Category: Basketball

As we find ourselves buried in the unrelenting sands of the desert known as the NBA offseason, we can’t help ourselves. We begin projecting forward, wondering what could happen with the Phoenix Suns during the 2026–27 season. It’s only natural to dive into the statistics we already have and attempt to project what they might mean moving forward. Such is the cycle of sports.

We’ve already looked at five reasons why the Suns could fall short next season, so now it’s time to explore the other side of the equation. Why might they exceed expectations?

And what exactly are those expectations? We can all set our own. Maybe it’s securing a playoff spot and a top-six seed. Maybe it’s making a run to the Western Conference Finals. Maybe it’s winning a championship. All are viable expectations depending on how optimistic you want to be. For this exercise, though, I’m going to use the baseline provided by the oddsmakers in Las Vegas, where the Suns’ win total sits around 38.5.

So let’s talk about the five biggest reasons why Phoenix could exceed that number.

The Suns don’t need traditional positions 

Yes, I understand the argument that the Suns don’t have a true point guard or a true power forward if you’re looking at the traditional expectations, archetypes, and historical significance of those positions. But this is where I remind everyone that simply because we don’t view this roster as having a traditional point guard or power forward doesn’t mean those roles don’t exist within the confines of the modern NBA.

Look at the two teams that played in the NBA Finals last season. Would you define Jalen Brunson as a traditional point guard? Maybe in terms of size, sure, but that’s about it. He ranked 16th in the NBA in assists last season at 6.8 per game. Since becoming a primary starter in 2021, his final season in Dallas, he has averaged 6.3 assists per game, which ranks 21st over that span.

He was also 14th in the NBA in scoring last season at 26.0 points per game. Brunson is a score-first point guard who possesses the ability to create for others, but distribution isn’t his primary role. That sounds very similar to what Devin Booker has been asked to do in the past, what he’ll be asked to do again this season, and something he has done successfully. Booker averaged 26.1 points last season, which ranked 13th, along with 6.0 assists, which ranked 29th. What separates Brunson from Booker is his ability to operate effectively in the clutch, but from an overall archetype standpoint, they aren’t all that different.

Then look at the power forwards who started in the NBA Finals last season. Were they big, bruising, 6’10” traditional power forwards? No. They were 6’7” OG Anunoby and 6’7” Julian Champagnie. So the idea that the power forward position has to be filled by some massive bruiser is rooted more in how we historically think about the position than how it functions in the modern NBA, where the ability to spread the floor is at a premium.

And yes, I understand that spreading the floor and consistently shooting the three point ball at a high percentage could be a weakness for this team. Of that there is no doubt. But that’s exactly why I think No. 2 on this list is so important.

The Suns’ depth gives them a margin for error 

The Phoenix Suns are deep. In my opinion, it’s unbelievably impressive how they’ve navigated the cap sheet while still maintaining that level of depth. I guess that’s what happens when Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal are no longer on the roster. Sure, you’re still paying Bradley Beal $19.4 million not to play for the team, but you’re no longer paying him roughly $30 million more than that. That creates a significant amount of money to work with, and over the past two seasons, the Suns have done a stellar job of filling out the roster with both veterans and young prospects.

That depth is going to matter. From a three-point shooting perspective, Phoenix has options. Luke Kennard, Collin Gillespie, Jordan Goodwin, and the potential of what Rasheer Fleming can become all give the Suns shooting that can come off the bench and contribute.

They’re deep at the five. They have multiple wings that can come in and confidently contribute. The guard room has options as well, and all of that exists while the team also has two-way players capable of filling similar roles.

That depth also matters because every team eventually faces adversity. We can sit here all summer and project what this team is going to be, but you never truly know until you get punched in the mouth. You have to adjust to what the season gives you, and one thing the season will undoubtedly provide is injuries. That’s unavoidable. The fact that Phoenix has depth across multiple positions is something to appreciate because it gives them the ability to absorb injuries, provide rest when needed, and still remain competitive on a nightly basis.

And that’s especially important because of the new anti-tank rules. Which brings me to point No. 3.

The Western Conference has opened the door for Phoenix 

You can already see it in the preseason projected over/unders across the league. The new anti-tanking rules, which will ultimately incentivize winning rather than losing, are going to have a profound effect on how teams operate. If you finish with one of the three worst records in the league, you no longer get more lottery balls. You get fewer.

What that means is a struggling team in March is no longer going to sit all of its starters in an effort to improve its lottery odds. Those teams are going to compete because they’ll want to avoid falling into that relegation zone. Which means there are no nights off.

For a team like the Suns, which did a good job beating up on bad teams last season, that creates some concern. But when you look at the entire landscape of the Western Conference, not only the teams projected to live near the bottom, I think the conference is weaker than it was a season ago.

Thunder – Sold off role players for picks
Denver – Lost only young, defense talent
Minnesota – Double ? At PF
Lakers – Entirely new roster
Rockets – Banking on healthy FVV
Portland – 100000 PG’s
Warriors – Old & no LeBron pic.twitter.com/Mb9pZYcroT

— Erik Ruby (@ErikRuby) August 20, 2026

Oklahoma City is now flirting with the second apron and has to move off key pieces in an effort to become more fiscally responsible. Lu Dort is now with Atlanta, as is Aaron Wiggins. Isaiah Joe was sent to Detroit. Yes, Oklahoma City has players waiting in the wings to replace them, but I don’t think this is the same plug-and-play Thunder team we saw a season ago.

The Denver Nuggets also appear to have taken a step backward. They traded Peyton Watson because they couldn’t afford to keep him after making a poor financial decision to re-sign Christian Braun. Minnesota completely pivoted as well. LaMelo Ball, who has never won a playoff game, is now running point for a team that once possessed tremendous size and depth but no longer has Julius Randle or Naz Reid.

Who knows what the Lakers are going to be? Having Luka Doncic on your team feels like it guarantees you 50 wins, but Luka and Austin Reaves as a defensive backcourt isn’t something I’m particularly afraid of. Houston is relying on a healthy Fred VanVleet to improve its chances next season, and there’s something about having Kevin Durant on your team that reminds us success is never guaranteed.

The Western Conference is weaker. Players like LeBron James, Kawhi Leonard, several Thunder players, and Julius Randle have gone East. That creates an opportunity for Phoenix. And part of that opportunity leads me to reason No. 4.

Continuity could be the Suns’ biggest advantage 

This is one of the biggest reasons I believe the Phoenix Suns are going to be better than they were last season, and why I’m happily taking the over on 38.5 wins.

Yes, there were periods of instability last year, and much of that was driven by injuries. You can show me all of the statistics from the back end of the season and try to point the finger at Jalen Green as the primary reason things didn’t work. I don’t buy that.

Green played a grand total of 32 games, but only 27 of them came with Devin Booker, 12 with Dillon Brooks, and 16 with Mark Williams. You can look at last season and pull whatever conclusions you want from that sample size, but my response is that there simply wasn’t enough time to fully understand what this team was or allow them to showcase what they could become while learning from the mistakes they made along the way.

Now you’re bringing back four of the five starters from last season, and that matters. There is familiarity. There is an understanding of spacing. There is camaraderie that you can’t quantify on any website. Basketball Reference isn’t going to show you a chemistry metric, and that is where opportunity exists for Phoenix. So many teams across the NBA will spend the first couple of months figuring out the basics of chemistry. The Suns already possess a good portion of that, and I think that advantage will manifest itself throughout the season.

The other side of the conversation is that Phoenix is still relying on progress to improve. Several players had career years, and now you’re asking them to improve again. You’re asking the youth to showcase development and continue fanning the flames of one of the pillars this organization is trying to build around.

Easier said than done? Absolutely. But continuity makes that progression easier to obtain. Roles are more established. Expectations are clearer. There is less instability. And for the first time since Monty Williams, the Suns are bringing back the same head coach for a second season. That matters too.

Although there is one guy who wasn’t on the team last season…

Miles Bridges changes what the Suns can do 

I honestly believe this one. I understand who and what Royce O’Neale and Grayson Allen were, but in my opinion, Royce O’Neale plus Grayson Allen does not equal Miles Bridges plus Luke Kennard. That is an upgrade for this team. You now have more offensive options, players who can do more than stand in the corner and wait for a three. 

Miles Bridges possesses a gravity that is going to affect everyone around him, and players like Devin Booker and Jalen Green should benefit from it. If Bridges has the ball, whoever is defending Booker has to be cognizant of what is happening. Miles isn’t going to stand behind the arc like Royce O’Neale and wait to fire away. He can put pressure on the rim, and when he does, defenses will naturally collapse. When defenses collapse, they’re doing it off of other players on the floor. Booker, Green, Brooks, and Williams can all benefit from that. Bridges can be a willing passer, and I expect him to be one within this offense.

