2009 NBA Offseason Champion

I want to start out by saying, that I was debating waiting the summer out until PG Ramon Sessions and PF David Lee ended up on new teams. However, my patience has worn thin, so, we will just analyze the offseason thus far, without these two major transactions. This has been one of the craziest offseasons in NBA history and it's now time to analyze the top movers and shakers!

I want to start out by anointing my NBA offseason champion, and then explaining in an exhaustive analysis why the Orlando Magic are #2 (aside from the fact that none of us like Vince Carter).

1) San Antonio Spurs

Just like last season when the Cavs provided cap relief to the Bucks to acquire a high-quality player (Mo Williams), this season, the Spurs dumped out a bunch of old players and expiring contracts (Bowen, K. Thomas, Oberto) to get SF Richard Jefferson.

To make up for the loss of big men, they signed Antonio McDyess and then got 2nd round stud Dejuan Blair. Blair will be awesome assuming his lack of any ACLs doesn't get him sidelined before the season ends. To top it off, they also got Marcus Haislip, who is a 6'10" 29-year old former NBA player, who tore up the Euroleague last year.

The main reason that this was such an awesome summer was that they used their older, more useless parts to get a great SF (Jefferson), and then added all sorts of weapons up front. Assuming Ginobili and Parker are healthy, and Duncan is ready for one last run, this team should be meeting the Lakers in the conference finals.

2) Nothing pains me more than having to give an award to one of the teams I despise, but in 2nd place: the ORLANDO MAGIC. Apparently, they had more money to spend than any of us even realized.

Backstory: Going into the offseason, everyone knew that Orlando was most likely not going to keep Hedo Turkoglu at $10 million per year. Also, I was anticipating that they would also lose C Marcin Gortat after his fantastic playoff performance (in the one game he started).

Instead, here's what GM Otis Smith did (in chronological order), which honestly, was simply genius, given the situation they were in:

1) On 6/25/09, he traded for Vince Carter. This is the most questionable part of Orlando's offseason, hell, I hated this trade in my instant analysis in the offseason. He gave up promising SG Courtney Lee, PF Tony Battie (who was old and worthless), and PG Rafer Alston (who was expendable), but he got back 6'10" promising rookie Ryan Anderson (who shoots 3s). But just keep reading, we'll get back to this whole Vince Carter thing...
2) He let Gortat get wooed by a plurality of teams, and they let him sign an offer sheet with Dallas. Then...
3a) He signed PF Brandon Bass from Dallas on 7/10. Dallas let him go because they were going to get Gortat...
3b) Meanwhile, he orchestrated a three-way trade of Turkoglu to give the Magic an absurd 7 million trade exception.
4) but then the Magic on 7/13 matched the offer sheet to get Gortat. If there was ever a time to talk some smack in the history of NBA GMs, I think this would be the time! It was like pulling a check-all-in on the grandest of all scares - people's livelihoods in the world of NBA free agency! Granted, just to be clear, this is only smart because the Magic have an unlimited amount of money to work with now.
5) On 7/22 he signed Matt Barnes, a fantastic swingman
6) On 8/19 he signed PG Jason Williams. Okay, that move is stupid, because you'd probably be better with just about any 23-year old.

In the end, the reason this active summer was so smart by the Magic was that they still received the trade exception for Turkoglu, they got another big-man who can shoot 3s (Ryan Anderson), they kept Gortat, they got Brandon Bass, and they even got Matt Barnes. It was much better than the "lose Turkoglu, Lee, Gortat" summer that I was forecasting! It's entirely possible that the Magic add YET ANOTHER PLAYER, since it appears they have no budget this year and will do whatever it takes to win. If they add Ramon Sessions or David Lee this would put them far out in front of anyone. Hell, they could even acquire a player like Gerald Wallace during the season.

However, we will evaluate the Magic on who they have now. With all these moving pieces, it's hard to keep track of it all. So... I took the time to do an interesting analysis, comparing the "Win-Shares", as computed on basketball reference for the top 3 players that changed. But, to compare apples to apples, I'm comparing win-shares PER MINUTE.

So, last year Orlando had:
1) SF Turkoglu = 0.202416 (2815 minutes)
2) SG C. Lee = 0.174729 (1939 minutes)
3) PF Battie = 0.185774 (1202 minutes)

This year they have the following players:
1) SF V. Carter = 0.20095
2) SG M. Barnes = 0.114649376
3) PF Bass = 0.210991105

Now, if you multiply the new players by the minutes they will play based off of the people they are replacing, it turns out that the Magic are worse off by -1.17 win-shares! Ha! Take that Otis Smith! It's only for this reason that I knocked the Magic to 2nd place - because of the unpredictability of all of these new pieces. On the Spurs, the superstars will still dominate, they just acquired all sorts of big-man help to do all the heavy lifting and dirty work. On the Magic, they changed so many things. Of course, Otis Smith will tell you that Pietrus will log more minutes than Barnes, but Pietrus, during the season, only had 0.121896 win-shares/minute. Otis Smith will probably also tell you that Bass will get more minutes, and Vince Carter less (to play a more traditional lineup) and so that Rashard Lewis doesn't play as much PF. Otis Smith will also tell you that Ryan Anderson is perfect because he's another 3-point shooter to drive the Cavs crazy (this is true). We could go round-and-round all day, but I'm just happy to report that the numbers don't lie, and this is a slightly WORSE group than last year, hence they are runners-up in my NBA offseason.