Lowe: The Clippers, the Nuggets and the convenient fear of the second apron

Now that the dust has (mostly) settled after another wild NBA free agency, it’s time to take stock of who won, who lost and where the league is now.

Jump to Lowe’s biggest free agency winners, losers and takeaways:
The Clips’ failure | Denver’s fear
Orlando’s build | OKC winning … everywhere
The Sixers’ Big Three | Boston running it back
Houston, chilling | Cleveland quieting the noise
The Spurs landing a Point God

There is a difference between failure and regret, though one can lead to the other. The Paul George–Kawhi Leonard era was a failure. Sure, it means something that a superstar chose Los Angeles’ “other” team — luring another superstar to come with him — and that they led the Clippers to their first conference finals in franchise history. Leonard and George cemented the Clippers’ relevance, bridging the gap between Lob City and the Intuit Dome.

But winning three playoff series in five seasons — none since that 2021 conference finals run — is a shocking failure. Leonard has not finished a season healthy since the Clippers’ catastrophic choke job in the Orlando, Florida, bubble in 2020.

They could never sustain chemistry — the ineffable rhythm of a team fully comfortable in its own skin. They appeared to catch it after acclimating to James Harden, only to lose hold of it — lurching around .500 after the All-Star break and limping out in the first round again. Now, it’s over.

It will hurt watching Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Jalen Williams (taken with one of the picks LA traded) lead the Oklahoma City Thunder on a prolonged run at the top, but pain is not regret either. The Clippers knew the risks when they traded everything. Rival executives did, too, and almost all of them agreed — some begrudgingly, some with head-nodding excitement — that they would have made the same deal under the same pressure. You stockpile assets for the chance to land the reigning Finals MVP and the guy who had just finished third in MVP voting — both in their primes.

In their statement explaining George’s departure, the Clippers cited the new second apron and the attached team-building restrictions. That could not have been the entire reason for drawing a line in the sand at granting George a fourth year on his deal — something the Philadelphia 76ers did without hesitation.

The Clippers re-signed Harden on a two-year, $70 million deal. If they were willing to bring George back on a three-year contract near Leonard’s salary — and I believe they were by the end — then they would have almost certainly blown past the second apron in the 2024-25 season. They would have also been at risk of again exceeding it in 2025-26.

Manage carefully, and they might have been able to duck the second apron in 2025-26 even with George earning $50 million. Perhaps the clarity — erasing that “might” — is the point.

Two straight years in the second apron triggers stiffer penalties, including having one future draft pick shoved down to No. 30 — not to mention the repeater tax bills. But by Year 3, Harden would be off the books. By Year 4 — the Clippers’ point of no return — both Harden and Leonard’s deals would have expired. The “blame the apron” logic does not quite hold all the way.

The Clippers appear to have simply concluded the George-Leonard team had run its course. The window had closed, and so there was no point investing much more into it. Paying George almost $60 million in that fourth year, at age 38, is almost certainly going to be bad business. The Sixers do not care. Joel Embiid is 30 with a long injury history, and they are chasing a title. The Clippers no longer were. The specter of the apron only made the choice starker.

Timing matters. Leonard signed his extension on Jan. 10, with the Clippers in the midst of a 16-3 run. Leonard was healthy, and the Clippers looked like contenders — worth investing in. For whatever reason — perhaps because he understood his leverage — George demurred until after the season.

By then, Leonard was hurt and the Clippers had lost in Round 1 — again. The West had passed them by. What was the point in caving to George’s demands?

One might wonder today what point there is to having Harden on the team. He’s good, and without much of a market, accepting of a shorter and cheaper deal. He and Leonard can keep the team afloat as they move into the Toilet Palace. The Clippers cannot tear everything down, since the Thunder and now the Sixers — courtesy of the Harden deal — control their first-round picks through 2029.

