FanPost

A Post-Free Agent Period Western Conference Power Rankings

Chris Covatta

Bumping to the front page, nice work, KVin2. -- Tim

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have come to the dog days of the NBA offseason. The big moves in NBA free agency have been made: LeBron is going home, Carmelo has told the Bulls/Lakers/Rockets to move on, Chris Bosh stunned everyone by pulling a Hedo Turkoglu, Wade is staying with the Heat, Gordon Hayward got paid by the Hornets (but is staying in Utah), and Chandler Parsons got a truly outrageous contract from the Mavs that makes every Blazer fan see Nicolas Batum's contract in a new light.

With the draft and free agency largely over there are a few deals to still be made (Eric Bledsoe is still without a contract), but barring any unforeseen trades teams are finally starting to take shape. So who is better now than they were at the end of last season? Which teams accomplished their offseason goals and which teams made dookie in the urinal? Obviously Cleveland won the offseason (I know, I know, it sounds weird to me too), but how did the Western Conference teams do? As it turns out, really, really well. The West is going to be a gauntlet again, while the East is still going to be a flaming pile of basketball dung.

Here's a survey of the Western Conference, four months before the season starts. Just as a note, this is not a strict ranking of where I think each team will finish in the standings. This is an overall evaluation that takes into account individual personnel moves, team quality, potential seeding and overall franchise momentum. So if you're Minnesota, the Kevin Love fiasco hurts your ranking greatly, while the Clippers get the benefit of the doubt on a questionable personnel move and overall roster composition thanks to their excellent coach.

1. San Antonio Spurs.

Key departures: None.

Key additions: Kyle Anderson (draft, F, UCLA), Boris Diaw (re-sign), Patty Mills (re-sign), Matt Bonner (re-sign), Head Coach Greg Popovich (re-sign).

The Champs are still here. Look at their key departures. None. Not one person from their title-winning team thought he could get a better deal elsewhere. (Gary Neil did last year, look at how that worked out for him.) These are the Popovich-Duncan Spurs. They aren't affected by the Disease of More. Their guys don't leave. They don't take more from another team because they'd rather stay and win. When they retire they'll be too busy showing off their championship rings to miss the extra couple million they could have gotten from the Bucks or Hornets or wherever. (You could argue $7 mil per season is high for Diaw, but when your best player makes only $12 mil you can afford to overpay a key player like Diaw who has thrived in your system.)

Even though Mills will be out until probably January due to shoulder surgery, that's ok, because Pop will get Corey Joseph reps early in the season. And of course he'll succeed, because these are the Spurs. This is Pop. This is Duncan. It's a foregone conclusion that Corey Joseph will succeed. They picked up Kyle Anderson in the draft, which is great because if you're going to draft the next Diaw he might as well learn from the man himself. He's a 6'10" power forward, which is misleading because he can shoot and spent more time playing point-forward than power forward for UCLA last year. Pencil the Spurs in for another 58+ win campaign barring any key injuries.

2. Los Angeles Clippers

Key departures: Darren Collison (free agent).

Key additions: Jamaal Crawford (re-sign), Spencer Hawes (free agent), Jordan Farmar (free agent).

It's an interesting proposition when a team wins 57 games, earns the third seed in a loaded conference, makes it to the conference semifinals and still considers the season a disappointment. Injuries played a large part in the fate of the Clippers last year (Chris Paul played with an injured shoulder for most of the playoffs, and JJ Redick missed large chunks of time), Matt Barnes is better suited to picking up technicals as a bench player, Jared Dudley was a disaster, and they didn't have any legit options behind Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan.

This year they should be better. Griffin and Jordan made huge strides last year defensively, and Hawes gives Doc Rivers a legitimate third big in the rotation. His shooting, passing and defensive rebounding will be a boon at the very least, though he turns the ball over a lot and isn't a very good overall defender. Redick and Paul should be healthy this year, and Farmar is a better backup than Collison for Paul. The only real question marks for the Clippers are at small forward and how well the big man rotation will play. Doc Rivers is one of the best coaches in the NBA though, and you almost have to assume he can make the pieces fit together.

