And now we say goodbye to the NBA's first eight eliminated 2018 playoff teams the only way we know how: by looking at what comes next for each of them.
Exit interviews have taken place. Locker rooms have been cleaned out. Headlines have been made. Forward-looking think pieces are scattered across the interwebz. The wounds that come with being bounced in the first round have, in most cases, yet to fully heal, but the process behind moving on does not wait for closure.
It begins immediately.
Taking that next step means different things to different teams. Salary-cap outlooks, incumbent free agents, glaring holes, undying storylines and the nature of their first-round defeats all come into play.
This exercise does not seek to cure everything, or even anything. It aims only to identify the starting point for what these early vacationers must do to ensure they're still playing around this time next year—or, at the very least, to protect themselves against harsh setbacks.
Indiana Pacers: Resist the Urge to Overspend and Overreact During Offseason
The Indiana Pacers should feel good about their 2017-18 campaign.
They won 48 games in the first year without Paul George. Victor Oladipo played liked a top-20 star and is already trying to get better. Darren Collison led the NBA in three-point accuracy. Thaddeus Young defended his butt off. Myles Turner remains an offensive force. The defense placed second in points allowed per 100 possessions during crunch time.
Above all else, Indiana pushed the LeBron James-led Cleveland Cavaliers to a seven-game first-round series and outscored them in totality (plus-40) despite suffering the early exit.
"If y'all don't respect the Indiana Pacers now, I have no respect for you," Oladipo told reporters after Game 7, per ESPN.com's Brian Windhorst. "That's just how I feel. Nobody thought we were going to be here—not one person—but us in the locker room. I feel like we've earned our respect from everyone now."
Indeed, the Pacers have the respect and attention of those who hadn't yet caught on to their regular-season machine. They deserve it. And, with one of the league's most enviable cap situations, they have the capacity to demand more of it.
Seven players hold non-guaranteed salaries for 2018-19: Collison ($2 million) Ike Anigbogu ($650,000), Bojan Bogdanovic ($1.5 million), Al Jefferson ($4 million), Alex Poythress (fully non-guaranteed), Lance Stephenson (team option) and Joe Young (team option). Young ($13.8 million) and Cory Joseph ($7.9 million) own player options. The Pacers, in turn, enjoy a reasonably clear path to $30-plus million in cap space, with an outside shot of sniffing $50 million if they prioritize flexibility over roster continuity.
Only eight other teams are, as of now, projected to have appreciably more spending power than the mid-level exception. The temptation to strike now exists. Indiana isn't a free-agent hot spot. Peddling cap space at a time when rivals have none matters.
This presupposes the Pacers, around Oladipo, are ready to make that leap from happy-to-be-here accident to genuine contender. They cannot guarantee that progression is in the cards. Calling this season a fluke unfairly discredits their body of work, but questioning its sustainability is hardly nefarious—particularly if any major additions come at the expense of standout role players.
Indiana needs another year of Oladipo's transcendency at the very least before doubling down on the current nucleus. Resisting the urge to reinvest in this 48-win fairy tale will sting, but the books are structured to soften the blow.
General manager Kevin Pritchard—who is allowed a victory lap or 50 right about now—can float the status quo knowing Bogdanvoic, Collison, Jefferson and Stephenson will be off the books by next summer. The Pacers can re-evaluate their position then, or even at the trade deadline, when their expiring-contract caboodle will put them in position to acquire any marquee name that may reach the chopping block.
Taking the wait-and-see approach demands similar restraint with the futures Indiana cannot control. Joseph and Young should be priorities if they opt out, but only if their price points tilt toward the bargain bin.
Paying market value for players to keep a fringe contender intact is a good way to become the next iteration of the Miami Heat. Reading too much into this season's success and supplementing that surprise run with glitzy additions, meanwhile, opens the door for the rebirth of the 2013-14 Phoenix Suns or 2015-16 Portland Trail Blazers.
Pat Riley's year-end presser was, as always, an enlightening affair: ostensibly optimistic, with the right amount of hedging caked between his aplomb and candor.
Chief among the takeaways: The Miami Heat's team president is not married to the present foundation, the one he spent to keep together only last summer.
"Show me the right name," he said, per the Sun-Sentinel's Ira Winderman. "I could be all in on everything."
At the same time, he is not above standing pat, with an alternative emphasis on improving around the margins.
"But it's got to be the right name," he continued. "That doesn't happen very often. Our core guys, we would like to keep together, there's no doubt. We would like to keep them together and we'd like to add something to it. But that's going to be a challenge.
"We are not going to do nothing."
