@thl3t1c C&P for people who don't support CONTENT CREATORZ

After years of meticulous planning, calculated maneuvers and intelligent team-building, a steady stream of frustrations over the past year has now pushed the Celtics into an offseason of deep uncertainty. The latest setback struck Saturday night, when the Lakers reached a trade agreement to acquire Anthony Davis for Lonzo Ball, Brandon Ingram, Josh Hart and three first-round picks, including the fourth overall selection in next week’s draft. Boston had positioned itself to pursue Davis over the past several years but now must move on to the reality that the superstar center will play alongside LeBron James instead.

Could the Celtics have topped Los Angeles’ offer? The answer depends on whom you ask. The Lakers surrendered two promising former lottery picks, a solid rotation piece and a whole lot of draft equity. Based on early indications, the Celtics were wary of throwing all their assets – including Jayson Tatum – on the table knowing Davis could be just a one-year rental. His agent, Rich Paul, made it clear throughout the process that his client preferred other destinations such as the Lakers and Knicks and did not want to land in Boston. If the Celtics still had the promise of a future with Kyrie Irving to flaunt, they could have been more willing to roll the dice on Davis, believing that the talent on their roster would eventually help convince him to stay. But recent signs have suggested the Celtics are likely to lose Irving, and selling Davis on the team’s future would have been difficult without the All-Star guard. Giving up a package headlined by Tatum and the future Grizzlies first-round pick could have been franchise-crippling if it only yielded a one-year rental. At some point, the Celtics needed to decide what type of risk they were willing to take. Without Irving, they might not have been able to build a championship-caliber squad even with Davis around.

There’s risk in standing pat, too. In the suddenly wide open NBA landscape, Boston with Davis would have had at least a small chance of raising a banner next season. Now that he’s off the trade market and Irving appears headed elsewhere too, it’s difficult to envision another path for the Celtics to build a legitimate contender quickly. They could pivot toward a youthful rebuild around Tatum, Jaylen Brown and Marcus Smart. They could straddle the present and future while Gordon Hayward and possibly Al Horford remain on the team. They could try to fortify their roster with a non-Davis star – somebody such as Bradley Beal or even an unforeseen option.

Yet nothing stands out as an obvious way to pry open the contention window again. The Celtics still have enough talent to be good – maybe even very good – but this ownership group has always wanted more than that. With a championship-or-bust mindset, the Celtics, without Irving, do not have a championship team. They do have three first-round picks to dangle on the trade market if they want to bolster the roster around their current core.

Will that core include Horford? Though the Celtics have called keeping him a priority, his future now stands out as a question mark. The star center has a $30.1 million player option for the upcoming season but could turn it down and enter free agency. Such a move wouldn’t necessarily spell an end to Horford’s time with the Celtics because he could ink a long-term deal to stay with the organization. But, at age 33, he might realistically find a better opportunity to win a ring somewhere else. Assuming Irving walks, the Celtics would be left with a core of Hayward, Tatum, Brown and Smart – not a bad group by any means, but not what anybody had in mind this time last summer. Boston’s future, though still promising, looks murkier than it has in years.

The list of disappointments from this season alone is a long one:

After entering the season as favorites to capture the Eastern Conference, the Celtics won just 48 games before falling to the Bucks in the second round of the playoffs.
Hayward never returned to All-Star form during his first season after a devastating ankle injury. Several of his young teammates – including Tatum, Brown and Terry Rozier – either regressed or failed to show progress amid complicated team dynamics.
Players all seemed frustrated by the failure to find consistent chemistry. The coaching staff never maximized the roster’s talent. The season brought enough headaches that Irving, who verbally committed to re-signing in Boston in October, now appears to be a goner.
At the onset of this season, the Celtics thought their first-round pick from the Sacramento Kings would land somewhere in the top five. Instead, the Kings exceeded all preseason expectations; the pick they conveyed to Boston landed 14th at the very end of what is considered a thin lottery.
The Lakers, meanwhile, were fortunate enough to vault to fourth in the lottery, then used that pick as one of the centerpieces to a Davis trade. How lucky did the Lakers get on lottery night? Their chance of landing a top-four pick was 9.4 percent.
So many of the failures are intertwined. The Celtics now must pivot from Plan A – pairing Irving and Davis – to whatever path they will choose next. They should still field a competitive team regardless, just not the annual contender the organization dreamed about building.

One winner in all this is Tatum, who should finally be free from the trade rumors that dogged him over the first two seasons of his career. With no more huge fish left on the trade market, the Celtics should comfortably move forward with the 21-year-old wing as a franchise cornerstone. Tatum has shown immense potential but must iron out some of the bad habits that limited his impact as a second-year pro. He needs to cut out some inefficient midrange jumpers and grow stronger going to the rim. He should work on his 3-point versatility to reach the volume of all the best shooters. He has stated he wants to emerge as an All-Star and now has his chance – in Boston – to show he can do it. If Irving departs, Tatum will have more freedom but also more pressure to emerge alongside Brown as one of the NBA’s top wing duos.

For the Celtics, the future is now. It’s just not exactly the future the organization dreamed of for so many years.

thx!

can yall pls spot me this piece on goga

https://theathletic.com/1029373/2019/06/20/vecenie-dont-forget-about-goga-bitadze-my-top-international-player-in-the-2019-nba-draft-class/

Yesterday, a photo Zion Williamson’s media session went viral, with hundreds of media members huddled around his tiny podium. Next to that madhouse, the player with the podium next to Williamson’s looked on in the foreground of the photo, seemingly wondering what kind of world he’d stepped into.

View image on Twitter
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Fletcher Mackel
✔
@FletcherWDSU
NBA draft prospect Gogo Bitazde got slotted next to @Zionwilliamson at @NBA draft media day.

Unfortunately he’s a bit overshadowed.

Gogo actually a guy I’ve heard @PelicansNBA have interest in.

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That player was Goga Bitadze, an international player from the Republic of Georgia who was also invited to the combine, as he’s expected to be selected somewhere in the top-15. Obviously, I don’t blame anyone in the media for being much more rabid about getting set up for the Williamson media session. Zion is the story this week, and in general, the international class has not been discussed in particularly glowing terms for this year’s crop of prospects.

That’s the narrative, at least. However, I do think this crop of international players has gone underrated. It’s gotten much better throughout the season, and has an interesting mix of production, upside, and fit in the modern NBA. Two players — Goga Bitadze and Sekou Doumbouya — have a chance to be picked in the lottery, with Doumbouya expected to be taken there. Luka Samanic will likely be selected somewhere in the first round, with his range expected to be anywhere from 19 to 35. Deividas Sirvydis could hear his name called in the top-40, with four others in Marcos Louzada Silva (“Didi”), Yovel Zoosman, Adam Mokoka and Joshua Obiesie having a chance to be picked.

While most executives see Doumbouya as the top prospect from the international class, I slightly differ and wanted to write about why. While I think it’s close, I actually give a slight edge to Bitadze as the top international in this class — something I never saw coming when the season started. Bitadze has been something of a known asset for the last few years due to his high-level production in Europe as a teenager. However, I had serious concerns about his frame and mobility then that made me concerned about his modern fit in the NBA. He also played with a high level of emotion that sometimes had negative effects on his play. I had him at No. 44 on my big board entering the year.

But over the last year, Bitadze has done everything in his power to quell those worries. He started the year dominant for his parent club, Mega Bemax, averaging 20.2 points, eight rebounds, and 2.6 blocks per game in Adriatic League play while shooting 60 percent from the field and 40 percent from 3. The Adriatic League is considered a strong one, but it’s not the highest level and its relative lack of athleticism didn’t do much to show how Bitadze had grown athletically. So in December, Bitadze was loaned to Budocnost VOLI, another Adriatic League team. However, the transfer allowed Bitadze the ability to compete in the Euroleague, the highest level of competition in Europe.

While with Budocnost, Bitadze continued his run of terrific play. He averaged 12.1 points, 6.4 rebounds and 2.3 blocks in 23 minutes of action per game. While those numbers don’t necessarily jump out to an American audience, it’s worth considering where they ranked in the competition. Bitadze only played 13 games and thus didn’t qualify for statistical leads in categories, but his numbers would have ranked in the top-20 in scoring, fifth in rebounding, and first in blocked shots. Given that, it’s no surprise that he won the Euroleague Rising Star award. But he also continued his strong play in the Adriatic League, and was named MVP there.

These awards certainly don’t equal what Doncic did in Euroleague, but beyond him they’ve likely only been matched in the last five years from a teenage production standpoint by Denver Nuggets star Nikola Jokic. So why is Bitadze not held in that same esteem?

Well, the big difference those two players have versus Bitadze is that they can act as offensive initiators, whereas that’s not his game. The team that takes the Georgian center will instead get a player who is an absolute monster in ball-screen scenarios as a screen setter and roller, in addition to a potentially elite rim protector. It’s a somewhat limited role, but it’s a role he’s been devastatingly effective in overseas. Let’s start on offense, where you can get a feel for his talent.

There are just so many positives. First and foremost, he’s a terrific screen setter. He makes contact and gets his guard space. Additionally, he has a great feel for how the on-ball defender is going to attack the guard, with smart instincts for when to flip screens, or do little maneuvers like sticking out his posterior to create a last-second impediment for a defender. Those little tools of the trade that make fans yell for illegal screens? Bitadze has got all of them in his game as a teenager.

Combined with that, his sense of timing on rolls is spectacular. He knows exactly when to end his screen and start his roll. He’ll slip, or he’ll stick a screen hard. After that, his ability to find the open area is superb. He’s great at rolling into the short roll area if that’s where he sees the soft spot, or he can go all the way to the basket and present as a lob threat. Don’t underestimate his hands here, or the way he presents a big target by spreading his limbs out for ball-handlers either. Bitadze’s ability to catch below his waist is critical for being able to handle pocket passes when those are the ones that are available. Bitadze is going to enter the NBA as a useful screen and roll big man for any guard.

Where Bitadze has potential to really differentiate himself as one of the best screen and roll big men in the game, though, is with the jump shot. He hit 40 percent of his 90 3-point attempts this season, with most of those shots coming above the break in pick-and-pop scenarios. As we’ve seen with someone like Brook Lopez this season, the ability to consistently hit above-the-break 3-point shots is critical to a team’s offense now from the center position. It completely warps the way defenses have to play the opposing team, and creates a ton of space for primary initiators to drive into the paint with. Giannis Antetokounmpo’s forthcoming MVP and Eric Bledsoe’s resurgent 2019 were not accidents: both players were terrific, but the space they had to move was critical.

His percentage is a small sample, after he shot 21 percent from 3 in 2017-18, but there’s reason to believe in him as a 3-point shooter early in his career. Everything mechanically is sound. He needs to keep repping jump shots and getting consistent with his footwork and the cleanliness of his release, but there’s reason to believe he will shoot it. This is far from what concerns me about Bitadze offensively long term.

The more concerning bit is his vision and passing. The 7-footer regularly misses kick-out passing reads for open 3s in favor of contested shots at the basket. He’s not super comfortable making the cross corner kick-out read after a short roll, instead looking to finish at the basket himself. He’s comfortable with dribble-hand-off settings and can put the ball on the deck once or twice going toward the basket, but he’s not going to be able to pick out players all over the court. It’s the idea of passing up a good shot for a great one, and it’s one that often comes up at the next level when guards get doubled and centers have to act as safety valve options that make quick decisions to release the pressure in 4-on-3 settings. That part of his game just isn’t quite there yet.

This is the thing that ultimately kind of limits him as an offensive weapon to merely an awesome pick-and-roll big. There are different thoughts around the league on how developable this skill is, with some executives believing that players pick this up as they get more experienced with the game (Clint Capela with Houston would be an example of this development positively). Bitadze certainly displays a high feel in these scenarios. But others are more skeptical that there will be a high level of growth here.

That’s okay, though, because Bitadze’s defensively ability figures to make him valuable, at the very least around the basket. His ability to protect the rim is extremely high level in Europe due to his sense of timing and desire to contest everything. He’s a smart rotator from the weak side, knowing what shots he can get to. In fact, whereas many consider Jaxson Hayes to be the best rim protector in the class, I’d humbly suggest that folks reconsider Bitadze in that conversation.

Bitadze is very real threat to block shots when you go inside the paint. He’s smart at playing gap defense between the ball, the basket, and the man he’s supposed to be guarding. But the downside to his activity can be fouling problems. Bitadze fouled 3.8 times per 23.4 minutes, which can artificially limit the amount of time he can spend on the floor. This remains a very real question about him: can he do his job protecting the rim while also staying on the floor for 28-30 minutes a night? This is also, at times, where you’ll still see his emotion get the better of him. For the most part, he’s done a good job of taking that fire he plays with and using it positively. But it’ll still come out in frustration after a few repeated foul calls.

As you can see a bit of in the clip above, Bitadze has also improved his movement skills quite a bit. His strong awareness helps, and I think there’s a chance he’s a liability out in space at times against the quickest guards. He’ll need to prove at the next level that he can play out on the floor in high-stakes situations when he might get attacked repeatedly. I don’t think you’re going to want to play much switch coverage in ball-screen scenarios with him on the floor, but I’m not convinced that he gets attacked repeatedly out there if you do that, either. He can be a legitimate positive on defense if you can play long, athletic players around him that filter players toward him around the hoop.

To put it all together, I see a player in Bitadze who, as long as foul issues don’t overwhelm him, is going to be among the most NBA-ready players in this class. In many ways, despite their age gap not being very large, Doumbouya is something of the antithesis of that. While his upside is rather large due to his athleticism and skill set, I think it’s going to take Doumbouya a couple of years to come into his own on the NBA level. His consistency in the French league for Limoges just isn’t quite there yet.

