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The dust has settled on 2024’s NBA Draft and Free Agency period. Well, most of it. The biggest names have found new homes, and some spiciness has occurred through trades. At the nearing end of it all, the league’s power axis looks to remain mostly intact. Just short of the sport’s apex, though, the New York Knicks and Philadelphia 76ers beefed up before a bid to unseat the Boston Celtics in the Eastern Conference, as did the Oklahoma City Thunder, who are now many pundits’ pick to represent the West in 2025.

Plenty of teams between there and the basement are strapped into a car driven by whoever on their team has the most variable upside. Maybe the Indiana Pacers can enter the fray at the zenith, if Tyrese Haliburton has a full season at the stunning productivity levels he displayed for just a few months last year. Maybe the Milwaukee Bucks, limited not so much by inchoate players as by still-developing collective identity, can walk into October on more sure footing, and stay on it long enough to return to glory. Maybe the Phoenix Suns, in Mike Budenholzer’s hands, are a true basketball machine instead of just an assortment of compelling parts. Maybe Ja Morant’s Memphis Grizzlies continue their paused ascension, and become the story of the season.

There’s a lot of outcomes on the table here, but the range of them is baked into what these teams have—pretty definitively—assembled. What about the teams whose variability is less clear, though, because it has to do with players they still have, but perhaps won’t have anymore; or to do with players they don’t have, but will soon have? Who’s still tinkering? Plenty of teams. There are still incomplete squads, in the second week of July; rosters that make 2024-25 forecasters throw their hands up and wait. 

For instance: The Utah Jazz, currently dangling Lauri Markkanen as potential trade bait, have a goofy and lopsided group. There are far too many centers in it, and given Danny Ainge’s record as an executive, they could absolutely be up to something. Markkanen, more than any player still possibly on the move this offseason, looms as an ostensible missing piece for some team on the verge of contendership; or one who thinks they are, anyway. He’s been amazingly productive in Utah, after floundering and looking like a forgettable career role player with the Chicago Bulls and Cleveland Cavaliers. He was an afterthought in the Donovan Mitchell trade, and no one saw his late bloom coming. Year six explosions like his are simply not normal.

Ainge probably isn’t actually going to move his Finnish star, though. Not unless a rival front office absolutely drops his jaw with an overly generous offer. Given the rumored gold of the 2025 and 2026 draft classes, it seems more likely that he’ll try convincing Markkanen to hold tight while the team loses more—easily enough, given the aforementioned blobbiness of their roster. It’s a hard line to walk, though. Most teams are incomplete because they’re trying to ram some changes forward despite limited optionality. The Jazz, loaded with picks and interesting talent already, experience incompletion more as executive paralysis; they can’t decide how much to become something or not. On a strategic level, this purgatory makes sense, but on a human one, it’s worth watching the situation to see how comfort levels may modify.

The team that drafted Markkanen, the Bulls, are a different kind of incomplete. Everyone knows what they want to do, but no one wants to help them do it. After saying goodbye to Alex Caruso and DeMar DeRozan with an eye on a future-oriented youth movement, their transition is still partial, and will be until they find a way to ship Zach LaVine elsewhere. Injury and acrimony have made him a hot potato no one has the mitts to catch. The primary July trade market has closed, as has the secondary. LaVine will have to move, if he does, at the flea market, where you don’t usually make purchases that change how you understand your house. But it could happen.

The Bulls are not alone in hoping that the improbable is around the corner. The Miami Heat must be wondering how wise it is to keep things as they are, and bet that Erik Spoelstra can transform another zombie regular season into a scary, not visibly dying, postseason creature. They don’t have any attractive assets they’re willing to jettison, though, so any changes will require coalition-making with the dissatisfied realm, and likely taking back something that doesn’t make them much happier. They could, for instance, inquire with the New Orleans Pelicans about Brandon Ingram. Ingram is, like LaVine, a productive All-Star but also on the verge of a payday that—again, like LaVine—makes him a clumsy fit on a contender nevertheless.

The Golden State Warriors’ offseason has been carried out in fear of such a contract. Rather than give Klay Thompson a number of dollars commensurate to his nostalgic value to the franchise and fanbase, they accumulated a few handy role-players on easily tradable contracts. They still have an eye for Markkanen, some reporters say. But if not him, whichever star next shakes loose. They’re an interestingly re-tooled team for now, but an incomplete insofar as they do not project as a title contender, and will always be looking for ways back onto that track so long as Steph Curry is still playing.

They may consider filling their hole at center by asking the Cavaliers about Jarrett Allen. Allen is stupendous, and loved by all, but if Cleveland truly believes in the rise of Evan Mobley’s star, he probably needs to play about 35 minutes per game at Allen’s position. But I’ll repeat: Allen is stupendous, and everyone loves him. Cleveland won’t give him up easily. Just like the Houston Rockets likely won’t comfortably choose a route at their knotty crossroads, made by a trio of promising young players who might not optimize each other—Jalen Green, Jabari Smith, and Alperen Sengun. They can’t pay all three and also treat veteran stars to big deals, as rumors suggest they’re looking to do.

There’s always the perpetually incomplete Los Angeles Lakers in the mix too. Even after winning the 2020 NBA Championship, they tinkered aggressively. Their group has stayed more stable for the past two seasons, but not for lack of a wandering eye. Ask D’Angelo Russell about that: he’s been in rumors as long as he’s been a Laker. His team still hovers as a potential business partner with any of the murkily positioned teams already mentioned. There are three more months until training camp, which is plenty of time for more complex, more deliberative deals to take shape among the beleaguered.