The Clippers used their newfound wiggle room to ink Derrick Jones Jr., old friend Nicolas Batum and Kris Dunn to smart deals. They will be solid — deep, maybe faster and bouncier. You can already see the feel-good headlines when the Clippers start 16-11: Frisky new-look Clips bound into new era!

But the upside and the margin for error aren’t there. What happens now if Leonard gets hurt?

In the frothy summer of 2019, the little-sibling teams in the league’s glamor markets scored audacious offseason coups and demanded to be heard. In the five seasons since, the Clippers and Brooklyn Nets have won four combined playoffs series.

The Clippers might be in purgatory again. The Nets are tanking. The Lakers are still king in L.A., and the New York Knicks have a chance to win it all. Yikes.

LOSER: The Denver Nuggets and the convenient fear of the second apron

The Nuggets can contend for titles as long as Jamal Murray and the world’s best player are healthy, but the downgrade from Kentavious Caldwell-Pope to Christian Braun will show itself against the best teams in the playoffs. There is also the backup-to-the-backup problem; someone outside Denver’s rotation now has to fill Braun’s reserve role — just as the Nuggets scrambled to fill Bruce Brown’s minutes last season.

Braun is a solid, improving role player who can guard up in size better than Caldwell-Pope. But he is not yet in Caldwell-Pope’s universe as a shooter, and shooting is what Denver needs most from that spot. They already attempted the fewest 3s in the league last season, and even for a team built around Jokic there is a math threshold you have to hit.

The Nuggets will blame the apron, and there is some truth to the idea that the apron is a convenient scapegoat for owners who don’t want to spend. A running joke around the NBA is that “no owner wants to be called cheap at the country club.”

Matching the Magic’s three-year, $66 million offer for Caldwell-Pope could have — could have — set the Nuggets up for three straight years above the second apron. Escaping the second apron is hard. The league removes a lot of roster-building tools. You can reduce your salary only in trades, and it might become harder to dump money as more teams approach the aprons. You might end up stuck with the players you have and (in Denver’s case) paying enormous repeater tax bills.

The counter, of course, is that being “stuck” with a championship-level roster is the whole point of owning an NBA team. The Nuggets also could have ducked the second apron this season by salary dumping Zeke Nnaji, though teams with space would have squeezed Denver for draft picks. The Nuggets are already out several future picks, so they are running low on ammo to grease the wheels on apron-related dumps.

Ducking the second apron in either the 2025-26 and 2026-27 seasons with Caldwell-Pope on the books would have been damned near impossible without sloughing away a major salary along the way — plus perhaps another role player in addition to Nnaji. Even without Caldwell-Pope, the Nuggets could be in danger of exceeding the second apron in 2026-27 given potential new deals for Murray, Aaron Gordon, Braun and Peyton Watson.

There were plausible ways of evading the second apron this season, keeping Caldwell-Pope and putting off painful choices one year. Those pathways were tight. But it was possible, and there is some merit to absorbing the penalties and paying through the nose to maintain a team you know could win the title.

There is also merit to Nuggets GM Calvin Booth arguing this situation is precisely the reason you draft players you think could help soon: Braun, Watson, Julian Strawther, Jalen Pickett, Hunter Tyson and now DaRon Holmes II. (Any GM parroting that argument is surely aware it gives cover to their bosses.)

Booth is intensely proud of his draft record. Those players had better be ready. Strawther looked ready before injuries short-circuited his season. He should be a good fit buzzing around Jokic.

Bottom line: The second apron is both a real impediment and something that stirs preexisting frugality.

Back in 2018, I wrote about the moral dilemmas of the new supermax contract — how some teams faced painful choices between paying stars gigantic, ever-rising contracts into their 30s, or trading them away. Had the NBA (and its team governors) accidentally introduced another wrinkle cutting against roster continuity?

With the help of several executives, I proposed a bunch of rule changes (some realistic, some pie in the sky) designed to mitigate the financial pain of keeping teams together: amnesty clauses, bonus cap exceptions, other minutia. The most relevant: What if supermax deals for homegrown players didn’t count in their entirety for luxury tax purposes? Even if that merely saved billionaires some scratch, was that worth it to help great teams stick together?