Doumbouya certainly has the higher ceiling, but at the end of the day, a draft pick’s value is not necessarily about who is going to be the best player 10 years down the road. Rather, a draft pick’s value is solely determined based upon how much value the team that selects the player derives from him, either based off of production or what it receives in a trade. And while I do see Doumbouya as becoming a successful NBA player in his 20s, I also have a real concern that he might be a guy who is better for his second team than his first team, given how impatient NBA organizations can be with their rookies.

It’s also worth noting my own personal biases as an evaluator, as I do tend to default a bit more toward production and polish than unfinished products, particularly when drafting outside of the elite tiers of the draft. I have both Bitadze and Doumbouya in my fourth tier, with Bitadze at No. 8 and Doumbouya at No. 10. Now, I do think Bitadze is a bit more scheme dependent, whereas you can see Doumbouya working just about anywhere. You have to be a team that’s willing to play more drop coverage in pick-and-roll as opposed to switching with your 5 man at all. But with teams beginning to utilize more zone-like, help-heavy schemes that keep the center in the middle of the paint on defense, more roads are opening up for Bitadze to find success at the next level.

Ultimately, I feel confident in Bitadze turning into a starting quality center due to the overall polish of his skillset and the upside that he’s shown over the last year with his body and his shooting ability. He’s not only my No. 1 international player in this class, but also my top center, as I believe in his rim protection giving him defensive value in the right scheme, and his offensive skill set being better than Hayes’ both now and into the future.

Bitadze might not exactly be well known by the media, yet, and he might not be the story this week. But I’m betting that if you give it a couple of years, they’ll know all about him.

ty cad

https://theathletic.com/1041885/2019/06/23/10-free-agents-the-spurs-could-should-will-target-this-offseason/

please and thank you

SAN ANTONIO – The question was simple, and Gregg Popovich provided a simple answer that today can be used as insight to what the Spurs could be seeking when free agency kicks off at the end of this month.

What was the decision to bring veteran Dante Cunningham onboard after the two sides agreed to a one-year, roughly $2.4 million deal last year?

“He’s veteran,” Popovich said during Spurs media day before last season. “He’s a pro. He plays aggressively. He can play some defense; he can score; he’s been with other programs; and he’ll add another player that’s been around and understand how this works.”

Cunningham, 32, certainly provided his fair share of moments for the Spurs. His best outing, on the stat sheet, came on Nov. 19 when he scored 19 points on 7-of-7 shooting (5-for-5 on 3-pointers), seven rebounds and three assists in a loss to the New Orleans Pelicans.

Popovich praised his defensive efforts in the thrilling Oct. 22 overtime win over the Los Angeles Lakers when Cunningham, before fouling out, secured a game-high 12 rebounds and did his best to help slow down LeBron James. And against those same Pelicans, Cunningham also had a 15-point, seven-rebound outing in the Nov. 3 contest.

In the first 22 games of the season, Cunningham, who was signed to be a role player off the bench, started 18 times, averaging 22.5 minutes for the Spurs.

“We didn’t expect him to be playing all these minutes and he’s taking advantage of the opportunity,” Popovich said after that Nov. 3 game against the Pelicans. “I think he’s been really good for us. He sets the tone defensively. LaMarcus (Aldridge) goes under the bucket, and Dante is picking people up who are really good shooters, or good one-on-one players, and he’s done a great job.”

So, at Cunningham’s price tag, it fair to say the Spurs got a good deal for what he was able to provide when he got extended opportunities. But Cunningham isn’t expected back next season, and the Spurs will have to look to replace his role off the bench.

Unless a significant transaction occurs, the Spurs will be likely operating over the salary cap but not into luxury territory. Hence, they will be able to use the $9.2 million non-taxpayer mid-level exception to add one or multiple players and have the veteran’s minimum slot as well.

If Popovich’s explanation of Cunningham’s signing last season serves as criteria, here are 10 players who could fit the Spurs next season:

Soobum Im-USA TODAY Sports
(Soobum Im / USA Today)
Trevor Ariza
After completing a successful stint with the Houston Rockets, Ariza chased the money last offseason and signed a one-year, $15 million deal with the Phoenix Suns. He provided leadership, but the fit wasn’t right on the court.

In 26 games, Ariza averaged 9.9 points and shot 37.9 percent from the field (36 percent from 3) before he was traded to the Washington Wizards last December. He performed better with the Wizards, averaging 14.1 points, 5.3 rebounds and 3.8 assists in 43 games.

The days of Ariza, 33, earning $15 million per season are over. He’s more of a mid-level player now and could be a stable fit for the Spurs — who, league sources told The Athletic, were interested in his services when he became available last season.

The Spurs could offer Ariza the full mid-level or persuade him to take a bit less and use the remaining money to sign another veteran. Ariza is still a good defender who can stretch the floor by hitting the 3. And, as Popovich said of Cunningham, he’s been around and understands how it all works.

If Rudy Gay departs in free agency, perhaps Ariza can help fill the void off the bench. And if Gay returns, nothing wrong with having a similar wing in the second unit or maybe a starter at moments of the season when the Spurs are grappling with injuries.

Jeff Green
Speaking of the Wizards, forward Jeff Green will be another free agent worth keeping an eye on. Green played last season on a one-year vet minimum valued at roughly $2.3 million, a deal similar to Cunningham’s. Perhaps he would be interested in taking another minimum deal with the Spurs.

Green, 32, averaged 12.3 points and 4.0 rebounds in 77 games with the Wizards last season. He’s known as a locker-room guy and as someone who can provide some big outings at times. The thing is, don’t expect Green to be consistent when it comes to those outings.

“He’s always been such an enigma that you don’t know what you’re going to get night to night,” one Eastern Conference scout said. “But I can also see him being a little Spur-ish in his skill set. I just don’t know if he’ll have the night-to-night focus that Pop would like.”

But the Spurs wouldn’t need Green to come up big every game. If they can live with the type of player he is — a scorer and someone who loves to play but is perfectly fine being a role player — maybe this could be a beautiful one-year partnership.

Wesley Matthews
Here is a name the Spurs flirted with through the buyout market. Matthews said Aldridge and DeMar DeRozan attempted to recruit him to the Spurs before he selected the Indiana Pacers.

Word around the league is the Pacers will not attempt to bring back Matthews, allowing the veteran guard to sign with any team he desires.

Though there were signs of slippage, Matthews is still respected as a solid 3-and-D wing. If he can accept a secondary role, Matthews could provide the Spurs with another 3-point threat who can stretch the floor for Aldridge, his former teammate in Portland.

It might take more than the vet minimum to get Matthews to San Antonio. If the Spurs decide to split the mid-level money between two players, maybe they could persuade Matthews with the right deal.

But if the two recruiters made any traction with Matthews months ago, it shouldn’t take much to get Matthews to sign with the Spurs.

Jeff Hanisch-USA TODAY Sports
(Jeff Hanisch / USA Today)
Wayne Ellington
Of the players mentioned so far, Ellington is probably the perfect Spur. Ellington can shoot, is a better defender than what he’s given credit for and is a reliable team defender.

With the Detroit Pistons, Ellington was charged with the task of defending multiple positions, and some of the assignments were bigger than Ellington. But the University of North Carolina product held his own and competed.

After he was traded by the Miami Heat and waived by the Phoenix Suns, Ellington signed with the Pistons, where he finished the season averaging 12 points and shot 37.3 percent on 3-pointers. What makes Ellington stand out the most when it comes to potential free-agent targets are his character and team-first mindset.

“He’s that 1,000 percent,” a league exec said when discussing Ellington. “He would fit what is known as the Spurs’ culture. He would embrace it. He wouldn’t mind being coached hard by Pop because he’s going to play the right way.”

Jonathon Simmons
“His best days were there,” the league exec said. “Maybe they can rekindle that.”

Simmons’ rights are now with the Washington Wizards after he was traded on draft night by the Philadelphia 76ers. Many around the NBA expected Simmons, who is scheduled to make roughly $5.7 million next season, to be waived by next month, but that all changed Thursday.

As of now, the feeling is the Wizards will keep Simmons around. Should that change, he’s guaranteed only $1 million next season if he’s waived.

Would the Spurs be interested in a possible reunion if Simmons’ time with the Wizards is short-lived?

If he becomes available, Simmons will most likely be grouped with the second or third wave of free agents. Should the Spurs miss out on some bigger targets, maybe Simmons is still around and decides to return on a one-year deal, hoping to have a productive season and make up lost revenue next summer.

Though he didn’t show much of it in Philly, Simmons is still a capable defender who can create his own shot and get into the lane. The Spurs do need more 3-point shooting, but Popovich always loves a player willing to compete and defend. And the Spurs should know how to incorporate Simmons better than any other team, as the Houston native developed under their watch before he departed in 2017.

Rondae Hollis-Jefferson
In one of the earlier news items of the week, ESPN.com reported the Brooklyn Nets did not extend Hollis-Jefferson his $3.9 million qualifying offer. He will now become an unrestricted free agent.

League sources have informed The Athletic that Hollis-Jefferson will explore his options and has not pinpointed any potential suitors. Though nothing is official, the Spurs should consider the former University of Arizona standout.

It’s known the Spurs like to get in-depth intel on players they are considering for their program. Sean Marks, the former Spurs GM and current Nets GM, should be able to provide all the insight needed about Hollis-Jefferson’s potential fit.

On the court, Hollis-Jefferson is praised for his defense and has good size at 6-foot-7. He can provide energy off the bench and would be reliable in transition with his athleticism. The problem …

“No offense to speak of,” a scout said. “He’s supposed to be a three, but he can’t put the ball in the hole.”

And here is what will be the issue for Hollis-Jefferson.

In his four-year career, he shot 44.4 percent from the field and 22.3 percent from beyond the arc. Where he makes up for his shooting woes is through his reputation of playing hard. Again, the Spurs admire players who will compete, but whether Hollis-Jefferson provides enough offense will be one of the questions the team will consider if it explores a signing.

Paul Millsap
The Nuggets will need to decide on Millsap soon, as he has a team option worth $30 million for next season.

Millsap averaged 12.6 points and 7.2 rebounds for the second-seeded Nuggets, who eliminated the Spurs from the postseason. Those numbers aren’t terrible, but the price to bring Millsap back to the Mile High City might be a bit too much.

Millsap is one of the better frontcourt defenders, and he’s not afraid to shoot the 3. If he’s in a lineup with Aldridge, he could see plenty of opportunities from beyond the arc.

The question: How much would it cost to add Millsap? He should have a fair share of suitors capable of paying him more than the mid-level exception. But if Millsap has an interest in the Spurs, this is a potential addition that could be intriguing.

Stanley Johnson
Since the trade deadline, Johnson’s name has always been linked to the Spurs. Assistant GM Brian Wright was in Detroit’s front office when Johnson was drafted eighth overall in 2015.

Some are still trying to understand what Johnson, who’s 6-foot-7, is at this level. A guard? Small forward? He’s not the best shooter and is a streaky scorer, but he is also known as a good defender when he wants to compete. The good, or bad depending on perspective: Johnson just turned 23 last month.

Usually, teams will still attempt to develop a player of that age and mold him into something that fits their needs. Whether Johnson will go along with the plan has been the question many league execs have asked when discussing his services.

The talent is there, though. The Spurs might need to do a little convincing — not much — and if Johnson buys in, he could be a quiet steal when it’s all said and done.

Steve Mitchell-USA TODAY Sports
Could Amir Johnson, right, be on the Spurs’ radar this offseason? (Steve Mitchell / USA Today)
Amir Johnson
Speaking of Johnsons, don’t forget about Amir. Johnson’s time with the Sixers, like that of Simmons, appears complete.

After agreeing to re-sign with Philly on a one-year deal last summer, Johnson played in only 51 games and his minutes dipped from 15.9 to 10.4 per game. As a reserve, Johnson averaged 3.9 points and 2.9 rebounds.

There has always been some intrigue with the Spurs and Johnson. The team inquired about signing Johnson since his days in Toronto and have kept a close eye on him while he played with the Boston Celtics, league sources told The Athletic. But the time to add Johnson, 32, never seemed to align until now.

Off the bench, Johnson would provide another vet who could serve as an energy guy — play defense, set screens, rebound, convert a few putbacks and call it a day. He’s also close with DeRozan and Gay, as the trio played together with the Raptors.

Robin Lopez
This would be a connection-based signing. The connection here is Aldridge, who played with Lopez in Portland. Aldridge loved playing with Lopez, who has always been respected around the NBA as a serviceable big man.

“I like him (with the Spurs) a lot,” the Eastern Conference scout said.

Lopez is a good paint protector and underrated passer, and some look at him as a better rebounder than his brother, Brook, especially on the offensive end. With the Spurs, Lopez would be able to once again play next to Aldridge at times and do what he does best — defend, pass, rebound and set screens.

Lopez, 31, shouldn’t cost too much and could be the right vet-minimum candidate for the Spurs, who need more frontline help with only Aldridge, Jakob Poeltl and youngster Chimezie Metu as the big men currently on the roster for next season.

Dang thanks

Spurs have a complete roster already and that full MLE should get them a decent vet. Ariza, wes matthews, or Jeff green would fit some me needs on the wing. they lacked for defense last year but not cool with people who can’t hit outside shots given their personnel.

Millsap seems like a fantasy unless they trade Aldridge

plz and thank you
https://theathletic.com/1066708/2019/07/08/the-good-and-bad-of-al-horfords-fit-with-joel-embiid-and-ben-simmons/

Over the course of the 76ers-Celtics battles of the past couple years, Sixers fans have grown quite familiar with Al Horford’s game. You likely know what to expect the 12-year veteran — who surprised the league when free agency opened by agreeing to a four-year deal with Philadelphia — to bring to his new team.

But Horford’s new role figures to be very different than it was with Boston. Specifically, he’ll play quite a bit of power forward next to Joel Embiid. That raises important questions: Does the 33-year-old provide enough spacing at the four, next to Embiid? Is Horford capable of attacking closeouts off the dribble? Can he defend sleek fours nightly?

