1 Question Every NBA Team Needs to Answer This Offseason

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Every NBA offseason is filled with drama and intrigue, and this one will be no different.

No matter where you look, every team will have big questions to answer about their future—be it a coaching hire, a free agent or trade decision, or more big-picture uncertainty about the direction of the franchise.

Here’s the biggest question each team will have to answer this summer.

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Back in January, Hawks general manager Travis Schlenk admitted that running back last year’s Eastern Conference Finals team may not have been the right choice. Since those comments, they turned it around enough to get through the play-in and into the playoffs, but they look overmatched against the No. 1 seed Miami Heat. An early exit is all but inevitable.

The roster is getting pricey with extensions kicking in for Trae Young and Kevin Huerter, De’Andre Hunter up for a new deal soon, and veterans John Collins, Danilo Gallinari, Clint Capela and Bogdan Bogdanovic on expensive deals.

The only sure thing is Young; outside of Atlanta’s franchise player, any or all of those names could be on the move. How many changes will Schlenk make now that he’s seen what this team’s ceiling is?

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Al Horford has been terrific in his second stint with the Celtics, coming up big in the first two games of their series against Brooklyn with starting center Robert Williams sidelined with a knee injury. Horford has been starting alongside Daniel Theis since the injury, and the combo has proved effective. It should be enough to get them through until Williams returns, which could happen in the second round.

But Horford is also 35 years old. He isn’t going to be around forever or playing at this level forever. At some point, Boston is going to need to find someone, whether in the draft or free agency, to replace what he’s given them off the bench as they build for the next iteration of this group.

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Kyrie Irving has the ability to opt out of the final year of his deal, which would pay him $36.5 million. The Nets reportedly pulled an extension offer off the table during training camp, when it became clear that Irving’s vaccination status would prevent him from playing in home games at the start of the season.

That issue is no longer in play with changes to New York City’s mandate, and Irving more recently has said he has no desire to leave. But it’s worth wondering what the Nets’ appetite will be for signing up for four or five more years of everything that comes with having him.

Here’s how the first three seasons of Irving’s tenure in Brooklyn have gone: In his first year, 2019-20, a shoulder injury limited him to 20 games; last season, he took a two-week break without informing the team of his plans; this season, his refusal to get vaccinated against COVID-19 cost him the ability to play for much of the year. It would be understandable if the Nets decided they were done with the entire experience.

But Irving has been fantastic when he has been on the court, and the Nets’ ceiling with him and Kevin Durant is still sky-high for as long as Durant is as good as he is. In the end, that will probably carry the day.

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Last fall, Miles Bridges reportedly turned down a four-year, $60 million extension offer from the Hornets. Following a career year, he’s in line to earn much more than that as a restricted free agent, either by re-signing with Charlotte or signing an offer sheet with another team.

Coming off his third season, forward PJ Washington is also eligible for an extension. Both are important supporting pieces for the Hornets’ young group around LaMelo Ball. This group hasn’t been able to break into the playoffs, losing in the play-in two years in a row. But they’re still seen as a team with a bright future—if they can pay everybody.

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The Bulls had a fantastic first half of the season and a major letdown of a stretch run, going from first place in the Eastern Conference for much of the year to the No. 6 seed in the playoffs. They look to be a likely first-round exit against the defending champion Milwaukee Bucks.

Some of this can be attributed to injuries, most notably Lonzo Ball missing the last three months of the season and the entire playoffs with a knee injury. Top executives Arturas Karnisovas and Marc Eversley pushed most if not all of their chips in to create this roster, giving up a lot of future draft picks for Nikola Vucevic and DeMar DeRozan as well as different assets in a sign-and-trade for Ball.

Now, with Zach LaVine hitting free agency and almost certain to re-up on a deal worth over $200 million, they’ll have to decide whether more big changes are necessary to join the ranks of the true contenders in the East, or if they can just run this group back.

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Cleveland fell to Atlanta in the play-in round, but this season was still a major step forward for the Cavs, with No. 3 overall pick Evan Mobley making an immediate impact and guard Darius Garland and center Jarrett Allen making their first career All-Star appearances. Notably, they had all of this success without fourth-year guard Collin Sexton, who suffered a torn meniscus 11 games into the season and missed the rest of the year after undergoing surgery.

The timing of the injury was unfortunate for Sexton, coming one year after a breakout season in 2020-21 when he averaged career highs of 24.3 points and 4.4 assists per game while shooting a solid 37.1 percent from three-point range. Even before the injury, there were rumors last summer that the Cavs weren’t sold on him long term and were open to moving him. Now, he’s set to be a restricted free agent, and they’ll have a decision to make about whether to pay him big money coming off a major injury or move on without an obvious replacement.

