Category: NBA

On August 12, 2026, ten months after he finalized the $10 billion deal to acquire the franchise from the hallowed and chaotic Buss family, Mark Walter sold the Los Angeles Lakers to a group led by Josh Kushner and Bob Iger at a valuation of just over $12 billion. His tenure at the helm is the shortest since the merger, by a factor of at least three: only Ted Stepien, who was possibly the most batshit decision-maker ever to own an NBA team, gets even close, and he lasted three years. This is without a doubt the most shocking sale of a franchise in my 25 years on this planet, and I’d guess that it’s probably the most shocking one anyone reading this can remember. This is theLakers, the runners and gunners and star chasers and champions and the NBA’s crown jewel and the home of a million MVPs and the NBA’s biggest glamour market, and there are people in the world who might really saw off their own legs for a 20 percent chance at taking the reins. And this is also Mark Walter, the billionaire owner of the Dodgers who’s managed to bring a couple World Series to LA by paying just about every superstar imaginable and whose pockets previously seemed to run so deep as to appear endless, and whose organization has proven so successful that the upcoming MLB labor negotiations will in all likelihood take aim at him specifically. 

Walter was supposed to bring some of that magic to the Lakers. Gone were supposed to be the days of Ramona Shelburne exposés and palace intrigue and the dropping-and-reading-of-tealeaves that had so long defined the Lakers after family patriarch Dr. Jerry Buss passed away. They were supposed to have money again, and they were supposed to be smart, and now Walter is gone. The timing of this is strange, and the facts of it make it look even stranger: the FBI investigation into some of his business dealings at Guggenheim, his seemingly desperate search for cash as his Delaware Life company attempts to pay down the $16 billion in loans that have made it the second-most exposed life insurance company in America, the involvement of a Kushner brother, and the recent reports that not only did Walter decline to seek other buyers but also decided to sell the team in the span of 72 hours. All of this might be damning, and then again it might not, and at least a few of these facts likely explain some part of his decision to sell what is at worst the fifth-most valuable asset in sports, and the most iconic in the NBA. 

We are not likely to get an especially detailed picture of what happened here: there is enough weirdness to assume that something shady is going on, and men like Walter and Kushner are not usually keen on telling us exactly what they are doing. But even if this sale is the product of the incredibly specific conditions of an FBI investigation, a demand for quick cash, and a potential need to curry favor with a family allied with the Trump administration, this sale sets a new and scary precedent for NBA franchises. Speaking yesterday about the Walter era, ESPN reporter Dave McMenamin said this: “They added two rows of courtside seats. They fired a bunch of folks. They raised season ticket prices 40% for some folks. And they made $2 billion. Like, not a very impressive resume there for his time being the principal owner of the Los Angeles Lakers.” 

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In 1973, America had a problem. The golden age of American capitalism had technically begun at the end of the Second World War in 1945 (it’s hard to really wrap your head around how powerful America was in 1945). For example, as Hitler bled out in his bunker, the United States held about half the planet’stotal capital and was the sole nation that could reasonably expect to exit the war intact. But its fundamental precepts—holding, in part, that strong labor protections, the so-called consumer economy, and greater public control over production would fortify the economic base and prevent the kinds of overzealous speculation that created the Great Depression—started gaining purchase in the early ‘20s.

The idea, with roots in the work of John Maynard Keynes, was that long-wave crises in the style of 1929 (and 1905, 1894, and 1877) were endemic to an unrestrained market economy. There would always be too much money going places from which it could not return, and consumer demand that would collapse at the first sign of trouble and banks that could not be trusted to act responsibly. And while some titans of industry had clearly begun to recognize this in the 1910s (on the back of other, smaller crises), the depression of ’29 had kind of sealed the deal. The depression was, of course, the worst in recorded history, and on the ground, many did not think it was actually going to end. Keynes himself, in 1930, in an essay claiming that the storm would pass away in the morning, could not help but notice how “Today we have involved ourselves in a colossal muddle, having blundered in the control of a delicate machine, the working of which we do not understand. The result is that our possibilities of wealth may run to waste for a time—perhaps for a long time.”

And while the conventional narrative generally holds that the Second New Deal rescued the economy, this is not exactly true: as early as 1937-1938, only a few years after its passage, a minor recession had once again cast doubt on the ability of the country to actually figure a way out. It was not until the outbreak of war, and really the stunning wartime mobilization, in which new, highly subsidized factories appeared overnight, production quotas in crucial industries were set, and wages fixed, that the true promise of public control appeared as something other than a fever dream or a corporate specter. It was here, it was effective, and by the war’s end, it seemed a kind of perfect solution. Not only to the problem of waging the most involved and expensive war of all time, but also to mitigating, eliminating, and weathering the myriad crises that just a few years prior had troubled the most basic and fundamental belief in the capital order. 

.     .     .

On April 26, 2023, the National Basketball Association and the National Basketball Players Association came to an accord. To the players, it was supposedly a very good thing: they managed to protect the 49-51 split of basketball-related income, raised contract extension limits for veterans from 120% to 140%, removed cannabis restrictions, and created new eligibility criteria for end-of-season awards tied to contract values (this is how you get at least one of Jamal Murray and Jalen Johnson on all-NBA, instead of Anthony Edwards). And for the owners, it was a coup: the most famous provisions increased luxury-tax payments and created a two-apron system for teams that spent over certain thresholds. Offenders would not only have to pay outlandish tax bills, but they would also lose the ability to aggregate salaries in trades, lose access to draft picks in trades, and lose access to the mid-level exception—a crucial lever for teams in tax trouble to acquire veteran talent at competitive rates. 

What this means, in essence, is that the players got a little more so that the owners could pay a lot less. Owners of small-market teams, owners with small pocketbooks, and owners who, for whatever reason, could not justify the $450 million bill for one year of basketball that Warriors owner Joe Lacob gladly paid in 2017 to build the greatest team ever were not only protected, but also rewarded for their cheapness. The propaganda for these measures has emphasized that they serve to create a parity of competition, in the style of the NFL, that the NBA has never seen before. 

It is very expensive to pay a lot of good players what they deserve now, and because punishments range far beyond money, cheaply is the best way to build a good team. You managed to draft three stars, but you have to give them max deals, or they walk? Well, you better hope your second-rounders and Carter Bryant can give you enough production so you don’t run your max guys into the ground before they get to the playoffs, because we’re not going into the second apron. You just traded for a superstar wing, making 35% of the cap to pair with your up-and-coming 30% wing? You better pray to God Karl-Anthony Towns doesn’t eviscerate Adem Bona in the playoffs, and Labaron Philon can be a good sixth man right away. 

Where the long-established logic of NBA team-building has generally held that veterans are more reliable — and thus a team of veterans is a team ready to compete — these new economics have flipped the math on its head such that only a team of young players, and more specifically, a team of young players whom you do not yet have to pay, has a chance of sticking around. And even then, as borne out by the unique faces of each champion since 2019, the dynasties of old do not have fertile soil from which to spring. 

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So let us go back to 1973. the year of the oil crisis in Tehran and a few years after the Europeans had recovered enough to begin competing in the marketplace again and a year before Nixon resigned and two removed from the 25th anniversary of the quasi-Keynesian order of postwar America and nine after Goldwater lost and seven before Reagan won. The crisis began with OPEC’s embargo of oil sales to any nation that’d supported Israel in the Yom Kippur War—raising prices of that most essential material across the Western world. But really the crisis began much earlier. Already, consumer spending, that essential fuel of postwar growth, had reached a plateau near the end of the 1960s, precisely when foreign competition, with which this order had never had to contend, had begun to nip at corporate profits; already direct foreign investment had begun to collapse, most acutely with the collapse of Bretton-Woods in 1971 and the emergence of OPEC at the end of the ‘60s, and also assuredly the wave of independence movements in the global south that defined the ‘60s; and already had cheap and plentiful supplies of skilled foreign labor brought into question the necessity of this enormously expensive american workforce. In fewer and clearer words: the order had already begun to fracture. 

The solution, as written ad nauseam at the time and after the fact, was neoliberalism; the slashing of social welfare programs and the breaking of American labor and the relocation of industry off American soil, and the rapid opening-up of all previously protected corners of the American economy to capital. Conventional narratives will point to the ’81’s failed air traffic control strike and the weakening of Glass-Steagall all throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s as the flashpoints of the new order, and they are not wrong; neither the complete destruction of a worker’s organization representing such a vital segment of the American economy nor the rapid merger of commercial and investment banking would have been conceivable prior to the crisis of ’73. But the real story of ’73 is the story of ’08, with the subprime mortgage crisis that plunged the American economy into the worst recession since ’29. 

It is the “neoliberalism-response-to-crisis-of-accumulation-reagan-trickle-down-economics-offshoring-deregulation-austerity-death-of-the-middle-class-flint-michigan-we-don’t-make-things-anymore” story. Full of neighborhood bankers offering Americans ridiculous loans they knew they couldn’t pay back and selling that debt to other vultures who’d been told that it was safe and the constant gambling with all this debt on hospitals and tech companies and private prisons and oil concerns and a “real economy” that hadn’t actually grown in decades filled with ordinary Americans whose paychecks hadn’t risen either, and so when it crashed to the ground everything fell with it and no one knew if it could get back up, and this time nothing really changed, the banks got their money back and the gamblers were told to be more careful next time because there was sure as shit gonna be a next time because we sure as shit didn’t have any other ideas. 

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On August 13, 2025, on the precipice of a season that would end in their first playoff run in four years, the Portland Trail Blazers announced their sale, for a reported $4.25 billion, to Tom Dundon, a billionaire who made his cash as a subprime auto lender in the early 2000s. Since 2020, an unprecedented 25 percent of NBA franchises have changed ownership in the span of six years, owing in large part to the meteoric rise of franchise valuations; in 2025 alone, the Blazers, Celtics, and Lakers alone combined for an estimated sale price of $20 billion. This is a time of great change for the league, and upon Dundon’s arrival, the dimensions of this change would make themselves clear. 

First was the announcement that Dundon had declined to pay for the travel and accommodations of Blazers support staff and their two-way players for the duration of their 2026 playoff run—a breach of the NBA’s long-established customs. Next were the rumors that interim head coach Tiago Splitter, who’d taken over for Chauncey Billups following his gambling arrest and who’d done a decent job coaxing a winning record out of a mismatched and mercurial roster, would not return to the Blazers the following season. The reason for the divorce, as alleged after the fact, was Splitter’s strange desire for a salary and contract length on the standard of other NBA head coaches. Finally, or at least most recently, are the troubling negotiations between Dundon and the city of Portland over the financing of the construction of a new arena (Dundon, of course, believes that the city should take much of the burden), with some not-so-subtle hints that Dundon aims to relocate the storied, though small-market, franchise. 

I do not get why you would buy an NBA team if you did not want to, you know, run an NBA team, especially one like Portland with a long history of relevance, a legendary title, and a rabid fanbase. But I believe, taken together with the passage of the second apron provisions in the latest CBA, all this actually does make sense. For so long in the NBA, the idea has been that you can and should buy your way into relevance. Most every great and storied team in the league’s history has had an enormous payroll. You spend on talent, and you spend as much as you need to keep that talent around. But the second apron restrictions, with all their far-reaching implications, passed and agreed to precisely when valuations are reaching record highs and teams are being sold all over the damn place, have served to not only protect but also incentivize low spending. Every team certainly must pay at least 90 percent of the salary cap, but the logic of winning has clearly changed: the OKC Thunder won a championship with the 19th-highest payroll in the league; the Spurs and Pacers went to the finals in the last two years, each with the 17th-highest payroll in their respective seasons; and even the Knicks, the most recent champions who won with the seventh-highest payroll in the nba, were only able to secure the cap space necessary to build the team because Jalen Brunson left $113 million on the table. What is more, four of the teams with the 10 highest payrolls did not advance past the first round. For reference, only once during the fabled Bron-Steph years did either of those teams fall outside the top five in spending. 