Then there’s the other part of Horford’s role — his minutes at center, when Embiid is on the bench. How will Horford’s time at the five change things for Ben Simmons?

Let’s dive into the film and see how Horford fits with Philadelphia’s young cornerstones.

The Horford-Embiid pairing

As Rich Hofmann broke down last week, the Sixers will likely stagger Embiid and Horford’s minutes some, but the new duo will still have to share the floor for a minimum of around 15 minutes per night. That won’t be an entirely new challenge for Horford, who has played power forward throughout his career. But he’s never shared the floor with a high-volume post-up player like Embiid.

Ensuring proper post-spacing for Embiid is paramount, and in that sense, Horford is not the perfect fit. While accuracy has never been an issue with Horford’s shot, there’s some concern over whether he has a quick-enough release to get his shot off over scrambling defenders, and the ability to blow by those defenders off the dribble. Without those things, opponents will simply double-team off of Horford and bet that they can recover.

The former is a legitimate concern, as Horford attempted only one 3-pointer with a defender within four feet of him all of last season, per NBA.com. That number sounds scarier than it is — for reference, Dario Saric only attempted 24 such shots in 2017-18 — but Horford’s slow release could still cause problems.

Being adept at both putting the ball on the deck and attacking the rim should help Horford compensate. Underrated in this sense, he’s often able to leave defenders in the dust and glide in for tough finishes.

Horford’s ability to pump fake and go should keep the Sixers’ offense flowing, and mitigates the damage of his tendency to opt out against tight contests. Horford is also a smart, controlled passer out of these situations, and a good finisher.

Again, though, the fit here is imperfect. Embiid’s previous partners at power forward — Saric, Ersan Ilyasova, Tobias Harris — are more prolific from 3 than Horford. The Sixers have to hope that Horford’s driving ability, along with some increased willingness to shoot, will hold things together.

Horford’s fit on the defensive end next to Embiid is much clearer. With Horford’s size, mobility and intelligence, the Sixers are poised to be a top five defensive team this coming season.

His ability to defend fours against small-ball lineups might concern some. Whom does Horford defend when the Clippers play Paul George at power forward? How about when Boston plays Jaylen Brown, Jayson Tatum and Gordon Hayward in the same lineup?

For my money, Horford is switchable enough to stay afloat against those lineups, even though it’s not ideal. Chasing players like Hayward or George will be difficult, but Horford is excellent at surviving in isolations.

Many good teams are going to throw small-ball lineups with dynamic perimeter scorers at the four at Philadelphia. A lot hinges on Horford’s ability to guard — and punish — them on the offensive end. It’s a battle we’ll track all year; my bet is Horford handles it decently well.

The Horford-Embiid pairing will have its challenges on both ends, but I think it will be a fruitful partnership. Horford has hinted a few times that he prefers playing power forward over center, and he certainly has the skills to do it. The defensive upside is incredible, and with any increased willingness to shoot, the offense should flow just fine.

The Horford-Simmons pairing

In recent years, the Sixers have coveted players like Horford — stretch bigs with the ability to play the four or five. They loved that dynamic with Ilyasova in 2017-18, and tried to replicate it with Mike Muscala this past year, but it didn’t work out. Now, they’ve got Horford.

Much of the value in having a stretch five — and perhaps the reason Philadelphia has targeted this type of player — comes in how much it helps Simmons. For starters, it opens things up tremendously in transition. Many teams try to form a shell at the free-throw line to impede Simmons in the open floor. But with Horford, they’ll have to think twice. He’ll be able to waltz into trailing 3s should teams have their big men stationed at the free-throw line, as Embiid does here.

Horford’s threat in pick-and-pops will help Simmons to operate more in pick-and-rolls, as bigs can’t play drop coverages against Horford. It would also open things up for Simmons to play as the roll man with guards, with Horford spacing the floor in the corner.

Defensively, lineups with Horford and Simmons offer a ton of versatility, and the Sixers will be able to switch everything, if they want. The team has always hemorrhaged points on defense when Embiid sits, but that should no longer be the case.

With Horford as the de facto backup center, we’re going to learn a lot about Simmons. Over the past two years, the Sixers have always remained solid when Embiid plays without Simmons, but they disintegrate when Simmons plays without Embiid. Much of that could be blamed on the Sixers’ dreadful backup-center play over the past two seasons. With Horford in the fold, Simmons no longer has that excuse. If the on/off numbers tell the same story this year, it will not be a good look for Simmons.

All things considered, Horford’s fit with Embiid seems less than perfect, but his fit with Simmons — with Horford as the backup center, at least — should be tremendous. The oversized lineups with limited shooting will have their challenges. But with Horford’s unselfishness and intelligence, along with an uptick in attempts from 3, the upside is enormous.

thanks. that kind of reinforces my thoughts on Horf in Philly; a lot depends on Simmons being able to step up to 20/10 territory

anyone have WSJ?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/kevin-durants-new-headspace-11568119028

Kevin Durant’s New Headspace
The Nets new star is focused on his recovery and elated to be coming to Brooklyn—so can everyone stop worrying about whether or not he’s happy? “We talk about mental health a lot. We only talk about it when it comes to players. We need to talk about it when it comes to executives, media, fans.”
By J.R. Moehringer
Sept. 10, 2019 8:37 am ET

“Some days I hate the NBA,” Kevin Durant says wearily.

He’s facedown on a padded table, wearing dark workout shorts, a weathered gray DMX T-shirt, a Washington Redskins fleece draped over his shoulders. A physical therapist leans over him, wafting circulation-boosting lasers up and down his surgically repaired right calf.

“Some days I hate the circus of the NBA,” he says. “Some days I hate that the players let the NBA business, the fame that comes with the business, alter their minds about the game. Sometimes I don’t like being around the executives and politics that come with it. I hate that.”

Since June 10, when Durant crumpled to the floor with a ruptured Achilles, halting Game 5 of the NBA Finals and casting a pall over the rest of the series, it’s been The Question: Will the two-time Finals MVP, 2014 league MVP, four-time scoring leader, ever be the same? But listen to him for just a few minutes: He won’t. He’s already a different person.

The change is more than cosmetic, more than simply leaving the Golden State Warriors and signing a four-year $164 million deal with the Brooklyn Nets. It’s more than dropping his longtime number, 35, which possessed enormous symbolism. (A beloved youth coach and mentor was shot and killed at 35 years old.) The change feels elemental, as if Durant’s brush with basketball mortality made him see how fast it all might go away, how fast it will go away (he turns 31 this month), and it scared him, or matured him, or made him think.

And he was already a thinker. “I’ve always been on a search,” he says.

Producer Brian Grazer, a creative partner, says Durant is one of the most original, idiosyncratic minds you’re likely to meet in the world of sports. Grazer recalls a talk Durant gave at a Google retreat in Sicily. During the Q&A someone asked what made Durant so great. Coolly, Durant replied: “Paranoia.”

But all this is guesswork, and Durant hates the way people are forever guessing about his psyche, which is another reason he hates the NBA. So here’s another guess: Maybe he’s not changed, or not merely changed—maybe he’s also dead tired. He sounds tired, looks tired, with good reason. His 12-year NBA career has featured outsize doses of drama, scandal, injuries, gutting losses, fierce beefs, dramatic exits, emotional returns, burner accounts. Even his most devoted fans (Mom and Dad) say the ruptured Achilles and the yearlong layoff it will likely require might be a blessing. In every sense of the word, the man needs to heal.

The healing starts here, in this $24 million neo-brutalist mansion nailed to the side of a cliff above Beverly Hills. Level with the tops of the Santa Monica Mountains, eye-to-eye with the raptors that surf the swirly updrafts, this will be the setting for Phase One of Durant’s rebuild.

In some ways the place is mega-normal, just another stately pleasure dome of superstardom (seven bedrooms, 12 bathrooms; rent: $90,000 a month). But at moments there’s a weird vibe. The house feels like a chrysalis, or a crypt, depending on your point of view, and not simply because the front door is a giant sliding slab of stone. Whatever comes next for Durant—a compromised skill set, a comeback for the ages—it will be determined largely by what happens within these concrete walls, inside these unaccountably dark rooms, and this inescapable truth can really throw off the feng shui. Even the man installing the special low-resistance treadmill in the living room looks a little tense.

Team Durant’s plan is for him to hole up here all summer, then transition to his new home in New York City soon after Labor Day. He’s flying east tonight to look at a few places. Friends have urged him to consider Manhattan, but Dumbo, he thinks, might be more his speed. He wants high ceilings, a sick view, proximity to the Nets practice gym. He lives for a gym, prides himself on rolling out of bed straight into practice. “I don’t wear matching clothes…I don’t wash my face, I don’t brush my hair. I just come in there and go to work.”

This morning, however, the only plan he cares about is the rehab plan. He’s laser focused on this laser. Somehow he even tunes out the blaring big-screen TV across the room. While his friends stretch out on big leather couches, watching White Boy Rick, discussing the plot twists, Durant stretches out on the table, subdued, quiet. This is the flip side of his hatred for the NBA: an almost pious devotion to the game itself and anything that can help him play it at the highest level.

“Without basketball,” he says flatly, “I wouldn’t have done much on earth.” Wouldn’t have traveled the world, or met politicians, entrepreneurs, moguls, rappers, each of whom adds to his store of knowledge and advances his search. “I wouldn’t have seen stuff that I’ve seen, compared to my friends I grew up with. Wouldn’t have gone to India. Or Hawaii.”

His words are suddenly punctuated by bone-shuddering gunshots in surround sound. Someone in White Boy Rick’s world is never going to Mumbai.

The physical therapist, Dave Hancock, cuts the laser, repositions Durant. He rubs around the eight-inch surgical scar on the back of Durant’s calf, kneading the soft tissue to increase blood flow and improve collagen formation. He then manipulates other muscles and tendons in the lower leg to keep them engaged and energized.

Next, Hancock slips Durant’s leg into a boot and sends him outside, into a walled backyard. On metal crutches that look like medieval jousting lances, Durant does a circuit, paces before an outdoor bar decorated with the logo of his new team. Just shy of 7 feet, without a shred of fat, he always traverses earth differently from other humans. (“You can feel his height,” Grazer says.) But with crutches and a boot, his halting-flowing stride is a jarring mix of fragility and athletic grace. Like a baby deer performing the Martha Graham technique.

After the gingerly constitutional it’s time to slide into the infinity pool for one-minute cardio bursts. The infinity pool overlooks…infinity. Durant, however, shows no interest in the view. After easing into the silver-blue water he begins kicking, paddling, maneuvering a rubber ball. When he flags, Hancock nudges. Again. The 45-minute regimen leaves them both gasping.

Hancock hands Durant a basketball (black, Nets logo) and tells him to shoot. The hoop is at the far end of the pool. Floating backward, standing flamingo-style, talking, not talking, looking, not looking, no matter: Swish. Swish. Swish.

Grazer says he once asked Durant what it’s like to choke in a big game. I’ve never choked, Durant said. Everyone chokes, Grazer said. “[Durant] says, ‘I will always shoot the ball—choking is not shooting the ball. If I miss, it’s not my fault. It’s the environment. Or someone else’s fault.’ At first that sounded arrogant. But if you think about it, it makes sense. Choking is not shooting.”

Cardio over, summer sun directly overhead, Durant moves into the dark coolness of the house. A chef brings him a plate. Crispy black cod, parsnip-and-potato purée, chanterelle mushrooms, roasted fennel, followed by crème brûlée topped with fresh whipped cream and sliced strawberries. Durant takes two bites, sets the plate aside. He burrows into the couch recently abandoned by his friends. He has only a short time to rest and regroup. This morning’s regimen will be followed by another this afternoon. Two sessions, every day except Sunday, all summer.

Another athlete might complain about the monotony, says Hancock, who’s worked privately with Odell Beckham Jr., David Beckham, Daniel Craig, U2. But Durant attacks it with an all-consuming fire, which Hancock calls the hallmark of an elite athlete.

In fact, for Durant, rehab began nanoseconds after the injury. He heard the tendon pop, felt the leg turn to lead, knew exactly what lay ahead. He stayed cool, collected, even back in the locker room, surrounded by teammates and executives looking like mourners at his wake. Only when doctors started talking blood clots and other bad outcomes did Durant’s mind go “to a crazy place.”

His phone went crazy too. Calls and texts from everywhere. (Barack Obama: Speedy recovery.) Among the first was his mother, Wanda Durant, whom he immortalized as “the real MVP” in his 2014 MVP acceptance speech. She was watching the game at home in Maryland, in the house Durant bought her. She stepped out of the room for a moment, and when she came back she saw her phone fluttering. Fifteen texts?

She looked at the first. It was from a friend. It just said: Oh no.

Frantic, she rewound the game, pressed pause, put her face close to the screen, looked deep into her son’s frozen eyes, trying to see how bad it was.

It was bad.

She cried when he answered the phone. He told her it was OK, because that’s what the son of a single mother says. She said she was on her way, she’d be on a plane that night. He said no. The next day would be soon enough.

She was at New York’s Hospital for Special Surgery 48 hours later, the last face he saw as they wheeled him into the operating room and one of the first he saw when he woke from the anesthesia. She then followed him to a suite at the Four Seasons, where she did all the things he couldn’t do for himself. “He was in the tub,” Wanda says, “and I was washing him, and we were talking, making sure his leg didn’t get wet and the bandage stayed dry, and he said: ‘Mom, it feels good to have you take care of me.’ And it just—”

She stops, overcome with emotion.

The moment was especially sweet because not long ago mother and son were on the outs. Wanda had been handling Durant’s financial affairs since he broke into the league, but in 2014 he decided to take control. It caused a rift, which took months, Durant says, to heal.