Bridges is also a reclamation project, someone looking to resurrect his career, and I believe Phoenix is the right place for him. This is an organization that will do everything it can to put him in a position to succeed. Ultimately, it comes down to him executing both on and off the court, and that could be a defining factor for the Suns as a whole next season. Bridges has shown throughout his career in Charlotte that he can play in a multitude of different ways. That Swiss Army knife ability may need to shift from night to night depending on the opponent, and, given his experience, I believe he can adapt.

I’m looking forward to seeing what he looks like within the confines of this offense, these schemes, and this roster.

---

Yes, it’s all speculation at this point. We won’t truly know what this team is until they tip off on October 21 in Portland. But I do believe there is reason for optimism.

I can also recognize the arguments for why this team could falter. My challenge with many of those arguments comes from something I’ve learned over multiple years of doing this. We tend to look at previous statistical results and use them to project forward. And that makes sense. You identify trends and assume those trends will continue in the same direction. The problem is that I did the same thing last offseason, and I was wrong. I did it the two offseasons before that as well.

The lesson I’ve learned is that you can’t rely solely on previous statistical results to dictate what will happen next in the NBA. Continuity and chemistry don’t have clean metrics attached to them, yet both play vital roles in the success or failure of a team. Last year’s Suns had an abundance of chemistry. The team before that was almost completely devoid of it.

So while statistics should always be part of the conversation when trying to understand what a player or team could become, they can’t be the end-all, be-all of the argument. These points of view are much more nuanced than that. They depend heavily on the ecosystem a player is operating within, not simply what he did last season in Charlotte.

And that’s ultimately why I’m willing to take the over on 38.5 and believe they will be better than last season’s 45-37 record. It isn’t because the Suns suddenly solved every problem, or because the numbers guarantee some dramatic turnaround. It’s because the context around those numbers has changed. Phoenix has more depth, more continuity, more versatility and, in Miles Bridges, another player capable of changing how defenses have to operate. Sometimes the best projection isn’t based on what happened last season, but on what has changed since. 

Not the strongest of posts, but better than none. Here’s the latest I’ve gathered from across the interwebs in the past few days. Enjoy and comment!

• Karl-Anthony Towns is making it clear one championship has only increased his appetite for another.

“I’m hungrier than ever to get the second one—I’ve said before, I’ll do anything to win that first one. If I was willing to do whatever it took to get the first one, what do you think I’m going to do for the second one?

“This was the first year where I was like, I’m going to put this in God’s hands. I’m going to work, of course, but I’m not going to stress about the things I can’t control.”

• Josh Hart and the Knicks are expected to find common ground on an extension, The Athletic’s James L. Edwards III believes, and projects said “common ground” to be in the $60-to-$62 million ballpark. For now, Hart will make $20.9 million next season (he’s got a $22.4 million team option for 2027-28).
• Hart and Jalen Brunson are taking the “Roommates Show” to a significantly bigger stage following the Knicks’ championship. Among those expected to appear on it: Jose Alvarado, Mariska Hargitay, Jimmy Fallon, Spike Lee and Landry Shamet, plus performances from Fabolous, Jim Jones, Maino and Dave East.

NYC…THE CHAMPIONSHIP PARTY JUST GOT BIGGER! 🏆🗽@Roommates__Show Block Party Presented by @DoorDash is releasing more tickets and moving to Randall’s Island Park!

🎟 LIMITED TICKETS ON SALE TOMORROW AT 12PM ET: https://t.co/Kx5jaedzQX

THE LINEUP:
🏀 Hosted by @jalenbrunson1,… pic.twitter.com/h13o95OU6C

— New York Basketball (@NBA_NewYork) August 20, 2026

• Kenny Kluska needs Jordan Clarkson to start doing something better if he wants to retain his spot in the Knicks’ rotation.
• SI’s Joseph Randazzo rated the highest and lowest point of New York’s offseason. We all know and agree on the lowest. Can you guess the highest?
• New York will have a significant scheduling advantage next season, as Canada Sports Betting did the research and projected the Knicks to travel just 35,135 miles during the regular season, the fewest of any NBA team. No matter that, most of us will keep our routine of couch-watching intact.
• OAKAAK and Nova guard Ryan Arcidiacono is heading to Germany to hoop for the Frankfurt Skyliners.
• Jeremy Lin posted tributes to both Mike D’Antoni and Amar’e Stoudemire following their Hall of Fame inductions. Lin credited D’Antoni with “changing the trajectory of my life” by empowering him during Linsanity and thanked Stoudemire for treating him with “acceptance and love” even when Lin was at the end of the Knicks’ bench.
• Shaquille O’Neal sees Philadelphia as a legitimate threat to the Knicks, but not an automatic one because of the most obvious reason. Emphasis mine:

“The team has enough talent to make a deep run, but the question is whether everybody accepts their role, shares the ball, and stays healthy.”

• Cleveland is paying 37-year-old James Harden a fully guaranteed $97 million over the next three seasons. Good luck making the Eastern Conference semifinals, folks!
• I missed this one, so I’m not sure if it really went as viral as some are saying, but there was a report earlier this week claiming the Knicks had traded Mikal Bridges, Miles McBride and draft compensation for Zion Williamson and Jordan Poole. #lolwut

Very intrigued by CJ Stroud’s warmup tonight pic.twitter.com/FDOGYEOtRn

— THE Bunch of Nuts Podcast (@bunch_nuts) August 20, 2026

Welcome to SB Nation Reacts, a survey of fans across the NBA. Throughout the year we ask questions of the most plugged-in Cavs fans and fans across the country. Sign up here to participate in the weekly emailed surveys.

Fans haven’t lost faith in the Cleveland Cavaliers. Nearly 90% of Fear the Sword voters said they believe the Cavs will pass their 47.5-win total prediction on FanDuel.

And that was before the Peyton Watson trade was finalized.

This is a roaring seal of approval for Cleveland. The fans aren’t feeling discouraged by whiffing on LeBron James or the widespread improvements made to the Eastern Conference this summer. The Cavs are still operating with a fanbase full of hope.

Passing the 47-win mark won’t be easy. The East has gotten stronger and new lottery reforms mean the teams at the bottom of the conference have fewer incentives to tank games. The schedule won’t get much easier in the dog days of the season as every team will have something to play for.

That puts the Cavs in a tight position. They’ve won more than 47 games in each of the past three seasons. But they’ve never had to face an Eastern Conference that was this loaded.

Still, there’s plenty of reason to think Cleveland will win 48+ games that aren’t rooted in homerism.

For starters, the Cavs have some of the best continuity in the conference. Their star trio of Donovan Mitchell, Evan Mobley, and Jarrett Allen has been together for years. James Harden, who arrived last year, has fit right in. That type of chemistry matters, especially in the regular season.

Then there’s the trade for Watson, which gives the Cavaliers a dose of athleticism and three-point shooting on the wing.

Previously, we polled fans on which trade target they would prefer. Jonathan Kuminga or Peyton Watson. A whopping 85% of fans voted in favor of Watson. It seems they got their wish.

Watson should help push the Cavs to more wins in the regular season despite all of the factors working against Cleveland.

In fact, FanDuel has already increased the Cavs win total to 48.5. A small difference, but worth noting nonetheless.

One of Los Angeles’ celebrated professional sports franchises was owned by one local family for more than 45 years. Catering to Hollywood royalty and leaning into its “Showtime” charm, the Lakers became synonymous with the star-studded city. Two quick transactions later, the team now belongs to a New York-based venture capital titan who made his billions in technology and software.

Joshua Kushner, founder of venture capital firm Thrive Capital, and former Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger agreed to buy a majority stake in the Lakers last week. The Buss family’s grip on the NBA’s glamor franchise loosened in 2025 when they relinquished their majority share to Mark Walter. His businesses are under federal investigation for undisclosed insurance loans and Walter flipped the team after just 14 months.

In 1979, Jerry Buss bought the Lakers, the Forum and the Los Angeles Kings for $67.5 million. Now the Lakers alone are worth $12.5 billion.

“It used to be, ‘Hey, I’m in this for the love of the game,’” said Ross Williams, a private-equity attorney and partner at law firm Reed Smith. “Like I measure the success of my investment based on whether we win championships. … And now it’s becoming apparent that these are really, really good financial investments.”

The booming business of sports has attracted a flood of private-equity investment, and even the most notable franchises require the influx of cash to keep up in the arms race.

As of May, more than 74 North American professional teams had some level of private-equity involvement, according to the CFA Institute, an organization providing finance education to investment professionals. Private-equity-backed consolidators have been responsible for 61% of all mergers and acquisition transactions in the sports industry since 2019, according to Oaklins, a global M&A and financial advisory company.

“The real attraction of professional sports is it seems somewhat recession-proof,” said James Adams, director of CFA program curriculum and an adjunct professor at New York University. “It has had a very successful run, a high rate of growth, it’s not as subject to the fluctuations of the business cycle as maybe other things are.”

