Category: Sports News

O'Connor: NBA sources view Dylan Harper as a franchise-changing talent originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston

Cooper Flagg is the crown jewel of the 2025 NBA Draft class, a projected No. 1 overall pick with multi-time All-NBA potential.

But don’t sleep on the next-best player in the draft.

Rutgers guard Dylan Harper currently projects as the No. 2 pick in the draft behind Flagg, and with good reason: The 19-year-old averaged 19.4 points, 4.6 rebounds and 4.0 assists per game for the Scarlet Knights last season and has significant upside as a two-way guard in the NBA.

The Boston Celtics have no shot at landing Harper with the 28th pick in the first round. But could they land the Rutgers star via trade? In Part II of his “Offseason Path” series, our Celtics Insider Chris Forsberg laid out a bold scenario in which Boston sends Jaylen Brown to the San Antonio Spurs in exchange for the No. 2 pick and a combination of young players such as Devin Vassell and Keldon Johnson.

Boston trading Brown — a four-time All-Star who is set to be the team’s No. 1 option while Jayson Tatum recovers from Achilles surgery — would be a very bold move, and the Celtics likely would explore several other avenues to trim their payroll and get under the NBA’s second apron before deciding to part with a franchise cornerstone.

But if trading Brown means bringing back a player like Harper, Celtics president of basketball operations Brad Stevens may have to consider it. Yahoo Sports’ NBA insider Kevin O’Connor shared what he’s hearing about Harper during NBC Sports Boston’s The OffC’season special Wednesday.

“If the Spurs made an offer you can’t say no to, well, Dylan Harper might be the great point guard next to Jayson Tatum,” O’Connor told Forsberg and co-host Drew Carter.

“I like Harper a lot. … The jump shot, in the context of San Antonio, I worry about, because they have Stephon Castle and De’Aaron Fox there. But for Boston — let’s just say, theoretically, that’s what happened — I would love Dylan Harper, surrounded by space in the Boston Celtics’ ‘Mazzulla Ball’ system, with Tatum by his side and those guys sharing the ball together.”

The Celtics have leaned heavily on 3-point shooting under head coach Joe Mazzulla, and Harper shot just 33.3 percent beyond the arc at Rutgers last season. But Harper’s shooting can always improve, and Boston would benefit greatly from his playmaking abilities.

“Harper can play off-ball, but the shooting — it’d be a little less important for him in Boston than it would be in San Antonio, where they need shooting around Victor Wembanyama,” O’Connor said. “But for the Celtics, man, I can’t imagine. He is so good at getting downhill, a foul magnet, great playmaker on his drives to the basket. He would be a haul.”

So, what’s the ceiling for Harper?

“A lot of people around the NBA — like, everybody has Cooper Flagg for the most part ahead of Dylan Harper — but there are a lot of people who consider Dylan Harper a can’t-miss prospect, a guy who can change a franchise,” O’Connor said.

“I’m not quite on the same level with him, but I do think at a minimum, he’s going to be a good player for a decade in the NBA.”

The Spurs ultimately may decide to keep the No. 2 pick and create a three-headed monster of young talent in Wembanyama, Castle and Harper. But that would make for a crowded backcourt with Fox also in the mix, so it might be worth keeping an eye on San Antonio as the June 25 draft approaches.

Check out more offseason analysis from Forsberg, O’Connor and Carter below:

Report: Nets not expected to prepare Kuminga offer sheet originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

The Brooklyn Nets aren’t expected to prepare Jonathan Kuminga an offer sheet this summer.

With the Warriors forward set to become a restricted free agent this offseason, there were several rumors that the Nets would make an offer given their salary-cap situation. However, that doesn’t appear to be the case.

“There is not a current expectation that the Brooklyn Nets are preparing an offer sheet for Kuminga, but there are signs Brooklyn could be willing to use its open cap space as a vehicle to execute multi-team trade scenarios this summer,” The Athletic’s Anthony Slater reported.

“That could open up several avenues and possible suitors for Kuminga, one of the market’s most intriguing names. The Warriors’ front office, with the help of new cap specialist Jon Phelps, showed some creativity last summer, routing Thompson’s departure into a six-team sign-and-trade that delivered Buddy Hield and Kyle Anderson (after generating the space for De’Anthony Melton).”

The 22-year-old has all of the physical talents to become an elite NBA player, but he has struggled with consistency during his tenure with the Warriors. With Golden State committed to building around Steph Curry, Draymond Green and Jimmy Butler next season, it doesn’t seem likely that Kuminga will fit into those plans.

