2013 NBA Offseason Decisions That Won't End Well

As the old saying (that I just made up) goes: Championships aren't won in the summer, but they can easily be delayed. 

A franchise's offseason decisions offer a glimpse into where it thinks it is relative to the competition and what its expectations should be. Often, organizations are either wrong or stubborn assessing their shortcomings.

Here are five situations where that seems to be the case. Five decisions made by five teams that will eventually come back to bite them in the near future. 

They are ranked from bad to worst.

5. New Orleans Pelicans Trading for Tyreke Evans

The New Orleans Pelicans did the impossible on draft night, acquiring a 22-year-old franchise point guard just coming off his first All-Star season.

Teaming Jrue Holiday up with Anthony Davis felt like the beginning of a beautiful partnership, with both players possessing skill sets that should complement one another nicely.

Then they took a turn down the wrong path, bringing Tyreke Evans in on a sign-and-trade that’ll pay him $44 million over the next four seasons (exactly $3 million more than Holiday—the better player who’s younger by a week—is set to make).

The Pelicans are trying to accelerate their rebuild, but teams that go down that road, more times than not, regret it in the long term. How will Evans fit with Holiday and the team's incumbent high volume scorer Eric Gordon? The probable answer? Not very well. 

4. Stubborn Behavior from the Dallas Mavericks

The Dallas Mavericks value financial flexibility. After winning the title in 2011, they immediately worried about their cap sheet instead of bringing all the pieces back and trying to win two in a row.

Today, that decision looks like the wrong one. They struck out on Deron Williams last summer, Chris Paul and Dwight Howard this summer, and they didn't want Andrew Bynum bad enough.

But instead of swallowing their pride and starting all over, the Mavericks spent July signing productive yet flawed veterans to long-term contracts. 

Monta Ellis, Jose Calderon and Samuel Dalembert will join Dirk Nowitzki, guaranteeing Dallas will fight for a seven or eight seed in the playoffs. Pending the severity of Nowitzki's pay cut, it might have enough cap space next summer to dole out a max contract. But will its roster be good enough to contend?

It's most unlikely, and the Mavs' stubborn approach to free agency this summer will only further delay the inevitable rebuild.

3. New York Knicks Trading for Andrea Bargnani

If it weren't for Greg Oden's knees, Andrea Bargnani would easily be the least productive first overall draft pick of the past 10 years. It's a devastating footnote for the Toronto Raptors, and for some reason, the New York Knicks want to share Toronto's misery. In early July they traded Steve Novak, Quentin Richardson, Marcus Camby and three draft picks (including a first-rounder in 2016) for Bargnani's services. 

The Knicks are desperate pseudo-contenders, now looking up at four or five teams in the top-heavy East. It's a franchise trying hard to maintain its status, but at the cost of mortgaging anything of value in the future, and Bargnani is far from their missing piece. 

The 27-year-old 7-footer has started just 56 games over the past two years, he's comically atrocious on the boards, and he shot just 40 percent from the floor last year (38.5 percent on jump shots, per Basketball-Reference.com.

Bargnani won't make the Knicks a better basketball team this coming year. And he'll drag them down in the years after that.

2. Charlotte Bobcats Signing Al Jefferson

It's difficult to explain this decision without first asking an important question: What’s the point? The Charlotte Bobcats have been toted as an aimless franchise since pretty much their inception, and rightly so.

They’re infested with a self-wrought culture of losing and have given no indication they’re capable of identifying or developing talent.

Bringing us to the team’s present day, and their decision to pay Al Jefferson—a personable man who will retire having made zero All-Star teams—$40.5 million over the next three years. The team needs to get better in its frontcourt (also, everywhere else), but overpaying for a center who could stunt the offensive development of just about every other young player (Kemba Walker, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, Cody Zeller, Jeffrey Taylor, etc.) on the roster is detrimental for obvious reasons.

Two years from now, when Jefferson needs to deal with his $13.5 million player option, it would be a total shock if the Bobcats were in any better position as a franchise. It’s ultimately a pointless signing.

1. Everything About the Denver Nuggets

A lot of bad things happened in Denver after the Nuggets were upset by the Golden State Warriors in a mostly one-sided first-round series in May.

They lost the three most important people in the organization (George Karl, Masai Ujiri and Andre Iguodala), then made a couple personnel decisions that could be described as puzzling, if we’re being nice.

What it comes down to, though, is their firm belief that the never-ending development project known as JaVale McGee is more valuable to their organization than Karl, a Hall of Fame head coach.

How they came to this realization is anybody’s guess. But unless Brian Shaw proves to have what it takes (something that may very well happen), it’s a choice that could haunt them for years.

The altitude will still be there, giving them a unique home-court advantage, but the Nuggets were once a successful team priding themselves on shrewd moves and an uptempo playing style. According to NBA.com/Stats (subscription required) Denver has ranked second in pace in each of the last two seasons. They were exciting, if for no other reason than their ability to compete sans individual All-Star talent.

This summer they fell back to Earth.