Just as was the case with our Eastern Conference grades, our 2026 Western Conference offseason grades are somewhat incomplete. Multiple teams here are in open pursuit of LeBron James. Another is waiting anxiously for a Kawhi Leonard verdict, and there are a few notable restricted free agents whose futures haven’t been settled. These grades will eventually be updated should circumstances demand it. They reflect the offseasons we’ve seen thus far.
For now, as a reminder, we grade based on how successfully a team accomplished its goals relative to the resources it had at its disposal. The greater your opportunity, the higher your standard. You do not get credit for lottery luck. You get credit for maximizing the resources you had. With that in mind, let’s dive in.
NBA offseason grades for every East team: 76ers, Hornets ace moves, Celtics among many in C- range
Sam Quinn
Los Angeles Clippers: A-
The obvious elephant in the room here is the terrific Kawhi Leonard trade they made potentially not happening because of the Aspiration Investigation. That turns a great offseason into a bad one very quickly. For now, we’ll assume the trade happens, and if it does, it’s an absolute victory for the Clippers. To turn a 35-year-old with his injury concerns and a looming extension into two unprotected first-round picks in the 2030s plus a non-trivial 2027 first-round swap, considering they already owed a separate swap to the Oklahoma City Thunder is a potentially transformative deal. Between the Leonard, Ivica Zubac and James Harden trades, the Clippers have executed a brilliant organizational pivot from a decayed contender into a young, flexible and asset-rich rebuilder.
Not only did they get Rui Hachimura for less money than he made for the Lakers last season, but they even managed to sneak a team option onto the second year of his deal. Convincing Kobe Sanders to sign for four years at essentially the minimum with the last two years non-guaranteed is a big win on the margins. They’ve escaped the “scary offer sheet” phase of Bennedict Mathruin’s restricted free agency with no more cap space floating around, so he’ll likely be back on favorable terms. If there’s a concern here, it’s with No. 5 overall pick Keaton Wagler’s uneven summer league performance, but he’d hardly be the first top pick to bounce back from a slow start in Las Vegas. The Clippers have a ways to go, but they’ve set themselves up wonderfully this summer.
Utah Jazz: B+
The Jazz had two long-term problems simmering this offseason that didn’t necessarily need to be solved immediately, but would have gotten worse over time if they hadn’t. The first was a six-starter problem, as one of Darryn Peterson, Keyonte George, Ace Bailey, Lauri Markkanen, Jaren Jackson Jr. and Walker Kessler would have been forced into a reduced role if all six had opened the season on the roster. The other was the accompanying financial issue of paying Markkanen and Jackson max deals, Kessler a hefty restricted free agent contract and George a rookie extension. The Lakers solved both of those problems for them with an outlandish trade offer of two first-round picks and two first-round swaps.
The Jazz will have to address center down the line, but they now have the resources to do so on their terms. For now, Jusuf Nurkić and Jaxson Hayes will suffice. They’ll likely close games with Jackson at center anyway. Utah is about as well situated to accommodate Josh Okogie’s offensive shortcomings to maximize his defense as any team in the NBA. Who cares if he can’t shoot? Basically everyone else here can. Without Kessler, the Jazz probably don’t have a path to real playoff success this season, but they’ll be competitive, and they turned him into a pick surplus that will mean quite a bit for them moving forward.
Minnesota Timberwolves: B
Nobody agrees on LaMelo Ball, so nobody agrees on Minnesota’s offseason. Count me as an optimist. Minnesota badly needed playmaking. Ball badly needed to play with a superior on-ball scorer and within a stronger defensive infrastructure. The Timberwolves felt they needed to reimagine their team after back-to-back postseasons ended because Anthony Edwards had no offensive support. It will be much harder for the Spurs and Thunder to double him with Ball on the court. Having two of the most prolific pull-up 3-point shooters in basketball to stretch those elite defenses is at least a credible approach to trying to beat them.