The problem is not that these owners are slashing budgets to raise profits, nor that the players are bearing the cost. Rather, what is happening is something far more insidious: the speculative turn of NBA team-building. With prices soaring, expansion looming, and more sales than ever before, there is a pretty obvious financial incentive for owners to cut costs where they can, especially owners who might soon put their teams on the market and don’t want to be dragging a $300 million payroll into negotiations. And for new owners, who again account for about 25 percent of league ownership—who bought in at this all-time high, and who, despite their vast individual wealth, have been frequently unable to amass the capital necessary to outright purchase their new teams on their own, some kind of austerity, or at least cost-deflation, probably looks appealing. The franchise is an asset now, and a ridiculously and increasingly valuable one at that. Considering all this, we are left with the big question: if the new logic of winning team-building just so happens to help out new highly leveraged owners, can all this focus on flexibility and cost-deflation really be divorced from the sales of franchises? Put another way, is it even possible to say anymore that these owners care about anything but the check they can get at the next sale?  

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This is a story of neoliberalism, but more specifically, it is a story of speculation. Where corporate butchers like Jack Welch began to understand that the numbers on the stock ticker were all that mattered, and the numbers didn’t care much for the reality of what a company was but more so the idea of what a company could be. Companies shrank their productive units or otherwise moved them to places where labor could be bought on the cheap; research and development budgets shrunk as corporations slashed their payroll and expanded to new lines of business, most especially financial. You know this story, but what matters here for our purposes is that this era no longer saw a future for itself. If the quasi-Keynesian tendencies of the old sought to address the root cause of crisis and calamity, the new order simply sought to survive. 

Gone were the days ahead and the backward days behind; all that needed to exist here, in this increasingly wild domain, was increasingly unhinged capital. able to turn a profit in a jail cell and an operating room, and that did not care for the cities of the hungry and the shocked it left behind. And they certainly could not give less of a damn about the human meat it ground to a pulp across the pond. Because these actions looked good in the moment, the same as those piles of shit with the shine of the old-school blue chips that tore everything down in ’08. It didn’t matter if all our roads were so lined with shit that your car could barely move because the gamblers knew that they would be protected in the event of loss. And even if those subprime loans were now illegal, something close to it probably was, and as long as you stayed a few steps ahead of the crisis, you could do pretty well for yourself. 

No longer was the nation willing to offer its citizens anything more than a pittance, and if they got sick or wanted a higher education or just looked a little funny at the powers that be, their lives were subject to complete upheaval. In ’97, just seventeen years after the collapse, 31 percent of Americans had no savings to cover surprise expenses; thirty years later, in 2026, the number of Americans fitting this designation may be as high as 67 percent. We understand that there is no one coming to save us and that if the whole thing falls down again, they’ll find a way to pick it back up and act like nothing ever happened. And all this means that there are no years anymore for millions upon millions of us, at least as we’ve ever been able to understand them; for us the horizon of the foreseeable future has slimmed to the few weeks just down the road.  

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We care about sports because the giants can fall down. In a second a man can be made a hero, and in less he can be made a villain, and every night twenty thousand of us gather in one place to yell and drink and boo, and it is all about luck and the gods, and even if these guys are kajillionaires and Adonis, we tell ourselves that they’re still like us, and we care about sports because we can absolutely ruin a billionaire’s night just by screaming. There is no reason I shut down for a couple of hours during Game 6 of the Nuggets-Wolves series last year and took a five-minute break in the middle of a rush at work to cry in the bathroom when my guys lost. We understand that our favorite players might have to leave one day and their bodies will break down, and glory doesn’t last that long. But for so long we understood that when you had a shot, you had to go all in, and if you got mad enough at the owner, you might be able to convince him to pay up.

Growing up, most of the team sales I recall were at least somewhat forced. Donald Sterling had to go, and so did Robert Sarver and so did Dan Snyder. The franchise was as much a public institution as anything else, and its owners were not good or generous people, but they were usually people who cared at least about the team and the city. and the better ones understood the business of sport was different than any other, where operating at a loss for a few years could be justified if you were winning and where there was a built-in consumer base that wasn’t going anywhere. There were easier ways to make a buck, and for many of them the franchise was something closer to a family heirloom than a business and a chance to have your name on a trophy and stand on a big parade float and wave at thousands of adoring lunatics. And so they would usually pay to keep our guys around, and they’d respect our little traditions and superstitions. They would be fixtures in our lives as much as anyone else, and for longer than any of the men they employed.

And of course, of course, of course, there were despots and union-busters and petty tyrants like Sterling and Sarver and Marge Schott. But you don’t have to mourn them to recognize that what they symbolized was a personal commitment to a city and a team with real obligations to both, and to recognize that the anonymous capital currently flooding the NBA does not see the franchise as anything but another asset in a portfolio, subject to the same economic pressures as anything else. Already they have been able to write off contracts and team purchases over 15 years using tax loopholes; already they have managed to squeeze cities for hundreds of millions in taxpayer funds for stadiums; already the franchise is an attractive investment vehicle. 

Like any good investment vehicle in 2026, this one will hurt the masses hard. Our teams will be subject to complete upheaval the minute payroll sniffs the second apron. Our owners will jack up ticket prices, cheap out on contracts, and threaten their city with relocation for more favorable terms on arena funding, only to sell off for a tidy two billion in profit a year later to the highest bidder. All that we considered so fundamental to sports—all that we believed about the need to keep your guys around and to chase glory at all costs and to pay more than you should to get what you need—has been eaten alive by capital and its logic of speculation. And that just sucks.  

File this the “ah-doy” column, but CBS Sports posted a list of the top NBA duos going into the 2026-2027 season, and the San Antonio Spurs earned themselves the top spot.

.@CBSSports ranks the top-10 NBA duos 👀

10. Donovan Mitchell +Evan Mobley
9. Anthony Edwards + LaMelo Ball
8. Jayson Tatum + Derrick White
7. Giannis Antetokounmpo + Bam Adebayo
6. Luka Doncic + Austin Reaves
5. Tyrese Maxey + Jaylen Brown
4. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander + Jalen… pic.twitter.com/ugnhkpZkBu

— SleeperHoops (@Sleeper_Hoops) August 23, 2026

The above post is not 100% accurate. For one, it is a Top 12 list, not a Top 10. But #12 are Golden State Warriors legends Stephen Curry and Draymond Green. #11 is Cade Cunnigham and Jalen Duren.

Though the actual article list the Philadelphia 76ers at #5, it says “Sixers choose your own adventure” meaning that on any given night, their best two players may fluctuate. Between Jaylen Brown, LeBron James, Tyrese Maxey, V. J. Edgecombe, and Joel Embiid, there is a lot of firepower coming out of the City of Brotherly Love.

And at #1, the Spurs list Victor Wembanyama and Stephon Castle/Dylan Harper.

For so many years now, the Spurs flew under the radar of national attention. Even back in the days of Timmy, Tony, and Manu, there never seemed to be recognition at the national level of just what was transpiring in San Antonio.

The Spurs 2026 Final appearance has garnered them plenty of attention as well as an increase in nationally televised games. Victor Wembanyama, the reigning Defensive Player of the Year, made the NBA2K27 cover.

It should come as no surprise that the 2023 and 2024 back-to-back Rookies of the Year are a tandem to be reckoned with considering the advances they have made since their respective rookie seasons. The addition of Harper just underscores (a) how well the Spurs have drafted over the last three years, (b) how great these players are, and (c) how great they are together.

A few opinions (through Silver & Black colored glasses):

1. Out of eighteen teams, there has to be a better duo than Curry and Green. Thoughts?
2. I love me some Derrick White, but is Jayson Tatum and Derrick White a better duo than Tatum and Jaylen Brown?
3. Luka Doncic and Austin Reeves sounds like step down from Luka Doncic and LeBron James. Does Reeves truly have what is takes to be Robin to Doncic’s Batman?
4. 2025 NBA Champions Shai Gilgeous -Alexander and Jalen Williams in the fourth spot seems to make a statement about where they were and where they are going.

Two of these duos have yet to play together. After being kicked out of the playoffs in the Western Conference Finals for two years, the Minnesota Timberwolves decided to shake things up. The last time the Timberwolves shook things up, they traded KAT to the Knicks. Worked out well for the Knicks (s0rt of, more on that below). They have paired their generational superstar Anthony Edwards with LaMelo Ball. Ball and Edwards have the most anticipated pairing this season, so there will be eyes on them throughout.

Meanwhile in the East, Giannis Antetokounmpo has moved to South Beach to give the Miami Heat another star player. Paired with Bam Adebayo, these two will be a menace in the paint and on the boards.

As for Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns in the third spot, it’s difficult to think of KAT as a top tier player based on his fourth quarter scoring in the Finals (he scored five points in total for all five games). While that’s a a small sample size, it’s the Finals, the highest stakes version of a small sample size.

What else stuck out to you all on the list?

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The Cleveland Cavaliersfinally made their move of the summer. A multi-team trade that ultimately landed Peyton Watson in the Wine and Gold.

So what’s the big deal?

Watson, on paper, fills the biggest hole this roster has had throughout the decade. A 6’8” wing with plus athleticism and legit upside on both offense and defense.

Today, we discuss three reasons why Watson can be the missing piece.

Defensive Versatility

It’s not an exaggeration to say the Cavs were the least athletic team that reached the conference finals last season. The Thunder, Spurs, and Knicks all ran laps around them in that regard. Cleveland wasn’t going to advance any further without addressing this.

Watson immediately steps in as the best athlete on the roster. His long frame and dexterity give Cleveland the versatility they need.

This will be most evident on defense, where Watson’s agility allows him to defend multiple positions and offer resistance to transition attacks. The Cavs ranked 17th in transition defense last season, according to Cleaning the Glass. Watson can bolster this aspect of their defense by being the most capable of getting back on D.

Welcome to Cleveland, Peyton Watson!
4 minutes of him blocking shots

(via @pitlessball) pic.twitter.com/mdO8d4Z64p

— Ballislife.com (@Ballislife) August 20, 2026

Watson’s speed also allows him to recover and track down shots from behind. He ranked in the 99th percentile as a shot blocker from the forward position last season. Downhill drives will be more difficult than ever for opponents as Watson joins an elite rim-protecting frontcourt with Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen.

Cleveland will always be vulnerable defensively with James Harden and Donovan Mitchell in the backcourt. But Watson gives them an option to defend the opposing team’s best player. Watson is proficient at defending the point of attack and contesting perimeter shots. This is something the Cavs needed almost more than anything.

You might be thinking to yourself: didn’t Dean Wade provide most of the same defensive skills that I just listed as positives for Watson? And you’d be correct. Wade already filled some of those gaps for Cleveland — and with him gone, Watson is simply trying to replace what is lost without Wade.