3. Oklahoma City Thunder

Key departures: Thabo Sefolosha (free agent), Derek Fisher (retirement).

Key additions: Mitch McGary (draft, PF/C, Michigan), Anthony Morrow (free agent), Sebastian Telfair (free agent).

Yes, I know Kevin Durant is the second best player on the planet and that Westbrook is a top-ten guy. I get that they beat the Clippers in the playoffs last year. And who knows what would have happened in the Spurs-Thunder series if Serge Ibaka had been healthy. The fact remains that the Thunder got worse this offseason and the Clippers got better, so they slip to third.

I think the team's main problem is Scott Brooks. It's not that he's a bad coach, he's just taken them as far as they can go. The Thunder nearly lost to the Grizz and the Clippers because their offense was so predictable; after their first two actions didn't work out on any given possession it devolved into Durant or Westbrook dribbling 20 feet from the basket and hoisting up a contested jumper. Adding Pau Gasol would have helped this team immensely, as his low post play and passing skills would have added some flavor into an at times too-bland offense.

It's unclear whether or not their offseason additions are actually going to improve the team. Morrow is presumably expected to start, and while he's a better shooter than Sefolosha he's much, much worse defensively. He'll space the floor on offense and is more dangerous with the ball in his hands than Sefolosha, but how much will his defense hurt them? Can he play 30+ minutes per game after averaging less than 20 last year? Are Jeremy Lamb and Perry Jones ready to pick up the slack? McGary is an interesting prospect, but we're not sure if he's any good. He had one good NCAA tournament run (insert mandatory, "Hello Joe Alexander" comment here), and then was out all of last season with a back injury. Even if he is NBA ready, are there enough minutes for him? He is presumably the fifth big man behind Ibaka, Perkins, Collison, and Adams. How much will a fifth big man with back issues really improve your team? Sabby Telfair is presumably their third point guard, replacing the departed Fisher. He's not any good, but then again neither was Fisher last year.

All of this might just be much ado about nothing, because at the end of the day Durant and Westbrook are the best 1-2 punch in basketball. As long as Westbrook, Durant and Ibaka are healthy they'll be a threat to win the West. They were the second seed last year and if I had to guess right now I'd say they are the best bet to finish second again. They're a great team, but in an absolutely brutal conference every tiny thing matters.

4. Portland Trail Blazers

Key departures: Mo Williams (free agent).

Key additions: Steve Blake (free agent), Chris Kaman (free agent).

Forget all the Spencer Hawes comparisons with Kaman, forget the concerns over Olshey and/or Portland being able to draw big-name (or even medium-name) free agents. Forget all the hype and speculation, and the concerns over keeping Aldridge happy. Forget all that. Focus on the fact that the Blazers, at then end of the day, added two players who will make this team better next year.

Neither of these moves are splashy, but when you're talking about backups they don't have to be. Kaman was out of shape last year in LA, and I imagine Neil Olshey and Terry Stotts are hoping he works harder playing for a winning team. He's a good midrange shooter, can rebound the ball, and can still block shots. He's not a game changer, but then again we're talking about a bench player that needs to play 25-30 minutes a night. If he has to he can still fill in as a starter if Lopez is injured. For only $10 mil (and only $1 mil guaranteed next year), it's a decent signing that fills needs on several levels. What Olshey did that was smart this summer but I don't think he gets enough credit for is preserving the team's flexibility going forward. He didn't overreact to being turned down by Hawes. He simply went to Plan B and preserved the Blazers' cap flexibility going forward. Kaman filled a need and can be either traded or cheaply disposed of after the season.

The Blake signing has been described in a number of different ways, but here are a few of the more positive one: safe, reliable, compatible, cheap. All Blake needs to do is come in and be a caretaker of the offense. He can play 20-25 minutes a night and let Lillard play a more reasonable number of minutes this year. He tries hard on defense, which is an improvement over Mo, and won't turn the ball over or shoot you out of games. He also won't win you games, but that's the trade off you make for having a more consistent, reliable player with the BAE.