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The Mavs already answered the question about the future of one of their best young role players, signing forward Dorian Finney-Smith to a four-year, $52 million extension after the trade deadline. Now, they’ll have a decision to make about fourth-year guard Jalen Brunson, who will be an unrestricted free agent this summer.

In his fourth season, Brunson established himself as a full-time starter and had his best season in every major statistical category. And that’s before we get to the playoffs, where he carried a Luka Doncic-less Mavs team to a Game 2 win over Utah on Monday with 41 points on 15-of-25 shooting.

It would make a lot of sense for Dallas to keep Brunson, but it may cost them. The Pistons and Knicks are known to be interested in signing him, and in a thin year for free agents, he could be one of the best names on the market, which could drive his price up.

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Jeff Chiu/Associated Press

Denver has enough talent to seriously compete in the Western Conference, but without Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr., they don’t have a chance. Murray missed the entire 2021-22 season rehabbing a torn ACL he suffered last March, while Porter was limited to nine games at the beginning of the season before undergoing back surgery.

Murray is close to being ready to return, but with the Nuggets down 2-0 to Golden State in the first round and looking overmatched in every way, it’s not worth it to bring him back at this stage. Hopefully, both Murray and Porter will be completely ready to go by training camp in the fall and finally make a real run with reigning (and likely repeat) MVP Nikola Jokic.

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Carlos Osorio/Associated Press

Although Detroit finished the year with the third-worst record in the NBA, there are signs the Pistons are close to turning it around. No. 1 overall pick Cade Cunningham had an outstanding second half of the season, and fellow youngsters Saddiq Bey and Isaiah Stewart blossomed as the season progressed. But it’s unknown whether their biggest name and leading scorer, Jerami Grant, is a part of their long-term plans given their intention to build the offense around Cunningham.

Grant is going into the final year of his contract, which will pay him around $21 million, and is known to want an extension worth over $100 million. There were teams interested in trading for Grant at the deadline, but the Pistons ultimately decided not to pull the trigger on any deal. Will they revisit those talks this summer with a decision looming about his extension?

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Through the first two games of the playoffs, third-year guard Jordan Poole has become such a sensation that all of Twitter is working overtime to come up with a nickname for the iteration of the Splash Brothers that includes a third sibling. He’s been so good that they haven’t missed a beat even bringing Stephen Curry off the bench to work him back from a foot injury that cost him the end of the regular season. They’re up 2-0 on Denver and look as dominant as they did at the height of their mid-2010s run.

It just so happens that Poole is up for an extension this offseason. The Warriors have never been shy about paying the luxury tax and are already paying huge money to Curry, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green and Andrew Wiggins. Will they add what will surely be a deal worth over $100 million for Poole to that total to lock in the next evolution of the Warriors as Curry and Thompson age out of their primes?

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Carmen Mandato/Associated Press

One of the strangest and most uncomfortable situations in the NBA didn’t get talked about much this season—John Wall was on the Rockets’ roster for a second straight year and didn’t play a single minute, despite not being injured. Houston simply didn’t play him, preferring instead to develop its young players with those minutes in a rebuilding season.

Wall’s name surfaced around the deadline in a rumored deal with the Lakers for Russell Westbrook that never came to fruition. Maybe that trade gets revisited this offseason. Wall has a player option for next season that would pay him $47.3 million, and there’s no way he doesn’t pick it up given his age and injury history. From there, he’ll either be traded if there’s a team willing to take on that money, bought out if he’s willing to give money back, or stay on the Rockets for another year while not playing. It’s an unusual situation that will have to be resolved in the offseason.

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The Pacers began the process of trading away their veterans before the deadline, shipping Domantas Sabonis to Sacramento for young guard Tyrese Haliburton, and Caris LeVert to Cleveland for salary relief. Between those moves and a season-ending foot injury for Myles Turner, they succeeded in securing the fifth-best odds in next month’s draft lottery.

Indiana now appears headed for a full rebuild, something the franchise has generally avoided doing over the decades. Turner and guard Malcolm Brogdon would figure to be next up on the trade block if they continue to go in that direction and go young around Haliburton and whichever prospect they take with this year’s lottery pick.

Both Turner and Brogdon should have some interest from contending teams if they are indeed made available in trades.

