Category: Sports News

The ghost of LeBron James will forever haunt the Cleveland Cavaliers. The King’s latest free-agency saga took center stage this summer.

To no surprise, James was a key talking point during Koby Altman and Kenny Atkinson’s media availability. Specifically, whether the Cavs missed their chance to improve the roster and entice James for one more homecoming.

“I think the misconception is, if we do something, that means [James] comes back,” said Altman. “That’s a misconception.”

The Cavs watched as Giannis Antetokounmpo and Jaylen Brown changed teams this summer. It’s impossible to know if Cleveland could have swung for either one of those players, but it’s safe to assume their best package would have been in the mix.

Altman says the idea that James would have returned to Cleveland if the Cavs had traded for one of the big names on the market is incorrect.

“We explore everything, as you know. We’re a really active franchise. We explore different things, different prices, different price points, and to go out and get that caliber of player [like Antetokounmpo or Brown], you’re giving up a lot. Is that the best thing for the team and the best thing for our future? And so not going too far deep into that question in terms of specifics, both [trade possibilities] would have taken a toll on both [our present and future] if we would have gone down that path.”

Sticking to your guns has been a theme of this era of Cavs basketball. Cleveland has kept the same core intact for most of the decade, while shuffling things on the margins to see what sticks. It wasn’t until this previous season that they made a major swing for James Harden, but aside from that, they’ve stuck to the same construction that’s led to success in the regular season.

“We’ll leave that internal in terms of our conversation with [James],” said Altman on his reported meeting with James earlier this summer.

“We have a lot of confidence and faith in the talent that we have in-house. You don’t fluke your way to the Eastern Conference Finals [last season],” said Altman.

“I’m not downplaying the enormity of [James’] decision and the magnitude of the decision. I get all of that, I just think the way we’re built as an organization is we have a great foundation and a great sort of ecosystem within our franchise in terms of talent, coaching staff, our performance staff. We’re built for a sustainable run here, regardless of one outcome.”

As for what ultimately led to James choosing Philly over Cleveland, the answer remains a mystery. Altman declined to reveal any of the details behind his meeting with James this summer.

“We’ll leave that internal, in terms of our conversation with him,” said Altman. “We have tremendous respect for LeBron, what he means to this organization, what he means to this region.”

I felt it for the first time when I went outside last night to play with the dog. For the first time in months, I could walk outside without getting blasted in the face by the oven-like air that the Phoenix metropolitan area has to offer. Yes, for the first time, it felt like fall. And that means Phoenix Suns basketball is right around the corner.

With Media Day this upcoming Monday and training camp starting Tuesday, we’re about to rev up the engine and start getting answers to the questions we’ve been asking ourselves all summer long about this team.

Which brings me to another Bright Side Roundtable opportunity for our writers to answer a simple question: What is the biggest question you need answered during the first 10 games of the Suns’ season?

Of course, we’re not going to get answers to everything. The season is 82 games long, and thinking that the first 10 games will tell us everything we need to know about this team is somewhat obtuse. Still, those first 10 games will provide insight into what we can expect, whether that’s schematically, how the rotations take shape, or how the new pieces fit into the puzzle.

And for me, that’s what I primarily want to see. How does this puzzle fit together from a rotational standpoint? Rotations will continue to evolve throughout the season. Injuries will present themselves, players will exceed expectations, others will fall short, and adjustments will be made based on opponents and production. 

But those first 10 games should begin answering one question I desperately want answered: How does this organization perceive the progress Rasheer Fleming made this offseason?

Sure, he was a second-round pick in the 2025 NBA Draft, but he’s somebody the Suns moved up to acquire. They spent assets to get him because they believed in what he could become. And in his limited opportunities last season, Fleming flashed the potential to provide size, athleticism, defense, and three-point shooting off the bench. For a team that has desperately needed a quality power forward since Amar’e Stoudemire played for the organization, Fleming could begin filling that role this season. That’s why I want to see how and when he’s utilized throughout the first 10 games.

In Year 1, he was a rookie learning to adjust to the speed of the NBA while developing his basketball IQ. Year 2 should be about building upon that foundation and demonstrating whether he’s made the developmental leaps we all hope he has. How much does the coaching staff trust him? Where does he fit into the rotation? And how much opportunity will he receive to showcase that growth? We should know quite a bit more after those first 10 games.

So what does the rest of our Bright Side Roundtable panel have to say about it? Let’s get into their answers.

Kevin Humphreys: Will we get to see the Suns’ core four players play together to begin the season?

Last season, we only got to see the Big 3 play 10 regular-season games together, and now Miles Bridges is getting thrown into the mix. If we can just get all four of those guys healthy through 10 games, that will be a huge win. If that happens, then what kind of hierarchy, if any at all, is developing between Jalen Green, Dillon Brooks, and Miles Bridges?

