NBA’s best under-the-radar offseason moves: Knicks bolster their bench, Cavs add potential missing piece, more

People think it’s the star transplants that most move the proverbial NBA needle. Everyone is on the lookout for where Giannis Antetokounmpo “might” go (never mind that there has never been any real indication that he’s going to go anywhere). 

Through this lens, Kevin Durant to Houston is the obvious headline move of the summer. Same with Karl-Anthony Towns to the Knicks last summer, and Jimmy Butler to the Warriors at the trade deadline. Of course, we’re all still trying to wrap our heads around Luka Dončić ending up on the Lakers. 

Meanwhile, it was the Oklahoma City Thunder who won the 2025 title, and it was a couple of non-star moves that helped put them over the top. When OKC signed Alex Caruso and Isaiah Hartenstein last summer, it went from a second-round team to a champion. 

In this spirit, which contenders made the best under-the-radar moves among this summer that could potentially put them over the top next May and June? Among contenders, I have four I’m looking at more than any other. 

The Cavs are close. That might seem like an obvious statement regarding a team that won 64 games last year, but lost in all this talk of the East being wide open is the fact that Cavs were arguably the best team in the NBA for large swaths of last season. They weren’t healthy in the playoffs. 

In truth, we should be looking at this team like we did when the Thunder had a second-round exit in 2024. A margin move away. And Ball was quite the margin move. Say nothing of the financial victory of replacing Isaac Okoro, who is guaranteed $11 million and change for the next two years with Ball’s $10 million expiring contract, the Cavs are finally getting the two-way player they have long sought. 

Okoro made strides in that spot, but Ball was a straight-up sniper before the injury that nearly ended his career and should be able to rediscover that form with Donovan Mitchell, Darius Garland and Evan Mobley drawing so much attention to the paint. 

And he’ll enhance those guys, too. Ball is, and always has been, a super computer of basketball processing, the exact kind of connective soul who can fall right into Cleveland’s pace and purposeful passing. Oh, and about the defense …

It might feel like another lifetime when Ball and Alex Caruso were deflecting everything under the sun as a havoc-wreaking defensive duo in Chicago, but they remain similarly stationed as long, handsy defenders who pack the kind of pressure punch that can knock out possessions before they even get started. Ball isn’t the defender that Caruso is. Caruso isn’t the offensive threat that Ball is. But they come out in the wash as pretty clean comps. 

Now, Ball isn’t an every-night player at this point. He almost certainly won’t play back-to-backs and his minutes with be closely monitored all season. But if all goes well, his impact can be exponential in the playoffs with more days off and less reason for restriction. He won’t be the reason Cleveland wins the East, if in fact the Cavs do, but he could play a major role in getting them over the top. 

Snagging Bradley Beal off the clearance rack and trading for John Collins, who could plug perfectly into what might end up being a pseudo Aaron Gordon slot, were savvy moves, and Chris Paul‘s homecoming is at least a cool story and maybe more, but to me, the defining transaction of an outstanding Clippers summer was locking down Lopez as the best backup center in the league. 

Lopez isn’t what he used to be, but honestly, he’s not far off. He still made 37% of his 3s last season on typically high volume, so the pick and pops with James Harden and potentially Paul against second units are going to be beautiful toy for Ty Lue to play with. Lopez also remains an elite shot contester with flawless vertical form.

He got played off the floor in last year’s playoffs, yes, and he’s probably done as a top-shelf defensive anchor, but in smaller samples he represents an embarrassment of big-man riches. Hell, last season the Clippers rocked with Ben Simmons and Nic Batum in backup center minutes. Whenever Ivica Zubac came off the floor, they had to play small. That’s a problem in a league that is going back to big. 

Look around at all the twin-tower lineups the Clippers could feasibly face in a Western Conference playoff series:

This is to say nothing of the Cavs (Evan Mobley/Jarrett Allen), Knicks (Karl-Anthony Towns/Mitchell Robinson), Hawks Onyeka Okongwu/Kristaps Porzingis), Bucks (Giannis Antetokounmpo/Myles Turner) and Heat (Bam Adebayo/Kel’el Ware) in the East.

Now the Clippers can match any lineup at any point in any game. They can go totally small, as they have leaned on in the recent past. They can spell Zubac with Lopez for 48 theoretical minutes of single-center conventionality, or they can deploy Zubac and Lopez together a perfectly paired unit given Lopez’s ability to stretch the floor. This is the type of addition that could swing a playoff series for the Clippers, if not more than that. 

3. Knicks bolster bench with Yabusele

I thought there was a chance the Knicks would trade Mikal Bridges before having to extend him, and maybe they still will, but barring some kind of seismic trade they had one clear summer mission as it pertained to their actual roster: Improve the bench. And they did so with Jordan Clarkson and Guerschon Yabusele. 

You know about Clarkson. He’s a born scorer. For 20 minutes a night, he can get buckets, taking weight off Jalen Brunson, perhaps, in some lineups but probably more as a second-unit specialist who poses a much bigger threat than Cam Payne. 

But it’s Yabusele who I’d be most excited about if I were a Knicks fan. If you lost track of him after his star turn for the French national team at the Paris Olympics (which I suspect a lot of non-76ers fans did), he was picked up by the Sixers last summer and played very well in both a starting and bench role. 

The raw numbers look good enough for what should be about a 20-25 minute player in New York: 11 points and a shade under six rebounds a night.  But it’s the 3-point shooting that could really swing some different units for new coach Mike Brown. 

Josh Hart is a great player. But when the Knicks go with the three wings (OG Anunoby, Bridges and Hart) along with Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns, it’s Hart’s shooting, or lack thereof, that can be the Achilles heel when defenses start sagging off him and clogging the lane for Brunson and Towns. You can’t sag off Yabusele, who banged 38% of his 3s last season on four attempts a night. 

In addition to the general bench production Yabusele will provide, Brown can, where he specifically sees fit, even at closing time perhaps, replace Hart with Yabusele and give New York five threatening shooters while keeping a stout defense intact. I love this addition for the Knicks, both in general and for the specific lineup options Brown can now tinker with in preparation for a postseason in which he should be looking to use his reserves more than Tom Thibodeau ever did. 

4. Hawks dream up a Unicorn

Atlanta had an extraordinary summer. Nickeil Alexander-Walker could just as easily be listed here, but he was one of the most coveted free agents (weak class, but still), so I’m going to focus on Kristaps Porziņģis, who could end up taking the Hawks to another level if he can stay healthy. 

As mentioned above, size matters again in the NBA and the Hawks now have two centers in Onyeka Okongwu and Porziņģis who complement one another well enough to actually share the court rather than just swap in for one another (as was the case with Okongwu and Clint Capela). 

Beyond that, Porziņģis’ fit with Trae Young has nuclear potential. With Young’s ability to get into the paint and Porziņģis popping well beyond the 3-point line, good luck surviving defensively in all that space and covering Jalen Johnson streaking to the rim. It doesn’t matter what poison you pick. They’re all deadly. 

Defensively, imagine a closing lineup in which Young is surrounded by Johnson, Alexander-Walker, Dyson Daniels and Porziņģis, who held opponents to a 42% conversion rate as the primary defender last season, a better mark than both Victor Wembanyama and Anthony Davis. That’s pretty damn good, and it’s Porziņģis who brings it all together on both ends.

The Hawks have built a team in specific support of Young. They’ve turned their wing defense into en elite, crack-covering unit, and now they have a top-shelf rim protector in Porziņģis. If Young can’t win with this kind of team, as long as the collective health holds up, there isn’t going to be anywhere else to point the finger.