With the eyes of the basketball world focused on Spain for the inaugural FIBA World Cup (or, if you prefer, the re-branded World Championships), and training camps still a month away, the business of the NBA is largely on pause. As the dust from a tumultuous summer continues to settle, it’s a good time to take stock of which teams appear to have blundered in their offseason deal-making.
While a team like Miami obviously had a wretched offseason on balance, with LeBron James returning to Cleveland, this wasn’t really a blunder on their part. Pat Riley and company were aware =James could choose to sign elsewhere and were prepared for the eventually. The franchise recovered quickly, retaining Chris Bosh and securing a decent free agent haul headlined by Luol Deng and Josh McRoberts. Miami made the best of the bad hand they were dealt.
Not every team can say the same. The moves or series of moves which follow were largely of the offending teams’ own doing, whether a bad trade, an outlandish signing or in one case passing up on an near too-good-to-be-true opportunity.
Detroit Pistons signing Jodie Meeks, D.J. Augustin and Caron Butler
New Pistons basketball czar Stan Van Gundy certainly had his work cut out when he took both the head coach and GM positions with Detroit. The mismatched parts assembled in the latter years of the Joe Dumars regime simply didn’t mesh. In particular the three-headed monster of Andre Drummond, Greg Monroe and Josh Smith couldn’t effectively share the floor. Combined with unimaginative offensive schemes, this ill-fitting trio contributed mightily to Smith putting up one of the uglier shooting seasons in recent NBA history.
The team obviously needed better floor spacing. So Van Gundy when out and got spacing, by buying at the top of an inflated market for shooting. This resulted in Detroit spending $13.5 million this coming season on a limited jump shooter (Meeks), an aging vet who’s rep vastly outstrips his current ability (Butler) and an undersized, poor-defending ball-dominant point guard (Augustin) to pair with the undersized, poor-defending, ball-dominant point guard already on the roster in Brandon Jennings.
Not only was this money poorly spent from a likely production standpoint, but don’t appear to be much of a long-term look. Why is a team which won 29 games last year making “win now” moves?
The Rockets Third Star Debacle
Houston GM Daryl Morey has loudly and publicly stated his desire to assemble a team based around the “big three” concept. With Dwight Howard and James Harden in place, Morey had assembled assets targeting this offseason or the 2015 trade deadline at the latest as the time to acquire that third star. With this summer’s crop of free agents, two potential targets were identified, Carmelo Anthony and Chris Bosh.
Anthony turned out to never be a real possibility. The lure of the $30 million or so more money the Knicks could as well as the continued opportunity to perform in the media hub that is New York City were simply too much to pass up. That didn’t stop the Rockets from engaging in some unseemly tactics to woo Anthony, even going so far as to photoshop Anthony into a No. 7 Rockets jersey, which is pretty standard fare. Except No. 7 was already taken on the Houston Roster by Jeremy Lin.
Aside from minor embarrassment, no real damage done there. When the time came to pursue Bosh, however, Houston jumped without a net. Trading Lin and a draft pick to the Lakers to clear cap space, while letting Chandler Parsons dangle in free agency put the Rockets in “Bosh or Bust” territory. As those moves were being made, it was widely assumed the Rockets had an agreement with Bosh more or less in place.
Unfortunately, no such deal had been struck. Bosh chose to re-sign with Miami, slamming shut the door LeBron’s departure had opened only hours earlier. Scrambling, Houston decided to let Parsons leave for Dallas and replace him with Trevor Ariza, betting on Ariza in free agency a second time. (Ariza’s first stint in Houston lasted only a year, as forced into too large an offensive role, he shot 39.4 percent as a Rocket.)
So in addition to not landing Bosh, Houston lost most of their attractive trade chips in terms of expiring contracts, future picks and young productive players on cheap deals, all while getting worse on the floor in prospect. Or in other words, they struck out.
A First Rounder for Hedo Turkoglu?
It’s hard to totally blame the Clippers in general and Doc Rivers in particular for missing some details this summer. Certainly, the Donald Sterling saga and attendant litigation dominated the spotlight, and rightly so.