"Doing close to nothing" is probably the Heat's default setting. They'll enter free agency a little under $5 million over the $123 million luxury-tax line if they carry Wayne Ellington's $8.2 million hold. That number will dip if Ellington costs less than his pre-contract hit (possible, if not likely), but Riley will invariably need to tweak the payroll to duck the tax.
Shaving that salary while landing a splashy add-on is almost out of the question. No team is taking Hassan Whiteside's contract (two years, $52.5 million) without a sweetener. Ditto for Tyler Johnson (two years, $38.5 million) and Dion Waiters (three years, $36.4 million). James Johnson falls somewhere between overpaid and dead-even compensation (three years, $46 million).
Kelly Olynyk is fairly priced (three years, $35 million) but not a blockbuster-anchoring asset. Josh Richardson fits that bill (four years, $42 million); he's also Miami's best player. Goran Dragic's contract is fine (two years, $37.3 million), but head coach Erik Spoelstra has enough trouble deploying lineups with three shooters as it stands. Flipping Dragic for anything short of an All-Star wing makes zero sense.
Riley and friends are known for their salary-cap voodoo, but they're not working with the Elder Wand. They cannot magically clear the decks. Meaningful cap room is out of reach until 2020 or 2021. Attempts to accelerate their wiggle room will obliterate a future-asset base they don't really have and, in all likelihood, wind up falling comfortably short anyway.
The Heat instead must figure out how to move the needle while being stuck. That entails praying for internal development from Richardson, Bam Adebayo, Rodney McGruder and Justise Winslow, but it also consists of finding clearance-rack shooters on the wings.
Ellington alone should not be the barometer for Miami's spacing. And he has no business defending conventional small forwards or bigger wings. The Heat don't necessarily have to find the efficient-chucker version of Winslow, but they damn sure need an above-average sniper with the defensive chops to spare Richardson from guarding every position up to small-ball 4s. And whether trading for or signing him, they'll have to find him on the cheap.
Milwaukee Bucks: Find Their Steve Kerr
Giannis Antetokounmpo said he thought the Milwaukee Bucks were the better team in their first-round series against the Boston Celtics. That's not something you get to say when bowing out to a squad that didn't have Gordon Hayward or Kyrie Irving and only received 16 minutes from Jaylen Brown in Game 7 (hamstring).
In a way, though, the Bucks' first-round exit is a small victory for simplicity. They need a replacement for the fired Jason Kidd, and now, after underachieving, needn't feel a sense of responsibility to interim head coach Joe Prunty.
That pang of obligation would have existed if the Bucks put up a fight in the second round or advanced to the Eastern Conference Finals. It will exist in slighter measures even now. But no one will blame them for turning elsewhere, to a more well-rooted name or flashier up-and-comer.
On the contrary, everyone expects them to pillage through the list of available names.
"Prunty will be a candidate to keep his position, but nothing is assured," the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Matt Velazquez wrote. "There will certainly be other suitors for what is considered the top available job in the NBA, with coaches like David Fizdale, Mike Budenholzer, Jeff Van Gundy, Ettore Messina, Monty Williams and many more floating around the rumor mill."
Shaking up the coaching staff is the Bucks' best, most realistic path toward reinvention. They won't have cap space to burn without jumping through a bunch of salary-dumping hoops. That includes renouncing restricted free agent Jabari Parker, and Antetokounmpo has already declared, "Jabari ain't going nowhere," per the Associated Press.
Remaining relatively idle isn't the worst outcome to the Bucks' offseason. They have a top-10, perhaps top-five, star in Antetokounmpo, two almost-stars in Eric Bledsoe and Khris Middleton and a strong(ish) supporting cast with Parker, Malcolm Brogdon, John Henson, Thon Maker and Tony Snell (first-round vanishing act notwithstanding).
Smaller-scale moves are essential, but this team looks better than a 44-win stepping stone on paper. It doesn't need a wholesale renovation.
Good thing, too. Because, again, the Bucks aren't positioned to make one. They bear more resemblance to the 2013-14 Golden State Warriors, a unit that went from adequate to otherworldly by swapping out head coach Mark Jackson for Steve Kerr in 2014-15.
The parallels aren't perfect. The Bucks need better shooters to improve their shot selection, they don't have the money to sign their Andre Iguodala, and the Warriors are the Warriors in part because Draymond Green's breakout was borne from David Lee's left hamstring injury. But Kerr's free-flowing offense and lax cultural structure elevated their ceiling.
Another coach should do the same for the Bucks. And they'll have their pick of the litter with Antetokounmpo, 23, under team control through 2020-21. They just need to make sure they pick the right candidate, be it someone more established like Budenholzer or a lauded prospect such as Fizdale or Messina.Read More Here
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