National Basketball Association

Five unpopular NBA free agency opinions

Published Jul. 14, 2015 12:11 p.m. ET

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By Sam Quinn

The overriding narrative of free agency has been the prevalence of competence. Star players are ignoring big markets and superstar teammates in favor of organizational forethought. Free agents are ignoring the Knicks and Lakers because they’re the last two teams (well … until the Nets get left alone on the dance floor next summer) that seem to think those things matter. Players want to play for teams like the Spurs because they actually seem to know what they’re doing. They want to know that they’re being pursued because there is a genuine basketball fit and not just because they’re big names dumb teams feel they ought to chase. Intelligence and planning are starting to pay more immediate and tangible dividends.

To an extent this is all true. It’s just warped how we perceive certain situations. Organizational competence is being mistaken for the promise of immediate on-court results. In many cases smart teams have made smart moves considering the specific circumstances surrounding them, but haven’t made nearly the improvements they’re getting credit for. In others, teams have built for the future but should expect far more immediate returns. Here are five unpopular opinions that reflect those differences between perception and reality:

1. The Milwaukee Bucks will be a top-three seed in the Eastern Conference …

There’s one of these every year. The young team flooded with that condescending “isn’t that cute? They could be pretty good in a few years” pseudo-praise that usually springs out of a low seed unexpectedly adding some new piece before we all go back to fawning over whoever stole the biggest star on the market. Last year it was Charlotte. This year it’s Milwaukee. But this year, there’s actual reason for optimism.

Besides the offense of mass destruction looming in Cleveland, none of the five teams that finished ahead of Milwaukee in the East last season have improved. And unlike Chicago, Toronto, Washington, and Atlanta, all five of Milwaukee’s starters are 25 or younger and still have significant room to grow. There’s Jabari Parker, essentially a redshirt rookie who should come back just in time to take advantage of the small-ball revolution and thrive as a nominal power forward. And then there’s Greg Monroe.

No free agent more perfectly fills his team’s needs than Monroe. Milwaukee can plop him on the high post at the start of every possession, give him the ball and let him initiate the offense. Very few centers are good enough passers to function as that sort of offensive fulcrum, even fewer who aren’t named “Gasol.” But Monroe is so decisive and aware with the ball that giving him that pivot spot—where he can pass as easily to a bolting cutter as he can a shooter in the corner—that giving him that much responsibility is not only an option but actually rather a appealing one. Having possessions off of the ball will do Michael Carter-Williams some good. His 14.5 percent turnover rate was fifth-highest in the league last season, and if he’s ever going to improve as a shooter getting more reps on catches seems like a nice place to start.

One thing Carter-Williams, and the rest of the Bucks do well, is play defense. Monroe doesn’t, but his deficiencies aren’t as troubling on a team like this. The Bucks have four other starters above 6’5”, all (besides Parker) freakish athletes with incredibly long arms that can cover a ton of ground. They are incredibly aggressive defensively, leading the league in steals through that absurd length and eagerness to trap. You can never fully hide a slow center defensively, but the closest you’ll come is by limiting the number of possessions an offense has to attack him. This is the perfect scheme for Monroe.

2. … and the Atlanta Hawks won’t be.

To be fair there was nothing Atlanta could’ve done to retain DeMarre Carroll short of letting Paul Millsap walk. Because both signed two-year contracts in 2013, Atlanta didn’t hold full Bird Rights on either. That meant that they could only be re-signed with cap space. The Hawks came into the offseason with around $30 million to spend, but the two combined for first-year salaries of around $35 million. The money didn’t work out. You can’t blame Atlanta for letting go of Carroll. You can blame them for using the $10 million they had left to absorb Tiago Splitter.

Splitter fills something of a need for Atlanta. Al Horford is a natural power forward, and though he can pass as a center defensively it’s far from ideal. You play Al Horford at center because the offensive benefits are massive. He’s dominant at the rim—68 percent per shotanalytics—but also spaces the floor from literally every spot on the court below the three-point line (and when it comes to the right corner, a shade beyond it as well). He hits at least 40 percent of his shots from all five sectors within the arc, and does so in remarkably balanced fashion. His pairing with Millsap allowed Atlanta to play five shooters on the court all at once, stretching the defense so thin it had to make the very precarious choice between protecting the basket and allowing Atlanta to have the threes it wanted.

Horford and Millsap can still shoot no matter where they play on the court. But the functional benefits diminish when you knock them down a position. Horford can space the floor extremely well as a center … but not as well as a power forward. The same can be said of Millsap transitioning from power forward to small forward. Atlanta goes from having otherworldly shooting to just pretty good shooting. Adding a rim protector to a defense that finished seventh in efficiency last year doesn’t seem worth that price. They could’ve used that cap space to sign someone like Arron Afflalo without missing a beat.

Of course, Atlanta could choose to play Splitter off of the bench, but that opens up another can of worms. The two presumptive replacements in the starting lineup for Carroll would be Thabo Sefolosha, coming off of a broken leg, and Tim Hardaway Jr., a mediocre shooter and miserable ball-stopper that could clog the beautiful San Antonio-style offense the Hawks mastered last year. Either way, losing Carroll is a disaster for an Atlanta team that was already running out of steam by the end of last year.

