy trade maneuvering, a number of franchises, especially out West, are probably thinking, “Why not us?” Teams like Denver, Portland, OKC, Houston, and the Clippers all have to be surveying to see if there is a splashy move or two which could vault them above all the other guys in the same tier, and there’s no time to capitalize on the opportunity like the draft. The teams at the other end of the spectrum who are in rebuilding/asset acquisition mode may be willing to pull the trigger on moving an established guy who doesn’t fit their competitive timeline in order to get extra bites at the draft apple.
The three names who immediately jump to mind are Jrue Holiday, Kevin Love, and Bradley Beal. [The Utah Jazz and Mike Conley were set to be included in this section as well until the news broke the long-rumored trade had been consummated on Wednesday. Memphis will receive Jae Crowder, Kyle Korver (and his non-guaranteed contract which I suspect they will waive or trade), Grayson Allen, the no. 23 pick on Thursday, and a future protected first-round pick. A bit of a smorgasbord of non-premium assets, but it’s unclear if there were any other offers and what they may have looked like. Love the trade for Utah, obviously; the upgrade from Rubio to Conley at the point is massive, and they didn’t give up anything they’ll truly miss. Also, I suspect they may not be done. Derrick Favors is a useful player, but he is (and has always been) redundant next to Rudy Gobert, and he’s set to make $16.9 million this season, but it is non-guaranteed until July 6th, making him a very attractive expiring asset for a team looking to shed salary and/or tank. Or just for an actual starting center, for that matter.] I wrote about it earlier in the week, but Holiday’s fate depends on whether New Orleans decides to continue amassing young assets or to accelerate the rebuild. If it’s the former, then Jrue could be on the move as early as Thursday, and there are a number of teams who could use the versatility and defensive tenacity he brings: Houston (especially if the rumors they are looking to move Chris Paul are based at all in reality), Indiana, Boston, Milwaukee (depending what happens with Malcolm Brogdon in free agency), the Clippers, or even a reunion in Philly (though they don’t have a ton of assets left to trade beyond their main guys). He probably stays put as a valuable player and mentor to all their young guys, but if the right offer came along, David Griffin would have to consider it.
There is no doubt Love is on the trading block. From the moment LeBron packed his bags for L.A., the Cavs have been looking for a taker willing to part with picks and absorb his massive contract. A healthy Love is still a valuable player, even if an overpaid one, but he needs to be placed in the proper ecosystem to thrive, which could be a challenge. I mentioned Utah perhaps still making another move, and he could be an intriguing fit beside Gobert in place of Favors. [A starting five of Conley-Mitchell-Ingles-Love-Gobert would be formidable, though making the deal work for Cleveland could be untenable after Utah just sent two picks to Memphis, along with the cap gymnastics which would be required. Utah is more likely to look for a slightly cheaper stretch-4 option in free agency; someone in the Nikola Mirotic tier might make more sense.] Worried about losing Kyrie and Horford in free agency, maybe Boston makes a play for him. They have both the cap space to absorb his deal (now, unfortunately) and the picks the Cavs would crave, even if the two long-time rival organizations might feel gross working with each other. Maybe the Pacers swap him for Domantas Sabonis in some fashion to ease their logjam at center. Love could fit well alongside Myles Turner and give them another proven scorer to go with Victor Oladipo. Portland might kick the tires on a deal, though the logistics of it would be tricky, given the uncertain status of Jusuf Nurkic and how willing they may be to part with promising young big Zach Collins. Point is, there are options out there, if anyone is willing to gamble on Love’s health for the tail end of his prime.
The last one is a long shot, but teams should definitely be sniffing around about the availability of Bradley Beal. The Wizards — who, by the way, still have not named a permanent replacement for former GM/slow-moving arsonist Ernie Grunfeld — would have to be bowled over to ship out Beal, as he is the only thing preventing their team from devolving into a full-fledged dumpster fire. [Some would argue, with John Wall’s injury and millstone contract hanging over their heads, the Wiz should lean into the tank and try to amass young assets to compete once they emerge from cap hell, but how does one of the league’s notoriously slap-dick organizations convince a top flight GM candidate to come in and take on that challenge? It’s a losing proposition, even if the alternative is to keep Beal around and win 35 games for each of the next three years. In short: the Wizards are screwed.] If New Orleans were interested in microwaving a contender, they could easily put together a compelling package of draft assets (along with, say, Lonzo?) and go to war with a core of Holiday-Beal-Ingram-Zion. Several teams with assets to burn (Denver, Boston, Orlando, the Clippers, etc.) would love to have Beal’s elite scoring, burgeoning playmaking, and cost certainty on their roster. The question is if the Wiz are willing to listen.
Who will consolidate their picks? Four teams — Boston, Philly, Atlanta, and San Antonio — possess fourteen of the top forty-two picks in the draft, and sixteen overall. The Hawks have the largest bounty, with picks 8, 10, 17, 35, and 41, and rumors are flying around they are looking to package some combination of the three first-rounders to move into the top-five. [They also had no. 44 until Wednesday, when they sold the pick to Miami for cash.] Assuming Kent Bazemore opts into his $19.2 million player option (and he would be insane not to), they already have at least nine players under contract for the ’19-’20 season and a bunch of cap space to either spend or take on bad contracts for future picks. So the likelihood of them using all five picks on guys they actually want to bring onto the roster — not counting this year’s limited draft-and-stash pool candidates or the “medical redshirt” types, who we’ll get to shortly — is pretty slim. They are rumored to be trying to swap nos. 8 and 10 with New Orleans for no. 4, even as a lot of draft experts say the section of the draft from four through ten is pretty flat, talent-wise. They must really like either Jarrett Culver or De’Andre Hunter in that spot because it would seem odd to give up an asset to move up and select either Darius Garland or Coby White, both of whom would be redundant with Trae Young entrenched as their point guard of the future.
With the disastrous news out of Boston that Kyrie Irving and Al Horford are both as good as gone in free agency, the Celtics have some hard choices to make on Thursday. They could shift back into asset collection mode and simply make all three of their first-round picks (nos. 14, 20, and 22). That section of the draft could feature a number of promising big man prospects, such as Goga Bitadze, Bol Bol, Brandon Clarke, Nic Claxton, P.J. Washington, Mfiondu Kabengele, and even the injured Chuma Okeke or Jontay Porter, to eventually replace Horford. Alternately, they could package some or all of the picks (plus the lightly-protected future Memphis pick, a lucrative asset) in an effort to reload rather than rebuild. Danny Ainge still has a lot of team-building flexibility at his disposal, but damn the Celtics have fallen far, and fast.
The Spurs have no. 19 and 29, though it’s not their style to make all-in moves. In any case, they have been so successful in developing lower picks into useful players over the years that those selections probably have more value to them than they would to virtually anyone else. They’ll undoubtedly draft some 6’11” foreign dude you’ve never heard of (Croatian Luka Samanic has been tossed around in many mock drafts) and then we’ll all be saying “Ahh, the fucking Spurs!” when he’s draining threes on fools in a few years.
Philly has nos. 24, 33, 34, and 42, the last vestiges of the Sam Hinkie era. [He died for our sins, and for extra second-round picks.] With uncertainty surrounding the free agent decisions of Jimmy Butler and Tobias Harris, and not much left in the way of additional assets after the trades which brought them said free agents, they could go the route of using all the picks in an attempt to find at least a couple useful bench pieces — that 33-34 range is often where teams find the “savvy upperclassmen who don’t fit the usual mold but are ready to contribute right away” guys — or consolidate some or all of them to get one extra veteran piece to pair with Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons. It wouldn’t be too surprising to see GM Elton Brand push his chips in one more time considering how close the Sixers were to knocking off the eventual champions in the playoffs way back in May. [Think how different the whole NBA conversation might be right now if Embiid made some smarter gastronomic choices and/or Kawhi’s series-winner wasn’t cosmically drawn to the bottom of the net.] In any case, be prepared for picks to be swapped around Thursday night faster than cigarettes at a prison card game.