It feels like there is room to discuss something like that in conjunction with the second apron.

WINNER: The Orlando Magic, starting to build it

At some point, the Magic might need one more near-All-Star-level player to vault into the contenders circle. That point does not have to be now. The Magic can wait to see how far Paolo Banchero and Franz Wagner advance — and what that tells them about the kind of talent infusion they really need.

They might already have that infusion on hand if Jalen Suggs makes another jump, or Jonathan Isaac can stay healthy. Isaac is probably the single best per-minute defender in the league and was one of the most impactful per-minute players overall last season. The Magic did great work using some of their cap space to bump up Isaac’s 2024-25 salary — and then sign him to a declining extension with an average salary around what Isaac earned last season. (I suspect the deal will also include injury protections.)

We have barely seen what Anthony Black, Jett Howard and Tristan da Silva might become. In that environment, spending the rest of their cap space on Caldwell-Pope is a fine move. Caldwell-Pope’s in-motion shooting amplifies everything Banchero and Wagner do without taking any of the offense from their hands. He and Suggs form a dynamite defensive backcourt.

The Magic still have financial flexibility, tradable salaries everywhere and all their draft picks — plus some extras. The sleeping giant is starting to wake up.

WINNER: Oklahoma City, winning on every level at the same time

LOSERS, in a way: Everyone rushing to tank at the same time

It’s likely no team has ever been better positioned for the present and future at once than the Thunder are now. They stand as favorites to repeat as the No. 1 seed in the West, and they are much better fortified to navigate multiple playoff series after swapping Josh Giddey for Alex Caruso and signing Isaiah Hartenstein. One of those two will start in Giddey’s place; I’d wager on Hartenstein, only because teams tend to start bigger and downsize from there.

The Hartenstein-Chet Holmgren frontcourt should work well enough on both ends, and Hartenstein can stabilize the Thunder when Holmgren rests — and stabilize their rebounding in general.

The Thunder sacrificed almost nothing in terms of picks and long-term cap flexibility. New deals for Isaiah Joe and Aaron Wiggins are almost comically team-friendly. They could outbid anyone for any player on the trade market.

The Dallas Mavericks got a little better on balance after vanquishing Oklahoma City in the playoffs, but almost everyone else around them in the West mostly stood pat or got a little worse. (The most recent episode of the Lowe Post podcast has much more on the Mavericks signing Klay Thompson, and the current state of both the Golden State Warriors and the suitor Thompson jilted — the Los Angeles Lakers.)

The Thunder still own extra first-round picks from all over the league, including a protected 2025 first-rounder from one team that is one move away from plunging into the increasingly crowded tanking race ahead of much-anticipated drafts in 2025 and 2026: the Utah Jazz. The Brooklyn Nets, Washington Wizards, Portland Trail Blazers and Detroit Pistons are already in that slap fight to varying degrees, and a few other teams could easily join them.

The more teams embrace the same strategy, the less effective that strategy is — even more so for tanking given the flattened lottery odds.

Trading Lauri Markkanen would buy Utah a one-way ticket toward the front of the tank line, and Markkanen indeed stands as perhaps the league’s most intriguing trade chip with Mikal Bridges now in New York. A pile of teams have shown interest in him, including the San Antonio Spurs, Sacramento Kings, Miami Heat and Warriors, sources said. History suggests Danny Ainge, Utah’s CEO, will move Markkanen once someone meets his price. That could be tomorrow or months from now if the Jazz raise Markkanen’s salary and then sign him to a contract extension once they are allowed to do so in early August.

Utah can do that because it has cap space. Most teams interested in Markkanen are capped out and thus could not extend him upon acquiring him. It’s possible Markkanen would have more trade value if the Jazz extend him first, providing security for interested teams.

Either way, Utah cannot keep doing this thing where they are frisky for two months before the front office pulls the plug and they end up picking around No. 10.

