Ranking the Most Promising Rebuilds Entering 2024-25 NBA Season
The NBA teardown is a pretty standardized process. Just trade veterans, hoard picks, clear cap space and embrace the ensuing losses for what they are: a means to find a new cornerstone in the draft.
There is, however, no set blueprint or timeline for a rebuild.
As we check in on five teams that are somewhere in the process of starting over, we'll evaluate them on the young talent they currently possess as well as the avenues they have to acquire more. We'll also factor in any hindrances to progress—unwieldy contracts, recent draft misses, etc.—and arrive at a ranking.
Finally, we've got a loaded Honorable Mention section populated by teams that many might expect to see listed but don't really fit the rebuild mold for one reason or another. In each case, we'll explain the difference.
These teams are all walking the road back to relevance. Let's see who's closest to that destination.
Honorable Mentions
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Utah Jazz
Thanks to the trades that sent out Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert, the Utah Jazz will have multiple first-round picks in 2025, 2027 and 2029, plus several additional swaps. The Oklahoma City Thunder are the only other team with a comparable stockpile.
Those assets alongside Keyonte George, Taylor Hendricks and Walker Kessler give the Jazz loads of upside.
That said, Utah doesn't feel like a true rebuilder because it just locked down 27-year-old Lauri Markkanen through 2028-29 at an average pay rate of nearly $50 million per season. Jordan Clarkson, John Collins and Collin Sexton are also still on the roster, and the Jazz have gone two straight years without embracing a tank until too late in the season to secure high lottery picks.
Maybe Markkanen is little more than a trade asset to Utah, but his presence along with a lot of generally anti-rebuild behavior means the Jazz don't get to feature in our top five. That's not necessarily a bad thing.
Chicago Bulls
They're at least trying to get themselves out of the middle, but the Bulls aren't quite in the rebuild realm yet. To get there, they'll need to move off of Zach LaVine's contract, ideally without giving up any of their own future picks to do so, and also find a taker for Nikola Vucević's deal.
Old treadmill-running habits die hard, and the Bulls raised eyebrows when they took Josh Giddey back from the Oklahoma City Thunder (instead of draft picks) for Alex Caruso.
Giddey, 21, is at least young enough to profile as a growth candidate, but Chicago onboarded him just as he hit extension eligibility.
Give the Bulls some grace. After years of chasing the eighth seed and avoiding the necessary pain of a real rebuild, they're new at this.
Toronto Raptors
Scottie Barnes is a cornerstone, and Immanuel Quickley might be close to that status, but this team is otherwise stuck in the middle.
Jakob Poeltl is making $20 million per season, RJ Barrett is what he is, and both Kelly Olynyk and Bruce Brown will look out of place until they're traded.
Toronto is too good to tank and not good enough to do more than threaten for a play-in spot. This isn't a rebuild, despite the absence of the previous veteran core: Fred VanVleet, Pascal Siakam and OG Anunoby.
Charlotte Hornets
Brandon Miller and LaMelo Ball are already good enough for the Charlotte Hornets to start thinking about a playoff push, and Miles Bridges' three-year, $75 million deal suggests tanking isn't in the cards.
Remember, too, that Ball earned an All-Star nod two years ago and is already on his rookie-scale max extension. The Hornets are starting over in one sense, in that they have a new head coach, ownership group and front office. But they don't belong among the early-stage rebuilds we'll cover momentarily.
5. Brooklyn Nets
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The Brooklyn Nets' biggest step toward a rebuild wasn't trading Mikal Bridges to the New York Knicks for five first-round draft picks, though that move certainly helped the cause. Instead, it was regaining two of their own future firsts, in 2025 and 2026, from the Houston Rockets in exchange for four future picks and swaps via the Phoenix Suns.
Normally, you wouldn't give up four first-round assets for two. But Brooklyn's teardown wouldn't yield ideal results if it couldn't cash in on the coming losses by using its own first-rounders in the next two drafts.
Now incentivized to lose, Brooklyn can go about shipping off veterans like Dorian Finney-Smith, Cam Johnson, Bojan Bogdanovic and anyone else not nailed down. Already in line to have upward of $55 million in cap space next summer once Ben Simmons' albatross deal comes off the books, the Nets could boost that number by another $37 million if they can get back expiring contracts for DFS and Johnson.
Brooklyn may not be able to maximize all its prospective cap space in an era that has lately seen fewer and fewer difference-making players change teams via free agency. The 2025 class looks pretty sparse, much like the one from this past offseason.
The real differentiator will be what the Nets can do in the draft. Their rebuild ranks this low because they currently have nothing close to a cornerstone player. None of their young pieces has star upside, and nothing matters more to a rebuild than securing that kind of talent.
Snag Cooper Flagg or Ace Bailey next June, and the Nets will be sitting pretty.
4. Washington Wizards
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The Washington Wizards would rank higher if it were clear they'll be able to move off several of their veteran contracts for positive value.
However, it's hard to be confident they'll get anything all that good by moving on from Kyle Kuzma, Malcolm Brogdon or Jonas Valančiūnas—three experienced players with starting-caliber games who have no place on a team as early into its rebuilding process as these Wizards.
If there was a quality first-round pick out there for Kuzma, who's averaged over 21.0 points per game in each of the last two seasons, the Wizards would have traded him last season.
Brogdon arrived in a deal that sent out promising young forward Deni Avdija, and the combo guard's game is a clean fit almost anywhere. But he's a full-on rental now, as his contract expires after 2024-25. It's fair to wonder if that means his value has dipped below first round-pick levels.
Valančiūnas was signed to be traded, but most teams these days aren't kicking down the door for a paint-bound center with iffy defensive credentials.