Are guys with medical red flags the new market inefficiency, or just a bad investment? We saw this question play out last year to some degree when no. 1 high school prospect Michael Porter, Jr. fell all the way to the Nuggets at no. 14, after his freshman season at Missouri was derailed by troubling back injuries. [I find it interesting how when media types discuss Denver, they talk about them as if Porter doesn’t even exist. If he ever gets and stays healthy, the Nuggets will have conjured up the exact scorer they need to go to the next level out of thin air. Not saying it’s likely, but it’s odd how everyone dismisses it out of hand as a possibility.] In a cruel twist of fate, Michael’s brother, Jontay Porter, finds himself in a similar scenario this season. He is a talented, multi-skilled modern big man who would be a surefire lottery pick if not for the fact he tore his ACL twice in the span of six months last year. [Ready for the crazy part? BOTH of their older sisters were forced to medically retire from playing college ball after multiple ACL tears. Whether the Porter family has some genetic predisposition to producing electric-but-brittle athletes, or their parents made some sort of accursed wish on a monkey’s paw, is a topic for another time.]
Auburn combo forward Chuma Okeke also finds himself a victim of bad injury timing, along with Oregon mega-center Bol Bol. [The 7’2″ Bol is the son of Manute Bol, the tallest player to ever play in the NBA.] Okeke tore his ACL during Auburn’s magical run to the Final Four last season, right as his draft stock was beginning to soar. He could return at some point next year, but chances are he’s essentially going to be a medical redshirt. Bol’s case is perhaps the most complicated, as he suffered a stress fracture in his foot in his lone season at Oregon, which is basically the canary in the coal mine for “seven-foot-plus guy whose career is going to be plagued by lower body injuries.” If not for his tantalizing mix of skills — elite shot-blocking combined with good lateral quickness and outside touch for such a giant — he would be borderline undraftable. Instead, someone will take a flier on him in the mid-to-late first round and hope to get at least a few productive seasons out of him before the near-inevitable physical breakdown. [We could also include Darius Garland in this group, who missed all but five games at Vanderbilt with a meniscus tear. However, all indications are he’s good to go, and he’s still likely to be selected in the top-5 on Thursday, so if anything, all the missed games created a mystique around him which has actually helped his draft stock. This league is fucking weird.]
If it were me picking, the safest bet feels like Okeke. His injury seemed to be a fluke (unlike those of Bol and Porter, which have a chronic whiff to them), and so long as he fully recovers — as most young guys suffering a lone ACL tear do these days — he should have a long, productive career in front of him. He’s strong, athletic, versatile, and skilled — all the things teams are looking for in a solid combo forward in today’s league. If that guy can be had late in the first round (or even early in the second), he could be the steal of the draft. Sure, the downsides of selecting Okeke or Porter are fairly obvious: they’ll take up a roster spot next year while not playing, which mitigates some of the value of their cheap, rookie scale contracts, and it’s uncertain what their condition will be once they come back. But at a certain point in the draft, the upside becomes too much to ignore, even with the potential drawbacks. Especially if I were running a team with an already-deep roster picking in the mid/late first (say, someone in the Indy-San Antonio-Boston-OKC nexus from 18-21), I would have Okeke’s name circled on my big board.
Ty Jerome | Brace Hemmelgarn/USA TODAY Sports
Shooters shoot (up the draft board). Every year, we hear the breathless recounting from some league insider of the dead-eye shooting specialist who nailed like 84 out of 100 threes in a private team workout in an empty gym, and invariably that dude goes five spots higher on draft night than he was projected in every mock draft. There is no single skill — yes, including iso scoring ability — which raises a player’s draft stock as much as elite shooting, especially in the pace-and-space era. The big risers to watch for this year? Kentucky’s Tyler Herro, UNC’s Cam Johnson, Virginia’s Ty Jerome, and Belmont’s Dylan Windler. Teams will gladly overlook their perceived flaws (wingspan, age, quickness, and overall athleticism, respectively) for a chance at those sweet, sweet shooting percentages. Teams aren’t wrong to place this premium on outside shooting — I think Johnson and Jerome in particular are going to have long, fruitful careers as ace role players — but it’s interesting how teams always put on the head fake with these guys in the pre-draft process, poo-pooing them for their weaknesses, then jump at the chance to snag them when the rubber meets the road.
Which late fliers could return value? We already talked about Jontay Porter, whose draft position could vary wildly depending on how teams feel about his medicals. Beyond him, there are a number of other projected second-rounders, most of whom fall into one of two camps. First, there are the high-upside guys who are either raw or it’s unclear how they will fit in the NBA game; guys like Darius Bazley, KZ Okpala, Talen Horton-Tucker, Jalen Lecque, Daniel Gafford, and Louis King all fit the bill here. Second, there are the upperclassmen who we know “too much” about. They clearly know what they’re doing on a basketball court, but scouts have had a long time to pick at their flaws and question their upside. Cam Johnson, Carsen Edwards, Terance Mann, Grant Williams, Shamorie Ponds, and DaQuan Jeffries are all names to watch among this group. These types tend to return value when picked in the early-to-mid second round because they’re skilled and mature enough to make rosters, and they soak up early minutes by having a defined skill set and not making a ton of rookie mistakes. Do they develop into stars? Usually not. [As with most things, the exception to the rule is Draymond Green.] But at this stage of the draft, finding a guy who can stick in the league and be part of the rotation for a winning team is a home run.
Remember: all predictions wrong or your money back. Enjoy the insane trade bonanza, everybody!
After five months of sloppy, unsatisfying foreplay, the long-rumored Anthony Davis-to-L.A. deal was finally consummated on Saturday. Before we could all fully process the fallout from a league-altering NBA Finals — especially as it pertains to the futures of Kevin Durant, Kawhi Leonard, and Klay Thompson — the superstar sands have shifted beneath our feet yet again, with The Brow set to team up with The King in L.A., and the Pelicans coming away with a war chest of riches to pair with Thursday’s presumed no. 1 overall pick, Zion Williamson. There are a ton of angles to this thing, so let’s get started. We’ll get to what the deal means for the Lakers and the league at-large, but first, it’s important we talk about how…
The Pelicans are now insanely, absurdly, ridiculously set up for the future. We cut now to a live shot from new Pels’ head honcho David Griffin’s office:
Of course losing a megawatt superstar like Davis hurts, but if landing Zion didn’t change AD’s mind, then nothing was going to, so trading him now was the only option. And damn, did it turn out to be a good option. The haul they extracted from the Lakers for what is, technically, only one year of Davis (I know, he’s almost certain to re-sign, but it does bear mentioning), is completely unprecedented. Simply put, it is the most expansive trade package for a single player in the history of the NBA. We’ve seen a lot of top-tier superstar trades over the years — Wilt twice, Kareem, Barkley twice, Webber, McGrady, Shaq, Kidd, Melo, Dwight, Harden, and Kawhi — and in most cases, the team acquiring the superstar doesn’t end up regretting it. To wit:
Via Instagram/nba
[Quick side note: Kawhi opting to sport the “Board Man Gets Paid” t-shirt is both incredible and perhaps the first clear indication we have that he is, in fact, a flesh-and-blood human being and not a humorless basketball robot sent from the future to end dynasties.]
It would be foolish to argue the team who is receiving one of the very best players in the league right as he enters his prime got fleeced, but when you see the haul for New Orleans, it is scarcely to be believed:
Lonzo Ball
Brandon Ingram
Josh Hart
Lakers’ 2019 first-round pick (#4 overall)
Lakers’ 2021 first-round pick, if it falls in the top 8. If it falls 9-30, the Lakers keep the pick and it rolls over to an unprotected 2022 first-rounder. [2022 is projected to be the famed “double draft,” the first year when high school players will again be draft eligible, so depending how things play out, this pick could be incredibly valuable.]
The option to swap first-round picks, unprotected, in 2023
Lakers’ unprotected 2024 first-round pick, which the Pelicans have the right to turn down at some agreed-upon point in the future and convert into an unprotected 2025 first-rounder
New Orleans didn’t get Kyle Kuzma, and they didn’t get L.A. to take on the last year of Solomon Hill’s blasphemous contract, but otherwise, Griffin plundered the Lakers of everything not nailed down. As it stands right now, they are sitting on a core of Ball, Jrue Holiday, Ingram, Zion, E’Twaun Moore, Frank Jackson, whatever the no. 4 pick turns into (hold that thought), and somewhere in the neighborhood of $30 million in cap space. They have all of their own picks going forward, and ummm, did you SEE all those picks they now have to work with from the Lakers? If things work out for the purple and gold (as they historically tend to), then those 3-4 first-rounders end up not hurting too much, but the reality is this: L.A. has aggressively sucked for the last six years, and the net result of a full decade of draft picks, including a metric shit-ton of lottery luck, will be Anthony Davis and cap relief for Timofey Mozgov. If the Lakers win a title or two over the next few years, then the blank check is obviously worthwhile. However, with a competent pro like Griffin now in charge in NOLA, and knowing what we know about how the Lakers’ brass have botched nearly everything over the last six years outside of the LeBron signing, if someone put a gun to your head, which of the two teams would you expect to win more titles over the next decade? The answer isn’t as clear-cut as it might at first seem.
