One thing not a lot of people are talking about with all the Brooklyn Nets drama is how much the Rockets stand to benefit. Houston owns Brooklyn’s 2024 and 2026 first-round picks as well as the right to swap first-round picks with the Nets in 2023, 2025 and 2027. If the Nets get worse, which looks like a certainty once Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving are traded, those picks that Houston owns suddenly become a lot more valuable.
That makes Houston but one of many offseason winners as we’re into Day 4 of the free agency period. We’ll slowly be factoring in draft results as we flesh out this full list of 2022 offseason winners and losers. This post will continue to update. Here’s what we have so far.
Winner: Boston Celtics
After finishing two wins from an NBA championship, the Celtics went out and landed Danilo Gallinari, who cleared waivers after being let go by San Antonio, and Malcolm Brogdon in a trade with the Pacers, who took back Daniel Theis, Aaron Nesmith, Nik Stauskas, Malik Fitts, Juwan Morgan and a 2023 first-round pick from Boston.
All of those parts are highly expendable for Boston, which essentially got Brogdon for a first-round pick that will likely land in the mid-to-late 20s. Brogdon is really good. He adds to Boston’s ridiculously stacked defense and is another ball-handler and scorer to live well in a flowing, egalitarian offense. Shocker: Another Celtic who can shoot, create and defend. Good luck finding a hole on this team.
Winner: Atlanta Hawks
Trading Kevin Huerter, a good player, for a draft pick that very well might not convey until 2027 is questionable to me. Now, if that pick eventually gets attached to, say, Clint Capela or John Collins and the Hawks flip for another All-Star-ish player (to go with the Dejounte Murray move), then we’ll reevaluate. But right now, losing Huerter just because you have a position logjam is tough. The Hawks would’ve almost certainly preferred to keep Huerter over Bogdan Bogdanovic, but the latter doesn’t have the trade value to bring back a first-round pick, protected or otherwise.
Still, getting Murray from the Spurs makes this offseason a win for Atlanta. It can still get better, but Murray alone is a really nice addition. There are pessimistic points about the pairing with Trae Young. Both thrive with the ball. Young is a more natural option playing off-ball, but he has to commit, and by commit I don’t mean simply standing somewhere spacing the floor while Murray is running pick and roll.
Young has to move. Cut. Relocate. Become a Steph Curry-like fly to track. I have my doubts about his desire to do that. I envision more of him moving once off a screen, not getting the ball, then standing around or, at best, running toward the handler for a dribble-hand-off. But even in that environment the Hawks are a better team. Murray is a second guy who can get two feet in the paint and he has really improved his midrange shooting.
Defensively, Murray is a long, athletic monster. He’s a nightmare on-ball and a hawk, so to speak, off the ball. You’re playing with fire even trying to run a DHO with him tracking. He’ll reach in with those Inspector Gadget arms and poke that thing away in a snap. The Hawks now have two high-level perimeter defenders in Murray and De’Andre Hunter. Onyeka Okongwu can be pretty big-time on the defensive end. If they trade Collins or Capela, it has to be for another two-way player so as to keep Young as the only real target in the starting lineup. That’s how a Trae Young team can survive defensively. Without any other weak links. Atlanta is making moves to create that reality.
Winner: Houston Rockets
First, Jabari Smith slipped to Houston at No. 3 in the draft. Most mocks had Smith going No. 1 to Orlando, with Paolo Banchero ending up with the Rockets. But Banchero went first, and Smith fills a big need in Houston with potential as an elite defender.
Banchero, an NBA-ready scorer who doesn’t project nearly as well as a defender, would’ve overlapped to a degree with Alperen Sengun, another highly skilled, offensive-minded big. With Jalen Green emerging as a big-time scorer, Houston is already offensively lopsided. Smith, who is also a terrific shooter and athlete, balances that out, and it wouldn’t surprise anyone if he ends up the best player in this class.
In addition, the Rockets could stand to be a major beneficiary of the Brooklyn Nets’ teardown. Here’s a refresher on all the future draft picks Brooklyn sent to Houston in the James Harden trade:
When Houston made this trade, the belief was that Brooklyn was entering what would be an extended stretch of championship contention. Those picks, certainly through at least 2025, were reasonably expected to end up in the late-20s range.