Power forward, for now, is wide open. They hope LeBron James is their solution. He probably won’t be. But I’m not sure they needed a long-term answer now anyway. Ball and Edwards are going into their age-25 seasons. Jaden McDaniels turns 26 in September. The bar at that position is relatively low given what they have elsewhere. If it takes a year, it takes a year. They have salaries to trade like Josh Green and potentially also Donte DiVincenzo. Perhaps Terrence Shannon can play more power forward, and McDaniels can as well in a pinch. They’re not as good as the Thunder or the Spurs. Nobody is. But they’ve raised their ceiling substantially enough to give themselves a puncher’s chance when they do eventually figure out that vacant power forward slot.
San Antonio Spurs: B
Jayden Quaintance was the perfect draft pick for San Antonio. His injury red flags are real, but he’s a complete luxury for the Spurs. If he never fully recovers, San Antonio has a big enough draft surplus to shrug a wasted pick off. If he does, even if it’s in a low-minutes role, the Spurs have potentially the most talented defensive frontcourt in NBA history. That’s not an exaggeration. Healthy Quaintance has that much athletic upside defensively. For them, he was a low-risk, high-reward swing.
Tobias Harris was a completely serviceable short-term power forward addition on a short-term contract. He’ll make 3s on low-usage without messing with the defense. Victor Wembanyama’s decision to forego Rose Rule max escalators may or may not wind up mattering. He would still need to play 65 games next season just to qualify for those raises anyway. But now, the Spurs don’t have to worry about that next season, and Wembanyama has potentially set a precedent of selflessness that his fellow young stars could follow. Julian Champagnie’s extension looks pretty favorable already. A De’Aaron Fox trade would have been nice, but the Spurs have time to figure that out. All in all, there’s plenty of good here and no real bad.
Memphis Grizzlies: B-
They traded Ja Morant without having to give up a draft pick or take on any contracts that lasted longer than his. That’s a big win, and should lead to some addition by subtraction. The Grizzlies get no credit for drafting Cameron Boozer, but they do get credit for the depth and versatility they’ve put around him in the front court. Adding Isaiah Stewart for a few second-round picks and Quinten Post on a deal with only one guaranteed season was nice business. Tuomas Iisalo likes to play his players in shorter bursts, so that front-court depth will be vital. That is especially true for the injury-prone Zach Edey at center. The Grizzlies don’t have to overtax Edey or Boozer now, and they’ve added enough different types of bigs to really get a feel for what works best with their core players.
They picked up some extra second-round picks for moving back from No. 16 to No. 21, and some more draft capital on top of that for trading Santi Aldama. They conducted their offseason business without touching their big Jaren Jackson Jr. trade exception, setting them up as a key possible trade facilitator during the season. They’re still early in their rebuild, and they still have a ways to go to trim their roster, but everything they did this offseason made sense.
Houston Rockets: C+
Marcus Smart outplayed the two-year, $12.4 million contract Houston gave him pretty substantially last season. He’s an older injury risk, but on pure value, it’s a great contract. He’s just a bit redundant here. Did the Rockets really need another offensively questionable defender? Will Smart’s presence just give Ime Udoka another excuse not to play Reed Sheppard? Only time will tell, but that’s a real concern here. Houston badly needs his offense.
Setting themselves up to duck the luxury tax by dumping Dorian Finney-Smith made plenty of sense after they unnecessarily paid it last season. This team is going to be expensive for a while, so whatever steps are needed to delay the repeater tax are warranted. They have more than enough draft capital to justify spending three second-round picks to do that. In a league starving for wing defenders, they locked Tari Eason up essentially for mid-level money. That’s a great contract, and another sign of how effectively the Rockets actually negotiate with their own players.
I’m a bit concerned with how much stock they’re putting into the returns of Steven Adams and Fred VanVleet to solve last year’s problems. These are both injury-prone veterans in their 30s. There are still long-term questions to answer, but most of what the Rockets just did makes sense.