For private equity — in which investors buy into companies that aren’t available on the public market — sports offers safe harbor. Media deals provide predictable revenue over several years. The NBA’s current deal that stretches to the 2035-36 season is worth $6.9 billion per year. Additional revenue streams with merchandise, sponsorships and ticket sales pile on. Owning an arena, which the Lakers do not, opens the floodgates for concerts and events that add to the revenue.

“Sports is one of those rare instances where you can invest in something cool that also makes money,” Williams said.

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

The appeal of owning a sports team is growing.

The NBA averaged at least 22 million fans during each of the last three seasons, according to Sports Business Journal. Last season’s nationally televised games drew 170 million viewers, the most in 24 years and an 86% increase from the previous year. The NBA Finals between the New York Knicks and San Antonio Spurs were the most-watched Finals since 1998. And the outlook for future profits is strong, if fans’ appetites are any gauge.

The trend is prevalent across many sports. WNBA viewership is at an all-time high. Fox and Telemundo dominated the summer with their FIFA World Cup broadcasts. Of the top 100 TV broadcasts in 2025, 96 were sports, according to Neilsen data, including 48 NFL games and seven World Series games (between the Dodgers and Toronto Blue Jays).

Investors are clamoring to find the next venture that will hit it big with consumers. Live sports already have a dedicated market and more stability than other ventures constantly affected by technical developments.

“You read a lot about AI and there are a lot of companies that their fundamental existence is being questioned because of AI and what it can do,” Williams said. “We don’t want to watch robots play basketball.”

The NBA adopted its first private-equity ownership framework in 2021. Individual firms can own up to 20% of an NBA team, according to Sports Business Journal, and 30% of a single team can be owned by private-equity firms. Such firms were limited to five teams in 2021, but the number grew to eight in 2025.

Read more:Inside the Buss family's long, painful history of sibling rivalries running the Lakers

Private equity even infiltrated the most exclusive ownership club in 2024 when the NFL was the last major U.S. league to open its doors. The league allowed preapproved firms to own up to 10% of a single team, up to six teams total with each stake being at least 3%.

The permanence of sports franchises were behind the formation of Kushner’s Thrive Eternal venture, a permanent holding company launched under Thrive Capital in April. Although venture-capital firms generally focus on turning profits from the most early stage companies, Thrive Eternal is “concentrated in a small number of assets that we can own and steward over many decades,” the company’s website says.

“These are assets with qualities that cannot be replicated by technology,” the homepage reads. “Iconic franchises and cultural institutions rooted in tradition, identity, and shared experience.”

How Kushner and Iger plan to finance the purchase of the Lakers has yet to be determined. Kushner, already a minority owner in the Miami Heat, must first divest from that team before the Lakers sale can be finalized, and the transaction must be approved by the NBA board of governors.

Read more:Jeanie Buss contests family sale of Lakers ownership stake to Bob Iger, Joshua Kushner

The board of governors announced last year that Jeanie Buss would remain in charge of the Lakers’ decisions after the Buss family’s sale to Walter. The family’s future is in limbo as Jeanie Buss contests her five siblings’ plans to sell their remaining stake of the team. The family feud over their remaining 17.8% stake is not expected to influence the sale from Walter to Iger and Kushner, a source familiar with the situation but not authorized to speak publicly told The Times, although it could affect who would represent the team on the board of governors going forward.

While analyzing the sale transaction, the board could look at where the money is coming from, Williams said: how much money from Kushner and Iger personally, how they are moving assets to provide the billions of dollars, and how much potential private-equity money from Thrive.

Thrive Enternal’s first entry into sports was purchasing a noncontrolling stake in the San Francisco Giants. Four months later, it is set to add the Lakers.

Private-equity firms can have a sliver of a team, but are not to have a controlling voice. Their influence trickles down to fans in other ways. Deep-pocketed new owners can help build stadiums or upgrade existing venues to maximize revenue from luxury suites. Ownership decisions also can lead to signing or retaining star players as teams hope to contend for championships. The influx of cash into sports has helped women’s sports take off with unprecedented investment and growth.

But just as a team’s valuation goes up, so has the price tags for fans. Just getting in the door to Dodger Stadium can cost a family of four nearly $250. In one season under Walter, season-ticket price increases rankled Lakers fans. A second row of courtside seats during the Lakers postseason changed what used to be an exclusive feel to a game.

Yet at each game, the seats were full.

“Passionate sports fans are not as price sensitive,” said Arianna Uhalde, an associate professor of clinical marketing at USC’s Marshall School of Business. “I think not as sensitive to some of these decisions that are getting made by ownership. It doesn’t mean that fans are not going to get upset, but they love their teams. They’re likely to still show up in good times and in bad.”

The business of sports has been great for owners, but isn’t guaranteed to last. A change in state or federal administrations and policies could affect tax laws that are advantageous for team ownership, said Mark Conrad, a director of the sports business concentration and professor of law and ethics at Fordham University’s Gabelli School of Business. Labor issues such as the one threatening Major League Baseball could put a freeze on valuations. A recession or another global pandemic could tank the economy. Even the NBA Finals ratings during the COVID-19 pandemic were at an all-time low, averaging just 7.45 million viewers for the Lakers’ six-game, bubble series win over the Miami Heat.

Fans have steadily marched back ever since.

“They’re going to pay for it,” Conrad said. “They can. They do. … And if that’s the case, the lords of the sport are going to be mighty happy.”

Sign up for our weekly newsletter on all things Lakers.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

Yes, it’s that point in the offseason where there isn’t much to talk about, but NBA 2K always comes through at the right moment. NBA 2K27 is set to release on Sept. 4 (Aug. 26 early access), and for the entire month leading up to the date, the company always gives tidbits of either new game modes, fresh face scans, and player ratings.

One of the first things that they decided to release this year was attribute ratings, and several Atlanta Hawks players were part of the list. Here are some of the attributes where those players rank top 10 in the game.

Jalen Johnson – No. 2 in driving dunk

In all honesty, this should come as no surprise, as Jalen Johnson is hard to stop when he has a head full of steam. Adding to that, he’s caught a couple of poster dunks throughout the past few years that some people won’t forget, and it’s obvious that NBA 2K didn’t need to be reminded.

Look to the sky to find these high flyers ✈️

Which one of these players has the nastiest poster in their career? 💥 pic.twitter.com/dWj26Fs9Dg

— NBA 2K (@NBA2K) August 4, 2026

Johnson’s driving dunk is rated at a 96 overall, and he’s just behind Anthony Edwards for the No. 1 spot. This is the perfect spot to put Johnson, and he’ll show at times during this upcoming season why he’s rated so high when it comes to throwing the ball down. It might even motivate him to participate in the dunk contest.

Kingston Flemings – No. 10 in speed with ball

Having a rookie in this category is huge, especially when looking around the league and thinking about all the other fast players. Most of the players on this list are point guards, and Flemings fits right in with them after realizing how fast he actually is. One of the things that was mentioned about Flemings coming out of the draft was his speed, and he’s said that he models his game after guards like Derrick Rose and Tyrese Maxey.

Blink and you’ll miss ‘em ⚡️

Which speedster are you looking forward to running with in NBA 2K27? pic.twitter.com/YNYKLJ5FWb

— NBA 2K (@NBA2K) August 4, 2026

Maxey has already found himself on this list at No. 2, and Rose has always been known as one of the more athletic guards to play the game. Flemings’ speed with ball is a 90 overall, and he’ll be blowing past a lot of defenders in real life and on the game.

Dyson Daniels – No. 4 in perimeter defense

This is another rating that shouldn’t be a surprise, but it could almost feel disrespectful in a sense. Dyson Daniels has proved over the past two seasons that he’s one of the best perimeter defenders in the league, so much that he could be rated higher than fourth on the list.

Putting the League on lockdown 🔒

These are your best perimeter defenders in NBA 2K27 pic.twitter.com/JCzLKbUHtQ

— NBA 2K (@NBA2K) August 5, 2026

Ausar Thompson, Derrick White and OG Anunoby are all ranked above him, and it’s well deserved. Daniels’ perimeter defense is a 94 overall in the game, and he’ll continue to be a pest on the floor. It is a little surprising that Lu Dort didn’t make the top 10 in this category, but his former teammate, Cason Wallace, cracked the list.

Dyson Daniels – No. 4 in steals

Daniels may need to be ranked top 10 in all defensive categories, and it is also not a surprise that he’s high on this list. At the same time, he could have a high rating in this category, considering the fact that he averaged the most steals per game last season, which was also tied with Ausar Thompson. Some of the players on the top list in this rating weren’t even top 10 in steals per game last season.

No handle is safe around them 🍪

The Top 10 guys who can pick pockets in NBA 2K27 pic.twitter.com/zeJnlcuIne

— NBA 2K (@NBA2K) August 8, 2026

Daniels led the league in steals per game two seasons ago, and he basically followed it up again by doing the same thing. He’s rated a 98 in steals along with Wallace, Thompson and Matisse Thybulle, but it wouldn’t have been a stretch to give him the 99.