However, that inattention to the minute details appears to have come back to bite the Clippers. Much like Van Gundy, Rivers dual role as coach and GM befuddled him to a degree. Adding big man depth and replacing (perhaps even upgrading) from the departed Darren Collison were vitally important tasks. However, the haste to fill those spots created further complications.
By signing Spencer Hawes to the full mid-level exception and Jordan Farmar to the full bi-annual exception, Los Angeles found themselves right up against the hard salary cap imposed by the “luxury tax apron” (short version acquiring players via sign-and-trade, MLE or BAE imposes a hard cap on a franchise for that season.) With only 13 players under contract, meaning not only could the Clippers not afford to sign new players, they would be severely limited in their ability to invite players to training camp.
So L.A. had to cut salary. Which means they had to pay somebody (in this case Milwaukee) a first rounder to take on Jared Dudley’s contract. Waiving Carlos Delfino and Miroslav Raduljica also entails the Clippers owing nearly $1 million in dead money for each of the next five seasons. The total effect is that the Clippers have enough room under the apron to sign three players to fill out the roster. But at what cost?
By virtue of ignoring the small details, Doc and co. effectively traded a first rounder, Jared Dudley and $1 million every year for five years for the right to sign Hedo Turkoglu and Chris Douglas-Roberts to minimum deals.
A Step Back In Sacramento
The free agent value of the offseason was Phoenix getting Isaiah Thomas for a mere $7 million per seasons. (By comparison that’s only a few hundred thousand more per year than Meeks got from Detroit). Though this was technically a sign-and-trade, Sacramento received basically nothing in return (actually a trade exception and the draft rights to a very marginal propect Alex Oriakhi).
The Kings decided they would rather have Darren Collison as their starting point guard for a small savings (paying Collison an average of $1.9 million less over the three years of his deal). What’s not to like? Well, Thomas was one of the more underrated point guards in the league, whereas Collison has been at best a competent backup. This is a gap worth well more than $1.9 million per season.
For a team which had finally been trending upward under new ownership after years of mismanagement, this move (combined with a rather embarrassing look at the team’s attempt to crowdsource its draft process) rightly has fans wondering if it’s the same old Kings.
Looking the Love Gift Horse in the Mouth
The biggest blunder of the offseason was a move not made. Inherently, there is a fair bit of speculation involved when discussing a trade which never happened. However, multiple credible reports had Kevin Love available for the taking if the Warriors had been willing to part with Klay Thompson. Golden State refused, perhaps gambling that Minnesota would cave rather than lose Love for nothing next summer.
If that was the gamble, they lost it in a big way. James’ decision to return to Cleveland brought a new player into the game. Combining the last two top overall picks as well with an extra future first rounder on hand from James’ original defection to Miami, Cleveland could suddenly and easily trump whatever offer the Warriors had on the table.
The exact sequence of Love’s trade to Cleveland was not totally foreseeable. James choosing the Cavs, perhaps with the tacit understanding that Cleveland would use Andrew Wiggins and other assets to acquire a second (or third, depending on your opinion of Kyrie Irving) superstar required too many things to fall into place to account for.
However, somebody trumping the bargain basement price Golden State was offered was always a risk of playing hardball. In fact, considering the number of teams who had both interest in and assets for Love (Phoenix, Chicago and Houston all could have been destinations if things had broken differently, not to mention of the specter of Love’s hometown team, the Lakers), it would have been far surprising had the Wolves caved and agreed to sweeten an already lopsided deal.
By getting greedy, the Warriors crapped out. The “Splash Brothers” pairing can be highly effective and #FullSquad was a nice meme by the Bay last year. That said, the Warriors simply aren’t and weren’t good enough reasons to pass on an all-NBA player, entering his prime, available for well below market value. In fact, by valuing Thompson so highly, Golden State has all but assured themselves of having to pay him a max or near max contract this coming offseason. After all, if he’s so good he can’t be traded for Kevin Love, he must be worth a great deal!
It’s possible that the transcendent talent of Steph Curry and a season of good luck with health will make this season another step forward for the Warriors. But more likely it won’t take a whole lot of adversity in the tough Western Conference for recriminations of who made the final call to not do the deal.