One to-do item for every non-playoff NBA team, from blockbuster trades to new coaches

The 2025-26 NBA regular season is about to end, and while 20 of the 30 teams still have basketball left to play, the worst 10 of them do not. For the Pacers, Wizards, Nets, Bulls, Bucks, Kings, Jazz, Mavericks, Grizzlies and Pelicans, it’s time to focus on preparing for the 2026-27 campaign.

So how do they do that? Well… that’s complicated. In reality, most of these teams are essentially paralyzed. Their entire roster-building approaches now hinge on a lottery that’s still a month away, so these teams can’t exactly make plans until they know where they will pick in June’s loaded draft.

But these teams otherwise know, at least broadly, where they sit going into the 2026 offseason. They know what their basic needs are. They know what their primary objectives should be. They know what’s actually in their control. So today, we’re going to look at the to-do lists for these teams and figure out the first thing each of them needs to do this offseason that isn’t lottery-dependent. The lottery may answer some of these questions for them, but no matter where they’re drafting, these are the issues that the worst teams need to tackle.

Indiana Pacers: Line up a trade to shed a bit of salary

In basketball terms, there’s really not much Indiana actually needs to do. Basically everyone that matters from their 2025 Finals run is still here. The one major loss was Myles Turner, and the Pacers already replaced him with Ivica Zubac. There’s nothing they need to go out and find. They should be reasonably confident that if Tyrese Haliburton is himself next season, they are ready to contend for championships again.

The question here is financial. Indiana has historically been averse to paying the luxury tax, and that may have factored into their decision to let Turner go. Well, even with Bennedict Mathurin gone, they’re projected above next year’s tax line. If they don’t keep their first-round pick, that problem solves itself. They’re close enough to the line to duck it with some minor tweaks. If they do keep their top-four pick, though, they’re far enough above the line that if they’re going to duck it, they’d have to move someone notable.

Of course, the flip side is that they’d have a top-four pick incoming. Moving Obi Toppin would sting a bit less with Caleb Wilson or Cameron Boozer coming in. If Darryn Peterson is the choice, maybe T.J. McConnell becomes expendable. The Pacers don’t necessarily need to duck the tax now. They’re not positioned like some other contenders who know they’ll have years of repeater payments coming and therefore need to delay the clock as long as possible. They’re just organizationally thrifty, and it probably wouldn’t hurt them to clear a few minutes for a top-four pick anyway. They don’t have to complete a trade until they know if they’re keeping their pick, but for now, all they can really do is explore what it would take to make one.

Brooklyn Nets: Either extend or trade Michael Porter Jr.

At one point, a Michael Porter Jr. trade felt inevitable. The Nets were tanking. Porter was outperforming expectations and would seemingly have fetched a nice return at the deadline. But Brooklyn has historically refused to trade players without getting monster returns. It worked out with Mikal Bridges and Cam Johnson, the latter of whom netted them Porter. Patience has paid off for the Nets. If someone wants to overpay for him, Brooklyn will probably let them.

But the incentive to move him is far lower now than it was a few months ago. The Nets don’t control their 2027 first-round pick, so having Porter around to help win them games is an actual positive. If that’s indeed the plan, it probably makes sense for the Nets to work out an extension now, while they have cap space and can therefore use the renegotiation-and-extension rule to front-load a deal while the rest of their roster remains cheap.

Washington Wizards: Figure out Trae Young’s contract

Like the Nets, the Wizards have an important contract to figure out. Unlike the Nets, the Wizards are working with very little information. Porter is an extremely portable player. Tall shooters can fit with anyone. Trae Young is a different story. Virtually all of his effectiveness comes with the ball in his hands. He has played just five games in Washington, so the Wizards have very little intel on how he fits with the existing players, but the other variable here is their upcoming draft pick. Most of the top prospects outside of the four most prominent players are point guards, so there’s a world in which Washington drafts long-term competition for Young.

The Wizards are reportedly likely to give Young an extension. I’ve argued that’s premature of them, at least at the price a player as accomplished as Young is likely to command. If they can get him to take a reasonable discount, that’s another story, but either way, the Wizards need this situation figured out, either through an extension or an understanding that next season will be a prove-it year, so they can plan out the rest of their long-term finances.

Milwaukee Bucks: Get a definitive, long-term answer out of Giannis Antetokounmpo

One way or another, the Antetokounmpo saga ends this offseason. Bucks owner Wes Edens has already said that the Bucks will either extend Giannis or trade him. But Antetokounmpo won’t be extension-eligible until October. The Bucks can’t wait that long and, based on how he’s handled this situation, they can’t expect him to make up his mind on a convenient timeline for them.

Milwaukee’s season ends in mid-April. The NBA Draft Combine starts on May 10. That’s when the real work of the offseason begins, and that’s when the Bucks need an answer. They should give Antetokounmpo until then to make up his mind. If he hasn’t agreed to extend by then, they have to assume he’s not staying and trade him. The whole league will be gathered in one place for the combine, giving the Bucks plenty of time to negotiate a deal and scout any prospects in this year’s draft they might be interested in with picks they add in the deal. This thing can’t drag on any longer. The Bucks have to act.

Chicago Bulls: Figure out Billy Donovan’s role

The Bulls fired their top two basketball executives on Monday. Before they can figure out what comes next, they have to settle Billy Donovan’s future. The Bulls have said they want Donovan back as coach. If he’s not the coach, he could be elevated to the front office as Brad Stevens was in Boston. He may also decide he’d simply prefer to coach another team — he left Oklahoma City right before a rebuild, and if the Bulls wind up going in that direction, he’d likely have options on more competitive teams.

