In today's NBA, there are basically three kinds of teams: Really good teams with legitimate, short-term championship aspirations, really bad teams who are very clearly taking the longer view, and a bunch of teams stuck somewhere in the middle. From a roster construction standpoint, life is slightly easier for the first two kinds of teams -- who can operate, for the most part, with reasonable clarity, though there are always going to be tough calls to make.
For the teams stuck in the middle, there are nothing but tough calls.
On Tuesday, the Cleveland Cavaliers and Kevin Love agreed on a reported four-year, $120 million contract extension. With the signing, it would appear the post-LeBron Cavs have voluntarily signed themselves up to be one of those teams stuck in the middle -- not good enough to compete for anything beyond a lower-seed playoff spot, yet with a likely All-Star in Love, an exciting rookie in Collin Sexton and some leftover parts from the LeBron era, potentially not bad enough, particularly in the lowly lower half of the Eastern Conference, to secure a high-leverage lottery pick.
These days, we tend to evaluate teams, at least from the outside, through an extreme prism: Either you're a true title contender, or you're not -- in which case, some would argue, your best course of action is to start making moves to become one, whether that be flat-out tanking, trading big-money stars with whom you've seemingly plateaued, or at least not exacerbating the problem by signing any more high-priced talent that isn't going to take you to the next level.
Hello, Pistons and Blake Griffin.
This is why we've heard at least rumblings for a while that the Wizards might be willing to trade John Wall. This is why we started hearing Damian Lillard's name in trade rumors, because the Blazers, perhaps, could be feeling increasingly stuck in the middle. Or maybe they fear Lillard himself might start feeling this way, and they're scared of losing their star for nothing -- the new great fear around the league.
Either way, there is little glory in being just a good team anymore. The Raptors were clearly sick of it when they sent DeMar DeRozan to the Spurs for Kawhi Leonard, because Kawhi gives them a chance -- even if for just one year -- to be great. And if it doesn't work out, they officially start moving toward being bad. No more middle.
It's a shame in the sense that each year in the NBA there are maybe four or five teams, at the most, that can realistically consider themselves title contenders, and if every team that wasn't on that list started going the other way, you'd have 25 teams, in some capacity, throwing in the towel. The Cavs may still end up moving Love. In fact, with him locked up long term, there is a reasonable scenario in which a team with cap room -- one that strikes out on the big free-agent class next year -- would be happy to acquire Love, and would in turn give Cleveland an asset or two to ramp up its seemingly inevitable rebuild.
Personally, I still think that's the play. The Cavs lose their 2019 first-round pick to the Hawks if it falls outside the top 10, and that's a mighty valuable pick to give up just to finish seventh in the East. Don't rule out Love getting dealt before, or at, the February trade deadline. Beyond that, the Cavs were smart in front-loading Love's deal and making him more attractive to other teams in the final two years when he'll be making less money. That will be right about the time the Cavs' books start coming clean of all those dead-weight contracts. You can see a long-term play here that isn't necessarily about thinking they can still win with Love as their centerpiece.
Still, for the time being, the Cavs, pretty simply, are choosing to put their best team on the floor, and there's something refreshing about that, just as there's something refreshing about the Mavericks giving DeAndre Jordan $24 million. It's only for one year, but nonetheless, after drafting Luka Doncic and with no real path to any kind of short-term contention, the Mavs easily could've tried to bottom out to get another high pick next summer. But they didn't do that. They simply looked at their team and tried to get better, independent of where that might put them in the Western Conference hierarchy. They're competing.
It's easy, after all, to only look at your team in comparison to the teams you're ultimately chasing. We're not good enough to beat Golden State or Houston in the West, or Boston or Toronto in the East, so what's the point? Through that lens, the Wizards might look like a pointless team. The Blazers, Pelicans, Nuggets, Bucks, Pacers, Wolves and even the Spurs, who have decided to remain a middle-class team in acquiring DeRozan rather than pursuing younger assets, might all look like pointless teams, as harsh as that term sounds, in the grand scheme.
But isn't this a sad way to look at competition? Isn't there something to be said for these teams believing they can get it done, even if all us "experts" look at their team on paper and dismiss them as contenders? Isn't it cool that the Thunder were willing to pay a boatload of money to bring back a team that lost in the first round? They believe in themselves. They don't want to take a step back to maybe, if they're lucky, take two forward at some point in the future. They want to play ball, and I have to say, I'm pretty damn excited to see if they can do something nobody thinks they can. OKC was becoming a really good team last season before Andre Roberson got hurt. Without Carmelo Anthony, it stands to be maybe the best defensive team in the league.
Indeed, a lot of this comes down to the momentum behind your team: Are you on your way up, or down? Or, perhaps worse, are you flat? The Thunder, Nuggets, Jazz, Pacers, 76ers, Bucks, Lakers and maybe even the Pelicans are all teams on the ascent, teams that for the moment can feel good about just being good, with the hope of something more. At the same time, the Wizards, realistically, are probably a bigger threat to make the Finals than any one of those teams, except for maybe the Sixers. The Blazers could finish ahead of every one of those Western teams. They did last year. They just feel different because they have fallen short of a conference finals berth for so long, which can be said about most of the league.
The point is, whether you're on your way up, on your way down or stuck in the middle, a good team is a good team, regardless of the perception, and all of these teams are good teams. The more I look at it, the more I think there is nothing wrong with being good. Personally, I have become so tired of the NBA's predictability that I find myself quietly hoping every team that doesn't currently pose a threat to the league's top tier will remake itself. This is a selfish stance. And kind of a silly one.
Seriously, if you're the Blazers, for example, and you get rid of Damian Lillard, what are the chances that any of the players you get back, whether draft picks or current guys, will ever be as good as Dame, let alone better? Not great. It seems like you're tearing your team down just to hopefully end up back in the same place, if you're lucky. I suppose the same can be said for the Cavs and Love, who has lost a lot of his luster in taking a reduced role beyond LeBron and Kyrie Irving over the last four years but remains a guy more than capable of keeping a team competitive every night.
Bear in mind, this guy is still a really good player. Among players who shot at least five 3-pointers per game last year, he had the eighth-highest percentage (41.5) in the league, which is about dead-even with Kevin Durant. Along with Anthony Davis, DeMarcus Cousins and Karl-Anthony Towns, Love is one of just four players to average 17 points and 10 boards over the past four seasons. As a No. 1 option, he's still a potential 20-and-10 guy.
Who knows what this will ultimately mean for the Cavs. Maybe Love's defense -- and by extension their overall defense -- will be too detrimental for them to be a playoff team. Maybe they keep Love and still end up missing the playoffs and getting that top-10 pick. That's entirely possible. The Cavs, after all, were just 4-15 over the last four seasons in games in which LeBron didn't play, so its not like Love is even guaranteed to make them good. But for the time being, at least on the surface, the Cavs are at least trying to be a good team more than they're trying to be a bad one. And I guess what I'm saying is, good for them.