WINNER: The Sixers. This time it will work, right?

There is so much work to be done, so much to prove, but forming a big three of George, Tyrese Maxey and Joel Embiid is a multidimensional triumph for Philly’s front office. They traded a disgruntled Harden for some Clippers picks — and then plucked away the Clippers’ second-best and frankly most reliable player in George.

This is close to the platonic ideal of a big three. They occupy three different spots on the positional spectrum, effectively encompassing all of it. Their core skills do not overlap much. All three can shoot 3s and create offense from all areas of the floor. Two of the three are good to great defenders.

In an annual Philly ritual, the Sixers now must reconstruct most of the team around Embiid — and now Maxey, finally a stable running mate for Philly’s MVP. They’re off to a solid start, bringing back Kelly Oubre Jr. and Andre Drummond, and adding one of Sixers president Daryl Morey’s old Houston favorites in Eric Gordon. (No tarmac hugs for Gordon, though.)

The roster chaos has taken a toll in past seasons. Continuity matters. The Boston Celtics, still the measuring stick, have it; Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum are entering their eighth season together, and Boston is bringing back its entire championship rotation — headed by five of the top 40 or so players in the league.

The Knicks, another offseason winner and Philly’s chief rival behind Boston, have it too, and they are emulating Boston’s model in compiling top-end depth. The Sixers will be comparably top-heavy and more vulnerable to ill-timed injuries. Several other strong East teams — including the up-and-comer brigade of the Cleveland Cavaliers, Magic and Indiana Pacers — have more top-to-bottom reps together than Philly.

George represents perhaps the last, best chance at building something sustainable around Embiid. Embiid is 30. He was not going to be patient forever. Philly’s top priority should be making sure Embiid is healthy when the playoffs start. If that means cutting his minutes and playing him fewer than 65 games — foregoing awards consideration — so be it.

Beyond that, it’s put up or shut up time for Embiid in the playoffs. He has underperformed in the postseason (relative to his regular-season efficiency) by a larger degree than would be expected. A sad litany of health issues has driven a lot of that. Embiid has had some huge playoff games and flashbulb moments, including his outrageous game-winning 3-pointer in Game 3 in the first round against the Toronto Raptors in 2022.

But his spirit has also flagged in some big games. He (and almost every Sixer) no-showed in Game 7 in the 2023 conference semifinals against Boston after the Sixers sputtered at the end of Game 6. In some crunch-time moments against the Knicks in the first round last season, Embiid looked skittish — hot-potatoing the ball to teammates.

George was not good enough in two of his three playoff runs with the Clippers. (He was sensational in the other.) His postseason record is scattershot. In the biggest moments, will Embiid be healthy? Will he and George bring the requisite steel? Will this team be deep enough?

LOSER: The other East champions of the 2020s

What is the case for optimism with the Milwaukee Bucks? Well, they blitzed opponents by 17.5 points per 100 possessions when Damian Lillard, Khris Middleton and Giannis Antetokounmpo played together. Middleton finished the season healthy, averaging 25 points on 49% shooting with Antetokounmpo and then Lillard got injured in Milwaukee’s first-round loss to the Pacers.

Lillard and Antetokounmpo will get a proper training camp — time to unlock their pick-and-roll chemistry. Lillard should be past the roughest part of his adjustment period. Doc Rivers can settle in as head coach.

But even when healthy, this team did not put together even a two-week stretch that made you think: OK, it’s clicking. The Bucks were just never that good. Everyone is a year older. The young guys are unproven. Middleton is an annual injury risk. The rumblings about Milwaukee at least considering Brook Lopez trades make sense on one level — this team could use a shake-up — but any such move would raise fundamental questions about the team’s defensive identity.

Meanwhile, New York and Philly got better. The Celtics have championship mettle. The Magic, Cavs and Pacers are rising. You can never count out Milwaukee’s big three, but their journey is getting harder.

