Ranking the NBA's Most Confusing Rosters – Bleacher Report

Myriad words can be used to describe NBA teams.

Ideally, confusing isn’t one of them.

Like with any other businesses, franchises need a clear, concise mission statement that gives them direction, purpose and a plan to bring that vision to life. For some, it’s as simple as championship or bust. For others, the focus could be on developing young talent today for a chance to compete tomorrow.

For a small, unfortunate group, though, they either lack an obvious focus or are aiming somewhere other than where their rosters and recent results say they should. That’s where the confusion comes in. You can’t tell either what these teams are trying to accomplish or how they plan to pull it off. In the most extreme cases, both the objective and the method of attack are head-scratchers.

Now that the 2023 NBA offseason has largely wrapped up, rosters can be seen in their near-entirety. With the following five teams—ranked by all things confusing (ill-fitting pieces, outdated approaches, lack of direction, distant hopes of accomplishing their goals)—these images aren’t flattering; they’re perplexing.

If you simply took a snapshot of the Blazers, you’d be looking at one of the league’s most puzzling rosters.

There is a decade-plus gap between (arguably) their two most important players: Damian Lillard, who turned 33 in July, and Scoot Henderson, who won’t turn 20 until February. The age gap is nearly as wide between (arguably) their next two most important players, too: Jerami Grant, who turns 30 in March, and Shaedon Sharpe, who turned 20 in May.

Portland is knee-deep in a youth movement, but it’s also heavily committed—at least financially—to the veteran core of Lillard, Grant and the soon-to-be 29-year-old Jusuf Nurkić. That trio alone is on the books for north of $90 million next season.

If this is how the Blazers planned to proceed, this blend of costly vets and unpolished prospects would create quite the confusing picture. But Lillard, of course, is anxiously awaiting his trade out of town (ideally, for him, to sunny South Beach), which leaves this team trapped in a transition phase that can’t get rolling until the longtime franchise face is…well, no longer with the franchise.

Assuming Grant isn’t attached to a Lillard deal—the Blazers certainly hope at least Nurkić will be—his presence (and paycheck) could stick out like a sore thumb on what would be an otherwise future-focused nucleus. Even then, though, Portland won’t be nearly as confusing moving forward as it currently appears.

The Mavericks ostensibly deserve some credit for trying to make things work. Given the possibility of Luka Dončić potentially looking for the exits if this club can’t contend sooner than later, Dallas is understandably putting a lot of resources into its win-now attempts.

Still, there’s a very real chance this doesn’t work—the Mavs went 9-18 once Kyrie Irving debuted last season—and if it doesn’t, Dallas will only have itself to blame. After all, the Mavs wouldn’t have needed to unload several key components (three-and-D wing Dorian Finney-Smith chief among them) at the 2023 trade deadline for an All-Star-level point guard had they simply extended Jalen Brunson the season before.

The Mavs could have signed Brunson to a four-year, $55.5 million extension ahead of the 2021-22 campaign, but they didn’t offer it, per ESPN’s Tim MacMahon. By the time Dallas finally extended the offer after the 2022 trade deadline, it was clear the 26-year-old had played his way into a much more lucrative future. (He scored a four-year, $104 million deal the subsequent offseason from the New York Knicks.)

That’s why Dallas had to throw caution to the wind with its deadline deal for Irving, despite his consistently inconsistent availability. It also created a shortage of two-way wings and reliable defenders in general. After the deadline, the Mavs had the Association’s fourth-worst defense. For all of the offensive firepower possessed by the Dončić-Irving pairing, even that wasn’t enough to overcome such defensive generosity.

How are the Mavs planning to fix this moving forward? Adding Grant Williams was a start, but he’s not a one-all fix for this defense. Can Josh Green summon enough offense to warrant a nightly allotment of 30-plus minutes? Is rookie Dereck Lively II a source of realistic hope for paint protection? Can Dončić and Irving score at such an efficient rate that Dallas can start winning in spite of a leaky defense?

The Mavs have a lot more questions than you’d like for a team that has a generational talent on the roster and also made an all-in trade within the past six months. You can sort of see what they’re trying to do—which is why they don’t rank any higher—but it’s a lot trickier to actually believe this will work.

The Rockets are going for it. That much seems clear. But good luck figuring out exactly what that “it” is.

Clearly, Houston sought to make a culture change this offseason, and it coughed up a ton of coin to try to make that happen. Fred VanVleet scored a three-year, $128.5 million contract. Dillon Brooks landed a four-year, $86 million deal. Jock Landale inked a four-year, $32 million pact. Jeff Green secured a two-year, $16 million deal. Even new head coach Ime Udoka got in on the spending splurge with a four-year, $28.5 million contract.

The Rockets want to gain some traction on their rebuilding project, and to a certain extent, that’s understandable. No team has posted a worse winning percentage than Houston’s .250 mark the past three seasons. That level of losing can weigh on any organization.

Still, it seems like Space City is racing to launch a rocket ship that isn’t ready for take-off. Obviously, the hope is that the older incoming players can help the younger ones develop good habits, but Houston might be operating on a two-timeline strategy that’s likely to come up short on both tracts.

The vets don’t have enough juice to book a playoff trip on their own. The prospects, meanwhile, don’t include anyone guaranteed for stardom. It seemed like Jalen Green was the designated centerpiece, but his name popped up in trade talks this offseason. If Jabari Smith Jr. is the long-term focal point, that’s putting a ton of faith into a 6’10” player who shot 40.8 percent from the field as a freshman.

