NBA Teams That Need a Full Rebuild This Offseason
Moderation isn't a virtue in the NBA. The league rewards organizations that operate at the extremes.
The goal of every team is (or should be) winning a title, and the ideal path to that destination usually involves minimal time in the league's dreaded middle. The blueprint is pretty simple: bottom all the way out, and then rise to the top as quickly as possible.
The teams we'll hit here are neither competing at a high level nor positioning themselves to do so any time soon. They lack financial flexibility, foundational stars or both. Barring some drastic action, these clubs are cranking out miles on the mediocrity treadmill, jogging along with no real chance to get anywhere meaningful.
If these teams only want to chase the eighth seed and an unceremonious first-round exit for the next several years, they don't need to do anything differently. But if they want to pursue a title—which, again, should be the point—something's got to give.
Notable Exclusions
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Rebuilds Already in Progress
Detroit Pistons, Houston Rockets, Oklahoma City Thunder, Orlando Magic, San Antonio Spurs
Let's See Where This Goes...
New Orleans Pelicans
If Zion Williamson ever gets back into action alongside Brandon Ingram, CJ McCollum, Jonas Valanciunas and Herb Jones, the Pelicans could be a force in the West. Plus, they could have as many as four incoming first-round selections and swap rights on three more over the next six drafts. New Orleans already has the young talent and draft capital that rebuilders need.
Getting out ahead of Williamson's potential trade demand is one thing. But otherwise, this is far from a teardown situation.
Indiana Pacers
The trade for Tyrese Haliburton was a stroke of rebuilding genius, and the Indiana Pacers will head into the summer with no bad contracts on their books. And yes, that includes Buddy Hield, an elite shooter with only two years and $40.5 million left on his deal. The Cleveland Cavaliers' top-14-protected 2022 first-round pick should also be inbound.
Haliburton, Chris Duarte and Myles Turner are all still young enough to improve, and Indy may have something brewing with 22-year-old former lottery pick Jalen Smith and 20-year-old Isaiah Jackson.
If Turner can't thrive with Haliburton setting him up and Domantas Sabonis out of the way, we can readdress this next year. For now, the Pacers don't need to do anything rash.
Totally Stuck
Los Angeles Lakers
NBA bylaws forbid rebuilding with LeBron James on the roster, and this team is so short on flexibility that any attempt to retool would be nearly impossible. The Lakers won't trade James or Anthony Davis, nobody will take Russell Westbrook without significant compensation attached, and the rest of the roster is at or below replacement level.
The only way out of this is better use of salary-cap exceptions and minimum deals this summer.
New York Knicks
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RJ Barrett is a potential star two-way wing who's shown enough growth in each of his three seasons to merit keeper status. The 21-year-old is knocking on the door of 20 points per game, getting to the foul line more often than ever and improving in spite of the rotten spacing and shaky personnel around him.
Toss in the other youngsters with rotation-or-better potential on rookie deals—Immanuel Quickley, Obi Toppin, Quentin Grimes and maybe even Cam Reddish—and the New York Knicks have some projectable bright spots. However, without an outlier year from Julius Randle and unsustainable good luck with respect to opponent shooting, the Knicks are just another boring, low-ceilinged occupant of the sub-middle class.
Randle's upcoming four-year, $117 million extension is an albatross unless he can somehow shoot 40 percent from three again. Evan Fournier, Kemba Walker, Alec Burks, Derrick Rose and Nerlens Noel make up a mostly overpaid or injury-prone veteran cast with little trade value and less upside. The Knicks have all of them on the books for next year, though the last three have team options in 2023-24 that could lead to financial relief.
The urge to resist a teardown is understandable for the Knicks, a theoretical free-agent destination that might balk at turning off interested parties by stripping the roster bare. However, the 2022 free-agent class is light on difference-makers, which means this might be the perfect offseason to trim the fat. Nobody of consequence is coming to the Knicks this summer anyway.
New York's 2021 offseason moves were mostly defensible. Fresh off a playoff trip, the Knicks tried to address areas of need like shot creation and backcourt depth, wisely utilizing team options to limit long-term risk. None of those signings have panned out so far, though, and it's getting harder to imagine any of them looking like good values in the future.
With noted "win right now, no matter what" head coach Tom Thibodeau likely to return and no realistic way to move off many of these veteran contracts without attaching picks, New York is probably going to run it back in 2022-23.
Remember, this is a list of teams that need to rebuild—not ones that can or will do it easily.
Portland Trail Blazers
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The Portland Trail Blazers dealt CJ McCollum and Norman Powell at the trade deadline in a pair of cost-cutting moves designed to increase optionality. Rebuild-adjacent activity, to be sure.
But as long as Damian Lillard is on the team collecting a max salary (with a potential two-year, $107 million extension coming this summer), trading McCollum and Powell will only count as half-measures.
The Blazers could keep Lillard, push the right buttons in free agency and regain their status as a competitive playoff team that absolutely nobody takes seriously as a contender. That's been their niche for the better part of a decade.
