Warriors, Bulls, Hawks and Kings face tough choices after Play-In Tournament exits

Two things inevitably follow the sting of a season-ending defeat: a brief assessment of what went wrong or right, followed by a long, deep breath and … “Now what?”

While 16 of the NBA’s 30 teams started playoff series last weekend, four others find themselves in “Now what?” situations after losing during the Play-In Tournament. Each of them is at something of a crossroads, as well, making their situations perhaps a bit more interesting than your typical vanquished ninth or 10th seed.

To be clear, not every team that loses in the Play-In is a disappointment. Oklahoma City, for instance, surely wasn’t happy that it lost to Minnesota in the Play-In in 2023, but that did not make the Thunder’s 2022-23 season a failure. Far from it: They improved from 24 wins to 40, and that ended up as a springboard for their further leap to 57 wins this season.

That’s not the case for the four teams eliminated last week. While there are levels of disappointment, all four expected to advance further than this at the start of the season. Whether those expectations were rational is another discussion, but three of them were in the playoffs a year ago, and three of them sacrificed significant future draft capital to be in the position they are now.

Let’s go through all four and size up what went wrong and where they can go from here. I think you’ll see a common theme: These teams loaded up to get the rosters they have, and now are facing some hard choices:

The Bulls are still recovering from their original sin of trading two first-round picks and starting center Wendell Carter Jr. for Nikola Vučević in 2021; both picks landed in the draft lottery, and one gave the Magic Franz Wagner. Since then, the Bulls have made the playoffs once in four years. Vučević was supposed to be the fulcrum of Chicago’s attack but instead has become a competent, inoffensive fourth option; the Miami Heat guarded him with Nikola Jović with no consequences whatsoever in Chicago’s Play-In loss.

The Bulls have thus far avoided the glaring reality that they need to blow this up and start over, whistling straight past their best opportunity to do so last summer, and may yet blow off rebuilding for another year. Chicago will likely point to its rally from a 5-16 start to make the Play-In and a final tally of 40-44, but the Bulls were also outscored on the season by 1.5 points per game and did nothing notably well at either end besides avoiding turnovers and pretending the 3-point rule doesn’t exist.

If they can’t persuade the NBA to abolish the 3-point line before the start of next season, that trend likely will continue; Chicago’s best player turns 35 this summer, and two other key starters are in their 30s.

At this point, it’s not even clear what blowing it up looks like. DeMar DeRozan is a free agent, efforts to trade Zach LaVine last winter bore little fruit and the trade market for Vučević is haha no really stop. The player with the most trade value, Alex Caruso, is still here, entering the final year of his screaming bargain of a deal (the best move by this current front office by far). He is capped at four years and $78 million on a possible extension, by the way.

Presumably, the Bulls would have traded DeRozan if they were planning to pivot that way, and instead, one suspects they’ll re-sign him. Chicago also may yet welcome back Lonzo Ball next season, on the final year of his deal at $21 million, but don’t get your hopes up.

On paper, even pursuing the stereotypical Bullsian strategy of just re-signing everyone and running it back could hit some snags. If Torrey Craig opts out of his minimum deal, the Bulls only have about $35 million below the projected tax line — something they sure as hell won’t be crossing anytime soon — to re-sign DeRozan and Patrick Williams and use exception money on a backup center (either Andre Drummond or his replacement).

Waiving Ball and stretching the final year of his deal over three seasons could also help the Bulls manage the tax and keep this roster together.
A more radical, if reckless, strategy would be to double down on the current group by trading what is likely the 11th pick in the draft and one in 2030 to bring in another star, using an assortment of contracts (Ball? Jevon Carter? Vučević?) as the matching money.

More modest (and appropriate) swings are possible if the Bulls can just find a taker for LaVine, whose spot in the pecking order has been all but usurped by Coby White (a legitimate success story and on a great contract). LaVine will make $40 million this coming season and has four years and $178 million left on his deal, which is why trading him has been a challenge, but that’s money that could be redeployed for a real power forward and/or a genuine rim protector either via trade or clearing money to use their nontaxpayer midlevel exception.

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Regardless, the Bulls are in an ugly spot. Their players aren’t valuable enough to command much in return if they blow it up, the team isn’t good enough to warrant spending future capital to improve the present, and the cap situation isn’t clean enough to add free-agent talent. The team at present is also juuuust competent enough to avoid a high lottery pick; in fact, if the Bulls run it back, they have a real chance of hitting the sweet spot of missing the playoffs in 2025 but still conveying a top-10 protected first to San Antonio from the DeRozan sign-and-trade. Fun times!