Kingston Flemings – No. 8 in rookie rating

This is a fair rating, considering that Flemings was actually drafted with the No. 8 pick. All of the other players above him are rated where they were picked in the draft as well, so it looks like everyone may have gotten a fair rating when it comes to rookies.

Ready to make their names known 🔥

Here are the top 10 rookies coming in to NBA 2K27! 🎮 pic.twitter.com/rslukienCn

— NBA 2K (@NBA2K) August 10, 2026

Flemings is a 74 overall in NBA 2K, and it will be interesting to see if he can bring that rating higher during the season. It will all depend on what he does with the opportunity when he gets in the game, and how much he actually plays throughout the season.

Robert Morris wants to be a viral basketball program in 2026-27. 

The small suburban Pittsburgh college has had success on its own merits in recent years after a transition from the Northeast Conference to the Horizon League in 2020-21. The Colonials reached the NCAA tournament as a No. 15 seed in 2024-25 and won over 20 games last year while just missing out on a return to the Big Dance. 

Now they’re working with local creator Cullen Honohan on a first-of-its-kind jersey patch partnership in which the primary exchange isn’t money, but exposure. Both to fans and potential recruits. 

More college sports: Matt Campbell's first big move at Penn State isn't Xs and Os. It's changing the conversation

Honohan, who lives in the city’s Strip District, has built a huge audience for his All Hail Cullen portfolio of basketball-focused social media accounts. He has over one million followers on TikTok and is nearing half a million on Instagram. Add about 370,000 subscribers on YouTube, and his reach is impressive. 

Robert Morris, meanwhile, has struggled to draw fans despite putting a solid product on the floor. The Colonials averaged just 1,411 spectators across 17 home games at the UPMC Events Center, which opened in 2019 and was built to accommodate up 4,000. 

Honohan wants to show that he can change that dynamic and build a greater following both locally and nationally. He plans to develop a video series following the team throughout its upcoming season. In exchange, his logo will appear on the team’s jerseys for each game. 

“We want this to be the best basketball spectacle in the city,” Honohan said in a recent interview with USA Today. 

Easier said than done. Pittsburgh is a notoriously difficult basketball market. There hasn’t been a viable professional franchise in town in decades. And even Pitt, which made the NCAA tournament 13 times in the 15-year period from 2001-02 to 2015-16, has had trouble filling its building since its move to the ACC a little over a decade ago. 

That hasn’t stopped Honohan from setting down roots in the city. While he frequently travels out of state to interview top prospects and major college players for his social accounts, the Winter Park, Fla., native has embedded himself with the small but passionate grassroots hoops community through AAU programs. 

He’s also developed a YouTube series focused on Luca Federico, a player at Chartiers Valley High School, south of the city. Federico was previously unranked by college recruiting services, but has since snagged multiple major college offers, a three-star rating at 247 Sport and tens of thousands of social media followers.

That work caught the eye of coach Andy Toole and Stephen Morrison, RMU’s associate athletic director for marketing and fan experience. It was the program that made the initial overture to work with Honohan, and the plan announced this week has flowed from subsequent meetings between the two sides. 

It’s an innovative move that Toole told USA Today he might not have considered for his program a decade ago. Many coaches might view such outside attention as invasive and distracting for players. But Toole feels it’s important for programs to stand out in the age of name, image and likeness (NIL) deals reshaping the sport. 

“There’s been radical change to college sports in general over the last four to five years,” Toole said. “How can we continue to adapt to the new landscape? I think content creators are part of that. It, I think, can help our players continue to become more attractive, and build a bigger brand and have a better experience.” 

The reaction he’s received from players – past, present and possibly future – has been positive. Friends, likewise, have texted to let him know that their children have seen Honohan’s video announcing the partnership and asked questions about the school that is named for one of America’s Founding Fathers and a signatory to both the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. 

Toole hopes Honohan’s large following of high school players will be asking questions, too. 

While the headline-grabbing tactic of putting a YouTube creator’s logo on a jersey is unique, the underlying value proposition RMU hopes to make is a fairly old school one that emphasizes things beyond the dollars and cents involved in playing basketball there. 

“I think, at the end of the day, still being able to create relationships, show positive impacts, have positive outcomes, help people develop and grow, I still think are valuable,” Toole said. “I think you still have to be able to show those kind of things to people. And this is a way to kind of show that, right?

“Show some of the interaction between players and coaches. Show the experience that our players have in a way that they might not have been able to see before. And I think that can attract some of the right people, not only to our program, but then also to our university as a whole.” 

Honohan plans to put those angles – and not himself – front and center. He expects his role to be more like a host than the focus of the videos. The tone will be less like a Mr. Beast stunt video and more like HBO’s “Hard Knocks,” he said. Neither side wants it to be a gimmick. 

Maybe some will still see it that way. Honohan lamented that the distinction between “influencer” and “creator” tends to get blurred in the social media economy. 

He’s nevertheless excited to have the buy-in of the program to do things at RMU this fall that aren’t happening quite like this anywhere else. The partnership may also include activations with nearby brands and appearances by some prominent local celebrities to get people out to games. 

“Everybody there is just so incredibly open to doing the most creative idea,” Honohan said. “I think that’s what you need to do right now, especially as a mid major in college basketball, to be able to get in front of the most people and get in front of the right eyes when it comes to recruiting, sponsorship and everything along the line.” 

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Robert Morris debuts first-of-its-kind jersey patch partnership with YouTuber

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.

Bird vs. Magic – Showtime vs. well, a team that wasn’t cool enough to have a nickname for its style of play. Boston vs. LA. Old vs. New. Gold and purple vs. green and white.

It was the 80s and the Lakers were the 80s in basketball form.

They played in the “Fabulous Forum” on a court that was trimmed in gold. Their head coach, Pat Riley, was a fashion plate as well as a competent strategist who had delivered a championship in his first year on the bench.

They had a player who more than lived up to his ‘Magic’ nickname. They had celebrities sitting courtside. They came from a city where it never rained and where winter was more theoretical than real. This was the city where dreams became reality, or at least as real as movies could make them. It was a city that was known, around the world, by just two letters: L.A.

Their star, with his infectious grin, had already made good in the NCAAs, defeating Larry Bird in the Final Four, and he’d won a pair of championships in the NBA as well.

At literally the other end of the country were the Celtics.

If the Lakers were the 80s personified, then the Celtics were the foundation and the first few floors of NBA history. They were run by Red Auerbach, who had been a fixture in the league from its inception. He had won fourteen championships by this point in time—nine as a coach and five as a general manager. They wore uniforms that were barely distinguishable from the ones that the team was wearing when Red was hired to coach them more than thirty years earlier. Their arena was a relic—a cramped relic painted mostly yellow, without air conditioning, with seats that were jammed together and placed behind columns and every one of them had been occupied for every single game the Celtics played for the past three seasons.

The Celtics played on a parquet court that had been trod by the league’s legends going back to the first year after World War II. It was a scarred and uneven surface that matched the tough and gritty character of the arena built around it.

The Celtics played in Boston—a crowded city where the past was present everywhere, where landmarks from the beginning of the nation were part of the fabric of everyday life, a city somehow nicknamed ‘Beantown.’ It had everything that L.A. lacked—history, tradition, cultural institutions—and it was hopelessly, helplessly uncool.

The 1984 Finals were a culture clash as well as a basketball contest.

Boston was coached by K.C. Jones. Jones, who had played for Red Auerbach in the 1950s and 1960s, had been on the bench as an assistant with the Lakers when Pat Riley played for them in the early 1970s, and had already coached a team into the Finals—the Washington Bullets (now Wizards) in 1975.

Jones was on the bench because the Celtics had more or less quit on Bill Fitch the year before. “I admit it,” M.L. Carr would tell Jackie MacMullin in her tale of Magic and Bird, When the Game was Ours, “Our goal in 1983 wasn’t to win a championship. It was to get rid of Fitch.”

While it’s unlikely, in hindsight, that the Celtics could have stopped the ‘fo-fo-fo’ Sixers, the way the Celtics gave up on the season incensed Larry Bird, who realized that once a year was gone it wasn’t coming back: “We could have won in ’83, but we didn’t because of all the [expletive] with Bill Fitch. Then we could have won it in ’85, but we didn’t because of more [expletive]. There are two years, right there, where we were young and together and healthy, and we didn’t capitalize on it. Looking back, it just kills you.”

The Celtics, who had made a poor showing in both the regular season and the playoffs the year before, had a new point guard to go along with a new coach.

As good as Nate “Tiny” Archibald had been, there was a problem with him implied by his nickname. “Tiny” was barely more than six feet tall, and he had struggled mightily to contain Andrew Toney, the “Boston Strangler,” and off in the distance was Magic Johnson, a 6’-9” point guard whose size allowed him to play the position in a manner that has never really been seen before or since.