The Blazers making a leap next year in being a more dangerous playoff team will be almost entirely dependent on any in-season trades they make, and on young player development. The signings of Kaman and Blake will actually help T-Rob, CJ, and the Thrill by giving them defined, specific roles they can concentrate on filling, rather than feeling like they have to do everything every time they step on the court. T-Rob can be the rebounder/shot blocker/energy/hustle/garbage man guy off the bench, and CJ and Barton can focus on being scorers. Instead of asking them to be able to do five things really well off the bench, Stotts can ask them to do two or three things really well.

The Blazers will compete for home court advantage in the first round, and if I had to bet I would make them the favorites - right now - for the fourth seed. The team directly ahead of them in the standings last year (Houston) got worse this summer, while the Blazers improved. This wasn't a flashy offseason for the Blazers, but it was a productive one. Hopefully the results on the court reflect that.

5. Golden State Warriors

Key departures: Steve Blake (free agent).

Key additions: Shaun Livingston (free agent), Brandon Rush (free agent).

The Dubs last year obviously hoped to be much better than they ended up being. Injuries to Andre Iguodala and Andrew Bogut hurt their win total, but they also suffered from a lack of depth past the starters. Jermaine O'Neal is likely retiring, Festus Ezeli was a non-threat offensively (and injured the entire year), and Harrison Barnes hasn't exactly lived up to his lofty draft status. The only truly reliable players they are going to have on their bench next year will be Draymond Green and Livingston. Livingston should cure their backup PG woes from last year, but he's a non-shooter so Barnes and Green are going to have to improve their shooting so the offense doesn't die in bench-heavy units.

Golden State is also in an odd position within the conference because of the Kevin Love situation. They're very good right now, but they could challenge for a top-three seed with him. They seem like the favorites to land Love, only because they are in the best position to return the most NBA talent to Minny. A David Lee, Barnes and Klay Thompson for the Kevin's swap (Love and Martin) seems to make the most sense for both sides. Golden State thus far has balked at any inclusion of Thompson in a Love trade, but seeing as Love is a top-10 player this should be a no-brainer. If they took on Martin's bloated contract they could probably get away with not sending a draft pick (which they don't have many of) to the T-Wolves as well. Martin isn't the defender Thompson is (actually, he's not the defender Yi Jianlian's chair is), but the Warriors did just sign Brandon Rush, presumably as an extra wing defender and shooter off the bench in the event they do make Thompson available in any Love trade.

Bottom line for the Warriors: they should compete for home court advantage in the first round this year as currently constructed. If they somehow were to add Love, they could compete for a title. The biggest concern for the Dubs is that they are completely capped out as of right now, and any moves they make to bolster their bench will likely take them into luxury-tax land.

6. Houston Rockets

Key departures: Chandler Parsons (free agent), Omer Asik (trade), Jeremy Lin (trade), Omri Casspi (trade).

Key additions: Trevor Ariza (free agent), Alonzo Gee (trade).

If you had asked any Houston fan or analyst what their worst case scenario for the offseason was, that scenario wouldn't have even come close to what actually happened to the Rockets over the past fortnight. Before we talk about the last two weeks, let's rewind to a full year ago. Dwight Howard was secluded away in his mountain resort with his people for a week to think about his basketball future. After choosing to take his talents to the Gulf Coast Houston declined to pick up the fourth year of Parson's rookie deal. This allowed him to become a free agent a year early, and in the process Morey gave up a year of probably the single best value contract in all of basketball. As Parsons and Howard share an agent, it's reasonable to assume this was in part a thank you to Parsons' agent for helping get Howard in a Rockets uni.

Presumably, they had a sort of wink-wink, nudge-nudge situation going with how Parsons was going to handle his free agency. Their only shot at a big time free agent was to sign one while Parson's cap hold was still a minuscule $2 mil, after which they could take care of Parsons. That Parsons and his agent got the secret hand signals from Morey mixed up, or that he just didn't care after Mark Cuban offered him $46 mil over three years (with a player option on the third) is anybody's guess. Either way, it screwed the Rockets in the worst way possible.