Bruce Veliz: The biggest question I need answered in the first ten games is how Jordan Ott’s play style will evolve into year two?

Last season, they were a scrappy and physical team that never gave up on the defensive end, and on offense, it was mainly three-point centered, focused on the drive and kick. Without Grayson Allen and Royce O’Neale, the team has lost part of that identity, so how will he adjust and benefit that to fit this team? Will there be any changes, or will they stick with what worked last season?

Holden Sherman: At least two wins against one of the Thunder, Nuggets, Spurs, or Rockets. Phoenix went 4-12 against these teams last year, including going 0-7 against Houston and Denver. These teams were four of the five top seeds in the West and are ones the Suns will have to compete with if they are serious about being top-six in the Conference. The team needs to finish games against these teams stronger; it’s not just about playing them close. All of these teams Phoenix suffered close losses to, and Denver should be worse this year, considering they traded Peyton Watson, a main contributor from a season ago, and only received draft compensation in return. The Suns need to play their best against the best.

SoSaysJ: How much are the Suns going to take the kid gloves off Khaman Maluach? During the first five months of last season, Maluach averaged 5.5 MPG. That ticked up to 13.9 MPG over the last two months of the season. During NBA Summer League, he (not surprisingly) played 27.4 MPG – and thrived, averaging 19.5 PPG, 12.8 RPG, and 2.0 BPG, while shooting 40.0% from three and 53.2% overall.

Considering his production during Summer League, the fact that he has one year in the NBA under his belt, and the injury to Mark Williams, extended minutes certainly seem warranted during the regular season, but to what degree? Will he start? Will he play 20+ minutes? 25+ minutes? Regardless of whether Khaman or Oso is the starting center when the regular season begins, I will be particularly interested in Maluach’s playing time during those first 10 games and the game situations in which he is on the floor.

For the Suns to enjoy any near-term success beyond what we saw last season, Maluach will have to develop and play a significant role on both sides of the ball. I think the first 10 games of the season should give us an idea as to how ready the coaching staff thinks he is to step into that role.

Brandon Duenas: The first 10 games are all about experimentation and seeing what you have as a group. That being said, I am looking forward to seeing how each individual player, especially those in the starting lineup, adjusts their game to this group. The potential glaring issue with this team is the lack of playmaking/floor spacing in the starting unit. I will be paying very close attention to the shot distribution and the roles that Green, Brooks, and Bridges naturally take.

I excluded Booker because I believe he can fit in any environment, so I’m more curious as to how those other three play off each other (and Book) and if there’s more “team ball” than “me ball.” Will Brooks and Bridges sacrifice shot attempts and make quick reads? Does Jalen Green take on more of a downhill playmaking threat this year? There are plenty of solutions to mix and match the right units on the Suns’ bench, so it will be an interesting dynamic to follow. Green and Brooks didn’t share the court a ton last year, and Bridges is the newcomer. This is why they pay Jordan Ott the big bucks.

Mark Bowser: I agree with Brandon’s specific dynamics above and how that results in the flow of the overall offense. My main question is in the intangibles category. Last year, the Suns were gritty more often than not. They dove for loose balls, scrapped on defense, and crashed the offensive glass. With new parts added and several high-effort players signing new contracts, will the effort dip? Or will it go up a notch? The extended players (Brooks, Goodwin, Gillespie) all have this in their DNA. The new acquisition, Miles Bridges, is the wildcard. Reviews of his effort fluctuate, generally positive when his team is doing well. Can he enhance the Suns’ reputation in this regard, or will his addition disrupt the chemistry?

Tom Mildenberger: In the 2024-25 season, the Suns started 8-2 before Budenholtzering their way to a 36-win season, so I’m not getting caught up in wins and losses. The Suns will bring the same coach back for a (gasp) second year in a row, so despite swapping Allen and Royce for Bridges, I think we mostly know how the team will look, stylistically and culturally.

What I’m going to be watching for in the first ten games is which Devin Booker we get. Are we going to get the make-the-right-play, Devin Booker? Or are we going to get the flame-throwing Booker who sets arena points records? There are reasons to think that the former version of the Book might be better suited for the Suns’ current roster than the latter, but if I’m being honest, I don’t want to see Devin Booker pile up hockey assists or get to the free-throw line thirty times a game this season. I want to see the Booker that the defense knows is going to shoot, but still can’t do anything to stop. Can he still be that Booker? I’m not sure, but I think we’ll know in the first ten games.

