NBA Free Agency: 5(ish) best free agents still available

With the overwhelming majority of marquee names from free agency now off the market, who are the five best targets remaining?

NBA free agency is a lot like a gold rush.

Okay, so maybe it’s not the most original analogy. I thought about using the Turbo Man craze instead of the gold rush but didn’t want to alienate potential readers who haven’t seen the Christmas classic, Jingle All the Way, since they’re obviously deprived enough as is. I’ll admit that the gold rush isn’t a seamless analogy either since actual gold doesn’t get together with other gold to start plotting which prospectors are going to unearth and claim them before the gold rush even starts.

In terms of general principles though, of the ebbs and flows, NBA free agency is starkly similar to a gold rush. As soon as the clock struck midnight on July 1, like a gold rush, it was on. With a wide open but finite market, each team (ostensibly) had the chance to stake their claim by pursuing whichever unrestricted free agents they chose. There was another secondary rush on July 6 as restricted free agents hit the market. Free agency is a feeding frenzy out of the gates. For the first 24-48 hours, players and teams are agreeing to terms and signing deals faster than Woj can tweet them, infinitely faster than I can create a list of the five biggest names still out there.

As hours and days go by, the level of players, the size of the average deal, and the frequency at which they’re being signed all taper off — which brings us about up to present day and time, July 11. Several free agents are still available but they’re fewer and further between and the big names still remaining aren’t sitting in a creek bed just waiting to be panned out with a max deal. Teams will have to be patient, strategic, willing to invest substantial resources. Basically they may have to blast out the sides of mountains or spend lots of time digging.

With that said, here are the five best free agents available for teams to pursue at this point.

*Apologies to Denver’s NBA franchise for the failure to make any kind of reference to their team name or logo in the above section despite obvious correlations and numerous opportunities.