Winner: Indiana Pacers
Some teams make great, underrated moves in free agency to complement their roster properly. Other have to spend a little extra to attract talent, sometimes forcing the fit in the process. Our winner here is the former, while our loser is the latter.
Coming off a 48-win season where the Indiana Pacers were the pleasant surprise of the NBA and pushed the eventual Eastern Conference champs to Game 7 in the first round, finding the proper depth and shooting to complement their young core of Victor Oladipo, Domantas Sabonis and Myles Turner was paramount.
The Pacers did exactly that this summer, adding shooting in Doug McDermott, secondary playmaking in Tyreke Evans and frontcourt depth and intelligence in Kyle O’Quinn. Indiana signed all of them to team-friendly deals, enjoyed Thaddeus Young opting in for the final year of his contract, let Lance Stephenson walk and cut Al Jefferson‘s deadweight. Once again, the Pacers are flying high under the radar.
Loser: Sacramento Kings
Meanwhile, the Sacramento Kings are all over the radar and once again, it’s for all the wrong reasons. First, the Kings chose to use their ample cap room on Zach LaVine, offering him a whopping four-year, $78 million overpay that the Bulls foolishly matched.
Sacramento caught a break there after trying to add another 2-guard to a roster that already has Bogdan Bogdanovic and Buddy Hield, but then doubled down in stupidity by stealing Yogi Ferrell from the Dallas Mavericks and trading the useful Garrett Temple for what amounts to an ex in a broken relationship, Ben McLemore.
Disregarding the fact that Ferrell joins a crowded backcourt whether he mans the 1 (De’Aaron Fox, Frank Mason III) or the 2 (Bogdanovic, Hield), this marked the second free agent Sacramento poached from another team. By drastically overpaying Nemanja Bjelica for three years and $20.5 million, he crowds a frontcourt that already has Bagley, Skal Labissiere and Zach Randolph at the 4. The players Sacramento signed aren’t bad, but the fit (Ferrell, McLemore), money (Bjelica) and manner in which they were signed is questionable at best.