A Quick Note On This Year's NBA Free Agency (So Far)
I don’t necessarily care that Dwight and Russ are making their way to Los Angeles. I don’t care that Patty Mills is heading to Brooklyn. Neither of the ideas behind moves like these — veterans to LA, shooters to Brooklyn — are LaMelo having fun with a full-court outlet pass or arrowing a pass in transition. It’s not Giannis, Steph, or Luka bending the game to their generational will. It’s not Jokic’s brain in action. (And who will score more points in a three-way game anyway — the Lakers, the Bulls, or the Nets? Which defense amongst these three will fail the most?)
There’s also a degree to which the top end of the draft class is going to do top end things, which creates something of a closed epistemic loop.
So the thing I might be most excited about is Denver picking up Bizzy Bones from VCU. As Kevin O’Connor put it: “Dude can launch logo 3s. And he's really savvy off-ball, moving, cutting, spotting up.” But I also feel like there’s a certain degree of in-game savoir faire that will end up benefitting Denver, too. It’s from 2017, but check out this video of Bones going one-on-one to get a sense as to what I’m trying to articulate. I could be wrong — the last time I wrote something like this was in praise of Carsen Edwards’s showing at Summer League — but I feel like there’s a degree to which Bones knows.