To a large extent, it will depend on whether the Pelicans decide to slow-play things with their young core or attempt to microwave a contender, as the previous regime did, to mostly disastrous results. There are two main forks in the road: what to do with the no. 4 pick, and what to do with Jrue Holiday. The two decisions are inextricable. If they trade the pick for immediate help — most speculation has them seeking a rim-running big to pair with Zion, like a Clint Capela/Steven Adams type — then chances are they would also keep Holiday around for his veteran presence and elite defense. He represents an interesting back court pairing with Lonzo Ball. Both can play on or off the ball (though Lonzo’s floor spacing remains mostly theoretical at this point), and with apologies to what San Antonio has brewing, it might immediately be the best and most versatile defensive back court in the league. Also, neither guy is particularly ball dominant, and having two guards who don’t suck up a ton of usage could be the ideal incubator for the on-ball development of Ingram and especially Zion. [There are some very intriguing, Giannis-like “Zion as point-center” permutations of this roster, especially depending what they do in the draft and free agency.] This version of the roster is a likely playoff team in Year One, though it probably falls short of an actual contender. Behind Door Number Two is a more uncertain future, though one with perhaps a higher ceiling. Griffin could trade Holiday, maybe as soon as this Thursday, for additional picks or young assets, and go all-in on a youth movement. [Holiday’s contract remains a bit onerous, but he’s a top-30 player and could realistically help get a number of playoff outfits over the hump right now given the state of flux in the league.] In this scenario, they certainly keep the no. 4 pick and go for the best guy available on their board — most mocks tie them to either Vandy PG Darius Garland or Texas Tech wing Jarrett Culver, though I find Virginia combo forward De’Andre Hunter to be an interesting fit — then plug the hole at center in free agency with any one of the glut of big, live bodies out there on the market. It’s super tempting to think there is some nascent Lob City 2.0 potential lurking in the current iteration of the roster and to try to build that out right away, especially considering how wide-open the league is about to be. But with the war chest of future draft compensation they now possess and Zion, for all his prodigious talent, being several years from becoming the centerpiece of a title team, the slow-and-steady route is probably the more prudent one. In addition, no one wants to foster a culture of losing — and the presence of Zion alone probably limits the Pels’ floor to some degree — but letting the young talent incubate for the next couple years would only further enrich the value of their draft capital, putting them in the driver’s seat for trades and free agency for the next half-decade. There’s a reason David Griffin must be laughing; his team-building options are virtually limitless. He’s the kid in the NBA candy store.
The Lakers are fully playing the Game of Thrones now; they either win or they die. I can’t stress it enough: I’m not knocking this trade. When you have a chance to pair two of the best ten players in the league, you do it. Every. Single. Time. With that said, the way this deal shook out, it ultimately looks like the Lakers were bidding against themselves, and now they are boxed in to an absurd degree for the next handful of years. Beyond the somewhat fluid amount of cap space they’ll have this year — more on that in a bit — L.A. will have no flexibility whatsoever to bring in marquee talent, whether in the summer or with in-season trades, until sometime in the middle of the next decade. The Lakers assumed every ounce of the risk in this deal (even the pick protections put in place are there to protect the Pelicans, not the Lakers, an unusual framework), and there’s a King-sized elephant in the room: L.A. is absolutely counting on LeBron to stay both healthy and elite for at least the next two years. While both of those things have been givens for as long as your average Gen Z-er can remember, the times they are a-changing. LeBron still put up his usual stat line last season, but he also suffered the first major injury of his career, and he is on pace to move into third place in total career minutes this coming season. The dude is a cyborg, but even machines wear out eventually.
If LeBron starts aging like a normal human being, the Lakers are in TROUBLE. We have basically seven years of evidence of what an “Anthony Davis plus a bunch of detritus” roster looks like, and if a couple things break the wrong way in free agency or with Bron’s health, the Lakers could easily turn into New Orleans West. It was brilliant for New Orleans to push the draft compensation from the trade out as far as humanly possible because there is virtually no way LeBron is still an elite player by 2024 or 2025, and maybe well before then. If the Lakers don’t win a title in the next two years and drop into the lottery for any length of time during this extended period when the Pels control all their draft picks, this trade quickly becomes the most disastrous deal of all time, full stop. This isn’t the 2013 Nets/Celtics debacle because AD is a full decade younger than Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett were at that time, but the Lakers have leveraged themselves even more to the hilt than did Brooklyn in that ill-conceived deal. GM/serial liar Rob Pelinka is either going to be the savior of Lakers Exceptionalism or the one to drive the final nail into its coffin. There is no in-between.
Sooooo….what is the rest of the roster going to look like? What the Lakers do in the next two-plus weeks is going to be nearly as critical as what they did on Saturday, and the track record of this front office in free agency isn’t exactly pristine. There are two important factors to consider here: 1) it’s unclear exactly how much cap space they are going to have; and 2) they currently only have FIVE players under contract, two of whom may not be ready to take on a heavy minute load. The former issue is due to when the actual Davis transaction becomes official. If the trade consummates on July 6th, when the league’s moratorium on transactions ends, as the Pelicans would prefer, the Lakers would have significantly less cap space to use because the salary of the player they drafted at no. 4 on behalf of New Orleans wouldn’t count against their cap yet, so they would be taking back a higher net amount of money in Davis’ salary. If the deal doesn’t go through until July 30th, when drafted players become trade-eligible, then the Lakers go from having as little as $22-23 million in room to something approaching a max slot. [The number also depends on whether or not Davis picks up his $4.2 million trade kicker. It’s strange to think he would turn down what is quite literally free money, but I’ve long since learned to stop expecting rational behavior from the actors in this drama.] These are obviously crucial details if L.A. is looking to pursue a third star — Kawhi, Kemba Walker, and Kyrie Irving are all names being floated — as none of those guys will have much interest in taking a discount to be a third fiddle.
It’s no less of a problem if they decide to forgo another big name and instead attempt to remedy the second issue by signing a cadre of role players. As the NBA Finals just brought into crystal clear focus, you need 7-8 trustworthy dudes to consistently win playoff series, so how do the Lakers get there, knowing they have to make this year count? Sixteen-game players, as Draymond Green so succinctly dubbed them, don’t generally come cheap on the open market, and we have no idea if either Moe Wagner or Isaac Bonga is anything close to one of those guys, so there is work to be done. [Also a thing to watch: New Orleans could try to extract one of the young guys from L.A. as blood money for allowing the Davis deal to sit until July 30th. They have no particular incentive to play nice or help out the Lakers, and it’s not as though L.A. is going to start playing hardball now.]
Bringing back Rajon Rondo on the cheap makes some sense, as the team currently has no usable guards, and Rondo jibed well with AD when the two played together in New Orleans a couple years ago. [FYI, the Lakers do not have Rondo’s Bird Rights because he was previously signed to a one-year deal, so they would have to sign him using cap space.] They could recycle a couple of the minimum salary and/or two-way guys from last year’s team, but those would probably just amount to warm bodies rather than anyone who would actually move the needle. L.A. will badly need shooting, and good shooters who can also defend don’t come cheap, so this may be where they’ll need to spend their cap space and room exception. [Older vets like Darren Collison, JJ Redick, Danny Green, and Terrence Ross have been bandied about as options here.] If everything lines up cap-wise and they are able to convince a third max-level guy to come (with Kyrie and Kemba seeming like the snuggest fits), they will be the most top-heavy roster in recent memory. It wouldn’t be a death knell for their chances of competing, of course, but one suspects the way Golden State — a team of similar construction — saw its dynasty crumble over the last week under the weight of injuries to its stars would be fresh in the minds of the Lakers’ execs. It will be fascinating to see how they attempt to thread the needle and fill all of those available minutes beyond James, Davis, and Kuzma over the next few weeks, especially since they won’t be able to trade any of their first-round picks to make in-season improvements until LeBron is in the middle of filming Space Jam 7. [Wait, who is that shadowy figure in the hoodie draining wide-open long 2’s in an empty gym?] I’d be inclined to give almost any other front office the benefit of the doubt, but, well, you know.
