The Toronto Raptors kept part of their core together this offseason in re-signing Kyle Lowry and Serge Ibaka, though they lost DeMarre Carroll, Cory Joseph, Patrick Patterson and P.J. Tucker. Toronto acquired C.J. Miles in the Joseph trade.

Masai Ujiri's moves were with LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers in mind.

“Our job is to beat him,” Ujiri recently told The Vertical. “You have to figure it out. If not, then go play in some other league or something. Go play in Greece. Our jobs, and the jobs of the players, [are] to figure out how to beat those guys. If not, you might as well give them the championship before it starts. I understand how good he is and I understand how good those teams are, but those things end. At some point, somewhere, somehow, we as leaders of our group, we have to figure out a way and motivate our players and give them the confidence to go out there and compete.”

Toronto was swept by the Cavaliers in the second round of the playoffs. 

“I don’t think we took a step back. I don’t like making excuses, but many things didn’t line up well. That was not a good feel,” Ujiri told The Vertical. “There’s no excuses for us. Cleveland was better than us at the time, so we have to regroup, come back and try to get a training camp out of it and grow from there. … There were times when our team was a little funky and we couldn’t get it together. You have to dig in-depth and find out what went wrong, and some of it, I think, it was complacency sometimes. Sometimes, it was chemistry. And sometimes, it was our style of play. Sometimes, it was us, individually. When we go back to the drawing board and address those issues with everybody, and everybody figures out, ‘This is what I didn’t do so well,’ and, ‘This is what we didn’t do so well.'”

Anthony Davis is "tired of losing" and believes the New Orleans Pelicans finally have a roster to turn things around.

"We can't wait for the season to come and try to make some noise here in the loaded West," Davis said.

"We're doing everything, whether it's signing players, trading players ... whatever it is to just try to make sure that we try to be a winning organization," he added. "We have the tools right now to be successful. ... Right now, I think we look good on paper. So we've just got to figure it out."

The Pelicans made the playoffs in 2015 as the No. 8 seed and have missed it each of the past two seasons.

In the past six months, the Pelicans have traded for DeMarcus Cousins, re-signed Jrue Holiday and signed Rajon Rondo.

"When I first heard about Rondo, I thought it was a good situation for us," Davis said. "He knows when to get guys involved, when to make that pass."

Davis said he's supposed to meet with new assistant coach Chris Finch soon to start discussing the offensive scheme he envisions when New Orleans' top two frontcourt stars are playing together. Finch worked with Nikola Jokic and Jusuf Nurkic with the Nuggets.

Davis said the Pelicans want to emulate "how they ran their offensive package with those two bigs who are very skilled."

Dwane Casey plans on allowing DeMar DeRozan to spend more time at point guard during the 17-18 season.

“We got to have a better mentality of ball movement, man movement and spacing,” Casey said on Wednesday while on The Andrew Walker Show on Sportsnet 590 The FAN.

“DeMar DeRozan, have him handle the ball a bit more as a point guard, a facilitator, a passer. Kyle Lowry moving the ball a bit more, spacing up. We don’t want to give our whole ‘what we’re going to try to do next year’ away, but again it comes down to passing the basketball and better spacing more so, than we know, one-on-one play.”

DeRozan played the role of facilitator while Lowry was out injured during the regular season.

“Everyone and their brother knows we want better ball movement,” said Casey.

Casey also wants the Raptors to rediscover their edge.

“We want to get that edge back, get that two-by-four I call it back on our shoulder, where you’re feeling hungry again,” said Casey. “I thought last year from a media standpoint, team standpoint, playing standpoint, coaching standpoint, front office standpoint, we got a little complacent. A little soft, so to speak. We’ve got to get that edge back to compete for a championship.”

With the Los Angeles Clippers moving out of the Chris Paul era, Doc Rivers expects their offense to feature more ball movement.

“Well, we’ll have ball movement,” Rivers said. “That’s one of the things, for the most part, that I’ve always preached. With Chris’ skill, you wanted to take advantage of what he could do, and he was a guy that needed the ball to make plays and he did it so well. You kind of changed to do that. If you look at my work historically, it’s been more of a ball-movement, cut basketball team, and that’s what we’re going to get back to doing.”