On a positive note, did I mention the Bears have the first pick in the NFL Draft?

Of the four teams, Sacramento is probably the least disappointed. The Kings won 46 games and smoked the Warriors in a Play-In game before meeting a New Orleans Pelicans team that has absolutely owned them; by then, they were also significantly diminished on the wings with the losses of Kevin Huerter and Malik Monk.

Before we get into the offseason, let us also take a moment to appreciate the quiet miracle of Sacramento now being a real, respectable basketball team and not the Kaaaaangz of yore. It would have seemed almost unimaginable two years ago that a 46-win season from the Sacramento Kings would be regarded as moderately disappointing, but a year ago, they won 48 and were the third seed in the Western Conference and have now gone multiple years without doing anything bat-crazy.

The Kings also were a decent-to-good team in 2023-24 without either being notably old, notably expensive or notably asset-poor. The biggest issue they face is how to get any better than that, because they’re built around two really good players who also aren’t top-10 players in the league.

With an expensive extension kicking in for Domantas Sabonis, that limits how much they can fill in around him and De’Aaron Fox. The Kings’ other three starters are adequate but not exactly frightening the league right now, either. As for the bench, re-signing ace sixth man Monk at his maximum amount (four years, $78 million) would take them to the projected luxury tax line without addressing glaring weaknesses at backup point guard and backup center. (Fox is also extension-eligible but likely would benefit from waiting until after the 2024-25 season when he could add four years rather than three and also possibly make himself supermax eligible.)

The Kings can trade three first-round picks on draft night (their likely pick at No. 13 and firsts in 2028 and 2030) if they want to take a big swing, which I’m not sure is that wild of a strategy at this point if an elite forward becomes available.

More likely, and probably sensibly, they should take a hard look at upgrading the power forward spot using the 13th pick and a couple of fungible contracts. At worst, surrendering a couple of second-round picks to drop the contracts of Chris Duarte, Sasha Vezenkov and/or Davion Mitchell on another roster could free their nontaxpayer midlevel exception for an upgrade behind Fox.

The hardest part for Sacramento is that it has built a perennial Eastern Conference playoff team … but it plays in the West. By my count, 14 teams in the West have legitimate, sensible playoff aspirations next season, so this will again be a tough neighborhood in which to stand out.

Theoretically, they’re set up for a solid half-decade run, but in this conference, they may need to take some risks just to tread water, let alone move up. And as our Sam Amick and Anthony Slater recently pointed out, coach Mike Brown’s situation warrants monitoring, as well.

The Kings won 46 games this season but failed to advance to the playoffs after being the third seed in the West last season. (Ron Chenoy / USA Today)

Golden State Warriors

Golden State is following a rather atypical path for a diminished dynasty. The Warriors aren’t quickly descending under the weight of a top-heavy roster and salary structure; they’re instead fading gently into an extended twilight of being halfway decent, with the roster now a muddle of pretty-good-but-not-great players while their centerpiece superstar declines to a mere All-Star. Hey, Rome didn’t collapse in a day.

Seriously, what do you do here? As far as championships go, it’s pretty clearly over, but only one team gets to win it all every year. Stephen Curry still sells out every arena he walks into, and everyone in the Bay still loves this core. Seen that way, you can understand why they’re pushing to bring back Klay Thompson even if, on paper, it doesn’t seem like the most urgent need.

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The other part is that the team also has enough decent players, including some young ones (kudos for nailing that 2023 draft with Brandin Podziemski and Trayce Jackson-Davis) to stay competitive even as the Draymond Green-Curry-Thompson core declines.

In fact, looking at the Warriors’ contracts and ages, only two strategies would make sense. The first is trading Curry for a boatload of picks, which is what you would do in a video game but is completely untenable in the real world. (The Warriors, incidentally, won’t have a first-rounder this year unless they luck into a top-four position in the lottery.)

This takes us to the second strategy: Rebuilding the team’s salary structure to set up for whatever comes next. Set aside the financial piece — just with the functional basketball part, the Warriors can’t be a second apron team with their hands tied by the collective bargaining agreement if they’re going to be this ordinary.

Waiving Chris Paul’s $30 million for next year is an obvious first step, one that gives them enough room to re-sign Thompson at a fair number, add a backup point guard with the nontaxpayer midlevel exception and still stay below the first apron. Additional wiggle room is possible via trading Kevon Looney ($8 million), who looked cooked by the end of the season, or if Gary Payton II opts out of his $9.1 million deal and takes a longer contract for less annual money.

