NBA Players Guaranteed to Have Breakout Year During 2013-14 Season

Likening the remaining NBA free agents to decorative couch cushions may be a slight overstatement, but for the most part all of the major pieces of the league's annual summer overhaul have fallen into place.

Dwight Howard passed on another year under Mike D'Antoni (and, reportedly in his mind, behind Kobe Bryant) to join forces with the Houston Rockets' bearded star, James Harden. Chris Paul re-signed for at least another four seasons with the Los Angeles Clippers, who bolstered their perimeter collection with sharpshooters J.J. Redick and Jared Dudley.

Andre Iguodala teamed up with the club responsible for ending his 2012-13 season, the Golden State Warriors. The Detroit Pistons brought one former All-Star back to his former basketball home (Chauncey Billups) after first locking up a potential All-Star (Josh Smith). 

And Mark Cuban's Dallas Mavericks came up short in their superstar chase once again, unless you're buying Monta Ellis' career scoring average (19.4 points per game) and forgiving his declining field-goal percentage (41.6 last season).

Trades can still happen between now and October, and there are still a few impactful free agents (Brandon Jennings, Nate Robinson) biding their time in the unemployment line. For the most part, though, teams know where they stand heading into the 2013-14 campaign.

Thanks to the new faces around them, or perhaps those no longer standing in their way, a number of players have quietly aligned themselves for career years.

The expectations have always been great, and there are reasons to believe that all of the players listed here are going to cash in on their tremendous talents starting this October.

*The 2013 postseason served as a breakout point for many future stars, so Jimmy Butler, Kawhi Leonard and Harrison Barnes have all been ruled out from consideration. 

**Hardware (All-Star Game selections or postseason awards) has also been seen as a sign of arrival, so there will be no Damian Lillard, Paul George or Jrue Holiday sightings here.

***All stats courtesy of Basketball Reference.

Eric Bledsoe

Eric Bledsoe is a supercharged, 6'1", 195-pound 23-year-old.

He's a walking highlight reel, a defensive pest and perhaps the league's best finisher-through-contact for a player of his size. With a ceiling not yet in sight, he's the ideal addition for a rebuilding team like the Phoenix Suns, particularly when you consider he cost them nothing more than Jared Dudley and a future second-round pick.

There are still plenty of unknowns when it comes to the former Kentucky star.

His shooting percentages from the field and the perimeter have shifted between respectable and abysmal (44.5 to 38.9 and 20.0 to 39.7, respectively). He's not a natural point guard yet, but Suns fans are eager to see what years of learning from people like Chris Paul, Chauncey Billups and Robert Pack have meant in terms of his development.

With expectations at their lowest, new Suns coach Jeff Hornacek can afford to give Bledsoe major doses of the sink-or-swim treatments. Given his chiseled frame and next-level athleticism, he's an intriguing candidate to share the floor with the Suns' incumbent floor general, Goran Dragic.

This is the opportunity that Bledsoe's spent the last three seasons waiting for, and he's simply too athletically gifted to let this slip away.

Andre Drummond

The Detroit Pistons had no idea what they'd found with the No. 9 pick of the 2012 draft, Andre Drummond.

In fact, no NBA team was quite sure what to make of the former Connecticut Husky, which at least partially explains how a 6'10", 270-pound athletic specimen was still on the board when Detroit made its selection.

After a year of delicate handling of Drummond, those kid gloves should be ripped off after the budding behemoth just decimated the competition at the Orlando Summer League.

He's still got plenty of work to do (even Dwight Howard can't believe Drummond's woeful 37.1 free-throw percentage), which is why a player of his caliber was even unleashed on the throngs of roster hopefuls in Orlando. He has all of the tools to succeed, but it's easy to forget that he's still all of 19 years young.

Unlike most of the players on this list, Drummond isn't the beneficiary of decimated rotations. In fact it's the exact opposite, as Josh Smith has since been added to Detroit's frontcourt.

But the raw ability is so great and the room for growth is so high, that it isn't out of the question for Drummond to thrive alongside his new teammate. 

Without a polished back-to-the-basket game, he posted a 60.8-percent success mark from the field last season. He also added 1.6 blocks and 1.0 steals on a nightly basis.

He's too good for the Pistons to sit, particularly if they're hoping to see instant returns on their $54 million investment in Smith. Detroit could still stand to add a pass-first point guard, but Smith and Greg Monroe see the floor well enough to give Drummond all of the touches he needs to succeed.

Derrick Favors

The Utah Jazz spent the better part of last season deciding which of their two productive post players was more expendable: Paul Millsap or Al Jefferson.

That question went unanswered past the trade deadline, but found its solution early this summer. Both Millsap and Jefferson were allowed to seek out greener pastures elsewhere, leaving the 21-year-old Derrick Favors free to roam through Utah's interior.

He's never logged more than 23.2 minutes per game through his first three seasons, but he's produced whenever given the opportunity to do so. He averaged nearly 10 points, eight rebounds and two blocks last season despite playing less than 24 minutes.

Long, lanky and super-athletic, he averaged a double-double (10.1 points and 10.0 rebounds) in eight starts last season. His offensive game is still a work in progress, but there are signs that his production will be on the rise.

Former Utah legend Karl Malone, second on the league's career scoring leaderboard, is tutoring the former No. 3 pick on the finer points of life in the paint. Also, Favors has added nearly 10 points to his free-throw percentage since his rookie year (68.8 up from 59.5), meaning there's potential that he won't have to rely on lob passes and put-back dunks for his points.