After several days Wanda went home, and Durant moved to a temporary apartment in SoHo. His father came. (Wayne Pratt wasn’t present for most of Durant’s childhood, but he’s now part of Durant’s small inner circle.) They ate vegetarian takeout, watched The Black Godfather, spent a whole afternoon together without once mentioning basketball, even though the NBA’s free agency period was days away. The basketball world was breathlessly waiting to hear which team Durant would choose, and Durant’s father was breathless too. But Durant was determined to keep his own counsel.

A far cry from three years ago, says Rich Kleiman, Durant’s manager, business partner and close friend. In the summer of 2016 he and Durant rented a palatial estate on Further Lane in the Hamptons and welcomed a procession of lobbying delegations from various teams, including a party of four stars from Golden State. This time around, shortly before the start of free agency, Kleiman met Durant for lunch at Cipriani, a chic restaurant in SoHo, and gave him one last overview of all the teams and all his options. Durant said: “All right. Well. I’m going with Brooklyn.” Just like that.

Kleiman was taken aback: For real? Yes, Durant said. End of discussion. (Looking back on both free-agency crossroads, Kleiman laughs. “The Hamptons and Cipriani? How bougie can you get?”)

Durant says his decision-making process was as simple on the inside as it looked from the outside. Brooklyn was the right fit; he just knew. He didn’t even speak to the Nets before his decision, he says. He didn’t need a PowerPoint. He’s always felt big love as a visiting player at Barclays Center, he says, and he wondered what it might be like if he were on the home team. Plus, the Nets offered the opportunity to join his “best friend in the league,” Kyrie Irving.

Of course, Durant says, he was conflicted about leaving the Bay Area. “I came in there wanting to be part of a group, wanting to be part of a family, and definitely felt accepted,” he says. “But I’ll never be one of those guys. I didn’t get drafted there.… Steph Curry, obviously drafted there. Andre Iguodala, won the first Finals, first championship. Klay Thompson, drafted there. Draymond Green, drafted there. And the rest of the guys kind of rehabilitated their careers there. So me? Shit, how you going to rehabilitate me? What you going to teach me? How can you alter anything in my basketball life? I got an MVP already. I got scoring titles.”

That he stood out, stood apart from the group, felt preordained. “Some days I hate the circus of the NBA,” Durant says. “Some days I hate that the players let the NBA business, the fame that comes with the business, alter their minds about the game.”

“As time went on,” he says, “I started to realize I’m just different from the rest of the guys. It’s not a bad thing. Just my circumstances and how I came up in the league. And on top of that, the media always looked at it like KD and the Warriors. So it’s like nobody could get a full acceptance of me there.”

He scoffs at rumors that his public disagreement with Green, in the final moments of a game last November, was determinative. (Durant scolded Green for not passing him the ball; Green then berated Durant, repeatedly calling him a bitch.) It was “a bullshit argument,” he says, “that meant nothing. Absolutely nothing. We were good before it. We were great.”

And great, he insists, after.

But there was also this: From a strictly competitive, strategic standpoint, Durant had come to fear that Golden State had hit a ceiling.

“The motion offense we run in Golden State, it only works to a certain point,” he says. “We can totally rely on only our system for maybe the first two rounds. Then the next two rounds we’re going to have to mix in individual play. We’ve got to throw teams off, because they’re smarter in that round of playoffs. So now I had to dive into my bag, deep, to create stuff on my own, off the dribble, isos, pick-and-rolls, more so than let the offense create my points for me.” He wanted to go someplace where he’d be free to hone that sort of improvisational game throughout the regular season.

His tenure in the Bay Area was great, he says, but because of media speculation, fan anxiety, “it didn’t feel as great as it could have been. We talk about mental health a lot,” Durant says. “We only talk about it when it comes to players. We need to talk about it when it comes to executives, media, fans.”

A small detail, perhaps telling: He hasn’t been back to the Bay Area since June, since the injury, and he has no plans to return. His staff cleaned out his apartment in San Francisco, packed up the furniture, the memorabilia, including the MVP trophies that sat on the mantel. He doesn’t know when he’ll return again.

Meaningful? Merely logistical? People want to know. Desperately. Durant knows they want to know. Breakups represent change, and change represents death—naturally people obsess. Some still need clarity on Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt, the Beatles. What the hell did Yoko do?

Durant has a Ph.D. in this phenomenon. When he left the Oklahoma City Thunder for Golden State, reaction was intense. Overnight he went from icon to traitor. The memory still pains him.

“People coming to my house and spray-painting on the for sale signs around my neighborhood,” he recalls. “People making videos in front of my house and burning my jerseys and calling me all types of crazy names.”

At his first game in Oklahoma City as a visitor—February 2017—fans yowled for blood and brandished cupcakes, because Durant was supposedly soft. “Such a venomous toxic feeling when I walked into that arena,” he says. “And just the organization, the trainers and equipment managers, those dudes is pissed off at me? Ain’t talking to me? I’m like, Yo, this is where we going with this? Because I left a team and went to play with another team?”

His mother recalls one particularly appalling piece of video: a Thunder fan firing bullets into a No. 35 jersey. Bullets—after she and Durant and half his extended family relocated to Oklahoma, after they embraced the community, after Durant gave a million dollars to tornado victims.

“I’ll never be attached to that city again because of that,” Durant says. “I eventually wanted to come back to that city and be part of that community and organization, but I don’t trust nobody there. That shit must have been fake, what they was doing. The organization, the GM, I ain’t talked to none of those people, even had a nice exchange with those people, since I left.”

Though fans in Toronto roared with pleasure and glee the moment he ruptured his Achilles, he doesn’t view that behavior in the same light. On the contrary, it tickled him. Torontonians knew he was playing the best basketball of his life. “They was terrified that I was on the floor,” he says, suppressing a smile. “You could feel it the second I walked out there.”

Does this same largesse extend to Toronto’s über booster, Drake, who trash-talked the Warriors and practically ran the floor on every fast break, thus irking half a continent? It does, it does. “That’s my brother. I view him as, like, blood.” If you get upset about how Drake roots for his hometown team, he adds, “You need to reevaluate yourself.”
Durant’s own clothing and jewelry, David Yurman chain, $3,500, David Yurman, 114 Prince Street, New York. . Hair, Eric Adams; grooming, Tasha Reiko Brown; manicure, Ashlie Johnson. Photo: Mario Sorrenti for WSJ. Magazine, Styling by Sydney Rose Thomas

No, what Durant doesn’t like, what unnerves him, is when raw hatred poses as fandom. “We talk about mental health a lot. We only talk about it when it comes to players. We need to talk about it when it comes to executives, media, fans.”

As with the ruptured Achilles, however, the bitter parting with Oklahoma City brought hidden boons. “It made me realize how big this whole shit is,” he says. The “shit,” he says, is “the machine,” a great big invisible generator of narratives, programmed by the powers that be to gin up controversy, conflict, whatever keeps people dialed in. He’s learned—he’s learning—to free himself from the machine, to separate the game he loves from the noise and nonsense surrounding it.

Though he can sound stressed when discussing this stuff, though he can look downhearted, beard askew, doleful eyes fixed on the ground, Durant wants people to know he’s happy. More, he wants them to please for the love of God stop asking if he’s happy.

Maybe it’s a function of his introversion. Maybe it’s his resting facial expression, which is that of a man who just found a parking ticket on his windshield. Whatever the reason, observers often think Durant is bummed, or numb, when in fact he’s just pleasantly idling in neutral. “People are always like, Are you happy? It’s like, Yo, what the f— does that mean right now?… That was the whole thing this year: Is KD happy where he is?”

Such a highly personal question, he complains. More, an unanswerable question. And whenever he tries to answer it, earnestly, honestly, no one’s satisfied, which makes them unhappy, which then makes him unhappy.

Indeed, right after he announced his deal with Brooklyn, a typical story dominated one or two news cycles. Warriors execs, behind the scenes, supposedly saying Durant wasn’t happy enough after winning two titles: Nothing’s good enough for this guy.

False, Durant says. “It’s very rare in our lives when we envision and picture something and it comes together the perfect way you envision it. [Winning a title] was the only time in my life that happened, and that summer was the most exhilarating time. Every day I woke up I just felt so good about myself, so good about life.… That was a defining moment in my life—not just my basketball life.”

This is the one thing that doesn’t change about Durant. He still tries earnestly, honestly to correct the record, give real answers, put the truth out there. He doesn’t measure his words, doesn’t care if he says it wrong or contradicts himself. (Case in point: He’s spoken forgivingly about Oklahoma City in the past. But he’s not feeling that right now, and he’s not the least bit concerned if the paradox throws you.)

What matters more than continuity, more than happiness, more than titles—more than anything—is the search. Durant is one of the few NBA players who speaks of the game as a vehicle for gaining wisdom.

The rapper Q-Tip recently sent Durant an old black-and-white clip of Bruce Lee, which Durant devoured. Lee put it so beautifully, telling an interviewer about the secret of martial arts. “All types of knowledge,” Lee says, “ultimately mean self-knowledge.” The more you know about martial arts, the more you know about yourself, and the more you can then express yourself with your body—especially in “combat.” On any given night he has things to express. Angry things, scary things, joyful things, about his story.

He grew up in the roughest parts of Prince George’s County, Maryland. No money, no father. Lost a cherished aunt and a coach at a tender age. Lost friends to gun violence. Survived a bare, lonely two-room apartment, just his mom and brother, and now inhabits this ridiculous American schloss. Every step of that remarkable journey has left a mark, reshaped his soul. He wants to tell you how, wants to tell the world, and he does so with his beautiful game, a sui generis hybrid of length and strength, violence and accuracy and grace.

Laurene Powell Jobs, who helped Durant establish a multimillion-dollar program in Prince George’s County to help college-bound kids ready themselves—scholastically, emotionally, financially—says Durant is “a deeply integrated individual,” which makes him rare among all people, let alone celebrities. Integrated people, she says, “keep all the knowledge of their experience and bring it to their current awareness.… They use it as a source of knowledge, of power, and want to effect change that’s informed by their experience.”

If basketball isn’t available, Durant finds expression through other means. Photography, music, art. He dabbles, or dives deep, depending. But he’s discovered a true passion for business. He seeks out founders, leaders, CEOs and applies what he learns from them to the empire he’s building with Kleiman. Under the rubric of 35 Ventures—headquartered in New York City, staff of 15—they manage Durant’s lucrative endorsement deals, oversee an equity partnership with luxury audio company Master & Dynamic and create an eclectic investment portfolio (technology, hospitality, media) tailored to their shared interests.

They also generate a lot of content. Just this year they produced a documentary about the San Quentin Warriors, a hoops team inside the maximum security prison; launched a six-episode series on ESPN called The Boardroom about the business of sports, along with related digital shorts; and began filming a scripted show called Swagger, loosely based on Durant’s days playing youth basketball, with Grazer as a co-producer.

Through the Kevin Durant Charity Foundation they also help groups that take innovative approaches to fighting homelessness and easing hunger, and they do dazzling refurbishments of basketball courts in low-income neighborhoods around the world.

Above all, Durant expresses himself through social media. Instagram is one of his main portals to the world. It’s an introvert’s utopia, he says, a place to engage with people from a safe distance. Never mind the grief it’s caused him in the past. (In recent years, at times using fake accounts, he’s clashed with online critics, including at least one who still had a curfew.) He checks his direct messages twice daily, and though they number in the hundreds, he methodically works his way through, chatting with all sorts of folks about all sorts of subjects. Recently he conducted a two-week-long dialogue with a total stranger, a young man who detailed his many struggles and mental woes, ad nauseam, all of which Durant found fascinating.

He’ll also talk shop with anyone. The other day a middle school student reached out. “She’s like, I started to play at the free throw line, but I’m not very comfortable there, so I don’t really know what to do when I get inside the zone. It was such a nice-ass question. She blew my mind.”

He often parachutes into young people’s comments, doles out praise, congratulates them on a great game, a big win, “just encouraging them, letting them know they’re nice, and keep going. That shit does a lot for me. That’s why I like the Gram. A lot of young grass-roots basketball players, I build relationships through Instagram, so when we see each other it’s love.”

He recalls having a drink with E-40, rapper, philosopher, who claims authorship of several everyday phrases, including “You feel me?” E-40 made a toast: I’m not above you, I’m not below you—I’m right beside you. “I’m like, That’s the approach I take with everybody!”

Maybe that utopian vision of the world will now come true. Maybe Durant’s unfiltered dialogue with humanity will reach new levels of intimacy and respect and mutual understanding. Just as the injury changed Durant, or accelerated changes already in process, maybe it will alter public perception. The knocks—that he was soft, that introvert was a fancy word for selfish—seemed to evaporate the moment he gave up his body for Golden State. Starting Game 5 with a strained calf, risking and then incurring catastrophic injury, seemed to instantly restore the hero status he enjoyed early in his career.

Or maybe the machine has other plans for his narrative.

It’s almost time for the afternoon session with Hancock. First, though, a quick interview with a film crew making a documentary about basketball in Prince George’s County. Time suddenly seems like the infinity pool. No edges, no horizon. Talking about the past, working on the future, hobbled in an uncertain present.

Durant says he’s decided to wear No. 7 in Brooklyn because it stands for completion in the Bible. (God rested on the seventh day after creating Heaven and Earth.) Clearly the completion of his career is on his mind. In which case, what next?

Kids, he says, maybe.

How many?

He throws out numbers. Maybe five. Maybe one.

First he needs to find a woman who can handle this crazy life.

He used to think that wasn’t such a tall order. But, as with so many things, his thinking on that has evolved.

