P.J. Washington is staying in Dallas as part of one of the best frontcourts in the league.
Washington has agreed to sign a four-year, $90 million extension to stay with the Mavericks, a story broken by ESPN’s Shams Charania and since confirmed by others including Washington himself.
This extension was expected, the only question was if Dallas would try to get Washington to agree to fewer years or take less than the maximum, but that ended up not being the case. This contract is fairly priced compared to the market and keeps Washington with the Mavericks through the summer of 2030.
Washington, who has primarily played at the four in Dallas, likely will come off the bench for the Mavericks this season as part of a deep frontcourt. Anthony Davis will start as the power forward, with Dereck Lively II starting at center and No. 1 pick Cooper Flagg more at the three in a kind of point/forward role. Off the bench will come Washington, Daniel Gafford and Dwight Powell (Flagg will certainly get time at the four as well). The Mavericks have as deep and talented a frontcourt as any in the league.
Washington was traded to Dallas at the 2024 deadline and found a quick connection with Luka Doncic, helping the Mavericks run to the 2024 Finals. His defense was something Jason Kidd returned to as coach time and again for key matchups. Washington averaged 14.7 points and 7.8 rebounds a game last season (he played in just 57 games due to injury) and has developed into a reliable 3-point shooter (38.1% last season).
It feels like it will take a while at the start of the season for Kidd to find and settle on a front court rotation. Whatever that rotation ends up being, Washington is locked in as part of it.
Kawhi Leonard is a six-time All Star. Photograph: Matt Slocum/AP
The Los Angeles Clippers and their owner, Steve Ballmer, have denied allegations the team’s star forward, Kawhi Leonard, was paid $28m for a job that doesn’t exist.
Journalist Pablo Torre laid out the allegations in his podcast on Wednesday. Torre, citing legal documents, claims Ballmer employed Leonard for a non-existent role in one of his companies to circumvent the NBA salary cap, which punishes teams for spending too much on player salaries.
Torre claims that Ballmer partially funded a now defunct tree-planting company called Aspiration. That company then allegedly entered into a $28m agreement with KL2 Aspire, LLC, a company owned by Leonard.
Torre says he could find no evidence that Leonard had ever performed any work for Aspiration, and there was a clause in the contract between KL2 Aspire and Aspiration effectively allowed Leonard to be paid even if he did no work. Another clause said the deal would be voided if Leonard left the Clippers. One former employee of Aspiration told Torre he had heard the deal with Leonard had been set up to “circumvent the salary cap.”
The Clippers and Ballmer denied the allegations in a statement released to Torre. “Neither Mr Ballmer nor the Clippers circumvented the salary cap or engaged in any misconduct related to Aspiration,” the statement said. “Any contrary assertion is provably false.”
The NBA investigated Leonard’s advisor, Dennis Robertson, in 2019 and found the Clippers had not granted the player any impermissible benefits when they pursued him in free agency. Leonard, a six-time All-Star, joined the Clippers in July 2019 after leading the Toronto Raptors to the NBA title.
The NBA is yet to comment on Torre’s story, but has said in the past it would reopen the investigation into Robertson if new evidence emerged.
Under the terms of the NBA collective bargaining agreement, the Clippers could be fined up to $4.5m for a first offense if they attempted to circumvent the salary cap. They could also be docked a first-round draft pick.
OK, here’s the situation: Brad Stevens went away on a week’s vacation and he left you the keys to the Celtics’ brand-new roster. Would he mind a deal? Well, of course not.
Back in July, after an initial batch of roster tinkering saw the Celtics trade away Kristaps Porzingis and Jrue Holiday in a quest to dip below the second apron, Stevens suggested he’d be content if the roster in that moment was the roster that Boston carried into the offseason.
The Celtics have made six roster transactions since that declaration — albeit mostly tinkering on the back end of the roster and finalizing their two-way deals — but that maneuvering also included trading away the only player received in the Porzingis swap (Georges Niang).
Which is to say, even as the 2025-26 season approaches, this Celtics’ roster hardly feels set in stone. The team might have additional motivation to tinker depending on how the season plays out.