That might feel like this is all a lateral move. But there is, however, one difference that makes Watson a more viable two-way option for the Cavs. It’s the other side of the floor.

Three-Point Shooting

This is in no way meant as disrespect towards Wade (who Fear the Sword has always been fond of). But having a wing who can check all of the boxes defensively while being a real threat to shoot the ball is something that Cleveland hasn’t had.

Watson hasn’t always been considered a shooter. Even now, this skill is an x-factor for his development. But Watson made a leap last season, ranking in the 97th percentile as a corner shooter. He shot 52% from the corner, which was 11% higher than Wade in each of his last three seasons.

There are two components to this:

First, Watson gets the benefit of projected development. He’s only 23, meaning this could be the tip of the iceberg in terms of his shooting potential. There’s no guarantee that he continues to improve, or even maintains the growth he showed last year. But if he does? The Cavs have a winning lottery ticket.

More importantly, confidence is key.

One of the long-standing criticisms of Wade was his fear of shooting the ball. Everyone watching could tell that Wade wanted nothing to do with scoring the rock. His lack of confidence was undeniable. And once you build that reputation for yourself, it’s nearly impossible to erase. Opponents no longer respect you.

Watson doesn’t have that issue just yet.

His volume isn’t much higher than Wade’s — but his progress from last season is fresh in our minds. He doesn’t have a track record for being hesitant. Teams haven’t watched him suffer from record scratches like Wade.

Watson is a more willing and able shooter who made the most of his opportunities in Denver. That will cause the defense to respect him more than they did Wade.

We understand that playing next to Nikola Jokic means you’ll reap the rewards. Watson was given high-quality shots on a nightly basis. While the Cavs don’t have a singular force as powerful as Jokic — the rim pressure provided by Allen and Mobley has proven to be enough to collapse the defense. I think Watson will receive similar shots in Cleveland, as a result.

From there, all he has to do is shoot with confidence. Watson can stamp himself as a premier 3-and-D wing with one more solid season.

On-Ball Flashes

It’s one thing to be a defensive stopper. It’s another to add three-point shooting to the mix. But completing it all by being a competent on-ball creator is the type of stuff that makes you a star.

Does Watson have All-Star potential?

I want to refrain from getting too carried away. At the same time, what else is summer for if we can’t get overexcited about Cleveland’s newest additions?

Watson flashed some important skills last year. Particularly when Jokic was on the sidelines. Watson averaged 23.1 points per game on above 50% shooting as Denver leaned on his shot creation to carry them during this difficult stretch of the season.

Peyton Watson self-creation leap pic.twitter.com/6oKZwf5eIr

— Brett Usher (@UsherNBA) January 23, 2026

Some highlights include his pull-up jumper from the mid-range, where Watson shot 50% during the season. He also showed some budding skills for attacking the basket, euro-stepping and spinning to quality looks at the rim. This is a work in progress, but a flash in the pan nonetheless.

Watson’s handle is encouraging. He’s a confident dribbler who looks comfortable navigating the floor. He utilizes a variety of moves from hesitations to crossovers to create space for himself.

Playing in Cleveland will push Watson to step deeper into that role. He no longer has to fit around an otherworldly offensive hub like Jokic. Instead, he’ll be asked to create more for himself as a tertiary option. It will be sink or swim. The potential rewards of that ultimatum are what make this addition so exciting.

Joshua Kushner and Bob Iger, successful businessmen by any measure, paid $12.5 billion for the Lakers, easily the highest price ever for a sports franchise.

It was a rare chance to acquire an iconic sports brand, and by all accounts, timing was everything.

The enormous sale price has implications for the rest of the NBA and raises a basic question: Did Kushner and Iger get a great deal or did they overpay?

Business titan Mark Walter owned the NBA franchise for only a year. Federal regulators are investigating Walter’s financial empire, and he reportedly felt compelled to sell as he moves billions to help unravel undisclosed related-party loans from two of his insurance companies to multinational holding company TWG Global — an abbreviation for The Walter Group, where he serves as chief executive.

Before many learned Walter might be interested in selling the team quickly, Kushner and Iger, already pining for an NBA franchise, jumped at the opportunity.

The haste of the transaction would seem to have given the buyers superior leverage, yet Walter negotiated a 25% increase on the $10 billion he spent on the team last October.

Some experts argue the Lakers are worth every penny. A deep dive into the market for legacy sports franchises indicates to Sports Value Consulting co-founder and chief executive Michael Rapkoch that the investment is sound.

“How often do the Lakers come up for sale? Why wouldn’t someone pay that amount if they were able?” Rapkoch said. “Are you going to be the person who says at a cocktail party that you could have bought the team but turned it down because you wouldn’t pay more than $11 billion? This is likely your one and only chance. It’s do it or lose it.”

Read more:The Dodgers are Mark Walter's crown jewel. Can he hold on to it amid federal probe?

Twelve years ago, Steve Ballmer bought the Clippers for $2 billion and admitted he willingly overpaid. In 2025, the Boston Celtics — like the Lakers, an illustrious legacy franchise — were sold for $6.1 billion, which closely matched Forbes market estimates.

Less than a year later, the Lakers sold for more than twice that amount. Some experts were astonished by the price tag.

“You’ve got to buy things with some discipline based on the revenue potential, the cost takeouts, what does the P&L [Profit and Loss] look like,” bestselling business author William D. Cohan said on a podcast. “You’ve got to believe that Iger and Kushner got caught up in wanting to own this thing.

“As usual with these kind of assets, you have to buy it smart, buy it right or else you overpay. If you get into ‘deal heat,’ which I have a feeling Bob Iger did ... it’s hard to get a return when you way overpay.”

Premium sports franchises have spiked in value so rapidly that sticker shock is nil. Shortly after Walter purchased the Lakers, sports business website Sportico determined that the average NBA team was worth $5.51 billion, a 20% increase in one year and a 113% surge since 2022.

Read more:Inside Lakers mega-deal: Mark Walter made a shocking decision. Bob Iger, Joshua Kushner jumped at the chance

The Golden State Warriors ranked first at $11.33 billion, the Lakers were second at $10 billion — reflecting what Walter paid for the team — and the Memphis Grizzlies ranked last at $4 billion. Collectively, the 30 NBA franchises were worth $165 billion.

Record-breaking purchases of NBA, NFL and MLB teams are often initially considered overpays, yet soon are deemed bargains.

Ballmer, like Iger, had come up short in earlier bids for teams, and wasn’t going to let it happen again with the Clippers. He acknowledged succumbing to the “deal heat” Cohan mentioned, but never regretted it. Forbes estimates the Clippers are worth $7.5 billion today.

“I was all in, but then it got into the bid process. And I was still all in, and I just said, ‘I’m gonna get this team,’” Ballmer said on a podcast in 2023. “People thought I way overpaid, but I got the team.”

Experts say the value of top-tier sports franchises involves three factors that differ from most other companies: guaranteed revenue through long-term league media rights deals; regional and global branding that fuels steady ancillary revenue from sponsorships and team merchandise; and extreme scarcity that fosters deep fan allegiances.

Read more:Why have private equity firms taken an interest in buying professional sports teams?

Major franchises — the Lakers, Dodgers, Dallas Cowboys and New York Yankees, to name a few — don’t change hands often. Kushner and Iger were mired in a lengthy battle to gain approval for an NBA expansion franchise Las Vegas and clearly viewed the Lakers as a better opportunity.

Recently approved NBA media rights deals are worth $6.9 billion a year from 2025 through 2036. They include the renewal of the league’s partnership with Disney — which owns ESPN — and new agreements with NBCUniversal and Amazon under which ABC/ESPN, NBC/Peacock and Prime Video will telecast games.

Some financial experts consider the Lakers a less risky investment than, say, OpenAI, into which Kushner invested a billion dollars through his venture capital firm, Thrive Capital. That investment and others in the AI and tech sectors have paid off handsomely, but pivoting to a legacy NBA team with a locked-in elevated financial floor could be prudent. Iger just stepped down after two runs heading the Walt Disney Co.

“The NBA has more secured, annual retention revenue than most other investments,” Rapkoch said. “You are buying into something stable. In 15 to 20 years the Lakers are going to be here. Will an AI company be here? Maybe so. But lots of companies have come and gone. We know with a high level of certainty the Lakers will be here.”

Some who believe Kushner and Iger got caught up in the moment and overpaid point to the bidding war with Comcast for 21st Century Fox that Iger won for Disney in 2019. The price escalated from $54 billion to $72 billion and Disney was left with a debt load of $25 billion and mixed returns.

Read more:Plaschke: Beneath the Dodgers' latest sweep, the scary rumblings of a team sale persist

Iger rejected the notion that he experienced “buyer’s remorse,” maintaining on a November 2024 call with analysts that the deal was made “through the lens of streaming.” He asserted that Disney would not have successfully launched and scaled Disney+ without Fox’s immense content catalog, which included the “Avatar” franchise, “The Simpsons,” FX and National Geographic.

NBA franchise revenue is not as diversified as Disney‘s, yet the league generated $12.25 billion in revenue — an average of $408 million per team — during the 2024-25 season, including events such as concerts at arenas owned or operated by teams. These earnings ranged from the Warriors’ $833 million to the Grizzlies’ $301 million.

But NBA teams also do not have some of the business challenges movie studios face in the streaming era.

Rapkoch pointed out that it is unclear precisely how much of the Lakers will be owned by Kushner and Iger. Walter’s majority ownership share has not been publicly divulged. It has been widely reported that among minority owners, the Buss family owns 17.8%, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong 4% and Edward P. Roski Jr. 3%.

Jeanie Buss, the current governor of the Lakers and one of six children of the late longtime owner Jerry Buss, is fighting with her siblings, who voted to sell the family’s remaining stake to Iger and Kushner. Buss said any such vote is void because the sale cannot be completed without her approval.

Soon-Shiong, a biotech billionaire and owner of The Times, said through his attorney that he is not interested in selling his stake, which he purchased from Magic Johnson in 2010 for an undisclosed amount.

What is it worth today? Four percent of $12.5 billion is $500 million. Roski, whose stake is worth $375 million, has not disclosed his intentions.

Whatever the minority owners decide should not impact the sale of Walter’s majority stake, said Rapkoch, whose firm has provided valuation services and operational consulting to more than 50 professional sports franchises. Assuming they get the blessing of the NBA board of governors, Iger and Kushner will own the Lakers.

“Bob and Josh are going to do an amazing job,” Rapkoch said. “They know L.A., and they will bring a fresh look to the franchise.”

Get the best, most interesting and strangest stories of the day from the L.A. sports scene and beyond from our newsletter The Sports Report.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

It’s History Month at CelticsBlog, celebrating all 18 banners hanging in the rafters. Today we look back at the team to bring the water back to the Garden, the utterly dominant yet humanely vulnerable 2008 Boston Celtics.

NBA history spans 80 seasons, and as CelticsBlog readers well know, the Boston Celtics have won a league-high 18 championships. This month, we are recapping each of those title years.

Five Olympics, five World Cups, 8,000 sleepless nights. A lot can happen in 22 years. For many a Celtics fan, the gap between 1986 and 2008 felt like an eternity. A franchise so renowned for its pedigree, with a fanbase so addicted to victory, had been starved of it for over two decades. It seemed that Bostonians, local and spiritual, had spent all their basketball capital to watch the most beautiful basketball ever put to the hardwood in 1986; what awaited was tragedy, disappointment and the feeling that Lucky the Leprechaun was never to witness the Green lifting the gold at the end of the rainbow again.

