As cap rises, NBA offseason filled with rich possibilities
I defy you to top an NBA season in which the team with the most regular-season wins in NBA history falls in seven games to one of the top three players of all time to end a 52-year city curse and complete that player’s campaign.
In a remarkable bit of symmetry, the greatest season in NBA history is being followed by what has to be the most fascinating offseason in league history.
Consider that the NBA salary cap, thanks to a massive influx of television cash and a collective bargaining agreement that demands it get spread to the players, will increase to about $94 million. Put another way, every NBA team gets a wad of cash to spend. Gone are the constraints, especially on the very best teams who have contracts bumping up against the cap, limiting their ability to add the most talented in the free agent pool.
Here’s the shorthand: Any player who wishes to do so this summer can sign for the max contact with any team.
That’s not just unprecedented, it means the NBA could see seismic, titanic shifts.
Two of the top four in Player Efficiency Rating (measuring overall value), Kevin Durant and LeBron James, are free agents. The league’s leader in Defensive Rating, Hassan Whiteside, is a free agent. So is the league leader with 11.7 assists a game, Rajon Rondo. So is the league leader in rebound percentage (the percentage of available rebounds a player gets), Andre Drummond.
There’s not a team need out there that, given the right pitch, cannot be filled by someone at or near the top of the NBA’s free agent talent pool. So from these lists, what can you hope your favorite team achieves in free agency? Glad you asked.
uCornerstones: F Durant, F James.
Obviously, the speculation is that only Durant is likely to go anywhere, holed up in New York and taking meetings with up to a third of the NBA.
What Durant (27.4 points, 7.0 rebounds, 3.7 assists a game over a nine-year career) means for a franchise is that one of the few players capable of leading an NBA team to the mountaintop virtually by himself is choosing to address the balance of power in the NBA for years to come. Picturing him with the Golden State Warriors, for instance, means an era in which a team more exciting and talented than any that have come before it would add the most versatile star in the NBA.
But in the same way the Oklahoma City Thunder have mattered — they nearly toppled Golden State in the playoffs — thanks to Durant (and let’s not forget Russell Westbrook), wherever Durant, 27, lands will become a power broker in the NBA.
As for James (27.2 points, 7.2 rebounds, 6.9 assists a game in 13 seasons), speculation about his motivations or plans is just that. The idea of James, 31, leaving the place where he is now a hero of heroes seems awfully unlikely. But the extent to which he returned to his peak in a number of different ways this season, principally on the defensive side, makes him anything but a downside pickup for a franchise. And it seems likely that James has enjoyed the trend he began, which is now rampant in the league, of signing short-term contracts. Ideally for the NBA, James would morph into a basketball version of Scott Bakula’s character in Quantum Leap, materializing in problem markets across the country and solving their issues. I know New Yorkers wouldn’t mind this.
uThe specialists: C Whiteside, C Drummond, C Dwight Howard, F Ryan Anderson, C-F Bismack Biyombo, G Rondo.
In 7-foot, 265-pound Whiteside, a team can take care of its ability to protect the rim with a single acquisition. Of course, Whiteside, 27, doesn’t receive nearly enough credit for his offen- sive prowess. He was seventh in the league in PER last season and shot better than 60% from the field for his second consecutive year — but the Whiteside package should fetch something north of the midrange salary this offseason, and whoever acquires him will be getting a top-five, maybe top-three, center in the league.
The same is true of Howard (13.7 points, 11.8 rebounds a game last season), whose public stock has plummeted as he has struggled to live up to a franchiseplayer reputation. But he is entirely capable of scoring on the pick-and-roll like few others, defending almost as well as he did in his high-flying Orlando Magic prime, and he is still 30. As for Drummond, there’s every chance he’ll be the center that people thought Howard would become, while his age (22) argues that he has a chance to have the most upside on this list.
uPotential starters, or at least rotation players, on a championship team: G DeMar DeRozan, G Mike Conley, G-F Nicolas Batum, C-F Al Horford, G Dwyane Wade, F Harrison Barnes, G Bradley Beal, F Ryan Anderson, C-F Pau Gasol, F Chandler Parsons, C-F Bismack Biyombo, G Jeremy Lin, G Jamal Crawford, G-F Evan Fournier, G Eric Gordon, G Arron Afflalo.
To me, the biggest value picks among this group remain Biyombo and Lin. In Biyombo, who won’t be 24 until August, teams who miss out on the 6-11, 279pound Drummond (16.2 points, 14.8 rebounds a game last season) have a chance to add someone who’s Drummond Lite (Biyombo is 6-9, 245 pounds and averaged 5.5 points and 8.0 rebounds). Biyombo benefited from working with Patrick Ewing, America’s greatest living assistant coach who deserves a head coaching gig.
As for Lin, here’s a fun stat to chew on: In the last three seasons, Derrick Rose, the New York Knicks’ high-profile acquisition last week, has played 137 of a possible 246 games with a PER of 14.1. For comparison sake, over that time, Lin has played 223 of 246 games with a PER of 14.5.
Lin’s game has been unfairly maligned. Now it appears a solution is at hand: a Brooklyn team coached by Kenny Atkinson, who assisted the Knicks during Linsanity of 2011-12, and the room to pay Lin enough money to make him a starting point guard for a young, athletic roster.
Lin excels most at getting to the basket. If a team wants a point guard with different strengths, there’s always Conley, who is a better three-point shooter. If they think they need a shooter, there’s also Anderson (17 points a game last season). If they want a mentor off the bench, there’s Crawford.
This is the magical summer ahead. All the money. All the musical chairs.
Did that Game 7 night at Oracle Arena seem like madness? It’s only just begun in the NBA.