Category: Basketball

Jaylen Brown injury update: Celtics star undergoes knee surgery originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston

The Boston Celtics’ two best players have both undergone surgeries over the past month.

Jaylen Brown underwent a successful surgery on his right knee Wednesday and is expected to participate in 2025 training camp “without limitation,” the team announced. The Celtics described Brown’s surgery as a “right knee arthroscopic debridement procedure.”

Brown had been dealing with nagging right knee pain since March and missed six regular-season games in a 13-game span down the stretch. After an April 3 loss to the Miami Heat, Brown admitted he had consistent knee pain but planned to play through it.

“I’ve had to come to grips that every night I’m not gonna feel my normal self,” Brown said at the time, “but that doesn’t mean I still can’t make plays and things like that. So, it’s just something that we are working through.”

The 28-year-old didn’t miss a game in the postseason, and while his typical explosiveness was limited, he still averaged 22.1 points, 7.1 rebounds and 3.9 assists per game. After Boston’s second-round playoff loss to the New York Knicks, it was revealed that Brown had a partially torn right meniscus.

Brown’s surgery comes just over a month after Celtics co-star Jayson Tatum had surgery to repair a ruptured Achilles tendon. Tatum is expected to miss most or all of the 2025-26 season, giving Brown a golden opportunity to step up as Boston’s leader if he’s fully healthy by the fall.

Celtics star Jaylen Brown undergoes knee surgery, expects to be ready for training camp originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia

The Boston Celtics’ two best players have both undergone surgeries over the past month.

Jaylen Brown underwent a successful surgery on his right knee Wednesday and is expected to participate in 2025 training camp “without limitation,” the team announced. The Celtics described Brown’s surgery as a “right knee arthroscopic debridement procedure.”

Brown had been dealing with nagging right knee pain since March and missed six regular-season games in a 13-game span down the stretch. After an April 3 loss to the Miami Heat, Brown admitted he had consistent knee pain but planned to play through it.

“I’ve had to come to grips that every night I’m not gonna feel my normal self,” Brown said at the time, “but that doesn’t mean I still can’t make plays and things like that. So, it’s just something that we are working through.”

The 28-year-old didn’t miss a game in the postseason, and while his typical explosiveness was limited, he still averaged 22.1 points, 7.1 rebounds and 3.9 assists per game. After Boston’s second-round playoff loss to the New York Knicks, it was revealed that Brown had a partially torn right meniscus.

Brown’s surgery comes just over a month after Celtics co-star Jayson Tatum had surgery to repair a ruptured Achilles tendon. Tatum is expected to miss most or all of the 2025-26 season, giving Brown a golden opportunity to step up as Boston’s leader if he’s fully healthy by the fall.

Sixers draft profile: VJ Edgecombe is a big-time athlete who loves to defend  originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia

A scouting report on NBA draft prospect VJ Edgecombe: 

• Position: Guard 
• Height: 6-foot-4 (without shoes) 
• Weight: 193 pounds 
• College: Baylor 

Strengths 

Edgecombe has the sort of athleticism that makes you stop whatever you were doing and watch replays in amazement. 

While he’s still learning how to harness it all, he’s currently got a nice feel for how to both shine in obvious ways (rapid bursts to the rim, highlight slams) and subtle ways (snagging rebounds in a pack, recovering after falling a step behind defensively). The 19-year-old had a productive all-around freshman season at Baylor, posting 15.0 points, 5.6 rebounds, 3.2 assists, 2.1 steals and 0.6 blocks per game. 

Edgecombe enjoys and takes pride in his defense. He doesn’t have the size of a guard-everyone stopper or the wingspan (6-foot-7.5) of a player destined to rack up steals and blocks, but his effort and explosiveness are great foundational traits. 

“I feel like I’m an elite defender, but I also have a ways to go,” Edgecombe told reporters at the NBA draft combine. “I’m just willing to play defense with all my heart. I know if there’s anything I can do on the floor to impact the game, it’s guarding. That’s something I’m ready to do for sure.” 

Edgecombe was a good college rebounder, ranking in the Big 12’s top 20 in rebounds per game. Rebounding is not one of his core tools, but it might lead Edgecombe’s NBA team to be a bit more comfortable using guard-heavy lineups. 

Last summer, Edgecombe played with the Bahamas in the FIBA Olympic qualifying tournament and showed his game already could be quite impactful against grown men. With NBA veteran teammates Deandre Ayton, Buddy Hield and Eric Gordon, he was one of his country’s key players. Edgecombe averaged 16.5 points on 57.1/38.5/81.3 shooting splits, 5.5 rebounds and 3.8 assists. 

