There is no bottom, it seems.
There was so much money spent by so many NBA teams on so many, uh, unproven players in free agency this season that Twitter came unglued. The dollars spent on the Timofey Mozgovs and Chandler Parsons
of the world seemed so outsized and inexplicable that NFL players took
to social media to complain about those players' lack of credentials. The money flowed and flowed and chaos seemed to reign, stopped only by NBA nation's Kevin Durant obsession. We all wanted to know if KD was staying in Oklahoma City (personal aside: his since-shuttered restaurant there was damned good, giving me a gastro-centric rooting interest) or going elsewhere.
His, though, was merely the biggest story of movement from team to team since the end of The Finals.
With so much TV money flooding the system, every team was compelled to spend as much of it as it could, leaving just about all of them dramatically different than they were just weeks ago.
This is where we, as ever, come in.
The annual rankings of all 30 teams is, again, just taking into account everything that teams have done since they last played a game, factoring in the Draft, free agency and trades.
Here's what it is not:
• A predicted order of finish for next season.
I do not expect the Jazz, for example, to have a better record than the Cavs. We're not talking about next year; we're talking about this summer. Is your team better now than it was before? That's all. (Some teams, though not all, have a Key Man or person listed in the rankings that is worth paying special attention to when assessing how productive their offseason was.)
• If your team is ranked in the top 10, it doesn't mean I love your team.
• If your team is ranked in the bottom 10, it doesn't mean I hate your team.
It's an opinion that seeks to answer a question: is the team better now than at the end of last season? The ranking reflects the belief on whether, and how much, that is so. (I like certain guys in the Draft more than others, so if your team took them, I probably gave it more weight. Doesn't mean I'm right.)
What plays into the rankings:
• This is art as much as science, weighing the impact both of the Draft and free agency, but also assessing whether teams got value in their free-agent signings. Overpaying the right player is as much a sin as signing the wrong player.
• New coaches, new GMs, new owners and new arenas are also significant factors in judging a team's summer success. A good coach can coax some more wins out of a roster, and a new building can generate the kind of revenue necessary to let a team be aggressive in pursuing free agents and trades -- if not this season, then in future seasons.
• Teams that are rebuilding obviously have different priorities than those making a championship push. That's factored in. It's why, even though I may like Oklahoma City's trade for Victor Oladipo, losing Durant obviously carries more weight. And a team like the Warriors that commits to paying Durant after already paying so many of its core players gets more positive bounce. That luxury tax is a real thing. Owners like Joe Lacob and Peter Guber in Golden State, who pay the tax to remain competitive, should get credit.
• Continuity matters here as well. The most successful teams identify a core group of players and keep them together several seasons; teams that re-sign their own players (at reasonable amounts) get good marks. The explosion in the cap means everyone has to be more aggressive, and everyone has to spend; keeping your powder dry for another day doesn't have as much cache as it used to.
Salary numbers, with a couple of exceptions, come from Basketball Insiders, whose Eric Pincus does the best job of anyone in the game of keeping track of all the moving financial parts, quickly and accurately.
Without further ado, here are my annual rankings for the Top 10 teams. You can find the rest of the rankings below ...
The Top 10
Warriors, Grizzlies, Jazz, Pacers, Celtics, Cavaliers, Suns, Timberwolves, Nuggets, 76ers
The Middle 10
Trail Blazers, Magic, Kings, Hawks, Hornets, Lakers, Mavericks, Rockets, Knicks, Pistons
The Bottom 10
Bulls, Clippers, Bucks, Thunder, Spurs, Wizards, Raptors, Pelicans, Heat, Nets
Source:http://www.nba.com/news/features/david_aldridge/morning-tip-david-aldridge-2016-offseason-grades-the-top-10/
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