Over a week into 2024 NBA free agency, we’ve seen a number of big moves take place.
LeBron James signed a $100-plus million deal to return to the Los Angeles Lakers. Paul George left the Los Angeles Clippers for the Philadelphia 76ers. Pascal Siakam and OG Anunoby got more than $400 million from the teams that traded for them this past season. DeMar DeRozan is now the newest member of the Sacramento Kings thanks to a sign-and-trade.
In the end, only a few of these deals will have an effect on the 2025 NBA title.
The following five moves will have the biggest impacts, given what they mean for the team acquiring the player, the team losing the player or both.
The Nuggets aren’t even 13 months removed from winning an NBA title, yet they’re now in real danger of falling back in the West.
The Oklahoma City Thunder matched them in wins last season (57) and added Alex Caruso and Isaiah Hartenstein as potential starters this offseason. The Minnesota Timberwolves knocked Denver out of the playoffs, while the Dallas Mavericks (who went to the NBA Finals) picked up Klay Thompson. Teams like the New Orleans Pelicans (Dejounte Murray), Sacramento Kings (DeMar DeRozan) and Houston Rockets (No. 3 overall pick Reed Sheppard) should all be better next season as well.
Losing Caldwell-Pope and replacing him with Christian Braun is a major gamble for Denver.
Braun had some promising playoff moments over the past two years, but he hasn’t made a huge overall impact. The 23-year-old averaged only 5.1 points in 17.0 minutes per game during the 2024 postseason and shot a dismal 22.2 percent from three.
To think he can step in and match Caldwell-Pope’s scoring and defense is a tall ask, and it leaves a weak Nuggets bench even more ravaged.
No starting five spent more time together than Denver’s last season, with the core of Jamal Murray, Caldwell-Pope, Michael Porter Jr., Aaron Gordon and Nikola Jokić logging 1,923 total possessions. Braun and the non-KCP starters were together for only 52.
Some questionable contracts (MPJ getting the max, Zeke Nnaji’s four-year, $32 million deal, re-signing Reggie Jackson last year) came back to bite Denver. But losing Caldwell-Pope is a huge hit to the Nuggets’ title hopes moving forward.
Klay Thompson will undoubtedly be the weirdest uniform change we’ll see this fall. His decision to leave the Golden State Warriors after 13 seasons to join the Dallas Mavericks via sign-and-trade could shake up the West, too.
While the Warriors rebounded by acquiring De’Anthony Melton, Buddy Hield and Kyle Anderson, not having Thompson’s scoring, floor-spacing and legendary presence will impact Golden State’s remaining title hopes. Meanwhile, he should be a big boost for the Mavericks’ championship chances as they look to return to the NBA Finals for the second straight year.
Inserting Thompson in the starting lineup over Derrick Jones Jr. would have a huge impact on Dallas’ offensive spacing. Jones’ best three-point shooting season of his career (34.3 percent) isn’t even close to Thompson’s worst year (38.5 percent).
It’s no coincidence that Jones, a 30.4 percent career three-point shooter, had the best season of his eight-year NBA career playing next to elite offensive creators like Luka Dončić and Kyrie Irving. Dallas’ effective field goal percentage as a team jumped by 4.1 percentage points with Dončić on the court last season (97th percentile, via Cleaning the Glass), which speaks to his ability to generate open looks for teammates.
Dallas is going to get elite three-point shooting accuracy from Thompson on elite volume. Thompson’s 3.5 made threes per game last season have only been topped once in Mavericks history (Dončić’s 4.1 last year). Dallas made 15.8 threes a game in its 50 wins last season, a number that fell to 12.8 in 32 losses.
Choosing the Mavericks also meant spurning the Los Angeles Lakers, who reportedly would have given Thompson a four-year, $80 million deal to join them, per Sam Amick of The Athletic.
The Mavs should have an even better roster than the one that just reached the Finals, while the aging Warriors and Lakers project as play-in teams once again.
Jalen Brunson is the unquestioned leader of the New York Knicks, but there’s no denying what re-signing OG Anunoby does for the team’s title hopes.
Anunoby’s five-year, $212 million deal was the 15th-largest contract in NBA history at the time it was agreed to, which might seem absurd for a player who’s yet to make an All-Star team in his seven NBA seasons. Still, the Knicks needed to bring him back to put themselves in the conversation for the 2025 championship.
