The six best under-the-radar offseason moves

Talking Milwaukee, Boston, Detroit, Atlanta, and more

With free agency all but wrapped up, I wanted to take a few minutes to highlight some moves we didn’t discuss in detail. Today, we’ll cover my favorite under-the-radar moves, the additions or re-signings that didn’t make the front page but could pay dividends. Later this week, I’ll go through the transactions that I liked the least or that most confused me.

Milwaukee signs Delon Wright (1 year/$3.3M)

The Bucks received a lot of shine for nabbing Gary Trent Jr. on a minimum deal, and rightfully so. Trent is a volume three-point shooter who can hold his own defensively. Even if you, like me, believe Trent to be overrated (I’m unsure if he can’t or simply won’t pass), he’s certainly worth more than a minimum deal. Solid shooting and decent defense are a hard combination to find at almost any price point.

But that deal has overshadowed another move Milwaukee made that deserves love, too: signing Delon Wright.

To be fair, almost nobody likes Wright as much as I do: he made my All-Defensive team just two seasons ago. At 32, Wright isn’t quite an airtight one-on-one stopper, but he’s still one of the best turnover-forcing machines in the league (he was one of just five players to post a steal rate of at least 3.0%). Wright never fouls, and he jumps passing lanes like they owe him money:

That’s hugely important for Milwaukee. The Bucks forced the fewest turnovers in the league last season, mostly thanks to a complete inability to bother ballhandlers on the perimeter. Wright will singlehandedly improve that metric, sowing chaos and reinvigorating the Bucks’ once-fearsome transition game.

Wright isn’t as good a shooter as the departed Malik Beasley or Trent, but he’s competent (37% in three of the last four seasons). He has enough passing juice to be the backup point guard and never turns the ball over.

Wright has battled injuries for most of his career, so that’s a concern. And he doesn’t get up as many threes as he should. But he’s a quality bench option who can play next to or in place of Damian Lillard. It’s hard to see how the Bucks could have done much better than Wright and Trent on the wing for the lowest of prices.

Teams usually get what they pay for with minimums; those players can’t command richer contracts for a reason. We only have to look at Phoenix last season for an example of too much optimism around depth pieces. But few minimum players can directly address a team need the way Wright will Milwaukee’s turnover problem.

Detroit re-signs Simone Fontecchio (2 years/$16M)

Detroit’s team-building philosophy has resulted in a roster filled with interesting young talents who all possess one similar trait: they can’t hit Lake Michigan from a boat.

Cade Cunningham is the tentpole offensive piece and primary ballhandler. He had by far the best shooting season of his young career in 2024 but still hit a below-average 35.5% of his triples. And that’s the one success story!

Shooting guard Jaden Ivey has shot just 34% from deep in both his years. Center Jalen Duren has attempted six career threes. Rookie Ron Holland shot 24% in the G-League last year. And my beloved Ausar Thompson, one of the most destructive perimeter defenders in the league and a multitalented Swiss Army Knife, had more airballs than made three-pointers disturbingly deep into the season.

That’s a lot of guys who need minutes and can’t space the floor. Detroit tried to address this by adding veterans like Tobias Harris, Malik Beasley, and Tim Hardaway Jr., but the best player of that group might be the unheralded Fontecchio, whom Detroit acquired in a trade with Utah last season.

I’m surprised Detroit’s bid won; perhaps teams were scared off by Fontecchio’s small sample size of success. Despite being 28 years old, Fontecchio has only played 118 games in his NBA career. But in 66 contests last season, Fontecchio shot 40% from beyond the arc on more than seven attempts per 36 minutes, excellent accuracy on high volume. The shooting alone should have made him valuable, but Fontecchio is also big (6’8”, 210 pounds) and a solid defender. In 16 games after being traded to Detroit, he averaged 15.4 points per contest and gave them a semblance of what they lost when they traded away Bojan Bogdanovic.

Fontecchio is the exact kind of player that every team needs. I’m worried Detroit won’t play him the minutes he deserves (their rotation is very crowded right now), but at least they had the sense to retain him. The Pistons need to have enough shooting on the floor to resemble a real NBA team; otherwise, even evaluating their young prospects becomes difficult, much less developing them.

Boston re-signs Sam Hauser (4 years/$45M)