Red had traded for Quinn Buckner in 1982, but he realized that an even more capable player was needed.

Enter Dennis Johnson.

Dennis Johnson was yet another Auerbach heist. He had been labeled a ‘cancer’ by Phoenix Suns coach John MacLeod.

Desperate to rid themselves of him, and thinking that they were getting a real steal from Auerbach because they were actually going to get a serviceable big in Rick Robey in exchange for a player they really didn’t want, three-time Executive of the Year Jerry Colangelo let himself get fleeced by the master.

Rick Robey was good, but DJ’s years with Boston put him in the Hall of Fame.

Red didn’t see a malcontent, he saw a guy driven to win on a team that wasn’t. DJ had scrapped his way up from playing junior college ball and working a factory job into a Finals MVP award. He was an excellent two-way player who could defend as well as he could dunk in his early years in the league. He had bounced back from an atrocious showing in the 1978 Finals to being the linchpin of the Sonics’ 1979 title winning team.

And he had the size and the mentality to body up against Magic.

The Regular Season

The Celtics started off relatively slowly. On November 22, they were just 9-5 and coming off a four game losing streak, but they proceeded to rip off a 29-4 record over the next 33 games. They finished the season with a 62-20 record identical to that of their previous championship winning season in 1981. This was easily the best record in the NBA—the next closest team was Los Angeles, who were 8 games behind the Celtics.

The Celtics weren’t exactly a grit and grind team, no team was in the go-go 80s, but they played the game with more deliberation than most, finishing the season with a below average pace of 99.7 possessions per game, good for just 15^th in a 23 team league. Nonetheless, their net rating was 6.5 points to the good per 100 possessions, which was the best in the league. As with so many of Red’s teams, Boston’s defense was the real story. The Celtics could score as well as anybody, but they were very good at keeping their opponents from scoring.

Larry Bird finally cracked through and won the MVP award. He led the team in scoring and assists and dang near led the team in rebounds as well. His free throw percentage, 88.8%, was the best in the league. After him, five more Celtics averaged double figures, with Kevin McHale winning the league’s inaugural Sixth Man of the Year award behind 18.4 points per game and a team-high 55.7% field goal percentage.

Bird’s MVP award broke a near stranglehold on the honor that had been held by centers. Since the award’s inception, it had only gone to three players who played other positions: Bob Cousy, Oscar Robertson and Julius Erving. Since then, it has only been awarded to centers on seven occasions.

This was the first of three consecutive MVP awards for Larry Legend—a feat that only he, Bill Russell, and Wilt Chamberlain can claim.

Eastern Playoffs

The NBA expanded the playoffs for the 1983/84 season. Now the first round was a best-of-five affair and there were no byes granted to the top teams in the league.

Thus Boston would need to win three playoff series just to get to the Finals.

Their first opponent was the Washington Bullets. The Bullets had the worst record of any playoff team at 35-47. In reality, letting a team with a record this poor into the playoffs wasn’t exactly unexpected. The NBA was a 23 team league with a 16 team playoff. Three teams with losing records made the playoffs in 1984 and a fourth, Phoenix, sat at .500 on the nose with a 41-41 record.

Regardless of record, the Bullets put up quite a fight. After a relatively easy eight point win in game one, the Celtics won two games by three points and lost a game by three as well.

Bird averaged 22.8 points, 7.5 rebounds, 7.8 assists and two steals per game for the series, but he was arguably outplayed by Jeff Ruland, the Bullets’ center, who torched the Celtics for 24 points per game to go with 12.8 rebounds and 7.8 assists. Ruland had made the All-Star team that year and was having his best season. Ruland’s career, like Bill Walton’s would be derailed by chronic and nearly debilitating foot problems, but for a while, he was a genuine star for the Bullets—and a tough, tough player. Also making himself a pest during the series was fourth year player Rick Mahorn. Mahorn would make himself more of a pest for the Celtics as the 1980s wore on.

Mahorn and Ruland were known as the “Beef Brothers” for their rather physical style of play—at least that’s what Bullets fans called them. Longtime Celtics radio announcer Johnny Most had different nicknames for them: McFilthy and McNasty. CelticsBlog contributor Mike Dynon, who’s been following the team since the 1960s, said that they were “Pistons lite, before the Bad Boys,” adding, “Ruland and Mahorn would hit people and then look at them in a ‘what are you going to do about it’ way.”

The Celtics’ series against the Bullets was a physical contest. It was a series that Dan Shaughnessy said was filled with “meanness, malice, and good old fashioned mud-slinging and name calling.”

In the closeout game, the Celtics were sitting on a 16 point lead in the third quarter when Parish picked up his fourth and fifth fouls in less than a minute. This keyed a 9-0 Bullets run. Parish, who was doing his best to contain Ruland, and who had looked rather pedestrian during the series, fouled out with just over two and a half minutes to go and the Celtics up by ten. The Bullets put in a solid effort to come back, scoring six points in a row, but two free throws by DJ gave the Celtics the margin they needed, 92-86, with less than a minute on the clock. A flurry of intentional fouls inflated the final score to 99-96.

When the buzzer sounded, the Celtics were the winners, but the series wasn’t over—at least not for Gerald Henderson and his Bullets counterpart, Frank Johnson. The two got into a fight that saw them wrestling around on the floor as the rest of the Celtics and Bullets mostly tried to separate them. Mostly they were trying to separate them, “I had no idea what was going on out there,” Ruland said after the game, “I was just sorry I couldn’t get one punch in just for the fun of it.” Cedric Maxwell alleged that Frank—or someone on the Bullets—bit Gerald, “I want to know how Gerald Henderson could have a human bite on him.”

No one was suspended and no one was fined. Times have changed.

The Bullets were a rough and tumble team and they gave as good as they got for four games against the Celtics.

In the next round, the Celtics faced the New York Knicks.

The Knickerbockers were at the tail end of a brief bout of competence. They had finished above .500 three times in four years, a feat that they hadn’t accomplished since their championship winning seasons over a decade earlier. The team would tank their way into Patrick Ewing the following season, but for 1983/84, they were a tough matchup for Boston.

The series was pure chalk, with the home team winning every game. The Celtics probably should have put the Knicks away before it came down to a winner-take-all contest at Boston. They won their games by an average margin of 17.75 points, but Madison Square Garden seemed to have some store of Kryptonite on hand, as the Celtics lost those contests by a combined 15 points.

The series was a bizarre affair, considering that a seven game contest usually means a number of close games along the way. Instead, five of the seven games were won wire-to-wire, and there were only four lead changes during 336 minutes of cumulative play.

The star for the Knicks was Bernard King, whose Hall-of-Fame career probably could have been even more spectacular if not for a gruesome injury incurred while trying to block a dunk in a meaningless game against the Kansas City Kings in 1985. King broke his femur and wrecked his knee and was never quite the same. For the series, King’s stat line was 29.1/4.9/3.3 in points, rebounds and assists.

Larry Bird, on the other hand, was transcendent. He averaged 30.4 points per game, just edging out King’s 29.1 average; Bird also netted 10.6 rebounds per game which, again, topped both teams. He led both teams in steals at 2.7 per game, and his 50 assists for the series were the most of any player as well. He led all players in field goal percentage at 58.5%, and singlehandedly ensured that the Celtics would live to fight another day.

This was Larry at his peak.

In game seven, Bird recorded a triple double with 39 points, 12 rebounds and 10 assists and a perfect 12-12 performance from the free throw line.

Defeating the Knicks set the table for an Eastern Conference Finals that proved anticlimactic.

The Celtics were up against the Bucks, who had soundly trounced them the year before—of course, this was also the year that the Celtics were in open rebellion against Bill Fitch, so the Bucks might have brought the wrong ideas into the contest. The Celtics, on the other hand, were determined to make sure they buried the past.

The series was over in five games.

Once again, Bird led all players—on both teams—in points, rebounds, assists and (almost) steals. On that last stat, he was tied with the Bucks’ Sidney Moncrief, a fellow Hall-of-Famer.

Boston’s average margin of victory across four wins was 13.5; none of the contests were particularly close, including the Bucks’ sole win in game four.

This set up the showdown that everyone had been waiting five years for.

The Finals

The Lakers had already won—and lost—against the Sixers, and the Celtics had taken a championship from the Rockets the year that the Lakers quit on Paul Westhead, but Bird and Magic had not, as yet, squared off for all the marbles.

L.A. was coached by Pat Riley, in his third year, and had the league’s second best record at 54-28. They had six future Hall-of-Famers on their roster, although two of them, James Worthy and Jamaal Wilkes, were at the beginning and end of their respective careers.