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Mark J. Terrill/Associated Press

At the deadline, the Clippers added reinforcements, picking up wings Robert Covington and Norman Powell in a trade with Portland. They ultimately fell short in the play-in tournament, but both of those acquisitions were impactful down the stretch after Powell recovered from a foot injury that kept him out for several weeks.

Now, Covington is set to become an unrestricted free agent. The Clippers are crowded on the perimeter, with Paul George back healthy and Kawhi Leonard (hopefully) ready to go by training camp. But with their lack of cap space or future picks, they don’t have many avenues to add talent, so they may look at re-signing Covington as a necessity. It will just be a matter of what his market is and how many other teams get in on the bidding.

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The Lakers face no shortage of potentially franchise-altering questions this summer. Who will replace Frank Vogel as the head coach? Will LeBron James sign an extension? Is trading Anthony Davis actually an option?

But the Westbrook situation, at least for now, appears to be the most pressing. Everyone in the organization is blaming each other for why that experiment didn’t work, but whoever is at fault, the fact is that it didn’t work. Westbrook is all but certain to pick up his $47 million player option for next season, but nobody thinks it’s tenable for him to return for a second season with the Lakers.

From there, it’s a question of exactly how their separation will go. The trade with the Rockets for John Wall that was kicked around at the deadline could be revisited, or another team could emerge with interest, either in taking his contract with future picks attached or in actually trading for him to play for their team.

The Lakers will likely have to attach at least one future pick in a deal, which will hurt their already limited capacity to add talent once James is gone in the next few years. They could just cut him too, but good luck getting Westbrook to agree to give money back in a buyout. It’s going to be painful no matter how it shakes out.

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Brandon Dill/Associated Press

The Grizzlies are the darlings of hardcore NBA fans and one of the most fun League Pass teams of the year. They improved dramatically on last year’s surprising play-in run to become the No. 2 seed in the West. Depending on how things break in the playoffs, they could make a deep run this year.

But this summer, they’ll have some roster decisions to make. Ja Morant, Jaren Jackson Jr. and Desmond Bane are set in stone as their core to build around, but one of their strengths has been their depth, with supporting players like Dillon Brooks, Kyle Anderson, Steven Adams and De’Anthony Melton all contributing.

Anderson is a free agent this summer, while Brooks is going into the final year of his deal. Eventually, they’re going to run out of minutes and money for everybody, so it may make sense to make some sort of consolidation trade, turning a few of these role players into one impact player at a higher salary. The Grizzlies have arrived as a threat. Staying there will be an interesting road to navigate.

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Without much fanfare, the Heat captured the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference and have jumped out to a 2-0 lead over the Hawks in the first round. They’ve got a star-studded, veteran roster including Jimmy Butler, Bam Adebayo and Kyle Lowry and a strong stable of younger players like Tyler Herro and Max Strus.

But if there’s one thing we know about the Heat under Pat Riley, it’s that they’ll always be in the mix to chase whichever star next shakes free. Maybe that’s Bradley Beal, should he decide not to re-sign with Washington. Maybe it’s his former Wizards teammate, John Wall, past the prime of his career but seemingly headed for a buyout from the Rockets. Someone else could come available that isn’t expected, and the Heat will forever have one of the most appealing sales pitches in the league.

If Miami makes the Finals with this group, they may just stand pat. But we know that Riley is always plotting his next big move. What will that be?

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Milwaukee has a lot of money tied up in four players—Giannis Antetokounmpo, Khris Middleton, Jrue Holiday and Brook Lopez—and is more than $20 million over the luxury-tax line. That commitment led to a championship last season, and they look to be in a great position to come out of the East again this spring.

But their supporting cast is going to stay expensive. They got lucky with Bobby Portis willing to come back at a discount for the title defense. But Portis has a player option for next season, as does Pat Connaughton, while Grayson Allen will be a restricted free agent. All of these players are due for raises, and it will be telling whether ownership is willing to keep paying to keep the window of title contention open.

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The Timberwolves are in the midst of their second playoff appearance since 2004 and first with D’Angelo Russell and Anthony Edwards as the other pieces of their Big Three alongside Karl-Anthony Towns. Edwards and Towns are the two clear building blocks, but Russell has been crucial during this run, including hitting some big shots down the stretch of their play-in game against the Clippers to secure the No. 7 seed in the playoffs.

Russell is going into the final year of his contract and will be eligible for an extension. It would seem to make sense that they’d want to keep him around long term, both because of his on-court fit and his close personal relationship with Towns. But any extension talks will come down to price and whether the Timberwolves are wanting to commit max or near-max money to their third-best player.

