Sunday Shootaround

Free agency had been going along so smoothly that it was almost, dare we say, boring. LaMarcus Aldridge chose the stately San Antonio Spurs over a host of other big market suitors, while Greg Monroe sought his postseason validation in Milwaukee. Free agents like Kevin Love and Marc Gasol reupped with their teams and everyone was in agreement that winning and culture trumped geography and marketing.

All over the league, free agents made smart choices and teams pivoted without overly panicking. The Knicks and Lakers, for example, made reasonable moves after being spurned by their initial targets. (It’s a measure of how low expectations have fallen that folks rushed in to praise their Plan Bs, as if you get extra credit for not screwing up.) Even the Kings added a couple of smart pickups in an otherwise questionable summer.

Yet, one free agent decision stood out as just a little more curious than the rest. Why did DeAndre Jordan leave a team that was within a game of the conference finals for another that didn’t make it out of the first round? It’s not that the Dallas Mavericks aren’t a quality franchise with a long track record of success. It’s that Jordan was leaving an all-NBA forward like Blake Griffin in his prime and one of the game’s great point guards in Chris Paul (in addition to more money) to sign with a team who’s featured players included the great but aging Dirk Nowitzki, and a pair of wings coming off surgery.

Jordan’s initial call was entirely defensible in that the Mavs offered a chance for a fresh start and a starring role for a player who seemed to have grown tired of being merely a supporting character. Still, it seemed a little shortsighted. Oh well. The league shrugged and continued going about its business, ready to wrap everything up by the time the moratorium lifted so we could all plan our vacations.

Jordan’s sudden reversal revealed the NBA’s absurdist bent was still very much alive, spelled out by the Great Emoji Twitter War of 2015. And while everyone quickly replaced their social media party hats with sober day-after laments, the league continued to churn. The few remaining free agents found new homes and no one else reneged on verbal agreements. The Mavericks are screwed and they have a right to be pissed, but all of this was about one player having second thoughts and changing his mind before actually signing a new contract.

This is not the first time this has happened, and it certainly won’t be the last. The moratorium has always been an odd, albeit necessary, part of the NBA calendar but the recruiting process never really stops even after the contracts are signed. Twitter has just given it a bigger and more visible platform.

That may be a bad look for a multi-billion dollar business, but the NBA has long reveled in this kind of dadaist performance art. God forbid the sport ever becomes as deadly serious as the NFL or as self-reverential as baseball with all of its unwritten rules and codes. The NBA will survive The DeCommitment, much as it’s survived and even prospered through every other bizarre twist in its crooked history.

Oh, and by the way … next season is shaping up to be epic with at least a half-dozen quality teams in the West all boasting multiple stars and even a few intriguing challengers in the East. No one left the free agent period empty-handed, not even the Mavs who picked up a couple of veterans on the cheap with their cap space. As we transition into the next phase, here’s a far from scientific post free-agency reorganization.

THE CONTENDERS

East: Cleveland
West: Golden State, San Antonio

The Spurs obviously made the biggest moves, but the Warriors and Cavs moved quickly to lock up their cores with an eye toward a possible Finals rematch. These were arguably the three best teams coming out of the regular season and they look like the strongest trio heading into next year, as well.

The challenges will be far different for both Cleveland and Golden State. There’s no more learning curve for the Cavs and they will be expected to not only win, but be dominant. The Warriors no longer have to prove that their supercharged version of smallball can succeed. Now they must maintain that edge. The Spurs will be the Spurs, always and forever it seems.

THE CHALLENGERS

East: Atlanta, Chicago, Miami, Washington
West: Houston, Los Angeles, Memphis, Oklahoma City

Let’s stipulate the conference imbalance: The four teams from the West could legitimately make a run at the Finals. The four from the East could all make it as far as the conference finals. They all have a decent chance of doing something special given the right set of circumstances.

It’s interesting that most of the teams on this list did little more than lock up their free agents and improve on the margins. Take the Clippers, who added Paul Pierce and Lance Stephenson. Or the Hawks, who loaded up on size to combat the Cavs’ interior muscle. Those marginal gains -- and good health -- could wind up being the difference between that special season and another long summer of regret.

THE UP AND COMERS

East: Milwaukee, Toronto
West: New Orleans, Utah

Over the final two months of the regular season, the Utah Jazz went 19-10 and had the league’s best defense and fourth-best net rating. Rather than splurge on free agent upgrades, Utah is counting on continued improvement from its young core. Likewise, the Pelicans are bringing almost everyone back from a 46-win team, augmented by a brand new coaching staff and a freshly renewed Anthony Davis.

The Bucks and Raptors went about things differently. Milwaukee added Monroe’s scoring punch to their unique roster construction, while the Raptors brought in DeMarre Carroll to try to push them to the next level. All four could be, maybe even should be, playoff teams. This is the fun part, although the Raptors face the most internal pressure to produce now.

