10 NBA Free Agents Who Can Still Help Every Team (2024)

Most of the NBA's big free-agent business is done, but several rosters still need finishing touches. Luckily, many capable free agents remain available.

Well, that's a good thing for teams in need of rotation help. It's less so for the unsigned masses who are clearly getting squeezed by the more punitive restrictions of the NBA's new collective bargaining agreement. When teams are more scared to spend, it's easier for quality players to slip through the cracks.

None of the players we'll feature here figure to occupy starting roles. The last likely first-unit free agent to sign was Tyus Jones, who had to settle for a minimum salary with the Phoenix Suns. All of these guys can still provide real value, though.

Some come with draft pedigree, youth and upside. Others bring experience and the kind of high-floor, low-ceiling reliability contenders prefer from deep-bench options.

All of them can help whichever team eventually scoops them up at bargain-bin rates.

Restricted free agents are still free agents, and from a completist's perspective, Isaac Okoro is too good to be left off this list.

The Cleveland Cavaliers are in charge of this situation, as they extended Okoro a qualifying offer and have the right to match any deal he signs with another team. Odds are, Okoro will stick with the Cavs on that $11.8 million qualifying offer before hitting unrestricted free agency next summer. If other teams were seriously interested in adding the 23-year-old at a price Cleveland wouldn't match, we would have seen it happen by now.

Sign-and-trade constructions are also still possible. The Brooklyn Nets are one potential landing spot in that regard, per HoopsHype's Michael Scotto.

Wherever Okoro winds up, he'll bring high-end perimeter defense and great energy. The 6'5" guard is a little undersized to handle the league's elite big wings, but he competes on D and quietly shot a career-high 39.1 percent from deep last year.

Despite that hit rate, teams still weren't concerned enough about Okoro's shooting to stay attached to him. If he could replicate near-40-percent accuracy for another year and add a little volume, unrestricted free agency could be very kind to him in 2025.

Even with Okoro's offensive questions, there aren't many other available young options with high-lottery pedigree and a demonstrated ability to play rotation minutes on a winning team.

Markelle Fultz comes with even more pronounced shooting issues than Okoro, but the 2017 No. 1 overall pick is a quality defender with the right combination of size, strength and quickness to capably check either guard spot.

A smart passer whose herky-jerky lane-probing drives tend to result in quality shots for himself or others, Fultz has some offensive value when surrounded by enough shooters and close-range finishers.

Fultz is a career 27.4 percent shooter from three-point range, which makes him a complete non-threat on the perimeter. His interior skills are beginning to slip, too. While he was a solid finisher throughout his career, Fultz's conversion rate at the rim dipped to below-average rates for his position last season.

Jalen Suggs' emergence, a spate of injuries and the Orlando Magic drafting several guards combined to reduce Fultz's role in 2023-24. But just because his former team may not have room for him doesn't mean he should be out of options elsewhere.

This is obviously a buy-low situation, but Fultz is still only 26 and not so far removed from 60 starts for an emerging Magic team in 2022-23, when he averaged 14.0 points and 5.7 assists while hitting 51.4 percent of his shots from the field. Most teams in the league would take far less than that from a backup point guard who'll likely only cost a minimum salary.

Across his first six seasons with the Cleveland Cavaliers, Cedi Osman was a model of solid, unspectacular, consistent play. A starter in about half of the 404 games he played during that career-opening stretch, the small forward averaged 14.9 points, 4.6 rebounds and 3.1 assists per 36 minutes while hitting 35.3 percent of his triples.

Last year was his lone season with the San Antonio Spurs, and he produced right in line with those rates (13.9 points, 5.1 rebounds and 3.4 assists per-36) while cranking up his long-range clip to 38.9 percent.

That last stat is the one that makes it hardest to understand why Osman isn't on a team yet. Shooting remains a premium NBA skill, and the 29-year-old possesses it.