The Wizards' fate doesn't necessarily depend on moving those players for big returns, but if we're ranking teams, the seeming inability to trade for first-rounders matters.
Washington also has three years and just over $100 million left on Jordan Poole's utterly immovable contract.
Pick-wise, the Wizards are in the black. They owe a top-10 protected first to the Knicks in 2025 that'll turn into two seconds if it doesn't convey by 2026.
Unless something goes completely sideways, the Wizards will retain that selection and add it to a war chest that also includes all of their own future firsts and up to five incoming first-rounders or swaps from other teams. They also basically control the Phoenix Suns second-round picks through the rest of the decade.
Like the Nets, though, Washington is short on foundational pieces. No. 2 pick Alex Sarr is a long way from solidifying himself as someone worth building around, and Bilal Couliably, while intriguing, has a similarly uncertain growth trajectory ahead of him.
3. Portland Trail Blazers
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If Scoot Henderson had played all of last year like he did during April, when he averaged 19.4 points, 9.7 assists and 3.4 rebounds while hitting 41.7 percent of his threes, the Portland Trail Blazers would have a case for a top-two spot.
Unfortunately, his overall rookie performance, marked by the worst true shooting percentage in the league among the 116 players who attempted over 700 shots, was less stellar.
It's far too early to give up on Henderson, who still has cornerstone potential. But he didn't remove all doubt about reaching that level as a first-year player and has plenty to prove going into 2024-25.
Shaedon Sharpe has A-plus bounce and has shown real bucket-getting offensive verve, though his sophomore campaign ended after just 32 games due to injury. If it didn't seem like Anfernee Simons was more of a trade chip than a keeper, the 25-year-old would warrant mention here alongside the 21-year-old Sharpe.
On the whole, Portland's roster feels like it has a few spare parts to strip off. Donovan Clingan, Deni Avdija and Toumani Camara belong, but Jerami Grant, Deandre Ayton and Robert Williams III feel out of place. As the Blazers realize they might be the only team in the entire Western Conference without realistic play-in hopes, they'll look into jettisoning those vets for draft equity and financial flexibility.
Lest there be any doubt about the Blazers' incentives this season, they owe a lottery-protected first-rounder to the Bulls in 2025. Keeping that pick is an absolute must, so expect the Portland front office to pull the ripcord in a hurry if Henderson finds his form and gets the team off to a hot start.
2. Detroit Pistons
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Maybe this ranking is based on too much optimism about Cade Cunningham's potential. After all, we dinged the Blazers because it wasn't clear after Scoot Henderson's rookie year that he's a franchise pillar.
Cunningham is two years older than Henderson, posted a 50.4 true shooting percentage as a rookie that was barely better than Scoot's league-worst mark last year and saw action in only 12 games as a sophomore.
We're pinning a lot of hope on what Cunningham did in his third year, during which the Pistons set the NBA record for consecutive losses. That's a risky proposition given the lack of info lost seasons like that one provide.
Still, the 22-year-old did average 22.7 points, 7.5 assists and 4.3 boards per game while finally delivering on his potential as a shooter by hitting a career-high 35.5 percent of his treys.
While it's true Detroit got nobody's best punch last season, Cunningham deserves credit for producing despite cramped spacing, a dearth of reliable secondary creators and former head coach Monty Williams' maddeningly odd rotations.
After Cunningham, the Pistons are loaded with possible second stars. None of Ausar Thompson, Ron Holland, Jalen Duren or Jaden Ivey are guaranteed to develop into high-end starters, but each has a shot.
Thompson, in particular, seems highly likely to land on several All-Defensive teams as long as he can stay healthy.
The Pistons owe a first-rounder to the New York Knicks with protections that could turn it into a second-rounder if it doesn't convey by 2027. That encumbers their flexibility by limiting what other firsts they can trade, but Detroit shouldn't really be in the business of moving off its own draft assets anyway.
Also helpful: eight extra second-round picks are on the way between 2025 and 2030, offsetting the four outgoing seconds in that same span, most of which are protected.
1. San Antonio Spurs
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Insofar as it's possible, put Victor Wembanyama out of your mind for a moment as we consider the San Antonio Spurs' other rebuilding assets.
Start here: The Spurs have no fewer than three incoming 2025 first-round picks. They probably won't get all of them—from Atlanta (unprotected), Charlotte (top-14 protected) and Chicago (top-10 protected)—but that's a lot of darts to throw at a board that will feature Cooper Flagg, Ace Bailey and several other potential franchise players in an extremely well-regarded 2025 class.
But wait, there's more.
In addition to retaining control over all of its own picks, San Antonio owns a ton of more distant assets, including Atlanta's 2027 first-rounder, swap rights on the Boston Celtics' 2028 first-round pick, the most favorable 2030 first from either the Dallas Mavericks or the Minnesota Timberwolves, an unprotected 2031 first-rounder from the Wolves and swap rights on the Sacramento Kings' 2031 first-round selection.
Those picks could all be used as trade fodder or as a means to keep the young-talent pipeline flowing. Fortunately for the Spurs, there's already a considerable amount of that on hand, as No. 4 pick Stephon Castle, 21-year-old Jeremy Sochan and 24-year-old Devin Vassell are all likely improvers as they move toward their primes.
Already-clean books get even tidier by the summer of 2026, when the Spurs project to have nearly $86 million in cap space.
This is an exceptionally promising rebuild without Wembanyama. That the Spurs have all these assets, flexibility and growth candidates on top of the most exciting prospect in years makes them the easy winners here.
Stats courtesy of NBA.com, Basketball Reference and Cleaning the Glass. Salary info via Spotrac.
Grant Hughes covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter (@gt_hughes), and subscribe to the Hardwood Knocks podcast, where he appears with Bleacher Report's Dan Favale.
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