With Kawhi Leonard, the biggest start this offseason, finally making his decision to join the Clippers in free agency, the big moves for this offseason are presumably finished. Let’s run down some of the more marquee moves this offseason by various teams.
First, we will start with the Lakers. Before the draft the Lakers traded virtually their whole team for Anthony Davis, a consequence of having Lebron James on the roster. Since 2010, Lebron James led teams have made 42 trades. Is that a lot? Well, it accounts for about 10% of all NBA trades made during the time period. They were poised to form a super team by adding Leonard, but then the little brother Clippers squashed that fantasy. They have a lot of work to do to fill out their depleted roster, but I don’t see any big signing or move affecting this team anymore this offseason.
Let’s take a six-hour flight back to the East Coast and the Brooklyn Nets. It was not long ago where if you said the Nets were going to make a big offseason acquisition or move, you would have been drug tested. Now, after a remarkable rebuild, the Nets have added two max players in Kevin Durant, who will not play next season while recovering from an Achilles injury, and Kyrie Irving, who will try not to blow up the Nets locker room. Oh, and of course, Kyrie and Durant helped out their good friend Deandre Jordan by taking a pay cut so the Nets could give him a four-year, $40 million contract. To look at that contract and still have people complain that the Knicks overpaid for Julius Randle is astonishing. How good can the Nets be next season? Well they were already a playoff team and they upgraded their point guard position in terms of talent. I would look for them to be at least a second-round playoff team next season.
If the Nets are going to make the playoffs again, then it is a good time to head over to Philadelphia and discuss the team that ousted the Nets in the first round of the playoffs this past season. The Sixers have been busy. Their moves all started by maxing out Tobias Harris, gasp. A move they had to make given all the assets they gave up to acquire him mid-season, but oh my I really hope this works out. Harris is a player who is assumed to have a high ceiling and great potential, but this is his fifth team in seven years. If he has such great potential, why has none of his teams refused to move him and use him as a building block? Saying he is a max player, essentially says he is a building block, so maybe Philly is just smarter than everyone else? Add in signing one of my favorite players in the NBA, Al Horford, and the Sixers have a front court for years to come with Harris, Horford, and Embiid. I’m not sure how it is all going to fit together stylistically as their personnel suggests a different style of play than Brett Brown is accustomed to implementing, but we will see.
The Miami Heat’s off season is tied to the Sixers so this is a good time to bring them into the fold. The Sixers and Heat performed a sign and trade for Jimmy Butler, sending Butler to the Miami Heat and Josh Richardson to Philly. Richardson is a good player, a decent shooter, but he’s no Jimmy Butler. Butler was a huge part of this Sixer team, especially in the playoffs when he was their primary ball handler in crunch time, despite having Ben Simmons whose best attribute is being a primary ball handler. The move signals to me that the Sixers are all in on Simmons being their floor general at all times of the game. With regard to the Heat, they got one of the best players in the league, someone who is going to compete every single game, and someone who wanted to be in Miami. Of course, it was probably a good idea after seeing what Butler did to Towns and Wiggins, to get Whiteside out of Miami. They did just that by sending him to Portland.
That is not all for the Eastern conference. If you guys couldn’t tell by other posts, I am a Celtics fan so I cannot just ignore the offseason the team has had thus far. To Kyrie Irving, don’t let the door kick your ass on the way out. To Al Horford, I’ll miss you dearly and I am quite upset you chose to go to Philly. The Celtics were able to sign Kemba Walker to a max contract and they brought in Enes Kanter. I like the Kanter move, it’s for a reasonable amount of money and could potentially be a steal, but the interior defense this team could potentially have is scary and not the good kind of scary. The offseason is not over and the only person I trust more than Danny Ainge is Brian Cashman.
I teased it at the beginning and here it is. The Clippers traded for Paul George and signed Kawhi Leonard in one night. First, the trade. I’m not going to sugar coat this, the Clippers better win at least one championship with this duo. They gave up SGA, Gallinari, four UNPROTECTED first round picks, a protected first round pick, and two pick swaps; a package the Oklahoma City Thunder had no choice but to swipe right on. Paul George has injury concerns with his shoulder, to give up that many unprotected first round picks is a gamble, especially when you consider that Leonard is no iron man either with his quad issue. It’s a gamble, but I believe it is necessary and one that makes the NBA much more intriguing next year. Kawhi to the Clippers has been of the biggest rumors all season. The Clippers probably went to more Raptors games to see Kawhi than Leonard’s family did. They were ready to make this happen and perhaps foreshadowed a bit on an SGA trade when they resigned Patrick Beverley to a multi-year deal. When the signing and the trade happened, it marked the biggest day in Clippers history and will only be topped by the day they win an NBA title.
The NBA, the greatest reality television show in the world.