Osman's old squad, the Cavs, could do a lot worse than bringing him back on a cheap deal to play a handful of second-unit minutes every night. Less competitive teams could justify bringing him aboard as well.

The Detroit Pistons, for example, have long tried to surround their young core of suspect-shooting prospects with good spacers. Osman would be a fit in that role for them and could bring the same value to any number of other rebuilders.

Yes, we're still stuck on Lonnie Walker IV's electrifying 15-point fourth quarter that put the Los Angeles Lakers up 3-1 and effectively eliminated the defending champion Golden State Warriors in the 2023 playoffs.

Walker hasn't had any other moments quite like that one in his six-year career, but the bucket-getting prowess he showcased then is intact today. He averaged 9.7 points in only 17.4 minutes per game for the Brooklyn Nets last year while hitting 38.4 percent of his threes, including a scorching 45 percent from the corners.

Walker figured to get more than the minimum coming off his lone season with the Lakers, but he had to settle for that pay rate again with Brooklyn. His continued free-agent status suggests the market values him as a minimum-salary type for a third year in a row.

That just seems wrong. Walker has legitimate value to a rotation.

Though he doesn't provide much in terms of individual defense, Walker grades out well above average in block and steal rate among wings. That he can give teams something on D while providing reliable (and sometimes spectacular) scoring sets him apart from most of the other available free-agent options.

We're a long way from Robert Covington's heyday, but the guy who finished fourth in Defensive Player of the Year voting in 2016-17 and followed it up with an eighth-place finish the following season can still help teams with his 7'2" wingspan, nose for the ball and just-good-enough three-point shooting.

Covington split last year between the Los Angeles Clippers and Philadelphia 76ers, averaging only 16.8 minutes across 29 total games. His 33.9 percent knockdown clip from beyond the arc was his worst since 2019-20. Knee issues also sidelined him for the last few months of the 2023-24 campaign, which might scare teams off.

But Covington hit 39.7 percent of his treys over a much larger 48-game sample in 2022-23. If he falls somewhere in the middle of that range next season while continuing to disrupt on defense, the 33-year-old will improve somebody's rotation so long as he's healthy.

Despite moving past the age at which most defenders lose their ball-hawk skills, Covington remains an elite free safety on D. He averaged 6.5 deflections per 36 minutes last season, the highest rate of anyone who saw at least 400 minutes of court time.

A combo forward who can do that on defense only needs to hit a league-average percentage of his threes to warrant 15-plus minutes per game.

Last season was the first in Landry Shamet's six-year NBA career in which he failed to hit at least 38.0 percent of his catch-and-shoot three-point looks. (He shot 37.4 percent on those attempts.) In fact, the 27-year-old had been up above 40 percent on those shots more often than not.

If Shamet's overall hit rate of 33.8 percent from deep in 46 games for the Washington Wizards last year is turning teams off, it's worth noting that his percentage was mostly dragged down by an 18.2 percent clip on off-the-dribble treys.

No team that's interested in signing Shamet should expect him to be a high-volume sniper off the bounce. His one-year dip in standstill hit rate feels like the exception to the rule.

The deeper we get into this list, the more warts show. Shamet is effectively a shooting guard with point guard size, which limits him defensively. He graded out surprisingly well with the Phoenix Suns in 2022-23, posting a plus-1.5 Defensive EPM, but he's typically rated in the negatives by that catch-all metric.

Teams also can't expect to get much in the facilitation department from a guy with a career average of 1.6 assists per game.

With that said, Shamet is a legitimate three-point specialist who can make tough shots on the move and bend the defense with his off-ball gravity. That skill set still plays in most places.

It seemed reasonable in April when Dennis Smith Jr. told HoopsHype's Michael Scotto he expected a multi-year deal in free agency. Though he isn't exactly a household name, the bouncy point guard was coming off a season in which he'd made some gains in key areas.

