Current NBA Rebuild Grades
It's looking good! For some teams!
Hey!
Over the past few days I’ve written two iterations of How Will Today’s NBA Teams be Remembered? If you’d like to read those, you can (and should!)
But here’s the thing, folks…I didn’t cover the whole league because there are numerous current teams that we won’t remember. At least, we won’t remember the February 2024 version of them because the rosters they roll out every night are more means to an end than finished product. (That is said with no disrespect to the players taking the court each night for these teams, of course. I am genuinely cheering for them all.)
In other words, these teams are rebuilding. Woo, yeah, rebuilding! Fun!
Correct, very fun— but not every NBA rebuild is built the same. Not even close actually. Some are going well, and the team looks good now while also prepping for the future. Some teams are prepping for the future, so things are going well even if that’s not obvious on a nightly basis. And if you’re the Detroit Pistons or Washington Wizards, things are going poorly and will continue to go poorly for many years.
Let’s grade some rebuilds.
Detroit Pistons
Rebuild Grade: D-
Fuck it, let’s get this out of the way. Detroit has finished in the bottom three of the Eastern Conference four years in a row and it’s just a few months away from making that a half decade, currently sitting in 15th (last) with an 8-46 record. Being bad is part of a rebuild. Being this bad for this long is not.
Is there a light at the end of this long, dark, damp (for some reason) tunnel? Not really. Whether Cade Cunningham becomes the player that folks envisioned him as pre-draft is to be seen. What exactly Ausar Thompson still remains murky as well. But regardless of what those two—and Jalen Duren I suppose— turn into, any semblance of success is still so distant for Detroit.
This was a failure of a rebuild. Pistons fans deserve better.
Portland Trail Blazers
Rebuild grade: B
This is going fine. After a brutal start, Scoot Henderson’s true shooting is up to 48.4% and he’s averaging nearly 13 and 5 a night. Everyone take a deep breath about Scoot.
His young backcourt partner, Shaedon Sharpe, has been injured much of this season, which is a bummer because I was ready for a big leap from Sharpe this year. Kris Murray and Toumani Camara will both be good role players for a while, too, and outside of the players currently rostered, Portland has some decent future draft picks and a GM who’s won me over with mostly savvy moves in recent years.
Blazers fans, shield your eyes for a second: this is a solid start to a rebuild, but it’s going to take a while. Patience is essential. Embrace low-stakes basketball.
Washington Wizards
Rebuild grade: F
What the hell are they doing over there... Seriously, what’s going on?
I don’t know who’s running this team but if you said it’s Boss Baby I’d believe you completely because this is barely even a rebuild— Washington’s best player Kyle Kuzma is 28 and its second-best player Jordan Poole is not good at basketball. Bilal Coulibaly and Corey Kispert will have fine NBA careers but… Washington might even be further from relevancy than Detroit.
Charlotte Hornets
Rebuild grade: B-
Hitting on Mark Williams and Brandon Miller brought Charlotte up about two full letter grades because without those guys, the situation in CLT would be awfully dire. It’s still not great but I think those two plus LaMelo (who fans are starting to turn on but I still believe to be a future All-NBA caliber guard) is at least a real foundation, which is something a bunch of these teams can’t claim.
Also, I don’t want to underplay how good Brandon Miller is playing as a rookie. Yes he’s allowed to kind of do whatever he wants because Hornets games in 2024 are the least consequential basketball games maybe of all time, but his offensive versatility as a 20 year-old is wacko. Eleven games of 20+ points since the new year. He’s going to make some All-Star teams.
San Antonio Spurs
Rebuild grade: A
This is so goddamn annoying. The Spurs have no idea what they’re doing but they were awarded the greatest basketball prospect of all time just fucking because that’s what happens to them, so now their rebuild is like 70% complete. This franchise lives on easy mode. Whatever, man. (I don’t have any ill will towards the Spurs but they’ve been bad about three times in history and were awarded a generational talent each time.