This uncertainty is going to create headaches. Historically speaking, general managers who are forced to inherit incumbent coaches don’t exist with them harmoniously. Organizational alignment matters, and asking a new general manager to establish authority while a coach already has it would inevitably make things awkward. One way or another, Donovan’s future needs to be settled. If he’s going to be the head coach, he probably needs to pick the general manager to ensure a collaborative relationship. If he’s going to be the general manager or take on some other front office role, the Bulls need to establish that so they can launch a coaching search. And if Donovan is going to move on, the Bulls need to know so they can pass that information on to the most desirable front office candidates.

Sacramento Kings: Hire an experienced coach

The NBA is reportedly investigating an intentional foul the Kings committed on Seth Curry. The foul sent Curry to the line with three minutes to go and the Warriors leading, but Kings sources told ESPN that Doug Christie miscalculated the number of fouls the team had committed and thought they had one to give, which he wanted to use to call a timeout before the clock reached three minutes and he automatically lost it. If your coach is making strategic mistakes that are so far out of the ordinary they trigger tanking investigations, well, that’s probably an indication that it’s time for a coaching change.

The only success the Kings have had in the past two decades came under Mike Brown, a longtime coaching veteran with championship rings as an assistant and multiple playoff runs in top jobs under his belt. An organization this dysfunctional needs a steady hand guiding the team. Christie, who only became an assistant in 2021 and was promoted to interim head coach when Brown was fired, has overseen a disastrous season in which Sacramento fell to the bottom of the standings despite harboring Play-In ambitions. This time around, they need to find a proven coach. 

Utah Jazz: Acquire a perimeter defender

The bulk of Utah’s 2026-27 roster is set. Assuming Walker Kessler is retained in restricted free agency, the Jazz should have one of the most imposing front lines in basketball with Kessler and Jaren Jackson Jr. Lauri Markkanen and Keyonte George are already All-Star-caliber offensive players, and Ace Bailey may join them. There’s playoff-level talent here; the Jazz just need to check a few final boxes.

The biggest is perimeter defense. That’s especially true with the current configuration of their starting lineup. The Jazz are enormous, and there are benefits to that, but Markkanen and Bailey aren’t really suited to covering guards. The Jazz need to find a point-of-attack defender who can come off the bench most nights and scale up depending on the needs of the matchup. Given Utah’s remaining picks and tradable salary, though, that’s a pretty solvable problem.

Dallas Mavericks: Try to sign Dereck Lively to a team-friendly rookie extension

The primary purpose of the Anthony Davis trade, aside from moving on from the disastrous Luka Dončić deal, was to save money. The Mavericks went from close to the second apron to below the luxury tax line in a single stroke. There are still several long-term deals on the books here thanks to the rash of extensions Nico Harrison signed last offseason, but the Mavericks are reasonably flexible moving forward at this point.

One way to use that flexibility? Taking a risk. Dereck Lively looked like a future All-Star as a rookie. He’s played 43 games in the last two seasons. That would likely make him eager to accept a long-term deal with guaranteed money if offered one. If Davis were still on the books, that wouldn’t be a risk the Mavericks could afford to take. Now? If Lively is willing to sign on team-friendly terms, this is a chance for the Mavericks to lock up a cornerstone player for far less than someone that good should command. The Gafford-Lively partnership took the Mavericks to the NBA Finals in 2024, so securing the two of them together would be a great start for the Cooper Flagg era.

Memphis Grizzlies: Get off of Ja Morant’s contract

The Grizzlies have already moved two of the three core players from their last era in Jaren Jackson Jr. and Desmond Bane. They obviously tried to move the third, Ja Morant, at the trade deadline. They couldn’t find a taker. Though he has one of the most onerous contracts in the NBA, the Grizzlies are going into a rebuild and have plenty of financial flexibility. This isn’t exclusively a financial matter.

It’s a roster issue. The Grizzlies want to develop the young players they already have or will soon draft. Morant is only valuable with the ball in his hands. Keeping him on the team means letting him run the offense, and letting him run the offense means not allowing the young players Memphis hopes will lead the next era to do so. Morant is a high-maintenance player. He’s not the sort of veteran who can blend into the background of a roster. He can really only function in a primary role, and the Grizzlies likely won’t have one for him moving forward.

There should be more options available to Memphis in the offseason. Teams that weren’t interested at the deadline could have disappointing postseasons and reconsider. They may also be able to swap him for someone else’s differently structured bad contract. But getting him off the team is what matters here. The Grizzlies have to turn the page.

New Orleans Pelicans: Find a defensive center

When the Pelicans made their largely panned trade for Derik Queen, it seemed as though they were doing so to replace Zion Williamson. But Williamson just had one of the healthiest seasons of his career, and the Pelicans were clear to the media that they did not intend to move him, at least at the deadline. For now, they don’t seem eager to split that duo up.

The problem? The two were terrible together. Lineups featuring both ranked in the 18th percentile offensively and the 11th defensively in terms of efficiency, according to Cleaning the Glass. We knew they wouldn’t be defensively viable at their size, but the offensive fit is just as clunky considering neither shoots 3s. The Jazz will eventually have to pick one, but they don’t seem eager to do so quite yet. Queen cooled off down the stretch. They’d probably like to see his second season before committing to moving Williamson. If he doesn’t live up to their hopes and Williamson stays healthy, maybe it’s Queen who ultimately goes. The stakes for next season aren’t high enough to rush a bad decision.

But if the Pelicans are going to be at all viable defensively, they have to get a true rim-protector. Only the Wizards and Bulls allowed more shots in the restricted area than the Pelicans this season, and forcing both to play with a likely offensively limited big man is a meaningful test of their shot-creating abilities. If either of them is the sort of special, plus-sized shot-creator New Orleans envisions, they’re going to have to be able to generate offense with suboptimal spacing, so getting a real big in the building to boost the defense is essential.