2018 NBA free agency: 5 best signings

2018 NBA free agency was a season of hope and of disappointment. Which teams made the best signings this summer and what does it mean for the future?

The NBA is by definition a professional sports league, which seems to imply that the product it offers takes place during the actual competition. Yet year after year, the league manages to turn its many off-court events into engaging spectacles that fans cannot look away from.

From the NBA Draft Lottery to draft night to NBA Summer League to the Africa Game, the NBA offseason is as captivating as its season. Yet the biggest draw of them all is free agency, where casual fans brush up on their cap minutiae and players chase down money, fame and championship rings in moving from team to team at will.

In some years, the cap situation makes it a player’s summer, with gobs of money to pass around. 2016 was like this, when a spike in the cap left teams with the unfortunate ability to severely overpay middling free agents. The repercussions are still being felt in the league today.

This year, the pendulum has swung the other way, and only a handful of teams had significant money. While a few specific players hit their payday, more ended up signing for small contracts. In fact, the depressed market this season, combined with a looming cap increase next summer, led many players to simply sign one-year contracts to hit the market again next summer.

This means that a lot of value was out there for smart NBA teams to take advantage of. For some signings, the power is in the player’s hands. For others, teams used their leverage to sign quality players for low prices. A list of the best signings in the NBA this summer could be 30 or 40 players long.

To distill things down to a handful, we will move away from the majority of one-year contracts; in general the value on such deals is more limited than on longer deals. Yet honorable mentions should go to Tyreke Evans, Seth Curry, Shabazz Napier, Treveon Graham and Isaiah Thomas. Aron Baynes was the perfect player for Boston to re-sign to guard Joel Embiid. Not letting Marcus Smart walk was the right move, as was Philadelphia bringing back J.J. Redick at a solid figure.

Now without further ado, here the top five signings of 2018 NBA free agency.