There’s no shortage of things to watch when the Suns finally take the floor, which is exactly what makes those first 10 games so valuable. We won’t have the answers yet, but we should have enough evidence to start forming better questions. How much has the roster evolved? Who has earned trust? Which combinations work? And perhaps most importantly, what does this team look like when the experimentation begins to give way to an identity? After spending the summer imagining the possibilities, we’ll finally get to see which ones survive contact with actual basketball.

LeBron James will officially speak for the first time as a Sixer on Monday at media day. But on Friday, he sat down with Steve Nash for the season premiere of his Mind the Game podcast to discuss what caused him to sign with the Sixers this summer.

The main takeaway? The Sixers need to build Mike Muscala a statue.

It would be an understatement to say that LeBron gushed about Tyrese Maxey. It’s clear that Maxey was influential in his decision to come to Philadelphia, no matter how much Maxey might try to downplay it.

“I just love everything about Tyrese Maxey, man,” LeBron said. “Every day, you get the same person. And that is very rare in sports and obviously super rare in life. And I’ve always talked about how great of a person that he is. Obviously, we know what he brings to the basketball court.

“When I became a free agent and we decided to let the Lakers know that I wouldn’t be returning, he was one of the first people that was on my line, calling me, ‘Yo, what we doing? What’s up, OG? What’s up, Old Head? Come on down here, we could use you down here.” And our relationship, a lot of times, I don’t answer the phone for a lot of phone calls. ‘Cause I don’t even want to be swayed in one way. I already know what you’re calling about. But he’s such a great person that I can’t not talk to him.”

The respect was real long before the decision was made. 🤝 pic.twitter.com/LCDzJyxjjp

— Mind the Game (@mindthegamepod) September 25, 2026

However, Maxey wasn’t the only thing that lured him. LeBron also made it clear how much he respects Jaylen Brown.

“I love the way he approaches the game, too,” he said. “Both sides of the floor, what he brings to the game. His insight on the game. I’ve watched him. Kind of misunderstood. And that is absolutely OK. I think we are all individuals for a reason. Everyone’s always trying to put everybody in the same box. And I love what he stands for and what he brings to the table in that fashion.”

LeBron later added that he and Brown worked out “three or four times this offseason” and have “been in communication.” Since they and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope are the only members of this year’s Sixers who have already won an NBA title, they appear to be taking it upon themselves to demonstrate what championship habits look like from day one.

“We’re two of the guys on the team that’s been through the foxhole and been through the wringer of what it takes from the moment we step on the court for training camp to the moment we raise that Larry O’Brien Trophy,” LeBron said. “We know what it takes. Just trying to make sure we’re on the same page and have everybody else on the same page.”

Joel Embiid, who teamed up with LeBron on Team USA in the 2024 Olympics—and was a main reason why they got past Nikola Jokić and Serbia in the semifinals—was also a major draw.

“One of the most important, to be honest, is the big fella,” LeBron said. “He’s done everything in our league. The only thing he has not done is win a championship. I want to try to help him get that first one.

“He’s been the MVP of our league, has a gold medal, All-Stars, signature shoes, bunch of money, beautiful family, he has everything. He has the city on his back. He’s been the Process, 10 years, 12 years, however long he’s been there. But I think it’s time now that we dig even deeper into the process, and I hope that I can be that final little piece that can get him over the hump, and maybe just see it a little bit differently than he’s seen it in his career as far as the day-to-day process, the day-to-day what it takes to get there.”

LeBron also expressed his admiration for VJ Edgecombe, whom he called “a flat-out player.”

“The intel that I’ve got from everyone is that this kid is beyond his year,” he said. “They say he was actually one of the leaders of the team as a 20-year-old rookie. And not in a disrespectful manner, it’s not like he was speaking just to be speaking or thinking he’s better than this guy. No. They say he speaks with an intelligent, confidence, natural. Works extremely hard.”

While the Sixers might not have Simone Fontecchio, the prospect of their star-studded starting five was enough to convince LeBron to take a veteran-minimum contract in Philadelphia. When training camp officially kicks off Tuesday, it’ll be on him, Brown, KCP and head coach Nick Nurse to set the tone for what they hope to be a championship season.

When the Los Angeles Lakers were presented the opportunity to acquire Luka Dončić — a perennial First Team All-NBA player entering his prime — 19 months ago for a staggeringly low cost, they had to seize the moment.

In doing so, though, they left themselves thin at center, with Anthony Davis as the focal point of the Dallas Mavericks’ return package, and provided Dončić a roster built in Davis and LeBron James’ image.

