Two playoff teams from a season ago (Mavericks, Jazz) joined repeat lottery clubs such as the Suns, Hornets/Pelicans, Blazers, Wolves and Kings.

Phoenix Suns

The Big Questions:

1. Will they keep Marcin Gortat around next season?
2. Can they get a long-term answer or two through the draft?
3. How committed are they to the young guys currently on their roster?

Notable Free Agents:  None

2013 Draft Picks Held:  Own 1st Rounder, Miami’s 1st Rounder, Denver’s 2nd Rounder (Own 2nd traded to Houston)

The Lay of the Land: After last summer, the Suns have a meaningful amount of money committed to current talent through the 14-15 season. They have some financial flexibility and the benefit of not having to overpay to keep their current guys but have a big decision to make in terms of Marcin Gortat. He is a talent and one of the few bright spots on the team but can walk away in 2014 since he is unrestricted. The Suns could try to agree to an extension or attempt to find a worthwhile offer for him any time between now and the trade deadline. The draft could end up playing a major part in this process depending where Phoenix ends up. Grabbing a big like Nerlens Noel could set a trajectory that could light the path towards other moves through trades and free agency.

New Orleans Pelicans

The Big Questions:

1. Do they want to use their cap space this summer?
2. Will Anthony Davis end up primarily guarding power forwards or centers?
3. What should they do with Eric Gordon?
4. Has Al-Farouq Aminu’s play this year earned him a new contract in New Orleans?

Notable Free Agents:  Al-Farouq Aminu (Unrestricted)

2013 Draft Picks Held:  Own 1st Rounder (Own 2nd traded to Philadelphia)

The Lay of the Land: Thanks to a strong year from Greivis Vasquez, the biggest need for New Orleans has to be at small forward. Fortunately for the team, SF stands out as the only position that should have a rotation-level player at the fifth pick (the Pelicans’ most likely landing spot in the draft) between Otto Porter, Shabazz Muhammad and Victor Oladipo. The team also has an interesting option in-house in the form of Al-Farouq Aminu who had a much better year than expected. Unfortunately for the Pelicans, he is an unrestricted free agent and could end up being overpaid by another team.

Beyond the draft and Aminu, the other big question facing the Pelicans is when they want to use their cap space either by trades or free agency. With Anthony Davis, Ryan Anderson, Eric Gordon and Austin Rivers all having another three years on the books, the only increased salary to come soon will be Vasquez next summer. Considering the money they have, New Orleans could choose to acquire a significant contributor or two via free agency or unbalanced trade at any point in the next two years. If Dell Demps and company see the right player become available, they could also use Eric Gordon or Robin Lopez as additional assets to get a deal done.

Sacramento Kings

The Big Questions:

1. Can their ownership situation be resolved in time to get new management in place for the draft?
2. What kind of extension should they offer DeMarcus Cousins?
3. How much are they willing to match/pay for Tyreke Evans?
4. Do they use the amnesty on John Salmons?

Notable Free Agents:  Tyreke Evans (Restricted), Cole Aldrich (Unrestricted) and Toney Douglas (Restricted)

2013 Draft Picks Held:  Own 1st Rounder, Own 2nd Rounder

The Lay of the Land: Unlike every other NBA team, the uncertainty around the Kings covers location, ownership, and personnel. The team needs a front office overhaul in the worst way but that process cannot start until we find out who owns the team and where they will be playing long-term. Fortunately for the franchise, they are getting closer to escaping bad contract purgatory though they have huge decisions to make on Tyreke Evans and DeMarcus Cousins over the next two summers. They stand out as two of the hardest players to get a firm read on in terms of value in the entire league and could infatuate another team enough for them to make an offer that would be hard for the Kings to swallow matching.

Since they traded Francisco Garcia at the deadline in the Thomas Robinson / Patrick Patterson trade, the only logical use of the amnesty left would be John Salmons’ $7.583 million contract for next year that only has a partial guarantee of $1 million for the following season. Clearing out that additional money would allow the team to make a bigger splash this summer without losing much on the court. Considering the new owners would like to give the fans a better quality product at the outset, a move like that seems far more likely than it would have been under the Maloofs.

Minnesota Timberwolves

The Big Questions:

1. Will they be able to retain Nikola Pekovic?
2. Will Andrei Kirilenko pick up his player option?
3. Can Minnesota combine their assets to get more meaningful contributors?