Weaknesses 

Edgecombe’s far from a polished ball handler and isolation scorer. He doesn’t have the tight, advanced handle to suggest he’s on the verge of consistently, efficiently creating his own shots in the NBA.

He also won’t enter the league as a crafty, comfortable finisher in traffic. When faced with resistance inside, he sometimes seemed to lack a real counter, flinging the ball toward the rim or trying to power through bigger bodies. 

Edgecombe’s shot is not a strength at the moment. The numbers weren’t bad in college; 34 percent from three-point range on 4.6 attempts per game, 78.2 percent at the foul line. That said, Edgecombe has a rather narrow base on his jumper, isn’t smooth off the dribble and generally doesn’t look the part of a pure shooter.

No apparent need for deep concern there, especially given Edgecombe’s willingness to let it fly, but shooting improvement would certainly enhance his odds of becoming an NBA star. 

Fit 

Notably, Sixers president of basketball operations Daryl Morey’s general philosophy is to take the best player available.

If the Sixers drafted Edgecombe with the third overall pick, he’d add to the team’s list of guards 6-foot-4 and under, which includes Tyrese Maxey and Jared McCain. Morey has said he intends to bring back restricted free agent Quentin Grimes, too. 

The idea of Edgecombe as a Sixer would sound better if he proves capable of defending wings well at times and grows as a shooter. His size alone doesn’t appear like it should be a disqualifying factor.

David Greenwood adored basketball so much in middle school that he would play for three different teams in three different parks on the same day, multiple times a week.

His brother, Al, would be in the car driving around with him between games while David traded in his sweaty uniform for a fresh one, repeating the process over and over.

“He was relentless,” Al said, “because he loved the game.”

At home, David would get tossed around in driveway games by the cement contractor father who was twice his size, only to keep getting back up for more contact. In practices, he shot blindfolded to perfect his form, his brother having to let him know when he was close to going out of bounds so that he could get his bearings.

Greenwood, the determined Compton kid who went from a star high school player at Verbum Dei to one of the top scorers in UCLA history to an NBA champion with the Detroit Pistons, died Sunday night at a Riverside hospital from cancer. He was 68.

True to the nature of someone who played through debilitating foot injuries throughout his career, Greenwood did not inform family of his illness until the end of his life.

“Everything happened so quickly,” said Bronson Greenwood, David’s nephew. “It was kind of a shock.”

One of the all-time great high school players in Southern California, Greenwood and teammate Roy Hamilton were among the final players recruited by legendary UCLA coach John Wooden. They were shocked when Wooden retired shortly after their senior season of high school and was replaced by Gene Bartow.

But they decided to stick with their commitments, lured in part by the pitch of a coach they would never play for in college.

“He told me if I went to USC or UNLV or Notre Dame, I’d be an All-American,” Greenwood once told The Times of Wooden’s proposal. “But if I went to UCLA, I’d be able to test myself against 12 other high school All-Americans every single day. ... It was kind of like, ‘Come here and test your mettle.’ ”

Greenwood’s work ethic continued to push him as a Bruin. His practices with the team were followed by an hour in another gym, his brother feeding him passes. Along the way, he never shortchanged himself or teammates.

“If he said he was going to shoot 100 free throws,” Al said, “it wasn’t 50, it wasn’t 65, it was 100 — and he didn’t stop until he got to 100.”

Having been dubbed “Batman and Robin” in high school, Greenwood and Hamilton remained close at UCLA, rooming together and biking to campus from where they lived in the Fairfax District. Hamilton remembered Greenwood as a remarkable rebounder who whipped outlet passes to him to get fast breaks started.

“We would always know how to motivate each other,” Hamilton said, “and connect with each other on the floor.”

Becoming a star by his sophomore season, Greenwood averaged a double-double in points and rebounds as a junior and a senior, finishing each season as an All-American. The 6-foot-9 forward’s go-to move was starting with his back about 10 to 12 feet from the basket before faking one way and unleashing a spin-around jumper.

One of his favorite memories as a Bruin, according to his brother, was a comeback against Washington State toward the end of his career in which the Bruins wiped out a late double-digit deficit, winning on Greenwood’s putback dunk only seconds before the buzzer.

UCLA never recaptured the Wooden glory during Greenwood’s four seasons, reaching the Final Four his freshman year and a regional final his senior year. But Greenwood remains No. 15 on the school’s all-time scoring list, having tallied 1,721 points.

After the Lakers selected Magic Johnson with the first pick of the 1979 NBA draft, the Chicago Bulls took Greenwood second as part of their massive rebuilding efforts. (Hamilton was also a lottery pick, going 10th to the Pistons.)

