What Are You Up To This Summer? Thunder, Nuggets, Timberwolves, Jazz, Blazers
Let's talk about the Northwest Division
Apologies for the lateness here. My dog has been sick for the last few days and so I wasn’t even able to get started on the write-up until around 11 a.m. this morning. I’ll still roll out the Southwest Division preview tomorrow, ahead of the opening bell of free agency.
Over the last few days, I’ve been going to go division-by-division through the league and laying out what decisions need to be made and what’s at stake for each NBA team this offseason. We began with the Atlantic Division, then hit the Central, Southeast, and Pacific, continue today with the Northwest and finish up with the Southwest tomorrow.
Some of these came out before the draft and some of them are coming out after it. That’s just the annoying way the schedule works out this year, with the draft and free agency starting within a few days of each other. Oh well, them’s the breaks.
Without further ado…
Northwest Division
Oklahoma City Thunder
Draft picks: Nikola Topic (12), Dillon Jones (26), Ajay Mitchell (38)
Key Potential FA: Isaiah Joe (TO/Non-GTD), Aaron Wiggins (TO/Non-GTD)
Big Decisions: Cap space, Joe and Wiggins options, Keeping books clean long term for the looming SGA/Jalen Williams/Chet Holmgren extensions
I really like OKC’s Nikola Topic pick in the same way that I really liked Denver’s Michael Porter Jr. pick back in the day. It’s a high-upside swing on a player who almost surely would not have been available this late in the lottery were it not for an injury, and it’s a swing the Thunder can afford to take because they already have their MVP candidate and a young core around him. OKC doesn’t have a player as good as Nikola Jokic, but it is in better financial position than Denver was then, and still has about 173 draft picks to use over the next several years. Taking shots like this is how you keep building an elite team.
I remain highly interested to see how the Thunder elect to use their cap space now that it’s clear they should be gunning for wins for the first time during this era. They have previously used it as a dumping ground for unwanted contracts so they could extort even more draft capital from opponents, but those days should be, and probably are, over now.
They can open up around $37 million in cap room if they so choose, and that’s enough to go shopping at or near the top of the market.Who their target should be, and whether they are willing to abandon or at least adjust their fundamental five-out philosophy to obtain that player, is also an interesting question.
When the Dunc’d On crew did their mock offseason, the Thunder landed Paul George. I’m not sure how realistic that is, but I’m also not sure if there’s a better basketball situation available to George. If they’re willing to play Chet Holmgren at the four more often, they make a ton of sense as the team to give Isaiah Hartenstein a Bruce Brown-style balloon payment contract. But whether a) Hartenstein be willing to sign a deal like that, knowing it could mean he’s eventually used a trade chip like Brown was (he’s talked about not liking moving around all the time and wanting a more permanent home); b) OKC be interested in even doing something like that is also in question.
If I’m interpreting things correctly (and given how complicated the CBA is, there is a very good chance that I am not), then Wiggins would be a restricted free agent if OKC declined his option but Joe would be unrestricted and therefore the latter seems all but guaranteed to have that option picked up, while what the Thunder choose to do with the former could tip us off to how they plan to use their cap space.
Denver Nuggets
Draft picks: DaRon Holmes II (22)
Key Potential FA: Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, DeAndre Jordan, Justin Holiday
Big Decisions: KCP UFA, How to replace him if he leaves, Backup PG, Zeke Nnaji trade discussions
The Nuggets don’t have all that much wiggle room to sign outside players in free agency, so I am pretty stunned that they are apparently more than okay with letting Kentavious Caldwell-Pope walk. You don’t say what Calvin Booth said the other night if you’re re-signing a guy:
I think we have to look at everything, and the nature of free agency is that he is unrestricted so we can try to bring him back but if he doesn’t want to come back or he chooses to go somewhere else, that’s his prerogative, we’ll have to work with that.
But I think we’re prepared to like, plug-and-play, so to speak. I think we look at some of the teams that have been good in the past. They have to find a way to replace fourth and fifth starters, and sixth men off the bench and still keep rolling.
It’ll be nice if KCP is back they have a lot of continuity together but I think all and all the stuff I’ve looked at the lineup stuff and everything Christian Braun is one of the best net rating guys in the league as is KCP. So I think if he has to step into the starting lineup, like probably projected I think, you know, we’ll be okay if KCP doesn’t return.
I mean… I fundamentally do not agree on any level that Christian Braun is a plug-and-play replacement for KCP on either side of the floor.
KCP has shot 38% or better from three in six of his last seven seasons, and over 40% each of his two years in Denver. Braun has made 37% of his 260 total three-point attempts in two NBA seasons. I don't think we can confidently say he is yet on KCP's level as a shooter. He has a bit more off-the-bounce verve but a) that's not always a good thing; and b) as the fifth option for most of his minutes, that's not going to matter all that much anyway. And KCP remains one of the best perimeter defenders in the NBA. Braun is not in his class yet. (KCP has graded out as 1.6 and 1.4 points better in Defensive EPM over the last two seasons, and has done so while routinely taking on some of the toughest assignments in the NBA, which cannot be said for Braun.)
And while I would note that yes, Christian Braun is a great net rating guy... that’s only true when he plays with Nikola Jokic. Just like everybody else on the team. Denver is plus-10.6 per 100 possessions when Braun shares the court with Jokic, and minus-13.2 per 100 when Braun plays without Jokic. Shockingly, it appears that Jokic — not Braun — is the one driving the success.