Golden State Warriors: C+
I’m going to give the Warriors credit for something unusual: they haven’t done anything stupid yet. They’re in the running for LeBron James, and there has been quite a bit of reporting suggesting that they’d need to add a star, potentially Anthony Davis, to convince him to come. Think of what a disaster the Paul George trade was for the Clippers. They made it because it also got them Kawhi Leonard. There was a world in which the Warriors similarly overpaid for a star just to land James, who is older and worse than Leonard was at the time. I applaud their restraint in not doing so… at least thus far.
Yaxel Lendeborg thriving at Vegas Summer League was inevitable. He’s older than Jonathan Kuminga. Of course he was going to be pro-ready. Nonetheless, the Warriors were justified in taking a win-now rookie, and they certainly got one. They haven’t meaningfully added to last year’s team otherwise, but Kristaps Porziņģis, De’Anthony Melton and Al Horford all signed for favorable contracts. Getting Porziņģis for only a $3 million 2027-28 guarantee was a big win. They haven’t drastically changed their fortunes, but they haven’t made things worse to mount a very unlikely championship push. Discipline is a valuable front office trait. Managing the end of Stephen Curry’s career is a unique challenge, but prioritizing the future after he’s gone, as much as it might infuriate their fans, is the responsible approach.
Dallas Mavericks: C+
Welp, we know how Masai Ujiri likes to build his teams. In Toronto, he built a champion by grabbing every big forward he could find. His Dallas tenure has started out in much the same way. The three most notable additions here all fall into that big wing category: Morez Johnson with the No. 9 overall pick, Santi Aldama in a trade with Memphis and Zaccharie Risacher in a trade with Atlanta. Is the fit here optimal? Probably not. Cooper Flagg should probably be a long-term power forward. That’s the easiest way to surround him with shooting and maximize his defensive strengths, but on this roster, he’s probably exclusively a small forward.
But he’s 19. The Mavericks have time to figure out what does and doesn’t work beside him, so taking swings at forward is a reasonable starting point. The decision to keep Kyrie Irving is defensible mostly with the idea that he can rebuild his trade value on the court during the season. Eventually, he’ll need to be flipped for youth. Hopefully, that youth is in the backcourt. The Marcus Sasser addition makes sense. He got crowded out of Detroit’s rotation, but he’s young, cheap and playable. Daniel Gafford and P.J. Washington remain trade candidates, and Dereck Lively is extension-eligible. Don’t be surprised if the Mavericks make another notable decision or two this offseason, and if they don’t, the roster probably looks meaningfully different by the deadline.
Oklahoma City Thunder: C
We knew where this was going. The Thunder started the offseason around $40 million over the second apron. They were inevitably going to get under, and they did so with players who had functionally already been replaced. The Jared McCain trade rendered Isaiah Joe obsolete. Aaron Wiggins was mostly out of the rotation. Lu Dort’s offense had become a problem, and while he may have been willing to go the bench (and probably will in Atlanta), he needed to be replaced in the starting lineup by Cason Wallace anyway, and trading him addresses any potential awkwardness preemptively.
Lu Dort trade grades: Thunder clean up their books; Mavericks take buy-low swing on former No. 1 pick
Sam Quinn
The Thunder aren’t as deep as they were a year ago. That was always the plan. Cycle out role players as they get expensive, replace them with cheaper draft picks and veterans willing to sign for team-friendly terms, as Isaiah Hartenstein and Kenrich Williams did. They still have a Victor Wembanyama problem. Maybe Aday Mara solves it someday. Maybe Chet Holmgren is better against him next year, or maybe Jalen Williams and Ajay Mitchell are healthy enough for the Thunder to win anyway. There wasn’t a realistic world in which the Thunder addressed that problem externally, so cleaning up their books and hoping for internal growth is par for the course.
