2019 NBA Off-season Review

Here are some brief thoughts on some specific teams and trends we saw in this explosive NBA off-season:

With all eyes on Paul George and Kawhi Leonard vs. Lebron James and Anthony Davis in LA the team with the best duo in the state of California still resides in the Bay Area.

The four superstars playing at Staples Center this year make for historically strong 1-2 punches. That being said, both duos possess flaws that make their respective sums less than the Steph Curry-Draymond Green tandem.

With the Lakers it’s 2 main issues. One, Lebron is 35. Even though he might be the best ever to lace them up, last year already started to show that even he won’t be breaking Father Time’s unbeaten record. While there is nobody I would take over him in a Game 7 right now, the mileage he’s accumulated over the years is starting to show. The defensive effort just is not there anymore, and he’s graduated from the Russell Westbrook School of just kind of stand there at the 3 point line with your hands on your knees when you don’t have the ball.

The other problem is that as good as Anthony Davis is, he’s not a true fulcrum offensively. This will be particularly apparent since it looks like the Lakers plan on playing him out of position as a Power Forward. Everyone knows AD is awesome, but he doesn’t go one on one and get his own shot. He’s at his best as rim rolling big man with as much spacing as possible around him. Starting him at the 4 next to Javale McGee takes him away from his greatest strengths as a rim protector and lob man. Lebron and AD are too elite as a duo to truly struggle, but it would not come as any kind of shock if they failed to make it to round 2 of the playoffs.

As for the team they share Staples Center with, it seems like the Clippers are the current title favorites in the eyes of most. Now that I’ve come down after my initial enthusiasm about there two huge moves, I’m not quite sure I see it. Again, Paul George and Kawhi Leonard are great, but like the Lakers’ duo I’m not sure if there won’t be some diminishing returns by having them team up.

I have seen it argued that when you when you combine these two with Patrick Beverly you may get as good of a defensive perimeter as any team in history. That may be true, but there are ways around that. Look at what Lebron’s Cavs and especially what Houston has done the past couple of postseasons against Golden State. They put Lebron, Kyrie, or James Harden in as many picks as possible to get Steph Curry isolated one on one and let him go to work. You don’t think teams will try this strategy with Montrez Harrell, Landry Shamet, and especially Lou Williams? Where are they hiding Lou when Houston comes to town with Westbrook and Harden?

And while both George and Leonard are clear pluses offensively neither really succeeds as a super high usage, ball dominant superstar. Maybe having each other helps in that regard, but neither is known as a plus passer who gets good looks for his teammates. Look at the teams year in and year out that put up the best offensive ratings in the league and it reads like a list of teams with the best point guard play. I’m not sure the Clips aren’t a Kyle Lowry sort of player short of being clear favorites.

You know what team you don’t have to worry about in regards as to how their two best players compliment each other? That’s right, the Warriors. You have a pretty big head start on the rest of the league when you have one guy who is either the first or second best offensive player in the league and you have another that’s the first or second best defensive player in the league. That they’ve got as much experience playing together as anyone in the league with styles that compliment one another to a tee makes that head start even larger. On top of that, I’m expecting more Playoff Draymond Green in the regular season as he chases his super max contract while attempting to prove that they really didn’t need Kevin Durant after all. Remember these guys went 33-4 without KD and with Curry until running into a truly great (and underrated) Toronto Raptors juggernaut in the finals.

True, those teams weren’t also down Klay Thompson, but they didn’t have DeAngelo Russell either. Even without Klay I still think these guys will be a top 5 team. Keep in mind the third best players on the Clippers and Lakers right now are probably Danny Green and Patrick Beverly. I love those two, but they might be all time lows for third wheels on championship teams. Russell has plenty of flaws, but he’s a max contract guy who went to an All Star game last year.

And are we sure Klay isn’t playing next year? I don’t know enough about ACL injuries to comment, but there are guys in the NFL coming back from tears in 8 months now. Can Klay do it in 10? If there were a basketball player I was betting on to do it, it would be him. A starting 5 of Curry, Russell, rusty Klay, Draymond and Looney come playoff time would be the best in the association. Even that team would probably be an Andre Iguodala short of a “true” title team, but with parity at the level it is right now in the league there are no real super teams you have to get past.