In 2007, spectators at TD Garden were subjected to the second-worst season in the history of the franchise at 24-58, all in the hopes of landing a top-two pick in the draft. Boston had been rescued by an ascendant rookie talent 28 years prior. Wyc Grousbeck, Paul Pierce, and anyone else who bled green hoped that one of Kevin Durant or Greg Oden would don the shamrocks to do the same once more.

It wasn’t to be.

Despite having the second-best odds at the number one pick, the Celtics slipped to fifth when the lottery balls fell as they did. It seemed purgatory wasn’t ready to let go of the Celtics just yet. Danny Ainge, former Celtics player and now GM, had to take matters into his own hands.

Assembling the Big Three:

June 28th, 2007. Draft Night.

“And with the 5th pick, in the 2007 NBA Draft, the Boston Celtics select… Jeff Green, from Georgetown University!” And immediately traded both him and Wally Szczerbiak to the Seattle SuperSonics for Ray Allen and Glen Davis.

Purgatory no more, the Boston front office made a declaration that they were not content to languish in the doldrums of the Eastern Conference. Commentators, analysts and fans at the time were confused. Allen was coming off a 26.4 PPG season and his fourth consecutive All-Star selection — Ray could play. But Allen had just undergone surgery on both ankles. 2008 would be his age-32 season. Had Boston given up the 5th pick simply to become respectable, not revered?

Adrian Wojnarowski chastised the front office. “No vision, no plan.” Michael Wilbon described the Celtics as “wandering aimlessly philosophically.” For many, Paul Pierce, Ray Allen and Al Jefferson looked more like a playoff team than a championship one. If only they could acquire a “Big Ticket” item…

A month later, with the help of franchise legend and Minnesota Timberwolves GM Kevin McHale, Boston landed former MVP and NBA superstar Kevin Garnett. The skies had cleared. Over the course of a summer, Danny Ainge turned lottery heartbreak into perhaps the most formidable big three of the 2000s.

A Regular Season for the Record Books:

Accompanied by sophomore starting point guard Rajon Rondo and a supporting cast featuring James Posey, Kendrick Perkins, Eddie House and Tony Allen, Boston had already surpassed its previous season’s win total by New Year’s Day. Through 30 games, the Celtics sat at 27-3, tied for the best 30-game start to an NBA season in history.

Pierce, Allen and Garnett blended seamlessly, each sacrificing shots and touches in pursuit of Banner 17. Highlights included a 16-0 start against the Western Conference, a 6-0 sweep of the Texas Triangle and a near-franchise record dismantling of the Knicks, 104-59! No, they didn’t turn the shot clock off for this game; this is what happens when Nate Robinson leads you into battle against KG & Co.

The individual accolades followed. Kevin Garnett won the only Defensive Player of the Year award of his career after spearheading a Celtics defense that posted a league-best 98.9 defensive rating. His willingness to sacrifice offensive production for the good of the team may have hurt his MVP case, but he still finished third in a fiercely contested race behind Chris Paul and eventual winner and future Finals rival, Kobe Bryant. Paul Pierce made All-NBA Third Team, while all three members of the Big Three were selected as All-Stars. Even Doc Rivers got in on the act, coaching the Eastern Conference All-Stars 20 years after appearing in the game as a player in 1988.

By season’s end, the Celtics had completed the largest single-season turnaround in NBA history: 24-58 in 2006-07 to 66-16 in 2007-08. A 42-win improvement transformed Boston from lottery hopefuls into championship favorites in the space of a year.

A Homesick Post-Season?

Let’s be clear. Boston went 31-10 on the road during the regular season. A tour of terror; no other franchise touched thirty plus wins away from home. Then something very strange happened. The best road team in basketball underwent mitosis, splitting into a swaggering, confident and imperious home team and a cursed, nervous and jumpy away team.

Their first-round opponent was Atlanta, a 37-45 Hawks team making its first postseason appearance in nine years. Boston had swept the regular-season series and wasted little time asserting itself at home, winning Games 1 and 2 by 23 and 19 points respectively. Then the series travelled south.

Atlanta won Game 3. Then Game 4. Boston returned home and comfortably won Game 5, only to lose again in Atlanta three nights later. Through six games, neither team had won on the road. A Celtics team that had lost just ten times away from home across the entire regular season had now lost three times in six days to an Atlanta team starring Joe Johnson, Josh Smith and a rookie Al Horford. I haven’t checked, but something tells me SI’s writers at the time didn’t have the two Big Threes ranked particularly close.

Fortunately, Game 7 was back in Boston. That swaggering buzzsaw from the regular season returned and any possibility of drama was quickly curtailed. All season long, Kevin Garnett had been the centerpiece of a progressive defensive scheme concocted by assistant coach Tom Thibodeau (whatever happened to him?). No game serves as a better microcosm for the C’s defensive dominance. They held Atlanta to just 26 first-half points. A second-half procession ensued and Boston escaped the first round having beaten Atlanta 99-65. The defending Eastern Conference champions and LeBron James were up next.

Remarkably, the pattern continued.

Boston won Games 1 and 2 at home, limiting Cleveland to 72 and 73 points. The Cavaliers responded with two victories in Ohio. Boston took Game 5 at the Garden; Cleveland answered in Game 6. Twelve playoff games had been played and the Celtics were now a perfect 6-0 at home and an inexplicable 0-6 on the road. Once again, their season would be decided by a Game 7 in Boston.

The Atlanta Hawks were a distant memory. Boston had done well throughout the second-round series to hold LeBron to 23.7 PPG through the first six games, but tension was palpable. Having seen James carry Cleveland past Detroit the season prior with a heroic 48-point Game 5 performance, including the Cavaliers’ final 25 points and 29 of their final 30, staff and squad alike knew that he was capable of ending their season.

Cue Paul Pierce and LeBron James in one of the great Game 7 duels in NBA history. James scored 45 points; Pierce answered with 41. Together they accounted for 86 of the 189 points scored in the game. Every time Boston threatened to pull away, LeBron dragged Cleveland back into contention. Every time Cleveland closed the gap, Pierce had an answer. With Boston nursing a three-point lead in the final seconds, Pierce even received a little help from the Garden rims, watching his first free throw bounce high off the iron before eventually dropping through. Pierce’s heroics saw Boston emerge winners, 97-92.

The game, and this series, should serve as a reminder of how blessed Bostonians were to watch Paul Pierce for 15 seasons. Nowadays, he’s a colorful character on broadcasts and whose social media posts are at times as embarrassing as the 2007 season, but KG summed up that night perfectly: “Tonight was basically get the ball to Paul Pierce and get the hell out of the way. Ain’t no need to ask me no questions.”

Somewhat ironically, the Eastern Conference Finals matchup against the Detroit Pistons, the yardstick by which all Eastern Conference contenders were measured in the 2000s, was the shortest of Boston’s playoff series in the lead-up to the 2008 Finals.

We often talk about teams built to take down champions in the league today. Daryl Morey’s Rockets in the late 2010s were constructed with Golden State specifically in mind. Tim Connelly’s double-big Timberwolves were built to combat the Denver starting five that looked set to control the 2020s after their title win in 2023.

Looking back, it seems Boston took Detroit’s formula and improved upon it. Both teams could field starting fives without a defensive weak link, allowing them to dominate on that side of the ball. A team-first, as opposed to star-first, mentality saw the scoring burden shared amongst stars rather than the offense relying upon one savior. Both franchises had incredible movement shooters in Ray Allen and Rip Hamilton. Paul Pierce and former Celtic draftee Chauncey Billups thrived as each team’s de facto closer. The difference between the two was found in the frontcourt.

Detroit’s trade for Rasheed Wallace in 2004 was one of the best of the 2000s. A versatile big man who could stretch the floor, guard one-on-one and pair with a bruising defensive savant in the paint in Ben Wallace. The Wallaces walled off the paint together and had just enough on offense to hold it down. In Kevin Garnett, rather fittingly, Boston had acquired a player who could replicate the impact of each of Detroit’s frontcourt stars all in one.

The game to remember from the series was undoubtedly Game 6. Having split the first four, with each team winning once on the road, Boston grabbed Game 5 to set up a closeout game in Motor City. Three quarters in, it seemed as though another Game 7 was in the offing as Detroit carried a 68-60 advantage into the fourth at The Palace of Auburn Hills. Then Boston’s season-long identity finally travelled with them.

The start of the fourth saw Detroit increase its lead to double digits before Boston finally recaptured the defensive form it had shown throughout the regular season. The Celtics erased the deficit with an 18-4 run, turning a 70-60 Detroit lead into a 78-74 Boston advantage. Pierce took control, scoring 12 of his team-high 27 points over the final 7:35, dragging himself to the charity stripe repeatedly down the stretch. On the other side of the ball, defensive specialist James Posey took on an expanded role in place of Ray Allen as Boston held Detroit to a measly 13 points in the fourth, emerging victorious, 89-81.

During the Detroit series, Garnett shone for Boston. Taking on a greater offensive burden than he had during the regular season, KG scored a series-high 22.8 PPG against the Pistons whilst continuing to captain that incredible defence. Garnett was the cheat code that helped close the book on Detroit’s reign as the East’s defining contender, preceding a marked decline in Motor City hoops that would last until Cade Cunningham arrived well over a decade later.

After needing 14 games to escape the first two rounds, Boston had finally learned how to win away from the Garden when it mattered most. The Celtics were Eastern Conference champions for the first time since 1987.

And waiting for them on the other side was Los Angeles.

The Finals and the return of the glory days

By the time the Finals rolled around, the odds had flipped. A team that had looked so dominant during the regular season had shown real vulnerability navigating the East. Boston had taken twenty games to reach the Finals, whereas Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol’s Lakers had blitzed the West, dropping only three on their journey to the ultimate showdown. The mood around the matchup reflected it. Bill Simmons admitted, “We’ve never battled anyone quite like Kobe in his prime.” Sporting News’ Stan McNeal cut to the heart of the national consensus: “Team with the best player wins.” Nine out of ten ESPN experts picked Los Angeles.

Coming into the playoffs, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen hadn’t made a postseason appearance since 2005, whilst KG had sat out since his MVP season in 2004. Perhaps there were fears that Boston’s star trio no longer had the legs for a hundred-game season. Bryant, meanwhile, was the league’s MVP and had just dismantled the defending champion Spurs in the Western Conference Finals. San Antonio possessed the third-best defense in basketball that season; Kobe still averaged an efficient 29.2 PPG to send them home in five.

Parity has defined much of the NBA since Kevin Durant left Golden State, but back then Jordan’s specter still loomed large over the league. More often than not, the best player eventually separated himself from the pack and ended the season with the Larry O’Brien Trophy in hand. Bryant, Gasol, Pierce, Garnett and Allen all entered the series chasing something different, but for Boston the stakes felt especially personal. Simmons argued that three players had the most to gain historically from a title: Kobe, Pierce and Garnett, with KG facing the greatest scrutiny if Boston fell short.

There was still a compelling case for the Celtics. Bob Ryan picked Boston in six, arguing that the series would be decided by which team imposed its identity more forcefully: Los Angeles with its pace and scoring, or Boston with a defense comfortable dragging games into the 80s. As Ryan later put it when explaining why so much of the national media favored LA: “They have the best player.” Boston’s answer was that it might have the better team.

