The NBA off-season, as it does every year, has left us with plenty to talk about. The Dwight Howard sweepstakes aside, there were plenty of other attention-grabbing moves that made some teams look like geniuses and others look about as delusional as Derrick Rose in this CNN interview (how he thinks he’s better than LeBron after missing more than a year of game action is beyond me. Oh, and let’s not forget those two championship wins LeBron willed his team to. But I digress…). Here are some of the moves that have stood out for me thus far, for better or for worse, in a new LWOS segment I like to call “The Good, The Bad and the WTF”.
The Good
1) The Brooklyn Nets —> The Nets already-impressive starting line-up has been bolstered by the additions of Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett, and they have new-found depth on the bench in the form of Jason Terry and Andrei Kirilenko. Their unseemly luxury tax tab notwithstanding, this roster looks primed for a long playoff run – now it’s up to new coach Jason Kidd to put the pieces of puzzle together properly.
2) The Golden State Warriors —> Speaking of strong starting lineups, the Warriors managed to add an All-Star caliber player to their squad without giving up anything significant in return. Adding Toney Douglas, Marreese Speights and a rejuvenated Jermaine O’Neal to their bench will offset the losses of Carl Landry and Jarrett Jack and put Golden State one series upset away from a Finals appearance.
3) The Los Angeles Clippers —> Finally, a Los Angeles basketball team that is able to hold on to their superstar player. Keeping Chris Paul was the major priority, but the Clippers also managed to bring in some much-needed three-point shooting to their reserves with Jared Dudley, J.J. Redick and Darren Collison. It’s hard to improve on a 56-win squad, but Lob City did so by a significant margin.
4) The Indiana Pacers —> Just like last year, Indiana pulled a San Antonio and did all the little things right with their roster tinkering. Keeping David West was huge, but adding C.J. Watson, Chris Copeland and Luis Scola are all underrated moves that will make the Pacers a team no one wants to play against. Seriously, all that “Beat the Heat” talk might finally carry some weight in next year’s playoffs.
The Bad
1) The Dallas Mavericks —> It seems that the Mavericks’ plan was simple this offseason: ignore the holes left by departed big men Chris Kaman and Elton Brand, and instead sign a whole bunch of mid-level guards that won’t help us win a championship. Are Monta Ellis and Jose Calderon going to pull down ten-plus rebounds a night? I think not. Just to give everyone an idea, they currently have no qualified backup for Dirk Nowitzki at the four and Bernard James is the top center on their depth chart. I’ll just let that sink in for a moment.
2) The Milwaukee Bucks —> It’s official – the only thing easier to understand than the Bucks’ questionable offseason moves is an episode of “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo” without the subtitles. They basically got a younger version of Monta Ellis in O.J. Mayo (doesn’t his name sound like a new citrusy spread to put on sandwiches?), created a logjam at center by signing Zaza Pachulia and looks to have burned their bridge with Brandon Jennings beyond repair. Tough times are ahead for the deer.
3) The Denver Nuggets —> They let their stud GM walk after constructing a Western Conference force of nature out of shrewd trades. They fire George Karl, a certain Hall of Famer, shortly after winning Coach of the Year and guiding the team to their biggest win total in franchise history. They replace defensive stalwart Andre Iguodala with the reckless Nate Robinson and let Corey Brewer skip town as well. Yep, sounds like a disaster to me.
4) The Philadelphia 76ers —> Besides trading their budding superstar of a point guard for an unproven, injury-saddled rookie center on draft night (somewhere, the New Orleans Pelicans/Hornets/whatever they’re called now are cheering), the biggest offseason move for the 76ers was retaining the services of Kwame Brown. Looks like Philly has all eyes set on the Andrew Wiggins sweepstakes in 2014.
The WTF
1) The Charlotte Bobcats —>They signed a big-time center in Al Jefferson and look to be really solid down the middle with Cody Zeller in the fold as well, but the more I think about it, the less sense it makes. Fans probably don’t want to hear this, but they could have used one more year of tanking to secure a high draft pick in what will be a strong class of rookies next year. This puts them in the mid-level lottery range. The team’s development could possibly stagnate as a result.
2) The Memphis Grizzlies —> They didn’t add any significant pieces and gave bloated contracts to pieces that no longer fit on their squad (i.e. – Jerryd Bayless and Tony Allen). This isn’t good news for Memphis, who are still solid, but took steps back because they didn’t match the improvement of other members of the Western Conference’s elite.
3) The Oklahoma City Thunder —> So that’s it? They ultimately got a highly-touted yet unproven rookie, one Jeremy Lamb, in exchange for James Harden, one of the NBA’s most dominant players? It’s GM Sam Presti and the rest of the OKC front office that look like chumps now, because as we’ve seen the past few years Durant and Westbrook are incapable of winning a championship without added bench support. It’s time to rethink their roster if they’re serious about taking the trophy away from Miami.
4) The Sacramento Kings —> Carl Landry and Luc Richard Mbah a Moute will do well as Kings, but their roster arguably became weaker with this new influx of depth. They now have no secondary star behind DeMarcus Cousins, and giving him more responsibility is probably not what their coaching staff has in mind. Ben McLemore could be that guy, but I don’t think it will happen overnight. With a team that could be leaving town any year now, it’s a “meh” kind of offseason.
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