Jeff Green

Jeff Green's basketball resume is far from barren.

In five NBA seasons (he lost the entire 2011-12 campaign to a heart condition), he's already poured in more than 5,000 career points and snared better than 2,000 rebounds.

Still, there's always been a desire to see more from the former Georgetown star. He averaged 16.5 points and 6.7 boards in his sophomore season in 2008-09, but a change of scenery and a move down the scoring pecking order has kept him from reaching those levels again.

For the first time in a long time, though, he should be dramatically climbing his team's priority list. With Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Jason Terry shipped out to the Brooklyn Nets in exchange for future assets, Green should be heavily relied upon by new Celtics coach Brad Stevens.

He started 17 games for Boston last season, and in those games averaged more than 20 points per contest. With range beyond the three-point line (38.5 three-point percentage in 2012-13), freakish athleticism and a strong basketball IQ, he's a threat to score from anywhere on the floor.

The fact that he excels on both ends of the floor could make him a Stevens favorite before training camp is over. That is if his new coach isn't already gushing over his film. 

Gordon Hayward

Unlike Derrick Favors, Gordon Hayward didn't need Al Jefferson and Paul Millsap to clear out of Salt Lake City to blossom.

But with Jefferson and Millsap's combined 32.4 points per game (and possibly Mo Williams' ball dominance) removed from Tyrone Corbin's equation, the 23-year-old Hayward should be in line for the greatest statistical season of his career.

It's tempting to call him a jack of all trades, but Hayward may have already mastered a few of them. 

His career shooting slash line of .451/.401/.811 shows just how lethal he can be when he squares up to the basket. He's assisted on better than 15 percent of his teammates' field goals while on the floor in each of the last two seasons, despite shuttling in and out of Utah's starting lineup and often sharing the floor with another primary ball-handler.

The harder task with Hayward comes from defining an area of weakness. He thrives as a shooter, slasher, finisher and distributor and defends as well or better than anyone on Utah's perimeter.

If rookie Trey Burke is eased into the equation, expect tremendous responsibilities to be placed on Hayward's shoulders. If his first three seasons have taught us anything, it's to prepare for something even greater than his already high expectations.

JaVale McGee

The Denver Nuggets parted ways with reigning Coach of the Year George Karl in part because of his reluctance to give budding big man JaVale McGee major minutes. Denver then went out and landed one of the best minds in player development in former Indiana Pacers lead assistant Brian Shaw.

See what I'm getting at here?

The 25-year-old seven-footer has always held one of the most tantalizing skill sets in the NBA. 

He has registered at least two blocks per game in each of the last three seasons, despite never averaging even 28 minutes a night. He's added eight points to his field-goal percentage since his rookie season (57.5 up from 49.4).

And despite his on-again, off-again relationship with analysts, he's maintained or increased his efficiency rating in each of his five seasons, peaking (for now) with last season's 20.7.

He needs a coach like Shaw, who's willing to live with his occasional blunders and help to limit those unsightly appearances. Shaw's going to get everything he can out of his mercurial big man; his job might depend on it.

Ricky Rubio

One could argue that Ricky Rubio has already had his breakout season. Some would say that moment came before the Spanish point guard ever came stateside in 2011.

There's certainly some truth behind that sentiment. After all, he's already posted back-to-back seasons of double-digit scoring (career 10.7 points per game) and flirted with a 3-to-1 assist-to-turnover ratio (7.7-to-3.1 in his career).

But given all of the additions to the Minnesota Timberwolves' perimeter this offseason, Rubio should be well on his way to shattering his previous best statistical marks.

His own shooting form may never be fixed, but he'll have more room to operate thanks to the space-saving efforts of Kevin Martin (career 38.5 three-point percentage), Chase Budinger (35.8) and Shabazz Muhammad (37.7 three-point percentage in his lone season at UCLA). Not to mention the tremendous boost he'll receive in the form of a (hopefully) fully healthy Kevin Love (career 17.3 scoring average and 35.2 three-point percentage).

Rubio was identifying or simply creating passing lanes even while Minnesota put on an atrocious performance from beyond the arc last season (30.5 percent as a team). 

Once those lanes open wide enough for the common observer to spot them, imagine what this table-setting savant will be able to achieve.

Jonas Valanciunas

The Toronto Raptors had to wait a full season to see just what they'd uncovered with the fifth overall selection of the 2011 draft.

Anxious or not, Toronto wasn't about to toss its prized investment in with the wolves lurking in the NBA paint.

As the 2012-13 season wore on, though, the Raptors knew they were doing themselves and Jonas Valanciunas a disservice by hiding his talents on the bench. After averaging fewer than 22 minutes per game over the first four months, the 6'11" 21-year-old tallied nearly 29 of them on a nightly basis after March 1.

Clearly he was worth the wait. In those final 22 games, he averaged 12.5 points (on 60-percent shooting), 6.8 rebounds and 1.5 blocks. With Andrea Bargnani officially out of Toronto now, expect Valanciunas' playing time and the rest of his notable numbers to soar in his sophomore season.

Blessed with athleticism and mobility, he'll be an even more physically imposing threat with the added muscle he's shown off at the Las Vegas Summer League. His offensive post game could use a little fine-tuning, but time is certainly on his side in that regard.

If Toronto's perimeter threats can hold defenders at bay, Valanciunas is going to go to work on the low block.