You certainly wouldn’t call the 2018 NBA offseason boring: the best player in the world, LeBron James, changed teams in dramatic fashion a day after the Lakers lost out on a guy who announced a year ago he wanted to sign with the Lakers as a free agent. In response to all of that, the clear best team in the NBA, the Warriors, signed an All-Star to the mid-level just because they could.
But like a fireworks show, the payoff on the build-up was regrettably brief. It might be over.
The only huge domino left to fall is a potential Kawhi Leonard trade, but the Spurs hardly seem pressured to get something done (unlike the Cavaliers with the Kyrie Irving saga last year). But for the major restricted free agents still on the table (Clint Capela, Zach LaVine) this NBA summer really could be a wrap.
We feared the offseason might be boring. It wasn’t exactly, though the excitement lasted all of three days. Strange times.
Pelicans’ risky game
This is a good column from Scott Kushner in the New Orleans Advocate on the risky strategy the Pelicans have chosen, and how it backfired on Monday when DeMarcus Cousins left for the Warriors. Kushner explains how trading draft picks for veterans is a riskier move than building organically, but that it’s a reasonable choice for New Orleans given the goal of keeping Anthony Davis forever.
To me, the Pelicans made it worse by treating Cousins like an also-ran free agent once he went down with injury. Losing Cousins for Julius Randle, perhaps, will not hurt much this critical season, considering Cousins’ injury. But Kushner’s full accounting of how everything went -- the Pels did not send people out to meet Cousins as free agency began, and were anti-aggressive in trying to retain him -- is a signal you don’t want to send to Davis.
That signal: if you are healthy and contributing, you are the world to us. If you’re hurt, don’t expect us to trip over ourselves chasing you. Now Cousins isn’t Davis, in talent or status within the Pels organization. But that’s the signal, and this stuff matters. New Orleans didn’t just botch Cousins’ free agency. They made themselves look cold and calculating in the process, which can’t be the impression they want the oft-injured Davis to have moving forward.
It was always a tricky navigation, Cousins’ free agency. The Pels hit the rocks.
Links Galore
(There aren’t many links because the Fourth of July was wildly slow in the NBA.)
The Harry Giles hype train is full and leaving the station. (It’s always nice to see good people so happy to get their chance.)
The NBA’s latest excuse for refusing to even consider abolishing the conferences in terms of playoff seeding is that it says doing so would add 40,000 miles of travel to teams’ itineraries. Note that the NBA will not consider shrinking the regular season to reduce travel or create the calendar cushion that would make the playoff travel easier.
I’m all about this Deandre Ayton quote about meeting Diana Taurasi.
100% agreed: Slamball was ahead of its time.
Be excellent to each other.
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