Game 1:

Boston dominated the possession game in the opener, killing LA on the glass and drawing fouls at will. In a game that ended 98-88 in Boston’s favor, all three of the Big Three showed up, with Allen scoring 19, Pierce 22 and Garnett 24. Ticket grabbed thirteen rebounds, four offensive, setting a trend that would hold throughout the Finals. The Lakers defended with a lack of finesse, allowing Boston thirty-five attempts at the line. Meanwhile, Kobe’s long-awaited return to the Finals was a disappointment. He shot LA out of the game, going 9-for-26 and ending the night with 24. Perhaps Bob Ryan knew what he was talking about.

Game 2:

The Lakers’ starting five returned to form in their second TD Garden game. Kobe scored an efficient 30, laying on eight assists in the process, while Pau Gasol scored an efficient seventeen and held his own on the glass against Garnett and Perkins. This one was decided by the benches.

Boston went into maximum Powe-verdrive…

Leon Powe had the game of his life on the largest of stages. A fifteen-minute blur comprised of thirteen, yes, thirteen, trips to the free-throw line, as well as six of Powe’s seven shot attempts dropping. Rack attack after rack attack set the Garden alight, and rewatching the highlights, it’s clear to see Leon trying to keep his cool for the cameras whilst knowing he was on fire. One man with split allegiances on the night was Bill Walton. The legendary Celtic got to watch Boston emerge victorious at the expense of his son Luke, who was manhandled by Powe on the night. The Lakers’ bench failed to show up and, heading back to LA, Boston found themselves in a familiar spot.

Treat yourself to four minutes of a man on fire.

Game 3:

Probably the low point of the series. The Lakers captured their first win of the Finals, 87-81, and Boston couldn’t get anything going on offence. Pierce failed the proverbial polygraph, leaving the Truth at home for the night. His worst game of the postseason saw him go 2-for-14 from the field. KG wasn’t much better, shooting 26% from the field, meaning Ray Allen’s efficient twenty-five was lost to time without the support of his co-stars.

Kobe had the quintessential Kobe game: 36 points, 60% from the field, one assist. It was Sasha Vujacic’s turn to play bench hero, scoring twenty as a reserve.

Was momentum about to shift?

Game 4:

Game Four is often where series are won and lost. If LA were to tie the series, they’d have another game at Staples Center and, knowing the Celtics’ struggles on the road, there’d be a good chance they could carry a 3-2 lead back to the East Coast, giving the Lakers two chances to close out what would be a famous triumph over their bitterest of rivals. Boston had to get over its away-from-home struggles once and for all.

An eighteen-point deficit at the end of the second quarter was not what the doctor ordered. For the first time in the series, the Lakers gained the upper hand on the interior. Lamar Odom went a perfect 7-for-7 from the field. Odom and Pau were the driving force behind the Lakers’ ten-rebound advantage at halftime.

With the series and season hanging in the balance, a halftime demand was made. We hunger for star-on-star matchups these days; they’ve become rarer with the heavy-switching nature of modern NBA defence. Paul Pierce reportedly demanded to guard Kobe Bryant. Determination coursed through the Celtics dressing room and they emerged from the depths of Staples ready for war in the second half.

Doc Rivers granted Pierce’s request. He picked up Kobe in the second half. James Posey and Eddie House were huge in the third and the Celtics ripped off a 21-3 run to drag themselves back into the game. After scoring 35 points in the first quarter, the Lakers managed just 15 in the third. By the start of the fourth, Boston had cut an eighteen-point halftime deficit to two.

The comeback was completed in the fourth. Pierce’s halftime demand to Rivers, “I’m going to guard Kobe. Let me guard him,” proved prophetic; Bryant finished just 6-for-19 as Boston took its first lead of the night with under four minutes remaining. Rivers stuck with House and Posey, spreading the floor and trusting a smaller lineup. Boston wrestled control away from LA, flipping the first-half script and finally taking the lead with 3:48 to go.

Pierce had been Boston’s closer throughout the postseason, but Ray Allen, who played all forty-eight minutes on the night, took the reins to finish the Lakers. Sports Illustrated’s Ian Thomsen described Allen making “three sensational drives to puncture Bryant’s hopes,” the last of which saw him blow past Sasha Vujacic along the baseline for a left-handed layup that effectively ended the contest. Bill Simmons struggled to decide whether he had witnessed “the greatest comeback in Celtics history or the greatest collapse in Lakers history. Maybe a little of both.”

Boston had trailed by 24. They won 97-91.

A series that looked destined to be tied at two was suddenly 3-1 Celtics.

Game 5:

A 38-point eruption from Los Angeles native Pierce wasn’t enough to secure Banner 17 at Staples Center, as the Lakers took Game 5 103-98. Pierce had spoken at length about his desperation to win a championship in the city that raised him but, on the night, LA prevailed. Boston repeatedly threatened in the fourth, but the Lakers held on to send the series back east.

Game 6:

Game 6 was less a contest than a coronation. Kobe Bryant opened with eleven first-quarter points, but Boston still led 24-20 before the defense swallowed Los Angeles whole. The Celtics won the second quarter 34-15, held the Lakers to 29% shooting in the first half and carried a 58-35 lead into the break. Paul Pierce had already dished nine assists. Kevin Garnett was bullying Pau Gasol inside. Rajon Rondo was everywhere. Phil Jackson admitted afterwards that Boston had simply “overran us.” The tone, he said, had been established when Garnett knocked Gasol down in the lane early. There would be no coming back this time.

The beating only worsened. Rondo produced the finest game of his young career, finishing with 21 points, eight assists and six of Boston’s Finals-record 18 steals. Ray Allen buried seven threes on his way to 26 points; Garnett matched him with 26 and fourteen rebounds. Pierce added seventeen points and ten assists. Chad Finn of Boston.com called it a “public evisceration,” and there was little hyperbole involved. With 4:01 remaining, Pierce, Allen and Garnett checked out together, embracing Doc Rivers before taking their seats and watching the final minutes of a journey they had begun less than a year earlier.

131-92.

The 39-point margin was the largest ever in a championship-clinching game. Twenty-two years after Boston last reached the summit, Pierce was Finals MVP, Ray and KG were champions and Banner 17 was heading for the rafters. Garnett, almost incoherent with emotion in the aftermath, screamed three words that would follow this team forever:

“Anything is possible!”

Legacies and what could have been:

The final game of the season reflected the regular-season dominance while masking the postseason struggle. As banners were hung and songs were sung on the streets of Boston, fans let out a collective sigh of relief. The longest championship wait in the history of the NBA’s most successful franchise had come to an end.

Danny Ainge had further cemented his place in Celtics history. Two years after the passing of Red Auerbach, Ainge had assembled a team capable of standing alongside some of the very best Red had ever built. At +11.4, the 2008 Celtics have the seventh-best regular-season net rating of all time. Only Jordan’s 1996 and 1997 Bulls had posted a better mark prior to 2008, making the immediate success of Boston’s newly assembled Big Three somewhat unprecedented.

Contrastingly, the Celtics endured the longest route to a championship in NBA history. No champion has ever played more postseason games: 26 of a possible 28 en route to glory. We know about the team’s road struggles and the pressure that came with restoring a great franchise to its former glory. With the weight of expectation finally lifted and Rajon Rondo blossoming into a star in his own right, Celtics fans couldn’t have been blamed for expecting a run that might rank alongside the teams of the 1980s.

That wasn’t to be.

With a 27-2 start in 2008-09, it seemed Boston had solved basketball. The champions had somehow bettered their incredible opening from the season prior, but Kevin Garnett’s knee injury derailed their repeat hopes. Boston would return to the Finals in 2010 and come agonisingly close to Banner 18, but this group would never again recapture the overwhelming regular-season dominance of its first year together.

As we know, Garnett and Pierce eventually played their part in Banner 18 after all. Their trade to the Brooklyn Nets became pivotal in creating Boston’s next great team. So, when you’re watching Jayson Tatum this year; when we draft the next great Celtic with one of those Philadelphia picks acquired in the Jaylen Brown trade… remember the Big Three, and remember the sweet satisfaction that came with climbing the mountain once more.

Over the last few years, a lot of things have changed in college basketball. Not all that long ago, between the influence of the Golden State Warriors and the endless defection of young college post players to the NBA, SmallBall was very much in vogue.

More recently, with teams like Duke and Michigan building much taller rosters, college has left that era behind (it’s happening in the NBA as well).

The truth is that basketball always has been, and always will be, a big man’s game. If you are 6-9 and can do things that a 6-2 player can do, well, that 6-2 guy can’t flip the script and overpower you inside.

Some big men are more skilled than others. Hakeem Olajuwon had the Dream Shake and could get loose on anyone. The other guy who really mastered post play was Kevin McHale.

McHale was a master of post moves. The Up-and-Under, the Drop Step, the Uptake, and, when all else failed, a very accurate fall-away jumper, McHale was so difficult to guard inside that he gained a unique nickname: The Torture Chamber.

Having a 7-10 wingspan when you’re 6-10 made life much more difficult for people who had to guard McHale.

Of course, having Dennis Johnson and Larry Bird get you the ball made your life that much easier, too.

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The Houston Rockets are predicted by ESPN’s summer prediction series to tie for third place in the 2026–27 Western Conference standings, according to a survey of its NBA insiders. Only the Oklahoma City Thunder (60-22) and San Antonio Spurs (62-20) are predicted to be ahead of the Rockets and Nuggets (51-31).

ESPN’s Michael C wrote: “The West goes through either Oklahoma City or San Antonio, but don’t count out Houston. The Rockets expect to take another step in Year 2 with Kevin Durant, bolstered by the return of guard Fred VanVleet and continued improvements from Amen Thompson and Reed Sheppard,“

In the previous two regular seasons, the Rockets had a 52-30 record. Despite suffering major long-term injury losses in the form of Steven Adams and VanVleet, Houston finished 52-30 last season, spearheaded by the All-Star tandem of Kevin Durant and Alperen Sengun. VanVleet and Adams are both anticipated to be healthy from the beginning of training camp this season. The addition of experienced guard Marcus Smart and Bogdan Bogdanović could strengthen the team’s depth as well.

Therefore, it may seem unrealistic to expect fewer victories than the previous season. However, the league’s recent draft lottery reform may result in much greater parity in 2026–2027, which should lessen the incentives for non-playoff teams to lose games.

In light of this, it’s conceivable that the Rockets could be a “better team” even though their win-loss record does not reflect it, at least in comparison to prior campaigns.

In all honesty, I feel that the West will definitely be a bloodbath next season, with San Antonio and OKC likely coming out on top. However, I personally expect the Rockets’ win total to improve rather than regress, and I have them slated for 55 wins in my personal standings. With that being said, what do you think about ESPN’s power rankings? Are the Rockets too high? Too low? Let us know!

Luka Dončić must feel as though, these past few months, he’s been twirling in a washing machine. He announced a separation from his fiancee in March; reports followed of a prolonged custody battle over their two daughters. As Dončić plays in the NBA and his children live in Slovenia, he doesn’t see them much as is. But after the reports of the rift with his ex emerged, he started playing some of the best basketball of his life: he led the Los Angeles Lakers to a 15-2 record in March, a stretch that included a torrential 60-point display against the Miami Heat. Behind Dončić’s brightening star, the Lakers seemed to be sharpening into a real contender. Then Dončić tweaked his hamstring in April and the illusion shattered. He watched from the sidelines as the Lakers limped out of the playoffs with an inevitable second-round defeat to the Oklahoma City Thunder.