Check out the Warriors championship odds and tell me it doesn’t feel just a bit low right now.

Brooklyn is obviously a big winner, but are they as big of a winner as they look? Diving in deeper shows the route they took is not the best way to build a championship roster.

No one in their right mind could state the Nets didn’t have a really strong offseason. However, count me as a skeptic of people claiming that this team projects as some kind of new super team.

It starts with Kyrie Irving. He’s obviously a really good player, but up to this point in his career he’s proven to be more of a championship level #2 option than an alpha offensively, while being a complete liability defensively. When you’re giving a guy a max contract worth 30% of your available cap space you need that player to provide roughly 9 Wins Above Replacement to just break even on that contract (assuming your level for a full replacement level team is roughly 9 wins).

According to Real Plus Minus, probably the best publicly available, all-encompassing player stat available, Irving had his best season ever last year and put up 10.34 wins. Even if you think RPM does a poor job of dispersing fair value for high usage guards (which it might), you also have to keep in mind that it isn’t accounting for his substantial injury history and how his poor leadership made life at his first two stops difficult.  If you look at Irving as a top 20ish player, an all-star but not a superstar projected to produce at a 9-10 WAR/year rate there is virtually no surplus value in his contract. Dedicating 30% of your payroll to him more or less both guarantees that you won’t have Knicks level disaster, but makes constructing a championship level team really difficult around him.

The counter argument used to be Kyrie is just saving himself for the playoffs and that his true value shines in the League’s second season. This past season shows that probably is not the case. Instead, there is more evidence that his postseason success with the Cavaliers stemmed from getting to play Robin to Lebron’s Batman.

Kyrie is just the start though. Kevin Durant has been an awesome player for a long time, but not the second best hooper on the planet the last five years or so as many have claimed. It’s been a half-decade since he’s even the featured player on his own team’s offense! His defense hovers closer to average than All defense contrary to what most people believe (box out JR Smith please!!!!).

Even with that being said KD was worth an easy 35% of the cap if everything had gone to plan. It didn’t though.  It’s shocking how many people act as though this Achilles tear is just a 1 year thing and he’ll be back to normal. It’s maybe the toughest injury in the sport.  He’s going to come back as a 32 year old who has to adjust to a new team.  Time is on neither his nor the team’s side.   If you assume KD was $50 million player in his prime, and comes back at 85%, which I would argue is a pretty rosy projection, he’ll barely have any surplus value on his contract as well.

If there were not enough the Nets also had to play the “sign our friend and overpay him game” with Deandre Jordan. DJ has been a solid center in this league for a while, but if there were a type of player that does not age gracefully it would be the athletically gifted Big Man who has very little basketball skills to fall back on when the athleticism deteriorates (Don’t believe me? Google the recently released Dwight Howard, or check out Ben Wallace’s Bulls numbers).  

To give him $40 million over the next four years gives back a good chunk of the surplus value created by the other two.

The conclusion I draw from Brooklyn’s off-season is that the save a bunch of cap room and recruit free agents to come play for you is an inherently flawed strategy.  Lebron James has warped everyone’s mind that it’s the way to build a championship roster, but it’s not the case.  Lebron was so much better when he went to Miami and came back to Cleveland than all of these guys now. By signing Lebron the team was more or less getting two max players for one when you look at the value he created. By going after the top of this class (with a decent sized asterik for Kawhi Leonard) teams are committing so much to guys who are worth their contracts, but use up so much space that it’s hard to construct a supporting cast to put you into a championship echelon.

The way championship teams really get built is by getting real good players at good prices. Look at the top 3 teams in the East this year, and the best players on their respective teams.  Giannis was the 27^thhighest paid player in the league last year, Kawhi was 34^th, Jimmy Butler was 41^st.  You can afford much stronger supporting casts at the price.  The best recent example would be Steph Curry making $11million/year the first 3 times the Warriors went to the Finals. 