Game One

Game one went to the Lakers in frustratingly undramatic fashion. They simply came into the Garden, took control of the game as though they were playing a junior league squad, and forced the Celtics to play ball the way they wanted to play it. Los Angeles had a 12 point lead after the first quarter and never really looked back. Kareem, who had almost beat the Celtics all by himself ten years earlier, picked up as though no time had passed at all and rattled off 32 points on 12 of 17 shooting from the field and 8 of 9 shooting from the line. The Lakers’ second year player, James Worthy, scored 20 points, and the team shot 51.8% from the field.

Game Two

Game two went to Boston in a contest that featured extra basketball for everyone. Boston came out hot and won the first quarter 36-26, but the Lakers clawed their way back. Their deficit after three quarters was just three points, and they made that up and then some in the fourth period. They had a two point lead when McHale was fouled and sent to the line. With a chance to tie, he missed both free throws and the home team looked like they were headed into a 2-0 hole. There were 20 seconds left on the clock. The Lakers called a timeout. Magic inbounded the ball to James Worthy.

And then James Worthy passed the ball to Gerald Henderson. Henderson sprinted down the court and laid in a game-tying basket with thirteen seconds to go.

The Celtics locked down every single Laker during the subsequent possession.

Los Angeles held the ball for the rest of regulation.

They never got a shot off.

In overtime, things once again looked bad for the Celtics. The Lakers had a three point lead when Kareem’s normally flawless sky hook went off the mark. Bird (who else?) corralled the rebound and sent an outlet pass down the court to Gerald Henderson who made a traditional three point play count for another tie.

With the Celtics down 121-120 and fourteen seconds on the clock, Scott Wedman buried a 13 foot jumper for the lead. At the other end of the court, Parish stole the ball from Bob McAdoo and the Celtics hung on to win.

Game Three

The series shifted from Boston to L.A., from a city steeped in tradition to a city that, despite being over 250 years old, is somehow always new.

The Lakers were in their element here. This was their home and they were comfortable.

After a close first quarter, the Lakers proceeded to curb stomp the Celtics. They ran Boston out of the Forum behind seven double-digit scorers, including five of their six future Hall-of-Famers and Kurt Rambis, who went a perfect seven for seven from the field.

The Lakers had a 2-1 lead on the Celtics, but to be honest, it really felt like a 3-0 lead. The Celtics had barely squeaked out a victory in game two, and it looked like the future of the league belonged, exclusively, to Los Angeles. Sure the Celtics were good and Bird was extraordinary, but, well, it seemed that they just didn’t have ‘it,’ whatever ‘it’ was.

Game Four

There are games and then there are games.

Boston found themselves in a ten point hole at halftime of game four and looked like they were completely out of it. If the Lakers held onto their lead, they would be sitting on a 3-1 advantage, with three opportunities to close out a team that owed its sole victory primarily to a Gerald Henderson steal.

But there’s something to be said for the tenacity the Celtics showed in that game two win, because they brought it out again in game four. In fact, tenacity is what defined the Celtics in this series.

For starters, Boston finally managed to slow the game down in the third quarter—in dramatic fashion.

After six quarters of letting the Lakers play the game the way they wanted it played, after six quarters that they had lost by a combined 43 points, something snapped.

K.C. Jones told the team “No more layups.”

And Kevin McHale took the instruction about as literally as anyone could take it.

About halfway through the third quarter Kurt Rambis broke free off a Boston miss, with the Lakers holding onto a six point lead, 76-70.

He had just left his feet on the way to the basket when Kevin McHale took him out.

McHale grimaced and awkwardly extended his left arm catching Rambis in the neck and shoulder. Kurt’s momentum sent him flying onto his back somewhere near the baseline.

By the time Rambis hit the court it wasn’t just the tenor of the game that had changed. The whole series changed. The Lakers, who had cruised to two easy victories, would lose three of the next four contests.

McHale stayed in the game. In fact, he wasn’t even called for a technical, despite a brawl nearly erupting in the aftermath of the foul.

The Celtics won the balance of the third quarter by four points, and headed into the fourth quarter down two. They weren’t going to cruise to a comeback victory, and cruising to a comeback just wasn’t their style. The Celtics were going to take every point they scored from the Lakers by force and by desire.

The Celtics were going to win game four because they wanted to win the game more than the Lakers did, and it was as simple as that.

The Lakers were trying to protect a five point lead off a pair of Magic free throws with less than a minute to go when the Celtics, who never led during regulation, closed the gap. They reduced the lead to two on a traditional three-point play that came after Parish caught his own offensive rebound and put it back in the midst of a rugby scrum under the basket. The Lakers did their best to dribble out the clock but ultimately settled for a Michael Cooper two from deep that bounced off the rim and into the hands of Parish, but not before Kareem shoved Bird. It was the sixth foul on the Lakers center, and it sent the league’s best free throw shooter to the line. The first free throw hit nothing but net. The second one rattled around a bit and then dropped through. The game was tied.

On the Lakers’ subsequent possession, Jones put Parish on Worthy, a move that paid off when Magic, being hounded practically off the court by DJ made what should have been a routine pass down the sideline to Worthy. Parish stuck an arm into the passing lane, deflected the pass and then wrapped it up with four seconds on the clock. A long three by Bird and a putback by McHale both caromed off the back of the rim and the game headed to overtime.

DJ scored Boston’s first four points in the extra period—but the Celtics were struggling to contain second year player James Worthy, already well on the way to earning his “Big Game James” nickname. Worthy scored nine of the Lakers’ twelve points in the overtime session. When he made a hoop and the harm count late in the overtime period, he gave the Lakers their last lead of the game at 123-121. Bird proceeded to tie the game up with 1:19 to go. Magic had a chance to put the Lakers up two, off a foul by DJ, but missed both free throws. Bird came out of the Boston timeout that followed and gave the Celtics the lead on a turnaround jumper. With ten seconds to go, Worthy was fouled by McHale, and after he missed his first free throw, Cedric Maxwell walked across the lane in front of James with his hands to his throat signifying ‘choke.’

When the dust settled, the Celtics had beaten the Lakers 129-125, but more than that, they had seized control of the series.

Game Five

The Celtics ran away with game five. The Lakers played the Celtics close in the stifling heat of Boston Garden for the first two quarters, but couldn’t keep up with Boston as the game wore on. The Lakers were outscored 33-24 in the third quarter and 33-26 in the fourth; the final score was 121-103 Boston. The Celtics finally shot the ball better than L.A., hitting at 51.9% compared to a 42.9% clip from the Lakers. Worthy was the only Laker to crack 20 points. On the other end of the court, Larry Bird led all scorers with 34 points and bested both teams with 17 rebounds as well.

The Celtics, who had been left for dead after game three were in the driver’s seat with a 3-2 series lead.

Game Six

The Lakers salvaged game six off a furious fourth quarter comeback. The Celtics had played their brand of basketball for, basically, eight and a half straight quarters, going back to the midpoint of the third quarter of game four, but they let up on the Lakers in the fourth quarter of game six. Los Angeles came into the quarter down four and proceeded to outscore Boston 36-21, for an eleven point victory, 119-108. Kareem put in 30 points, 10 rebounds and 5 assists, against 28 points, 14 rebounds and 8 assists from Bird.

Some Lakers fans might have seized onto this aberration as proof that, perhaps, the tide had shifted back in favor of the purple and gold.

If so, game seven would prove to be a colossal disappointment for them.

Game Seven

The Lakers and Celtics were knotted at 30 all after one, but the Celtics had a six point lead by halftime, and after the third quarter the Lakers were down thirteen. The Celtics held on to win the game—and the title—by a final margin of 111-102.

Los Angeles fouled the Celtics 32 times—in a 48 minute game—and sent the Celtics to the line 51 times, where the Celtics shot a lights-out 84%. Both DJ and Bird were perfect from the line.

In fact, the Celtics outscored the Lakers by 25 points from the charity stripe. This more than made up for another bad shooting performance from the Celtics, who really only had one game during the series where they shot at a rate that even approached their regular season levels.

Was there a conspiracy afoot? Hardly. The game was called with a tight whistle—Gerald Henderson picked up three fouls in the first four minutes of the game.

Boston adjusted. L.A. did not.

Larry Bird won a well-earned Finals MVP to go with his regular season title.

For the series, the Legend led all players in points, rebounds and steals. Magic, to no one’s surprise, led both teams in assists.

In the 1984 Finals, Larry was on the court with nine other future Hall-of-Famers, and he out-performed every one of them.

Turning Point

There really were two turning points in this series. The first was Gerald Henderson’s steal and layup that forced overtime in game two. Without it, the Lakers probably cruise to an easy championship victory, or, at best, the Celtics do no better than make things interesting for a game or two.

But Henderson’s steal didn’t really stop L.A., as they clobbered Boston in the next game.

The second turning point came when McHale rather emphatically kept Rambis from grabbing an easy two. From that point on, Boston took over the series.

In the thirteen and a half quarters that followed the Rambis clothesline, LA had one where they looked like the team that was on the verge of a 3-1 lead at halftime of game four. It was all Boston the rest of the way.