Actually, Dončić must feel as if he’s been in turmoil for the past few years. He made his first – and so far only – NBA finals in 2024, leading the Dallas Mavericks there with a barrage of awesome shotmaking. As the best offensive player on the court while playing through multiple injuries, Dončić and his Mavs lost to the far deeper Boston Celtics in five games. As thanks, the Mavericks traded Dončić to the Lakers, citing defensive concerns, when what had really doomed them against the Celtics was that no one aside from Luka – who led his team in points, rebounds, assists and steals in that series – could play at the requisite level to win.

Related: From Showtime to Insurance Time: how the LA Lakers became a $12.5bn hedge fund play

And what to make of Dončić’s Lakers tenure? He and Austin Reaves seem to be platonic soulmates. He’s played with LeBron James, his idol. And yet the team remained built in the afterimage of the LeBron-Anthony Davis Lakers, a far worse fit for Dončić than the Mavs were during his stint in Dallas. With a hard ceiling imposed upon them – not enough shooting, less defense – they’ve yet to make an impactful playoff run during his time in LA.

Now Dončić may get his chance. James is gone, off to the clunky but alarmingly stacked Philadelphia 76ers. In his place the Lakers have, at long last, employed a center not named Deandre Ayton. Walker Kessler may transform the Lakers for the better; he may also need time to develop into what Dončić needs; he most definitely cost a lot of money. This is the first season in Los Angeles that Dončić will get to run the Lakers as truly his own team, which is a mixed blessing. Will the (hopefully) improved synergy be enough to take down, or even meaningfully threaten, the monstrous basketball ecosystems that are Thunder and Spurs? Probably not, in which case many will blame Dončić.

So, is Dončić cursed? Born to be an MVP, but thrust into the same era as Nikola Jokić and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. Perfect on the Mavs, but helpless in the clumsy, unfeeling hands of owner Miriam Adelson and Nico “Defense wins championships” Harrison. Totally in control of any offense, but constantly furious at and distracted by those pesky outside factors, the referees. A shade too uninterested on defense for anybody to ignore the deficiency. Traded to the Lakers, who took too long to mold themselves around him. Brilliant in the regular season, capable of being a supernova in the playoffs, but too often injured. Early in his Lakers tenure, ready to return to the court after healing from a hamstring injury, the franchise gets new owners.

The clock’s ticking for the 27-year-old, and it’s not even his fault. How is it fair that one of the great pressure performers of his generation is primed for a James Harden-esque legacy? We should know by now to resist the immense gravitational pull of rings; they’re too elusive – and too reliant on the contributions of others – to be the main criteria by which to judge a player in a team sport. But if Dončić retires without an NBA title, it will be held against him. Likewise with his lack of an MVP award, despite the fact that Dončić’s lone crime is being a unicorn slightly smaller than Jokić, and being born too soon before Victor Wembanyama. By the time voter fatigue comes for Wemby, Dončić will be on the wrong side of 30.

Sports are made for narratives, all the more attractive when subjectivity enters the conversation. The prevailing attitude is that there are winners and there are losers, and excepting the most mythmakingly tragic bad luck everybody pretty much deserves what they get. Within that framework each player is buttonholed into a tidy little story, while various factors such as “timing”, “teammates”, and “De’Aaron Fox had a high ankle sprain during the most recent playoffs” are ignored or shunned. You wonder how much Dončić’s story will acknowledge that he didn’t always have agency in his fate, at least not to this point.

The more interesting question is how he feels right now. This is a player with something approaching absolute power on the basketball court who a) doesn’t seem very happy when exercising said power, b) is so bothered by any and all refereeing that his complaints are the pet peeve of half the fanbase, c) has repeatedly found himself in impossible situations through no fault of his own, and d) is dealing with a difficult situation in his life off the court. Lost in the inevitable handwringing about the pressure on Dončić and the potential of him underdelivering on what seemed to be a destined legacy is the feeling that one of the best basketball players alive doesn’t seem very happy. Think of his reaction after the famous game-winner over Rudy Gobert. That’s not self-satisfied or showy trash talk, he’s pissed off. Not to mention what his apparent discontentment says about the sport or the person. Perhaps this season Dončić will be able to conduct the team and the action the way he hopes, but I wonder if he’d trade that possibility for a measure of peace. To hijack a cliche, the best offense is a good defense.

WARNING: This Off-Season Report contains barely warrantedenthusiasm and optimism. Proceed at your own risk.

There’s always anniversaries to speak of. And this month marks an important one for Nets fans trying to figure out where the organization stands and more importantly, where it’s headed. Twenty-five years ago, in August 2001, annual previews for the upcoming 2001-02 season hit the stands. You know those glossy magazines published by companies like Athlon Sports and Street & Smith’s. All but one of the four big publications that year projected the then-New Jersey Nets wouldn’t even make the playoffs … even with new addition Jason Kidd. The lone holdout had them barely making the post-season as the East’s eighth seed.

The annuals were not alone. Only one prominent pundit thought much of the combination of Kidd, KMart, KVH and Kerry. His name was Charles Barkley. Sir Charles thought Kidd would get them to the playoffs. No real surprise.

After all, New Jersey had won only 26 games the year before behind Stephon Marbury, a 24-year-old wunderkind from just across New York Harbor in Coney Island. Kidd was Kidd, a four-time All-Star, a three-time All-NBA selection, former Rookie of the Year but he had baggage … a lot of it. He had been arrested in January of that year for assaulting his wife in front his children. He was dispatched to East Rutherford for Marbury in July.

Of course, the Nets stunned the NBA that season behind the MVP runner-up, winning a franchise record 52 games, a mark that unfortunately still stands, getting to the NBA Finals the first of two straight times and sending beleaguered Nets fans into the basketball equivalent of Nirvana. They got swept by the Lakers but who cared? Been down so long looked like up to us.

No, we are not saying history will repeat itself in 2026-27. Nor are we comparing anyone on the current roster to JKidd. Few players to ever don an NBA uniform had his charisma, his toughness or his skillset. But to invoke Nets history again, we want to echo Joe Johnson’s famous preseason quote after the departure of Deron Williams a decade ago: “It ain’t that bad here.”

The point is simple: all the projections, predictions and even an insult from one of Hollywood’s biggest stars mean nothing before the games are played. Nada, zip, naught. The team that the Nets will put on the court this season will be decidedly different than last year. The roster has improved. The rookies have a year under their belts. They have two bigs capable of averaging 20/7/3 and two 20-year-old guards who were top 10 Draft picks. The Nets have never had either in their history.

They will present a more physical presence and more than enough assets to improve during the season if that’s what the brass wants to do. But most of all, they want to win this year after two years of desperately tanking to get a top lottery pick and before that a season when they didn’t seem to know what they wanted to do. It should be interesting, even fun.

Maybe it’s pollyannish to think this way. Probably is, when you consider what’s happened in the East this Summer with two All-NBA stars including LeBron James joining the 76ers, new faces in Miami, Toronto, Boston and an old one returning to Indiana. The Knicks are NBA champions and darlings of the city where they play. At the moment, the Nets are irrelevant, but that’s not a surprise. Nor should it be considered a permanent condition.

You have to trust the process and the hunger of a young roster with something to prove and a young head coach who’s intolerant of anything less than a full effort.

Another Nets great, Buck Williams said his week that maybe Joe Tsai’s comment about being embarrassed, first published in these very pages a week ago, will be the “fire” a young team needs to excel. We actually disagree. A team with nine players 22 or younger shouldn’t really need to be set alight. They should be hungry enough to prove themselves. Indeed, there’s every indication they want it. The kiddie corps leaders — Egor Demin and Mikel Brown Jr. — are saying all the right things and did all the right things as well in Summer League. SL head coach and Nets assistant Dutch Gaitley wasn’t exaggerating when he called MBJ’s performance “electric” … and not just on the court. He and Demin have charisma.

As Chaney Johnson, who was also a rook last year, told our Connor Long this week, the youngsters know what’s what.

“I just feel like we’re hungry,” said Johnson who at 24 is the team’s sixth oldest player. “They know — we realize how terrible of a team we were last year, or how terrible we did. I know ‘terrible’ is a strong word, so I don’t want to — but we weren’t the best team last year. So I feel like we’ve got that chip on our shoulder now, and we’re ready to prove some people wrong.”

This week, we also began to see a bit of a counter-narrative emerging about the team, at least in a couple of assessments of NBA front offices if not in power rankings. Although Sam Quinn of CBS Sports ranked Sean Marks & co. 16th out of 30, we found his opening line encouraging:

Brooklyn’s front office probably faces the biggest disparity between perception and reality of any in basketball. The prevailing narrative surrounding the Nets is that they’ve been poorly run and their outlook is bleak. True, they haven’t yet found any truly foundational players, but they have a clean cap sheet and a six-pick first-round draft surplus (not including swaps, though in fairness they owe their 2027 swap to the Houston Rockets). The reality is that this is a pretty promising blank slate if you’re willing to take the long view.

Similarly, Stephen Noh of the Sporting News gave the Nets an A+ for their assets although he ranked the Nets 21st in his assessment of where he thinks teams will be in 2029. He did say they could rank higher if they decided to be aggressive, as they almost certainly will be The other lesson we can take from 25 years ago is that one player can make a difference with a young team.

In the meantime, better to focus not on what an anonymous writer for FanDuel, ESPN’s projection of 18 wins (!!) or even what Marty Supreme thinks but on possibilities with the league’s youngest roster. There will be enough time during the season to make adjustments to your thinking.

Youth movement still a thing

It was our Connor Long who pressed Chaney Johnson late last week on what’s going on behind the doors of HSS Training Center. He gave a generalized and positive review of the Flatbush 5 and the Nets two bigs, the returning Michael Porter Jr. and the new guy, Julius Randle, but saved his highest compliments for Nolan Traore, the 6’4” French guard who was the NBA’s sixth youngest player in 2025-26.

“Honestly, I’m going to have to say Nolan,” Johnson told Connor when asked about what he’s seen . “All the guys have improved, but I feel like Nolan … he’s a different guy now. He done put on some mass. He’s walking around with a sleeveless hoodie on, looking at the biceps, you know what I’m saying? He done put on some strength.”

Troare of course didn’t play in either Summer League, not Sacramento nor Las Vegas. He was still recovering from a post-season scope — arthroscopic surgery — on his right knee. But C.J. also said nice things about how Drake Powell, Ben Saraf and Danny Wolf were playing in scrimmages at HSS.

That might have been a surprise to those fans who watched the Nets Summer League games. None of the three were lighting up the arenas in either league. While Egor Demin and Mikel Brown Jr. drew raves, particularly when playing together, there were a LOT of missed shots being thrown up by the picks taken at Nos. 22, 26 and 27. Indeed, it seemed that Powell and Wolf had regressed from the end of last season.

One Nets insider excused their failings by saying they just “need more time” in development, that the worries many fans shared among themselves were not shared by the team’s development types. Of course, development is critical to the Nets plans for what Joe Tsai and Sean Marks have called “sustainable success.” So they’d better succeed. The organization is counting on a steady stream of rookies making their way through cheap four-year contracts, permitting it to push in all their chips when the opportunity to acquire stars arises.