“I thought this life was pretty simple,” he says. “But it’s not as simple as I thought it was.”

thanks!

kd and kyrie on the same team, good times lol

U want me to see you, I see u my son. Now go flourish with that clout u received

— Kevin Durant (@KDTrey5) September 10, 2019

these guys are walking contradictions but i kinda love it.

dont forget deandre jordan is on that team too lol

jordan has had some episodes of flightiness but seems like a good guy to be around is well liked etc kyrie and kd are such grumpuses

btw this chrome extension will get u into the wsj and many other sites https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome

ah thanks

i mean

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EEIRuhPU8AEEpst?format=jpg&name=large

he is extremely silly

not even kobe wld wear a chain that said revenge

mamba mentality tho

at least he employed a symbol, tried to show some verve

Kind of amazing how much his public rep has changed since that MVP press conference. Remembering that guy, it just seems like he's been horribly ill-equipped to handle being megafamous in a social media world, and it's really taken its toll on him. In retrospect Kyrie's always been a loon but Durant seems more fallen.

People really didn’t like that move to GS, and people still aren’t over it. 3 years of hearing the same ol thing has got to get old.

True because he can't resist paying attention to all that noise. Which is unfortunate because plenty of fans totally got it -- who wouldn't want to trade the paranoid, antagonistic culture in OKC at the time for the sweetness of what was going on in GS? To say nothing of the chance to win there. To say nothing of living in the Bay Area as opposed to Oklahoma. At least I certainly felt that way at the time

it was a hoe ass move tbqh

i think he was taken totally off guard by the reaction which he shdnt have been

a lot of the discussion around his decisions has an underlying assumption that there is a decision out there that would make him happy. i don't think the dude is really wired to be happy.

sometime he shd just reflect on the fact that most people will never dunk in their entire lives

he doesnt want us to worry about his happiness, he even said so. maybe playing iso ball in brooklyn will make him happy idk. if hanging with kyrie is all he wanted then thats cool, hang away.

I think Durant perceived some sort of new era where winning a title is all that matters, because LeBron more or less skated on abandoning his team. But he didn’t process that LeBron didn’t abandon Cleveland for a team that won SEVENTY THREE GAMES

Nah, LeBron got just as much hate when he went to the Heat. The Decision + bringing Bosh with him more than made up for the Warriors dynasty fueling the animosity towards Durant. But LeBron had one season where it got to him and then learned to dgaf. Durant never figured it out and he's gonna be disappointed to find that whatever he's trying to move past, they have it in Brooklyn too. But he doesn't want us to care if he's happy so

LeBron didn’t abandon Cleveland for a team that won SEVENTY THREE GAMES

― Matt Armstrong, Wednesday, September 11, 2019 2:47 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah if kd had gone anywhere else not many ppl wldve cared

if bron had just done a humble goodbye to cleveland letter instead of the decision he wldve got a lot less hassle too

at least kd didn't curse us with the phrase 'taking talents to _____'

hopefully he did remember to bring his talents with him tho

LeBron also felt like the undisputed leader of the Heat even w/Wade there, Bosh was just a chill guy, it was a good vibe. If there was any drama, it was minor. I wouldn't be surprised if that four-year period was LeBron's happiest run in the NBA.

Durant moved to GS and it was just weird, not just the mercenary "hey can i get a ring too?" feel but the personality fit. there was already a clear all-time star player plus huge personalities and already three future HOFers, there was no room for him to step up and feel comfortable in that locker room. obv in the end he felt like it was a thankless endeavor, despite him being a top 3 NBA player he's got Dray sonning him in front of the world on the sideline and other shit like that i'm sure behind the scenes.

dray was not having kds bs lol

draymond is the best. ripped the bandaid off early in the season. weirdest part of the whole thing was when KD went into weird passive aggressive im not gonna shoot the ball mode for a few weeks and the team went on a run. i think he and the team were all cool but just in different phases of their lives.

NBA Future Power Rankings: Outlook for all 30 teams

5:18 AM MT
Kevin Pelton and Bobby Marks

How will your team perform over the next three NBA seasons?

The Future Power Rankings are ESPN Insider's projection of the on-court success expected for each team in the 2019-20, 2020-21 and 2021-22 seasons.

Consider this a convenient way to see the direction in which your favorite team is headed.

To determine the Future Power Rankings, we asked ESPN Insider analysts Kevin Pelton and Bobby Marks to rate teams in five categories and rank them relative to the rest of the league. For an explanation of each category and a full view of how each team did in each individual category, click here. Each team also received an overall Future Power Rating of 0 to 100, based on how well we expect it to perform in the next three seasons.

Here are our latest rankings.

Note: The previous version of these rankings dropped in March.

1. LA Clippers
RANK SCORE
Players 1 87.5
Management T-1 85.0
Money 23 37.5
Market 3 87.5
Draft T-24 25.0
Overall: 77.7
The largest year-to-year jump in the decade-long history of these rankings saw the Clippers go from 21st in the fall of 2018 to No. 1 overall after signing reigning Finals MVP Kawhi Leonard as a free agent and trading for Paul George to team with him.

The Clippers had already moved into the top 10 by the spring, when they were headed to an unexpected 48-win season and had added draft picks and guard Landry Shamet in the savvy Tobias Harris trade. But it wasn't clear whether the Clippers could land the coveted Leonard, which ultimately required sending out a historic haul of draft picks and swaps to the Oklahoma City Thunder for George.

Having retained quality role players to support Leonard and George, the Clippers should be considered title favorites this season and likely in 2020-21 as well before both stars can become free agents in the summer of 2021.

-- Pelton

(Previous rank: No. 8)

2. Brooklyn Nets
RANK SCORE
Players T-6 77.5
Management T-4 80.0
Money T-25 32.5
Market T-4 85.0
Draft T-16 50.0
Overall: 72.5
If the Future Power Rankings were based on the upcoming season alone, the Nets would not be in the top 10. Instead, Brooklyn moves up 10 spots to No. 2 because of what lies beyond this season.

The return of Kevin Durant will move the Nets from a middle-of-the-pack playoff team now to one that should compete for an NBA championship. Despite Brooklyn ranking No. 25 in money, the addition of Durant, Kyrie Irving and Taurean Prince plus new deals for Caris LeVert and Spencer Dinwiddie has the core group of players under contract through at least 2021-22.

Even with limited cap flexibility, general manager Sean Marks and his front office (No. 4 in management) have shown a propensity of finding under-the-radar players in free agency (Joe Harris and Dinwiddie) and identifying talent in the late first round (LeVert and Jarrett Allen). The Nets also could have two first-round picks in June, from Philadelphia and Golden State (though perhaps not their own pick).

-- Marks

(Previous rank: No. 12)

3. Golden State Warriors
RANK SCORE
Players T-6 77.5
Management T-1 85.0
Money T-27 22.5
Market T-2 90.0
Draft T-24 25.0
Overall: 70.8
For the first time in five years, the Warriors have fallen from their comfortable perch at No. 1. That's the product of a ruinous four-week stretch during which Golden State saw All-Stars Kevin Durant (Achilles) and Klay Thompson (ACL) suffer devastating injuries, and then lost Durant to the Brooklyn Nets in free agency.

Still, there's reason to believe the Warriors can resume contention once Thompson returns to the court. Golden State aggressively pivoted by agreeing to a sign-and-trade deal to bring D'Angelo Russell from the Nets. How Russell will fit with the core of Stephen Curry, Draymond Green and Thompson remains to be seen, and the move gutted the Warriors' bench this season, but they will have a window next summer to utilize a $17.2 million trade exception created in the Andre Iguodala deal. At worst, Russell would be valuable in a trade coming off an All-Star season at age 23.

-- Pelton

(Previous rank: No. 1)

4. Houston Rockets
RANK SCORE
Players T-3 82.5
Management T-4 80.0
Money 29 20.0
Market 7 65.0
Draft T-29 20.0
Overall: 70.2
After swinging a bold deal to re-team former MVP Russell Westbrook with his onetime Oklahoma City teammate James Harden, the Rockets rank near the bottom of the league in both financial flexibility and future draft picks. Yet Houston still sits fourth overall thanks to the star duo and quality supporting talent that's signed up through at least 2021 after guard Eric Gordon agreed to an extension this offseason.

There are long-term reasons for concern as Westbrook ages and the bulk of the picks and swaps the Rockets gave up for him (and to move Chris Paul's contract) comes due, but over the next three years, the biggest issue might be on the sidelines. Mike D'Antoni, the 2016-17 coach of the year, enters the final season of his contract after extension negotiations broke down this summer. Houston also lost assistant Jeff Bzdelik, who oversaw the team's defensive improvement in 2017-18.

-- Pelton

(Previous rank: No. 7)

5. Denver Nuggets
RANK SCORE
Players T-3 82.5
Management T-6 77.5
Money T-25 32.5
Market 18 45.0
Draft T-27 22.5
Overall: 69.4
The Nuggets slide two spots not because of anything that went wrong, but rather due to the success other West contenders enjoyed this offseason.

Riding a breakthrough campaign from All-NBA first-team center Nikola Jokic, Denver returned to the playoffs for the first time since 2013 and got within a game of the conference finals. The Nuggets are counting on continuity and internal development to keep up with the West's top tier, though their one key addition -- Jerami Grant -- looks like an ideal fit as Paul Millsap's possible long-term replacement at power forward.

Letting Millsap walk would help Denver manage payroll with Jamal Murray's max extension kicking in next summer, which will hamper flexibility. Still, Denver should remain competitive with a strong core of young talent that could get another boost if 2018 lottery pick Michael Porter Jr. proves healthy and as effective as he was before multiple back surgeries.

-- Pelton

(Previous rank: No. 3)

Jeff Chiu/AP Photo
6. Los Angeles Lakers
RANK SCORE
Players T-3 82.5
Management T-23 35.0
Money 16 50.0
Market 1 92.5
Draft T-27 22.5
Overall: 67.7
Having added Anthony Davis via trade to LeBron James to create arguably the NBA's best duo, the Lakers moved up to third in the roster category. Yet the Lakers still rank just sixth overall because of our lack of faith in their management.

No other team in the top 10 rates below average in this category. GM Rob Pelinka gained decision-making power after president Magic Johnson abruptly resigned before the Lakers' 2018-19 finale, and though he oversaw the Davis deal, Pelinka's track record has been mixed.

The Lakers couldn't land their top choice for head coach, Tyronn Lue -- who went to the Clippers as an assistant -- and settled on Frank Vogel. If the Lakers start slowly, speculation on assistant Jason Kidd replacing Vogel will run rampant. If James regains his crown as the NBA's best player, however, it's possible off-court issues won't hinder the Lakers' title chances.

-- Pelton

(Previous rank: No. 11)

7. Philadelphia 76ers
RANK SCORE
Players 2 85.0
Management 14 65.0
Money 30 10
Market T-13 50.0
Draft T-24 25.0
Overall: 67.5
It is almost unfair that Philadelphia moved down three spots. The roster is ranked No. 2 after the acquisitions of Al Horford and Josh Richardson and new deals for Ben Simmons and Tobias Harris. Even after losing Jimmy Butler and JJ Redick, the 76ers are still viewed as one of the favorites to come out of the East.

The concern moving forward is the $580 million investment in four players, starting in 2020-21: Joel Embiid, Simmons, Horford and Harris. The team will live in the luxury tax for the foreseeable future, and improvement will come only from within or if management is willing to make Embiid or Simmons available in a trade. As a result of those commitments, Philadelphia now ranks No. 30 in money.

-- Marks

(Previous rank: No. 4)

8. Boston Celtics
RANK SCORE
Players T-9 72.5
Management T-12 70.0
Money T-27 22.5
Market T-8 62.5
Draft T-6 75.0
Overall: 67.3
Despite not ranking in the top two for the first time since September 2015, Boston is well positioned for the future. While the team fell in every category except for market, the Celtics are still in the top 10 when it comes to their roster, draft assets and management.

Compared to a year ago, the Celtics replaced the uncertain future of Kyrie Irving with a four-year commitment from All-Star Kemba Walker, and they still have a young core of Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum along with veterans Gordon Hayward, Marcus Smart and now Enes Kanter.

The Celtics' treasure chest of draft assets also remains full. While they no longer have the coveted Sacramento Kings first-round pick, they still possess all their own firsts, along with a top-seven protected first from Memphis and top-eight protected first from Milwaukee in 2020. The first from Memphis could be the best asset any team in the league has because it becomes unprotected in 2021 if not conveyed.

Boston fell in the money category because of how the future shapes up -- Brown is scheduled to be a restricted free agent in 2020 and Tatum the following year.

-- Marks

(Previous rank: No. 2)

9. Milwaukee Bucks
RANK SCORE
Players T-9 72.5
Management T-1 85.0
Money T-18 45.0
Market T-15 47.5
Draft T-20 35.0
Overall: 67.1
The Bucks advanced to the Eastern Conference finals, returned four out of five starters, are the favorites to come out of the East and still fell three spots in the rankings.

The small slide comes because of two factors: the loss of Malcolm Brogdon in free agency and what the future might hold for Giannis Antetokounmpo. If the MVP commits next summer to a $254 million supermax contract, Milwaukee should jump into the top five. If he doesn't, a cloud of uncertainty -- like with New Orleans and Anthony Davis -- will follow next season, possibly the last with Antetokounmpo in a Milwaukee uniform.

One bright note is that Milwaukee now has a top spot in management. The Bucks have the returning coach of the year in Mike Budenholzer, a creative front office led by Jon Horst and a committed ownership group.

-- Marks

(Previous rank: No. 6)

10. Utah Jazz
RANK SCORE
Players T-6 77.5
Management T-6 77.5
Money 24 35.0
Market T-25 33.5
Draft T-20 35.0
Overall: 66.7
More than anyone else, the Jazz slid in the rankings because of the way other teams improved this summer. Utah did, too, but it came at a long-term cost: The Jazz gave up two first-round picks plus 2018 first-rounder Grayson Allen to get stalwart point guard Mike Conley, then spent their remaining cap space on a four-year, $73 million deal for Bojan Bogdanovic.