Once Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving are traded, which seems like an inevitability, those picks stand to become a lot more valuable. Brooklyn has no incentive to outright tank precisely because they owe these picks to Houston, but even in a case where they bring back established players in a Durant deal, those players are not going to be Kevin Durant. Even if the picks end up in the mid-to-late teens, or even the low-20s, that’s still somewhere in the ballpark of 10 draft slots higher than expected for Houston.
Winner: Zion Williamson
The man has played 85 career games over three seasons, one of which he didn’t play a single second, and he just got a five-year contract extension that could be worth up to $231 million. I’m not sure if this is a win yet for the Pelicans. If Zion plays and stays healthy for the majority of this contract, of course, it’s a win. New Orleans has a pretty damn good team brewing.
But if Williamson is in and out of the lineup and the Pelicans never gain real traction in a loaded Western Conference, and Zion’s trade value dips because he can’t stay healthy, this could end up ugly for the Pels. But for Zion, regardless of how it plays out, he walks out filthy rich.
Winner: Minnesota Timberwolves
The Wolves gave up enough capital to choke a hippo, but they got Rudy Gobert. After signing Karl-Anthony Towns to a four-year, $224 million extension that keeps him in Minnesota for the next six years, it’s twin-tower time in Minnesota, which sent back to Utah Malik Beasley, Patrick Beverley, Walker Kessler, Leandro Bolmaro, Jarred Vanderbilt and multiple first-round picks: unprotected first-rounders in 2023, 2025, and 2027, and a top-five protected pick in 2029.
Gobert is a one-man defense, and notions that he loses defensive viability in the playoffs have been greatly exaggerated. Given the Wolves’ ability to score the ball with Towns, Anthony Edwards and D’Angelo Russell, this suddenly looks like a really good team. It will have to be to justify this steep of a price, but it’s worth the risk. It’s been ages since the Wolves were actually a team to take this seriously, and I don’t subscribe to the theory that teams have to win a championship to warrant these kinds of gambles.
Indeed, the Wolves aren’t going to win the title next year. It’s probably a good bet that they won’t win one during the Gobert era, however long that lasts. You know why? Because only one team wins it all. That doesn’t mean the other 29 did it wrong. For the Wolves, this is a major jolt of franchise energy, building on the momentum they’ve already created with the drafting of Anthony Edwards and last year’s playoff appearance.
Same thing as the Hawks trading for Dejounte Murray. They gave up a ton. They’re likely not going to win it all. But they’re in the ring. They’re trying to fight. Fans love that. The energy around a franchise feeds itself. There’s no way not to be excited about the Wolves heading into next season, and when was the last time you could honestly say that?
All valid points.
But Durant’s wants are of no concern to the Nets. Meet his hardball with their own. You want to sit out? Fine. Sit out the next four years. You want to play somewhere else? We’ll see. Go find us a deal we want, not some frontrunner (again) that fits your purely self-interested needs. You want a ring elsewhere? Yeah, we’ve seen that story from you before. Just understand we’re chasing our own ring, and we won’t move you without the requisite pieces to make that possible.
Talk to the Grizzlies about whether they’d part with some of their young stars not named Ja Morant and a boatload of picks. See if, say, the Atlanta Hawks would swap Trae Young and a first-round pick for Durant. Call Houston about all those picks. Point out — and, yes, sure, this might be pushing it — that the irony aside it turns out two of the most compelling packages could actually come from the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Golden State Warriors. See if the Boston Celtics want to swap K.D. for Jayson Tatum or Jaylen Brown (and, in Brown’s case, then some).
Explore every crazy idea. Because trading K.D. for less than what the Nets need is more insane, more destructive, and more likely to end badly, just as it did when they succumbed to Harden’s same request.
Durant has already gone to the mattresses with his GM. It’s time for Marks, then, to remember that it’s not personal. It’s strictly business.
And the Brooklyn Nets are in the business of the Brooklyn Nets, not Kevin Durant’s next-team daydreams.
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