Top 5 NBA Offseasons: Mavericks revenge + Knicks, Bucks & 76ers chasing Celtics | Hoops Tonight
Jason Timpf ranks which NBA teams have had the Top 5 Offseasons in pursuit of the 2025 Larry O’Brien Trophy inlcuding Giannis Antetokounmpo’s Milwaukee Bucks and Luka Doncic’s Dallas Mavericks. Where do Jalen Brunson’s New York Knicks and Joel Embiid’s Philadelphia 76ers rank after acquiring Mikal Bridges and Paul George this offseason? Later, Jason answers listener questions during an NBA Mailbag segment.
Timeline:
00:00 – Honorable Mention: Spurs & Hawks
06:45 – #5: Philadelphia 76ers
09:02 – #4: Dallas Mavericks
12:57 – #3: Milwaukee Bucks
15:49 – #2: New York Knicks
18:58 – #1: Oklahoma City Thunder
21:20 – NBA Mailbag
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29 Comments
Exactly people not even talking about the bucks but Gary Trent, Delon and Prince are all defenders and offensive shooters and scorers. And all on vet Min the bucks could’ve won it all last year now with those additions and upgrading younger watch out
People in comments better not overestimate Derick Jones impact on Mavs defence.
Klay will play off the bench after all-star,at latest.
Imo this gets posted too soon. The off-season definitely will still have some surprises sooner rather than later (I hope 😁)! 😊
Mavs at 4th best offseason over Mikal Bridges loool stop it. Was he not shipped to Brooklyn. The Knick hype got to stop – they are not a contender
Jason, I agree that 5 out has a higher ceiling than 4 out. The Diaw Splitter Spurs made me love basketball as a kid haha. However, 4 out clearly has a better floor and we’ve seen 4 out can be championship caliber. Players like Luka Harden Lebron etc. can spam actions that get the best out of limited players in a way 5 out struggles too.
The Mavs just beat the Clippers Thunder and Wolves! Thats 3 of the best teams in the league. LuKai demonstrated that style has a championship ceiling.
(I understand Kawhi was hurt but thats still a good roster and Luka was clearly not himself. No excuses, he played the games and he eventually lost, but we have a wealth of evidence Luka can and will play better than he did this playoff run.)
I believe the Celtics are an all time team and we shouldn’t hold the Mavs style responsible for that loss. Jrue Holiday is their worst starter for Christ’s sake 😂. He’s a starter on team USA! I believe 4 out can beat 5 out with appropriate talent.
If we do hold the Mavs style responsible let’s keep that same energy when the Warriors struggle with 5 out because they don’t have aggregate ball handling and IQ! There are positives and negatives to both.
Sorry for the long post 🤣.
10:29 I think it’s important to note that Spencer had his best catch & shoot year of his career in 21-22 with the Mavs & it may be a comfort thing.
if dwhite keeps this up, and the cletics keep winning titles hes gonna go down as a greater player than draymond. hes a STAR even if he plays "a role" on most nights
i think jts shooting is related to his role morphing over the course of his career, specifically in the playoffs. Ppl often criticize jt for dipping from a scoring perspective in the post szn but he always takes a leap from a play making perspective. he also starts guarding bigs n pgs, assignments he never gets during the regular szn. i think in order to shift his role he has to give more mind power towards those areas n apply less focus to scoring. thats my theory bc he shot it 38% on high volume last yr 37% for his career. so hes obviously not a bad shooter. i think he just gets out of rhythm w the role shifts in the offs
Anthony davis is better than Tatum now…OK LAL-Jazeera
Another underrated part for the spurs is the potentially valuable draftpicks they picked up for the future.
wait we were told incessantly that in order to win a Championship you need to have a TOP5 player…
Guy is moving the goalposts again
Holy Fu@k these Olympic games mean absolutely nothing. ZERO. its an exhibition against teams that are worse than the Detroit Pistons
Lebron has 12 turnovers in 2 games. Curry has been crap, can't guard a garden rake
Disagree on the Anthony Davis portion. He LOOKS better because he's playing second fiddle to LeBron, compared to Tatum being THE NUMBER ONE OPTION. He's NOT creating offense for others, he can't shotfinish consistently unless it's right at the rim or is getting a favorable officiating night, and though he's one of the BEST defenders all time, at this point he is more reliant on having teammates who help out at point of attack. Unless he's getting away with 3 in the key violations as usual, he's not as good as he used to. Again, he's ELITE at that, but he's definitely gotten worse due to age, injury, and roster fit.