Notable Free Agents:  Nikola Pekovic (Unrestricted), Andrei Kirilenko (Player Option) and Chase Budinger (Unrestricted)

2013 Draft Picks Held: Own 1st Rounder, Memphis’ 1st Rounder, Brooklyn’s 2nd Rounder, and OKC’s 2nd Rounder (own 2nd Rounder traded to Portland via Cleveland)

The Lay of the Land: After a season decimated by injuries, Minnesota has another summer full of compelling possibilities. The Nikola Pekovic situation will have a major effect because a longer-term deal will mean that he will bridge the years before Ricky Rubio is eligible for an extension and likely mean the end of any gargantuan amount of cap space, though the team would still have plenty in 2014 to make some strides. If Pekovic heads elsewhere, the Timberwolves will have a clear-cut need and more long-term money than short-term money (assuming AK47 opts in). Luke Ridnour’s expiring contract might allow Minnesota to break up the point guard logjam as well if they can get a small asset in return.

The biggest problem that Minnesota has at the moment is the lack of a coherent core around their best players (Kevin Love and Rubio, in my estimation) that makes sense with their strengths and weaknesses. Even though this off-season can go in many directions given their assets, the Wolves would be wise to understand who they are building around and use the strongest building blocks they have. 

Portland Trail Blazers

The Big Questions:

1. Can they pull a starter-quality player through free agency or an unbalanced trade?
2. Will they re-sign JJ Hickson?
3. How much better will Damian Lillard be next season?

Notable Free Agents:  JJ Hickson (Unrestricted) and Eric Maynor (Restricted)

2013 Draft Picks Held:  Own 1st Rounder, Own 2nd Rounder, T-Wolves’ 2nd Rounder, Celtics’ 2nd Rounder

The Lay of the Land: With three core starters (LaMarcus Aldridge, Damian Lillard and Nicolas Batum) locked up through at least 14-15 and a fair amount of cap space, the Blazers have a clear opportunity to take their team to another level talent-wise. With nine players already under contract for next season, four draft picks, and only around $43M on the books before draft picks, they can be aggressive with the space they have in either of the next two summers. Even though this year’s class is weaker they could get a nice SG or C through free agency or by getting a talent from a team looking to be a player in the big 2014 free agent class.

Portland also faces an interesting decision on JJ Hickson. He has been a nice contributor this season but the team will likely have to face the reality that they can better use the money they would pay him to shore up more glaring holes in their roster and/or make a more significant upgrade in talent. I absolutely love the situation the Blazers have right now though it will take more positive moves this summer to work into the tightly packed Western Conference Playoffs.

Dallas Mavericks

The Big Questions:

1. Can they get an elite talent through free agency?
2. Will they retain any of their young free agent guards?
3. If they get a major player, will they have enough depth to compete this season?

Notable Free Agents:  OJ Mayo (Player Option), Darren Collison (Restricted), Rodrigue Beaubois (Restricted), Chris Kaman (Unrestricted), Brandan Wright (Unrestricted), Elton Brand (Unrestricted) and Anthonty Morrow (Unrestricted)

2013 Draft Picks Held: Own 1st Rounder, Own 2nd Rounder

The Lay of the Land: Dallas is in an unusual situation because they only have six players under contract for next season and four of those six will be on the last year of their deals. Unfortunately for Mark Cuban, two of those contracts (Dirk Nowitzki’s final year and Shawn Marion’s player option) combine for $32 million. That large number makes it much harder to build a long-term team in just one summer. Fortunately, it could become a two-year process where the team gets one building block now and then another significant one next summer after those big salaries come off the books entirely. Furthermore, a progression like that would build momentum and potentially make Dallas more enticing to someone in next year’s class.

The Mavericks also face the challenge of making decisions on O.J. Mayo, Darren Collison and Rodrigue Beaubois at the same time. Mayo can go wherever he likes if he declines his player option with DC and Roddy Buckets have to deal with being restricted free agents. Having that much volatility in terms of salary will make it harder for the front office to keep things together unless they can hold off their RFA’s from signing until after they handle potential big ticket players. Dallas also loses out with the new sign-and-trade rules because now the number of teams that would acquire any of the three guards while giving resources to Dallas has been cut dramatically. One of the most complicated and convoluted summers could also yield fantastic results if the dominoes line up over the first few weeks of July.

Utah Jazz

The Big Questions:

1. What combination of Paul Millsap and Al Jefferson do they keep?
2. Can they agree to an extension with Derrick Favors or Gordon Hayward?
3. How will they use their insane amount of cap space beyond retaining current players?

