As NBA training camps open, here's a refresher on a busy offseason
For the vast majority of NBA teams, Monday marks media day and the start of training camp for the 2023-24 season. A lot has happened since Nikola Jokić led the Denver Nuggets to the franchise's first championship in June, so we are here to offer you a refresher course — the 16 things you need to know in the preseason.
1. Damian Lillard had his trade request granted. James Harden has not.
James Harden requested a trade from the Philadelphia 76ers on the eve of free agency, shortly after he picked up his $35.6 million contract option for the 2023-24 NBA season. Damian Lillard requested a trade from the Portland Trail Blazers on July 1, soon after the team drafted his replacement and failed to bolster its roster on the opening day of free agency. Lillard is entering the first season of the four-year, $176 million contract extension he signed in July 2022. Three months from their requests, only one has been traded.
In late July, the NBA warned Lillard in a memo shared league-wide he would face discipline if his agent continued to declare publicly or privately that his client would only comply with a trade to the Miami Heat. Discussions stalled between the only team Lillard had ever known and the only team he wanted to play for, and the seven-time All-Star recently softened to the idea of joining a third party. On Wednesday, as if willed by Giannis Antetokounmpo, the Blazers traded Lillard to the Milwaukee Bucks, forging a new title favorite.
Meanwhile, Harden made clear the Los Angeles Clippers were his sole preferred destination. He was fined $100,000 in August, when he twice told a crowd at a promotional event in China that Sixers president of basketball operations "Daryl Morey is a liar, and I will never be a part of an organization that he’s a part of."
Except, no trade has materialized for Harden. He risks further financial penalties if he does not report to Philadelphia's training camp, and if he sits out the season, he could lose his free-agent eligibility in 2024.
Lillard's trade and Harden's lack of one have left a handful of teams scrambling. The Bucks dealt Jrue Holiday to acquire Lillard, and on Sunday the rebuilding Blazers sent the All-Star and All-Defensive guard to the Boston Celtics, a team trying to keep pace with Milwaukee in the Eastern Conference.
The fallout could impact reigning NBA MVP Joel Embiid's commitment to the Sixers, all as new coach Nick Nurse tries to navigate the crosswinds in the preseason.
2. Giannis Antetokounmpo has not signed an extension.
Antetokounmpo told The New York Times' Tania Ganguli this summer that "numbers-wise it doesn't make sense" to sign a contract extension now, two years removed from the end of his contract. The two-time MVP also conceded his primary goal is to win another championship — not finish his career with one team — and if he does not think the Bucks can fulfill their end of that bargain, he will not re-sign with them.
That threatened to unsettle a team that has disappointed for two years, so they boldly pursued Lillard, hoping he can help deliver Milwaukee a second title in four years and convince Antetokounmpo to stay.
The Bucks tabbed first-time head coach Adrian Griffin to make good on that promise, but the roster around Antetokounmpo is no younger. Brook Lopez is 35 years old. Lillard and Jae Crowder turned 33 in July. Khris Middleton is 32 and oft-injured. Antetokounmpo, Lillard, Middleton and Lopez are owed $152 million in the final year of Antetokounmpo's deal (2024-25). Anything less than immediate success could be calamitous.
3. The defending Eastern Conference champion Miami Heat lost two starters.
After becoming the first eighth-seeded team to reach the NBA Finals in a full season, the Heat lost two starters to free agency this summer. The Cleveland Cavaliers and Los Angeles Lakers respectively paid Max Strus and Gabe Vincent to fulfill the same intensive difference-making roles they succeeded in for Miami.
The Heat counted Josh Richardson, Thomas Bryant and rookie Jaime Jaquez Jr. as their most important offseason additions. Every Miami move this summer was seemingly made under the assumption Lillard would be on the roster. The Heat idled, the Bucks and Celtics made their moves, and the reigning East champions will feel the losses of Vincent and Strus if they cannot salvage another top talent expediently.
4. The Boston Celtics swapped Marcus Smart for Kristaps Porziņģis.
The last three East champs in order: Milwaukee, Boston and Miami. And Boston has its own learning curve, having swapped Marcus Smart — the NBA's 2022 Defensive Player of the Year and the soul of the Celtics — for Kristaps Porziņģis, a resurgent one-time All-Star with a troubling injury history on his 7-foot-3 frame.
On the eve of training camp, the Celtics landed Holiday as their Smart replacement, but it cost them both returning Sixth Man of the Year Malcolm Brogdon and one-time All-Defensive selection Robert Williams III.