That’s seven teams, and we haven’t mentioned the Miami Heat — who finished sixth or worse in three of the past four seasons. It’s not as dire as it seems. Miami barely got to play with Jimmy Butler, Terry Rozier, Bam Adebayo and Tyler Herro available together. Nikola Jovic made a leap that presaged another. Jaime Jaquez Jr. is legit. Miami could unlock enough future first-round picks to get into trade talks for some stars.

But Boston widened the gap and shed the postseason shakes that troubled it in past series against Miami. The Heat are nearing a crossroads.

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Celtics fired up during championship parade through Boston

The Boston Celtics are having a great time as they celebrate their championship.

WINNER: The Celtics, running it back as the all-in NBA chases them

Every champion inspires copycats, but the Boston model is harder to mimic than it might appear. The trades for Jrue Holiday, Derrick White and Kristaps Porzingis were masterstrokes — with quirks of timing and situational context that helped Boston execute them at acceptable costs. If it were easy to compile so many top-50 players, everyone would do it.

It’s also too expensive to keep together for long. Boston had a window to hoard all this talent before White and Tatum cycled onto fat new deals. That happens in 2025-26. The Celtics are set up to blast through the second apron and eat brutal repeater tax bills as long as they retain their entire core. That might be untenable someday soon.

The Knicks took advantage of a similar window to stockpile talent before several key players — including Jalen Brunson — sign massive new extensions. The time pressure wrought by the second apron is yet another variable nudging teams toward all-in transactions when they sense a real chance to win.

The Atlanta Hawks made what turned out to be one of the smaller of these trades when they flipped three first-round picks to the Spurs for Dejounte Murray two years ago. They recouped maybe 85% of that drafty equity last week when they sent Murray to the New Orleans Pelicans for Larry Nance Jr., Dyson Daniels and two future first-round picks.

That is a pittance compared to what the Knicks gave up for Mikal Bridges. The difference is in the context.

New York believes — rightly — it is not far from making the Finals. The Knicks’ financial window with this full roster could be tight. They could not wait for future disgruntled stars, nor be picky about price.

The Pelicans and the Hawks reside closer to middle, without the same urgency.

The Hawks are resetting their roster and going somewhat younger behind No. 1 pick Zaccharie Risacher. Trae Young seems perhaps slightly out of place with that direction, but he’s only 25. Jalen Johnson, the team’s one true untouchable, is 22 — between Young and the coming youth movement.

Young is potent enough to keep the Hawks around .500, and they don’t have much incentive to tank so long as the Spurs control their first-round picks through 2027 thanks to the original Murray trade. The smoothest way to reclaim those picks is trading Young to the Spurs, but San Antonio has not shown much recent interest in that, sources said. The Spurs understand the potential value of those picks, and they (for now) appear to favor holding them hostage over swapping them back to Atlanta.

The Lakers, too, have shown little recent interest in Young, sources said. That could change if the price drops to L.A.’s liking. But the market for Young is as chilly as it has ever been.

Bridges’ game also fits more neatly than Murray’s into a classic contending roster. A lot of Murray’s value comes from having the ball, and every legit contender will have a lead ball handler better than Murray. His value as a secondary player is murkier. Murray is smaller than Bridges, not as versatile or stingy on defense. Murray has become a better 3-point shooter, but Bridges is still more accurate — with more experience in a spot-up role.

The Pelicans needed a real point guard with crunch-time poise, and Murray can toggle into a floor-spacing role around Zion Williamson if he replicates his 39% mark on catch-and-shoot 3s from last season.

New Orleans now has a jumble of ball-dominant players. Another move is coming. For both teams, this Murray trade is a nice in-between-stations move — the trade that reorients the roster before the next big directional shift.

It’s fine for the Rockets’ brain trust to think ahead and wonder if Jalen Green and Alperen Sengun are compatible to the point of paying both maximum or near-maximum salaries — and if they could ever construct a “championship-level” defense around Sengun’s ground-bound game. After picking Reed Sheppard, the Rockets now have seven interesting prospects. If enough hit, they will not be able to pay them all.