Notable Free Agents: Paul Millsap (Unrestricted), Al Jefferson (Unrestricted), Mo Williams (Unrestricted), Randy Foye (Unrestricted), Earl Watson (Unrestricted), DeMarre Carroll (Unrestricted) and Jamaal Tinsley (Unrestricted)

2013 Draft Picks Held: Own 1st Rounder, Golden State’s 1st Rounder, Own 2nd Rounder

The Lay of the Land: The best way I know how to describe Utah’s challenge this summer is that they have to attempt to speak two languages at the same time. Free agency all happens in the same whirlwind so the Jazz front office has to figure out whether they can retain one or both of Al Jefferson and Paul Millsap (and at what price) while also trying to figure out how to use the remaining cap space to make the best possible roster while sitting on cap holds for Jefferson and Millsap as long as they are unsigned. Fortunately for Utah, they have a ton of salary cap space and that gives them a little more time flexibility than they would have without it.

One of the downsides of possessing multiple young talents at the same time is that eventually they will need to get pay raises. Derrick Favors and Gordon Hayward will leave their rookie deals next summer, which means they are eligible for extensions until the start of next season. Thanks to restricted free agency, the downside risk of not coming to a deal is lower than for unrestricted players but the team must estimate the cost of retaining both of them and Enes Kanter one year later when doling out contracts now. With two first round picks and plenty of room to add new salary, no team has a greater opportunity to improve this summer than the Utah Jazz.

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Coming into this year’s draft, Thomas Robinson was considered one of the most “NBA ready” prospects available. An athletic 6’9 240 forward coming off an All-American season at Kansas, he had a defensive position (the 4) and a skill (rebounding) that would immediately translate to the next level. But while Robinson’s collegiate statistics were eye-popping, the holes in his game meant he would only be effective in a limited number of roles in the NBA, at least initially. The Sacramento Kings passed on several players with substantially higher upsides to make the “win now” selection in Robinson; eight months later, they dealt him to the Rockets for pennies on the dollar.

In a draft where Damian Lillard went No. 6 and Andre Drummond went No. 9, you would like to get a little more out of the No. 5 pick than Patrick Patterson, Toney Douglas and Cole Aldrich. Patterson has some value as an undersized stretch 4, but he’s a role player in his third season set to become much more expensive in the near future. With more talented players behind him in Houston, the Rockets would have been looking to give him away this summer. And while Robinson will be a more useful player in Kevin McHale’s uptempo system, he will probably never be a frontline starter. When the Kings selected him, they were thinking short when they should have been thinking long.

From an on-court perspective, Robinson didn’t make much sense for the Kings. DeMarcus Cousins is a low-post center who can’t protect the rim, so his ideal frontcourt partner is a shot-blocking power forward who can space the floor from the three-point line. It would be hard to find a worse fit than Robinson, an undersized big man without a consistent perimeter shot. Instead of making each other better, they made each other worse: they couldn’t co-exist defensively or get out of the other’s way on offense. As a result, with Cousins averaging 31 minutes a night, Robinson slowly slipped out of the rotation.

He will have a better chance to showcase his game with the Rockets. Rather than running an offense built around a post scorer, the Rockets spread the floor and attack with a barrage of pick-and-rolls. Robinson’s speed and finishing ability make him an excellent roll man and the four-out offense creates a lot of room for him to attack the basket. Not only is he now on the receiving end of James Harden’s passes, their breakneck pace (No. 1 in the NBA) gives him more chances in the open court. He’s more effective in transition, where he can use his speed and athleticism to his advantage, than in the halfcourt, where his lack of skill can be easily exploited.

All that said, Houston isn’t a perfect fit for him either. Since he can’t consistently knock down a perimeter jumper, it’s hard to play him and Omer Asik at the same time. The Rockets' offense is based around spacing the floor, and neither Robinson nor Asik can make a defense pay for leaving them open 15 feet from the rim. Asik is the only thing preventing their defense from collapsing in on itself like a neutron star, meaning Robinson will have to learn to shoot to play 30+ minutes a night with Houston. With the Kings, he had a 34% effective field goal percentage outside of 10 feet. Right now, he is best used as a small-ball 5, which means that if another team has a quality 6’10+ post scorer who can punish his lack of size down low, it’s going to be hard to find him minutes.

Developing an outside shot will be crucial for Robinson’s career. Since he’s unlikely to ever develop into an elite shot-creator, either with his back to the basket or off the bounce, a consistent jumper is the only way he can play as a power forward. When he plays as a 4, he can use his lateral quickness to defend in space on the perimeter; when he plays as a 5, he has to be an interior defensive presence and a rim protector. In college, he only averaged 0.87 blocks a game and outsourced defensive responsibility to Jeff Withey. That’s not going to work in the NBA, particularly when his skill-set demands a more offensive-minded big man next to him. He’ll have a long pro career regardless, but he’ll be a third big man if he doesn’t become more skilled offensively.