Theoretically, Porziņģis balances a roster that boasts All-NBA wings Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown and features Derrick White and Holiday in the backcourt. Porziņģis can protect the rim and dependably score from the post to the arc. He also withdrew from this past summer's FIBA World Cup with plantar fasciitis in his right foot. He joins 37-year-old Al Horford in a frontcourt that is now awfully shallow without Williams.
5. Ja Morant is suspended for the first 25 games of the season.
Meanwhile, Smart landed in Memphis as part of the three-team trade that sent Porziņģis to Boston and Tyus Jones to the Washington Wizards. Smart will serve as the Grizzlies' starting point guard in the absence of suspended All-Star Ja Morant. The NBA suspended Morant for the first 25 games of the season for wielding a gun in an Instagram video soon after he served an eight-game suspension for similar behavior.
Smart joins reigning Defensive Player of the Year Jaren Jackson Jr. on a team that will rely on its grit to survive the first third of the season. Upon Morant's return, Smart will fill the role vacated by Dillon Brooks' departure to the Houston Rockets, acting as a primary perimeter defender and secondary playmaker. The end result should be an upgrade for a back-to-back 50-win team that has floundered so far in the playoffs.
6. The Phoenix Suns went all in on Bradley Beal.
The Suns traded Mikal Bridges, Cameron Johnson and the rights to five first-round draft picks in February to the Brooklyn Nets for Kevin Durant. He helped Devin Booker and Deandre Ayton reach the second round of the playoffs, where they lost in six games to the eventual champion Denver Nuggets — two rounds short of where Phoenix finished in the 2021 playoffs. So, new Suns owner Mat Ishbia traded what was left of his future draft capital — six second-round picks and four first-round swaps — to the Wizards for Bradley Beal.
Beal is a 30-year-old three-time All-Star whose talents as a shooter and playmaker were wasted on a Washington team that missed the playoffs the past two seasons. He is also owed more than $200 million over the next four years, which, when paired with Durant and Booker, makes the Suns an expensive roster at the dawn of a new collective bargaining agreement specifically designed to discourage max-salaried trios.
Still, the Suns did well to piece together a roster around their three stars. As the third team in the Lillard deal, they turned Ayton into Jusuf Nurkić, Nassir Little and Grayson Allen. They added Eric Gordon for the veteran minimum and took fliers on Keita Bates-Diop, Yuta Watanabe, Drew Eubanks and Bol Bol. There are real questions about what any of them can give the Suns in the playoffs, but at least they have options.
The job of sorting out the rotation falls on new coach Frank Vogel, who built a championship squad out of a similarly built Lakers team in 2020, blending high-priced stars with a mishmash of lower-paid role players.
7. Chris Paul is on the Golden State Warriors now.
The Suns shed Chris Paul's $30.8 million salary in the Beal deal, and the tanking Wizards subsequently flipped him to the aging Warriors for the nine figures left on Jordan Poole's contract and a first-round draft pick in 2030. The 38-year-old Paul has had trouble staying healthy throughout the playoffs for the better part of a decade, and his latest postseason absence sent Phoenix in search of a more reliable third option.
Paul now aims to make a run at the title that has evaded his career with a team that prevented him from achieving that goal. Golden State coach Steve Kerr said his team boasts "six starters." He will need them to nurse Paul and a championship core full of 30-somethings through what hopes to be a 100-game season. Whether Paul starts in a defensively challenged backcourt, he should stabilize an offense that was putrid whenever Stephen Curry rested last season. How long his legs can hold up is the bigger question.
8. The Denver Nuggets are not the betting favorite to repeat as champions.
Since the turn of the century, Denver's 16-4 playoff record last season was the third-most dominant title run behind only the 2001 Lakers and 2017 Warriors. Both teams repeated the following year, and the Nuggets were betting co-favorites (along with the Celtics) to do the same — that is, before Milwaukee landed Lillard.
BetMGM's post-trade championship odds (as of Sunday):
Milwaukee Bucks +375
Boston Celtics +400
Denver Nuggets +500
Phoenix Suns +650
No other team, including the Warriors (+1400) and Heat (+3000), is better than a 12-to-1 favorite.
The Nuggets lost rotational contributors Bruce Brown and Jeff Green to free agency and did not replace them with veteran contributors over the summer. Instead, they expect promising sophomore wing Christian Braun to fill much of the void, and Denver executive Calvin Booth selected three additional upperclassmen between pick Nos. 29-37 in the draft this past June: Julian Strawther, Jalen Pickett and Hunter Tyson.
