The 10 Biggest Takeaways from a Wild Opening Day of NBA Free Agency

Kyrie and Durant are Nets. Kemba, Butler, and Horford have new homes. The NBA has turned upside down. Let’s break it all down.

WELL, HOLY CRAP! 2019 NBA FREE AGENCY CAME IN LIKE A LION and roared for eight hours straight until darn near every free agent was signed before midnight struck and turned to the new league fiscal year. Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving are Nets. Kemba Walker is a Celtic. Jimmy Butler is in Miami. Al Horford’s in Philly. And just about no one is in New York or L.A.

It was one of the wildest days in NBA history, and the entire league looks different on July 1 than it did just one month ago. Almost everyone has signed other than the big kahuna, Kawhi Leonard, and even the minor characters are mostly gone. The NBA saw over $3 billion in contracts agreed to in its first 24 hours of free agency, which technically aren’t even over yet.

Let’s bounce around the league and look at the 10 biggest takeaways of a wild opening day of 2019 NBA free agency…

1. The Brooklyn Nets won free agency

Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant are Nets. That is a real thing. It’s crazy how much of a footnote it felt by the end of the day since the Kyrie news was on lock for weeks and the Durant announcement was one of the first of the day. But it’s by far the biggest news of the day.

In my free agency preview, I deemed only three veterans worthy of a full max contract. The Nets just got two of them, and they got them for less than the max too, since Kyrie and KD are apparently giving up some cash so their very fortunate buddy DeAndre Jordan can tag along in the least big Big Three yet.

The best NBA duos are now Lakers and Nets, and Brooklyn’s duo have both proven it on the biggest stage. Don’t underestimate how good the Nets already are. If Kevin Durant were healthy, this would be the immediate championship favorite. Everyone had fun smack talking Kyrie Irving but he remains one of the top 10 or 12 players in the league — Giannis, Kawhi, LeBron, Steph, and Harden in some order, followed by some mix of Dame, Brow, Jokic, Kyrie, Embiid, Butler, plus Durant somewhere along the way.

Healthy KD and Kyrie are really good, like just as good as LeBron/Brow, like just as good as LeBron/Wade. Like championship-caliber good. And it’s not just those guys. DeAndre Jordan, Jarrett Allen, and Nic Claxton are good bigs. Caris LeVert was breaking out before his injury. Spencer Dinwiddie might have been their best player in 2018–19. Garrett Temple, Joe Harris, Taurean Waller-Prince, and Rodions Kurucs are quality, versatile rotation pieces.

Now the Nets just need to get Kyrie and KD healthy. There’s a faint whiff of early 2000s Orlando Magic here, when Tracy McGrady and Grant Hill never got healthy on the same page, never made their run. Durant won’t be healthy this year, if he plays at all. Kyrie misses 15 or 20 games a season and has missed two playoff runs.

If the Brooklyn Nets ever get to April healthy, they may be the title favorite. But they might also get only one or two chances, if they get one at all.

It’s a risk they had to take, certainly. But the team that wins free agency isn’t always the one that wins in June.

2. The Warriors as we know them are dead.

It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.

Boogie’s quad. Durant’s Achilles. Klay’s ACL. There are no asterisks in sports, but we all know the playoffs would have played out differently with a full Warriors roster. Golden State never lost a playoff series with Steph, Klay, Draymond, and Durant healthy. And now they never will.

Durant leaving was one thing. We knew all year that might be coming. But then, at the end of a wild night, the Warriors shocked the NBA by completing a sign-and-trade for D’Angelo Russell. His incoming max contract means the Ws are hard capped and immediately led to another move, with Golden State paying a mostly unprotected first to send Andre Iguodala to Memphis to clear salary. Shaun Livingston will be next, one way or another. Kevon Looney won’t be back. Boogie is gone. Even names like Quinn Cook and Jordan Bell will be elsewhere this fall.

The Warriors as we know them are dead. They’ll enter this season with a three-man team of Curry, Draymond, and… D’Angelo Russell? It’s still so jarring. They’ll get Klay eventually, at which point they’ll have over $100 million committed to three guards that can’t play together. DLo wants the ball in his hands and is used to being the star, pretty much the antithesis of what made Warriors basketball so beautiful. Around those three it’ll be youngsters Jacob Evans, Jordan Poole, and Eric Paschall plus a new cast of veterans. That’s a 2.5-man team with little support in a deep, retooled West. Golden State might not even make the playoffs next season. And that’s not even taking into account the two first-round picks Golden State paid to do this or the max deal they’re giving to a guy that isn’t worth it right now.

Losing Durant stings, but Iggy’s departure is the real death of these Warriors. His tenacity, leadership, intelligence, and defense was a key part of the best the Warriors had to offer in this run. He was part of every great Ws lineup. There’s no more Hamptons Five. No more Death Lineup. It’s over.

The Warriors will reload. Maybe they’ll flip DLo as an asset play once Klay returns. They’re not dead. But they are dead as we know them. RIP.

