The Duck Boats are parked and now we start again. The World Champion Boston Celtics parade has come and gone. Now the frenzy that is the NBA Off-season is officially underway.
The excruciatingly long, widely underwhelming postseason closed with Boston hanging banner 18 on Monday night. Save me with the “cupcake” path to Larry. We said it, several other people did all year long, Boston was just that much better than everyone else.
With the new league rules, teams have started negotiating with their own free agents (Pascal Siakim; Four/189.5-Indiana). Oklahoma City got even better on Thursday acquiring Alex Caruso for Josh Giddey. Sam Presti loves stockpiling draft picks and the Thunder have 11 firsts and seven swaps at their disposal, plenty of assets to help their biggest glaring weakness– rebounding.
We’ve got the elephant in the room, the Lakers. JJ Reddick, a flawed roster, LeBron’s “decision” and the done, but not officially done drafting of Bronny James. Udonis Haslem had the line of the off-season on Friday in talking about the Lakers roster. “JJ could draw up the annexation of Puerto Rico, it doesn’t matter what he puts out there, the Lakers do not have a championship roster” Haslem said. You know what? He’s not wrong. On top of the obvious, LA has D’Angelo Russell on a player option as well. Mix in ZERO projected salary cap space and a lack of assets and the Los Angeles drama in the offseason go together like milk and cookies.
The NBA Draft is probably the least intriguing it has ever been. In typical NBA fashion, it’s being drug out over two days, not one (June 26-27). Don’t get me wrong, from a personal level, I’m excited to see where favorites of my own (Donovan Clingan, Tyler Kolek, and Devin Carter) end up, but this draft lacks serious appeal.
Phoenix, Golden State, Philadelphia, Miami, and Milwaukee will be fascinating to see, because they’re all their own beautiful disasters.The Nuggets are close to a Jamal Murray extension due, and lacked the key depth that they rode to last year’s title on. Minnesota, Dallas and the other team in Los Angeles will have interesting off-seasons as well.
We’ve seen six different champions over the last six years which is “best for business”. The next few weeks will be a must-see, and go a long way to determining if there’s another party on Causeway next June or not. The HUB is again the center of the NBA Universe.