For Day 3 of our Ramp to Camp series, we asked our panel to channel their inner Stevens and consider if there’s one more move they’d make for the Celtics before the season starts. Are our Armchair Brads comfortable with the team’s frontcourt depth chart? Do our Virtual Brads see Anfernee Simons as a long-term fit for this roster?
While the next big transaction feels more likely to come closer to the February trade deadline, this is the time of year when teams need to take a long look at their roster and decide if this is the group they’re content to roll with. Given the absence of Jayson Tatum to start the season and some of the talent drain that occurred this summer, the Celtics can take a bit of a wait-and-see approach, but they also have to be opportunistic with eyes towards building the next iteration of a championship-caliber roster.
My goal: The Celtics sit about $12 million away from clearing the luxury tax. Even if it’s sometimes difficult to see a path toward resetting the repeater penalties by getting under (and staying under) the tax in one of the next two seasons, at least you put yourself in position to ponder that option by getting there this season.
So, while we’re content to carry Simons into the season, we’re examining deals that send out Simons while trying to 1) Bring back at least one player who could be a high-level role player on a championship team and 2) Cut salary with the goal of eventually getting below the tax after all deadline maneuvering is complete.
Since no one ever knows what exactly the Bulls are doing, we’re calling them to see if they think Simons can help in their annual quest to land a play-in berth. Even after the Bulls sign Josh Giddey to a long-term deal, Chicago has ample room to take on salary. Would they take on Simons’ money for a package that includes something like Ayo Dosunmu, Jalen Smith, and Dalen Terry?
The Celtics shed nearly $6 million off the books with this deal and would have pathways to eventually get below the tax (particularly if they could move a player like Terry to a third team without taking back salary). Boston gets a look at Dosunmu, someone who better fits the mold of a long-term piece, and can decide if it want to pay his next deal.
Speaking of Bulls moves… That’s where our panel starts as well:
Josh Canu, Media Editor
Trade Anfernee Simons for Nikola Vucevic.
Both players are on expiring contracts, the Bulls get a younger player, and the Celtics get a starting center and some cap relief as well. Not the sexiest move, but a move that works and is attainable.
Max Lederman, Content Producer
I’d pay Isaiah Thomas to be a part of the organization, either as a player or on the coaching staff.
I never felt right about how things turned out for IT, and bringing him back to Boston would be good karma.
Darren Hartwell, Managing Editor
The easy answer is trading Anfernee Simons and his $27.6 million expiring contract to shed salary. The hard part is finding a deal that makes sense.
After tinkering with NBA trade machines, we’ll go with a three-team proposal from Bleacher Report’s Andy Bailey that sends Simons to Toronto and Terance Mann and Ochai Agbaji to Boston.
Michael Hurley, Web Producer
I’m inviting all of my friends to the Garden for some pickup basketball, first and foremost. After that, I don’t think I’m going too crazy.
The chances of going on a title run without Tatum are minuscule, if we’re being honest. So, why push the envelope when I could reset some financials and build for the following season?
If I’m doing anything, though, I’m challenging Joe Mazzulla to just try for one game to tell his team to take a normal number of 3s, just to see what happens. It’s possible I’d be engaged in some hand-to-hand combat as a result.
Brad Stevens said it was unlikely Al Horford would return. That was months ago. It feels like it’s a done deal and Horford is headed to Golden State. But since it hasn’t happened yet, I’m going with Big Al.
If I was running the front office, I’m making it work with Horford, an all-time Celtic and impactful contributor who would improve the front court in 2025-26. (I hope this doesn’t age as poorly as it very well could.)
Kevin Miller, VP, Content
I’m not sure there’s anything Stevens can really do. Adding another big would make sense, but I don’t see any realistic options.
I’m keeping Simons to see how he works in this offense for first half of season.
Adam Hart, EP, Content Strategy
Make some room for Malik Beasley and add him on a discount prove-it deal.
Summer, in technical terms, still has almost three more weeks until the lights go out and fall rears its head from the shadows. Draymond Green doesn’t ascribe to that calendar.
It ended with the passing of Labor Day, he announced Tuesday on Threads, his apparent preferred social media website.
