The Nets are a glittering void. There's something else out there for us other than this anti-team. There is everything. Read more »

The Jazz are about as pleasantly low-stakes as basketball teams get. Every couple of years there's a team like this, with a young core who figure to improve game-by-game, a clever coach who knows what to do with them, vague championship promise that no one involved is yet under much pressure to make good on, and a slight chance to go on a playoff run. Read more »

Avery Bradley and Al Horford are a match made in basketball nerd heaven. They are two of the rare NBA players who take nothing away from their teammates while still having a level of production that's independent of the roster around them. Read more »

This Atlanta switch is the least bold decision of Dwight Howard's now-vagabondish career. The Lakers were supposed to be a superteam. Dwight and Harden were supposed to belong to a lineage of championship-contending guard-center combos. The 2016 Hawks are supposed to die an admirable death in the Eastern Semis. Read more »

James Harden in the Steve Nash role for Mike D'Antoni, the Spurs in the mid-range, whether Anthony Davis can expand his game, the Grizzlies' three-point shooting and how the Mavs may shift their offense in Harrison Barnes' direction. Read more »

Stan Van Gundy seems happiest when he's operatically exasperated. Even the best coaches, the sharp ones, the ones with self-awareness and success and a sense of humor- sketch a grim model for living: an insular, continual shoveling of debris into a hole within you that fills up for only so long. Read more »

For as long as his old man brilliance persists, Dirk Nowitzki deserves our effusiveness. There's a decent chance he's going to retire having had a single bad season: his rookie year, when he was 20. Read more »

On Chicago manufacturing space in their offense, the Greg Monroe dilemma for the Bucks, Jeff Teague unleashed in Indiana's system, Cleveland's veteran depth and whether the Pistons can still improve without Reggie Jackson. Read more »

The Nuggets have one of the deepest teams in the NBA but they also don't quite have a star and managing minutes to all of their deserving players will be difficult. Read more »

On the half-decade mark of Anthony Davis' stay in this counterproductive purgatory, the Pelicans will be afforded a soft reset. They can take a breath and think carefully about the sorts of players they want to bring in, and at what cost. Read more »

Rick Carlisle doesn't believe his guards need a defined position, and that might not be because he is some sort of advocate for position-less basketball. It's probably just because he has Dirk Nowitzki on his team, a man who has given careers to combo guards for over a decade. Read more »

It's rare for two players to inform each other in the way Marcus Camby and Tyson Chandler have, playing so similarly, slightly below the radar, following only slightly divergent paths. They're peculiar to this era. After Chandler is gone, he'll have no heir. Read more »

At least in the imagination, the Celtics are the most enticing rival LeBron will have faced since returning to Cleveland: a squad drilled by one of the league's better strategists, with a deep bench, and a new star who should pull them out of the East's grubby middle. Read more »

James Harden has shown he can be a passable defender in the past; last season was an anomaly for him. He'll always wander off a bit, but doing so intelligently instead of haphazardly could pay dividends. Read more »

The Pistons were an eighth seed last season, truly beginning their rise back to contention. There's now optimism of them bypassing the morass in the middle to get into the upper part of the conference. Read more »

Whatever the original vision was, it's been scrapped in favor of an ill-fated win-now scheme that's selling out everyone who stuck with the Magic as they stumbled like foundlings through the past few seasons. Read more »

While not the most impactful rule in the CBA, Designated Player extensions have played a meaningful part in some huge events over the last five years and are a key component of the overall extension and free agency picture. Read more »

If Tom Thibodeau and Scott Layden's first offseason is any indication of how they'll operate over the next few years - tempered, shrewd and logical - the Timberwolves will eventually do what everyone expects: Devour. Read more »

James Harden has the makings of a player we can enjoy but he needs recontextualization. He needs a coach who won't try to remake him so much as construct a system that urges him to play in the surprising, spectacular fashion of which he's capable. Read more »

While the Pelicans looked for healthy bodies, the Spurs, Rockets, Grizzlies and Rockets made significant changes to their core. Read more »