Denver Nuggets: C-
This grade is very much a “TBD,” because until Peyton Watson’s situation is settled, we don’t really know what Denver’s top six will look like. For now, escaping the first wave of free agency without an offer sheet is a win. There is no longer substantial cap space on the market, so no one can make the Nuggets sweat with a giant offer sheet. They control the proceedings now. If they get him back without trading off a core piece to cut into their enormous impending tax bill? That’s a successful offseason. If they sign-and-trade him for poor value just to cut that tax bill, or if they trade an important player so they can keep Watson more affordably, this offseason is a negative.
Outside of the core six, Denver has probably gotten worse. Losing TIm Hardaway Jr. is a real blow. His bench scoring was very valuable last season. Spencer Jones is still sitting in restricted free agency, and since he’d only be signing for an exception, someone could still try to make the Nuggets uncomfortable with an offer sheet. They already have two players on rookie minimum deals in order to save money. Not a great sign for their depth. Marvin Bagley has turned himself into a real rotation player, but he’s undersized for a 2026 center, so the non-Nikola Jokić minutes are still a question.
Speaking of which… Jokić hasn’t extended yet. Denver shouldn’t be concerned yet, especially with the Lakers spending their possible 2027 cap space, but that’s certainly an uncomfortable place to be a year away from his potential free agency. That might be why they haven’t shed any money yet. They can’t risk incurring the wrath of their franchise player.
Los Angeles Lakers: C-
The Lakers entered this offseason with two major team-building resources and two major needs. They had over $50 million in cap space and up to three first-round picks and three first-round swaps to trade, but they had to walk away from this summer with both a center and an entire wing rotation. They went all-out at center, landing Walker Kessler, but it cost them both a substantial chunk of their cap space and two picks and two swaps. That left them without the resources they are going to need to build a championship-level wing rotation. Right now, they simply aren’t good enough to win a title, and they have no obvious way of bridging that gap.
Center isn’t fully secured. Kessler was about as good as they could have done at starter, but Kevon Looney is no longer an acceptable playoff-level backup. Deandre Ayton may be frustrating, but at $8 million, he’s a nice value as a backup. They had to trade him for Jaden Hardy, who has no clear fit on this roster, just to clear the last bit of cap space they needed to sign everyone else. Is Sandro Mamukelashvili playing center? They’ll never get any stops that way. Speaking of which, between Mamukelashvili and Collin Sexton, the Lakers devoted quite a bit of money to players who don’t really defend. A questionable choice for a team with Luka Dončić and Austin Reaves. If they’re going to meaningfully compete with the Thunder and Spurs, they’re going to have to build a defense almost fully on the margins. I’m not sure that’s even possible. Ziaire Williams and Matisse Thybulle were nice minimum signings, but they’re fliers with real flaws, not starting-level wings. The Lakers have a lot of work to do without many tools to do it with.
Phoenix Suns: C-
The Suns did very well when it came to the contracts they handed out this offseason. Collin Gillespie on a four-year, $48 million deal is one of the best values of the summer, and Jordan Goodwin, Luke Kennard and Mark Williams all signed for very fair money. They’re now around $16 million over the luxury-tax line, though, so unless they can line up a Jalen Green trade during the season, they probably won’t be able to reset their repeater clock this year. That’s more of a Mat Ishbia problem than a Phoenix Suns problem, though. If he’s willing to spend the extra money, great.
The Miles Bridges trade was unjustifiable. How they didn’t learn their lesson when they were widely mocked for giving up their 2031 first-round pick at the 2025 deadline, I will never understand. Their (unprotected!) 2033 pick was among the most valuable selections traded all summer, and they gave it up for a power forward that neither shoots nor defends at a high level. He scores a lot of points, but not especially efficiently. He doesn’t pressure the rim nearly as much as he should. He puts up big numbers but has never consistently impacted winning.
To go yet another year into the future without controlling their own first-round pick for him when they are a Play-In Tounrament team at best with no path to anything better in the near future was the single most indefensible thing any team did this offseason, and that’s before we even factor in the hefty extension he’ll surely demand. The Suns seem set on locking themselves into expensive mediocrity.