Assuming Utah extends the contracts of All-Star center Rudy Gobert (who will be eligible for the supermax) and guard Donovan Mitchell next summer, the Jazz won't have cap space or quality draft picks any time soon. That tradeoff will be well worth it if Utah can parlay the shooting upgrade provided by Bogdanovic and Conley into the team's deepest playoff run since making the conference finals in 2007.

Long term, the Jazz's best hope for improvement is Mitchell developing into an All-Star centerpiece.

-- Pelton

(Previous rank: No. 5)

Jonathan Ferrey/Getty Images
11. Portland Trail Blazers
RANK SCORE
Players 11 70
Management T-9 75.0
Money 20 42.5
Market T-15 47.5
Draft T-16 50.0
Overall: 65.0
By extending the contracts of guards Damian Lillard (who agreed to a four-year supermax extension through 2024-25) and CJ McCollum (who added three years through 2023-24), the Blazers answered the biggest questions about their future. Now a different challenge comes into focus: Can Portland maintain a contender while paying the two guards a combined $70-plus million per year?

Neil Olshey won't have to deal with that issue until 2021-22, when Lillard's extension kicks in, but there are key decisions between now and then. In newcomers Kent Bazemore and Hassan Whiteside, the Blazers have two huge expiring contracts that could be used to trade for a long-term deal (say, Oregon native Kevin Love?) if the team is willing to keep paying the luxury tax.

Those decisions might depend on how Zach Collins develops as a starter and how Jusuf Nurkic comes back from a compound lower leg fracture suffered last March.

-- Pelton

(Previous rank: No. 9)

12. San Antonio Spurs
RANK SCORE
Players T-15 57.5
Management T-9 75.0
Money 7 65.0
Market T-11 52.5
Draft T-9 60.0
Overall: 60.8
Remarkably, the Spurs are the only team to rank better than average in every category we consider, a testament to the options in front of a San Antonio front office now led by GM Brian Wright with R.C. Buford moving into the larger role of CEO.

The Spurs are competing now with veteran All-Stars LaMarcus Aldridge and DeMar DeRozan, but have developed a new wave of young talent led by guards Dejounte Murray and Derrick White.

If San Antonio wants to move on from Aldridge and DeRozan, there's potential for max-level cap space in either 2020 (when DeRozan has a player option and Aldridge's contract is partially guaranteed) or 2021 (when both deals are up). Alternatively, the Spurs could extend or re-sign Aldridge and DeRozan to delay a change of direction until after legendary coach Gregg Popovich (now age 70) decides to call it a Hall of Fame career.

-- Pelton

(Previous rank: No. 14)

13. Dallas Mavericks
RANK SCORE
Players 12 67.5
Management T-15 62.5
Money 17 47.5
Market 10 55.0
Draft T-29 20.0
Overall: 60.0
Unable to land a max-caliber free agent this summer, the Mavericks have largely locked in their core for the next couple of years. They won't have appreciable cap space again until Tim Hardaway Jr.'s contract expires in the summer of 2021.

Between now and then, Dallas is counting on the development of 2018-19 Rookie of the Year Luka Doncic and newcomer Kristaps Porzingis -- set to return 20 months after tearing his ACL playing for the New York Knicks -- to get back to the playoffs after a three-year drought.

It's particularly important that the Mavericks become competitive by 2021, when they're set to send an unprotected first-round pick to New York to complete the Porzingis trade. If Porzingis reclaims his All-Star form and Doncic takes a step forward in Year 2, Dallas could crack the top 10 by the next installment.

-- Pelton

(Previous rank: No. 13)

14. New Orleans Pelicans
RANK SCORE
Players 14 60.0
Management T-17 55.0
Money T-8 62.5
Market T-21 37.5
Draft T-6 75.0
Overall: 58.8
No team improved its future projection more from the spring than the Pelicans, owing to a combination of good decisions and good fortune. The latter came in the draft lottery, when New Orleans landed the coveted No. 1 pick and the chance to draft Duke forward Zion Williamson first overall.

The good decisions started with hiring David Griffin to run basketball operations. Griffin satisfied Davis' request for a trade but squeezed just about everything possible out of the Lakers: budding talents Lonzo Ball, Josh Hart and Brandon Ingram, three first-round picks and a swap. The Pelicans then flipped one of those picks, this year's No. 4 selection, to Atlanta for two first-rounders (Nickeil Alexander-Walker and Jaxson Hayes, who both impressed at the NBA summer league). With so much young talent on hand, New Orleans could add veterans Derrick Favors and JJ Redick this summer without sacrificing future flexibility.

-- Pelton

(Previous rank: No. 27)

15. Miami Heat
RANK SCORE
Players 17 55.0
Management T-15 62.5
Money T-10 57.5
Market 6 82.5
Draft 23 32.5
Overall: 56.9
There is light at the end of the tunnel of mediocrity for Miami. After falling outside of the top 15 in March for only the second time since 2009, the Heat return at No. 15.

The addition of Jimmy Butler to a young core led by Justise Winslow, Bam Adebayo and rookie Tyler Herro gives Miami its boost. The Heat are still in salary-cap purgatory this season but are set to receive relief when the contracts of Goran Dragic and Meyers Leonard expire in July and those of James Johnson, Dion Waiters and Kelly Olynyk expire in 2021. As a result, Miami moves from No. 15 to No. 10 in money and will have the ability to add a second max player to join Butler two years from now.

-- Marks

(Previous rank: No. 19)

Jesse D. Garrabrant/NBAE via Getty Images
16. Indiana Pacers
RANK SCORE
Players T-15 57.5
Management 11 72.5
Money T-14 52.5
Market T-25 32.5
Draft T-20 35.0
Overall: 55.6
Indiana lost three starters in the offseason, have Victor Oladipo rehabbing from a knee injury that cost him most of last season and still dropped only one spot in the rankings. The Pacers stayed away from a bottom-10 ranking because of strong management (No. 11) and a playoff-worthy roster (No. 15) that adds Malcolm Brogdon, Jeremy Lamb and T.J. Warren.

Those three players and Myles Turner are under contract through at least the 2021-22 season. So the big variables are whether Oladipo can return to his All-Star form and how the Pacers handle contract negotiations with Domantas Sabonis. The forward can be a restricted free agent next summer if he is not extended by Oct. 21.

-- Marks

(Previous rank: No. 15)

17. Atlanta Hawks
RANK SCORE
Players T-18 50.0
Management 19 47.5
Money 1 97.5
Market 19 42.5
Draft T-4 77.5
Overall: 55.2
The committee of two is still a big fan of the future in Atlanta despite the Hawks' one-spot drop in the rankings.

The No. 17 ranking comes from the Pelicans soaring past the Hawks more than anything Atlanta did this offseason. The Hawks have seven players on controllable rookie contracts, including a franchise-level talent in Trae Young and a potential All-Star in John Collins.

Atlanta will add two first-round picks next June, its own and Brooklyn's. The Hawks rank No. 2 in money, with continued cap flexibility of up to $70 million in room not only next summer but in 2021.

So if Atlanta is in playoff contention this season, don't be surprised to find the Hawks in the top 10 when the Future Power Rankings come out in March.

-- Marks

(Previous rank: No. 16)

18. Toronto Raptors
RANK SCORE
Players T-20 47.5
Management T-6 77.5
Money 6 77.5
Market T-11 52.5
Draft 19 42.5
Overall: 55.0
The one-year, $31 million Kyle Lowry extension moved the needle a little for Toronto in our rankings. Before the new contract, the champs ranked No. 19 because of a roster with five players on expiring contracts -- Lowry, Pascal Siakam, Fred VanVleet, Serge Ibaka and Marc Gasol.

Lowry's extension is a sign the front office is not willing (for now) to break up a playoff team, but there is still uncertainty about what the future holds. Because half the roster consists of pending free agents, Toronto ranks No. 3 in money and could have over $30 million in room next year if it does not extend Siakam before Oct. 21. And the Raptors can wipe their finances clean in 2021 (with likely only Siakam under contract), when we once again will see a star-studded free-agent class.

But while it does rank as the No. 11 market, does Toronto have appeal when it comes to signing star free agents? The championship roster was constructed through the draft and trades.

-- Marks

(Previous rank: 17)

19. Sacramento Kings
RANK SCORE
Players 13 62.5
Management 21 40.0
Money T-21 40.0
Market T-28 25.0
Draft T-16 50.0
Overall: 52.7
Having moved out of the basement of the future rankings, the Kings remain in the same spot after a summer that saw them exchange financial flexibility for superior depth. Sacramento paid heavily to add guard Cory Joseph, forward Trevor Ariza and centers Dewayne Dedmon and Richaun Holmes as well as re-sign Harrison Barnes.

Believe it or not, the luxury tax could become an issue for the Kings by 2021-22 if they extend starting guards De'Aaron Fox and Buddy Hield and re-sign wing Bogdan Bogdanovic (also eligible for a veteran extension).

We'll file that under the category of good problems for the Kings, who finally appear to have a young core worth paying to keep around. If Fox and 2018 No. 2 pick Marvin Bagley continue progressing under new coach Luke Walton, Sacramento could conceivably end a 13-year playoff drought this season.

-- Pelton

(Previous rank: No. 18)

20. Orlando Magic
RANK SCORE
Players T-18 50.0
Management T-17 55.0
Money T-21 40.0
Market T-13 50.0
Draft 8 67.5
Overall: 51.5
There is still upside to an 18th-ranked roster that won 42 games and made the playoffs for the first time in seven years.

The team will count on continuity with its starting five returning, and has multiple veterans under contract for at least three more years with a stable of young players, including Jonathan Isaac, Markelle Fultz, Mo Bamba and Chuma Okeke.

Isaac and Fultz are the X factors to move Orlando into the top half of the rankings.

-- Marks

(Previous rank: T-20)

Zach Beeker/NBAE via Getty Images
21. Oklahoma City Thunder
RANK SCORE
Players 25 37.5
Management T-12 70.0
Money T-10 57.5
Market T-25 32.5
Draft 1 95.0
Overall: 49.0
Back in the spring, the Thunder were getting an MVP-caliber season from Paul George, helping offset a slide in Russell Westbrook's play. Oklahoma City hoped for a long playoff run after back-to-back losses in the first round. That didn't materialize, as the Thunder slipped to sixth and were knocked out in five games by Portland.

That proved the end of an era. George privately requested a trade, and after he was dealt to the Clippers, Oklahoma City traded Westbrook as well. The moves, plus sending Grant to Denver, have given general manager Sam Presti a massive war chest of draft picks even more impressive than the ones he used to build the Thunder into a playoff team for a decade. Yet they also signaled the start of what Presti termed a "repositioning" that will likely take the franchise into the lottery for the first time since its inaugural season in Oklahoma City.

-- Pelton

(Previous rank: No. 10)

22. Chicago Bulls
RANK SCORE
Players T-20 47.5
Management 29 27.5
Money 13 55.0
Market T-8 62.5
Draft T-14 55.0
Overall: 46.7
Chicago fell slightly in the rankings but has the foundation in place to become a consistent playoff team. After relying mainly on the draft for a few years, the Bulls have begun taking a more aggressive approach by adding veterans, including Otto Porter Jr. at the trade deadline and free agents Tomas Satoransky and Thaddeus Young this summer.

Those three players now join potential All-Star Zach LaVine and recent lottery picks Coby White, Lauri Markkanen and Wendell Carter Jr.

Our concerns come largely off the court. The Bulls rank No. 29 in management and have put all their eggs in Jim Boylen's basket with a long-term contract for their new coach. If they continue to struggle, there will lots of blame to go around.

-- Marks

(Previous rank: T-20)

23. Detroit Pistons
RANK SCORE
Players 23 45.0
Management 20 45.0
Money T-10 57.5
Market T-21 37.5
Draft T-14 55.0
Overall: 46.3
Detroit cannot shake mediocrity, as the Pistons have found a home in the 20s in our rankings. That's despite making the playoffs last season and having All-Star Blake Griffin under contract for the next three seasons.

With Griffin, the Pistons can't easily bottom out and commit to rebuilding. Yet with a patchwork roster of veterans and younger players still in development, Detroit also doesn't project as a likely East contender. With Andre Drummond and Reggie Jackson due for free agency in 2020, the Pistons are No. 10 in potentially available money, but without a track record of luring top free agents.

-- Marks

(Previous rank: T-23)

24. Phoenix Suns
RANK SCORE
Players 24 42.5
Management T-27 30.0
Money T-8 62.5
Market T-15 47.5
Draft T-9 60.0
Overall: 44.0
The Suns have cleaned house in basketball operations, naming James Jones full-time GM in April (under new vice president Jeff Bower) and replacing Igor Kokoskov after a single season as coach with the respected Monty Williams, along with a number of additional changes behind the scenes. Yet you'll forgive us if we want more proof that what has been one of the NBA's most dysfunctional organizations is truly headed in the right direction.

Phoenix upgraded with NBA-caliber talent this summer, adding Ricky Rubio in free agency and Aron Baynes and Dario Saric via trade to complement young cornerstones Devin Booker and Deandre Ayton. Projections using ESPN's real plus-minus suggest the Suns could challenge .500 after losing at least 58 games each of the past four seasons.

However, Phoenix made other befuddling moves, giving up quality second-round picks to move forwards Josh Jackson and T.J. Warren and unexpectedly taking North Carolina forward Cameron Johnson in the lottery.

-- Pelton

(Previous rank: No. 26)

25. Minnesota Timberwolves
RANK SCORE
Players T-20 47.5
Management T-23 35.0
Money T-18 45.0
Market 30 15.0
Draft 13 57.5
Overall: 43.3
After ranking as high as fifth in the future rankings entering the 2017-18 season, the Timberwolves drop for a fourth consecutive installment. It's up to new president of basketball operations Gersson Rosas to arrest that slide once he's got more flexibility to build the team he wants.