Indeed, the Nets will have eight players on rookie deals this season, from Mikel Brown Jr, at age 20 ,the team’s youngest player by seven weeks, to Noah Clowney, who just turned 22 last month. In fact, it seems likely that the Nets will once again have the youngest roster in the NBA. Last year’s was the youngest in two decades!

Here in order are Brooklyn’s 17 players by age, including two-ways. Those with asterisks are on rookie deals.

— Mikel Brown Jr., 20*

— Nolan Traore, 20*

— Ben Saraf, 20*

— Egor Demin, 20*

— Drake Powell, 20*

— Noah Clowney, 22*

— Danny Wolf, 22*

— Tyler Bilodeau, 22

— Joshua Jefferson, 22*

— Josh Minott, 23

(All 10 players above this line are younger than Yaxel Lindeborg, the Warriors pick at No. 11 in the June Draft.)

— Chaney Johnson, 24

— Day’Ron Sharpe, 24

(All 12 players above this line are younger than the NBA average.)

— Keon Ellis, 26

— Michael Porter Jr., 28

— Moe Wagner, 29

— Terance Mann, 29

— Julius Randle, 31.

There are a few aspects of the list that jump out beyond just the obvious one how young they are. Five of them can’t legally buy a beer! One is that, as the Nets insider noted, there’s time, lot of it, for lots of players on the roster to get a lot better. No guarantees but suggesting that they only need time seems less of an excuse than a rationale for patience. You know, hope.

Another is where Clowney sits on the list: the sixth youngest player on the youngest team in the NBA despite having played nearly 3,200 minutes in the NBA. However, Clowney has the least amount of time to prove himself. He will be a restricted free agent next July. He didn’t play that badly last season, averaging 12.3 points on 40/33/80 splits while grabbing 4.3 boards in 66 games, 60 starts. But he has been disappointing in large part because of what he’s shown on occasion, those seven three’s vs. the Knicks in November of last year and those seven blocks vs. the Raptors in 2024.

Said one NBA scout who followed him since his days at Alabama. “I loved him in college. Loved him when he was drafted,” he said. “Wish he was further along.”

The scout added that aside from Clowney’s occasional shot blocking, he’s “soft on defense.” Where does he fit this season? Back-up to MPJ? back-up to Randle? a 6’10” wing? A rim-runner and protector? If he advances and justifies that scout’s love, it could be a big help to Brooklyn this season and beyond.

One other aspect we found interesting: Minott’s youth. Like Clowney, the 23-year-old could provide the Nets with some depth up front and on the wing. Also, like Clowney, he started young in the NBA and has a wealth of NBA experience despite his youth. In four seasons, he’s played nearly 1,300 minutes, more than half last of them — 834 — last season with Boston and Brooklyn.

After the Nets got him for the bargain basement price of $110,000 from the Celtics in a classic salary dump, he played with enough skill and energy to warrant a two-year. $9 million deal with the second year a team option. He averaged 10.8 points on 49/40/80 shooting splits in 16 games with the Nets who chose him over Ziaire Williams, opting out of Z’s $6.3 million second year.

The question is whether there will be minutes for the two forwards aged 22 and 23? Like a lot of questions with such a young roster, that’s a good thing. Same with the backcourt if Demin, Brown Jr. and Traore develop.

Rising tide of money engulfing Brooklyn?

The changes in ownership at the Los Angeles Lakers, the defining NBA franchise (sorry again, Knick fans), is once again altering the NBA financial landscape. A valuation of $12.5 billion for the Lake Show will cause other franchises values to jump as well. A rising tide, you know, lifts all boats. It already has. Marc Lore, Alex Rodriguez’s partner in owning the Timberwolves, sold his stake in the Minnesota club to San Francisco investment banker Marc Stad at a valuation of $4.5 billion, three times what he paid a mere five years back.

If the Nets were worth $6.2 billion — per Sportico — prior to the Lakers’ sale, then they are more than likely worth closer to $8 billion now. That’s a huge profit for the Tsais who closed on the Nets and Barclays Center in 2019 for $3.3 billion. Indeed, that estimate might be low considering there’s been recent speculation at the two new franchises in Seattle and Las Vegas will likely require prospective owners to put up as much as $8 billion to join the club as the 31st and 32nd franchises. (And we’re not even talking about the Liberty.)

Is that a good thing for the Nets and their fans? At least for now, it would seem so. The Nets, through Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment, are among the more stable franchises in terms of finances, despite word that Joe and Clara Wu Tsai are divorcing. The Tsais’ investments in pro sports, in everything from the Nets and Liberty to minor stakes in the NFL’s Miami Dolphins and an international catamaran racing team, were featured in a story we wrote a little more that a year ago and updated since in these pages. One of the more telling indicators of just how committed he’s been was this line from that July 2o25 story:

Bloomberg News breakdown of Joe Tsai’s net worth, which the news site estimated at $9.1 billion, puts the value of his sports assets, primarily the holdings of Brooklyn Sports and Entertainment, at a conservative $4.85 billion, amounting to 52% of his overall holdings. Bloomberg valued his holdings in Alibaba — 1.4% of the Chinese e-commerce giant’s stock — at nearly a billion dollars less: $3.95 billion.

His single biggest asset, said Bloomberg, is not his Alibaba stock but the Nets.

He’s said both publicly and privately that he sees sports and particularly the Nets as the “family business,” a legacy. He and Clara recently stated that despite the dissolution of their marriage they expect their three adult children will be involved in BSE over the long term. All three have sports backgrounds. Thiers isn’t so much a corporate investment like the one Mark Walter and his Guggenheim partners made in the Lakers 14 months ago then sold under duress to Bob Iger and Josh Kushner this month. (No doubt the Tsais are also taking lessons from what’s happening with the Buss family following the sale.)

For the want of a better term, the Tsai family appear to fall, at least for now, into the “sportsman” category of owners rather than the “investor” category. They have continued putting money in their teams and their infrastructure while selling small pieces to others among the mega-rich whether the Koch family in the case of BSE or Jack Ma and a group of prominent business women in the case of the Liberty.

That certainly doesn’t mean the Tsais are likely to be conservative. They remain ambitious in Brooklyn as recent events have shown.

Beyond what we’ve already seen — the four-year, $150 million worth of renovations at Barclays Center, the $80 million Liberty training facility underway on Newtown Creek in Greenpoint and the eight-figure revamping of Modell’s as a youth training facility— there’s still the somewhat amorphous and yet-to-be announced plans for what’s what’s been called an arena-centric “ecosystem,” an ambitious accumulation that could include a hotel, conference center, marketplace, restaurants, etc.

There hasn’t been much made of the plan since Sam Zussman spoke to Bloomberg News about it in October 2024, but 10 days ago, Peter Stern, BSE’s chief financial officer, mentioned it again in CFO Magazine when discussing differences between what an NBA team CFO’s job entailed a quarter century ago versus now:

First is adjacent opportunities. So in the timeframe you mention, whatever basketball team it was, whatever arena it played in, the focus was on that team and that arena. How much food and beverage are we selling when people come into the arena? What are the per caps?

Now, teams are thinking about how they can make their customers’ experience better before the game and after the game. Should I have a restaurant down the block? Should I have an entertainment opportunity after the game? You’ve seen that done in Chicago with the Cubs, for instance, where the organization literally bought up the land all around, or what the Buffalo Bills are doing with new mixed-use facilities that they’re building.

And indeed, BSE just announced a “restaurant down the block.“ It’s partnering with Casa Tua, a well-known hospitality brand out of Miami to create Cucina by Casa Tua at One Hanson Place in the lobby of the Williamsburgh Savings Bank building, a property acquired at a foreclosure sale in 2024. It’s described as ”located just steps from Barclays Center.“ Beyond the restaurant scheduled to open next year, there are plans for it to anchor ”a broader mix of hospitality, dining, and experiential offerings to be announced at a later date,“ said the press release. They also invested in the Brooklyn Paramount Theatre.

And yes, as Marks has said of his boss, he is ready to invest when needed in the team, having already proven it during the glory days of the Big Three, shelling out hundreds of millions of dollars in luxury taxes.

So now, whether you’re a fan of the Tsais’ ownership or not, there’s no indication that the rising tide of money will engulf the Brooklyn Nets (or New York Liberty.) Indeed, it’s the opposite.

Final Note

The WNBA will be taking their bi-annual FIBA break permitting international players to take a couple of weeks off to play for their national teams in the women’s World Cup which this year takes place in Berlin…

As part of the Cup celebrations, FIBA has released a 55-minute documentary on the history of women’s basketball. And one of the key elements in the video is the budding friendship between two Liberty players, both stars of their respective national teams, Marine Johannes of France and Han Xu of China…

"In New York, she told me: You have so many fans in China! So many!" 🇫🇷🇨🇳

Watch the full #FIBAWWC documentary featuring Marine Johannes and Han Xu, available on FIBA YouTube 👉 https://t.co/e7TsqHlr6Qpic.twitter.com/JxMMn4yvy7

— FIBA Women's Basketball World Cup (@FIBAWWC) August 24, 2026

It’s worth a watch … and be assured there will be no cameos by Enes Kanter Freedom or Royce White. IYKYK.

So, our advice to all is to hang in there. There’s a lot of basketball to be played at Barclays Center this season.

The Utah Jazz have had one of the most eventful offseasons I can remember. It’s been filled with ups and downs, rumors, victories in the lottery, and losing players in free agency.

The quickest of recaps is that the Jazz won the lottery after another year of tanking, or to be more specific, a full year of focused tanking. The fruits of two seasons of tanking led them to an incredible lottery night and the #2 pick, which they then used to draft Darryn Peterson.

After unsuccessful restricted free agency negotiations, the Jazz signed and traded Walker Kessler to the Los Angeles Lakers for two unprotected first-round picks and two pick swaps.

All things considered, what grade would you give the Utah Jazz offseason?

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The messiness at the very top of the Lakers took the attention away from Jonathan Kuminga Watch.

Fortunately for everyone sitting on the edge of their seats, absolutely nothing happened.

Despite the Cavs making a move for Peyton Watson, taking a Kuminga suitor off the market, he and his agent are still trying to find money on the market that doesn’t exist. Their options presently are to join the Lakers on a multi-year deal via sign-and-trade or, presumably, go to the Wolves on the minimum.

Even as Kuminga and his agent inexplicably balk at a deal that would guarantee him tens of millions of dollars, the Lakers and Hawks are still negotiating a trade, which remains the other problem.

In a recent article from Kurt Helin on NBC Sports, the current discussions between the two teams include Jaden Hardy.

The Lakers and Hawks talked sign-and-trade earlier this summer, but those talks stalled out because Atlanta is not looking to add salary (it is only $3.8 million below the luxury tax line, and Kuminga currently counts as zero for them). Or, at least Atlanta is not interested without a quality draft pick as an incentive, and the Lakers would not go there. Also, Atlanta currently has 17 players under contract heading into training camp and needs to shed at least two, not add players.

The Lakers and Hawks are talking sign-and-trade again, with guard Jaden Hardey reportedly in the conversation (he makes $6 million this season), while previously that was Jared Vanderbilt ($12.4 million).

Unless the Lakers and/or Hawks have had a third team lined up this whole time, that will remain the next biggest hurdle in this ordeal. And yes, we have graduated to calling it an ordeal. The Hawks, like the Lakers, already have too many players and won’t be willing to take back more on guaranteed deals.

