The NBA offseason! It feels like it never stops. Except here’s the thing: I think we’ve gotten to a place where it’s basically over and we’re just treading water until we get to training camp toward the end of September. Sure, we might get a trade request from a disgruntled star player before we get to preseason, and that request might be approved by his incumbent team. For the most part, however, it feels like we know where the free agents are and where rosters stand heading into next season.
With that, I thought it was a good time to look at how rosters changed and what it means for all 30 NBA teams. We can do that by examining what happened to them last season, how their four groups of players (lead guards, wings, forwards and bigs) changed this summer, whether or not the team got better, how they find success with the new group and giving them an overall grade for the summer. Also, we’ll bring you a local or national expert to answer three pressing questions about this team.
How an offseason ended up for each team depends on what its goals are for constructing its group of guys. These are the statuses available:
Rebuilding franchise
Tired-of-rebuilding franchise
Play-In Tournament gives them life
Playoff hopeful
On the brink of contention
Contender
Championship or bust
We’re going in reverse order in terms of team success from last season. The previous offseason recap was the New York Knicks. Here is a landing page for all of the team recaps that will come out during this period.
Now we break down the 42-30 Dallas Mavericks, who took another promising season with their young phenom into an unexpected offseason of turmoil.