It’s a shame we don’t really pay attention to NBA divisions anymore, because this year’s Pacific Division is quite a story.
Happy teams are all alike, you might say, but Pacific Division teams are all unhappy in their own way.
Actually, Mr. Tolstoy, this quintet is unhappy in similar ways. Each of the division’s five teams — the LA Clippers, Los Angeles Lakers, Golden State Warriors, Sacramento Kings and Phoenix Suns — had contention dreams of varying intensity heading into the season, assembling veteran rosters and surrendering some juicy future draft capital to do it. But as a group, they’re only 99-94 through Tuesday’s games and careening toward some difficult offseason conversations if things don’t improve quickly.
It’s amazing because the division holds what are still the league’s two highest-wattage TV draws, not to mention the four best players from the gold-medal-winning U.S. Olympic team. Yet it’s highly plausible none of them will make the Western Conference’s top six, and it’s still very much on the table that we’ll only get two postseason games in the Pacific Time Zone this spring*.
(* — None of us really know what time zone you’re in, Phoenix.)
Wait, there’s more. All five have additional urgency to their quests based on age, impending free agency of key players or both. All five have draft-pick debts of varying sizes. And all five are facing a new reality: the idea of a “wide-open” West colliding with the emergence of a potential dynasty in Oklahoma City.
You could argue they each face another sticky issue, too: that the simplest way out of their current impasses is a full teardown, but back in the real world, it’s the only option that isn’t truly on the table.
Thus, all five teams head toward the Feb. 6 trade deadline pondering fairly deep philosophical questions about their futures, and dark clouds are gathering on the offseason horizon.
As the great philosopher Axl Rose once asked, “Where do we go now?” He then repeated the question over and over because he lacked a good answer, and these teams might be doing the same. (Yes, I have quoted Tolstoy and Guns N’ Roses in the same column. My work here is done.)
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So … what should the Pacific Division’s “Flailing Five” do next? Let’s break it down:
Clippers (21-17)
Relative to expectations, this has been a very successful Clippers season. Most pundits (*ahem*) thought this team would land in the draft lottery, but the Clippers have stayed in the West’s top six (barely) without Kawhi Leonard and recently brought him back to the lineup. We’ll see how long Leonard can stay on the floor, but the big-picture issue is unchanged: The Clippers are probably in the hardest spot of any team in the division despite their current success.
The Clippers can’t trade a first-round pick until 2030 and, more amazingly, can’t trade a second-rounder until then either. They also owe swaps to the mighty Thunder in 2025 and 2027, portending picks at the very tail end of the first round, and thus have no real incentive to bottom out.
That produces some really interesting questions. Is it worth replenishing the draft-pick coffers by selling high on Ivica Zubac, having a career year and signed to a team-friendly contract for three seasons after this one? What of Norman Powell, who is blowing up with a career year of his own at 31? (Side note: Dating back to Toronto, has any player had the perception of his deal change from “bad contract” to “good contract” and back more often than Powell?) What do they do about James Harden, who has a player option after this season and is carrying the offense?
More likely, the Clippers keep plugging away at this. Assuming Harden is back, they can add a player with the nontaxpayer midlevel exception next summer and will be far enough below the apron to make trades that take in more salary beyond that. After that, they’re set up for a cap-room splash in the summer of 2026. They’ll have to think hard about any serious offers for Leonard, but those are unlikely to materialize until he shows more signs of vitality and shows them for a duration longer than 20 minutes every other game.
James Harden is carrying LA’s offense this season but has a player option this summer. (Mitchell Leff / Getty Images)
Lakers (20-17)
Superficially in a good place standings-wise, with a record three games above .500 and a soft stretch of extremely winnable home games coming up, the Lakers’ underlying stats aren’t nearly as comforting. They’re 12th in the West in Basketball-Reference.com’s schedule-adjusted net rating, with only the tanking trinity of the Portland Trail Blazers, Utah Jazz and New Orleans Pelicans trailing them.
LA has been outscored by nearly three points per game on the season despite having LeBron James and Anthony Davis for a combined 69 of 74 games. Yikes. James is 40, Davis is 31, and the Lakers don’t have a deep asset well to make major upgrades around them. Even if they did, it would completely nuke their future, likely costing unprotected first-rounders in 2029 and 2031 to get the type of talent who might meaningfully alter their outlook.