The best way to build a true championship team is to acquire as many draft picks as you can, sign the best of those players to team friendly deals, and fill in any gaps with Iguodala types who are drawn to your teams culture and potential.

The Brooklyn model is more likely to bring you an Westbrook/George version of Oklahoma City kind of team. That style of team has a super high floor with a questionable ceiling. That’s better than most, but it’s not the best way to win a title unless you can convince prime Lebron to join you.

The Celtics have been made out as big losers, but they’re fine.

Trust me when I say nobody would love to pile on the Celtics having a bad off-season more than me, but the truth is they’re not in a worse long term position than in April.

Kemba Walker isn’t quite on the level of Kyrie Irving like some Celtics fans have claimed, but when you factor in they saved some money on the switch it’s pretty close to a wash. 

I also think they got a little lucky with Al Horford.   I love the guy, but there is no way I want to give $27 million a year to a guy who scores so little and will be 37 at the end of his contract. This becomes even more true when you take a look at the contracts other Centers like Kevon Looney and Ed Davis got. Sure, Al is better than those guys, but they are capable starters who make 5 times less money. I’d rather take one of them and spread the $20 million I saved for some difference makers on the wing.

They had a pretty solid draft as well. I like how they traded down to get more bites at the apple, and Langford, Williams and Edwards were all good values relative to where I had them on my draft board.

Boston will probably lose a couple more games this year than they otherwise would have, but their long term outlook is just as rosy as it was before it was clear Kyrie was gone.

Letting the market play out proves to be a better strategy than targeting “Your Guy” Day 1

This point is the number one thing I took away from Free Agency this year. Generally speaking, patience wound up being a virtue for teams that that gave things a day or two rather compared to teams that tried to jump the market.

No team exemplified this phenomenon quite like the New York Knicks:

Within hours they signed 34 year old Taj Gibson to a 2 year/$20 million deal, when instead they could have waited a couple days and topped the 3 years/$15 million pact the Warriors gave 24 year old Taj Gibson (Kevon Looney).

They wasted no time giving Julius Randle 3 years/$63 million when waiting could’ve yielded Delon Wright at 3 years/$29 million and the opportunity to absorb Andre Iguodala’s contract as part of the Kevin Durant-DeAngelo Russell sign and trade deal. This would have plugged more serious holes on the roster, netted a first round pick, and not made any kind of serious difference on the competitiveness of this years team.

Within 24 hours of the opening bell they again splurged, this time on Bobby Portis handing out 2 year/$31 million deal. Had they waited another day they could’ve signed Richaun Holmes for a third of the price. A similar 3 point shooter who actually protects the paint.

It wasn’t just the Knicks though. If I had to analyze NBA Free Agency 2019 in 10 words or less it would be: Deals day one were bad, deals after were good.

Unlike just about every other analytic geek, I didn’t like what Utah did.

I was surprised the reaction to the Mike Conley deal was overwhelmingly positive. Sure, he’s an upgrade over Ricky Rubio, but at what cost? In terms of raw production, I think Utah gave most of the gain back by also including strong role players Jae Crowder and Kyle Korver. In terms of money being paid, is Conley definitely $13-14 million better than Rubio?

The trade is justifiable to that point, but when you include that they had to add 2 first round draft picks to the deal (and Grayson Allen, but he’s a 0 to me) it becomes pretty hard to justify what amounts to a slight upgrade.

That was just the start though. Going from Derrick Favors to Bogan Bogdonavic hurts more than it helps. Having Favors next to Rudy Gobert was always going to be a little redundant, but Favors is still a clearly superior player. Giving Niko Mirotic the 4 year/$73 million dollar contract and moving on from Favors would make sense, but Bogdonavic just is not on that level. Even though there are benefits to having players in roles that more suit their skills, it hurts to take a pretty sizable step back in talent just to transition to a new playing style.

Utah should not be written off as a title contender. It’s just that if they get to that level it will be more a result of the Warriors coming back to earth combined with a larger than expected leap from a player they currently have, in all likelihood Donovan Mitchell.

Trading first round draft picks is back and back with vengeance!!!