Boston had taken the first round of this new rivalry with Los Angeles. The Lakers, however, would be back. Bad health and bad luck would rob this rivalry of much of the sizzle this series promised, but for 1984, at least, Boston had carried the day.

Stop by Monday for the greatest team of all time

For years, the NBA was built on the alliance of patient money and marketing pizzazz, and no team captured that curious mixture better than the Los Angeles Lakers. Through Showtime in the 1980s and the dominance of the Shaq-Kobe years, the Lakers became the benchmark for a league and a sport intent on global conquest: charismatic, ambitious, and flashy, a sporting-cultural amalgam in which athleticism and celebrity held equal rank. Through careful front office recruitment, savvy coaching, and the harnessing of Hollywood’s star power, the Lakers evolved from a team into a “brand,” establishing a template that virtually every other outfit in the NBA has felt compelled to mimic in the years since. But the razzle-dazzle on the court – the Laker Girls, Magic flinging no-look passes, Shaq smashing the glass, Jack Nicholson smiling his Joker smile in the front row, all eyebrows and mischief – depended on a far more staid and stable arrangement off it. Real estate investor Jerry Buss bought the Lakers for $16m in 1979, and remained the majority owner until his death in 2013, when his children assumed control of the franchise.

When Jerry Buss died, the Lakers were valued at $1bn. Now, the team looks set to be sold to former Disney CEO Bob Iger and venture capitalist Josh Kushner, the brother of Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared, for $12.5bn. The sale is still under negotiation and will need to be approved by the NBA’s board of governors; the Buss siblings are also now bickering over whether to join the stampede and sell their minority 17.8% stake in the franchise to Iger and Kushner, which has added a subplot of Shakespearean family intrigue to proceedings. But in the likely event it goes through, the sale would make the Lakers the most valuable franchise in basketball. It would also signal an acceleration in private equity’s scramble to get its claws into the world of sport.

The disappearance of the patient old world of sporting capital that Jerry Buss once embodied can have no better advertisement than the fact that Iger and Kushner’s bid for the Lakers comes a little over a year after the franchise was sold to an entirely different set of private equity investors. Mark Walter and Todd Boehly announced their purchase of a majority stake in the Lakers at a valuation of $10bn in June 2025, with the Busses retaining a minority share in their family inheritance. Walter’s mooted disposal of this sporting crown jewel – for a tidy $2.5bn bump in the franchise valuation, of course – just 14 months after he took control of it symbolizes the arrival of a brash new era in US sporting investment. Today teams are flipped with the calculated emotionlessness that a real estate speculator might get rid of a block of cheaply renovated apartments, and the old ideas of heritage, tradition, family, and community that once bound the pro leagues’ owner dynasties to their teams are now mostly useful as a rhetorical device, rather than a set of values to respect in practice.

There are still teams in the NBA holding out against the tide of private money: the Indiana Pacers have been in the same (majority) hands since 1983, the Chicago Bulls since 1985. But many long-time owners are now spying the exit, which is understandable given the boom in franchise valuations: Mark Cuban, for example, sold his majority stake in the Dallas Mavericks in late 2023 after 24 years running the franchise. He now says he regrets the sale, but only, it seems, because the team has fared so poorly since his exit and he’s no longer as influential in basketball decisions; patient money may be draining away from the NBA, but the egos attached to it remain as large and self-adoring as ever.

The NBA opened up to institutional money – investment from private equity firms, hedge funds, venture capital funds, and the like – in 2022, the first big pro league in US sports to embrace the worldwide emergence of sport as an investible asset class like technology or construction. It makes a rough kind of sense, given the NBA’s status as first mover, that basketball is now at the forefront of a fresh intensification in the sports investment cycle. Iger and Kushner are wealthy, but they don’t exactly inhabit the Muskosphere. Iger, the veteran in the couple, was last estimated by Forbes as having a net worth of $690 million in 2019 – not bad, but that won’t even buy you a stadium half-court in the modern NBA. Iger and Kushner’s deal to buy the team will have to be structured in various tricky and byzantine ways – most likely as a consortium involving a number of individuals and firms, with finance coming via a mix of debt and cash – to get around their own comparative poverty and the restrictions the NBA places on institutional investment (in particular, the rule stating that no individual fund can hold more than 20% of a single team). But it’s clear that this type of deal, for this type of money, involving this type of investor, is precisely what the league wants. There’s more where this came from. The families are out; the sharks are in.

What exactly does private equity want from sport? “Good returns” may seem like the simplest answer, and when appraising the surplus a figure like Walter has been able to extract in a single year from the Lakers, it’s hard not to feel that’s also the best answer: this was also a year, let’s not forget, in which LeBron James left LA and the team went backwards as a basketballing proposition, while not faring much better in the commercial realm. If all that’s required these days to book a fat profit is to sit back, do nothing to arrest a team’s slide into mediocrity, then exit the scene, perhaps owning a professional sports team, especially a storied and prestigious one like the Lakers, really is the perfect modern investment.

Others have speculated that the rich guys’ (and it is almost always a guy stumping up the cash) newfound interest in sport is a bid for cultural relevance, a cry for attention and perhaps even love amid the vexed politics of extreme wealth in an age of populist rage. No doubt there’s some truth to that, too. But the typical sports investor of the future probably looks more like Josh Kushner than Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos, now perfecting his impersonation of a Scouse accent as he prepares to take a minority stake in Liverpool; the moneymen piling into the sector over the years to come will probably be dominated by mid-career financial guns rather than post-divorce billionaires looking to escape the boredom of their own personalities.

Kushner, according to most reports, is the driving force behind the Lakers deal – which represents a remarkable rebound just a few weeks after FIFA Forward Enterprise, the scheme he concocted with Gianni Infantino to create an outside investment-friendly subsidiary tasked with managing FIFA’s commercial operations, went up in flames. Kushner is the founder and managing partner of Thrive Capital, a VC firm that “builds and invests in internet, software, and technology-enabled companies,” according to its own website; the firm’s portfolio includes positions in OpenAI, Stripe, and Anduril – all Silicon Valley darlings. The investment in the Lakers will go through Thrive Eternal, a subsidiary of the main investment firm, which Kushner and his partners formed earlier this year in a ploy to diversify their portfolio beyond traditional tech. Thrive Eternal’s goal is to invest in “assets with qualities that cannot be replicated by technology,” the fund’s mission statement reads, including “iconic franchises and cultural institutions rooted in tradition, identity, and shared experience.” Buying up sports teams (the Lakers, for example) and even whole sporting institutions, as with the failed attempt to devour the World Cup, represents an important hedge against the vagaries of the US tech sector, which is now dangerously exposed to AI. America’s lunatic pursuit of a vandalizing technology no one wants is now responsible for the desecration of your beloved local basketball franchise. The team of Kareem and Kobe might be a lucrative investment in strict financial terms. But to the Kushners of the world, what the Lakers are, above all, is a hedge.

The old NBA of Jerry Buss was about making money, building dynasties, giving the fans a good time, and injecting sport with a slick of Hollywood glamor. The new NBA of Josh Kushner is about saving investor-owners’ bank balances from the consequences of their own poor decisions. Everything else in sport now is secondary to the basic imperative of investor enrichment and protection. Once the Lakers were Showtime; now they are Insurance Time.

Joe Ingles is returning to the NBL, and, like any of us would, his home nation has questions regarding his 12 year NBA career. Ingles recently sat down with Pete Hooley (former NBL Champion) for an interview/test of his memory on his time playing basketball in the United States – naturally, this conversation centered around his time with the Utah Jazz, the team that he spent 8 of his 12 seasons with. Check it out below.

There’s lots of interesting tidbits in here – I knew former Jazzman Bryce Cotton was tearing up the NBL, but a 6 time MVP?? – but what stood out to me was his quick moment speaking on Derrick Favors. At 6:10 in the video, Joe Ingles says that Derrick Favors is the best pocket-pass catcher he’s ever played with. In that moment, I felt so much validation! For years, I never felt more confident in the Jazz offense than when Joe Ingles and Derrick Favors were running a pick-and-roll, and it felt good to hear my confidence be validated by the on-court opinion of Jingling Joe. It was only ever a small part of the team’s gameplan – it obviously wasn’t spammed with nearly as much regularity as Stockton to Malone – but I, and many other fans, picked up on the chemistry present when these two Jazzmen played together.