In the absence of a Giannis Antetokounmpo-level talent becoming available, smaller, unsatisfying moves around the edges like the recent trade for Dorian Finney-Smith seem more probable. With only two seconds left to trade in the cupboard (their own and the Clippers’ in the 2025 draft), even those moves are limited.
The Lakers don’t own their 2025 first-round pick, so they might as well play this out, but the offseason could get interesting. Bottoming out for a strong 2026 draft and then coming back with a high lottery pick and cap space the next year has to be pretty tempting in this market.
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If you’re playing a video game, the move is obvious: trade Davis after the season for a raft of assets, while he’s still at the peak of his powers and signed for three more years. You could say the same about 40-year-old James, except he has both a no-trade clause and a player option.
The more likely reality is that the Lakers keep trying to fight the good fight until either James retires or one of their two stars demands a trade, at least through the 2027 season when they owe a top-four protected first-rounder to Utah. After that, they can well and truly rip off the Band-Aid and start over.
In the meantime? Jonas Valančiūnas isn’t saving their season, but the Lakers desperately need a backup big who can mash. It probably will only cost them a second-round pick or two, and Gabe Vincent is a salary match. A blockbuster deal for a needle-mover seems rather less likely until the offseason; they just don’t have the assets and matching salary.
Kings (20-20)
The Kings already pulled the easiest lever available by changing coaches, something the Suns and Lakers also tried this past summer after similarly disappointing campaigns last season.
The Kings’ underlying numbers were already much better than their record when they fired Mike Brown, and they rode that coaching-change sugar high in a six-game win streak after Doug Christie took over until the Milwaukee Bucks smashed them on Tuesday.
That isn’t the only thing, of course. The Kings have leaned into playing smaller and faster, and since most of their best players fit that description, it’s kept their best players on the floor a lot more.
That said, I’m not sure Sacramento’s big picture shifted a lot in the past two weeks. Maybe De’Aaron Fox is feeling a bit better about the long term, but that’s really an offseason question. (Fox can become an unrestricted free agent in 2026 and could probably strong-arm his way out of town if he refuses to sign an extension.) The Kings would have to continue this hot streak for roughly 43 more games before we can start making proclamations about his happiness and future.
Otherwise, Sacramento might be the one team on this list that isn’t too upset about middle-class life, not after the two decades of destitution preceding its 2023 ascent to the playoffs. The Kings also haven’t burned through assets the way some others have; they’ll likely owe their 2025 first-round pick to the Atlanta Hawks (top-12 protected), and they sent an unprotected 2031 pick swap to the San Antonio Spurs in the DeMar DeRozan deal, but they could still trade three firsts and three swaps on draft night.
But … for what? The thing about a Fox-Domantas Sabonis pairing is that it ensures both a relatively high floor (Sabonis, in particular, is massively productive and never misses games) and a relatively low ceiling (Sabonis, in particular, has his shortcomings magnified in playoff environments). They’re All-Star-caliber players, especially if they were in that other conference, but neither would make anybody’s list of the 10 best players in the league.
Thus, Sacramento’s big chance to escape the middle class is by acquiring somebody better than both of them, which is massively easier said than done. I floated the idea earlier this month of trading DeRozan and expiring salary for Jimmy Butler, but unless it required relatively minimal draft compensation, that juice might not be worth the squeeze.
Lesser prey — think Brooklyn’s Cameron Johnson, for instance — might help keep the Kings comfortably in the upper middle class for another few years. But surrendering two firsts and still having a team that likely wouldn’t win a single playoff series in this conference doesn’t sound like a compelling swap; they’d probably need the Nets to drop their price for something like this to be realistic.
If you’re truly thinking about small ball, getting another big seems like a Captain Obvious plan. The Kings still have two seconds they can legally trade (their 2026 and 2027 second-rounders are encumbered by the protections on that pick to Atlanta) and have enough room below the luxury tax to work the edges for a cheap center; it just needs to be somebody appreciably better than the last several cheap centers they brought in.