New Orleans Pelicans: D+
I can agree with any of the individual decisions New Orleans made not to trade their players. They wanted a haul for Trey Murphy or Herb Jones? That’s fair. Affordable young wings are worth their weight in gold. Won’t give Yves Missi to the Knicks? They need a young, defensive center, so it makes sense. Zion Williamson is still here? Well… he doesn’t fit with Missi or Derik Queen, but he’s a star-level talent coming off of a very good year. Fine. In a vacuum, you can justify all of this.
As a coherent plan? You absolutely cannot. Why on Earth are they running back a 26-win team? A fake 26-win team at that. They racked up plenty of those wins late in the season, when they were the only lottery team without a reason to tank. A coaching change simply is not enough here, especially when the coach they just hired, Jamahl Mosley, just got fired in part because of his inability to make an island of misfit offensive toys work in Orlando. That’s more or less the sort of roster he’s walking into in New Orleans: a lot of talent, weird fit, and far less defense.
Explaining four most confusing moves of NBA offseason: Gary Trent for $64M? Two years for DeAndre Jordan?
Sam Quinn
Not that it’s all that consequential, but the two-year minimum for DeAndre Jordan was an own goal cap-wise. Most minimum contracts only count for the two-year minimum against the cap. The only exceptions are multi-year minimum deals, which Jordan now is, adding an extra $1.5 million onto their books this year and next. Were they going to need that money for anything? Probably not, they never pay the tax. But it’s a bad process to keep someone who’s here to be an adult in the locker room, not a basketball player.
Sacramento Kings: D+
The Kings are about to start a teardown, except they haven’t torn anything down yet. The only expensive veteran who’s gone is DeMar DeRozan, who had a partially guaranteed contract. They haven’t been able to find trade takers for Domantas Sabonis, Malik Monk or Zach LaVine. The latter probably should be a buyout candidate. The Kings are still technically above the tax line, though using the stretch provision on DeRozan could change that. Is the idea to keep LaVine in the name of avoiding the relegation zone? He didn’t exactly help them win games a season ago. They could’ve used that extra money to seek out longer-term fits.
The Kings just haven’t really accomplished anything this offseason. They made their draft picks, made the inevitable decision to waive DeRozan, and called it a summer from there. It’s too early to say much about their rookies other than they’re about to waste a year or two with a bunch of teammates who won’t be playing alongside them for the long haul.
Portland Trail Blazers: D
The logic behind trading for Ja Morant was seemingly that he is a star-level talent that cost nothing to acquire but matching salary. It was, essentially, a no-risk, all-reward proposition. I simply disagree with the premise. There is a lot of risk here, even if the Blazers didn’t give anything up to get Morant. His addition, paired with Damian Lillard’s return, threatens to derail the development of young guards Scoot Henderson and Shaedon Sharpe as they will now be relegated to lesser roles. For that matter, it threatens the star leap Deni Avdija took last season. He thrived as a downhill driver and high-usage ball-handler. Morant has to have the ball in his hands to provide any value, which means Avdija has less of it, and his complete lack of 3-point shooting cramps the floor for Avdija.
Maximizing Avdija means quite a bit next season. His contract is so cheap that he is essentially unextendable without cap space. The Blazers have a slightly harder path to space with Morant on their books in the summer of 2027 than they did with Jerami Grant. If the fit doesn’t work, Avdija may be less inclined to actually re-sign. Couple all of that with Morant’s recent history of clashing with a head coach (Portland has a first-year head coach in Micah Nori with only one guaranteed year on his contract, by the way) and the remarkably poor defense the Blazers should expect to get out of their starting guards and suddenly this trade looks like a potential disaster. Picking up Micah Potter off waivers was a nice find on the margins, and the partial guarantee on Robert Williams III’s new contract was essential given his injury history, but the Morant trade just has too much downside risk even without a hefty price attached for this offseason to be deemed successful.