Of course, that safer path presumes Lillard will still be a fringe top-10 overall player in his age-32 season next year, and that a new front office —or the one currently led by interim GM Joe Cronin—will finally field a supporting cast that does more than look good on paper.
Alternatively, Portland could move Lillard, perhaps looping in the Los Angeles Lakers in a multi-team deal that would bring back Russell Westbrook's expiring contract, L.A.'s 2027 and 2029 first-rounders and more draft assets from other teams. Follow-up steps would include Portland using its own high-lottery pick plus New Orleans' (if it falls between Nos. 5 and 14), retaining Anfernee Simons in restricted free agency and shifting gears toward a youth movement for the first time in years.
It'd be painful for the Blazers to move Lillard, but it seems like their window for contention with him is closing rapidly. It'd be best to start thinking about how to open the next one.
Sacramento Kings
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If Tyrese Haliburton hadn't quickly gone up a level in a larger on-ball role with the Indiana Pacers, it would have been possible to defend the Sacramento Kings' decision to trade him.
Domantas Sabonis, who's already a two-time All-Star at the age of 25, headlined the return for Haliburton. There was a case to be made that he improved the Kings' present, and that Haliburton might never be as good as Sabonis already was.
But Haliburton did immediately thrive in Indiana, while Sabonis did nothing to contemporaneously elevate the Kings. That leaves them in a hopelessly familiar (or familiarly hopeless; either works) spot.
They could move forward with a maxed-out De'Aaron Fox and Sabonis as the pillars of the team. The former has performed better in the second half of the season but has come nowhere close to justifying his max contract, while that latter's claim to fame is being the best player on wholly mediocre Pacers teams.
In other words, the Kings might have traded their best young (and cost-controlled) player for a shot at being as good as the Pacers...who are now rebuilding because they realized they weren't going anywhere.
The Kings won't do it, but they should seriously look at moving Sabonis for picks and young talent. Ditto for Fox, though the asking price should be even higher given the fact that he's under contract through 2026, while Sabonis can hit free agency in 2024. Harrison Barnes will be on an expiring deal next year and plays a position everyone covets. Richaun Holmes is a starting-caliber big paid like a backup, and Justin Holiday fits anywhere.
Pull the ripcord on all of them, but hang onto Davion Mitchell, whose competitiveness and defense-first approach make him an ideal cultural tone-setter.
Back to Fox and Sabonis. It's hard to imagine a roster built around a point guard who can't shoot and a big man who can't space the floor or defend. Those are the guys who'll lead a surge against an increasingly tough West next year? Remember, three low-end playoff or play-in teams—the Denver Nuggets, Los Angeles Clippers and New Orleans Pelicans—should have Jamal Murray, Michael Porter Jr., Kawhi Leonard, Paul George and Zion Williamson back in 2022-23.
If you think starting all the way over is a bad idea, or that there's some kind of quixotic honor in chasing a .500 record, congratulations! You agree with an ownership group that has presided over zero playoff trips and the third-lowest win total in the league since it took charge in 2013.
Washington Wizards
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In a perfect world, the Washington Wizards would have traded Bradley Beal two years ago. In a slightly less perfect one, they would have moved him this season.
In this world, the one their years of inaction created, the Wiz have to either let Beal walk for nothing in free agency this summer or re-sign him to a max contract. The latter route will almost certainly outstrip his production, locking the team into another long stretch where simply making the postseason with a costly roster would count as an accomplishment.
Signing Beal with an intent to trade him might be the best of some bad options now, though the Wizards will likely want to see how he meshes with Kristaps Porzingis first. Pardon me for being skeptical about Porzingis' ability to help Beal and the Wiz make deep playoff runs when he couldn't do it with Luka Doncic and the superior Dallas Mavericks.
Kyle Kuzma (26) and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope (29) are plug-and-play depth pieces with universal appeal. Sure, they make sense as as win-now Beal sidekicks. But they also have trade value.
If everything breaks right for the Wizards, they could win 40-something games in 2022-23. Maybe even 50. But they just don't have a path to joining the conference's elite, and with Beal entering his age-29 season, a first-round elimination might be as good as things ever get.
In the more likely scenario that everything doesn't break right, Washington could find itself with an expensive, veteran-laden roster that again lands in the late lottery. Deni Avdija and Corey Kispert are the team's best young players at the moment, but neither project to be stars. It'll be difficult to draft that kind of talent without bottoming out.
Teams are always hesitant to go from mediocre to bad because of the potential to turn fans away. But it's clear Washington's supporters aren't interested in the current product; the team is last leaguewide in attendance.
The Wizards did this to themselves, but they can undo it by acting like a team that wants to do more than hang around the middle of the pack.
Stats courtesy of NBA.com, Basketball Reference and Cleaning the Glass. Accurate through Tuesday, March 22. Salary info via Spotrac.