Phoenix (19-20)
This is an emergency, and the Suns need to bail sooner rather than later before they salt the fields for an entire decade. There is no trade-deadline fix that is getting them out of this, although I’m sure they will kick every tire on Bradley Beal-for-Butler possibilities (not to mention Beal-for-literally-anybody possibilities; he’s not a terrible player, but his contract is about as terrible as terrible gets).
The Suns, much like the Lakers above and Warriors below, are still fighting the good fight and hoping a Devin Booker-Kevin Durant combination can lead them into contention. Or at least, you know, the Play-In Tournament.
I wrote about the horrors of Phoenix’s situation two weeks ago, but I can’t emphasize enough how they’re at the leading edge of all these Pacific Division teams in terms of diving headfirst into their fate. The Suns have to deal Booker and Durant this offseason and get their picks back, or the next decade will be one of the most dismal chapters in NBA history.
But not yet, since the Houston Rockets already have their 2025 first-round pick. At this point, it would be unwise to burn their 2031 first (the only thing they can trade) just to throw more assets at a team going nowhere, but there’s a case for using it on a young player who could help both now and later.
Kevin Durant and Devin Booker likely aren’t going anywhere in Phoenix. (Christian Petersen / Getty Images)
The Suns can only trade down in money because they’re over the collective bargaining agreement’s second apron, meaning, for example, that trading Jusuf Nurkić’s $18.1 million salary requires a lower amount coming back. One trade I’d call about: sending that pick (top-two protected) and Nurkić to the Orlando Magic for Wendell Carter Jr., who is 25 and signed at reasonable money through 2029.
Phoenix also still has three second-round picks it can trade, so it could opt to do smaller stuff around the edges, especially with little-used Josh Okogie’s $8.2 million contract, a de facto expiring deal since it isn’t guaranteed beyond this year.
Warriors (19-20)
Golden State is in the best long-term position of any of these teams, still owning all its future firsts and having a few good young players of its own. That fact belies another truth: The Warriors didn’t go for it at the tail end of the Stephen Curry-Draymond Green era the way some other teams have, with pulling back on a Lauri Markkanen deal being a notable road not taken.
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Perhaps they’re better off for it — they still won a title in 2022! — but right now, they’re left in the middle. Or lately, not even the middle, with the offense in free fall since a torrid opening month. Curry remains an All-Star-caliber guard and Green a defensive monster, but those two no longer guarantee awesomeness on their own, and they’re 36 and 34, respectively.
Again, if you’re playing a video game in franchise mode, you absolutely trade these guys and start over, especially with the Warriors owning all their picks going forward and Curry likely to return a boatload of assets in any trade scenario. It’s just hard to do that in reality, when Curry is the best player in Bay Area franchise history and one of the two most popular players of his generation. It seems unlikely they’d go down that road unless Curry pushed for it.
So … then what? The Warriors have worked the edges well (Trayce Jackson-Davis!) and have a lot of rotation-viable players, but at this point, only Curry truly moves the needle, and even his impact isn’t as overwhelming as it was in the glory days. The Warriors’ path to contend for another title likely includes importing a player who is better than Curry.
For short-term upgrades, they still can trade their 2025 first-round pick to get help, which might be a reasonable compromise on how to get a bit more out of this era before the inevitable comes (as long as they protect it top-four). They don’t have killer contracts or huge apron concerns and can repackage Dennis Schröder before the deadline if the right deal for an impact wing comes up.
That said, you can understand the limited thirst for Butler. Acquiring him would likely cost Jonathan Kuminga — either in the trade or because they couldn’t afford to pay both him and Butler next year — in addition to Andrew Wiggins (who is back to being good!) and whatever other assets were required. The contracts of Wiggins, Green and Curry are timed to run through 2027, and maybe that’s when everyone sails off into the sunset.
On the other hand, trying to just chill in the middle of the pack for three years while the candle burns out on a superstar career is a tough existence. The Warriors have the relief of knowing they are in a better position than some of their division rivals when that dark day comes, but the sun is setting just as quickly.
(Top photo of Stephen Curry and LeBron James: Thearon W. Henderson / Getty Images)
