NBA free agency is yearly, uncontrolled chaos. It’s a time when the best athletes in the world use the best agents in the world to fight on their behalf to secure hundreds of millions of dollars from those who have billions. Does that sound stressful? That’s because it is. Egos are at an all-time high, one move catalyzes the next, and everything happens quickly.
4 players and 3 teams that can completely shake up NBA free agency
Kevin Durant, Kawhi Leonard, and Kyrie Irving are the big dominoes. But after them, plenty of plans can be foiled.
The disorganization, uneasiness, and frantic nature of the league’s biggest non-basketball event leaves plenty of room for surprises. Last season we saw DeMarcus Cousins sign with the damn Golden State Warriors. That messed a lot of things up.
Here we try to predict which unexpected players and teams have the potential to turn the entirety of July 2019 on its head.
Kyrie Irving and Al Horford aren’t coming back, but does anyone really think the Celtics and Danny Ainge are going to rebuild? Boston can create max-contract money as well, and is likely to attempt to recoup something to make up for an embarrassing season and its fallout.
Who will Ainge swoop in for? Who can he convince the locker room issues are over with? As of Thursday morning, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski has called them the frontrunner to land Charlotte’s Kemba Walker. Is he the key to righting the ship in Boston? Can they pitch a meeting with Kawhi Leonard instead?
The Celtics aren’t through yet.
The Milwaukee Bucks thrived as a team built on the sum of its parts, so losing any mixture of Giannis Antetokounmpo’s supporting cast will be felt. The problem: three of those supporting cast members, Khris Middleton, Malcolm Brogdon, and Brook Lopez, are free agents, and the Bucks have limited means to keep all three.
Brogdon was a 16 point-per-game scorer on unreal 50/40/90 shooting, Lopez had one of the best seasons of his career as an elite three-point shooter, and Middleton was the team’s second-best scorer. All three were essential to Milwaukee’s success, but only Brogdon is a restricted free agent that the team has some control over. The other two can walk, and Milwaukee would have to use cap space to retain Lopez because they don’t have his Bird Rights.
Keeping all three would mean shelling out a lot of money for one team in a small city to pay. Expect other teams to pounce to put Milwaukee in a tough spot.
Yes, the Kings — the team that hasn’t signed a major free agent since Vlade Divac in 1999 — can ruin someone’s free agency plans this season. Sacramento’s been a barren wasteland for more than a decade, but was anything but last season, finishing just two games below .500 on the backs of its young talent. With De’Aaron Fox, Buddy Hield, and Marvin Bagley III, Sacramento has talent, and it can create more than $59 million in cap space.
Are the Kings the team with a big-money promise to Al Horford? Can they snake in and slightly overpay Nikola Vucevic, or Brogdon? These Kings aren’t the Kangz of a previous era.
Should Kristaps Porzingis return healthy, the Mavericks could be playoff-ready even without another star. But with the potential to create another max contract slot, Dallas could enter the title contention ring with one big splash.
Playing next to Luka Doncic and Porzingis is the big sell that could attract the upper-middle tier of free agency. The money is the clincher. Dallas is another rumored Horford spot, but maybe Khris Middleton or even DeMarcus Cousins joins the fold. Maybe, just maaaaybe, they hit a home run and lure away Kemba Walker.
DeMarcus Cousins
He’s back! Cousins was the summer of 2018’s biggest disruptor, and he’s in a similar position to do so again. Cousins tore his quad in the second game of this year’s playoffs, 30 games after he recovered from last year’s torn Achilles. He returned in the Finals and had flashes of brilliance throughout the series, but was also rusty.
The Warriors have limited means to keep him, so where does his market lie? Could a contender scoop him up at a discount again? Could he go back to Golden State anyway? Will another team give him the long-term, bigger-money offer he wanted a year ago?
July could go a million ways for Cousins.
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