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After making it out of the play-in to capture the No. 8 seed, the Pelicans are tied 1-1 with top-seeded Phoenix. The deadline pickup of CJ McCollum has been a huge win, as was last summer’s hiring of Willie Green as head coach. Rookies Herb Jones and Jose Alvarado have far exceeded expectations as playoff contributors. But hanging over all of this is the fate of Zion Williamson, who has yet to play a game this season after undergoing offseason foot surgery.

Williamson is eligible for an extension of his rookie deal this summer. He will surely want the full max, and on talent there’s no doubt he deserves it. But whispers from his camp that he wants to be somewhere else (read: New York) have never fully gone away. Pelicans president David Griffin will have to decide if the double whammy of that speculation and Williamson’s injury history is enough to deter him from committing that much money. Maybe they can work out something like the deal Joel Embiid signed with the Sixers in 2017, which was filled with games-played incentives to mitigate how much time he had missed over his first three seasons. 

The Pelicans players who are actually playing are currently a great story. If Williamson is healthy and bought in to the future, they could be truly dangerous.

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Carlos Osorio/Associated Press

Coming off a career year and Most Improved Player campaign last season, Randle signed a four-year, $117 million extension with the Knicks. He immediately regressed from last year’s breakout, and at various points got into back-and-forths with fans who were displeased with his performance.

Last summer, the Knicks front office doubled down on the team that led them to their first playoff appearance in eight years. That decision has backfired, and most of those players are now negative assets on the contracts they’re on. What will New York be able to do this summer to course-correct, and will a Randle trade be a part of that? Team president Leon Rose didn’t give a press conference after their season ended, so we currently have no idea what he’s thinking.

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Kyle Phillips/Associated Press

The last two seasons in Oklahoma City have been all about player development and asset accumulation. General manager Sam Presti has assembled a nice young core including Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Josh Giddey and Lu Dort, and he has more future picks than he’ll ever be able to use. 

How close are they to being competitive again? The Thunder are far from good, but down the stretch they were the kind of “bad” team that could play teams tough and give them headaches. At some point, the talent has to catch up.

Are they planning for another season gunning for a lottery pick, or will this be the summer that Presti augments these prospects with more veterans to try to get back into the postseason mix? Much may depend on where their pick ends up in this year’s lottery, and who they take with it.

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Phelan M. Ebenhack/Associated Press

With Franz Wagner, Cole Anthony, Jalen Suggs, Jonathan Isaac (if he ever gets healthy) and Markelle Fultz, the rebuilding Magic have assembled an intriguing young group with a lot of potential. At last year’s deadline, they sold off veterans Aaron Gordon and Nikola Vucevic and went all-in on the youth movement; they figure to add another high lottery pick to that group this year.

Still unknown is whether fourth-year center Mo Bamba fits into those plans. After an up-and-down first three seasons with the Magic, the former No. 6 overall pick had a very good year, starting 69 games and putting up career-best numbers in every statistical category. Now, he’ll become a restricted free agent and the Magic will have to decide if they want to commit to him long term.

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Matt Slocum/Associated Press

Before the season, James Harden turned down a three-year, $161 million extension offer from the Nets, preferring to test free agency for the first time in his career. Since then, he forced a trade to Philadelphia to reunite with Daryl Morey, who traded for him in Houston and built eight years’ worth of teams around him there.

Around the time of the trade, there was a report that as part of the deal, Harden had agreed to pick up his $47.3 million player option for next season, but that turned out not to be the case. Now, Harden will likely decline that player option and seek a huge multiyear deal to re-sign. He’ll almost certainly get that from Philadelphia, but with his age (32) and concerns about how he’ll hold up physically into his mid-30s, it’s not as much of a no-brainer as it would have been a few years ago.

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Near the beginning of the season, ESPN published a report detailing numerous allegations of racism and sexism against longtime Suns owner Robert Sarver. The NBA announced that they had launched their own independent investigation into those claims, which commissioner Adam Silver said earlier this month is still ongoing.

Roster-wise, the Suns were entering an uncertain offseason independent of this story. They didn’t agree to an extension with starting center Deandre Ayton before the October deadline, so he’ll hit restricted free agency this summer. Forward Cameron Johnson, a Sixth Man of the Year finalist, is also due for an extension. With the Suns now firmly in “perennial title contender” status, you’d think they’d be willing to spend whatever it took to keep this group together. Ayton has certainly played his way into a max deal, whether it be from Phoenix or someone else.

But there’s a very real possibility the league’s investigation into the Sarver accusations could lead to a Donald Sterling-like removal and a bidding process for a new ownership group. That will certainly not make any of these questions about roster and salary easier to answer in the short term.