Two summers ago it was jarring to see two star players, Paul George and Jimmy Butler, both traded without the team trading away the star getting back more first round picks than they gave up in the deal. First round draft picks were hoarded to an almost unhealthy degree, as teams valued there team friendly contracts at the expense of paying market rates for true stars.

Even last year the only pick the Spurs got back for NBA Finals MVP Kawhi Leonard was the #29 pick in this years draft.

Flash forward to this summer and the difference is stark. Paul George, now two years older (albeit with less fear of him being a rental), gets FIVE first round draft picks with two pick swaps! Even if you want to say the difference in situations make it difficult to compare the two trades, then look at the situation with Anthony Davis. Once again a superstar says he’s going to the Lakers in a year when he reaches free agency. Instead of waiting him out, LA decides to bid against itself and sends out 3 first round picks and 2 more pick swaps (and some interesting young players to boot).

And it’s not just upper echelon stars that are getting multiple first round draft picks. It’s really good Point Guards on the wrong side of 30 with fair contracts are fetching two as well. I mentioned earlier how two 1’s for Conley felt extreme, but the two 1’s and two swaps Houston gave up in their exchange for Westbrook is huge even if you factor in the some of that is offset by getting off of Chris Paul’s contract.

There are two factors that appear to be pushing this drive. One is welcome to a world without the spirit crushing Warriors. As their super team crumbled in the finals, other franchises who had been waiting out that dynasty decided this was the time to move. The door has been as open as its been in at least 3 years.

Another factor I think played a role in this was the success of Brooklyn this past season. After only missing the playoffs for only three seasons following their infamous, terrible trade for Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce in exchange for all of those unprotected draft picks, selling out your future for now seems more palatable. Flags fly forever as they say, and if you’re seen as place that gets the most out of its talent, knows how to treat stars, and plays in a premier market then all you’ll need is cap space and a little luck in order to attract the league’s top players.

Even understanding that call me Goldilocks. There has to be a sweet spot between these two worlds. After a couple years of GM’s being overly concerned about coming ahead on the long term Expected Value of trades instead of pushing the pedal to the metal on championship drives, now it seems like teams are tossing on at least one more lightly protected first round draft pick than they have to. You mean to tell me New Orleans is holding onto AD if Pelinka holds the line at 2 unprotected first rounders? Who did Utah outbid by giving up the second first rounder? OKC wouldn’t have been fine with Shai Gilarious-Alexander, Gallinari and just 3 first round draft picks?

Memphis very quietly had a great off-season.

I touched on it a little bit earlier, but the biggest winners of the off-season weren’t Brooklyn and the 2 LA teams, although they did really well obviously. The biggest winners of the off-season were:

1. The Pelicans for landing Zion, and getting maybe the biggest haul in the history of any trade ever for one year of AD,
2. Oklahoma City for pivoting from a team that looks like it had a low 50 win ceiling and was way over the luxury tax to a team with as much draft capital as we’ve ever seen.
3. Memphis

The job their new management did this off-season was incredible. It started with a little luck, but moving up to #2 in the lottery and getting the opportunity to strike on Ja Morant was just the beginning.

They got a great haul for Mike Conley and with the first of the draft picks they got in that deal got an absolute steal at #21 with Brandon Clarke. He was five on my board and then he went out and may have been the best player in the Summer League this year. He also is a perfect compliment to both Morant and Justin Jackson Junior. Great value.

Where they did their best work was with their cap space though. Andre Iguodala does not have the most egregious of contracts, but they somehow were able to land a future number one for absorbing his deal. Not only did they land a one, but they got Golden State to kick it far enough down the road that it may wind up being a valuable number as Steph Curry will be 36 years old when it’s due up.

That would’ve been more than enough to make it a Grade A off-season, but they topped it off by being able to capitalize on the rampant incompetence taking place in Phoenix. Just taking a roll of the dice on Josh Jackson for Kyle Korver was a sufficient price. That they were able to somehow squeeze 2 second round picks as well as an interesting piece in DeAnthony Melton makes that an awesome trade. They get 4 long shot roll of the dices for a guy they probably would have bought out anyways. None of those moves may pan out, but this is the kind of move smart front offices try.