3. The Lakers are ALL in on Kawhi Leonard.

The Lakers never seem to have a Plan B. Lakers exceptionalism at its finest.

So it’s all in on Kawhi Leonard.

Kawhi is the only one of this summer’s 12 marquee free agents standing — and reportedly hasn’t even taken a meeting yet. The Raptors, Clippers, and Lakers are waiting. Toronto either keeps him and runs it back or plays things out without him. The Clips either get him or run it back with a fun, young roster and plenty of avenues going forward. But the Lakers have a three-man team, a bunch of cap room they moved heaven and earth to drum up, and exactly one man left worth spending it on.

We wondered if the Lakers might sign Kyrie or Kemba to play with LeBron and Anthony Davis. We thought it might be Butler or a run at DLo, or that they might split their cap room between veterans like Patrick Beverley, Cory Joseph, Rodney Hood, or Jeremy Lamb. Nope, nope, nope, and nope. Every one of those names is off the board.

There is no Plan B. There’s no Plan C or D or E. If Kawhi doesn’t come, the Lakers might literally have to bring back Rajon Rondo and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope. They might have to absorb someone like Jeff Teague or Goran Dragic or themselves into Austin Rivers or Iman Shumpert. And this is their starting back court!! We haven’t even thought about building depth. And some of those names will probably be signed by the time you read this, too.

L.A. didn’t even pony up to keep Reggie Bullock, their presumed de facto two, now gone to New York. Heck, even if Kawhi signs, the Lakers STILL don’t have any guards. They’ll have Kawhi, Bron, and Brow and it probably won’t matter, but still. They’re out of options.

I don’t think it’s hit everyone just how bad this is all going to look for the Lakers if Kawhi doesn’t come and they strike out finding a star to play with LeBron a second straight summer in a wide open year.

4. Kawhi Leonard is the kingmaker.

The Nets are a year away. The Warriors are dead. The Lakers are incomplete. The Bucks got worse. The Sixers reset. The Rockets hate each other. The league remains wide open, even with every free agent in their new home.

And that means Kawhi Leonard is the kingmaker. Whoever gets Kawhi is the new favorite. If it’s the Lakers, duh. If it’s the Raptors, it means Danny Green too and running back a championship roster. Even if it’s the Clippers, it’s fair to like their chances now that we’ve seen what Kawhi can do with a strong supporting cast.

The world is your oyster, Kawhi. We wait.

5. The 76ers are zigging with everyone zagging.

Goodbye Jimmy Butler and J.J. Redick. Hello Al Horford and Josh Richardson. And get paid, Tobias Harris.

I love the Horford contract and hate the Harris one, and I’d rather have Richardson on his current contract than Butler on a max. The Sixers remixed their lineup again, with an even bigger, more defensive starting five of Ben Simmons, JRich, Tobias, Horford, and Joel Embiid.

And I like it.

I like that Philly is doing something different when the league is increasingly going smaller, focusing on offense and spacing. This is interesting! Horford and Richardson are 37% shooters and add more spacing overall than Redick and Butler — two shooters are more than one, and Butler made under one 3 per game in Philadelphia. This also means more shots for Harris, who ought to be taking the most shots in Philly now. And it means more time with the ball for Simmons and a possible Giannis role driving into more space with four willing shooters around him.

It just feels like everyone fits better. Richardson is the willing role-playing defender Butler once deigned himself to be. Horford will be a great high-low option with Embiid. Redick isn’t there to be hunted on defense anymore; now the weakest defensive link is Harris, a much bigger, more versatile defender. The offense will be more egalitarian. The defense will be more versatile.

This is interesting!

Philly is back to being a wildcard. And they’re back to being fun now, too.

6. The East is wide open.

Who’s your pick to win the East right now?

The Bucks got worse, losing Malcolm Brogdon and Nikola Mirotic. The Celtics downgraded from Kyrie to Kemba and have no Horford replacement. The Pacers added Brogdon and get Oladipo back in January. The Heat got Heatier with the addition of Jimmy Butler. The Nets might be the 2021 favorite but not until we know KD is back. The Raptors are dependent on Kawhi. And the Sixers are on their umpteenth iteration in the last few seasons.

Those are the seven teams. One of them will be in next year’s Finals. But your guess is as good as mine on which of the seven it’ll be.

For the record, my pick right now is Philadelphia… at least until Kawhi and Danny re-sign in Toronto.

7. The New York Knicks remain a laughingstock.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

The Knicks traded Porzingis. They waived and stretched Joakim Noah. They cleared cap room and tanked all season for Zion, Kyrie, and Durant. But they didn’t win the draft lottery, and then they didn’t win the Kyrie or KD lottery either and, according to Ramon Shelburne, weren’t even willing to give Durant the full max.

Listen, I literally wrote a whole article about the risk of signing KD off his Achilles injury. The risk is very real. But you’re the Knicks! You haven’t been relevant in 20 years!! Sometimes risk is good. Kevin Durant risk is good.