We had almost an ENTIRE DECADE of evidence of AD being a number one option, and it was to be empty stats on a team that didn't do SHIT in the playoffs, or a Laker team that beat bad teams for a month and wasn't competitive against the nontomato cans.
You can have Tatum in any role on both ends of the floor; you can effectively ONLY play AD as a rim finisher on offense and a paint protector on defense.
looking at Second Spectrum numbers over a handful of games in short minutes is statistical noise
Thankyou for answering my mailbag Jason, this my favorite NBA content channel and only one I watch. Great point on the effort based impact Derrick White brings while the superstars (JT, JB) are conserving energy.
How can you say SGA is a better often engine literally choked in the playoffs and Tatum has had success even despite his struggles. Where is all this fake proof of these players playing better than Tatum. SGA and Tatum are the same age and not once has SGA ever been as good as Tatum. It’s disrespectful and disingenuous to act like cause one scores a little more efficiently but does literally everything significantly worse to say that play is better. You could just watch them play and see oh Tatum does way more on the court than SGA.
cool now we are comparing AD's jump shot with Tatum…
Where were embiid sand Lukas offensive force in the playoffs for their career because out side of 2 years they both have significantly under achieving for the praise that you’re saying. So either offensive force doesn’t mean as much as you say it does or Tatum is a better offensive force. You can’t keep ranking players who get beat by other better. At the end of the day you play to win the game and Tatum is better at winning basketball games than most the nba including superstars. Which makes him better than said super stars. To act as if it’s option based is disingenuous and disrespectful.
s/o whoever asked that last mailbag. great question
Great stuff on the Hawks. One thing to mention is that they did get a Lakers pick, but got the 2025 1st from NOLA in the Murray trade.
Bucks are to high
Love the inclusion. Great job taking the opportunity to discuss other teams.
Can't always do it, but looking for ways to include others is a great idea.
Mailbag- Hi Jason, I’ve done some work in statistics. I’ve passed a few actuary exams. My education background was in math and physics. I’ve seen the basic error statistics for the catch all metrics and they don’t seem that impressive but I’m not the best person to make this call. I’m an amateur. If you want to get someone on your show, with a sufficient background in this area, I think this might be an important topic.
These catch-all metrics are based on how well they perform when compared to each other. Their overall performance does not seem all that impressive. I think you would need someone that specializes in nba metrics and someone who is a non-nba data scientist.
Voters and the public are putting a lot of weight behind these measures. Their impact on nba awards is deciding nba history. I think you have the integrity and sizable platform to take this topic on.
As an amateur, here’s another one of the issues I see. Defensive catch-alls. Just imagine how difficult it would be to define all the variables that could explain a player’s contribution to a teams defensive rating. And those variables need to be able to be put into a spreadsheet. You also can’t create too many of these variables because there’s an issue with needing more possessions for every new variable you create. I find it hard to believe you could create a ballpark measure. maybe you could get in the parking lot.
The Celtics had the best off season and it's not even close.
Kevin Durant is better than Tatum?In 2024? Really?
😂😂😂😂😂😂 Man this guy is extremely inconsistent. I'm old enough to remember back in 2022 when he picked the Celtics to beat the warriors. I'm old enough to remember just this past season him saying that Tatum is better than LBJ and KD, Davis as well. But seeing Tatum struggling in USA basketball, it all of a sudden switches everybody's opinions on him. Man this guy really has a lot of you guys fooled
I think it goes both ways – due to JT being on a very talented team he isn’t able to hog the ball and have as much chance to showcase his talent!
Agree with how you view the Bucks. I was surprised and impressed. I figured they had to move someone and kind of remake two of their starters. They went small and smart (in terms of splash) and as you said clearly got better. Think they'll be hungry too.
Your team talent point is something I entirely agree with. It's why the Celtics STILL aren't getting the kind of respect they deserve AND a major reason so many people argue that LBJ+AD/KD+Book+Beal line: they still believe that ONLY a Top 5 player and STARZZZZZZZ win. It's a myth. You still gotta have good role players. Most people don't understand that the 2020 Lakers, GSWs, LeBon Heat teams and Spurs had good role players. People don't really respect that. They think it's ALL about a Big Duo or Big Three. IT NEVER WAS.
Great to see Spurs get some real adults in the locker room. Barnes is a quality guy.
"Hate" is just the 2020s word for "anything less than unadulterated fawning over." How many analysts "hate" Bam? Toughen up, Heat fans.