NBA Free Agency: Winners & Losers & More
11 voices from NBA Substack on July's big moves
We asked 11 leading NBA voices on Substack:
Your NBA winners and losers โ or observations โ from free agency?
Check out their answers and subscribe!
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After an opening hour of free agency during which nothing moved and so many of us clamored for the days of 30 deals getting uncorked in the first 30 minutes, I'd say fans of change did eventually win. Paul George, Klay Thompson, Chris Paul, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Isaiah Hartenstein all switched teams. That's a pretty significant amount of movement.ย
But let's be real: The Aprons have won. The league's lawyers who conceived the first and second luxury tax aprons have dominated this offseason and will presumably continue to do so now that the NBA's richest owners can no longer just say they'll pay as much luxury tax as they want and deal with it later. The team-building restrictions attached to The Aprons have changed everything.ย
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It's hard to consider anyone but the Thunder the winner of free agency โ or at least of the talent-acquisition phase of the offseason. Before the draft, they added Alex Caruso via trade. In the draft, they snagged Nikola Topiฤ, who was tracking to be a high lottery pick before his injuryย and instead slipped to them at No. 12, Michael Porter Jr.-style. (They also drafted Dillon Jones and Ajay Mitchell, but Topiฤ is the prize.) And then they added Isaiah Hartenstein with their cap room on a frontloaded, team-friendly deal.
They were already one of the league's five best defenses, and that unit now got even better. Caruso gave them another shooter. Hartenstein addresses their rebounding issues without detracting from their core style of play. And now they have the ability to shapeshift into big and small lineups in a way they didn't last year. It's early, but I think they have to be the favorite to come out of the West.ย
More from Jared Dubin: 2024 NBA Free Agency Live Analysis
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The star of 2024 NBA free agency is certainly the Second Apron, whether it's a legitimate reason expensive teams are cutting salary or whether it's a convenient excuse. Legit or not, it's changing the list of contenders before our eyes, whether it's downgrading the Nuggets and Clippers or boosting the Sixers.
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The โwinnerโ of NBA free agency thus far is the CBA. The tax, the aprons, and fear of hard caps have ruled the opening days of the offseason. The Warriors and Clippers arenโt what we once knew them to be. The Celtics, Suns, Timberwolves and Bucks are re-signing their own players and adding veterans for the minimum.
The system (along with looming fines and penalties for tampering) took some of the fun out of free agency. But it forced teams to get really creative. Simply throwing money at a problem to fix it is no longer a thing in todayโs NBA.
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The 76ers are the obvious winners of free agency โ adding Paul George, locking up Tyrese Maxey, retaining Kelly Oubre Jr. โ but the Thunder and Magic deserve props for addressing their biggest needs and bringing back vital role players.
Is Isaiah Hartenstein a $30 million per year-level center? Maybe not. Should Kentavious Caldwell-Pope be making $22 million per year? Debatable. Do I care that either of these guys got a little overpaid? Not at all! I love both of these signings; if your roster has a hole, don't overthink โ go sign a guy who fills that hole. OKC and Orlando did that and immediately became better teams. OKC, especially, is loaded up.
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Winners: Stingy owners
The CBA did its job. Yesteryearโs superteams largely balked at the roster constraints and luxury tax payments required to keep pricey cores together, and the teambuilding restrictions will further limit the additions that new challengers, like Philadelphia and New York, can make.
Maybe this isnโt a bad thing? In an ideal world, the CBA would spread more talent throughout the league. In the real world, though, it is a handy excuse for billionaires to cheap out.ย
Losers: Los Angeles Lakers
I thought about saying โthe fansโ here as a nod to the encumbrances of the aprons, but the Lakers have struck out on every major free-agent target so far (and their top coach target, too). They will likely run it back in a West that saw top contenders improve. At least those bullies in Denver got worse!
More from Mike Shearer: Isaiah Hartenstein is the big news | A tentative Free Agency Day 1
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Winners: NBA team owners
For decades weโve been enjoying a league with a soft salary cap. If you want to pay, knock yourself out. Not anymore.
We are now in a league with a effective hard salary cap, even if itโs not in the salary cap line, but in the second apron. At least thatโs how franchises are operating, and weโve already seen a couple of big-spending teams like Warriors or Clippers making hard decisions because of these rules.
Who benefits from this? Maybe the fans, with a superior competitive balance. But surely the owners, having now a good excuse to cut salaries and control their salary sheets.