The Clippers ran their offense primarily through Paul and they were routinely near the top of offensive efficiency.

The New Orleans Pelicans plan on starting Rajon Rondo at point guard with Jrue Holiday at shooting guard.

The Pelicans are thin on the wing, which necessitates starting two traditional point guards.

Holiday has enough size and shooting to adequately play shooting guard.

Alvin Gentry said the Pelicans spoke to Holiday at length about this decision.

Steve Mills and Scott Perry are preparing to rebuild the New York Knicks.

"We want to build a team that centers on that group of guys growing together, which may take longer to do. It will take longer to do," Mills said. "But I think it's something the fans of New York are ready for and will accept."

Carmelo Anthony will remain expendable but they're not in a rush to trade him.

"If Carmelo is with us, we will continue to develop our young players," Mills said. "If he's not here, we'll continue to develop our young players."

Perry is not concerned with the dynamic working under Mills.

"We've developed a friendship," Perry said. "And I have complete trust in (Mills). I think we're very much aligned in our thinking, so I'm really excited about the prospects of spending time and working with him."

The Knicks will presumably have Kristaps Porzingis as the center piece.

The Brooklyn Nets don't anticipate any issues with getting Jeremy Lin and D'Angelo Russell enough minutes and enough time on the ball.

The Nets traded for Russell in June.

“I think Brad Stevens said this the other day: We don’t even look at the roster like 1-2-3-4-5. We have our smalls, our perimeters that can handle the ball. Then we have our wings, then you have your shooting bigs and your rolling bigs. It’s like, I don’t anticipate any problems," said Kenny Atkinson.

"The way we play offense, it’s very conducive to both of them getting enough touches. You look at C.J. McCollum and Damian Lillard — and I don’t want to compare the players — but they end up both playing a ton of point guard. They just stagger the minutes. So believe me, there’s gonna be enough minutes, enough touches for both of those guys.

"I look at it for myself as like, we just got another really good player. Jeremy’s really good, he’s really good. Now it’s up to our coaching staff to figure out how we can use them best.”

John Collins fell to the Atlanta Hawks at No. 19 in the 2017 NBA Draft and he had an excellent Summer League.

Collins ranks second in Summer League in PER at 32.5.

“I wanted to prove that I should have went higher,” Collins said. “Not to say that I’m not happy with the spot I’ve fallen. I’ve fallen to great spot, a great organization, the fans love me. I have a great opportunity here, which I’m blessed for. But I want to show everybody, I feel like I should have gone number one. Maybe that isn’t realistic. But I want to prove to everybody that I should have went higher. I’ve been overlooked most of my career. So I’m kind of happy, because it gives me that same energy, that same fear and drive.”

Collins was a first-team All-ACC selection in 2017 as well as the conference's Most Improved Player.

James Harden is looking forward to sharing the floor with Chris Paul. Both players have grown accustomed to playing with the ball in their hands but they will each have less responsibilities playing with each other.

"The last 13 years, he's had to dominate the ball so much because he didn't have somebody to help create plays for him," Harden said. "I know how I felt the last five years the same way, having to dominate the ball. It feels good to get a catch-and-shoot opportunity or to just run the floor and not have to worry about having to make a play every possession.

"It's going to be fun. There's no point guard, no shooting guard. We just go out there and make plays and make our team better."

Harden played a big role in convincing Paul to join the Rockets.

James Harden will be paid $228 million over the next six seasons with the Houston Rockets.

"It's rare that you feel so welcome, that you feel like you're at home and feel like every single day you wake up to go to work and have people around you to motivate you, that push you to be better, that you love to be around," Harden said. "That's another reason I signed the extension.

"I don't want to go anywhere. I don't want to deal with free agency. I know where home is. I know where I want to be. I know where I want to retire ultimately. And I know where I want to win a championship. Everything is going to happen in Houston."

Harden's relationship with Daryl Morey, Leslie Alexander and Tad Brown has grown over the years.

"The relationship we have here in terms of him pushing me to make the team better and his ability to recruit all these players ... is the modern way I think teams are going to be built," Morey said. "To get a cornerstone player like James and have him bring everybody to the party in Houston. We think next year is going to be the best team we've had, and it's all thanks to this guy."