The Celtics and Knicks are left holding the bag. Two of the other long-rumored suitors for Davis will now have to regroup in a serious way. The C’s spent the last half-decade carefully cultivating their young assets and draft capital for this exact moment, only to blow it because 1) according to some reports, they wouldn’t pony up their best asset (Jayson Tatum) for what would have been a one-year rental of Davis; and 2) they didn’t properly account for the fact Kyrie Irving is a fucking weirdo. [Boston is basically the guy in your fantasy league who sits on his hands all night during the auction draft, then after two hours he still has like $74 left but there are no players worth more than $5 remaining.] If Kyrie bolts in free agency (as recent reports indicate he will), all Danny Ainge’s scheming and hoarding will have netted him an interesting young team and a bunch of non-premium draft picks, a far cry from the decade-defining juggernaut into which many of us thought they would be coalescing. Boston has those three mid-round picks in Thursday’s draft, along with the lightly-protected future Memphis pick, so they could try to consolidate those assets into another high-end player (Mike Conley, perhaps?), and they’ll probably get a better version of Gordon Hayward back next season. But damn, life comes at you fast in the modern NBA, and the Celtics may have gotten left behind because they played it too slow.
As for the Knicks, well, you know what they say about the best laid plans. Long-suffering Knick fans distracted themselves from the team’s execrable play by fantasizing about a superteam magically coming together in Gotham over one audacious summer. Then they didn’t luck into Zion. Then their top free agent target, Kevin Durant, snapped his Achilles and probably won’t be an impact player for two years even if he does sign with New York. Then they found out Kyrie is more interested in signing with the cross-town rival Nets. [Many Boston fans would argue this qualifies as good fortune for the Knicks, but that’s another story.] Then they were never a serious bidder for Davis, and suddenly, all of their copious cap space and young assets seem unlikely to amount to a whole lot.
Sure, they have the no. 3 pick on Thursday, which most draftniks assume they’ll use on Duke swingman R.J. Barrett (a marriage of player and team about which I have my concerns, but let’s put that on hold until later in the week). They also have a couple potentially valuable future picks from Dallas they scooped up in the Kristaps Porzingis trade, though they could become less lucrative should the partnership of the “Lativian Gangbanger” and Luka Doncic prove fruitful in the near term. And they could conceivably convince a couple of the B-list free agents — say, Kemba Walker and/or Jimmy Butler — to take their cap space, but where does that really get them? There are theoretical avenues to contention for them over the next few years, but it would take a lot of things falling into place, which hasn’t exactly been the norm under the “stewardship” of owner/earnestly terrible musician James Dolan. Hope has become a four-letter word for Knicks’ fans.
Teams are about to light their cap space on fire again. The first week of July isn’t going to rival the orgiastic excess of 2016, but with AD now ostensibly off the board next summer, teams who might otherwise have considered keeping their powder at least a little bit dry will now be more likely to open their checkbooks, perhaps in questionable ways. The persistent Kyrie-to-Brooklyn rumors mean incumbent Nets’ point guard D’Angelo Russell will probably be available on the open market, and he will have a number of suitors who could throw a max deal his way. [The Jazz have been heavily linked to D-Lo, a move which would make sense if they don’t trade for Mike Conley, given Utah’s need for another perimeter scorer and the relative ages of their core players.]
Once the obvious big-money guys set the terms of engagement at the beginning of the moratorium, lower-tier vets will start to get overpaid as the market for “guys you could actually give real minutes to in a playoff series” dries up. We’re only two weeks out from the annual “Wait, Bojan Bogdanovic/Kevon Looney/Delon Wright/Terry Rozier/Brook Lopez/Ed Davis/Pat Beverley/Dewayne Dedmon/Julius Randle/Darren Collison/Terrence Ross/Michael Kidd-Gilchrist/Robin Lopez/Jonas Valanciunas/DeAndre Jordan got HOW MUCH?” conversation, and I can’t wait. As if the Finals weren’t bat-shit crazy enough, things are about to take an even wackier turn. Let’s get weird.
First, a disclaimer. This column may turn out to be more of a public therapy session than a cogent piece of basketball analysis. Like many fans, I am still processing the events of Game 5, trying to make some sense out of what feels like a seminal moment for the NBA. There remain a lot of unknowns surrounding the interior condition of the Warriors organization and how the decision was made to allow Kevin Durant to play in a game his body was not equipped to handle, and we may not get answers about it for a while, if at all. One thing I know for sure: no one who passionately follows the NBA is ever going to forget June 10th, 2019, and we haven’t even begun to feel the ripple effects of it yet. Game 5 was the modern NBA in full bloom, for better and (obviously) worse.
After what transpired, it feels almost macabre to talk about the game itself, but there is still a series going on, one which, by the way, just got a hell of a lot more interesting. Whether they were galvanized by the KD injury and subsequent reaction or they’re just really good at basketball, the Warriors played one of the best games of their entire dynasty in a bonkers environment, and absolutely deserved to win. They shot 20-of-42 from three and got 57 combined points from Steph Curry and Klay Thompson. Nine times out of ten, if Golden State gets both of those things, they win by at least two touchdowns. But Toronto would not go away. Kawhi Leonard went full Terminator mode down the stretch, calmly draining all manner of ridiculous shots to keep the score tight. Pascal Siakam and Danny Green combined to go 0-for-8 from deep, and most of those shots couldn’t have been more wide open, yet they persisted. The Raptors were outscored by 36 points from beyond the arc and yet still had a decent look at the buzzer to win the title. [Credit to Draymond Green for his work on the fateful last possession. He was put on this Earth to be the help defender in that exact situation, and he did a great job shaking loose of Marc Gasol and closing out to Kyle Lowry at the right moment, then getting into his air space to contest the final shot without fouling. His passing was also outstanding throughout the game.] The Raps have to feel as though they played well enough to win that game despite Golden State’s three-point onslaught, so I’m sure Nick Nurse isn’t ready to hit the panic button just yet, even as the series now shifts back to Oakland for Game Six and the Warriors remain capable of mind-meld shit like this under maximum pressure:
In a just world, the narrative from Game 5 would be “Wow, what an instant classic! Isn’t it great we get to keep watching these two exceptional, perfectly matched teams square off in front of their passionate, classy fan bases?” Alas. As a person who takes the sanctity of the game of basketball very seriously, it’s frustrating to watch the beauty these two teams are able to create on the court together be subsumed by all the ugly trappings of modern sport happening around them. Injuries are a part of the game, and they impact the championship picture in some form or fashion nearly every year. But as Switch would say, “Not like this. Not like this.”
Where to even begin with the Durant situation? There are so many levels to this injury, and they’re all depressing as hell. As much as KD has spent the last three years wearing the black hat for the league and as prickly as he can often be, it’s impossible not to feel for him as a human being. He was set to be among the most coveted free agents in history. He didn’t have to rush back to play for a Golden State franchise from whom he appears to feel increasingly alienated. No matter how much flack he has received for “taking the easy way out” and choosing a team of stars, Durant is a true competitor. Always has been. His team finally, truly needed him, and he wanted to be there to help them under the most dire circumstances, in whatever way he could. He doesn’t “owe” the Warriors anything, including trying to gut his way through an injury which had a high likelihood of turning catastrophic.
But he is also a sensitive guy. We know he pays attention to the way he is perceived by fans and media, and through that lens, there was basically no way for him to win in this series. If he isn’t ready and plays anyway, he risks the worst-case scenario, AKA exactly what happened. If he doesn’t play, the perception in many circles would be he quit on the team, that he was sitting purely out of spite. He will be a more sympathetic figure now — both because he played at all and because he got injured — but man, talk about your Pyrrhic P.R. victories. We don’t know whether KD felt compelled to play in part because of this outside conversation, or whether the organization knew he wasn’t ready and cleared him to play anyway, or some combination thereof.
It’s easy to place responsibility at the feet of the Warriors’ staff, regardless of how unproductive the blame game is. The perception will be they willingly placed Durant in harm’s way because he is probably leaving anyway, so there was no organizational downside to risking his health. This almost certainly isn’t what really happened, for a couple reasons. First, everyone who spoke publicly, including President of Basketball Operations Bob Myers, seemed genuinely devastated by the injury. I find it hard to believe it was all for show. Second, while teams don’t generally take the long view when they’re only a few wins from a title, it would be insanely shortsighted for a franchise to play fast and loose with the health of a generational superstar under any circumstances. Everything comes out eventually, so when the damning report surfaced, it would be a scarlet letter for them in terms of attracting star talent in the future. No way the “light years ahead” organization is that foolish, and if they are, they’ll deserve every bit of the eternal clowning they receive for it.