Instead, New York “played it safe,” dropping $21 million a year on 6th-man, Julius Randle, then signing a bunch of 1+1 team-option vets in Bobby Portis, Taj Gibson, Reggie Bullock, Wayne Ellington, and Elfrid Payton. Those guys are all nice and will probably net New York some second-round picks at the deadline, and that’s fine. But not one move helps the team in any meaningful big picture way. If they weren’t going to give KD the max, at least use all that cap room to stockpile draft picks eating Andre Iguodala, Allen Crabbe, Goran Dragic, and other contracts teams. That’s four first-round picks right there the Knicks left on the table to sign a bunch of veterans just good enough to knock New York out of pole position for next #1 pick next summer.

New York Knickerbockers forever.

8. The Mavericks and Timberwolves were quiet free agency losers.

Dallas thought they had a deal lined up with Miami in the Jimmy Butler sign-and-trade. Minnesota thought they were landing D’Angelo Russell and getting off one or two of their awful contracts. Then the music stopped and both were left holding their collective jockstraps.

Dallas is one of the few teams with a bunch of cap room, even after giving out a quietly dangerous max with no team protections to Kristaps Porzingis. But they didn’t even get a sniff from any of the big free agents and now, like the Lakers, have nothing to spend it on. Minnesota fans got hopes up for life after Wiggins and KAT spent all summer recruiting DLo. Instead it looks like another year with Wiggins, Gorgui Dieng, and Jeff Teague.

Both teams thought they had a big move lined up. Instead they got nothing while everyone around them got better. The Pelicans added J.J. Redick and Derrick Favors and look like a real playoff threat. So too the Kings, who added Trevor Ariza, Cory Joseph, and Dewayne Dedmon to their talented young core. The Clippers re-signed Patrick Beverley and might still get Kawhi. The Spurs are the Spurs. The Warriors, Thunder, Blazers, Lakers, Rockets, Nuggets, and Jazz are all clearly better. Minnesota and Dallas might be fighting for the West 12-seed, ahead of only the Suns and Grizzlies. Ouch.

9. Free agency is over before it even began.

And just like that, free agency is essentially over. In just a few hours, the entire NBA landscape changed. And there’s almost nothing left to figure out.

We’re still awaiting Kawhi’s decision, and Danny Green’s will follow. But the free agent pool dried up real fast after that. Boogie Cousins could still get a big short-term deal. There are other quality bigs like Kevon Looney, Kenneth Faried, and Willie Cauley-Stein. There’s a few intriguing restricted free agents like Delon Wright, Maxi Kleber, and Khem Birch. This is where we’re at already. It’s July 1st, and we’re already in talk-yourself-into-Jeff-Green range.

NEVER talk yourself into Jeff Green.

10. We might look back on June 30, 2019, as the beginning of the end of the Giannis Antetokounmpo era in Milwaukee.

All we think about right now is the present.

What’s happening with Kawhi? Who will the Lakers sign? Did the 76ers get better? How good will the Nets be? Are the Jazz really the best starting five in the NBA, and did this dude really just write a 3000-word column on free agency without even mentioning them?

But one year from now, I wonder if we will ultimately look back on June 30, 2019, as the beginning of the end for the Giannis Antetokounmpo era in Milwaukee.

The Bucks got definitively worse. Malcolm Brogdon was really good for them, and though he’s now overpaid and netted a future first, he’s a big loss. Brogdon was Milwaukee’s second best player in the ECF. He’s the only Bucks player that does a little bit of everything, a 50/40/90 guy that played off ball and shot the lights out. Milwaukee also lost Nikola Mirotic to Spain, and they used a first-round pick to give away a solid rotation wing in Tony Snell for cap savings they ended up not using to keep their guys.

Milwaukee did pay to keep Khris Middleton… and paid way too much, like $100 million too much, a contract that is immediately one of the worst in the NBA. They kept Brook Lopez and George Hill, who was mostly out of the rotation until they had no other options. They already paid for Eric Bledsoe, a worse fit than Brogdon, glaringly so in the playoffs. They’ll have those four and Giannis, plus very little off the bench unless you’re a big believer in Pat Connaughton, Sterling Brown, Robin Lopez, or Ersan Ilyasova.

Two things are undeniably true. The Bucks were not good enough this year. And they just got noticeably worse.

There’s a third thing that’s true — Milwaukee is now locked into this roster for a long time. Middleton will be there at least four years. BroLo is signed for four. Bledsoe is, too. This is the team. This is the core. Except you know who’s not signed for four years? Giannis Antetokounmpo.

Giannis is under contract just two more years. What happens when the Bucks don’t win 60 games again next season? What if they don’t even make the Eastern Conference Finals? What happens when Giannis looks around and sees teammates that aren’t good enough again and sees an ownership group he now knows isn’t willing to go all-in to give him the best chance to win?

Two years from today, Giannis Antetokounmpo is a free agent. And the clock just started ticking. Loudly. ■

Follow Brandon on Medium or @wheatonbrando for more sports, television, humor, and culture. Visit the rest of Brandon’s writing archives here.