Yesterday on ESPN’s daily NBA show, NBA Today, there was a segment where Kendrick Perkins and Richard Jefferson talked about the Denver Nuggets, Golden State Warriors, Los Angeles Lakers, and Phoenix Suns. They picked which team had the best off-season, best offensive weapon, best pure scorer, and highest ceiling out of the four. Kendrick Perkins picked the Suns or a Suns player for every category. Let’s compare the Lakers and Suns’ off-seasons.
Richard Jefferson picked the Los Angeles Lakers as the team with who had the best off-season. The Lakers had a very good off-season. They were able to re-sign Austin Reaves, D’Angelo Russell, and Rui Hachimura. Those three players were all big parts of the rotation for them last season. The Lakers also signed Gabe Vincent, Christian Wood, and Taurean Prince among others in free agency.
The Lakers were very busy around the trade deadline last season. They were able to improve their team in a major way. Los Angeles moved up from outside of the play-in tournament to the seven seed after the trade deadline. This off-season they were able to keep the most important pieces from their trade deadline moves along with improving the roster even more.
There is a strong argument to be made for the Lakers to have had the best off-season but most of their improvement happened during the trade deadline of last season. They did a good job of maintaining the momentum from last season but the Suns had a better off-season.
The first move that the Suns made in the off-season was the dismissing of Monty Williams as their head coach. They replaced Williams with Frank Vogel. Vogel has experience winning a championship with big time stars like LeBron James and Anthony Davis. So, going into a “championship or bust” situation isn’t new for Vogel.