No, the three-point shot didn't come around. Smith hit 29.4 percent of his threes, right in line with his career rate of 29.8 percent. But the seven-year vet shot a career high 74.1 percent from the foul line and converted over 50 percent of his two-point attempts for the first time in his career.

Maybe there's nothing to read into with those small-sample stats, but what if they indicate passable three-point shooting is on the horizon? At the very least, they're the most promising signs we've ever seen that Smith's stroke could improve.

Even if Smith remains a non-shooter, his defense is good enough by itself to warrant a roster spot. He ranked in the 99th percentile in D-EPM with the Charlotte Hornets in 2022-23 and "fell" to the 98th percentile with Brooklyn last year. His highlights back up those numbers.

Any team in need of a smothering on-ball pest should be looking closely at the 26-year-old.

On some level, it's easy to understand why Talen Horton-Tucker hasn't found a landing spot in free agency. He's not a good enough shooter to man the wing, and he isn't quite the oversized point guard both the Los Angeles Lakers and Utah Jazz hoped he might become.

Update: "Tweener" isn't a pejorative term anymore.

Every NBA team wants players who can fill multiple roles, and the squads that tend to advance deep into the playoffs usually have several multi-skilled hybrids in their rotations.

That's not to say Horton-Tucker is some kind of sleeper whom contenders should be fighting over. But his ability to do a little bit of everything should be commanding more interest.

A double-digit scorer in each of the last three seasons, THT also graded out with a top-20-percentile assist percentage for his position during that span. A burly 6'4" with a 7'1" wingspan, Horton-Tucker has a frame that suggests he could be much better than the catch-all metrics have shown him to be on defense.

THT's combo of relatively high usage and low scoring efficiency means he has plenty to prove before he earns a major role. But he's still only 23 years old and has enough upside to be worth a roster spot almost anywhere.

We've officially entered the "maybe he has one more year in him" portion of the exercise...but maybe Marcus Morris has one more year in him!

Injuries had something to do with it, but the 13-year vet wound up playing real minutes for the Cleveland Cavaliers during last season's playoffs, notably averaging 8.0 points and going 6-of-9 from long range in the conference semifinals against the Boston Celtics. That's a small sample, but Morris also shot 40.3 percent from long range in stops with the Cavs and Philadelphia 76ers last year.

And it was only 2022-23 when Morris averaged 11.2 points in 65 appearances (all starts) for the L.A. Clippers.

At this stage of his career, there's real risk that Morris is done being a reliably productive part of a rotation. But his toughness remains, he's still shooting the ball just fine, and even as his skills diminish, Morris will still have the bulk to occasionally bang with opposing bigs as an undersized center.

If Morris was good enough to see action in the most recent postseason, he's certainly worthy of starting the year on a roster.

As a general rule, it's not a great idea to overlook the Holidays.

Jrue Holiday just won a title with the Boston Celtics in his 15th season, Aaron fought his way to quality-backup status with six years under his belt, and Justin remains worth a look even after a dozen journeyman seasons as a three-and-D wing.

Holiday saw action in 58 games with the Denver Nuggets last year, shot 40.4 percent from deep and averaged 2.1 steals per 100 possessions. Only 11 other players fit those criteria in 2023-24. A few are perennial All-Stars, and all the rest are inked to multi-year contracts.

Holiday is the outlier.

Age is a factor, as the rail-thin 6'6" wing is already 35. But Holiday's per-minute production has been remarkably consistent over the years, with fluctuations in playing time standing as the only real variables in his bottom-line averages.

Better still, the veteran has sustained his defensive impact as he's aged. Holiday has rated as a positive on-off defensive piece in eight of the 10 seasons (including last year) tracked by Dunks and Threes' DEPM metric.

Give him eighth- or ninth-man duties, and Holiday is going to provide trustworthy shooting and "right place, right time" defense across 15 minutes per game.

Grant Hughes covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter (@gt_hughes), and subscribe to the Hardwood Knocks podcast, where he appears with Bleacher Report's Dan Favale.