The offseason still very much is ongoing for the Warriors as a team that hasn’t made a move more than two months since free agency began. The roster only consists of nine players. But players are beginning to trickle in through Chase Center to work out and scrimmage with training camp starting at the end of the month.
Before veteran stars Green and Jimmy Butler make their way to the Warriors’ home arena, the two shared the floor in Los Angeles for a workout at the end of August. Butler shared photos and videos of the workout Sunday with a 20-slide post to his Instagram, using the caption “whatever @money23green said on the last slide.” And on that slide, Green made the same prediction he proclaimed during NBA All-Star Weekend less than two weeks after the Warriors acquired Butler from the Miami Heat at the trade deadline.
“We gettin’ that b—h this year,” Green said, referring to the Warriors winning the championship.
Draymond Green after working out with Jimmy Butler in LA: “We gettin that b**ch this year.” 🏆
Green guaranteed the Warriors would win the championship on Feb. 16 as part of his TNT broadcasting duties. They, of course, did not. The Warriors went on a tear after Butler’s arrival, but then lost in the second round of the playoffs against the Minnesota Timberwolves without an injured Steph Curry.
About a month after his bold words on national TV, Green made an admission to NBC Sports Bay Area’s Monte Poole and Kerith Burke on the “Dubs Talk” podcast, saying he likes the Warriors’ chances at a championship even more the next season in 2025-26.
“I think coming back next year, I think we’ll be even in a better position than we were this year,” he reiterated at his exit interview press conference after the season. “Number one, because you can manage the season better, which helps when you’re trying to compete for a championship, especially at the ages we’re at. It helps a lot.”
The ages of the Warriors’ top players – Curry, Butler and Green – are a talking point that isn’t going away. The facts are, a team leaning on this old of a trio has never won a championship. Butler and Green working out together isn’t going to guarantee a parade down Market Street.
The workout and increased chemistry is what Butler promised, though.
“Now you’ve got a whole offseason,” Butler said the same day as Green at his exit interview press conference. “I get to be around my guys in the offseason. We’re going to get to vacay together. We’re going to get our kids together. We’re going to get to train together, build even more chemistry and then take this thing into training camp and into this next year, this next season, and do what we set out to do.”
The worry in bringing Butler into the Warriors’ locker room was if the big personalities of him and Green would clash. The opposite happened, at least in the first chapter. The next chapter appears to have begun with an even greater sense of commitment and understanding of each other.
Which will be critical for the Warriors both at the start of the season, as well as a playoff push later on. Led by Curry, Butler and Green, Golden State badly needs to get off to a strong start this season. The Warriors begin their campaign against LeBron James, Luka Dončić and the Los Angeles Lakers on the road and then welcome Nikola Jokić and the new-look Denver Nuggets to San Francisco.
They have five sets of back-to-backs in their first 17 games, making the Jonathan Kuminga situation that much more interesting with the need for a young scorer helping an older team on nights that look like scheduled losses.
Green played every game after the Butler trade. The Warriors went 23-7 to end the regular season in games Butler and Green played together, and they had the best defensive rating (109.0) in the NBA.
“Great,” Green said at the end of Butler’s Instagram post when asked how he’s feeling. “We ‘bout six weeks out. Right where I need to be, baby.”
Replicating those same results, a 76.7 win percentage, isn’t going to happen for an entire season. These Warriors aren’t going to reel off 63 wins. Even if a workout can’t predict a large number in the win column, the Warriors need Butler and Green to be the tone-setters while Curry runs the show.
Whether they’ll have enough gas in the tank to last is a whole other question.
Luka Doncic wasn't going to let a little foul trouble keep him and Slovenia out of the final 16 of EuroBasket.
A game that started with Doncic in foul trouble saw him finish with 26 points, seven rebounds and four assists to lead Slovenia to an 87-79 win against Iceland.
With the win, Slovenia became one of the 12 teams to guarantee its spot in the 16-team knockout round that starts this weekend. Another team to clinch its spot was Israel, which picked up a 92-89 win against Belgium behind 22 points from Portland's Deni Avdija.