The Rockets were rooting for LeBron to leave Miami, as it represented the best chance for them to lure Bosh away to play alongside Howard. The Rockets maintained all along they could dump Lin and Asik if they had to in order to clear the requisite cap space to sign Bosh (or any other free agent to a max/near max deal). As it turns out, they were right. They had to pay the Lakers a first round pick take Lin, but they cleared the cap space. Adding Bosh and keeping Parsons could have put the Rockets over the top in the West, vaulting them to the top tier of the conference alongside San Antonio and OKC. And they almost pulled it off, but at the last second Mickey Arison dangled $118 million in front of Bosh's face and that was that.

Houston now suffers from what I like to refer to as "Portland-itis": a near-complete lack of any NBA-caliber player on the bench. Patrick Beverly is the only point guard with any NBA experience, and while they have high hopes for Troy Daniels and Jordan Hamilton those guys are young and Hamilton mysteriously disappeared from Kevin McHale's rotation in the playoffs. They still have the full MLE to use on a free agent because they stayed over the cap by turning the Asik deal into a S&T, but who's left? How excited could Rocket fans really get over signing Jae Crowder and bringing back Aaron Brooks at this point? (And those are two of the better options left on the market.) Not all was lost though, Morey's big offseason trophy he can hold up to show Rockets fans is... (drumroll please) ... Trevor Ariza!!!! Yes, the same Trevor Ariza to whom Morey gave a five-year, $35 million dollar contract last time around and promptly traded to New Orleans. Ariza is leagues better as a defender than Parsons is, and is a better shooter, but isn't the creator on offense Parsons is. He's also 30 while Parsons is only 24, and of the two of them I'd bet on Parsons, not Ariza, getting better over the next for years.

Look, the Rockets are still very likely going to be good next year, and no one is going to want to play them in the playoffs. A starting lineup of Beverly, Harden, Ariza, Terrence Jones, and Howard isn't a bad lineup. But the Western Conference is the real-life edition of the Hunger Games. "Good" just doesn't cut it. However, and this is a big one, what if someone get's hurt? What if Beverly's knee issues flair up again? What if Howard re-injures his back? What if "Contract Year" Trevor reverts back to being the same guy Houston traded away? If anything goes wrong next season the Rockets could miss the playoffs entirely. The West is that good. If healthy though, and absent any other trade, it's hard to imagine the Rockets having any serious chance at home court advantage next season.

(Also, doesn't this make you feel better about the Blazers losing out on Spencer Hawes? Sure, the Blazers had to settle for Kaman with the MLE, but at least they didn't have to trade away Matthews, Batum and T-Rob just to get turned down.)

7. Memphis Grizzlies

Key departures: Mike Miller (LeBron-ed), James Johnson (trade), Ed Davis (free agent).

Key additions: Vince Carter (free agent), Zach Randolph (re-sign), Beno Udrih (re-sign), Jarnell Stokes (draft, PF, Tenneessee).

Poor Memphis. They have a veteran roster ready to win now, they're by far the most physical team in the league, they get better in the offseason, and they still aren't expected to be better than the seventh seed in the conference. The West is just that good. Re-signing Z-Bo was big for them, and if he can stay healthy for the length of his contract the $10 mil/year he gets in his extension will look like a bargain. Marc Gasol should be healthy the entire season, and that alone should be worth a win or two. Carter should bring much more shooting and offensive creativity to what was a terrible offense last year. Along with Mike Conley Jr. and Courtney Lee, who are both about league-average three point shooters, they should have much more spacing offensively than they did last year. They let the promising Ed Davis become a free agent (though they still hold his Bird Rights) because they have high hopes for Jon Leuer as a floor-spacing power forward. They're deep (which counts for a lot), and if everything goes right they could conceivably compete for home-court advantage in the first round. (Although, really, you could say that about teams ranked 4th-9th on this list.)

8. Dallas Mavericks.

Key departures: Vince Carter (free agent), DeJuan Blair (trade), Samuel Dalembert (trade), Jose Calderon (trade), Shane Larkin (trade), Wayne Ellington (trade).

Key additions: Dirk Nowitzki (re-sign), Chandler Parsons (free agent), Tyson Chandler (trade), Devin Harris (re-sign), Raymond Felton (trade), Rashard Lewis (free agent), Richard Jefferson (free agent).

