Ranking the Best NBA Free-Agency Signings of the Past Decade
The transformative power of major NBA free-agency signings has manifested itself in the form of championship banners, silly statistics and worst-to-first leaps up the standings.
Pick the right player—or, more accurately, have the right player pick your team—and your fortune can change overnight.
It's happened time and again in the past decade, so we're here to remember and rank the 10 best signings between 2010 and 2019. Since we're talking transformations, we'll focus only on players who switched squads. And while our ranking criteria is ultimately subjective, we're ultimately weighing significance, most easily seen in the success of a franchise and that player's part in it.
With that as our measuring stick, we're including only players who have suited up for their new teams. While last summer's addition of Kevin Durant could (and assuming a clean bill of health, should) catapult the Brooklyn Nets into a new plane of existence, we'll leave the Slim Reaper on the sidelines—as it pertains to his move to The Notorious B.I.G.'s old stomping grounds, that is.
10. Ray Allen to the Miami Heat, 2012
1 of 10How do you crack the all-decade free-agency team while barely breaking double-figures over two seasons? Single-handedly decide the outcome of a championship series, like Ray Allen did in 2013.
The sweet-shooting sniper launched his way to legend status in South Florida and a permanent place on the NBA's ultimate highlight reel with his miracle make. You almost want to attribute Allen's season-saving splash to luck given the degree of difficulty, but everything from the flawless footwork to the automatic release had somehow been rehearsed, as Erik Spoelstra told Bleacher Report in 2016:
"He would lay on the floor, pop up, backpedal, have the presence of mind to have his feet set and not out of bounds and have a coach throw him the ball. ... Afterwards I said, 'That seemed like a crazy drill.' Why would he do something like that—lay down in the middle of the floor?
"He said, 'It's extreme, but I want to prepare myself for when I'm in the lane, I hit the floor, I'm on the ground, offensive rebound that I have the fundamentals to be able to backpedal stay in bounds and be able to knock down shots.'"
Allen's unwavering commitment to training left him sharpshooting through his twilight years in Miami. Over his two seasons with the Heat, he had the 13th-highest splash rate (39.8 percent) among the 57 players to make 200-plus triples.
9. LaMarcus Aldridge to the San Antonio Spurs, 2015
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With Father Time finally catching up to Tim Duncan in 2015, the Spurs needed a new post player to help continue this group's death-and-taxes consistency.
Texas native LaMarcus Aldridge arrived just in time to scratch that itch.
Already a four-time All-Star by this point, the smooth scorer proved the Silver and Black could pluck an elite talent out of free agency's player pool. Over his five seasons on the River Walk, he has paced the club in points, rebounds, blocks and win shares—and the categories aren't close.
San Antonio opened his tenure with consecutive 60-win seasons, and while the victories aren't piling up like they used to, the team still has the Association's fourth-highest win total since he arrived.
The Spurs' need for a youth movement will split up this relationship sooner than later, but both parties should be thrilled with the mileage they've received from it.
8. Chris Bosh to the Miami Heat, 2010
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Being a third banana isn't easy, especially for a team as loaded as Miami was coming out of 2010 free agency. Based on the Heat's hierarchy alone, Bosh's numbers were never going to approach those of LeBron James or Dwyane Wade. That meant, for casual fans at least, that Bosh would rarely be credited with team success, but would make for an easy scapegoat when blame went around.
He shrugged off the criticism, though, and understood how quietly vital he was to the team.
"I just let it go," Bosh told Jonathan Abrams for a 2013 Grantland feature. "That's the only thing I can do, because I'm not going to get 30 and 15, or 20 and 10, with this team. Sometimes you have to sacrifice the glory."
Bosh, a five-time All-Star with career averages of 20.2 points and 9.4 rebounds when he landed in South Beach, molded his game however Miami needed. He helped unlock Spoelstra's position-less style by shifting from the 4 to the 5. Bosh expanded his offensive range to be a better floor-spacer, even though it erased his post-up chances and ravaged his rebounding rates.
Each of the four seasons on Bosh's initial contract with the Heat ended in the Finals, and two raised NBA championship banners into the AmericanAirlines Arena rafters. Bosh's plus-1,917 net points trailed only James over that stretch.
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7. Al Horford to the Boston Celtics, 2016
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The Celtics weren't a destination franchise for free agents until Al Horford broke the dam with his four-year, $113 million mega-deal in 2016. Suddenly, Brad Stevens' scrappy bunch had its All-Star glue guy, and the Shamrocks spent the ensuing campaign winning 53 games and reaching the conference finals.