The 12 teams that have qualified for the knockout round are:
• Serbia • Turkey • Latvia • Germany • Finland • Lithuania • Greece • Italy • Poland • Israel • France • Slovenia
That group is likely to be joined by Nikola Vucevic and Montenegro, provided it can beat winless Great Britain in its final game. The biggest game may come on Wednesday when Estonia takes on Celtics' center Neemias Queta and Portugal: Winner advances to the round of 16, loser goes home.
In other action on Tuesday, the Knicks' Guerschon Yabusele had a monster game, scoring 33 with six rebounds and a couple of blocks in France's win over Poland.
In less good news for France, a team already without Victor Wembanyama or Rudy Gobert for this tournament, Wizards big man Alex Sarr is out for the remainder of EuroBasket with a calf injury.
It’s never too early to look ahead, especially when it comes to potential future pieces of the Kentucky men’s basketball program. With basketball season inching closer and closer, our friends over at Rivals unveiled their debut player rankings for the 2028 high school class (current sophomores). This marks the first of what will be several […]
Hall of Famer George Raveling, who coached at Washington State, Iowa and USC, but his influence was much broader — including on Michael Jordan's Nike deal — has died at the age of 88 due to cancer, his family announced Tuesday.
It is with deep sadness and unimaginable pain that we share the passing of our beloved “Coach,” George Henry Raveling. pic.twitter.com/LGWQubvI3V
Raveling was a "coach's coach" and part of a trailblazing initial wave of black basketball coaches at predominantly white universities. Raveling was widely respected throughout the basketball world and found success at every stop on his coaching journey.
That respect landed him on the USA Basketball coaching staffs for the 1984 Los Angeles and 1988 Seoul Olympics. It was at those 1984 games when Raveling grew close to Michael Jordan and his family. It was Raveling who introduced Jordan to Sonny Vaccaro at Nike and helped convince Jordan to sign with the Oregon company in a move that ultimately transformed the basketball shoe industry. Jordan has said multiple times since then that it was Raveling, more than Vaccaro, who convinced Jordan to sign with Nike. In the movie "Air" about Nike's peruit and signing of Jordan, Marlon Wayans portrayed Raveling.
Raveling also famously owned the original copy of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. Raveling was working security at the 1963 March on Washington and was near King during the speech. As Raveling tells it, he simply asked King for the speech as he was walking off the stage, and King smiled and handed it over. Raveling held on to the speech (which he had framed to protect it) until he donated it to his alma mater, Villanova, a few years ago.
USA Basketball celebrates the life & legacy of two-time Olympic basketball assistant coach George Raveling.
George was a trusted friend & advisor to USA Basketball & he will be missed.
Raveling played his college ball at Villanova between 1957 and 1960, averaging 12.3 points and 14.6 rebounds a game over his final two seasons. He was drafted by the Philadelphia Warriors — in the eighth round, when the NBA draft used to go that deep — but never suited up in the NBA.
"The finest human being, inspiring mentor, most loyal alum and a thoughtful loving friend," Jay Wright, who coached Villanova to two national championships, posted on X. "Coach Raveling lived his life for others, His heart was restless and kind and now rests In the lord!"
Raveling found his calling as a coach. He racked up a 335-293 as a head coach for the Cougars, Hawkeyes and Trojans, taking each program to the NCAA Tournament twice. After coaching, he served as Nike's director of international basketball for years, flying around the globe to watch and talk to prospects.
George Raveling, who died Monday after a battle with cancer, had an impact that stretched far beyond basketball, the sport which he last coached three decades ago at USC.
One of the most influential figures in the history of basketball and a close friend of the Kentucky Wildcats has passed away. George Raveling, a Hall of Fame coach who helped steer Michael Jordan to Nike and owned the original copy of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, lost his fight with […]
For the past few years, God Shammgod — the New York playground legend who is your favorite hooper's favorite hooper — has been coaching in Dallas, working with a couple of players who have some of the best handles in the game.
"I love Kyrie [Irving], you know what I mean?" Shammgod said while discussing his new book, “Word of God.” "I know his whole family, so I knew him since he was young. Luka Doncic, of course, Luka's like amazing."
Now is in Orlando, helping teach his dribbling wizardry — the man has a crossover named after him — and coaching up a young and promising Magic team stacked with All-NBA level talent such as Paolo Banchero and Franz Wagner. It's a team a lot of pundits (*raises hand*) project to make a leap up to the top three of the East — if there is a team poised to make an Indiana-style run this season, it's the Magic.