To that end, it’s difficult to understand what the Lakers would be negotiating with the Hawks about, unless they’re really interested in Hardy, which is unlikely.

There remains a seemingly remote possibility that the Hawks are willing to do a simple swap. Hardy has a team option for next season, so he’d effectively be an expiring deal. Getting back some kind of draft compensation, even if it might be second round picks, when you were going to lose him for nothing could be intriguing to Atlanta.

But this is all pointless to talk about or ponder when Kuminga and his agent are just going to twiddle their thumbs and talk about a new team they might sign with instead of the Lakers.

You can follow Jacob on Twitter at @JacobRude or on Bluesky at @jacobrude.bsky.social.

Late Memphis Grizzlies player Brandon Clarke had cocaine, heroin, oxycodone and multiple other prescription medications "within therapeutic levels" in his system at the time of his death, according to an autopsy report released by the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner on Monday, Aug. 24.

The full autopsy, obtained by USA TODAY Sports, attributes Clarke's cause of death to effects of heroin and cocaine with the combined effects of the other prescription medicines in his system listed as contributing factors. The medical examiner classified Clarke's death as an accident, confirming an earlier statement from Aug. 7.

Kratom was also found in Clarke's system.

Just six weeks before his death on May 11, Clarke, 29, allegedly led Cross County Sheriff's Office deputies on a miles-long chase on April 1, with speeds reaching more than 100 mph, and was found with more than 230 grams of kratom in his possession, according to an arrest affidavit obtained by The Memphis Commercial Appeal, part of the USA TODAY Network.

Also found in Clarke's bedroom and attached bathroom were "vape devices, cannabis products, prescription medications, injectable peptides, syringes, a box of Narcan, blister packets of medications, vitamins and other medical evidence."

A plate with an "unknown powdery white substance" and hotel keycard were found in the kitchen, according to the synopsis.

Clarke's agent allegedly reached out to his roommate at approximately 5 p.m. local time on May 11 after he had been unable to get a hold of him, per the summary. The roommate had recently returned home and went into Clarke's bedroom, where he found the Grizzlies forward unresponsive. Clarke was pronounced dead 15 minutes later.

The roommate told the Medical Examiner that Clarke had "a history of drug use with prior stints at a rehabilitation facility" and was last seen by him alive at their Woodland Hills residence around midnight the previous night.

An investigation of his home included in the report found no evidence of foul play.

Clarke was drafted out of Gonzaga by the Oklahoma City Thunder with the 21st overall pick in the 2019 NBA Draft and was immediately traded to the Grizzlies, where he spent all seven years of his career. At the time of his death, he was tied with Ja Morant as the team's longest-tenured player. In October 2022, he signed a four-year, $52 million contract extension to remain in Memphis, but his career became derailed by injuries shortly after.

He tore his left Achilles tendon in March 2023, and the lengthy rehab process from that limited him to just six games in the 2023-24 season. The following year, Clarke played in 64 games until suffering a high-grade right PCL strain that ended his season and forced him to miss the beginning of 2025-26. He made his season debut in December and played two games before being shut down with a right calf injury. Clarke never appeared in an NBA game again.

Clarke's contract was reportedly protected by a life insurance policy and his estate will receive the remaining $12.5 million owed to him in full, according to USA TODAY Sports' Lorenzo Reyes.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Brandon Clarke's full autopsy released: What we know

Sometimes Past Me annoys Present Me. Today is one of those times.

Past Me promised a statistical doppelgänger article about Trae Young. Present Me looked at the numbers and wants to write about Something Else. But…well…crap, a promise is a promise.

The first challenge is that Young didn’t play much last season. Just 10 games for the Atlanta Hawks and five for the Wizards. He totaled 384 minutes, which isn’t enough to say much of anything. Except, bright side: his on-court performance this past season was pretty similar to his 2024-25. And his 2023-24, for that matter.

So, I used Young’s 2024-25 numbers in the statistical doppelgänger machine to find statistical comparisons. For the record, I tried using Young’s 2025-26 age with his 2024-25 stats, and it made no difference in his comps. I tried adding in his 2025-26 play, and it made basically no difference.

Why am I grumpy? Because the comps are giving me the same message they did when I did a similar analysis when John Wall was about to sign his maximum contract extension, which is basically the same message I delivered using an entirely different process when Young signed his extension earlier this summer.

The TLDR is that every way I look at things, I keep coming back to the same conclusion: the Young extension is a mistake. It has a high chance of ending up a blunder. Probably not as high as getting into a land war in Asia, but…I think it’s going to be one of the worst contracts in the NBA, if it isn’t already.

What makes this even more annoying is that I like Young. I’ve enjoyed watching him play, even when he grifted free throws so much the league literally changed the rules to make him stop. And by the way, new rules or not, Young’s free throw attempts per possession barely changed. Either he found new ways to grift, or he’s actually a pain in the butt to defend. (It’s the latter.)

Liking Young and appreciating his offensive game doesn’t replace analysis of his overall impact on the game. His defense has been a problem. His overall production has drooped the past few seasons. Still good, but not at the level of the mustache-twirling villain who tortured the New York Knicks. His old team was willing to trade him for the worst team in the NBA’s discards.

And the Wizards gave him the max. Despite there not being anyone else interested in paying close to that much.

Okay, enough with all that.

This is the fourth installment in the annual ritual of running players through the Statistical Doppelgänger Machine to see which player seasons are most like the reference player. The Machine uses 14 categories, which include per possession box score stats, playing time, and age. Factors like size and position are not included, but players tend to get comparisons similar in both.

So far this summer, we’ve looked at Alex Sarr, Bilal Coulibaly, and Kyshawn George.

To the doppelgängers:

1. Deron Williams | 2011-12 | New Jersey Nets | Age: 27 — Williams was a major problem for opponents. From age 23 to 25 he had three straight seasons with a PPA of 167 or higher. The year he got traded, he rated over 150. This was his first full season with the Nets, and it was bad by his standards. He bounced back for a 151 PPA at age 28 and then declined fast. By age 30, he was basically average…and he dropped more from there.
2. Michael Adams | 1990-91 | Denver Nuggets | Age: 28 — This comp works for me — small guard, unorthodox and herky-jerky, shot tons of threes, didn’t defend. This was Adams’ best season (161 PPA). He returned to Washington the following season…and declined. He was decent at 29 and 30 (131 and 123 PPAs) and average by 31. He hung on for a couple more years as a seldom-used reserve with the Charlotte Hornets.
3. John Wall | 2016-17 | Washington Wizards | Age: 26 — My mental math on this is Young is kinda like Wall plus shooting, minus the strength, athleticism, and defense. This was Wall’s best season. Then, as predicted by analysis I did back in 2017, his performance dropped precipitously as he encountered a series of major injuries. He was out of the league after his age 32 season.
4. John Wall | 2017-18 | Washington Wizards | Age: 27 — YOU SEE WHY I’M ANNOYED? The Machine is saying the Wizards of today have just committed long-term to a player very much like the John Wall who got hurt and got worse…right after signing an expensive long-term contract!
5. Kemba Walker | 2017-18 | Charlotte Hornets | Age: 27 — Another small guard who was really good. Walker’s prime went from a 172 PPA at age 25 to a 166 at 29. Not bad. Except, after being an iron man in previous seasons, he started getting hurt at 29 — a pattern that persisted to the end of his playing career at 32.

There’s a trend here — quick guards who peaked early and declined quick. Guards who changed teams and got worse. Guards who started getting hurt and couldn’t stay healthy.

There are a few more hopeful comps further down the list. Names like Damian Lillard (though Lillard did eventually change teams and get worse), or Tim Hardaway who changed teams, did decline, but stayed fairly productive to age 34 — though with some injury issues after age 31.

The point here is one I’ve been making for years — smaller guards tend not to age well. As their quickness wanes, so does their production. And their health becomes an increasing issue as they approach and pass 30. When I’ve discussed this topic with coaches and executives around the league, I often hear variations on the idea that the “old” analysis of career trajectories isn’t applicable because guys take better care of themselves.

And maybe that’s true. It could be that it’ll be borne out in the data when we look back in 2036.

I’d still rather not have the Wizards staking a maximum contract on that idea.

Next up: Bub Carrington.

The Miami Heat made its signing of legendary guard Klay Thompson official on Monday. However, Thompson is still busy arguing with fans about his Golden State Warriors legacy.

Over the weekend, the “Swishlist Podcast” posted an Instagram clip where its hosts argued whether Thompson or Ray Allen had the better all-time resumé.

An Instagram user commented, “Klay has never been a first option. Ray was a top 10 player his first 10 years.”

Thompson then replied to this comment by writing, “You do realize I was the 2nd leading scorer on two championship teams without KD? You want me to go to a bad team and put up empty stats, that’s easy buddy.”

Thompson added a second comment, writing, “Holy s*** I led the 2016 playoffs in points scored you casuals .”

Klay Thompson had some words for his haters in the Instagram comment section

(Via: Klaythompson) pic.twitter.com/rKdH5FQ9yq

— Tyler Covers NBA (@TylerCoversNBA) August 23, 2026

Essentially, Thompson is shutting down the idea that his playoff success was owed to opposing defenses, giving Steph Curry and Kevin Durant more attention. He then references being the leading scorer in the 2016 postseason because Durant was still with Oklahoma City Thunder at the time, making that aspect of the argument moot.

It’s unclear why Thompson felt compelled to write what he did about going to a “bad team” and putting up “empty stats,” as that wasn’t part of the argument being made. He’s definitely not calling the Warriors a bad team, either in their current form or those championship-winning squads from eras past.

It’s rare to see Thompson engage with online trolls, which made him doing so amid signing with the Heat even more intriguing.

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Welcome to SB Nation Reacts, a survey of fans across the NBA. Throughout the year we ask questions of the most plugged-in Cavaliers fans and fans across the country.

It has been an interesting summer for the Cleveland Cavaliers. They’ve improved a position of need by trading for Peyton Watson, but getting to that point wasn’t exactly a straight line. Let’s go through the timeline of events.

• May 30 – Mike Gansey leaves the Cavs to lead basketball operations for the Philadelphia 76ers.
• June 23 – The Cavs trade out of the first round of the NBA Draft.
• June 24 – The Cavs draft Meleek Thomas in the second round.
• June 27 – The Cavs re-sign Thomas Bryant to a one-year deal.
• June 30 – LeBron James announces he’s leaving the Los Angeles Lakers and enters free agency.
• June 30 – Keon Ellis leaves in free agency and signs with the Brooklyn Nets.
• June 30 – Dean Wade leaves in free agency and signs with the 76ers.
• July 7 – The Cavs agree to a four-year contract extension with Donovan Mitchell worth $263 million.
• July 24 – LeBron James chooses the 76ers over the Cavs in free agency.
• July 26 – The Cavs sign Mario Hezonja to a one-year minimum contract.
• August 14 – The Cavs trade Dennis Schroder and cash to the Charlotte Hornets for Tre Mann.
• August 19 – The Cavs trade Max Strus, a 2031 first-round pick, and Tre Mann for Peyton Watson and Cam Whitmore.
• August 20 – The Cavs re-sign James Harden to a three-year, $97 million deal.

Not captured above is the fact that the Cavs went from a team in the second apron last season to being hard-capped at the first apron. Shedding money and improving the on-court team would be a win.

With the dust mostly settled, how would you grade the overall offseason for the Cavs? Let us know in the poll and comments below.

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