There is plenty of time to add depth on the trade and buyout markets, and the Nuggets still return a starting lineup of Jokić, Jamal Murray, Aaron Gordon, Michael Porter Jr. and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope that outscored opponents by 9.4 points per 100 possessions throughout the playoffs last season. Feels notable.
9. The Victor Wembanyama era is upon us.
Brandon Miller, Scoot Henderson, the Thompson twins and a host of other rookies, including 28-year-old reigning EuroLeague MVP Sasha Vezenkov on the Sacramento Kings, make for an exciting class, but the San Antonio Spurs will soon introduce a specimen the NBA has never before seen: Victor Wembanyama.
The 7-foot-4 Frenchman is among the handful of most-hyped prospects in NBA history, somewhere alongside LeBron James and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Wembanyama can score over anyone from anywhere on the court — even sometimes over everyone from everywhere — and his 8-foot wingspan is as disruptive on defense as any skill the game's best defenders can conjure. The future is here, and its name is Victor.
10. It was the summer of Anthony Edwards.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Luka Dončić were the two best players at the FIBA World Cup in August, which makes sense, since they were the only All-NBA first-team selections to play in the tournament. Journeyman point guard Dennis Schröder, who joined the Toronto Raptors in free agency, captured World Cup MVP honors, leading Germany to the gold medal, but Anthony Edwards was America's breakout star.
Granted, the U.S. failed to win a medal, but Edwards scored a team-high 26 points per 36 minutes — with room for more efficiency. More importantly, Kerr, the Team USA coach, said of Edwards, "He's unquestionably the guy. You can see he knows it. But now the team knows it, and I think the fans see it. ... He genuinely believes he's the best player in the gym every single night. And he's such a dynamic young player. I think he's taking a leap."
Every move the Minnesota Timberwolves make should be motivated by maximizing the roster around Edwards. Except, they stood pat this summer, running back the misfit frontcourt tandem of Rudy Gobert and Karl-Anthony Towns. Maybe an Edwards leap will spur the Wolves to better the roster more rapidly.
11. The Dallas Mavericks are desperate to satiate Luka Dončić.
The Mavericks' trade for Kyrie Irving restricted their ability to build around Dončić in many ways. They finished last season 5-11 together and missed the postseason entirely, but the investment of a 2029 first-round pick into Irving all but forced the front office to tie a $40 million annual price tag to the mercurial point guard for the remaining years of Dončić's contract. That leaves little room for significant roster upgrades.
Still, Dallas worked the margins in an effort to return to fringe contention. The Mavericks dealt Reggie Bullock and a 2030 first-round pick swap in a three-team sign-and-trade transaction that landed former Celtics forward Grant Williams, whose 3-and-D ability should complement Dončić. They reunited with Seth Curry in free agency and added Dante Exum, the former lottery pick who resurrected his career overseas. They shed Dāvis Bertāns' deal on draft day, replacing it with Richaun Holmes' contract, and in the process turned the No. 10 overall pick into the 12th (Dereck Lively) and 24th (Olivier-Maxence Prosper) selections.
How much any of this helps the Mavericks bounce back from a 38-win season to something closer to their 2021 Western Conference finals campaign is up for debate. Where that conversation settles by the end of this season will determine how loud speculation gets about Dončić's happiness in Dallas. He has seen the lengths the Bucks were willing to go to satisfy Antetokounmpo, and he will expect the same treatment.
12. Zion Williamson is back.
The healthy returns of 2021 No. 1 overall pick Cade Cunningham (stress fracture in his lower left leg) and 2022 No. 2 overall selection Chet Holmgren (Lisfranc injury to his right foot) are welcome sights at training camp for the young Detroit Pistons and Oklahoma City Thunder, respectively, but no comeback should be more anticipated than 2019 No. 1 overall pick Zion Williamson's hopeful reintroduction to superstardom.
Williamson missed the entire 2021-22 campaign with a fractured right foot, and a right hamstring strain ended his last season in January. He has averaged 28.5 games a season since entering the NBA, so optimism about his ability to stay healthy will remain tepid until we see it. Williamson has been a monster whenever he is on a court, and the New Orleans Pelicans anticipate him on the floor to start this season.
The Pelicans still have a ton of talent around Williamson, including Brandon Ingram, CJ McCollum and Jonas Valančiūnas. Second-year standout Trey Murphy III required meniscus surgery in September and could return in November. If Williamson can stay healthy and Murphy can get healthy, the Pelicans have every reason to believe they can be a serious playoff threat. They also have the talent and draft assets to chase the next big-name player who enters the NBA's never-ending trade portal.