The Rockets should be more competitive next season, but it’s anyone’s guess when this club will be competitive enough to matter.

It would be fascinating to get a look at whatever GPS Raptors president Masai Ujiri is consulting. Outside looking in, it sure appears Toronto is trekking down the proverbial road to nowhere.

There has been a mass exodus of established, talented players ever since the Raptors captured the world title in 2019, starting with Kawhi Leonard that same summer and lasting through Fred VanVleet’s departure this offseason. You’d be forgiven for thinking a youth movement is overdue. You might also conclude that new coach Darko Rajaković, who has spent much of his career in player development, would be a great choice to oversee a youth-heavy roster.

Yet, Toronto hasn’t even shown so much as a passing interest in resetting this roster around its youth. If anything, the Raptors have done the opposite. Sure, they let VanVleet walk, but they were in the running before he became perhaps this offseason’s biggest overpay. They also re-signed Jakob Poeltl, whom they sacrificed a lightly protected first-round pick to add at the trade deadline.

They have also effectively rebuffed any inquiries about their own players, with league sources describing Toronto’s asking prices as “astronomical” and “far-fetched,” per the Action Network’s Matt Moore. That already resulted in the Raptors losing VanVleet for nothing, and history could repeat itself with free agency awaiting Pascal Siakam and O.G. Anunoby next summer.

Barring trades, Toronto has too much talent to bottom out but not enough of it to compete for anything of substance. The Raptors were an abysmal shooting team last season, and that was before they replaced VanVleet with Dennis Schröder, a career 33.7 percent three-point shooter. Expecting much more—or much less—than a .500 record feels unreasonable.

Zigging against a popular zag can be a way of getting ahead of the curve. Then again, it could just be a sign that you’re going about things in the wrong way.

Minnesota’s move toward the towering frontcourt combo of Karl-Anthony Towns and Rudy Gobert felt decidedly dated. Even if you remove the egregiously high price the Wolves paid to get Gobert—five players (including Rookie of the Year finalist Walker Kessler), four first-round picks (three unprotected) and a pick swap—his fit with this roster is wonky at best.

On offense, his non-existent scoring range means he clogs up the interior. That can muddle up attack lanes for Anthony Edwards and limit post-up opportunities for Towns. On defense, the Gobert-Towns tandem lacks the lateral quickness to hang with face-up forwards and small-ball bigs.
When Minnesota made its all-in push for Gobert, the timing of the trade seemed off. So did the target. The Wolves should have already known they needed to do everything they can to brighten the future ahead of Towns and Jaden McDaniels, who are 27 and 22, respectively. Depleting draft assets and clogging the financial books for Gobert, who turned 31 in June, did the opposite.

Minnesota is sprinting toward mediocrity and might not have the fuel to go any farther. Gobert could be on the decline—in everything other than pay rate—and his presence could force the Wolves to explore Towns trades. Mike Conley is fighting against the clock with his 36th birthday approaching, and Minnesota doesn’t have a succession plan behind him. Naz Reid is a good player, but why spend $42 million on your third-best big?

The Edwards-McDaniels pairing alone should give the Timberwolves one of the league’s best long-term outlooks. Minnesota’s rush to establish a second-round ceiling (even that could be optimistic) dimmed that considerably. It’s entirely confusing to imagine where the Wolves are even trying to head and how they plan on getting there.

Back in May 2021, Bulls executive vice president of basketball operations Artūras Karnišovas told reporters: “We will not settle for mediocrity here.”

Combine that quote with all of Chicago’s performances and personnel decisions since, and you have the NBA’s single most confusing situation.

Since completing the Zach LaVine-DeMar DeRozan-Nikola Vučević trio in 2021, the Bulls have gone a combined 86-78. In their first season together, they were bounced out of the opening round. In their second, they couldn’t escape the play-in tournament. They finished the two campaigns ranked 20th and 13th in net rating, respectively. That sure sounds like mediocrity to me.

The Bulls could have (and should have) sensed by now they were bumping into a low ceiling, but they either refuse to accept their fate or are less opposed to mediocrity than they claim.
They could’ve let free agency break apart this roster, but they inked new deals for Vučević, Coby White and Ayo Dosunmu instead. They even went outside the organization to add Jevon Carter and Torrey Craig. They could’ve sought out trades for LaVine or DeRozan, but they set a “giant” asking price on the former, per The Athletic’s Fred Katz, and consider the latter “almost untouchable,” per Bulls.com’s Sam Smith.

You can’t blame them for a lack of trying, but what’s the end game? They don’t have a superstar, so championship contention is off the table. They don’t have a lot of shooting, so dominating with offense is a tall task. They have a lot of offense-leaning (or offense-only) players in prominent places, so repeating last season’s fifth-placed finish in defensive efficiency seems unlikely. (They ranked 23rd the year prior.)

How is this supposed to work? Do they expect LaVine, DeRozan and Vučević to suddenly add new layers to their game? Are they waiting on a leap year from Patrick Williams despite not having any evidence that one is in the works? Are they holding out hopes of a healthy Lonzo Ball, even though he’s looking at missing a second consecutive season with a knee injury that first sidelined him in January 2021?

I’m confused—more confused about Chicago than any other team in this league.

Statistics courtesy of Basketball Reference and NBA.com. Salary information via Spotrac.
Zach Buckley covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter, @ZachBuckleyNBA.

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