Anunoby is an elite defender who averaged 14.1 points, 4.4 rebounds and 1.7 steals while shooting 39.4 percent from three following his trade to New York. The Knicks were 20-3 with Anunoby in the lineup and 30-29 without him last year. Across an 82-game season, that’d be a difference of a 72-10 record (the second-best in NBA history) and a 41-to-42-win team (this year’s Houston Rockets).
The 2024-25 Knicks likely aren’t going to keep this pace up and win 70 games, although a healthy season from Anunoby (along with Mikal Bridges and a healthy Julius Randle) could have them sniffing 60.
Anunoby’s swing rating of plus-23.9 was the best mark in the entire NBA, narrowly beating out reigning MVP Nikola Jokić. The two players are extremely different, yet they made the biggest impact on winning of anyone in the league last year.
The Knicks giving Anunoby over $40 million per year is certainly expensive. Letting him leave for nothing would have been far more costly, though.
Can someone who averaged less than eight points per game last season have that much of an impact on the NBA title race?
For a player who does as many things as well as Isaiah Hartenstein does, yes.
The 26-year-old center got a three-year, $87 million contract to leave the New York Knicks for the Oklahoma City Thunder, a team that desperately needed more interior muscle. Hartenstein has registered a positive swing rating every season of his career, with the Knicks improving by 11.1 points per 100 possessions with him in the game last season (95th percentile, via Cleaning the Glass).
His absence puts a dent in the Knicks’ championship hopes and throws gas on the fire for Oklahoma City’s.
The 7-foot, 250-pound Hartenstein outweighs his new frontcourt partner, Chet Holmgren, by more than 40 pounds. Allowing Hartenstein to take on bigger, more physical defensive assignments on a nightly basis should help preserve Holmgren for a long playoff run and should allow him to play more than the 29.4 minutes per night that he averaged last season.
Hartenstein’s individual defense against some of the NBA’s best big men stands out, per the league’s tracking data:
- Joel Embiid: 9-of-21 shooting, 42.9 percent
- Anthony Davis: 14-of-28, 50.0 percent
- Domantas Sabonis: 6-of-15, 40.0 percent
- Alperen Şengün: 3-of-10, 30.0 percent
- Bam Adebayo: 7-of-15, 46.7 percent
The presence of Hartenstein should do wonders for OKC’s rebounding woes as well. The Thunder ranked 28th overall (48.4 percent) and 13th out of 16 playoff teams (47.5 percent) in total rebounding percentage last year.
Hartenstein impacts winning with his defense, rebounding, passing and occasional scoring. He should help push the young Thunder even closer to a title.
Paul George leaving the Los Angeles Clippers for the Philadelphia 76ers was the only free-agent signing of the 2024 offseason to destroy one team’s title hopes while opening up a championship window for another.
We can wonder whether both Paul George and Joel Embiid will ever be healthy come playoff time, but even the combo of Tyrese Maxey and George or Embiid may be enough to help the Sixers make the Finals. Maxey by himself was not.
George is still an elite two-way player even at age 34. Kawhi Leonard was the only other player in the NBA last season to average at least 20 points and 1.5 steals per game while shooting north of 40 percent from three. George also finished eighth overall or better in estimated plus-minus (plus-5.7) and expected wins added (14.8), via Dunks and Threes.
Other top contenders in the East like the Boston Celtics (Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown) and New York Knicks (Mikal Bridges, OG Anunoby) are especially wing heavy, making the addition of George all the more important for Philly in potential playoff matchups.
George brings 114 games of playoff experience over 11 runs with him to the Sixers and is another offensive option to have the ball in his hands in the final minutes of a game. Opponents won’t be able to devote as much defensive attention to Embiid or Maxey with a third option as good as Paul on the floor.
Meanwhile, George’s departure was a crushing loss for Los Angeles.
The Clippers had a net rating of plus-10.6 with George, Leonard and James Harden on the floor last season (94th percentile). When just Leonard and Harden were in the game without George, that plummeted to minus-2.2 (42nd percentile). L.A. went 3-5 in games he missed.
The Clippers don’t even look like a playoff lock without George, while the Sixers should now be considered a true title contender.