“He wasn’t exciting, he was steady,” Al Greenwood said of his brother. “You knew you were going to get a double-double every night out of him regardless of what the score was.”

Greenwood started every game in his first NBA season, averaging 16.3 points and 9.4 rebounds while making the all-rookie team. The Bulls went 30-52, their loss total more than triple the 17 losses that Greenwood’s teams had absorbed in four seasons as a Bruin.

But he persevered through the losing and a series of foot injuries caused by a running style in which his heels would hit the ground before his toes. Al remembered his brother coming back to Los Angeles to play the Lakers and taking his shoes off at home, saying it felt as if they were full of broken glass.

“That was how his feet felt a lot of the time, but he just played even when he shouldn’t have,” Al said. “I always called him The Thoroughbred.”

Greenwood would undergo one Achilles’ surgery on one foot and two on the other, never missing a full season in the process.

In October 1985, before the widespread use of cell phones, Greenwood learned he had been traded to San Antonio for future Hall of Famer George Gervin while listening to the radio. Late in his 12-year NBA career, he was a surprise playoff contributor for the Detroit Pistons when they won the 1990 NBA championship. Hamilton worked for CBS Sports as part of the production team broadcasting the Finals that year.

“Having my best friend in the world on the team and winning a title,” Hamilton said, “that was a joy for me.”

Greenwood went on to own several Blockbuster video stores and coached at his alma mater, guiding Verbum Dei to state championships in 1998 and 1999. His nephew recalled a soft side, his uncle picking him up and giving him a good tickle.

Greenwood is survived by his brother, Al; sister, Laverne; son, Jemil; and daughter, Tiffany, along with his former wife, Joyce. Services are pending.

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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

The Knicks continue to search for their next head coach, but the candidates they were initially interested in are becoming unavailable one by one.

SNY NBA Insider Ian Begley reports that the Knicks formally reached out to the Houston Rockets for permission to talk to head coach Ime Udoka. However, the Rockets denied the Knicks, per people familiar with the Rockets' stance.

It seems Houston is not ready to part with the coach who has turned the franchise around. In just his second year with the Rockets, the 47-year-old Udoka led the team to a first place finish in the Southwest Division and the organization's first playoff appearance since 2020. This year, Houston was eliminated by the Warriors in seven games of the opening round of the NBA Playoffs. After finishing 41-41 in his first season, the Rockets improved to 52-30 and the No. 2 seed in the Western Conference under Udoka.

Udoka was one of three coaches currently under contract the Knicks were interested in. In addition to Udoka, Minnesota's Chris Finch and Dallas' Jason Kidd were the names the Knicks had interest in, per Begley.

While it seems the Mavericks are confident Kidd won't leave Dallas, the Knicks were denied permission by the Timberwolves to speak with Finch, according to multiple reports.

Like Houston, the Timberwolves are not interested in allowing their coach to potentially go elsewhere after so much recent success. Minnesota had made the playoffs in four consecutive seasons, including back-to-back Western Conference Finals appearances.

Finch has amassed a 209-160 record in the regular season since being hired midseason to replace Ryan Saunders in 2021. He also has a 21-21 mark in the postseason.

With Udoka and Finch formally off the table, and Kidd hypothetically unavailable, it's unclear where the Knicks go for a head coach.

The Knicks, who are searching for a head coach to replace the fired Tom Thibodeau, are about to embark on an offseason where they try to add the finishing pieces to a roster that just finished two games shy of reaching the NBA Finals.

Could one of those pieces be a former MVP and all-time great?

According to Brian Windhorst of ESPN, "the Knicks are definitely a team that is gonna have some interest in Kevin Durant. There are going to be a handful of them."

As far as what it would take for the Knicks to pry KD from the Suns?

"The way the Knicks get this done is Karl-Anthony Towns," Windhorst said. "It has to do with the trade rules. It has to do with stuff like that. The Knicks would have to trade three rotation players otherwise. Just keep that in mind when you dream of your Knicks trades."

Durant, who will turn 37 in September, has one year left on his contract -- with a cap hit of $54.7 million during the 2025-26 season.

He is set to become an unrestricted free agent after next season.

Towns, 29, is under contract for three more seasons. He has a cap hit of $53.1 million next season. That hit escalates to $57 million in 2026-27, and $61 million in 2027-28.

New York trading three seasons of Towns for one season of Durant would seem odd, unless they have a desire to clear Towns' contract off their books.

Durant, while nearing the tail end of his career, is still a dynamic player.

He averaged 26.6 points, 6.0 rebounds, and 4.2 assists in 62 games this season for the Suns.