PLAYOFFS OR WHAT?

East: Boston, Charlotte, Detroit
West: Phoenix

Spurned by free agents, the Pistons added some useful players like Ersan Ilyasova and Marcus Morris, while the Hornets grabbed Nic Batum, Jeremy Lamb and Spencer Hawes. Both of them are trying to win now, while the Celtics and Suns are somewhere in between. It sure feels like Phoenix and Boston may have another move or two left in him before the summer’s over.

THE TWILIGHT ZONE

East: Brooklyn, Indiana
West: Denver, Sacramento, Dallas

The Pacers are attempting a rather dramatic transformation so their place in this nebulous grouping makes a bit of sense, but what to do with the others? The Nets are cutting costs everywhere. The Mavericks are trying to regroup on the fly. The Kings are conducting the game’s oddest chemistry experiment. The Nuggets … the Nuggets didn’t do much of anything. All of these teams are too good to tank, but not good enough to be taken seriously. So they’re here, wherever that is.

REBUILDING, OR SHOULD BE

East: New York, Orlando, Philadelphia
West: Los Angeles, Minnesota, Portland

Losing LaMarcus Aldridge is a crushing blow, but the Trail Blazers are going about things the right way, snatching up every available young tall person while locking up franchise cornerstone Damian Lillard for the next half-decade. It may not work any more than Orlando’s long game or Sam Hinkie’s Master Plan, but it’s a start. The Timberwolves also seem headed down an enjoyable path with enough dynamic athleticism to make them a League Pass favorite and maybe something more soon.

It would be nice if the Knicks and Lakers got religion on such things and it appears that New York may indeed be finally willing to attempt to build something of lasting value. We shall see. If nothing else, this summer has shown us that the vast majority of players and their reps are savvy enough to keep up with the times.

Here’s a deeper look at the offseason moves of five teams who made some smart under-the-radar moves. Yes, even the Kings.

Memphis: This is more or less the same team that won 55 games and took the eventual champs to six games in the second round of the playoffs. No one does stasis like the Grizz, who re-signed franchise center Marc Gasol to a max deal and smartly scooped up versatile big man Brandan Wright on a mid-level contract. The rail-thin Wright does give them a slightly different look with his ability to dive and finish at the rim on pick-and-rolls, but this is the same old grit n’ grind squad we’ve come to love the last five years. And that’s OK, because opportunities like this don’t come along every often and Memphis has decided to ride it out for as long as possible. They’re still a contender, a flawed contender maybe, but a contender nonetheless.

Washington: Paul Pierce called game so many times during the postseason that it was easy to overlook a bigger development: The Wizards’ young core was developing and getting better. To be sure, last season was too often a struggle but through the cracks real strengths began to show. John Wall is an elite point guard and he and Bradley Beal are a dynamic backcourt. Otto Porter is ready to assume a larger role and the big man combination should be good enough to compete against the other frontcourts in the East. The Wizards smartly replaced Pierce with three veterans in Jared Dudley, Alan Anderson and Gary Neal. Taken individually none of them can match Truth’s track record, but they signal a necessary change in direction toward a smaller, more versatile team. The Wizards just might be the second best team in the East. Now they need to prove it.

Phoenix: Once again, the Suns took a big swing in free agency and once again they came in second when Aldridge chose San Antonio. By all accounts the Suns made a strong pitch that was seriously considered but in the end, close is as far away as never in the free agency game. GM Ryan McDonough did make a big splash when he signed Tyson Chandler away from Dallas and the big man should help patch up holes on the defensive end and in a locker room that needed a strong veteran presence. McDonough made a few other sharp moves, bringing in Sonny Weems and Mirza Teletovic, but the Suns are still in a nebulous phase between rebuilding and contending. What’s needed this season is clarity, both for their present and future directions.

Sacramento: Kosta Koufos has started a little more than a third of his games, but he provides better rebounding and the same scoring punch on a per-minute basis as Robin Lopez, who got a $54 million contract out of the Knicks. Koufos will earn a little more that mid-level money for the Kings, and it’s a good value signing by Vlade Divac. The weird thing about the weird Kings offseason is they might not be that bad next season. Whether that’s a good thing in the long run remains to be seen, as does everything else with the league’s strangest franchise.

Toronto: The Raptors wants to be seen as a free agent destination, so getting a meeting with Aldridge was a solid, if ceremonial, step in the right direction. Signing Carroll before he had a chance to meet with the Pistons and Knicks was something else, for it signalled a willingness to be bold. Carroll is a strong two-way forward who has developed as an outside shooter, and he’s a good fit for a Toronto team that was lacking both toughness and defense on the perimeter. Masai Ujiri added to the mix with point guard Cory Joseph and backup big man Bismack Biyombo, the quintessential rim protecting specialist. The Raps core remains in place, but they’re hoping that the whole may be a little bit more complete than the sum of their solid, yet uninspiring parts.