Beyond the narratives, as a fan of the game, it just sucks. People are entitled to their opinions of Durant and his career choices, but this much is inarguable: Kevin Durant is, at minimum, one of the best 15-20 basketball players to ever walk the Earth. The next time he steps on an NBA court, he’ll be at least 31 years old and coming off the most devastating injury possible. We don’t know how much, but his greatness will be diminished in some tangible way, and that qualifies as a loss for the sport. The league is in an amazing spot talent-wise, but it still needs all the great players it can get, and it just feels capricious and unfair when one of them is felled by injury. To whom much is given, much is tested, and Durant has endured many tests, both on and off the court. He’ll be back, and he’ll still be a productive player a couple years from now, but his all-time-level greatness is probably gone forever. No matter how you feel about the guy, that’s a bummer.
Also a bummer: the whole kerfuffle about the fan reaction in Toronto at the time of the injury. I don’t want to spend too much energy on this because it’s already being picked apart and hot take’d to death by every media outlet imaginable, but it needs to be addressed. As a fan of any team, when the star player on the opposition gets hurt, it is perfectly natural for your mind to almost immediately go to the “this helps my team win” place. There’s nothing wrong with it. This person might even lean over and talk about it in hushed tones with the person sitting next to him. Fine. And it’s easy for the mob mentality to take over in these scenarios, especially when the emotion is already cranked up to 11 anyway. I get how this set of circumstances led to that outcome, but it in no way excuses the behavior.
The bottom line is, anyone who would actively cheer for an injury, particularly to an all-timer like Durant, is an asshole, full stop. And this isn’t to say all Canadians are assholes, or all Toronto natives are assholes, or all Raptors fans are assholes. Far from it. As anyone who ever leaves his/her house and interfaces with the outside world knows: it’s full of assholes! Put twenty thousand people of any kind from any city in one place, and you’re going to have a few thousand assholes. It’s just math. Of course this isn’t a great look for Toronto, and perhaps their tortured fan base has been put up on too much of a pedestal relative to other franchises until now, but it’s all representative of the culture surrounding modern sports and not indicative of some inherent character flaw in every Toronto fan for which they must be condemned. Fans, media, and even owners act like assholes sometimes, and the only thing we can do is call them out for being assholes so maybe next time, some other asshole will think twice about doing whatever asshole thing he was about to do.
The thing that bothers me most is this: all those assholes paid huge money for the tickets to the game, AND THEY DON’T EVEN LIKE BASKETBALL. No one who has any knowledge of the game or any appreciation for it would ever react in that way. The idea that a group of people who are ostensibly fans of basketball (and not just the laundry they happen to support) would dance on the grave of one of history’s greatest players — to his face, in one of the worst moments of his entire life, no less — is ludicrous to me. Fandom makes people do crazy things –the word is literally a contraction of “fanatic,” after all — but I have no time for assholes who don’t even care about my sport detracting from it with their nonsense. Spend your loonies and toonies on something else, you rich posers.
The ripple effects of the injury are going to be far-reaching. For one, the NBA will take a hard look at the way it polices fan behavior going forward. [There have been a number of incidents this year alone, including the Kyle Lowry/idiot Warriors’ owner fracas in Game 3, so it’s probably not something the league will be able to sweep under the rug, nor should they.] But the outrage over the Toronto fans will die down eventually. The lasting impact will be on the upcoming free agency period and how it changes the competitive balance of the league, as well as how teams manage the health of their stars in the future, even late in the playoffs.
First and foremost, there are the effects on KD’s future, outside of just what kind of player he will be when he comes back. If he’s not going to play at all next year, and will likely be compromised to some extent even in ’20-’21 (as the history of such an injury suggests he will be), are a bunch of teams really going to line up to throw a four-year max deal his way? It sounds crazy because we’re talking about Kevin Freaking Durant here, but are there organizations ready and willing to light almost $80 million (of both real currency and cap space) on fire over the next two years in order to get whatever is left of him at age 33? As fast as things move in the modern NBA, isn’t that borderline delusional? [On second thought, the Knicks would definitely do exactly that, so maybe I need to reconsider.]
The other door here is one we would have never considered before this injury. The talk is always about how KD is about to be a free agent, but it glosses over one suddenly critical fact: Durant has a player option in his contract for next season at $31.5 million. The fact the injury happened right before he has to decide whether or not to exercise the option could turn out to be extremely serendipitous for both Durant AND whichever team he actually wants to go to next, while being semi-disastrous for Golden State. While it would seem like an aggressively dick move, and would probably burn all of the goodwill he has suddenly come into in the wake of the injury, KD could simply opt into the final year of the contract and collect his $31.5 million while he rehabs, then go into free agency next summer with quite a bit less uncertainty surrounding his condition. If he is in fact the petty sniper some people want to believe he is (I’m not accusing him; this is purely for the sake of argument), then he would get the added “benefit” of crippling Golden State’s cap space and forcing them deeper into the luxury tax to keep Klay Thompson around. [Klay will be an unrestricted free agent this summer, and the rumors have long swirled he will not take anything resembling a hometown discount to remain with the Warriors. Nor should he.] It would be an incredibly strange situation because he would ostensibly be part of the team for another year, but he wouldn’t be playing and they wouldn’t really want him around. He’d basically get locked under the organizational staircase like a basketball Harry Potter. It’s so truly bizarre I have a hard time imagining it come to pass, even if there is a certain logic to it. [It’s been reported the injury probably won’t prevent several teams from offering him a long-term deal, regardless of how insane it would be, and even if they didn’t, the Warriors could always short-circuit the player option by offering KD a long-term deal at a raise and then using him as a trade chip later on. Point is, someone is about to take a giant gamble on KD, a statement which would have made exactly zero sense two days ago.]
Beyond Durant, the effects cascade down to all the other stars who could be on the move in the next few weeks. Kyrie Irving’s “two max slots” conspiring suddenly feels like a lot less of a slam dunk, and Anthony Davis might be making some major revisions to his list of preferred trade destinations. [There is a universe where any of the Knicks, Nets, or Clippers could have made a play for KD, Davis, AND another big money free agent this summer, but the calculus surrounding it changes significantly now, especially if they aren’t certain Davis is anything more than a rental.] Both Jimmy Butler and Kemba Walker — the prospective “second max guys” in many of these hypotheticals — may be a bit more skittish about leaving a truckload of money on the table to follow KD somewhere, thereby giving their incumbent teams an advantage in re-signing them, should they want to. There had even been speculation the best chance Toronto would have to keep Kawhi Leonard would be to sign him to a Durant-esque “1-and-1” contract, but if Kawhi’s processor doesn’t recalculate the cost/benefit of such a course of action after watching firsthand as KD snapped his Achilles’ like a rubber band three weeks before the big payday, then perhaps he isn’t the advanced cyborg we take him for.
We will cross all these bridges when we come to them. For now, there are only two games left to decide a champion and the fate of a dynasty. Where do the events of Game Five leave us? The remaining Warriors have dedicated the rest of the series to KD, and perhaps his absence will once again galvanize the team, as it appeared to when they won their next five games after he went down against Houston. [Durant is Golden State’s version of Kenny. “Oh my God — they killed Kevin! You bastards!”] It’s equally likely they rode a wave of “fuck you” adrenaline to a superhuman victory in Game 5, and the reality of their situation will come crashing down on them in Game Six. There’s no way to know which way it will go, but it’s been beaten into our heads over the years never to underestimate the heart of a champion, and it proved true in Game Five, so maybe we should afford Golden State the benefit of the doubt.
If Toronto were composed of a less even-keeled set of personalities, I might subscribe to the notion they missed their chance to grab a title at home in Game Five and now they’ll be on tilt. I don’t suspect there will be any panic in them. We know Kawhi and the defense will show up. The only unknown is which of the other guys, if any, will have the testicular fortitude to step up and deliver the kill shot to slay the giant. In other words:
OK, I think I’ve worked my way through to acceptance. Bring on Game Six!