Last summer, they made a few notable moves by signing Deandre Ayton, Marcus Smart and Jake LaRavia to be rotation mainstays but the roster still felt in flux as the Lakers navigated old and new identities after such a dramatic trade. This summer, though, once James made clear he’d be heading elsewhere as a free agent, Los Angeles mashed the accelerator and sprinted into the Dončić Era. The Lakers added seven players via free agency and re-signed Austin Reaves to a four-year, $184 million deal.

Now, the Dončić-Reaves Era has unambiguously arrived and head coach JJ Redick believes this is the most cohesive roster-building he’s had since being hired two summers ago.

“I think we’ve always tried to give our players clearly defined roles. I think with this group, probably the first time in my three years here that I feel like the pieces actually fit together. So those roles probably get even more crystallized,” Redick told reporters Thursday. “I’ll give you the wing thing, like, there’s a very clear ask for you to be able to play. And if you don’t do those things, then you’re not gonna play. That’s just the reality. We’ve already had some of those conversations this week with our players.

“We have high, high confidence in these guys that they’re going to buy into that. So, it’s going to naturally create a lot of healthy competition. Everybody at some point, inevitably, will get a chance to impact our team and impact winning.”

The Lakers won plenty of games the past two seasons because Dončić, James and Reaves is a damn good trio and Redick has proven himself a pretty shrewd head coach thus far. But the roster certainly didn’t always mesh and there felt like plenty of stretches in which everyone was just trying to get on the same page while also attempting to win basketball games.

A bunch of new faces playing together will still require an assimilation period. If Redick’s assessment is correct, though, a sensible identity has been established and that should be an advantage moving forward over the past two seasons.

You can follow Jackson on Twitter at @jackfrank_jjf.

Imagine paying $515 to get in on some card pack breaks at a local sports card shop and having that investment return more than $8 million.

That’s how it happened for South Carolina machine shop owner Jason Williams, 50. He, like many sports fans and collectors, reportedly started participating in online live sales of unopened packs of cards, which were then broken open on the stream so that everyone watching could see what was pulled during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Today, Williams ought to be glad he stuck with it, as his Cooper Flagg 1-of-1 Topps Chrome Update NBA Debut Patch Autograph card, sold at auction for just over $8,040,000. The auction closed early Friday morning. Williams was identified as the lucky SOB who pulled the card last month. The pull came on a live stream hosted by Rhody Breakers, a collecting streamer associated with Baseball Cards of Rhode Island, a local shop eight states away from Williams’ living room.

“They slid that card over and I just slid to the floor crying,” Williams told ESPN at the time. “… It took me about five seconds to realize what I was looking at on that screen.”

In the run-up to the auction, most of the speculation was that the card may fetch “over $1,000,000.” It’s hard to predict what the market will do in a one-of-one situation like this, but a similar Paul Skenes 1-of-1 rookie autograph patch card sold for just over $1.1 million in 2025.

BREAKING: The Cooper Flagg NBA Debut Patch autograph card has officially sold in our auction for $8,040,000.

This sets the record for the most expensive Cooper Flagg card of all time, surpassing the previous record of $366,000.

The historic sale makes it the third-most… pic.twitter.com/6IdhRT1xGZ

— Fanatics Collect (@Collect) September 25, 2026

According to The Athletic, the sale of just over $8,040,000 makes this Flagg rookie card the fifth-most expensive trading card purchase of all time, topping a $7.25 million sale of the famed Honus Wagner 1909 Sweet Caporal T206 in 2022. That Wagner card has traditionally been viewed as the “Holy Grail” of card collecting through the years.

The 1-of-1 card features the NBA Debut patch Flagg wore during his first NBA game, along with the Mavericks star’s autograph. The rookie patch was removed from Flagg’s jersey following his Oct. 22, 2025 debut against the San Antonio Spurs and was later embedded into the Topps Chrome Update card.

Flagg scored just 10 points in that game before going on to win NBA Rookie of the Year over his college roommate and Charlotte Hornets forward Kon Knueppel. The Dylan Harper NBA Debut Patch rookie card sold for $2.88 million. Harper was selected by the Spurs second overall in 2025. Knueppel’s went for just over $2.3 million. Both were sold as part of the same Fanatics auction.

Flagg signed the card at FanaticsFest in July and joked in an interview with ESPN that he’s only be able to afford to buy the card after signing his second NBA contract.

At the time that interview segment aired, the highest bid for the autographed Flagg rookie card and patch was just over $3.2 million. That means the bidding ramped up by nearly $5 million in less than 24 hours at the end of the auction.

Flagg, 19, was ​the ⁠No. 1 overall pick in the 2025 NBA Draft and earned 2025-26 NBA Rookie ⁠of ​the Year honors after ​averaging 21.0 points, 6.7 rebounds and 4.5 assists in ​70 games for the Mavericks.

The winning bidder has not been named publicly.