Horford's fingerprints were all over the success. He led the team in boards (6.8) and blocks (1.3), while ranking second in assists (5.0) and third in scoring (14.0). Boston fared 4.1 points better per 100 possessions with him than without.
The numbers weren't knock-your-socks-off great, but his impact was in that zip code.
"Al Horford averaging 15 points a game for you is like other guys averaging 27," Stevens told reporters.
Horford's final two seasons with the Shamrocks saw more of the same. He defended like crazy, transformed his approach on the fly to find his nightly niche on offense and always made the team better. He also booked an All-Star trip and helped bring another All-Star, Gordon Hayward, to town.
6. Andre Iguodala to the Golden State Warriors, 2013
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Andre Iguodala wasn't the central figure in the Warriors' rise to world-beating behemoths. Whenever their story is retold, several names will be mentioned before getting around to his.
But he played a massive part in the formerly forlorn franchise flipping the proverbial switch.
The puzzle pieces started aligning almost the second he put pen to paper on his four-year, $48 million pact. The Warriors won 51 games in his first season, then pushed the third-seeded Los Angeles Clippers to seven games in the opening round. It would be the only time in his tenure that Golden State didn't advance to the Finals.
Speaking of which, when the Warriors had their 67-victory, championship-winning breakthrough a year later, remember who took home the Finals MVP? It wasn't Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green or any of the other three Warriors who outscored Iguodala in the regular season. It was their Swiss Army knife sixth man, who made his first start of the season in Game 4 of the Finals and led Golden State to three straight wins.
"He had never come off the bench once in his entire career, and he sacrificed that job to make Harrison [Barnes] better, to make our bench better, and that set the tone for our whole season," Warriors coach Steve Kerr said. "An All-Star, an Olympian, saying, 'OK, I'll come off the bench.' It set the tone for everything we were able to accomplish."
Iguodala's four-year contract wound up featuring three Finals trips and two world titles. He had the eighth-most net points over that stretch (plus-1,986) and was one of only three players to rank among the top 15 despite playing fewer than 8,000 minutes.
5. LeBron James to the Los Angeles Lakers, 2018
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Entering the 2018 offseason, it was fair to wonder whether the magic was gone in Hollywood. History suggested Lakers exceptionalism might once again save the day, but if you removed the team from its storied past, it seemed like just another big-market dreamer hoping for a splash.
Wrong.
LeBron James leaned into the Lakers' allure, and just like that, business was booming again.
"This moment is (to borrow a phrase from James) bigger than basketball," Howard Beck wrote for Bleacher Report. "It's about a restoration of faith. It's about the revival of basketball's premier glamour team."
James spent a single season as a solo star in L.A., and then Anthony Davis joined him last summer. Now the Lakers are right back in the championship race—if not leading it. James will presumably age out of his prime at some point—doesn't a cyborg's batteries eventually wear out?—but even at 35 years old, he's an MVP finalist and central figure for a heavyweight contender.
4. Kawhi Leonard to the Los Angeles Clippers, 2019
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While the Clippers had gained some respectability during the Lob City era, what went down last summer was different.
The Lob City Clippers came together through the draft (Blake Griffin, DeAndre Jordan) and a timely trade (Chris Paul, who almost became a Laker before the league nixed that deal). This time around, the Clips stood toe-to-toe with every team vying for Kawhi Leonard's services—including both the Lakers and the defending champion Toronto Raptors—and simply signed him outright.
That the Clippers coupled the Leonard signing with a trade for Paul George gave the organization reason to believe it had finally found its championship formula.
"The Clippers—yep the Los Angeles Clippers of Michael Olowokandi, and 12- and 10-win seasons and Donald Sterling—really pulled this off," Jeff Zillgitt wrote for USA Today. "This is a monumental moment—perhaps the biggest?—in Clippers history."
Leonard has been everything the Clippers could've hoped for and more. The four-time All-Star and two-time Finals MVP has never averaged more points (27.1), assists (4.9) or three-pointers (2.2). His 5.10 real plus minus ranks seventh overall, per ESPN.com; last season, when he helped bring Toronto its first NBA title, he was 46th.
Depending on the next chapters of this story, we might be underselling this signing's significance. But we don't know whether Leonard will bring a championship to the Clippers, and each player in our top three delivered at least one title to his team.