To quote the great Ron Burgundy: “Boy, that escalated quickly.” The first two games of the NBA Finals are already in the books after the defending champs kinda-sorta stole a road win in Game 2 Sunday night, downing the Raptors 109-104 based largely on a signature 37-12 Warriors’ run spanning parts of the second and third quarters. With the series knotted at one game apiece and the stage shifting to the Bay Area for Game 3 (Wednesday, 9 PM ET, ABC), what have we learned about how these two teams match up, and what does it mean going forward? Let’s get right to it.
The series is rapidly becoming a war of attrition. The Warriors took back the home court advantage with the win in Game 2, so things should be looking rosy for them. However, they are an absolute M.A.S.H. unit as they head back to Oakland. In addition to the cloak-and-dagger nature of Kevin Durant’s injury and the gradual re-integration of Boogie Cousins to the rotation, Golden State is still dealing with a hampered Andre Iguodala, along with new injuries to Klay Thompson and Kevon Looney. While Looney has been ruled out for the series, the severity of the Thompson injury is unclear (he is listed as questionable for Game 3 and is a famously tough player), Iggy looked spry on both ends Sunday, and Boogie was able to log 28 mostly useful minutes in Game 2 (partially out of necessity because of the Looney injury, but still). So they appear to be soldiering on, but an already-thin roster can only afford to take so many more dings before the levy breaks.
After Thompson went out on Sunday night, the Best Shooting Team in NBA History was so thin on the perimeter Raptors’ coach Nick Nurse deployed a “janky” Box-and-One defense on Steph Curry, and it almost worked! Curry took no shots and had a 0% Usage Rate in the fourth quarter. If not for timely buckets by Quinn Cook, Shaun Livingston, and Iguodala (along with the Raptors shooting 3-of-16 during those late-game minutes), we’d all be calling Nurse a genius for having the guts to bust out some gimmicky high school junk in the fourth quarter of an NBA Finals game. The point is, the Warriors were able to get away with having those guys prominently involved in the offense over a short period where they already had the lead, but if they are forced to rely on lesser players to knock down critical shots over the rest of the series, they are in serious trouble.
For the Raptors, the injury problem is not one of quantity, but quality. While Kawhi Leonard is still putting up big box score numbers (28/ 11/ 4 in 40 minutes a game), his shooting has been inconsistent and he clearly looks hampered getting up and down the floor. Leonard appears able to mostly get to his spots on offense despite the lingering knee injury, but a lot of his shots are coming up short (perhaps due to a lack of burst to finish), and he’s looked gimpy on a number of occasions following heavy contact or a strenuous play, which has likely limited his defensive effectiveness as well. The perfect distillation of the difference a fully healthy Leonard could make was visible on the scramble leading to Iguodala’s game-sealing triple Sunday night:
An unencumbered Kawhi almost certainly picks off that wounded duck from Curry and heads the other way for a game-tying layup (or gets fouled). As the pass was leaving Steph’s fingertips, the Raptors couldn’t have dreamed up a better scenario, yet somehow, it connected. [Credit to Livingston for coming to meet the ball, one of those tiny, fundamental basketball skills it’s easy to take for granted.] Basketballs tend to take funky bounces in these crucial moments (just ask the 2013 Spurs if you don’t believe me), but in the “Sliding Doors” universe where Kawhi — you know, only the most lethal ball hawk on the damn planet — isn’t a half-step slow in jumping the passing lane there, this might be a very different series right now. If Golden State ends up winning in protracted fashion, Toronto is going to rue letting Game 2 slip away, and Kawhi’s health is going to be a big part of the story. Perhaps load management isn’t such a panacea, after all.
So many of the main story lines of these Finals now revolve around health. Can Kawhi drag himself and his team to the finish line? How hurt is Klay? If he can’t go, can Iguodala continue to shoulder more of the load? Is Boogie in good enough shape to paper over the loss of Looney, and can he hold up on defense in big minutes? Will OG Anunoby be able to give Toronto anything? And oh yeah, what about Kevin Freaking Durant? The NBA title may come down to something as simple as which team can get (and keep) its most useful bodies out on the floor.
The Raptors have a Kyle Lowry/Fred VanVleet problem.I’m not here to dog on Kyle Lowry. The dude is a five-time All-Star and the heart and soul of the Raptors’ franchise. Watching him game-in and game-out during this postseason run has given me a new appreciation for the nuance in his game, the subtle but unmistakable way he seems to make a play at the exact moment his team needs it. He’s a brilliant basketball player. Even with all of that being true, he is a problem for Toronto right now. His shots aren’t falling, and as a result, the Warriors are starting to give him the Tony Allen/Andre Roberson treatment, which seems unfathomable for such an accomplished offensive player. In the second half, Golden State switched Draymond Green onto Lowry. The change allowed Green to roam off of him and patrol the paint, which helped spur the game-altering 18-0 run to start the third quarter. Until Lowry can start canning open shots, the Dubs will likely continue sagging off him and clogging up the lane against Leonard and Siakam. He could use the lack of defensive attention to his advantage by doing more cutting and screening, but with Siakam and Gasol already out there, the offense only needs so much of those skills.
Perhaps more importantly, Lowry appears to be having a much tougher time sticking with Steph Curry on defense than is his backup, Fred VanVleet. FVV’s on/off numbers are sterling so far, and the eye test lines up with the stats. He has been easily the more impactful player of the two on both ends, relentlessly hounding Curry into tough shots (or no shot at all) while effectively spacing the floor and getting to the rim on offense. After Leonard and Siakam, VanVleet has probably been Toronto’s third-best player through the first two games. While it’s fantastic to get such a contribution from a purported role player, it simultaneously speaks to how much production they aren’t getting from a primary guy like Lowry.
The problem cuts both ways. Are we to extrapolate from a scintillating four-game sample (going back to the end of the Milwaukee series) that this is who VanVleet is now, or is the regression monster lurking just around the corner? If it’s the latter, can Lowry, a player known for letting the game come to him, be aggressive and confident enough to pick up the slack, while also not giving those hypothetical gains back on defense? The Raptors have been able to get away with hiding Lowry on Iguodala when he and VanVleet share the floor, but if Lowry isn’t going to make shots, and he can’t handle a primary defensive responsibility (outside of his uncanny knack for taking charges), then all the veteran savvy and nuance in the world aren’t worth a whole lot. They simply have to get more out of him to have a shot in this series.
Both defenses are elite but tend to spring leaks. Despite being shorthanded, Golden State’s half court defense has been solid overall in both games. They’ve changed up the looks on Kawhi, blitzing him at times and playing him straight up at others. By and large, they have made him work for his buckets. Toronto won Game 1 because Siakam went ballistic and the transition defense of the Warriors was abysmal. They mostly plugged both leaks in Game 2 and the result flipped. They still gave up a few too many uncontested outside shots, but fortunately for Golden State, the Raptors shot poorly on those looks, especially in the second half. The Warriors may have problems if Toronto’s percentages normalize going forward, but it’s hard not to give up something to a team which moves the ball as well as the Raptors do.
Toronto’s defense was phenomenal in Game 1. They missed a few assignments and got beat backdoor a couple times (an issue which reared its ugly head even more in Game 2), but overall, they put the clamps on Golden State in the half court, much like we saw in the latter part of the Milwaukee series. The Warriors only had any real success in transition and off broken plays, neither of which are sustainable ways to win a series. In Game 2, they let Klay spring loose early, but otherwise were sound again to start the game, leading 47-35 with 5:16 left in the second quarter. Then it all fell apart. Curry got going, the Warriors did their usual “pull a couple buckets out of their asses right before halftime to keep the deficit manageable” routine, and then they were off to the races to start the third. The Raptors counted on Golden State’s role players to miss shots, and they didn’t, so again, there is some possible regression to the mean coming, though complementary guys tend to shoot better at home. Curry was devastating as a screener (he notched four screen assists in Game 2, all of which led to dunks/layups), so Toronto will need to figure out how to navigate those play types and take away the easy backdoor cuts while also preventing Steph from popping out to open triples. [Easier said than done, obviously. There’s a reason the Warriors are gunning for their fourth title in five years.] It becomes quite a bit easier if Klay is out, but if history is any guide, his hamstring would have to be physically detached from his body for him to miss any significant time.
These may seem like relatively minor strategic tweaks, but that’s where we are with these two teams. The big picture defensive principles for both are shipshape, so there’s nothing left to do but sweat the small stuff. Whichever team plugs the remaining holes will likely be the one to take home the title.