Shammgod sees that.
"Paolo and Franz and them, they're coming into their own right now," Shammgod told NBC Sports "They're at the right age where they still young, but they, they young enough to dare. Dare to be great. And I, I believe like Paolo and Franz is going to be great, but Desmond Bane, Jalen Suggs, Anthony Black, we got Tyus Jones. Now we got, we got so many great players.
"And they all right. And I feel like right now they all are ready to make their mark. So I'm just happy and honored to be a part of it."
Orlando was a .500 team last season, not a bad record considering both Banchero and Wagner missed considerable time with matching oblique strains. The Magic had the second-best defense in the NBA and that propelled them into the No. 7 seed and the playoffs, but they couldn't get by the Celtics (who still had a healthy Jayson Tatum at that point). The focus of Jeff Weltman and the rest of the Magic front office this summer was to upgrade the offense. Part of that involved adding guards like Bane and Jones, but also bringing Shammgod and his wisdom onto the staff.
It wasn't just the players that drew Shammgod to Dallas, it was their coach, Jamahl Mosley. As quickly becomes evident when reading “Word of God,” Shammgod has great stories and connections with people across the NBA, and Mosley is one that goes way back.
"I knew him when we both was teenagers, because when I was a freshman at Providence, he visited Providence. So that's full circle," Shammgod said of Mosley. "Like for me and him coaching at Dallas together, he just got such a great passion and such.
"He's so about the work. You know what I'm saying? There's not too many people I could say, that's all about the work. Like, forget all the accolades, forget all that stuff. Like, he's all about the work and all about winning and all about pouring into the kids. And I think that's what me and him share in common the most."
It's that connection that the players relate to and get them to buy in, whether it's Shammgod improving their handles or Mosley with the bigger picture themes.
This season, when the Magic come into the spotlight and we see Banchero flashing a new dribbling move, or Wagner breaking ankles on the way to the rim, just remember that Shammgod, with his legendary handles, is coaching them now and they are finding a new flow.
George Raveling, a Hall of Fame basketball coach who played a role in Michael Jordan signing a landmark endorsement deal with Nike, has died. Raveling's family said Tuesday in a statement that he had “faced cancer with courage and grace.” “There are no words to fully capture what George meant to his family, friends, colleagues, former players, and assistants — and to the world,” the family statement read.
The ongoing saga between the Warriors and restricted free agent Jonathan Kuminga has persisted past Labor Day. NBA training camp is in four weeks, and the Oct. 1 deadline for Kuminga to accept the qualifying offer is under a month away. So, where are the two sides?
Still miles apart it appears.
The one-year, $7.9 million qualifying offer remains the most attractive offer to Kuminga at the moment, sources continue to tell NBC Sports Bay Area. The Warriors have offered a two-year contract worth roughly $45 million, but are holding strong to a team option for the second year, while Kuminga and his camp have made it clear they want a player option for Year 2.
To ensure Kuminga doesn’t sign the qualifying offer, which essentially would eliminate any option of trading him this season and severely hurt roster building, the Warriors will have to convince him what they’re proposing is that much better than the last resort. The first way to do that is ceding the team option for a player option. The second is simply to give him more money up front, making the team option less of a sticking point in the end.
Year 1 of the Warriors’ offer is $21.75 million, per sources, but because of the base salary compensation rule, Kuminga’s outgoing salary is equal to half of that. So, much of this entire situation comes down to control.
Through four years, Kuminga and the Warriors have yet to find common ground on who he presently is as a player, who he can be with more opportunities and who he will be in the future. The way this offseason has played out only has furthered Kuminga’s desire to control his own destiny and how his future plays out. Kuminga wants to make sure that no matter who his next employer is, he’s comfortable and confident he is being set up for success from the start.
There has been confusion as to why Kuminga would hold steady to the inherent no-trade clause of a qualifying offer, as well as a player option for the second year with the assumption he wants to be somewhere else aside from the Warriors. Kuminga doesn’t want to be used as a “pawn” for a team where he has seen himself as the scapegoat, and he still doesn’t fully know what his role will be going into his fifth NBA season with the likelihood that he still isn’t a starter and might not close games.