3. Dallas is better off without DeAndre Jordan.

The caveat to that statement is that it doesn’t pertain to this year. The 2015–16 Mavericks are going to be bad. Really, really bad. But they weren’t going to be much better with Jordan anyway.

Jordan is more or less Tyson Chandler. Both protect this rim and dive on pick-and-rolls without doing much else. Jordan finished fifth in the league in win shares, Chandler finished 12th. Chandler had a slightly higher real plus-minus. There isn’t a demonstrable difference between the two in 2015. Jordan is just younger, and Dallas was a No. 7 seed that decomposed by the end of the first round with Chandler. Jordan wouldn’t make much of a difference.

And the rest of the roster? Unimpressive. Wesley Matthews is coming off of a significant Achilles injury and nobody on the team is equipped to pick up Monta Ellis’ ball-handling load. Chandler Parsons running pick-and-rolls consistently is somewhere between dangerous and laughable. The truth is they were probably going to miss the 2016 playoffs either way. Oklahoma City gets Portland’s abdicated spot from last year. Phoenix and Utah would have both been better than Dallas anyway.

But beyond 2016? Things are much clearer. The Mavericks had this delusion that with Jordan in tow they could somehow nose their way into the Kevin Durant sweepstakes. It wasn’t going to happen. No superstar would leave an extra year and millions of dollars on the table to play with Jordan and Chandler Parsons. At least now, we have a clearer picture of Dallas’ future.

The 2015–16 team is going to be bad and will most likely surrender its top-seven protected lottery pick to Boston. Dirk Nowitzki will retire. Chandler Parsons will opt-out to grab a bigger slice of the new TV money. And the Mavericks will tank. If they do it right, they’ll be back in contention by the end of the decade.

Nobody wants to tank, but how satisfying have the past four years been for Mavs fans, really? Is winning worth it when you’re getting knocked out in the first round every year? Is that even winning? Is free agency the right approach when no player better than a B+ will ever truly consider your organization?

It won’t be pretty, but the Mavericks have an actual roadmap now. Jordan would’ve prevented that. So maybe we’ve lost another 45-win Dallas team, but we’ve gained a smart organization undergoing a well-timed rebuild. In the long run, that’s better for everyone.

4. Sacramento is stupid … but not necessarily bad.

There was never a way to justify Sacramento giving up a 2014 top-eight pick (Nik Stauskas), another likely lottery pick, and the rights to swap picks in multiple drafts to clear cap space. Nobody of note was ever going to take that money, and the fact that the Kings cleared it without knowing who to spend it on shows just how little forethought goes into their decisions. There’s no long-term planning going on in Sacramento. There’s not a unified vision for where this team is going, and it leads to shortsighted decisions like this. The Kings are going to be mediocre or worse for at least the rest of the decade.

But when it comes to the 2015–16 season? You could talk me into this being interesting. There wasn’t another team willing to make a $9.5 million Rajon Rondo bet, but the Kings had the money so they might as well spend it. The spacing issues Rondo creates will only be exacerbated on a team like Sacramento that uses two traditional big men, but at least he’ll get to hold the ball. Before Monta Ellis, Rondo had never played with a ball-dominant shooting guard and it showed. He’s clueless without the ball in his hands. If you’re going to go down with the Rondo ship, you might as well do it letting him play the way he wants to play. There’s a shred of optimism here.

If Rondo can be even a league-average point guard the Kings should float around .500. They were 9–6 last year before viral meningitis cost DeMarcus Cousins several games and Mike Malone his job, and the heart of that roster is still intact. If Rondo is any better the Kings should at least hang around the playoff fringes. Between Cousins, Rudy Gay, Willie Cauley-Stein and whatever Rondo has left in the tank there’s too much talent for this team to be as bad as everyone thinks.

5. San Antonio will be great … but not championship favorites.

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As a general rule, five-time champions who go 20–4 down the stretch and add 29-year-old four-time All-Stars tend to be pretty good. You can quote me on that. But the hoopla over the Spurs as surefire title favorites is a bit overblown for three reasons.

First, LaMarcus Aldridge and Tim Duncan are remarkably similar players. It’d be easy to say that Aldridge’s mid-range game—which will likely start to sneak behind the three-point line a few months into his time with legendary San Antonio shot coach Chip Engelland—will mesh nicely with what Duncan does in the post, but it’s not quite that simple. Both love the ball on the left block extending up to the high post. At this stage Duncan is also more comfortable with a primary rim-protector next to him as opposed to a somewhat less physical defender like Aldridge. The talent combination is incredible, but it will take time for the two to figure each other out.

Second, Tony Parker was a replacement-level player last year. No, really, per basketball-reference.com his value over replacement was 0.0. The days of Parker sneaking into the MVP conversation when we get bored in mid-March are long over, and while he did improve somewhat down the stretch he’s no longer close the caliber of point guard one would want as a member of any sort of “big three.” The same can largely be said of Manu Ginobili, and sooner or later Duncan will fade at least a little.

And finally, the 67-win Golden State Warriors have a 27-year-old MVP, a 25-year-old All-Star and a 25-year-old Defensive Player of the Year runner up. Their nine leaders in minutes played will all be back this season. Where exactly are the Warriors going? The Spurs are going to be very good this season. But they should not be favored against Golden State, and that’s before we bring whatever’s brewing in Cleveland into the conversation.

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