Toronto Raptors
Rebuild grade: B
Things aren’t pretty in Toronto right now (19-36 overall, worst net rating in the NBA over the past 15 games) yet I’m feeling pretty good about the overall state of the Raptors.
Transitioning from a team that’s trying to compete to a team more focused on development is a tough task, but I think the Raps fared pretty well in that transition by adding Immauel Quickley, RJ Barrett, Ochai Agbaji, and Bruce Brown, a nice young supporting cast around Scottie Barnes, who made the All-Star game this year (very cool) and will probably make a bunch more in the future.
Toronto is a perfect example of “things are actually going well, just don’t look at the scoreboard for a few years.”
Utah Jazz
Rebuild grade: A-
I love almost everything this team is doing. Lauri Markkanen is incredible (
recently wrote a great piece about him over at ) and I’m fully bought in on rookie Keyonte George. Apparently Utah is fully bought in on him too because it just traded Ochai Agbaji (another young gaurd I like) at the deadline presumably so there’s no logjam at the combo guard spot.I’d love for Utah to sneak in a play-in game this year because I think any postseason experience is huge developmentally for young guys, but even if they fall off a bit in the homestretch I adore this team and the direction it’s headed.
Houston Rockets
Rebuild grade: B-
Houston is paying two veterans a bunch of money and still isn’t particularly good (24-30) but I see a clear path to competitiveness. I still like the Fred VanVleet and Dillon Brooks signings—if nothing else, Houston just needed to be a real NBA team this season— and I’m confident that coach Ime Udoka will be a solid developer of the youngsters on this team (of which there are still many.)
Oklahoma City Thunder + Orlando Magic
Rebuild grades: A+
OKC is so good that I understand not wanting to call it a “rebuilding” team at this point, but they are still building… they just happen to be really goddamn good while they build.
Orlando is a step or two behind but everyone on the Magic is still improving, too. Playoff team in year three of a rebuild? That’s an A+.
What I’m Listening to: billy woods
As always. Best rapper on the planet, of course.
When the revolution was over, they gave ‘em half of what they promised
One More Thing: Ranting About Trees Edition
When I was a kid, I really gave a shit about saving the environment. I wanted to be an environmental lawyer for years but eventually realized that’s a job for 1) intelligent people and 2) hard workers, which I am 1) not and 2) only on occasion, so that dream died in my early teen years.
Then I fell into a state of nonchalance for about a decade (normal for late-teen, early 20-year-olds, I think) and believed that a lack of caring was the coolest, least stressful way to live. Maybe I was right about the least stressful part, but not caring about the world around you or the people that inhabit it is also the least rewarding way to live. Being sad for people is a more worthwhile existence than not thinking about them.
I’m no longer in that phase of insouciance, luckily— but now I have to deal with these bouts of sadness about the environment again, and lately I’ve been bummed about the destruction of natural areas. Why do we do that? I don’t think we’re ever going to run out of trees (at least I don’t think) but we can all agree it’s fundamentally insane to chop down thousands of trees to build a neighborhood, right? It’s lunacy to build a freeway over a wetland, right? Is there not a better way to maximize the buildings, neighborhoods, and cities we’ve already built while protecting natural areas? I’m actually asking because I have no idea.
I don’t know if there’s any way to stop or reverse this but it’s been bumming me out recently, so please regale me with a positive, recent experience you’ve had with / in nature to cheer me up. And if you haven’t had one… go have one! Go to a protected wetland and just walk around or go sit in a forest or go take a birding class or something that gets you away from buildings. Okay, rant over. Love you, talk soon.
Common Boss Baby W
The Jazz rebuild is probably my favorite one to watch. They're avoiding trading away every single player they have of consequence, they embrace the idea that winning thirty games actually helps development more than winning fifteen, but they also seem to understand that they're not actually close to being a genuinely good team.
They've hit on a lot of players that other teams had largely given up on, grown draft capital without doing it at the expense of being competent, and employ (in my opinion) one of the best three or four coaches in the NBA.
I'd be willing to give them an A+ over teams like the Spurs because it seems like their rebuild going well is based on skill and intentionality and not just "hardy har, lets get another superstar"