Welcome to the dog days. Most of the NBA will spend the next few weeks lounging on deck chairs near various distant seas before the slow march back into playing shape begins after Labor Day. Before you know it, we’ll start a whole new cycle of October promises.
Before we get to that point, it’s time to assess what’s already happened. Free agency went fast, and then slow, and there was only one true blockbuster move — Paul George heading to Philly. (I say this with the caveat that my publishing this piece all but assures an out-of-nowhere blockbuster upsets the apple cart soon.)
Nonetheless, the summer featured a sizable number of mid-sized transactions that either went under the radar or weren’t fully appreciated, and I’d argue an equally large number fell firmly in the not-great-Bob category and were equally underrated for their … underwhelmingness. This week, I’m going to delve into both categories. However, to stave off accusations of being an angry curmudgeon for at least one more news cycle, I’m going to start with the positive and focus on the offseason’s best under-the-radar moves.
The story of the greatest players in NBA history. In 100 riveting profiles, top basketball writers justify their selections and uncover the history of the NBA in the process.
The story of the greatest plays in NBA history.
Before we begin, remember that I’m correcting for public perception here. For instance, the Philadelphia 76ers getting George was awesome, but I think the Sixers have already gotten their flowers for that.
Similarly, the Oklahoma City Thunder made out like bandits this offseason; suffice to say, I believe the impact of their two big gets (Alex Caruso and Isaiah Hartenstein) is just as large as everyone thinks. Finally, Jalen Brunson’s extension is going to pay massive dividends for the New York Knicks in the coming years, but that’s already received plentiful (and well-earned) coverage.
GO DEEPER
NBA’s best offseason moves by team: Finalists crack top 10, but neither is No. 1
Instead, here are five other moves I think deserve a lot more attention. Four of them get bonus points for requiring some relatively out-of-the-box thinking, while the fifth happened during the Paris Olympics, so some people may have missed it.
The fact that people seem to think Golden State had a bad offseason is a tell to me that they don’t get how much lemonade the Warriors made out of Thompson’s departure … and that re-signing him at a big number had a chance to be pure lemons.
No, they didn’t get George and Lauri Markkanen, but those were low-odds moonshots. Further down the talent curve, however, look at what they got out of Thompson leaving for Dallas.
Rather than overpay a declining player for the vibes, the Warriors parlayed him into two different players (Buddy Hield and Kyle Anderson) who combined will make less money than Thompson and a random minimum-contract guy. There’s a good chance each individually will matter more to the Warriors than Thompson would have too. (Thompson seems like a good fit in Dallas, incidentally … but Golden State is not Dallas.)
GO DEEPER
Joe Lacob on Curry’s future, Thompson’s exit and much more
For starters, you could hardly design a better Thompson replacement than Hield. The Warriors replaced a 41 percent career 3-point shooter with a 40 percent career 3-point shooter, and Hield is three years younger, less destructively thirsty inside the arc and more capable of guarding the perimeter. (Hield isn’t exactly a DPOY candidate, but Thompson has reached a point where he mostly has to be hidden on fours.)
And as they say in infomercials … but wait, there’s more! Golden State also acquired Anderson from the Minnesota Timberwolves. Slo-Mo is a tough fit for some rosters because of his limited floor spacing, but in a Warriors system that’s all about reading, reacting and IQ, he should be perfect. He averaged 3.5 assists for every turnover last year as a point forward in Minnesota and likely can fill a similar role when Stephen Curry is off the floor. Additionally, he was by far the Wolves’ best Luka Dončić defender in the Western Conference finals.
These moves aren’t going to put the Warriors back in the title chase on their own, but turning Thompson into these two players (and cutting Chris Paul, I should add) had two other benefits. First, it allowed Golden State to sign De’Anthony Melton while staying below the tax apron. Second and more importantly, it didn’t burn any of their draft-pick capital for an in-season blockbuster if one comes their way: The three separate sign-and-trades netted out to only cost them cash and a 2031 second-round pick swap.