Draymond Green is EVERYWHERE. It’s a tough sell for a guy averaging only 13.5 ppg, but if Golden State wins the series, there’s a real chance Draymond could end up as the Finals MVP. He’s been that good in every aspect of the game outside of putting the ball through the hoop. [As a bonus, watching the talking heads lose their collective shit over Steph Curry being snubbed again would be kind of hilarious.] Dray is averaging a tick below a triple-double in the two games so far, and for the playoffs as a whole, he’s the leader in assists, 2nd in Defensive Box Plus/Minus, and 5th in Value Over Replacement Player. He’s the queen on the defensive chess board, able to control any individual matchup (Siakam’s Game 1 detonation notwithstanding) or take on a less threatening assignment and act as a free safety, using his otherworldly intelligence and anticipation to snuff out threats before they surface.
He hasn’t shot well and has been turnover-prone, but otherwise Green has filled in every conceivable crack for a team sporting an awful lot of them right now. If Durant can’t come back and Klay and Iggy remain limited, Draymond may have to step into the role of Kawhi stopper as the series progresses, and there’s no reason to think he won’t excel there as well. As Draymond freely admits, his role is vastly different without Durant in the lineup, so there could be some diminishing returns on his play if KD is somehow able to return and resume control of the offense. Until such a time, however, we are witnessing one of the all-time playoff glue guy performances. And Steve Kerr hasn’t even deployed him at center yet.
This thing is nip-and-tuck, and it’s probably going deep. After dropping the hammer on Cleveland in the last two Finals and a relative cakewalk through the West this year, it appears Golden State, regardless of how many injuries have been required, finally has a worthy adversary in Toronto. Even if they let Game 2 get away from them and Kawhi’s hardware isn’t going to be fully operational the rest of the way, the Raptors’ defense, collective basketball IQ, ball movement, and shot-making should keep them in nearly every game with the champs. Obviously, the complexion of the series totally changes if Durant is able to come back and be effective. The long layoffs between games boost the chances he returns at some point; if you’re reading this on Wednesday, a potential Game 7 is still an absurd eleven days away. Between now and then, we’re set to see the strategic and rotational adjustments of two tremendously bright coaches, a ton of tight, aggressive defense, and probably some crazy shots and bounces which will send the series off in a direction none of us anticipated. As another famous denizen of Jurassic Park once said:
Top Photo Credit: Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press via AP
Unlike all those climbers waiting in line on Mt. Everest, at long last we’ve reached the summit of the NBA season. The Toronto Raptors, making their first-ever Finals appearance, will host the Golden State Warriors, playing in the Finals for a historic fifth straight year, in Game 1 on Thursday night (9 PM ET, ABC). The thousand-foot view of this NBA season has been the air of inevitability surrounding another Golden State title run, but now that we’ve reached the final stage and some of the conditions on the ground have changed, does the narrative still hold?
The bad news for contrarians and content producers alike, is the Warriors, with or without Kevin Durant, still look like a dominant force. Golden State is 5-0 since Durant went down with a calf strain of still-unspecified severity (more on that in a bit), in the process re-discovering their joyous, ball movement-heavy style from the ’14-’15 and ’15-’16 seasons. MVP-caliber Steph Curry has also returned, averaging a mind-boggling 35.8/ 7.6/ 6.6 on 49/ 42/ 95 shooting splits in the five contests. Draymond Green has been unleashed in a larger role as well, looking like the all-court menace and triple-double machine he was in the early days of the Warriors’ dynasty. In short, the Dubs come into the Finals happy, well-rested, and seemingly galvanized by the absence of one of history’s greatest players. Whether KD plays or not, is there any reason to think the Raptors have a shot at this thing?
Naturally, the answer rests on the chiseled shoulders of Kawhi Leonard. Since Durant went down, The Klaw has cemented himself as the unquestioned MVP of the playoffs (if such an award existed; wait, why doesn’t it?), churning out iconic stat lines, moments, and bland interviews in equal measure. Earlier in the postseason, I compared him semi-favorably to ’91 MJ, and even after a slew of games against elite competition, the comparison still basically holds:
Courtesy of Basketball-Reference.com
[Quick side note: there are a few crazy things about that ’91 Bulls team, apex Jordan’s untouchable playoff run obviously being chief among them. They played only 17 total playoff games, going 15-2, whereas the Raptors have already played 18 and haven’t even begun the Finals yet. The ’96 Bulls are held up as the gold standard of those dynastic years because of the 72 wins, but the ’90-’91 team was playing in a much tougher league-wide competitive environment. They won 61 games with a young-ish core — remember, at that time Scottie Pippen and Horace Grant were not yet considered guys a team could “count on” — dominated the postseason, and effectively closed the windows of both the Bad Boy Pistons and the Showtime Lakers in the same year. An all-time team which gets taken for granted a bit because of all the additional success which followed it.]
Anyhoo, back to Kawhi. By virtually any measure, he is having one of the most prolific and efficient postseason runs the league has ever seen. Looking for ways to quantify his dominance, I began combing Basketball-Reference for comps. When I searched for players appearing in a minimum of 12 playoff games (so basically, they made it to the Conference Finals or further) who tallied at least 28 ppg, a True Shooting Percentage of 60%, and .250 Win Shares Per 48 Minutes, here is the entire list:
Needless to say, Kawhi finds himself in some pretty lofty company. [Fun things about this table: First, LeBron appears three separate times, and didn’t win the title in any of those three years. After one garbage season in the L.A. cesspool, it’s remarkable how quickly we forget what an unbelievable playoff performer he’s been over such a long period of time. Second, two guys from the ’17 Warriors make the list. The ’16 team obviously captured the zeitgeist (for better and worse), but when we look back on this era in NBA history with some distance and perspective, that ’17 squad is going to be remembered as one of the most untouchable teams in history. The only reason they didn’t sweep the playoffs — non-Zaza division, speaking of Kawhi — was because Cleveland had an out-of-body shooting performance in Game 4 of the Finals. Seriously, go back and watch that game sometime. It was nuts. They couldn’t freaking miss. OK moving on, for real this time. I just love these trips down memory lane.]
Suffice it to say, when a player is performing at MJ/LeBron/Kareem levels of excellence, his team has to be considered a threat, regardless of opponent. [To be clear, I’m not saying Kawhi is the historical equal of those guys; merely that he is performing at a similar level at this moment. Don’t @ me.] Guys who can blow up an opponent’s game plan at both ends of the floor like this just don’t come along. As soon as coach Nick Nurse switched Kawhi onto Giannis full-time, the Conference Finals were basically a wrap. [Had Coach Bud made a few additional adjustments, as I and many others suggested, perhaps things would have gone differently, but alas.] So no, I do not think another Warriors’ championship parade is inevitable, even as it does remain likely. With that established, let’s take a look at the questions which will determine how much of a chance Toronto has of pulling the upset, starting with the seven-foot elephant in the room…
How much, if at all, will Durant play? It makes sense to start here because KD’s presence or absence more or less dictates the lens through which we view all of the other strategic questions in the series. We know Durant is out for Game 1, and likely beyond. The little birds keep whispering his injury is more serious than originally reported and he is probably done for the year, though this remains nothing more than speculation at this point. From a gamesmanship perspective, it makes total sense for the Warriors to prop up the narrative he may return during the series, since if the Raptors in any way suspect they are about to face one of the greatest players in history, it would be malpractice not to game plan for him. If KD is able to play, he immediately becomes the logical matchup for Kawhi at both ends, and all of the assignments become different than they otherwise would have been were Toronto facing the “O.G.” Warriors. His presence would allow Steve Kerr to rely far more heavily on the Death Lineup (Steph/Klay/KD/Draymond/Iguodala) because of the added shooting and defensive versatility Durant brings to the lineup over Shaun Livingston, which in turn would force Toronto to re-jigger its rotation in specific ways (more on that later).
Leading up to the Finals, everyone is pointing to one alarming stat: in the past 32 games Golden State has played with Curry but without KD, the Warriors are 31-1. It lacks the proper context, but even so, the stat shows unequivocally the Warriors can win this series without Durant, and may even be significant favorites to do so. The difference is, if KD is able to play and perform at something resembling his normal level, it becomes tremendously difficult to see a path to victory for Toronto. I tend to think the injury is more serious than we’ve been told, and he probably will not see the floor. If he does, it may only be because things have gone sideways and they need to break the glass. I suspect deep down the “classic” Warriors want to do this without him to prove they are a championship team regardless of his impending free agency decision, and as more than a little bit of a “fuck you” to Durant himself for the way he’s conducted his business this season.