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Portland missed the playoffs for the first time since Damian Lillard’s rookie year, following a season full of drama that included a controversial coaching hire, the firing of longtime general manager Neil Olshey following a workplace-conduct investigation, Lillard undergoing season-ending surgery on a lingering abdominal injury, and a total roster teardown at the deadline that included CJ McCollum, Lillard’s longtime running mate in the backcourt, being shipped to New Orleans.

Blazers interim GM Joe Cronin said after the season ended that they planned to be competitive next season and retool the roster around a newly healthy Lillard. They’ll have decisions to make around two of their own free agents, guard Anfernee Simons and center Jusuf Nurkic, both of whom will likely be back, and from there they’ll have some moves to make with various trade exceptions created at the deadline. The first-round pick from New Orleans not conveying this year will hurt those efforts.

Lillard has continued to say he wants to stay in Portland despite rampant speculation that he’s the next star on the way out. With Olshey gone, he’ll have a much greater say in how this roster is built going forward. But do they have enough assets to make meaningful upgrades around him?

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Rick Scuteri/Associated Press

Shortly into the season, the Kings fired Luke Walton and named Alvin Gentry their interim head coach. Following the end of the season, Sacramento’s 16th consecutive trip to the lottery, the team announced that Gentry would not be returning.

Whoever they hire to replace Gentry will be the 12th different head coach the franchise has had since they last made the playoffs in 2006. Sacramento made a win-now trade at the deadline, sending promising young guard Tyrese Haliburton to Indiana for two-time All-Star center Domantas Sabonis in an attempt to get back into the playoffs that ultimately was not successful.

Their next coach will be tasked with doing something none of those other coaches has been able to do: getting the most dysfunctional franchise in the league back to relevance.

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Gerald Herbert/Associated Press

This question comes up seemingly every year as Gregg Popovich enters his mid-70s. He shut down speculation about his retirement after the Spurs lost in the play-in, calling the questions “inappropriate.” There still hasn’t been any clarity one way or the other about his future plans.

There’s also no clear successor whenever Popovich’s legendary 26-year run comes to an end. Many of his top assistants over the years who have been believed at different points to be in line for the job (Ettore Messina, Becky Hammon, Ime Udoka) have left to take other jobs. Depending on what happens in Utah, Quin Snyder could be an option with his past ties to the organization.

Since there hasn’t been an announcement yet, and the draft and free agency are coming up quickly, one can only assume right now that Popovich plans to return to the sidelines in San Antonio for at least one more season. The Spurs have never exactly been forthcoming with this kind of stuff—Hall of Famers Tim Duncan and Manu Ginobili retired with very little fanfare.

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Matt Slocum/Associated Press

The Raptors are in an interesting place as an organization. They’re still a playoff team, just three years removed from winning a title with some of the key players from that run (Pascal Siakam, Fred VanVleet) still on the roster and in their primes. They’re also developing younger players, with No. 4 overall pick Scottie Barnes coming off a terrific rookie season that has him firmly in the Rookie of the Year conversation.

One player who may or may not fit into the long-term picture is OG Anunoby, a talented defensive wing who is currently at best the third option on offense behind Siakam and VanVleet and is rapidly being overtaken by Barnes.

Going into the offseason, he could want a bigger role than the Raptors can give him, and it may make sense for the organization to move him for an upgrade at the center position, currently their biggest weakness.

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Matt Kelley/Associated Press

Buzz about a potential Jazz blowup has been building for months. The rumors of tension between All-Stars Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell aren’t going away, and they’re currently tied 1-1 in a first-round series against a Mavs team without Luka Doncic. If they lose that series, or even in the second round, there could be big changes coming.

What could those changes look like? Head coach Quin Snyder, who has had that job since 2014, could be on the way out. At least one of Gobert and Mitchell could be traded, and if they trade one, it’s likely only a matter of time before the other is traded.

Barring a surprise deep playoff run, the Jazz are likely not going to look the same next season.

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Behind Damian Lillard, Bradley Beal is the most speculated-about star in the trade-rumor content machine, mostly because he’s been in Washington his entire career and they haven’t won anything meaningful. Also like Lillard, Beal has consistently said he wants to stay put.

Now, Beal is set to become an unrestricted free agent this summer. In March, he told reporters it was “fair” to say he’d likely re-sign. But the Wizards will also have to decide whether they want to commit a max deal to him at his age and coming off season-ending wrist surgery.

All signs point to him indeed re-signing, but we won’t know for sure until July.