13. The Houston Rockets are no longer trying to lose.
Fred VanVleet was the only recent All-Star to change teams in free agency, and he left the Raptors for a Rockets team that has lost 187 games over the last three seasons on purpose. The next highest-paid player to swap jerseys in free agency? All-Defensive wing Dillon Brooks, another FIBA World Cup standout.
The Rockets paid VanVleet and Brooks a combined $214.5 million to mentor Jalen Green, Jabari Smith Jr., Amen Thompson, Alperen Şengün, Cam Whitmore, Tari Eason and Jae'Sean Tate — an impressive collection of talented young players who emerged from the tanking wreckage. Houston also plucked Jock Landale from the Suns and Jeff Green from the Nuggets after failing to steal Lopez from the Bucks.
Now that Houston is no longer tanking, the NBA can count only the Wizards as a team built to lose. Even the post-Lillard Blazers boast a fascinating potential starting lineup of Scoot Henderson, Anfernee Simons, Shaedon Sharpe, Jerami Grant and Deandre Ayton. The Pistons and Hornets could also join a late-season race to the bottom of the standings, but it will not be for lack of trying to win at the outset of the season.
14. It is not all sunshine and rainbows as training camp opens.
Content warning: The following section contains graphic descriptions of alleged domestic violence.
The Rockets will reintroduce to the NBA head coach Ime Udoka, who was suspended from the Celtics for the entirety of last season for multiple violations of team policies allegedly stemming from an inappropriate relationship with a female subordinate in Boston. The Brooklyn Nets were also reportedly urged by some "strong voices" not to hire Udoka when they conducted a coaching search in the middle of last season.
Houston also counts Kevin Porter Jr. as a member of its current roster. Porter was arrested on felony assault and strangulation charges last month, when prosecutors allege he fractured a vertebra in his girlfriend's neck and left her bleeding above her right eye. The Rockets reportedly began shopping Porter's $15.9 million salary within days, offering draft capital as incentive. Naturally, they did not find any takers.
Meanwhile, Charlotte welcomes back Miles Bridges, who was arrested on similar charges prior to his 2022 restricted free agency. He allegedly assaulted his wife in front of their children. His spouse shared since-deleted images of her injuries to social media, including what she described as "a fracture[d] nose, wrist, torn eardrum, torn muscles in my neck from being choked until I went to sleep and a severe concussion."
Bridges pleaded no contest to a domestic violence charge and remained unsigned for the entirety of last season. In July, he signed a $7.9 million qualifying offer with the Hornets for the 2023-24 season, and his suspension will be lifted after the first 10 games of this season. He will be joined in Charlotte by Brandon Miller, the No. 2 overall pick in the June draft, who allegedly transported the firearm used in a fatal shooting at the University of Alabama in January, and James Bouknight, who in October 2022 was arrested when police allege he was intoxicated and unconscious in a parked car with multiple firearms in his possession.
15. There is a midseason tournament now.
We first reported full details of the NBA's new in-season tournament format in April, but commissioner Adam Silver's pet project is here now, so here is a refresher course on how the tournament will work:
Teams have been assigned to six intraconference pools of five (not necessarily by division).
Teams will play group games — one each against the others in their pool (everyone plays two at home and two on the road) — on four designated "tournament nights" (Nov. 3, 10, 14, 17, 21, 24 or 28).
The winners of each pool and two wild-card teams (the team from each conference with the best record in Group Play games that finished second in its group) will advance to a single-elimination tournament.
The tournament semifinals and final will be held in Las Vegas on Dec. 7 and 9. Every game but the title tilt will count toward a team's regular-season record. The two finalists will play 83 games instead of 82.
Players from the teams that reach the single-elimination quarterfinals will receive a portion of $18 million in prize money. Prizes will increase in each successive round to $500,000 per player for the champions.
16. End-of-season awards now come with a caveat.
In order to be eligible for the MVP, Defensive Player of the Year, Most Improved Player, All-NBA or All-Defensive awards this season, players must participate for a minimum of 20 minutes in at least 65 games (or 62 if a player suffers a season-ending injury and played in at least 85% of his games prior to the injury).
All-NBA selections who fell short of that standard in 2023: Antetokounmpo, Lillard, James, Curry and Jimmy Butler. In other words, we could have some funky awards announcements in 2024.
This is part of a league-wide effort to ensure more participation among star players. Teams can no longer rest multiple stars in the same game or any star in a nationally televised game without the NBA approving the absence. The league's definition of a star is anyone named an All-Star or All-NBA in the last three years.