Signing the qualifying offer is a risk for Kuminga. His agent, Aaron Turner, isn’t discrediting that. However, the risk is much more on the Warriors.
With an aging core of Steph Curry, Jimmy Butler and Draymond Green, letting Kuminga sign the qualifying offer would take away the Warriors’ best asset at the NBA trade deadline for another big-time name. Kuminga then would have zero trade value because no team can extend off that. Golden State loses his Bird Rights, Kuminga’s Warriors tenure would be done after this next season without getting anything back for him after spurning multiple trade offers for him in previous years, and the situation would make Kuminga a distraction, at least in a media sense, all season because of the nature of the qualifying offer.
The nightmare scenario the qualifying offer presents digs a far bigger hole for the Warriors than it does for Kuminga.
The main example of the qualifying offer risks for Kuminga is Nerlens Noel. The Dallas Mavericks in the summer of 2017 initially offered Noel a four-year, $70 million contract that he spurned in hopes of signing a maximum contract offer that never came. He then instead signed a $4.1 million qualifying offer with the Mavs, but greatly disappointed in an injury-filled season where Noel only played 30 games and averaged 4.4 points.
Noel signed with the Oklahoma City Thunder the next offseason on a two-year, veteran’s minimum contract.
Here’s the difference: Noel already missed his entire rookie year because of a torn ACL, and missed 31 games the season going into his contract dispute. At the time of turning down $70 million, Noel had averaged 10.0 points and 7.5 rebounds per game while averaging 27.6 minutes. He never was the scoring option Kuminga is and was in a different contractual world than him.
Kuminga doesn’t have a $66 million gap between the contract he’s being offered and the qualifying offer. The gap really is a little more than $13 million when looking at the one-year qualifying offer and the first year of the contract the Warriors currently have on the table. He surely would have insurance policies to lessen the risk, too. The former No. 7 overall pick turns 23 years old on Oct. 6 and is confident his next contract easily will exceed $13 million annually.
The Sacramento Kings and Phoenix Suns both offered Kuminga long-term contracts, empowering him with a starting role and making it known he’d be their power forward of the future. Contracts from the Kings and Suns included a player option, according to sources, but both were dependent on the Warriors agreeing to a sign-and-trade that never enticed their front office enough to do so.
None of the NBA’s four restricted free agents – Kuminga, Josh Giddey, Cam Thomas and Quinten Grimes – have signed a contract yet. The first domino must fall soon. Nothing is close between the Warriors and Kuminga, sources say, with both sides waiting for someone to blink first.
Brooklyn Nets general manager Sean Marks has been doing this all summer long: He took on the contracts of Denver's Michael Porter Jr., Atlanta's Terance Mann and Miami's Haywood Highsmith this summer and got a couple of first-round picks — one used in June to select Drake Powell — and what is expected to be a high second.
The Nets are the only team with remaining cap space, about $14.3 million, and Lewis said don't be surprised if the Nets use that space to take on a player and contract another team does not want at the price of another first-round pick. The problem is the Nets are pushing up against the 15-player limit once Day'Ron Sharpe and Ziaire Williams' contracts are inked, and if the team signs Ricky Council IV, as rumored, that would have them up against the limit.
The one potential hurdle is the ongoing restricted free agency dance with Cam Thomas. The Nets would use up most of that cap space if Thomas took the two-year, $24 million offer the team put on the table, however, he thinks that is insultingly low and could play for his $6 million qualifying offer to become a restricted free agent next summer. Either way, that would eat into the team's cap space and roster spots.
Marks and the Nets surprised the league by using all five of their draft picks back in June, rather than trading one or two, but the Nets are all in on their youth movement, and adding more picks as part of that could happen.
After the Boston Celtics’ 2024 title season, president of basketball operations Brad Stevens basically put the team on offseason autopilot while bringing back nearly an identical roster the following season. Stevens didn’t have that luxury this past summer, as the Celtics were forced to overhaul that championship core in a quest to dip below the prohibitive second apron.