There were a lot of headlines for the Mavericks this free agent period. After a few years apart, Mark Cuban decided to hit the reset button and bring Chandler back to Dallas alongside his old pal Dirk. Dirk, meanwhile, took a huge discount to stay in Dallas for another shot or two at a championship. Cuban also went nuts and offered Chandler Parsons $15 mil a year, which simultaneously screwed Houston's cap space and put a clock on them to get a deal done with another star player.

The devil will be in the details for Dallas this coming season. They have a very old roster, and while Parsons is an added infusion of new blood they gave up some young legs in Larkin and Ellington to get Chandler. Adding Jefferson and Lewis to the roster only drove the average age of the team up, not down. They lost a lot of shooting when they traded Calderon and lost Carter to Memphis, but Parsons and Jefferson (if healthy) should make up for it. They were also forced to take back Felton in the Chandler deal, which is an interesting acquisition. "Cupcake" Felton was able to eat and pout his way through Portland and New York the past few seasons, but he won't be able to in Dallas. They have too strong of a locker room culture for him to disrupt it. Rick Carlisle's backing from Cuban is absolute; Felton can't run him out of town in a player mutiny. Carlisle is so well respected by players he may even be able to turn Felton back into an average point guard. They need that, as Harris is the only reliable point guard on the roster.

The biggest problem for the Mavs this year will be wheedling a league-average defense out of this roster. The only above-average defender on the team is Chandler. They'll score a ton of points, but will they be able to guard anyone? Their defense is probably going to keep them from a top-four seed.

9. Phoenix Suns

Key departures: Channing Frye (free agent).

Key additions: Isaiah Thomas (S&T), P.J. Tucker (re-sign), Tyler Ennis (draft, PG, Syracuse), T.J. Warren (draft, SF, NC State).

Phoenix might be the most interesting team in the NBA. On the one hand, they are pretty openly stockpiling assets in order to land a top-10 player should one ever come available. They have a fun, quirky roster that can play virtually any style and is loaded with tradable contracts. On the other, we're watching a fun on-court experiment play out as they go about exploiting a massive market inefficiency at the point guard/wing positions.

Quick, someone start a thread asking who the ten best point guards in the NBA right now. Then name the best five. Then do the same for wing players. I bet you we'd get a massive debate about both lists, but for different reasons. There are a ton of good point guards in the NBA right now. However, there is an equal lack of quality wing players. Outside of LeBron and Durant (who don't exactly count), Batum might be the fourth best small forward in the league. Matthews is certainly a top 10 shooting guard, and I'd place him in the top six or seven (remember, you have to take offense and defense into account in these arguments). Phoenix has seen that inequality and bought low on the massive supply of point guards by starting Goran Dragic and Eric Bledsoe (who they will most likely re-sign eventually). Others might have stratched their heads at the S&T for Isaiah Thomas after they drafted Tyler Ennis, but for Phoenix those moves were no-brainers. If you're going to start two PG's you have to have a ton of depth at the position. They have that depth now.

Their other moves were interesting as well. Re-signing Tucker was a similar no-brainer, he was great on the perimeter defensively for them and in the locker room. Warren was an interesting selection, he's a great athlete and was the ACC player of the year last year. He could be starting at small forward for them in a few years. Letting Frye go was probably a harder decision, but at the end of the day he's unlikely to be an $8 mil/year player by the end of that contract. They also have the Morrii, who can both fill that stretch-4 role Frye did last year.

The Suns have a ton of interesting, tradable assets and a stockpile of draft picks in the event a superstar becomes available, and in the meantime they should be a very good team. They have enough versatility that they can offer up pretty much any combination of their young players in a blockbuster trade and not completely deplete their roster (a la the Knicks in the Carmelo deal). Will they make the playoffs? Possibly. They could sneak ahead of teams like Dallas, Memphis and Houston if there were injuries or Dallas just ends up not being able to guard anyone. They're certainly a team to keep an eye on.

10. New Orleans Pelicans

Key departures: Anthony Morrow (free agent), Alonzo Gee (trade), Pierre Jackson (trade).

Key additions: Omer Asik (trade), Omri Casspi (trade), Russ Smith (draft, PG, Louisville).