The one deal from this summer that has the highest ratio of “crazy high upside” to “people aren’t really talking about this” is Houston’s ancillary piece of the Mikal Bridges trade between Brooklyn and New York. Obviously, the Knicks and Nets made their own fascinating bets, but Houston is the side that seems to have walked away with something for nothing.
The Rockets took an unprotected pick and an unprotected swap that were owed to them by Brooklyn and sent them back to the Nets, in return for different unprotected picks that were owed by the Phoenix Suns. The trade gave the Nets a logic to tank that didn’t previously exist and paved the way for them to deal Bridges, Sag for Flagg and get on with their lives, but it came at a steep price.
GO DEEPER
Team USA raves about Cooper Flagg: ‘Unbelievable’
The Rockets didn’t just trade like for like; they got some extra goodies on top. For instance, Houston sent a Brooklyn 2026 unprotected first-round pick back to the Nets in return for Phoenix’s unprotected first in 2029 … but there was more. The Suns got some added vig with the ability to swap that pick for Dallas’ unprotected first that same year, and further to swap their own pick in 2029 for whatever of the two is left. In other words, the Rockets are guaranteed the two best of their own pick, Dallas’ or Phoenix’s that June.
Similarly, the Rockets exchanged a 2025 pick swap with the Nets for a more complicated (and less alluring, I should say) pick swap that likely will let them swap Oklahoma City’s 2025 first (which they already own) for Phoenix’s; realistically, that projects as a likely move up in the back half of the first round of, say, five to 10 spots.
But, again, that swap of swaps (you following this?) also came with a big extra cost: The Rockets got Phoenix’s 2027 unprotected first too.
Thus, the Rockets started with an unprotected first and an unprotected swap from Brooklyn and ended up with two unprotected firsts from Phoenix and two swaps.
What makes this so cool for Houston is that the Suns, despite their own underrated move this summer (more on that below), are rapidly hurtling toward Armageddon. Maybe not this year, maybe not even next … but it’s just around the corner. Owning late-decade Suns draft capital is a great business to be in.
As the Suns’ old guys age out, their lack of draft picks and apron handcuffs the talent pipeline and the expense of a declining roster weighs them down, just look here … the Rockets are sitting there as a potential savior.
Dangling the return of those two picks and some other goodies to get Devin Booker and let the Suns restart in two or three years is perhaps still an underdog bet, and much water will go under the bridge between now and then.
However, this is some serious strategic thinking. It also has near-zero downside since the Rockets can always just, y’know, use the picks, and they improved their position vis-à-vis those as well. Thus, Houston might end up the real winners of the Bridges trade.
We still don’t know exactly how the player will work out. Rob Dillingham might end up being too defensively vulnerable to stay on the floor in the playoffs or not quite offensively gifted enough to be more than a second-unit scorer. He was the eighth pick in a weak draft; history says stardom is hardly guaranteed.
On the other hand, the more I think about the process behind this trade, it was fairly brilliant. The Timberwolves had little capacity to add rotation-caliber players in free agency due to being above the second apron, realistically needed at least one more rotation-level player at any perimeter position over the next two years and also had a looming succession issue at point guard (Mike Conley Jr. is 36 years old) with no talent waiting in the wings.
Enter draft night. Minnesota took the only sharp arrow left in its asset quiver, a 2031 first-round pick, and advanced it seven years by sending it and a 2030 top-one protected pick swap to San Antonio to select Dillingham with the eighth pick. San Antonio also had reasons for doing this, but the Wolves paid a reasonable price. Remember, in the current lottery system, they could be horrible in 2030-2031 and still not end up picking higher than eighth.
And I’m not sure they’ll be horrible. Yes, Minnesota is all-in now, almost as deeply and scarily as the aforementioned Suns. However, the Wolves’ core players are also much younger. In particular, Edwards is 23 and, the way the cap rules work now, his next extension is likely to keep him in Minnesota at least through that 2031 season, perhaps softening the blow of the future pick they owe. (Edwards could sign a monstrous extension in the summer of 2028 that would carry him to 2033, for instance.) If Dillingham pans out, he’ll have a similar effect.