So much energy has been spent lamenting the players who went out of town — and understandably so given what they delivered here — but in Part 2 of our annual Ramp to Camp series, we’re asking our panel to pick which newcomer they’re most excited to watch this season.
Boston’s roster is likely to feature at least five new faces in Anfernee Simons, Chris Boucher, Luka Garza, Josh Minott and rookie Hugo Gonzalez. The team will also have three new two-way players in Max Shulga, Amari Williams, and RJ Luis Jr., but we’ll tackle their potential impact in a later installment of this series.
With Jayson Tatum sidelined by his Achilles rehab, the Celtics are going to look very different than the past two seasons when the 2025-26 season tips. Recent draftees like Jordan Walsh and Baylor Scheierman also should see increased opportunity this season. But which newcomer is most likely to distinguish themselves?
Summer might be fading, but Lawn Mower season hasn’t even started. “Lawn Mower” is the nickname that Minott inadvertently coined for himself after a Summer League game in 2022. In a postgame interview, the energy-gushing Minott suggested he’s “like a lawn mower: Once I got going, I just kept going.”
If the Celtics are to compensate for the obvious talent drain while watching Kristaps Porzingis, Jrue Holiday, Luke Kornet, and (eventually) Al Horford relocate this summer, then they might need to make up for it with hustle and grit.
The 22-year-old Minott has only scratched the surface of his obvious potential after playing fewer than 500 minutes in three seasons in Minnesota. We suspect his blend of size (6-foot-8) and athleticism could open the door to minutes in the frontcourt, where he’ll get more time to show off his potential.
He can win immediate time with his defensive toolbox: rebounding, blocking shots, and using that 6-foot-11 wingspan to disrupt his defensive assignments. His leaping ability is well-documented — just ask poor Derrick White, whom Minott dunked over in a game in Minnesota — but Minott’s development on that end of the floor could be the key to just how much he blossoms here.
Pull the cord, and let the Lawn Mower rumble.
Here’s a look at who our panel chose:
Darren Hartwell, Managing Editor
Hugo Gonzalez.
Yes, he’s only 19 years old. No, he may not see extensive playing time as a rookie. But the opportunity for minutes is certainly there in this “gap year,” and Gonzalez’s skill set as a high-motor playmaker should make him a fun watch.
Developing Gonzalez into a full-time rotation player should be one of Boston’s top goals over the next few seasons.
Michael Hurley, Web Producer
Do you take N/A for an answer? I’m kidding! I think. I’ll have to go with Hugo Gonzalez, only for the rookie potential aspect.
I’ll be surprised if anyone turns out to be a Derrick White-type diamond in the rough. And I’m still not convinced Simons will play for the Celtics.
Sean McGuire, Web Producer
I’m expecting Anfernee Simons to be tasked with leading the second unit, and I’m excited to see how the veteran guard does in that role.
Simons averaged more than 32 minutes per game in each of the last three seasons and is a proven scorer. Given the C’s need to make up for some of the scoring they lost, he feels like he could be a crucial piece — especially if he shoots eight or nine 3-pointers per game, like he did in each of the last three campaigns with Portland.
Josh Canu, Media Editor
Hugo Gonzalez.
The Celtics haven’t been in a position the last few years to work a rookie into a sizeable role, but with four of Boston’s top six from last season not in the mix for this season, Hugo could carve out some consistent minutes if he proves he is ready.
I was surprised they brought him over right away, but that is an indication they feel he is ready to contribute. So let the hype train leave the station!
My first instinct is to name Hugo Gonzalez because his draft pedigree and psycho motor, but why not Minott?
Josh Minott is not a great shooter and has only played 463 minutes in his first three seasons in the NBA, but he has the potential to be an impact wing defender and flashed playmaking juice during his lone season in college at Memphis.
His nickname is also “Lawn Mower,” so I can’t wait to hear what Drew Carter cooks up for him this season.
Kevin Miller, VP, Content
Hugo Gonzalez.
His effort and tenacity will be a crowd-pleaser, but he’s super young and will need seasoning. I love his upside as a glue guy who can be a real difference-maker down the road in winning situations.
Adam Hart, EP, Content Strategy
Chris Boucher.
After an offseason of attrition in the frontcourt, can Boucher be more than a bench guy?