The Pellies are in a really unfortunate situation. They have possibly the best asset in the NBA (Anthony Davis on a rookie contract), but an owner (Tom Benson) who is old, probably dying soon and wants a winner now. That puts Dell Demps in the unenviable situation of having to construct a winner around a franchise player who isn't ready to be the best player on a title winning team. The Pellies (I'm using it until it catches on) have a roster of middling-to-good players who are largely overpaid and just don't fit well together. They have four ball-dominate perimeter players in Jrue Holliday, Eric Gordon, Tyreke Evans and Austin Rivers, Casspi (the throw-in from the Asik trade) is just bad, and their big man rotation doesn't really fit together (mostly because Anthony is still developing his offensive game). It's nice they got Asik to take the wear-and-tear off Davis, but he won't be around when Davis is in his prime.

The Pellies are mostly capped out for the next several seasons thanks to bad deals given to Evans, Gordon, Holliday and Ryan Anderson, and have traded away their last three first round picks (last year's and this year's for Holliday, and next year's in the Asik deal). This is not the ideal way to build around the player who will eventually be the best player in the league. If things don't change in New Orleans it wouldn't surprise me if Davis signed his qualifying offer after his rookie contract expires in two years and becomes an unrestricted free agent in 2017. Regardless, absent seismic roster changes this team isn't likely to make the playoffs next year.

11. Denver Nuggets

Key departures: Evan Fornier (trade).

Key additions: Arron Afflalo (trade), Garry Harris (draft, SG, Michigan St.), Jusuf Nurkic (draft, C, Croatia).

The Nuggets had a tidy little offseason. They were painfully thin last season in the backcourt, often times pressing Randy Foye into duty as a PG. They solved those issues this offseason, trading for Afflalo (who they sent out in the Dwight Howard blockbuster), and drafting Harris, a terrific shooter, perimeter defender and ball handler for a shooting guard. He'll earn some minutes behind Afflalo and Foye in the guard rotation. Danilo Gallinari is back after a season lost to an ACL tear, and he will certainly help improve their shooing and spacing on offense.

The Nuggets have two fatal flaws: their frontcourt is a mess and they suffer from an overall lack of talent. The second is the easiest to explain: they have only one All-Star (Lawson), but no top-10 or even top-15 players. They took a gamble (and lost) on JaVale McGee developing, Kenneth Faried should be a backup, Jan Vesely is terrible, Darrell Arthur has been plagued by injuries the past several seasons, JJ Hickson is asked to play too much center, and Timofey Mozgov is still developing. Nurkic is going to come over, but who knows how ready he is going to be for minutes. Wilson Chandler is an excellent small-ball four, but he's better suited to a reserve role. The McGee mistake is a particularly expensive one, though his contract expires in two years.

The Nuggets are going to be too good to draft high enough to nab a star player, but they can't really effectively blow it up. Their best chance to make the leap is to trade a number of their assets for a star or two that fit with Lawson and fill in the edges from there. Unfortunately there is currently a dearth of star players available for trade, outside of Love (and the Nuggets don't seem to have the assets to win that particular auction). They'll probably fight for a playoff spot this year and see if this season shakes a star loose from his current team.

12. Los Angeles Lakers

Key departures: Pau Gasol (free agent), Chirs Kaman (free agent), Jodie Meeks (free agent), Jordan Farmar (free agent).

Key additions: Julius Randel (draft, PF, Kentucky), Jordan Hill (re-sign), Nick Young (re-sign), Jeremy Lin (trade).

On the one hand, it's somewhat shocking that the Lakers are in the bottom half, much less the bottom third, of any kind of NBA power ranking. On the other hand, it's not really surprising at all given the season they just had. The real problem is they aren't doing anything to get better over the long term. First, let's be clear: the Lakers had no chance of winning another title anytime soon. This isn't about the two-year, $48.5 mil extension they gave Kobe during last season. It's about them not being a title-contender anytime soon after Kobe retires.