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Losers: Denver Nuggets
If youโll forgive the cross-sport metaphor, I like when teams go for it. I donโt like when they punt on 4th and 2. Though you can quibble with that yardage in the ultra-competitive West (especially given how OKC is definitively going for it), thatโs what we seem to be observing in Denver. Two straight offseasons, two key departures โ first Bruce Brown, now Kentavious Caldwell-Pope โ with no one of note coming back in. And no, pulling Russell Westbrook out of the burning wreckage of the Clippers is not my idea of going for it.
I could be wrong, of course; itโs just frustrating to watch such a well-built team around the best player in the world start looking this โฆ complacent. As if this St. Louis native needed one more reason to resent the Kroenkes.ย
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Not really a winner/loser thing, but it sure feels like the NBAโs role player wage gap is widening. Case in point, Isaiah Hartenstein (who is an elite role playerย by definition) is getting $29 million per year from the Thunder, while Gary Harris (whom I consider to be an above-average role player) is getting "just" $7.5 million per year โ and fewer years to boot. And I donโt think the gap between the players is worth $21.5 million per year when put in similar situations (though Hartenstein is definitely ahead).
That gap will likely continue to widen as teams adjust to the new CBA rules and the cap rises, but it doesn't bode well for the laymen of the NBA.
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My winners:ย The pillagers of lopsided trades
The Thunder and Magic are winning free agency because they already had two foundational pieces on rookie contracts, provided by fruits they're still reaping from their previous trades.
โฆ and Bilal Coulibaly, for getting a real center to play with.
My losers: (Most of) the old guard
Six of the last eight finals teams โ namely, the Heat, Nuggets, Warriors, Suns, Bucks, and Lakers โ are seeing younger teams with more cap flexibility improve as they get worse or, at best, stay the same.
... and Larry Nance Jr., for getting traded out of an ideal situation.
More from Dallin Murphy: Free Agency Winners and Where to Find Them
Ray LeBov |
The most interesting "winning" teams, to me, don't involve the ones that have added the biggest names. In fact, the TV screamers have barely mentioned the players I'm focused on, if they have at all.ย
And yet several of them are likely to play key roles for their new teams. In addition to teams re-signing their own free agents, some key adds were KCP to the Magic, Nicolas Batum and Derrick Jones Jr. to the Clips, Delon Wright to the Bucks, Andre Drummond to the Sixers, and Naji Marshall to the Mavs.ย
I look forward most to observing the role that Isaiah Hartenstein is likely to play for OKC, not only shoring up the Thunder where he is most needed with his defense, rebounding, passing, screening and more, but also how he will free Holmgren to play his most natural position without having to worry about trying to defend behemoths.
When I add re-signing Isaiah Joe and Aaron Wiggins and trading Josh Giddey for top defender/shooter Alex Caruso, I'm naming Sam Presti the biggest winner for his continued team-building brilliance.
I'm in complete agreement on OKC. Often the best talent is that which is a force multiplier - where their value comes not solely from their own stats, but the secondary and tertiary impacts their performance has on others. It's what they enable others to do in addition to their own performance.
Chet Holmgren faded significantly after April and into the postseason. It was reasonably obvious he was worn down from his first NBA season. OKC was rumored to be interested in Zach Edey to help alleviate the burden on him. In the end, they looked to the marketplace to solve that which suggests that they feel their window is now. Caruso and Hartenstein strike me as low risk force multipliers in the OKC lineup.
Beyond that, there are two fundamental ways to look at improving at an admittedly simplistic level. You can either score more points or prevent more points to widen your point differential. Either can work, and we can debate which side of the equation is more stable and sustainable throughout the season, but one thing is reasonably clear - focusing on point prevention is presently cheaper until the market responds further. With the significant financial impacts discussed here by so many now upon us, the movement toward point prevention and freeing up your existing offensive weapons just seems smart.
Life is not about optimal decisions, but about placing smart bets on an endless series of suboptimal choices. The OKC moves strike me as an extremely low risk, high reward decision. I'm less sure about Philadelphia's decision with Paul George that the media seems to just love. Paying a soon to be 35-year-old, with a recent history of injuries, whose performance has sagged in recent postseasons more than $200 MM over four years feel possibly high reward for two seasons, but extremely high risk over four. The last two seasons of that deal could be very ugly for Morey and the Sixers.
Different players of course, but George's signing for me had eerie echoes of a similar media reaction when James Harden signed with the Nets three years ago. Irrational exuberance on the Coasts. Personally, I prefer the low key intellect being exercised in Oklahoma. We'll see how it plays it out.
never will i understand the fascination with Paul George.