Additionally, Dillingham’s inexpensive rookie contract ($6.2 million, $6.6 million and $6.9 million for the next three years before a bump to $8.8 million 2027-28) fills a four-year window when the Wolves are at their most vulnerable to the depredations of the two tax aprons and the new collective bargaining agreement’s punitive luxury tax and repeater penalties.
Hard decisions await in the next two summers; both Rudy Gobert and Naz Reid have player options and could become free agents, for instance, and the draft pick cupboard is barren. Not having to worry about signing a point guard, or about opening a new hole on the roster by trading for one, eases the degree of difficulty of executing the rest.
(While we’re here: One could argue Providence’s more defensively versatile Devin Carter might have fit the Wolves’ win-now mode better than the 19-year-old Dillingham, but his post-draft shoulder surgery pretty much ends that discussion. Ditto for Nikola Topić, who is out of the year with a knee injury.)
On one level, this didn’t require the creative juice of some of the other moves. Phoenix only had a minimum deal to offer Jones, and when the market turned on him, he took it. Credit to the Suns for having the patience to wait out the market before filling their 15th roster spot, and to their ownership for paying the additional $12 million in luxury tax this required rather than just staying at the minimum 14 players.
On the other hand, I don’t think the impact of this move is getting enough attention. The Suns desperately needed both A) a real point guard and B) another starting-caliber level player, at any position. Jones checked both boxes without costing them any draft picks (not that they had any left to trade) or other assets.
My BORD$ formula had a $14.2 million valuation on Jones, which obviously makes him a screaming bargain on a minimum deal. On a roster where the only other options were the brittle and less offensively potent Monté Morris (himself a bargain on a minimum deal earlier this summer) and “let’s see how another year of Point Booker works out,” Jones is basically manna from heaven. Though an extremely late addition, he’s good enough that he could genuinely matter in a congested West race where two or three wins might be the difference between the third seed and the Play-In Tournament … not to mention a playoff series.
Sure, Jones is gonzo next summer, and they’ll have to try to fill his spot again, but for a team in win-now mode, the “NOW” part strikes me as the more important element. The late-decade endgame in Phoenix looks brutal no matter what. But whatever Phoenix’s 2024-25 ceiling is going to be with Mat Ishbia’s absurdly all-in, burn-all-the-draft-picks approach, the Suns are way more likely to hit it after adding Jones.
GO DEEPER
How Tyus Jones can help boost the Suns’ hopes for contention
Dallas’ sign-and-trade for Thompson hogged the spotlight, and early returns are tilting positive after Josh Green’s 0-for-the-Olympics in Paris. (Dallas sent Green to Charlotte as the matching salary in the deal.)
However, the Mavs’ other moves might have been better. The trade of Hardaway’s $16.2 million salary for Quentin Grimes’ $4.3 million salary set the stage for the Thompson trade and the Naji Marshall signing. The deal only cost them two seconds, and it was critical to keeping the Mavs under the first apron and thus making both the Thompson and Marshall additions cap legal.
Yet even if there were no apron component, this deal would be a win. Yes, Grimes’ knee injury from last season looms as a question mark, but at full strength, he’s a better player than Hardaway at this point in their respective careers. Grimes is a volume 3-point shooter who defends his position and can fit in perfectly as a weakside player while Dončić and Kyrie Irving dominate the ball. He’s also only 24 and a restricted free agent after the season (if the Mavs don’t extend him in October, that is).
Meanwhile, don’t forget that $16.2 million trade exception Dallas took away from this deal. The Mavs are more likely to use it in the 2025 offseason given their position just pennies from the first-apron limit (they can’t go over due to acquiring Thompson and Marshall). However, they project to have enough sub-apron space to utilize most or all of it next summer or could potentially roll it into another, longer-lived exception in a future trade.
(Top photos of Klay Thompson and Tyus Jones: Kavin Mistry, Stacy Revere / Getty Images)
