With the majority of the offseason\u2019s moves in the rearview, we can now reflect on what has truly been a wild summer in the basketball world. Some teams capitalized on the chaos. Others sat back and watched it unfold. <\/p>\n
But the biggest losers were the teams that had expectations to meet and failed, even though so much was available. Here are the five teams that had the most disappointing offseasons.\u00a0<\/p>\n
5. Brooklyn Nets<\/p>\n
With the cap space flexibility the Nets had, they were expected to swing for the fences this offseason. Brooklyn\u2019s front office had other plans, though, with their two biggest acquisitions coming through the draft and via trade.<\/p>\n
The signings that they did use their cap space on? Keon Ellis and Mo Wagner. That isn\u2019t going to move the needle in a conference that is rapidly improving. <\/p>\n
To be fair, this year\u2019s free agency class wasn\u2019t particularly attractive. Most of the newsworthy roster moves this offseason materialized through trades. Brooklyn didn\u2019t overpay for anyone out of desperation to sign a name, which is the smart play in the long run. <\/p>\n
At the same time, executives expected them to be aggressive buyers, which they were far from. So while they were conservative and avoided bad moves, they didn\u2019t make many moves to begin with.\u00a0<\/p>\n
4. Denver Nuggets\u00a0<\/p>\n
If the Peyton Watson negotiations go well for Denver, their offseason won\u2019t look as bad, but overall, they took a big step back. Tim Hardaway Jr departed for Miami after finishing third in Sixth Man of the Year voting. <\/p>\n
They also let go of Jonas Valanciunas, who was the best center that ever backed up Nikola Jokic.<\/p>\n
Still, any team led by the Joker is a contender, but they haven\u2019t done enough to maximize this window of his prime. <\/p>\n
They also matched an offer sheet that pushed them into the second apron to retain Spencer Jones. Jones did have a standout rookie year, but for that to be the most notable move of the summer is disappointing.<\/p>\n
3. Cleveland Cavaliers<\/p>\n
We could have been calling the Cavs one of the biggest winners of the offseason, but instead, we\u2019re left with much to be desired.<\/p>\n
At one point, all signs seemed to point to Cleveland as LeBron\u2019s next destination. However, LeBron ultimately went to Philly, and now we’re left with the remains of a shaky conference finals team.<\/p>\n
They lost some quality rotational pieces like Dean Wade and Keon Ellis, while their biggest signing was Mario Hezonja, who hasn’t played in the NBA in five years.<\/p>\n
A full season of James Harden might be able to boost their regular-season record, but their lack of improvement will likely haunt them in the playoffs.<\/p>\n
2. Detroit Pistons<\/p>\n
Cade Cunningham is an offense by himself. That doesn\u2019t mean he couldn\u2019t benefit from some offensive help, which is exactly what the Pistons didn\u2019t get.<\/p>\n
Tobias Harris, who was their most reliable offensive option for the entirety of this year\u2019s playoffs outside of Cade, signed with San Antonio. They also lost Caris LeVert, who was one of their better on-ball creators. <\/p>\n
They did replace them with John Collins and Isaiah Joe, but in the absolute best-case scenario, they end up at a net zero. A guaranteed role for Daniss Jenkins can be helpful, but as far as free agency goes, Detroit did next to nothing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
1. Golden State Warriors<\/p>\n
On one hand, the Warriors didn\u2019t add anything, but on the other hand, they pretty much didn\u2019t lose anything either. The Dubs were another team that got caught up in the LeBron sweepstakes and ended up empty-handed.<\/p>\n
Steph Curry was as great as ever this past year, but the Warriors still missed the playoffs, which makes their decision to stay put even more baffling. They will also be missing Moses Moody and Jimmy Butler for much of this season, which only adds to the lack of direction.<\/p>\n
The Warriors are poised to waste away another golden Steph Curry season, to the misfortune of anyone who wanted to experience the last few years of greatness.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With the majority of the offseason\u2019s moves in the rearview, we can now reflect on what has truly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":846927,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,370253,590,85],"class_list":["post-846926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketballnews","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=846926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846926\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/846927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=846926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=846926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=846926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}