3. LeBron James to the Cleveland Cavaliers, 2014
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When the Cavaliers landed James with the first overall pick in 2003, he took them from a 17-win team to 35 victories as a rookie and had them in the playoffs by his third season. He'd eventually get them all the way to 66 wins in the 2008-09 season and an NBA Finals appearance in 2007.
When he returned from his South Beach sabbatical in 2014, the now-29-year-old accelerated their ascension. Cleveland went 33-49 the season prior to his homecoming and had a league-worst 215 losses during the time he was gone. The Cavs, who followed James' signing with a trade for Kevin Love, immediately reeled off 53 wins and made the first of four Finals trips as soon as he was back.
All four of his seasons back in Northeast Ohio were absurdly brilliant, but his second will live on in hoops' history books. That's when he went to battle with the record-setting 73-win Golden State Warriors and simultaneously helped Cleveland snap a 52-year championship drought and become the first team ever to recover from a 3-1 deficit in the Finals.
James, who collected his third Finals MVP, averaged 36.3 points, 11.7 rebounds, 9.7 assists, 3.0 steals and 3.0 blocks over the Cavs' three consecutive victories.
"I came back for a reason," James said, per ESPN's Kevin Arnovitz. "I came back to bring a championship to our city. I knew what I was capable of doing. … I knew I had the right ingredients and the right blueprint to help this franchise get back to a place that we've never been. That's what it was all about."
2. Kevin Durant to the Golden State Warriors, 2016
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The Warriors stopped short of mapping their championship parade routes when Kevin Durant joined the fold in 2016, but they knew—as did everyone else—they were about to do great things together.
"I'm excited about the opportunity to add one of the best players in the world to our team and welcome him to our brotherhood," Draymond Green told The Undefeated's Marc J. Spears. "This will be some of the best times of our lives and I'm looking forward to it."
Durant's three seasons in the Bay were cheat-code dominant.
His brilliance extended equally to volume and efficiency. His three-year averages in Golden State included 25.8 points, 7.1 rebounds and 5.4 assists. For context, only 18 players have ever averaged 25 points, seven boards and five dimes in a single season, and his sample size tripled that. Durant's 64.0 true shooting percentage was fourth-best among the 371 non-centers to log at least 1,000 minutes over that stretch.
The Warriors won a championship in his first season, knocking off the Cavs in five games. They won another in his second, this time sweeping LeBron and Co. Durant was Finals MVP of both series. The Warriors were heavy favorites to win the 2019 Finals, but they fell short after losing Durant to a torn Achilles and Klay Thompson to an ACL tear.
The union of Durant and the Dubs looked unfair from the start, and that's exactly how it played out. Still, it didn't quite match the historical significance of our No. 1 signing.
1. LeBron James to the Miami Heat, 2010
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Every time a notable free agent has swapped jerseys since 2010, there has an inevitably been a reference to that player "taking his talents" elsewhere. James' move to Miami obviously resonates for reasons much more meaningful than that, but think about that—he changed the way we speak, and that was maybe the 50th-most significant thing that happened.
The relocation and everything involved in it—"The Decision," the superteam power structure, the ability to use his voice and control his narrative—skyrocketed player empowerment to a place it had never been. James gave players a platform to communicate their message to the masses directly, and he helped them take charge of their careers (and, by extension, their legacies).
Oh yeah, and he also played some ruthlessly efficient, jaw-droppingly captivating hoops for the Heat.
His least productive season in South Beach (by player efficiency rating at least) was his first, when he averaged 26.7 points, 7.5 rebounds and 7.0 assists while shooting 51.0 percent from the field. If you're wondering how many players have ever gone 26/7/7 on 50-plus percent shooting, the answer is four: James, Michael Jordan, Larry Bird and Oscar Robertson. Remember, this was James' "worst" line of the four years.
Over his entire stay, he averaged 26.9 points, 7.6 rebounds and 6.7 assists while posting a 54.3/36.9/75.8 shooting slash. He led the league in PER, win shares and box plus/minus in each of his first three seasons. He made the Finals in all four and won a pair of titles. He won a pair of MVPs and a pair of Finals MVPs.
He simultaneously changed the sport and ruled over it. There has never been (and maybe will never be) another free-agency addition quite like this.
All stats courtesy of NBA.com and Basketball Reference unless otherwise noted.
Zach Buckley covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter, @ZachBuckleyNBA.
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