But it would have been rash to trade any key young player — including the No. 3 pick before the draft — for a veteran upgrade. Houston does not have enough information about any of its young players, or how they fit, to make a decision of that magnitude when the immediate upside would have been fighting to stay above the play-in.

Let this thing marinate. Every good player on a rookie-scale contract is a precious asset in the apron era. The Rockets barely know anything about Amen Thompson, Cam Whitmore, Sheppard and Tari Eason — and how they fit with Sengun and Green. (Jabari Smith Jr. fits with everyone. He might never become a superstar, but he’s a keeper — a winner.)

Sengun, right now, is a minus defender. The Rockets went on a nine-game winning streak after he suffered an ankle injury. Thompson took over the paint on offense as a rim-runner.

But the Rockets won four out of Sengun’s last five games, their opposition in that nine-game streak without him was abysmal, and they lost six of their last nine to end the season — all without Sengun. Concluding from that sample that trading Sengun now is wise would have been malpractice. Sengun has the smarts and footwork to become passable on defense with the right support system around him.

Several reports have suggested the Rockets are ready to take a harder-than-usual stance in extension talks with Sengun and Green instead of conceding the max without any negotiations. That’s smart, too. Restricted free agency is their ally. There are risks in pushing players toward offer sheets — including shorter contracts — but it doesn’t have to reach that point. The Rockets can see how their young players perform and negotiate from there.

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Woj: Donovan Mitchell, Cavaliers agree to ‘massive deal’

Adrian Wojnarowski reports that Donovan Mitchell has signed a three-year max contract extension with the Cavaliers.

WINNER: Cleveland quiets the noise, too

It seemed improbable even six weeks ago that the Cavs might bring back all four of Darius Garland, Donovan Mitchell, Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen — plus almost the entire supporting cast from the first Cleveland team to win a playoff series (unconvincingly, but still!) without LeBron James since 1993.

But Mitchell is now under contract for three more seasons — a coup for the Cavs even if his extension is not as long as they might have dreamed. The Mitchell-Garland fit has proven more awkward than expected, and there were rumblings Mitchell’s return might spur Garland’s camp to push for a trade. Those rumblings — and Garland’s trade market — have quieted.

And that’s fine. Garland is just 24. I’d bet on a nice bounce-back after a plague of injuries derailed him last season. There is a very good team in here somewhere, even if maximizing it — for now — might require Kenny Atkinson, the Cavs’ new head coach, to stagger minutes pretty strictly between the team’s two foundational guards and its two key bigs. The Cavs have the depth to pull that off, though they are still searching for that archetypal 3-and-D wing. (They’d have interest in one of Dorian Finney-Smith and Cameron Johnson in Brooklyn, sources said, but they have only one future first-round pick — their 2031 pick — available to trade.)

In an ideal world, the Cavs would wait out the juggernauts above them — and rise up when Boston and New York might shed key players to avoid the second apron. But the Cavs, too, might face a financial crunch if Mobley and Allen join the star guards on hefty new deals in 2026-27.

Still, Cleveland has age on its side. For this to really work, Garland has to reassert himself as an All-Star candidate and Mobley has to blow up into something more than that — with enough of a perimeter game to thrive next to Allen.

WINNER: The mostly patient Spurs landing the Point God

The Spurs have been mostly quiet in free agency and signaled a willingness to play the long game with Victor Wembanyama by trading the No. 8 pick (Rob Dillingham) to the Minnesota Timberwolves for future draft assets. Wembanyama is so good already that the Spurs can have the best of both worlds: major year-to-year improvement while hoarding future assets.

They still have some cap flexibility to add another player this offseason. (They are my personal favorite Markkanen destination, though I suspect those negotiations — should they happen — could fall apart around Devin Vassell.)

Their young guys will all improve. Paul fills a need. The Spurs won 22 games last season. I’ll bet they’re around 40 — and in the play-in race — this season.