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Possible Fits For The Remaining FAs From Our Top-50 List

July 26th, 2024 at 8:03am CST by Luke Adams

Of the 50 players we listed as our top free agents of the summer last month, 43 have signed NBA contracts. That leaves seven unsigned players from that top-50 list. They are as follows:

Tyus Jones, G
Isaac Okoro, F (Cavaliers RFA)
Luke Kennard, G
Precious Achiuwa, F/C
Markelle Fultz, G
Cedi Osman, F
Gordon Hayward, F

There aren't a lot of viable destinations left out there for these seven guys, as many teams around the NBA have filled their projected 15-man rosters and/or aren't in position to continue adding players due to their proximity to the luxury tax line or one of the tax aprons.

Still, it would be a little surprising if these players doesn't have an NBA home by the fall. So where might they end up? Let's take a closer look to see if we can come up with logical landing spots for each of them.

Tyus Jones

We opened up a discussion on Jones' best fit last week -- I made a few suggestions in our article and got some good feedback from readers in the comment section. One thing that struck me during that exercise was that many of the best fits for Jones - a good distributor and shooter who never turns the ball over - project to be some of the worst teams in the league.

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Offseason Observations: Apron Impact, Rockets, Spurs, Okogie

July 18th, 2024 at 11:52am CST by Luke Adams

The NBA's offseason is far from over. As we saw last summer, when Damian Lillard was traded to Milwaukee in late September and Jrue Holiday was flipped from Portland to Boston on October 1, the trade market stays open into the fall.

We also could still see impactful moves on the free agent market occurring much later in the offseason, as was the case a year ago when Derrick Jones and P.J. Washington - two key members of the Mavericks' team that made the NBA Finals - signed their respective contracts during the second half of August (Washington signed with the Hornets before being traded to Dallas later in the season).

Still, the pace of the offseason action has certainly slowed down since the start of July, giving us an opportunity to look back and reflect on all that's gone down in the last few weeks.

From one of the biggest storylines of the summer (the impact of the new tax apron rules) to some under-the-radar developments (like the structure of Josh Okogie's new deal with the Suns), we're taking a closer look today at some of the more curious offseason subplots.

Let's dive in...

Has the impact of the new apron restrictions been overstated?

The concept of the tax apron has existed in the NBA's Collective Bargaining Agreement for years, and a second apron was implemented in 2023, but the 2024 offseason is the first time all the new apron-related restrictions introduced in the current CBA have been in place. Those new restrictions affect the trade market most significantly, with teams operating over the first tax apron not permitted to take back more salary than they send out and teams over the second apron prohibited from aggregating player salaries.

While it's true that these rules have made it challenging for teams with high payrolls to make moves as easily as they used to, I think they've also become a convenient scapegoat for teams to justify certain roster decisions.

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How The Sixers Used Every Dollar Of Their Cap Room

July 11th, 2024 at 7:15pm CST by Luke Adams

It has been rare in recent years for contending teams to operate under the cap in order to pursue star free agents. In each of the four NBA offseasons prior to 2024, between four and eight teams opened up cap room, and the majority of those clubs were coming off losing seasons and weren't going after top-tier free agents.

Prior to 2024, the last time an All-NBA-caliber free agent changed teams using cap room was in 2019, when Kawhi Leonard headed to Los Angeles and Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving landed in Brooklyn. Both the Clippers and Nets were coming off winning seasons and viewed their free agent additions as moves that would help push them over the top, cementing their place among the NBA's top tier.

Despite the fact that no team had replicated that free agency feat in five years, Sixers president of basketball operations Daryl Morey began heading down that path over a year ago. When word broke in June of 2023 that Philadelphia wouldn't be pursuing a rookie scale extension with rising star Tyrese Maxey, it became clear that Morey's front office was prioritizing 2024 cap flexibility in the hopes of adding another All-Star to the club's core.

Not only did the 76ers achieve that goal, but they cleverly made use of every single dollar of their cap space and their room exception to sign nine-time All-Star Paul George and three additional rotation players while preserving a possible trade chip who could help them further maximize their flexibility.

Let's take a closer look at how the Sixers have navigated the cap and made the math work so far this offseason:

The 76ers had 13 of 16 players from last season's roster become free agents on July 1, as RealGM's transaction log shows, meaning they entered the new league year with just three players under contract: star center Joel Embiid ($51,415,938), backup big man Paul Reed ($7,723,000), and 22-year-old guard Ricky Council ($1,891,857).

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