This got me thinking; what are some of the other great Jazz “micro-skills”, meaning relatively small scale but impressive talents than you’d only really start to notice by watching a substantial amount of Jazz games? This is an interesting thought exercise – I found myself reminiscing on things that I hadn’t thought about in years. A few examples immediately came to mind:

• Bojan Bogdanovic and his pump-fake to side-step three pointer
• Karl Malone and his classic chair pull move
• Ed Davis (yeah, Ed Davis – I’m surprised my mind went here as well) and his offensive rebound tip to the perimeter
• Shelvin Mack and his 8-12 foot floater
• Joe Ingles (double dipping with Slo-Mo) and his fake lay-down pass to scoop layup in the pick-and-roll
• Donovan Mitchell and his one handed, high-speed baseball passes to perimeter shooters
• Jordan Clarkson and his boxing square-up at the first sign of any tension

Obviously, this is not an all-encompassing list; it’s easy to tell my formative years of being a Jazz fan through the players that I selected. That is why I want to open this up to you. Everyone has a few arbitrarily chosen Utah Jazz micro-skills that they have kept, sealed away, in the recesses of their mind, and this is the time to dig them back up again.

So, in the comments, tell us one of your favorite Jazzman micro-skills, and let’s spend the dog days of the offseason looking back fondly on players and talents that don’t always get the most shine.

In our latest Jazz Reacts survey, I asked Jazz fans which of our draft picks that will come off the bench will have the most impact next season. I focused on the Jazz draft picks because I’m only allowed 4 choices it’ll be fascinating to see who of them, if any, can take things to another level.

It looks like a pretty clear leader in our survey results.

I’ll be honest, I thought this was a pretty surprising result. If I was guessing, I’d have predicted Jazz fans might have picked Sensabaugh over Collier. But this does make sense. Collier has a clear role with the team this season as the backup guard and should thrive in lineups that have five shooters on the floor. Collier also brings solid defensive upside thanks to his quickness and aggression. The best part is that he’s unafraid of anyone and will bring an edge the team needs.

Somehow, FanDuel has the Jazz odds for the playoffs at 9.5. With the talent upgrades, the depth with players like Collier, and a team playing at full strength all year, that feels low.

Well, there is at least a little bit of normalcy around Lakers ownership on Thursday.

There has been lots of talk about Mark Walter, Jeanie Buss and her siblings and Bob Iger and Josh Kushner, but there are others in the mix as well. Patrick Soon-Shiong owns 4% of the team, purchased back in 2010 from Magic Johnson, and Ed Roski Jr. owns 3%, purchased in 1998.

While there hasn’t been anything from the latter about potentially selling his shares, the former’s attorney spoke to Dave McMenamin of ESPN on Thursday and reaffirmed he would retain his stake in the franchise.

“Dr. Patrick is absolutely not selling his minority share of the Lakers,” Chuck “Tiger” Kenworthy, the Soon-Shiong family attorney, told ESPN on Thursday. “Bob Iger and Josh Kushner are good friends, and we will be joining them as supportive, active and engaged partners once they close the transaction with Mr. Walter. We are extremely excited about the Lakers’ future and look forward to many more championship years.”

First, there’s no way we can move forward without acknowledging the name Chuck “Tiger” Kenworthy. The blessing and curse of being referred to as that is no matter what you’re quoted as saying, no one is going to look at it and will just focus on the name.

But if we take that away, there’s more to dive into.

Tiger — there’s no way I’m calling him anything else — also spoke to Bill Shaikin of the LA Times and provided an even more revealing quote (emphasis added).

“We love the Lakers,” Kenworthy told The Times. “We believe in the Lakers. We believe in the future of the Lakers and the championship years they are going to have. And we believe they are still undervalued.”

It brings up an interesting hypothetical. If the Lakers were theoretically placed on the open market, would they net more than $12.5 billion in a sale? The biggest hurdle in this scenario would be finding buyers with enough money, but it doesn’t feel like much of an exaggeration to say they would be sold for more than that figure.

More specific to this scenario, finding someone to buy a smaller percentage of the team is easier and could lead to a higher valuation. If Soon-Shiong wanted to sell his 4% stake, the $12.5 billion valuation would see him net $500 million. It feels likely he could net more than that.

Regardless, as pointed out by McMenamin, Soon-Shiong is not short on finances anyway.

Known for his innovative cancer research and treatment, Soon-Shiong is also a successful businessman and surgeon, with a net worth north of $15 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

When you have that much money, you can afford to hang onto your $500 million investment and status symbol that is a small percentage of the Lakers.

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

An Alabama jury determined on Thursday, August 20 that former Alabama men’s basketball player Kai Spears was defamed by The New York Times for an article that inaccurately linked him to the scene of a fatal shooting.

As part of the ruling, which came after five hours of deliberation and two weeks of testimony in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama, Spears was awarded $9.25 million in damages.

In March 2023, the newspaper reported that Spears, a walk-on that season for the top-ranked Crimson Tide, was in the passenger seat of former Alabama star and current Charlotte Hornets forward Brandon Miller's car during the deadly shooting of Jamea Harris in Tuscaloosa. It was later revealed that the passenger in the car was a team manager, not Spears.

REQUIRED READING: SEC commissioner Greg Sankey voices objections to pro athletes returning to college

Spears filed a lawsuit against the outlet for defamation and “false light” invasion of privacy, claiming it caused him emotional distress for linking his name to a high-profile murder. The Times later issued a correction and added an editor’s note following Spears’ lawsuit.

According to the Times, it’s the first defamation lawsuit the newspaper had lost in the United States over one of its articles in more than 50 years.

Much of the case centered around the Times’ use of anonymous sourcing for its original story and its process for verifying the information it received. The Birmingham, Alabama attorney representing the newspaper described the incorrect reporting as “an honest mistake.”

Former Alabama basketball player Darius Miles, who played for the Crimson Tide from 2020-23, and his childhood friend, Michael Lynn Davis, were ultimately charged with capital murder in connection to Harris’ death. Davis was later convicted and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Spears’ father, Christian, a longtime college athletics administrator who was most recently the athletic director at Marshall, told Patch that the family was grateful for the verdict.

"Our goal was a simple retraction from The New York Times," Christian Spears said to Patch. "Instead, the Times defended its inaccurate article and continued to distort facts rather than acknowledge the harm they caused, acting as if its power made it untouchable. The Alabama jury made it clear to the New York Times that they were wrong to do what they did."

Kai Spears spent the past two seasons at Marshall, having transferred from Alabama after the 2023-24 season. He's currently a senior at West Liberty University in West Virginia, one of the top programs nationally at the Division II level.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY Sports: Former Alabama basketball player Kai Spears wins defamation case against New York Times

For whatever it means to the Brooklyn Nets, oddsmakers and pundits don’t project win totals based on morale or culture-building. FanDuel pegged the Nets at 24.5 games this season — one season after they won 20 in 2025-26.

Brooklyn added three-time All-Star Julius Randle and clearly improved this offseason, but the Eastern Conference only got stronger following the Knicks first championship in 53 years.

LeBron James joined a loaded 76ers team with Joel Embiid, Tyrese Maxey, Jaylen Brown in Philadelphia, Kawhi Leonard is headed to the Toronto Raptors. Still pending. Trae Young, Anthony Davis, and 2026 No. 1 overall pick AJ Dybantsa are all new additions for the Washington Wizards. Even the Cleveland Cavaliers just added Peyton Watson!

Other changes include Tyrese Haliburton’s (torn Achilles tendon) return to the Indiana Pacers and Giannis Antetokounmpo heading to the Miami Heat.

It won’t be easy. How many games do Nets fans think they’ll win? Out of 117 votes…

---

Thanks to everybody who voted and/or participated.

This is a sponsored post. Check out the latest lines, futures, and player props by visiting FanDuel.

The Lakers look much different after a complete overhaul of the roster this offseason.

After LeBron James informed the Lakers he would not return for the upcoming season, the Luka Doncic era officially launched. The star guard’s leadership is on full display this summer as he’s hosting the entire Lakers roster for a four-day minicamp in Slovenia.

Doncic welcomed the team to his home country and shared pictures of their first day on the overseas trip via social media Thursday.

“First supper,” Doncic wrote in a caption on his Instagram Story.

Doncic has spared no expense to bring his teammates to Slovenia, where the squad is working out, playing pickup games, golfing and exploring Ljubljana. The Lakers star chartered a flight to get the team to Slovenia and back.

The Lakers minicamp is in the midst of ongoing drama surrounding the franchise, including the $12.5 billion sale of the team by Mark Walter, and the Buss family’s heated battle over its remaining stakes in the team.

Thus, Doncic’s role as the face of the franchise is more important than ever.

The Lakers’ front office made a flurry of signings this summer to address key holes on the roster, such as an A-list center. General manager Rob Pelinka successfully acquired Doncic’s top priority of the offseason by signing Walker Kessler to a $130 million deal.

James’ departure officially placed Doncic in the leading role of Hollywood’s Lakers, and his first act as captain of the ship is the minicamp in Slovenia. Over the four days, the team will get to know one another and learn how to jell with each other on the court — an important aspect of a championship team.

Doncic has handled the ongoing Lakers drama with poise, and he’ll have to retain that characteristic once the season begins as LA will look to him to put on a strong performance.

---

Download The California Post App, follow us on social, and subscribe to our newsletters