Robinson may have been more NBA ready than many of his peers, but that really isn’t saying all that much. For 99 percent of rookies, the first year in the league is mostly about survival. Not only have they just received a life-changing amount of money, but they have to become accustomed to the grind of an 82-game schedule. Players from BCS conferences might see an NBA-caliber player at their position once or twice a month; in the NBA, they match-up with multiple NBA-caliber players every single night. Their heads are spinning so fast that it seems unfair to even ask them to learn the complicated help-side defensive principles they never had to bother with in college.

If a team is depending on a rookie to be a foundation piece, they aren’t going to be very good. If they need a first-year player to be a complementary piece, he won’t be the one who pushes them over the top. There are situations where a rookie can fill a minor role on an elite team, like when the Heat drafted Norris Cole to match-up with smaller second-unit PG’s in 2011. Even if there was a higher-upside player on the board, Miami made the correct decision in taking a guy who gave them minutes in the NBA Finals as a rookie. However, for the most, there’s really no reason to draft a player based on what they are going to do in their first year.

When a player reaches the end of their rookie contract, what they’ll be able to do as they enter the prime of their careers is far more important than what they’ve done at the beginning. Coming out of UCLA in 2009, Darren Collison and Jrue Holiday both slipped in the draft. Holiday fell to No. 17 because he was many years away from his ceiling; Collison fell to No. 21 because there were questions about how high his ceiling was. Four years later, Holiday is an All-Star and Collison is falling out of favor with his third different team. Does it matter if Collison was a substantially better player in their rookie season?

Before this year’s draft, everyone acted like Andre Drummond was the biggest gamble on the board because of the lack of polish in his game. In reality, the real gamble was passing on a 6’11 270 monster with his type of freakish athleticism. If Sacramento had taken Drummond, he could have formed one of the biggest front-lines in the NBA and perhaps even made Cousins expendable down-the-road. Because the learning curve for rookies is so steep, drafting players is like shopping for a new car: they lose half their value once you take them off the lot. And if you go into the draft expecting that they will all need time to develop, you might as well take someone who can develop into something special when you get the chance.

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Reuniting the Morris twins marked an unusual starting shot to the trade deadline and was immediately followed by a much bigger deal also involving the Rockets. Considering the fact that the trades were done concurrently (and likely will become a three-way when it hits the league office) I will evaluate it as such.

The Rockets' Perspective

I had been critical of Daryl Morey and the Rockets brass since the Draft because they had a stockpile of not that special power forward and not enough time to play them all. Well, that just got emphatically clarified. Losing Toney Douglas and Cole Aldrich makes them slightly shallower at those spots for this season, but means nearly nothing to the team moving forward. As such, it becomes a simpler trade for the future.

Effectively moving Patrick Patterson for Thomas Robinson (and some pieces) absolutely makes a ton of sense for a team that has had plenty of time to evaluate Patterson and his fit with what they have. Robinson has a ton of potential and possesses the additional benefit of two extra years of team control (Patterson hits restricted free agency in 2014 and Robinson in 2016). Losing Marcus Morris for a 2013 second round pick may make people balk but the net moves save the team about $1.5 million for next season, marking a necessary sacrifice for a team in the free agency sweepstakes this summer.

On top of that, I am intrigued to see what Houston does with Francisco Garcia and Tyler Honeycutt, who could absolutely contribute to a team set at the starting perimeter spots but lacking somewhat when it comes to swingman depth.

All in all, Houston made a smart trade of Patrick Patterson for Thomas Robinson while picking up some interesting assets and some valuable salary space for the 2013-14 season in the process. Well done.

Grade for Houston: A-

The Kings' Perspective

I like Patrick Patterson but worry that the difference in years under rookie deals could end up hurting Sacramento relatively soon. After all, having a player closer to his peak makes remarkably little sense for a team who should not be looking to win the rest of this season and likely cannot make much noise next year. He could help try [emphasis on try] to stabilize former Kentucky teammate DeMarcus Cousins, but that is not enough of a benefit to outweigh the other costs. Now is far too early to give up on Thomas Robinson, especially when doing so for a guy who helps them more at a less valuable time in the team’s progression.

The other issue I have with the deal is that Cole Aldrich will be an Unrestricted Free Agent this summer by virtue of his option year being declined, while Toney Douglas will be Restricted but is not that good and plays a position where the Kings actually do not need help from a rotation player. Trading a swingman like Garcia who can actually shoot could be a problem as well though it’s not too big a deal.

Grade for Sacramento: D+

The Suns' Perspective

Trading a solid second round pick for a talented enough guy like Marcus Morris is fine. I personally love early seconds (since they are so cheap), but Morris has enough time on his deal and fit with Phoenix to make it a reasonable choice.

Grade for Phoenix: B

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