NBA Team Needs: Southwest Division

ATLANTIC I SOUTHEAST I PACIFIC I CENTRAL I NORTHWEST

After a 2014-15 season that saw the Southwest collectively record one of the best seasons for any NBA division in history - with all five teams making the playoffs and four winning at least 50 games - the group took a major step back in 2015-16.

While the Spurs posted one of the great regular seasons of our age, no other team won more than 42 games, and three finished with negative point differentials. The Grizzlies and Pelicans were wracked with injuries, the Mavericks showed their age (the division actually featured the league's three oldest teams), and the Rockets simply imploded.

As they look to rebound in 2016-17, here are each Southwest team's biggest needs going into the summer.

San Antonio Spurs

Biggest need: Mobile big

After a franchise-best 67-win season, history, the Spurs' biggest flaw was laid bare in the playoffs against the Oklahoma City Thunder. The warning signs had been there during the regular season, too, whether against the Thunder or the Golden State Warriors.

Tim Duncan had a tremendous showing in his age-40 season, but became virtually unplayable against those whirring death machines, with their five-out lineups, long-limbed combo-forwards, and stretchy bigs. LaMarcus Aldridge, similarly, held his own defensively against 27 teams, but struggled both to keep up with the Warriors when being dragged away from the basket, and to match the Thunder's relentless physicality inside.

Whether or not Duncan retires, the Spurs need another big man to complement Aldridge: one who can help-and-recover, hang with guards on the perimeter, blow up pick-and-rolls, and still bang down low. They basically need their own version of Steven Adams.

Dallas Mavericks

Biggest needs: Rim protection, wing depth

If the Mavs want to help Dirk Nowitzki retire with dignity, they need to shore up this aging, stretched-thin roster in a hurry.

Uncertainty presides over this coming offseason in Dallas. The Mavs have just $29 million in guaranteed salary committed for 2016-17, but three starters - point guard Deron Williams, swingman Chandler Parsons, and Nowitzki - can (and almost certainly will) opt out of their deals, while a fourth - center Zaza Pachulia - is already headed to unrestricted free agency. Nowitzki's staying, but that's about all you can say with confidence.

Assuming they pony up to keep Parsons, they need to add depth on the wing after playing a ragtag hodgepodge of Charlie Villanueva, Jeremy Evans, and Justin Anderson behind Parsons and Wes Matthews last year. They'll also have to decide what to do about Pachulia. He's coming off a great season, but that means he'll come at a cost, and he isn't a good enough rim protector to mask Nowitzki's defensive flaws. Is this the summer Mark Cuban finally lands his white whale in Dwight Howard?

Memphis Grizzlies

Biggest need: Scoring guard

This season's version of the Grizzlies never really got a chance to show what it was capable of, thanks to an unrelenting parade of injuries. Even when fully healthy, though, the core has suffered from a lack of scoring punch, particularly on the outside. They just finished in the league's bottom four in made 3-pointers for the seventh straight year.

The Grizzlies' first priority will be trying to re-sign free-agent point guard Mike Conley. Failing to do that will open up a whole new set of uncomfortable questions about what this team is, and where it's going. Even if they bring him back, they'll still need someone else on the perimeter to help ease the scoring load from Marc Gasol - who's coming off foot surgery - and Zach Randolph, who's about to turn 35.

Houston Rockets

Biggest needs: Power forward, locker-room shakeup

The Rockets need a secondary scoring option, and the best fit for their roster would be a playmaking four, which neither Terrence Jones nor Donatas Motiejunas looked like last season (despite showing glimpses in 2014-15).

Whatever toxic mix of bad on-court chemistry and locker-room discord caused them to combust this season, the Rockets appear headed for change. Howard is unlikely to be back, and that will put the onus on James Harden to prove he can play nicely with others and isn't part of the problem.

With a multi-dimensional power forward, the team would have an opportunity to reshape a half-court offense that's become staid and predictable. At the end of the day, though, this team simply needs to rediscover its identity and play harder, particularly on defense.

New Orleans Pelicans

Biggest need: Interior D, starting big who isn't Omer Asik

The Pelicans are squandering prime years of Anthony Davis' career by playing him in a misbegotten frontcourt with running mates that don't fit defensively (Ryan Anderson), offensively (Alexis Ajinca), or at all (Asik).

Anderson can walk in free agency this summer, but the Pelicans' lone realistic option for getting out from under Asik's albatross of a contract is to waive him using the stretch provision - a bitter, $47-million pill they may have to swallow in order to pair Davis with someone that actually complements him (and/or is good at basketball).

The Pelicans have finished no better than 22nd in the NBA in defensive rating since Davis was drafted in 2012, and they got absolutely shredded in the restricted area this past season. They need to figure that out, first and foremost.