Rosas' big splash in his first offseason at the helm was a draft-day trade up to No. 6 overall to take Texas Tech product Jarrett Culver. Adding Culver to a group including defensive stalwart Robert Covington, former No. 1 pick Andrew Wiggins and 2018 first-round pick Josh Okogie gives Minnesota a crowd on the wing, and the natural conclusion is Rosas -- a longtime assistant GM under Daryl Morey in Houston -- has more deals in store as the Timberwolves seek to build a competitive group in time to keep newly extended All-Star Karl-Anthony Towns from considering a trade request.

-- Pelton

(Previous rank: No. 22)

Mark J. Rebilas/USA TODAY Sports
26. New York Knicks
RANK SCORE
Players 28 22.5
Management 22 37.5
Money 2 92.5
Market T-4 85.0
Draft 2 90.0
Overall: 41.7
Instead of focusing on the summer of missed free-agent opportunities or lament how New York used cap space to build the roster, we will focus on the positives. Because the Knicks rank No. 2 in both draft assets and cap space, there will be opportunities in the future to escape the bottom five.

New York has all its own future first-round picks, plus an unprotected first from Dallas in 2021 and the ability to shape its roster either next summer or in 2021 because of how the Knicks structured each free-agent contract signed this past offseason. But with so much uncertainty on a roster dominated by unproven young players and those same short-term contracts, the Knicks rank No. 28 when it comes to players.

New York can look to Brooklyn for hope. Two years ago, the Nets ranked one spot worse than where the Knicks are now.

-- Marks

(Previous rank: No. T-23)

27. Memphis Grizzlies
RANK SCORE
Players 26 35.0
Management T-23 35.0
Money 3 85.0
Market T-28 25.0
Draft T-9 60.0
Overall: 40.4
The Grit 'n' Grind era in Memphis officially ended with Conley's trade to Utah months after Gasol was dealt to the Toronto Raptors. Yet there's hope the Grizzlies can build a new contending core around No. 2 overall pick Ja Morant and All-Rookie first-team pick Jaren Jackson Jr., even if it comes after the three-year future rankings window.

A front-office shakeup last spring empowered new executive vice president of basketball operations Zach Kleiman, and the group he built handled this offseason well. Memphis got two first-rounders for Conley and another to take on Iguodala's contract.

With several big expiring contracts, including Iguodala's, the Grizzlies are looking at $40-plus million in cap space next summer to make more such trades. If the Morant-Jackson duo develops as expected, Memphis will have plenty of flexibility to build around them.

-- Pelton

(Previous rank: No. 29)

28. Washington Wizards
RANK SCORE
Players 27 25.0
Management T-27 30.0
Money T-14 52.5
Market 19 42.5
Draft T-9 60.0
Overall: 32.5
One year (and two editions of FPR) ago, Washington ranked No. 12 and featured one of the top backcourts in John Wall and Bradley Beal. Now the Wizards rank No. 28 and face a more uncertain future.

Wall has $170 million left on his contract as he recovers from a torn Achilles tendon, and Beal's future is uncertain. While Beal is under contract for the next two seasons, the shooting guard is the Wizards' best trade asset if Washington decides to tear down the roster and start over. He is eligible to sign a $112 million extension until Oct. 21 and could be supermax-eligible next summer if he earns All-NBA this season.

Not all is doom and gloom, though. New Washington GM Tommy Sheppard and a revamped front office have acknowledged that the focus will be on player development (Troy Brown, Thomas Bryant and Rui Hachimura) and say they will not take the kind of shortcuts that hampered this team in the past.

-- Marks

(Previous rank: No. 25)

29. Cleveland Cavaliers
RANK SCORE
Players 29 17.5
Management 26 32.5
Money 5 80.0
Market T-23 35.0
Draft 3 85.0
Overall: 32.3
The Cavs do have some positives despite falling to No. 29. They rank in our top 10 in both money and draft assets. They have five players with expiring contracts -- Tristan Thompson, Brandon Knight, Jordan Clarkson, John Henson and Matthew Dellavedova -- that can be used in trades during the season to take back salary, as Cleveland did with Kyle Korver and George Hill. From those trades the Cavs ultimately added nine draft picks and could try something similar this year. They could also shop Love, of course.

With Love's future uncertain and a talented but unproven backcourt, the roster ranks just No. 29. Now we'll find out how new coach John Beilein transitions from a winning college program at Michigan to one that is not expected to win more than 20 games.

-- Marks

(Previous rank: No. 28)

30. Charlotte Hornets
RANK SCORE
Players 30 15.0
Management 30 12.5
Money 4 82.5
Market T-23 35.0
Draft T-4 77.5
Overall: 27.1
Kemba Walker's departure is not the reason Charlotte sits in last place. Even with Walker on the roster, the Hornets have ranked last since March 2018.

The biggest reason is the lack of vision from ownership and the front office. While it was one thing to lose Walker for nothing in free agency, it was another when the Hornets compounded the mistake by paying starter money for a career backup in Terry Rozier.

The Hornets' No. 4 ranking in likely draft assets is a plus, but their past three lottery picks -- Malik Monk, Miles Bridges and PJ Washington -- haven't done enough to lift the 30th-ranked roster.

Some potential good news comes with three big contracts set to expire next summer: those for Bismack Biyombo, Marvin Williams and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist. The Hornets could have up to $25 million in 2020, the first time the team has had cap flexibility since 2016. But as we saw with Rozier, we should not feel comfortable that Charlotte will spend wisely.

-- Marks

(Previous rank: No. 30)

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http://insider.espn.com/nba/insider/story/_/id/27893998/projected-w-l-records-standings-every-nba-team

por favor

Projected W-L records, standings for every NBA team
Oct 21, 2019
Kevin Pelton

On the eve of the 2019-20 NBA season, let's take a final look at our projections using ESPN's real plus-minus (RPM). These differ from our initial projections, released in mid-August, by incorporating injuries and roster changes since then, as well as updating my guesses at playing time based on preseason rotations.

While it has certainly been an eventful month in the NBA, preseason seems to have had less impact on the projected standings than in most years. No. 1 overall pick Zion Williamson was the only starter to suffer what appears to be a potentially long-term injury, meaning changes in the projections are more attributable to rotations shaking out around the league than any other factor. After a quick explanation, let's get to our final projections.

How do the projections work?

Our RPM projections utilize the multiyear, predictive version of RPM as a starting point. They're adjusted for typical player aging and -- new for this season -- then regressed toward the player's projected offensive rating and defensive rating from my SCHOENE projection system, based solely on box-score stats. (For players without RPM projections, including rookies, the SCHOENE ratings are used instead.)

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Games played are projected based on time missed over the previous three seasons. I then make a subjective guess at minutes distributions for each team. (You can see my full minutes projections here.) Multiplying those minutes by players' offensive and defensive ratings yields team ratings that translate into expected wins. I used those projections to simulate the season 10,000 times and record the average number of wins as well as how often each team made the playoffs.

Why are these projections so compact?

Amazingly, just three teams are projected for more than 50 wins this year. In part, this is a product of the conservative nature of projections. While we know that more than three teams will win 50-plus games, we don't know for sure beforehand which teams will do so.

That said, the parity the RPM-based model forecasts appears unique to this season. Using the exact same method with 2018-19 projections yielded six teams with projections of 50-plus wins and a seventh whose projection rounded up to 50.

What makes this season so wide open?

Besides the absence of a single dominant team, with the Golden State Warriors weakened by injury and attrition, this season is also unique because of the level of roster turnover this summer. I project just 62% of minutes leaguewide to be played by returning players, as compared to 76% in 2018-19. That's important because of the tweak to the projections I made last year to treat players who change teams differently from those who remain with the same team.

Regressing projections toward the player's SCHOENE projections rather than league average improved out-of-sample projections and no longer penalizes stars quite so harshly for changing teams. Still, it's clear that even stars do pay an RPM price for changing teams.

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Within the sample I used for testing (back through 2012-13), 13 players who posted an RPM of 5.0 or better changed teams. On average, their RPM declined from 6.0 to 3.3. By comparison, players with an RPM of 5.0 or better who stay with the same team see a much smaller drop-off, from an average of 6.4 to 4.8. This effect is particularly relevant for the Brooklyn Nets, LA Clippers and Los Angeles Lakers, all of whom added players whose projections would rank among the NBA's top 15 if not for the adjustment.

Given that, it's no surprise that the top three teams in the projections all had a relatively high degree of continuity this offseason and return three of last season's top five players in RPM.

Western Conference

1. Houston Rockets
Average wins: 54.9
Playoffs: >99%

Counterintuitively, the Rockets' projection actually went up slightly with Gerald Green presumed out for the season with a possible Lisfranc fracture in his left foot. I assigned most of his minutes to Thabo Sefolosha, who projects slightly better by RPM.

Still, losing Green should test Houston's depth. The Rockets are already essentially down one spot because they can play Nene in only nine games before risking him earning a $2.4 million bonus that would take them into the luxury tax. Green's absence would cost them another spot, so minor injuries could severely compromise the Rockets' rotation.

2. Denver Nuggets
Average wins: 53.6
Playoffs: 99%

Given they return a league-high 88% of last season's minutes and have enviable depth with the additions of Jerami Grant and rookie Michael Porter Jr., the Nuggets might have the highest floor of any team this season. If you're picking the most likely team to win 50 games, it's probably Denver, coming off 54 wins in 2018-19.

3. LA Clippers
Average wins: 47.1
Playoffs: 87%

The Clippers' modest regular-season projection dipped further with the acknowledgment by coach Doc Rivers that All-Star wing Paul George will miss at least the first 10 games of the season. Though rumors were already swirling back in August that George would not be ready for opening night, I hadn't yet docked his projection any games in the original version.

4. Utah Jazz
Average wins: 46.8
Playoffs: 86%

In part because Mike Conley is conservatively projected for 64 games, the Jazz's offensive projection (11th in the league) might undersell their room for improvement. They hope to combine an offense that generated the league's highest-value shots (their quantified shot quality of 54.8% was the league's best, per Second Spectrum tracking) with shooters capable of actually taking advantage of those opportunities.

5. Los Angeles Lakers
Average wins: 46.4
Playoffs: 84%

Technically, DeMarcus Cousins' ACL tear occurred after the original projections, which we updated later that week once the injury was confirmed. The addition of Dwight Howard, projected slightly better than replacement level for a center, didn't do much to affect the Lakers' outlook either way.

6. Golden State Warriors
Average wins: 45.6
Playoffs: 80%

Golden State's projection declined a touch with Alfonzo McKinnie's minutes going to rookies Eric Paschall and Jordan Poole after he was waived to make room on the roster for training-camp invitee Marquese Chriss.

7. Dallas Mavericks
Average wins: 43.9
Playoffs: 68%

The Mavericks' position as a solid playoff team ahead of two teams that reached the playoffs last season (Portland and San Antonio) remains one of the biggest surprises from RPM's projections, but it's an outlook shared by many stat-based projections. FiveThirtyEight's similar RAPTOR model has Dallas averaging 45 wins, the West's eighth-best total.

8. Portland Trail Blazers
Average wins: 40.6
Playoffs: 42%

At Blazers media day, All-NBA guard Damian Lillard told reporters, "What the experts' percentages of us making the playoffs are, that's I would say the least of our concerns." There's certainly a disconnect between Portland's internal expectations of competing for a championship and its statistical projections (FiveThirtyEight also has the Blazers at 41 wins on average and less than 50/50 to make the playoffs).

9. Sacramento Kings
Average wins: 39.8
Playoffs: 35%

While the Kings' projection is close to the 39 games they won last season, it still represents a huge step forward from this time a year ago. Sacramento's 26.1-win projection entering 2018-19 was the league's second lowest.

10. Minnesota Timberwolves
Average wins: 39.5
Playoffs: 32%

Minnesota star Karl-Anthony Towns told Marc J. Spears of The Undefeated that observers should "keep sleeping on us," but statistical projections aren't. FiveThirtyEight's model is even more bullish on the Timberwolves, who average 43 wins in those projections.

11. San Antonio Spurs
Average wins: 38.6
Playoffs: 26%

If the Spurs were any other team, we'd look at their weak projections and rough preseason (San Antonio's minus-6.4 net rating ranked 28th in the league, per NBA Advanced Stats) and say their 22-year playoff streak is in grave jeopardy. However, betting against Gregg Popovich's teams has typically been a losing proposition.

12. Phoenix Suns
Average wins: 38.2
Playoffs: 23%

With Zion's injury, the Suns jumped New Orleans. The 8.2-win difference between Phoenix's RPM projection and the team's over/under win total (30) at Caesars Sportsbook is the single largest in the NBA.

13. New Orleans Pelicans
Average wins: 37.5
Playoffs: 19%

As noted in Friday's analysis of Williamson's injury, projecting him out for the team's first 20 games costs New Orleans 0.7 wins on average and drops the team's chances of making the playoffs from 22% beforehand.

14. Oklahoma City Thunder
Average wins: 36.7
Playoffs: 15%

To illustrate the depth of this year's West, last year's No. 14 team in the projections was Sacramento at the aforementioned 26.1 wins. That depth could end up altering Oklahoma City's outlook. If the Thunder are actually 14th in the West, they'll likely trade impending free agent Danilo Gallinari by the deadline.

15. Memphis Grizzlies
Average wins: 32.4
Playoffs: 3%

For a likely last-place team in their conference, the Grizzlies figure to be competitive behind veterans Jonas Valanciunas and Jae Crowder and their young core of Ja Morant and Jaren Jackson Jr. Remarkably, they win more games on average than the bottom four teams in the East.

Eastern Conference

1. Milwaukee Bucks
Average wins: 50.7
Playoffs: 99%

Though the Bucks' win projection is rather modest, they're the only team in the league forecast to finish in the top five in both offensive (fourth) and defensive (first) rating. Houston (second in offensive rating, sixth on defense) just misses out.

