Derrick Jones Jr. was the primary defender for the Mavs against their opponents’ best players during their 2024 postseason run.
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Defense still wins championships.
If you take away the Dallas Mavericks’ last two regular-season games (in which they rested both Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving), the 2024 NBA Finals were their worst five-game stretch of offense (106.7 points scored per 100 possessions) all season.
In short, when it was time to win a championship, the Boston Celtics shut down a talented opponent. And they did it because they had several great defenders.
As every other team tries to catch up with Boston, all of them could use more guys who can make things as difficult as possible for the opponents’ best players.
Here are six free agents (in alphabetical order) who could help teams defensively next season.
Kyle Anderson, Minnesota Timberwolves
Number to know: Anderson had an effective field-goal percentage of 47.2%, down from 55.3% in 2022-23. That was the sixth-biggest drop among 262 players with at least 200 field-goal attempts in each of the last two seasons.
Anderson certainly hurts the Minnesota offense, which scored just 105.4 points per 100 possessions with him on the floor in the playoffs (vs. 116.6 with him off the floor). But having reached the conference finals with a star who’s only 22 years old, the Wolves probably want to run it back. They need more than seven competent rotation guys and Anderson is No. 8.
Coming off a contract that paid him $18 million over two years and with the Wolves likely over the second tax apron, he’ll probably take a pay cut. It’s also not clear if he has more value anywhere else.
Bruce Brown, Toronto Raptors (team option)
Number to know: The Raptors were outscored by 16.8 points per 100 possessions in his 885 minutes after he was acquired from Indiana.
Part of that number was the Raptors playing without Scottie Barnes and RJ Barrett for much of the last six weeks of the season. But another part of it was the team being outscored by 10.0 points per 100 in 324 minutes with Brown and Barnes on the floor together.
Brown is a terrific, undersized defender and a connector offensively, but he doesn’t seem to fit in Toronto. If the Raptors exercise the $23 million team option on his contract, it may be to trade him to a contender.
Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Denver Nuggets
Number to know: The Nuggets were 15.3 points per 100 possessions better with Caldwell-Pope on the floor (plus-11.3) than they were with him off the floor (minus-4.0). That was the second biggest on-off differential (behind only that of teammate Nikola Jokic) among 255 players who played at least 1,000 minutes this past season.
Caldwell-Pope, who is 31, has been an essential ingredient on two championship teams and a great fit in Denver. He’s a competent shooter (40% from 3-point range and 45% from mid-range over the last three seasons) who moves well without the ball, so he’s not hurting you offensively as much as other elite perimeter defenders.
He should see plenty of interest from outside of Denver. If he stays, the Nuggets could be the favorites to win the Western Conference next season. If he leaves, not so much.
Isaiah Hartenstein, New York Knicks
Number to know: Hartenstein had a free-throw rate of 43.0 attempts per 100 shots from the field this past season, up from 21.7 per 100 in 2022-23. That was the biggest jump among 262 players with at least 200 field goal attempts in each of the last two seasons.
Hartenstein is only 26 and one of the league’s best role players, a mobile big who can pass, rebound and defend. That role expanded after Mitchell Robinson got hurt, and Hartenstein was essential as the Knicks made it to Game 7 of the Eastern Conference semifinals.
The Knicks would surely love to have him back, but the biggest new contract they can give him is $72.5 million over four years, and other teams can pay him more.
Derrick Jones Jr., Dallas Mavericks
Number to know: The Mavs allowed just 97.6 points per 100 possessions in 247 playoff minutes with Jones and Dereck Lively II on the floor together. That was the second-lowest mark among 103 two-man combinations that played at least 200 playoff minutes together.
Jones is the only free agent in the Mavs’ rotation, and you can certainly find reasons why they’d want something different on the wing. But as much credit as Daniel Gafford and P.J. Washington get for Dallas’ defensive improvement over the second half of the season, it was Jones who was the primary defender on the opponents’ best players — Paul George, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Anthony Edwards and Jayson Tatum — as the Mavs reached the NBA Finals and defended pretty well when they got there.
He also shot 18-for-41 (43.9%) on corner 3-pointers in the playoffs, up from 33.8% in the regular season.
Royce O’Neale, Phoenix Suns
Number to know: After they acquired O’Neale, the Suns were at their best (plus-9.4 points per 100 possessions) with him on the floor.
O’Neale wasn’t much help as the Suns got swept in the first round of the playoffs, making just seven (32%) of his 22 shots over the four games. But the Suns had bigger issues than how much offense the veteran forward (now 31) was providing. He’s a good complement to their stars, a wing with some size, shooting and defensive competence.
The Suns can re-sign O’Neale on a deal for around what he got paid last season ($9.5 million), but because they’re already over the second tax apron, every dollar they pay him comes with a lot more in luxury tax penalties.
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John Schuhmann is a senior stats analyst for NBA.com. You can e-mail him here, find his archive here and follow him on X.
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