Trading Andrew Wiggins also is a more hopeful possibility, although the three years and $85 million left on his deal are likely negative equity at this point. Additionally, his contract could remain an impediment a year from now when a potential extension for Jonathan Kuminga kicks in, pushing the Warriors back into the tax even if they do get under this year. The Warriors’ best bet is probably hoping Wiggins has a better year and is more tradeable at the February 2025 deadline or in the summer of 2025.

That’s still way in the future, though. And if this sounds like a slightly depressing game plan for the Warriors, to just run it back with a different backup point guard and everyone a year older, consider that Golden State still has a more tantalizing option if the right deal comes along.

At any point after draft night, the Warriors can trade three future first-round picks (2025, 2027 and the top-20 portion of the 2030 pick they owe Washington for taking Jordan Poole off their hands) if another star becomes available; if Wiggins was one of the outbound contracts and the incoming player was good enough, that might be worth a longshot chase of ring No. 5 for this gang.

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Much like the Bulls, the Hawks have embarked on an extended run of not really making any moves and hoping a flawed roster would be good enough. The fact they got smoked by those same Bulls in the Play-In tells you how that’s working out.

Atlanta committed multiple unprotected firsts to San Antonio to get Dejounte Murray in 2022, a defensible proposition on its own were it not for his heavy positional overlap with Trae Young. The Hawks are too small when the two play together, not to mention too on-ball dominant with two lead guards who need a lot of dribbles to get where they’re going. As a result of that trade, the Hawks are in the odd position of being unable to tank for the next three seasons, yet not really being in a position to contend either.

I hate to even say this out loud, but running it back with the same team is a real possibility given the front office’s reluctance to complete deals and the potentially tepid market for Atlanta’s players. The Hawks could return all 12 players with contracts for next season, sign two-way Vít Krejčí to a roster deal for 13, use the likely 10th pick in the draft on a player to fill out the team and end up just under the luxury tax line. (There is no chance they go over.) That team would likely give us another 40-win season punctuated by a Play-In Tournament and fork over a pick in the teens to San Antonio. Yay?

Alternatively, there is the obvious potential that they trade either Murray or Young, with league handicappers seeming to think Young is now the favorite. The Hawks did go 12-11 with Murray at the controls during Young’s injury absence, with the team presenting as notably bigger on the perimeter with the 6-foot-5 Murray shifted to point guard. While that is March basketball — not always the best gauge — it at least offers some proof of concept that the team wouldn’t collapse in Young’s absence.

Beyond that, the logic for keeping Murray and trading Young is on the cap sheet. Murray is on a relatively team-friendly deal through 2028; Young can opt out and become a free agent in 2026, and if he extends his deal longer, it will be for roughly double what Murray is making.

Replacing Young’s salary with multiple smaller deals (the likely outcome of any swap) also allows Atlanta to push further back from the tax line; regardless of what happens in 2024-25, the Hawks will need that breathing room to accommodate a hefty contract extension for breakout forward Jalen Johnson that would begin in 2025-26. (I’ll note that the Hawks, in true Hawksian style, could also kick all these cans down the road until the trade deadline before deciding which guard they want to trade. Please … don’t.)

Getting a return on Young will be challenging but not impossible; the Los Angeles Lakers and Spurs seem like potential destinations, and upcoming playoff results inevitably will make a couple other teams desperate enough to take the plunge. Getting back multiple firsts to offset the investment in Murray has to be the minimum ante; getting the picks back from San Antonio is an obvious temptation given that it opens the door to a full-on rebuild if the Hawks want to go that way.

Otherwise, Atlanta is pot-committed to riding this out through 2027. And as far as the rest of the roster goes, everything seems mostly on hold until the guard situation gets worked out.

With so many players already signed for next year, that might have been true anyway. Nobody is clamoring to get their hands on De’Andre Hunter or Clint Capela, the two players Hawks fans put in every fake trade. In particular, trading Capela (whose $22 million expiring deal is their most movable chip besides the guards) could be problematic with Onyeka Okongwu a very iffy proposition as a long-term starter.

Finally, one for the cap nerds — Atlanta does have some motivation to take action by June 26, when a mammoth $23 million trade exception from the John Collins trade expires. Atlanta could likely use this exception to generate one of similar size in a Young trade, depending on which players come back and the size of their contracts. If so, ironically, it would be the first trade by this front office since dumping Collins.

(Top photos of DeMar DeRozan, Klay Thompson and Trae Young: Rick Osentoski, Petre Thomas, Jesse Johnson / USA Today)