2. Boston Celtics
Average wins: 47.4
Playoffs: 95%

Because of their strong perimeter defenders, the Celtics are projected to finish seventh in defensive rating. That might overstate Boston's potential with weakened rim protection after losing both Al Horford and Aron Baynes.

3. Philadelphia 76ers
Average wins: 47.2
Playoffs: 95%

As a reminder, Philadelphia's modest win projection owes in large part to both Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons being projected for 66 games based on time missed over the past three seasons. While that seems reasonable for Embiid, who has averaged 63.5 games the past two years, it's harsh for Simmons. After sitting out his entire first season, Simmons played all but four games over 2017-18 and 2018-19.

4. Orlando Magic
Average wins: 46.4
Playoffs: 93%

Orlando still finishes fourth in the East on average, even with a shift to give Mo Bamba primary backup center minutes instead of the higher-rated Khem Birch. Bamba averaged 17.6 minutes to Birch's 12.8 in the preseason and is looking more productive than he was as a rookie.

5. Toronto Raptors
Average wins: 45.8
Playoffs: 91%

The Kyle Lowry extension makes it all the more likely that the Raptors will keep what's left of the championship team intact and contend for home-court advantage in the first round instead of tearing it down at midseason. Of course, big changes will likewise shift their projections.

6. Miami Heat
Average wins: 43.0
Playoffs: 78%

Despite the excitement over his preseason play, Tyler Herro projects worse than replacement level as a rookie based on his translated performance at Kentucky. In particular, Herro is unlikely to keep shooting so well on jumpers. He made 20 of 38 attempts outside the paint during the preseason (53%), as compared to 41% in college, according to Synergy Sports tracking.

7. Indiana Pacers
Average wins: 42.2
Playoffs: 73%

A key question for the Pacers is when Victor Oladipo will return from a quadriceps tendon rupture and how much he'll play thereafter. Oladipo is projected here for 49 games and a little less than 1,400 minutes under the assumption he'll be back in mid-December.

8. Brooklyn Nets
Average wins: 41.3
Playoffs: 65%

It's worth watching how well the Nets play defensively. Their 109.0 defensive rating last season was almost exactly league average, but the team's top six regulars in on-court defensive rating, according to NBA Advanced Stats (Ed Davis, Shabazz Napier, Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, DeMarre Carroll, Allen Crabbe and Treveon Graham) all left over the offseason. That helps explain why Brooklyn is projected to decline to 23rd defensively.

9. Detroit Pistons
Average wins: 39.6
Playoffs: 52%

Detroit's projection benefits slightly from the news that preseason standout Christian Wood will make the team. Giving him some of the minutes previously assigned to Thon Maker strengthens the Pistons' rotation in terms of projected RPM.

10. Chicago Bulls
Average wins: 38.9
Playoffs: 46%

Similarly, Chicago could benefit if opening-night starter Tomas Satoransky establishes himself as the clear choice at point guard ahead of Kris Dunn and rookie Coby White, who projects as an ineffective contributor during his first season.

11. Washington Wizards
Average wins: 33.0
Playoffs: 9%

The Wizards project as a deep fringe playoff contender in the East exclusively because of All-Star shooting guard Bradley Beal. He alone projects to 9.2 wins above replacement based on RPM, as compared to 1.3 wins below replacement for the rest of the Washington roster.

12. Atlanta Hawks
Average wins: 30.7
Playoffs: 3%

After a strong second half, the Hawks are a trendy pick to take a step forward this season. That hype is likely a year ahead of schedule. There's scant evidence that in-season improvement tends to carry over to the following campaign, and Atlanta is projected to finish 28th in defensive rating.

13. Charlotte Hornets
Average wins: 30.1
Playoffs: 3%

Despite significant rotation adjustments as the Hornets committed to their young players during the preseason, starting recent first-round picks Miles Bridges and PJ Washington together at forward, the Hornets' win projection barely budged at all -- probably an indication Charlotte is right to sit the veterans.

14. Cleveland Cavaliers
Average wins: 26.2
Playoffs: <1%

The Cavaliers' final record may depend largely on how much Kevin Love plays this season after being limited to 22 games in 2018-19. He's projected here for 60 games and about 1,700 minutes, similar to his 2017-18 total. Cleveland was 6.9 points per 100 possessions better with Love on the court, per NBA Advanced Stats.

15. New York Knicks
Average wins: 26.1
Playoffs: <1%

Out of the 10,000 simulations of the season, the Knicks made the playoffs a league-low 31 times -- 0.3% of the time.

You know you're in trouble when:

"The Cavaliers' final record may depend largely on how much Kevin Love plays this season"

https://theathletic.com/1299879/2019/10/23/pacers-assistant-dan-burke-on-the-state-of-the-defense-they-care-about-doing-what-were-asking-them-to-do/

pls

Like most things with the Pacers, there’s a lot of newness and a lot of questions. There’s much that cannot be answered until opening night arrives and beyond, when the coaches have real games to coach and video to learn from.

Of the Pacers’ 17-man roster, which includes two players on two-way deals, more than half the team is new to Indianapolis, new to the Pacers and, most of all, new to each other. Myles Turner is the only returning starter. The talent this bunch has is obvious, but what about the chemistry?

For example, Turner and Domantas Sabonis arrived in town later than the rest after playing in the World Cup in China. Most of the team moved to Indy in early September; they arrived Sept. 25. Training camp opened a couple of days later.

Opening night falls on Wednesday, Oct. 23, the 85th birthday of Pacers owner Herb Simon and less than a month since the Pacers’ frontcourt returned. At least they already know coach Nate McMillan’s offensive and defensive principles.

Wednesday is also is exactly nine months from when Victor Oladipo dropped to the court after rupturing his right quad tendon. He will be on the bench (but unavailable) for the first regular-season game since that night. He also intends to travel with the team to most games.

Longtime assistant coach Dan Burke will be in his usual seat near the front of the bench. He’s served as a Pacers assistant since Larry Bird hired him in 1997, making him the longest-tenured assistant coach with the same team in the NBA.

So it’s no surprise that when the annual survey of NBA GMs came out this week, Burke finished tied in first for best assistant coach in the league, along with Chris Finch (New Orleans) and David Vanterpool (Minnesota).

“I’ve known that for a long time,” McMillan said. “I’m not in front (of him), he’s beside me. DB does a great job. I’ve worked and had some really good assistants in this league, and he has the experience. I don’t even call him DB, I call him coach. I’ve always had that respect for him since joining the Pacers (in 2013) when Frank (Vogel) was in charge and I was an assistant working with him. The guy does his job.

“Since I’ve met him years ago, nothing has changed. He comes in every single day and he motivates you. A guy that works that hard, you can’t come in not prepared.”

One of the Pacers’ offseason priorities was to upgrade the offense. They needed more weapons, more shooters and more scorers. Getting swept in the first round — they averaged 91.8 points per game without Oladipo — drove that point home.

Defensively, though, they lost their free safety in Thad Young (to Chicago) and a solid wing defender in Bojan Bogdanovic (to Utah). Fortunately, at least, they have time to figure it out. Detroit’s Blake Griffin is out for the next several weeks, and the Pacers face the Pistons three times in the first nine games, including on opening night. Their first real test isn’t until Nov. 15 in Houston.

Last season, the Pacers ranked third in defensive rating (106), sixth in field-goal percentage defense (45), fifth in points off turnovers allowed (14.9) and 22nd in defensive rebounding percentage (72.2). McMillan emphasized rebounding and transition defense all camp. And over the next few months, the team must find its identity, learn to communicate effectively and set a rotation.

How might the Pacers do this season defensively? In a recent chat with The Athletic, the Pacers’ defensive coordinator discussed what he saw in camp.

How is the defense taking shape with this new group?

I spent the summer, first off, starting with Domas and Myles. If they are going to start together, play together, how much do we tweak to accommodate that? Do we even talk about a zone? Do we zone up the help side inverted?

The character we have — you see it already — even with the nine new guys. They care. They care about guarding their man. They care about helping their teammate. They care about doing what we’re asking them to do. So we’re going to stay with a lot of what we’ve been doing. Jeremy Lamb is asking questions every day. There’s an eagerness there. T.J. Warren, that last game in India, asked me at halftime, “So what do you typically do here? Allow 25 points a quarter or what?” Of course, I lied and said, “No, man, 20, 22.” And we went out there in that second half and I think in the first 15 possessions we had 13 spots. Now, both teams were stiff and tired as heck, but the eagerness and the building of what we are used to doing here, I think there’s a care there that we can build on and get these guys on board without a lot of changes.

We have more length, so we could maybe talk about switching more. We just never switch because it was easier, we never switch because (they’re) the same size. We want to switch if we have the same talent. I think right now we’re on the same path how we’ve been doing things — with an idea that it might not last. Depends how it goes.

Do you have that elite wing defender to guard players like Giannis or LeBron?

It turned out the other night in India, just happenstance, we kind of subbed without coach really knowing it. At the end of the game, we put Justin Holiday out there, and he went right to Hield. It was at the end of Game 1. I didn’t tell him to go to Buddy Hield. We knew that’s who he was going with. Jeremy was on Buddy Hield, and I was kind of interested in seeing how Jeremy was going to do. And then we had two bigs in and at the last second, instead of asking coach — there wasn’t enough time — I just went “Justin, get in.” I think it was for Domas (Sabonis). And Jeremy saw him coming in and he put him on Buddy, and he went on the ball. And it was a hell of a move. Then at the end of overtime, I saw that and he draped all over him. Maybe he’s that guy.

I don’t know if he’s that guy say six, seven or eight minutes in a game yet or not. But T.J. Warren is eager as hell to be that guy. And, as you’ve guys have been told when you were little, how much defense is desire. We’re going to try to grab onto that desire and see if he can be that guy. Maybe T.J. and Justin are in there together and Justin guards the better guy and T.J. the other guy. … We’re still trying to learn. But I love what I see as far as the determination to execute down on the defensive end.

Is Warren like Bogdanovic in that he’s got a reputation as a poor defender but he hadn’t been asked or made to do it in the past?

I think so. I see it. He’s got great length, and he has pretty good speed. His feet are good. I don’t see any reason. Now I don’t know what his experience was in Phoenix; I haven’t even asked him. I know Dave West grabbed me and said, “Take care of my guy. He hasn’t had structure, DB. He hasn’t had structure.” Does that mean he wasn’t asked to play defense? That stuff I really don’t want to know. I want to judge him with what I see and coach him the way I’m used to coaching guys. Right now, all these guys can be coached, they can be pushed, and anytime you can do that with a group of guys, you have a chance. I think T.J. is going to surprise people on the defensive end. He looks like he has great pride in that. And right now I’ve had to tell him coach is lying about I don’t want to say “Giddy up,” I want to say, “Whoa!” Right now, I don’t have to say “whoa” to T.J. because he’s trying to bust everything up. It’s impressive.

When did you talk to David West about him?

In Vegas. And the night we traded for him on draft night. He texted me right away and said he was going to call me, but we talked in Vegas when T.J. came to meet the team. David loves him, and he came up through his AAU (program). And David isn’t just about basketball. He’s talking to these guys about their studies or life after basketball and to learn a skill. He even wants to teach some of his kids how to weld. You got to learn the trade, yeah. That’s D-West, man.

(Randy Belice / NBAE via Getty Images)
You’ve coached some really good defensive teams here. What’s the potential of this one?

Good question. One thing I could start with is I know potential hasn’t won any ballgames. Right now, I’ve seen a lot of good. A lot of good. Whatever our goals are going to be, top five or top ten, I usually don’t look at all those numbers. Coach puts them on the board, but I think we can still be one of those. Again, it will be interesting just what kind of mix we end up with when it really comes nut-cutting time.

Outside of points allowed, what stats are you most interested in?

Right away, to me, it’s defensive field goal percentage. I guess you got to add 3-point field goal percentage. I’m not too hung up on 3-point attempts. I think if we start talking that way, then our defense is going to be spread out. I think the average number of makes last year was 11 3-pointers made per game. That’s 33 points, and teams are averaging 110 (points per game), so where are those other points? So defensive field goal percentage, defensive rebounding percentage (are notable). We got to keep teams off the boards. If there’s two key areas, it’s the defensive rebounding and then transition. We allowed about 12 to 14 points last year in transition. That’s got to come down to 10.

If there was a fourth: free-throw attempts. We don’t want to be fouling just to foul. But then we chart challenges, the percentage of jumpers we are challenging. We chart deflections, and we play with little prizes for charges. Those first four are the key. I don’t want them buried with a bunch of numbers. Our goal is to challenge shots and defensive rebound every possession.

Having Sabonis in there instead of Thad Young makes you a better rebounding team, but not as good in transition defense.

Yeah, they’re going to try run us like crazy. We’ll be passing out track shoes instead of basketball shoes.

With so much talk about playing Turner and Sabonis, what’s the impact defensively?

I don’t know. (Laughs.) I really don’t. I’m watching closely. Right now, we’re asking Domas to do what our four man typically does. The one part that can spoil the soup is opponents like putting their four on Myles and their five on Domas, so now you’re running back cross-matching. We’re going to ask Myles to do the same. I’m watching it closely. Right now, we’re just asking Domas if he’s guarding the shooter to do his best and we’ll cover for you.

I think our offensive rebounding is going to help some of that transition defense. Offensive rebounding in the league has come down because it’s usually 3s and long shots. I think maybe we could make a little hay that way to help the defense. How much switching do you do with Domas and Myles out there? We just play solid like we have. In India, we forced turnovers and I don’t know how we forced turnovers, so we’re not gimmicking the game up, we’re not doing anything to force turnovers as far as switching and denying. But we’ve got active hands, we’re solid in the paint, and we force turnovers. We were up there (in forced turnovers) last year, too. People ask me how. (Laughs.) And we just got good character and great care.