There are two completely different possible series about to unfold: one where Durant plays the bulk of it, and one where he plays very little to none of it. It’s damn near impossible to analyze without choosing one lane or the other, so I’m going to pick the latter, in part because I think he’ll be physically unable to play, and in part because the series is more competitive without him. [Yes, of course it would be thrilling to watch KD and Kawhi go toe-to-toe, so I won’t exactly be crying in my beer if I’m wrong.]
Who guards Kawhi? The regular season matchups are not terribly informative in this regard, as Kawhi sat for one of the games and Durant got the primary assignment in the other. [FWIW, Toronto won both contests during the regular year. As I’ve mentioned in the past, regular season head-to-head records tend not to be predictive of postseason outcomes in a statistically reliable way.] If Durant is out or limited, the obvious candidate is Andre Iguodala, who has enough strength, smarts, and quickness to at least make Leonard work for the points he will inevitably get. Iggy is a more complementary offensive player than the other likely options (Klay or Draymond), so the cost of him draining his tank to hound Kawhi is less. Additionally, the Raptors will probably want to stick Kawhi on a more threatening offensive player — Draymond so he can switch the screens or Curry/Klay so he can shut off their flow of open looks — which could create cross-matches the Warriors can take advantage of in transition.
Golden State will switch up the looks on Leonard, so in addition to Iggy, Klay, Draymond, Livingston, and Alfonso McKinnie will likely all get a crack at slowing him down at various times. Similar to how the champs defended James Harden and Damian Lillard in previous rounds, they will frequently blitz Kawhi in the pick-and-roll in an attempt to get the ball out of his hands and force his teammates to make plays in 4-on-3 situations. Kawhi’s passing is the only part of his game anyone could remotely classify as a “weakness,” but lest we forget, he’s also a freaking basketball robot. Milwaukee tried something similar as the East Finals progressed, but Kawhi apparently downloaded a software update and responded with a combined 16 assists in Games 5 and 6, so the Warriors may have to pick their poison. The Raptors have craftier playmakers in the short roll (Marc Gasol, Pascal Siakam, and even Kyle Lowry if they decide to invert the pick) and more capable shooters on the weak side than what a depleted Portland team was able to muster against Golden State, so forcing the ball out of Kahwi’s hands may be their best option, but it’s far from a death knell for Toronto’s offense. Which leads right into the next important question…
Can Toronto’s role players stay hot? There is virtually no way backup point guard Fred VanVleet is going to continue shooting flames out of his fingertips. He shot 14-of-17 from deep in Games 5 and 6 combined — a small sample size anomaly which effectively tipped the series in the Raptors’ favor — but even with some expected regression, he’ll need to continue to be a reliable release valve to keep pace with the Dubs. Gasol will have to keep hitting threes out of the pick-and-pop at a high enough rate (he’s at an even 40% for the playoffs) to draw Golden State’s bigs out away from the hoop and open up driving and cutting lanes. Serge Ibaka has been up and down throughout the postseason, but he’s saved Toronto’s (Canadian) bacon with big performances a couple times already. When he puts together a plus shooting game to go along with his usual defensive versatility and rugged athleticism on the offensive glass, he raises the team’s ceiling considerably. Danny Green was lousy, full stop, in the Milwaukee series, shooting only 4-of-23 from deep and ceding minutes to the more effective Norman Powell, but it’s hard to imagine such an accomplished postseason shooter won’t snap out of the slump at some point. [The image of Green raining holy hellfire on Miami in the 2014 Finals is forever etched into my brain. If you recall, the Heat’s semi-villainous, carpetbagging super-duperstar, coming in with consecutive Finals MVPs, left in free agency after that humbling defeat, so perhaps history could repeat itself?]
Siakam’s confidence has waxed and waned throughout the playoffs, and the Warriors will likely pull the same trick on him as Philly and Milwaukee did by nominally putting Draymond on him so he can roam the back line as a free safety, a la Joel Embiid and Giannis Antetokounmpo. Spicy P will need to show he can knock down open corner threes consistently and attack closeouts with his frenetic athleticism to take Golden State out of that scheme. He’ll be a huge bellwether in this series, along with another one of their big men…
Will Marc Gasol get played off the floor? When Golden State goes small with Draymond at the 5, it’s going to be really tough to keep Gasol in the lineup. For all his defensive acumen, he will have a difficult time corralling the Curry/Green pick-and-roll, and at this point in his career, he doesn’t offer enough as a post-up brute on the other end to make up for the deficit. The Death Lineup (or the bastardized version with another wing in place of KD) has run many a hulking center into extinction, so there’s no shame in it. Raptors’ coach Nick Nurse will need to carefully tie Gasol’s minutes to those of Golden State’s traditional centers: the criminally underrated Kevon Looney, Andrew Bogut, and perhaps Boogie Cousins, should he be available. Ibaka will be the big man of choice against the small-ball lineups, and should that prove untenable, Nurse could even run out the 6’9″ Siakam at center for stints. [This lineup was highly effective in limited minutes during the regular season, though it usually featured OG Anunoby and his gargantuan wingspan at the 4. Anunoby is questionable for Game 1 after missing the last six weeks due to an emergency appendectomy, so it remains to be seen if Nurse will be gun-shy about deploying this configuration.]
Gasol’s playmaking and floor spacing have unlocked the best version of Toronto’s offense; they are first in the league in both assists and three-point percentage since his arrival. He has an uncanny pick-and-roll chemistry with Kyle Lowry as a second-side attack opposite Kawhi’s iso-heavy brilliance. If Golden State can run him off the floor with its small unit, the Raps may not have enough firepower to keep up.
Can Toronto’s elite defense keep the score manageable? When Golden State has the ball, we’re in true “unstoppable force/immovable object” territory. Toronto sports the no. 1 rated defense in the playoffs, while Golden State unsurprisingly has the no. 1 offense. [Both teams rank no. 8 on the other side of the ball, an OCD-calming level of symmetry for all the stat nerds out there.] No one can truly stop Golden State’s offensive machine, but the Raptors have all the elements to at least make it a grind: a stratospheric collective basketball IQ; multiple bodies to throw at Steph Curry; rangy, athletic bigs and wings to closeout to the three-point arc; and an All-World, “In Case of Emergency” stopper (Kawhi) to throw on either KD, Steph, or Klay should one of them start to detonate. They are best in the league at limiting transition, which served them tremendously well in the last round. Once Toronto shut down Milwaukee’s vaunted fast break game, the Bucks were completely lost in the half court. This same game plan will be necessary but not sufficient against Golden State, as the Warriors have a whole universe of counters in their set offense if they can’t get out and run.
The Raptors will also need to encourage Golden State’s tendency to be careless with the ball, as Toronto is elite in capitalizing off turnovers as well. They absolutely want to avoid a track meet (RIP, Clippers and Blazers), but they’ll need to run selectively to generate enough easy buckets and stay within arm’s reach of the Dubs late in games. If Toronto can keep the scores in the 90’s and low 100’s, they have a real shot. If Golden State gets up into the 110-115+ range, the Raptors are cooked. Toronto obviously hasn’t faced an offense this explosive, but the inverse is also true, so it will be fascinating to see which side is able to set the tempo for the series.
So who’s it gonna be? Raptors in seven. Chances are I’m going to look foolish for this, but where’s the fun in playing it safe? The Warriors will probably just uncork the ultimate weapon in Durant if things start to go sideways, but I am seeing some shades of the ’04 Finals here: an organizationally fatigued, fraying dynasty struggling against a balanced upstart with a vise-grip defense made whole by a midseason trade for a veteran big man. Golden State has better complementary guys than did those Lakers, but the Pistons also didn’t have a Jordanesque superstar in his prime, so we’ll say those cancel each other out. Pulling out a Game 7 on the road is an exceedingly difficult task, particularly in an environment where the Raptors faithful will be foaming at the mouth and speaking in tongues (politely, of course) by that point. I’m not super excited to watch Drake celebrate and act like he’s part of the team, but in the end, I’d rather be wrong about the predictable outcome than the fun, historic one.
Enjoy the highest level of basketball on Planet Earth, everybody. Let’s do this!
24 Sloppy Seconds 