The Lin trade was nice, they gave up two first round picks to the Suns to get Steve Nash, and picking up an extra first rounder was needed. He's on an expiring contract and the Buss family can afford to pay him $15 mil this year. Even drafting Julius Randel made sense, he was the most NBA-ready player in the draft and will do the dirty work down low to take some of the burden off Kobe. But none of their other moves have made any sense. The Lakers will be gettin' Swaggy with it for four years, which is nice until you remember Swagimus Prime will be 33 by the end of the deal. Hill got $9 mil per year, which makes total sense for a guy who isn't even an average NBA starter.

Everyone is probably just going to shrug this off, because the next two years are going to be all about Kobe chasing Kareem's scoring record. There's going to be a lot of, "the Lakers are the Lakers, they'll be fine" talk over the next two years. People assume free agents will always want to sign in LA., but will that be true in a post-Kobe world? This Lakers team has no foundation, no real future after Kobe leaves. What free agent is going to want to come build a team from complete scratch? Especially in the West? We just saw Bosh turn down a very-near-max deal in Houston to go back to Miami, and you can bet that part of the reason is that Houston plays in the West. Would he have put them over the top? Probably. But he knows how hard it is to win a title and he knows his best shot to do so is in the wide-open East. This Lakers team feels lost, and they need to use the next two years to start building a foundation for a when Kobe retires.

13. Sacramento Kings

Key departures: Isaiah Thomas (free agent).

Key additions: Nick Stauskas (draft, PG/SG, Michigan), Darren Collison (free agent).

No one has any idea what the Kings are doing. Maybe not even the Kings themselves. They just traded away a 20 ppg scorer in Thomas and replaced him with Collison. Collison is probably a better overall point guard than Thomas, but he hasn't ever impressed anyone enough to actually keep him around for more than a year or two, and Thomas has more potential for growth. They just spent two high lottery picks in a row on shooting guards (Ben McLemore and Stauskas), although Stauskas is better at getting his own shot than McLemore and can probably make a transition to PG at some point. Rudy Gay is vastly overpaid, and unless you can surround him with shooters at both guard spots and with a stretch four, he's going to clog your spacing (though he did shoot much better after his trade away from Toronto).

The good news is they still have Boogie Cousins, who is only 23 and put up a 23/12/3/1/1 last season. He's a franchise player, and someone you can build around. Unfortunately there are a lot of if's involved in their long term plans. If McLemore can develop his game and if Stauskas can make a smooth transition to PG to play alongside McLemore in the backcourt, if they can find a stretch four to put next to Cousins and if Gay can fit into whatever offensive system they eventually run and if they choose to re-sign him at all. A lot of things are up in the air for the Kings, who are lottery bound until further notice.

14. Minnesota Timberwolves

Key departures: None.

Key additions: Zach LeVine (draft, PG, UCLA), Glenn Robinson III (draft, SG, Michigan).

The Timberwolves' offseason was pretty much summed up by their newest lottery pick. At some point the Flip Saunders is going to have to give in and trade Love. It has to happen. He's not signing an extension with Minnesota and he's not signing a new contract with them as a free agent, even if he does have to sacrifice $30 million or more to leave at the end of this year. Even trading him for 30 cents on the dollar is better than letting him walk for nothing more than the cap space he frees up. If they want to trade for the future Cleveland represents their best bet, as they can get back Andrew Wiggins and a host of draft picks. If they want to reload as opposed to rebuild then Golden State's offer is their best bet. It will be interesting to see if Love is on the roster when the season starts. Minnesota's future starts and ends with Love and what they decide to do with him.

15. Utah Jazz

Key departures: Richard Jefferson (free agent).

Key additions: Gordon Hayward (re-sign), Dante Exum (draft, PG, Australia), Rodney Hood (draft, SG/SF, Duke), Steve Novak (trade).

The Jazz are doing what bad teams do: collecting assets/young players with upside, and generally not caring how good they will be next year. Exum has promise, and Hood could be a very good wing player for them in a few years. They've clearly chosen to build around Hayward, so we'll see where that takes them. They should, however, be concerned that Derrick Favors and Enes Kanter have not developed like they thought they would. Many were comparing Favors to a young Howard when he was first drafted, but it seems those comparisons aren't very accurate. Still, this is a bad team that has plenty of time for it's young players to develop, and is relatively happy with trips to the lottery until they do.