The Nuggets just don’t have a viable path to replacing KCP, either. I and several others were told that the Klay Thompson smoke was just that. And even if KCP leaves, the Nuggets are way too far over the cap to use the full mid-level exception. So they almost *have to* convince themselves that Braun can do it. They don't have any other options. Oh, and they also need a backup point guard after trading Reggie Jackson. Granted, they also needed a backup point guard before trading Reggie Jackson, but they have at least admitted it to themselves. All of this is to say, that two years after their title, the Nuggets will likely have lost the two role players they acquired to put them over the top and gotten nothing in return for either of them (KCP and Bruce Brown), while also not yet knowing whether the players drafted to eventually take over those roles (Braun and Peyton Watson) are actually capable of doing so on anything resembling a full-time basis.
Minnesota Timberwolves
Draft picks: Rob Dillingham (8), Terrence Shannon Jr. (27)
Key Potential FA: Kyle Anderson, Monte Morris, Jordan McLaughlin
Big Decisions: Anderson UFA, Karl-Anthony Towns trade discussions, Who the hell owns this team?
Minnesota made arguably the most fascinating bets of the draft. The Wolves are going to be a second apron team pretty much no matter what, so they will be extremely limited in their ability to sign veterans to anything but minimum contracts.
But there are no restrictions on the salary you can give draft picks, so the Wolves once again traded part of their future to improve in the present by sending their 2031 first-round pick (unprotected) and swap rights to their 2030 pick (top-1 protected) to San Antonio for the rights to Dillingham. Then they took Shannon with their own pick (one of the few they still actually had control over) at No. 27.
After seeing what Dereck Lively II did against them in the playoffs as a rookie last season, it’s an interesting bet to make — especially since, as mentioned, they had few other avenues to improvement. But the thing about Lively is that he is a marked exception, not the rule. Rookies are usually bad. Young, very small rookies who subsist on making tough shots (like Dillingham) are usually even worse.
Tim Connelly said they thought he was the best shot creator in the draft; and while that might be true, what the Wolves need is for him to make shots, not just create them. And it’s tough to be needing that from a rookie — even if he did shoot 47.5% from the field and 44.4% from deep in college. I'm not sure they should expect contributions from Shannon, either. He seems to be an okay-to-fine shooter and defender but the only two years where he looked like much of a prospect came in his fourth and fifth seasons in college. That's not the type of player who is usually all that good. But these are the guys Minnesota pretty much needs to count on to take the next step.
Utah Jazz
Draft picks: Cody Williams (10), Isaiah Collier (29), Kyle Filipowski (32)
Key Potential FA: Talen Horton-Tucker, Kris Dunn
Big Decisions: Lauri Markkanen renegotiation and extension, Cap space, Trade discussions
Utah can open up a whole bunch of cap space this offseason, but it would make sense to use a chunk of that to renegotiate and extend Markkanen’s contract, given how well he has played over the last couple years and that he is heading into the final season of his bargain deal.
The Jazz aren’t typically major players in the free-agent market anyway, and they seem contend to take a slow-build route to contention focused on draft assets and young players. They have now added Keyonte George, Taylor Hendricks, Brice Sensabaugh, Williams, Collier, and Filipowski in the last two drafts, along with Walker Kessler in the Rudy Gobert trade. George and Collier are both combo guard types, while Hendricks, Sensabaugh, and Williams are combo forwards and Filipowski and Kessler are centers. It’d be nice to have more plus shooters among the group, and maybe that’s where the next step comes in.
The Jazz still have potentially tradable veterans like John Collins, Collin Sexton, and Jordan Clarkson on the roster, and they can use those players to acquire either more draft capital or players to accentuate the skill sets of the young building blocks. Sexton seems like he might be one of those building blocks (he's still only 25); but Clarkson's contract seems like one that was signed to eventually be traded.
Deciding whether they are still in on Kessler as a long-term piece seems to be of importance. They reportedly dangled him in trade discussions ahead of the draft, which was surprising to hear — but he did take a step back in Year 2. Some of that was probably because playing him, Collins, and Markkanen together didn’t really work, and so they sent Kessler to the bench after he missed some time early in the year. He’s a non-shooting center in a league where that archetype of player is only particularly valuable if he’s a strong scoring option or elite rim protector, though, so he’ll have to rediscover his rookie-year form to be worth it for the Jazz to invest in him.
Portland Trail Blazers
Draft picks: Donovan Clingan (7)
Key Potential FA: None (Dalano Banton TO/Non-GTD was picked up)
Big Decisions: DominAyton, Robert Williams III, Jerami Grant, and Anfernee Simons trade discussions
Chauncey Billups can talk all he wants about how he’s willing to experiment and play Clingan and DeAndre Ayton together, but DominAyton is not long for this team. The Blazers are going to build around Scoot Henderson, Shaedon Sharpe, Toumani Camara, and Clingan.
Anything else that isn’t literally nailed down, it would not be surprising if Joe Cronin found a way to swing a deal. How much he’ll be able to get for the likes of Ayton, Williams, and Simons remains to be seen, but Grant seems like an excellent big wing/combo forward target for a playoff team that hopes he can be their version of Aaron Gordon. That should prove very valuable on the market, even if his contract is a bit onerous.