After trading for Butler, Kuminga fell out of the rotation almost entirely, seeing significant game action only after Curry went down with a Grade 1 hamstring strain in the Western Conference Semifinals.

Given the 22-year-old’s contract situation, it’s more feasible for a sign-and-trade deal to materialize, and it’s possible that Golden State could get some solid players in the exchange.

The Warriors selected Kuminga with the No. 7 overall pick in the 2021 NBA Draft with the expectation that it would take time for him to develop into an elite-level player. While he has flashed brilliance at times, it’s clear that the “two-timeline” approach owner Joe Lacob envisioned isn’t working out.

With Curry continuing to play at a high level, it’s clear that general manager Mike Dunleavy and the rest of the Golden State front office are looking to acquire more complementary pieces to fill out the roster.

Only time will tell if Kuminga fits into those plans or not.

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The definition of success is subjective, ephemeral. But in today’s sports zeitgeist, it’s becoming less so: “rings culture” dominates all, serving as the wall into which any nuanced conversation inevitably crashes: “But did they win?” Of course, each NBA team enters the season every year with the same goal: to hoist the Larry O’Brien trophy. But only one team can every year, so does that make the other 29 failures?

The Minnesota Timberwolves present an interesting counterpoint: their fanbase is, no doubt, deeply disappointed this morning after a harrowing blowout loss in Oklahoma City, which means the team came up short of the NBA finals in devastating, decisive fashion for the second year in a row. On the other hand, they’ve made back to back Western Conference finals for the first time in team history, gone from league laughing stock to bona fide perennial contender, and have one of the most exciting young stars in basketball, 23-year-old Anthony Edwards.

Related: Would the NBA’s transatlantic expansion strip the soul of European basketball?

Edwards has fallen victim to a classic conundrum for a young, fast rising star athlete: disappointing people by not quickly enough becoming a thing he never asked to be. In his case, that’s “face of the league,” an idea foisted upon him almost instantaneously by an NBA public wooed by the guard who plays a bit like one Michael Jeffrey Jordan. Edwards’s popularity grew rapidly, due to his Jordan-esque explosiveness, propensity for highlight dunks, and sparkling charisma. The devil-may-care Edwards has spoken on the record, several times, about not being particularly interested in being the “face” of the NBA, a plight LeBron James (whose team Edwards recently sent packing for the season) says he empathizes with. “I understand,” James, who has served as the face of the NBA for two decades, told the Los Angeles Times recently. “I completely understand. There’s this weird energy when it comes to that.”

Charles Barkley recently made some somewhat controversial comments on the subject. “Don’t try and make Anthony Edwards the face of the NBA,” Barkley said. “You can’t give [the title of face of the NBA] to people. They have to take it.” It certainly seemed, in moments throughout the postseason, like Edwards was doing exactly that, wrestling the title from his elders inadvertently or otherwise. His dismantling of a Los Angeles Lakers team spearheaded by James and Luka Dončić, who sent Edwards and the Timberwolves home last season, was decisive and damned impressive, showcasing his newfound basketball maturity and growth as a playmaker. And while his team lucked out when the Warriors’ Stephen Curry was ruled out of the Western Conference semi-finals with a hamstring injury, you can only play the team in front of you, and Edwards & Co made quick work of Golden State, too.

The Timberwolves had lost a cumulative two games through two series until they ran into the freight train that is the Oklahoma City Thunder. The Thunder’s historically great defense brutally exposed Minnesota’s flaws, and they were the first team to make Edwards look every bit of what he really is: 23 years old. It’s easy to forget when young stars come into the league after a single-year in college that, even five seasons into their NBA tenure, they’re still so very young. But Edwards is young, and while it was another whimper of an ending to his playoffs, the fact that he already has two conference finals runs and marked improvement as a player under his belt should serve as encouragement. He showed flashes of his newfound maturity, and flashes of the years of work left to reach his sky-high potential, in this playoff run. Edwards’s time will come. But it’s not here yet.

The Thunder are a young team, and they will probably stand between Minnesota and a place in the NBA finals for some time to come. But it would be wrong to place the blame for the Timberwolves’ playoff exit at Edwards’s feet. The team has a lot of existential (and financial) questions to answer this summer. For starters, there’s Julius Randle, the player Minnesota took a gamble on when they traded Karl-Anthony Towns to the New York Knicks last October. Randle, who has a checkered playoff résumé to say the least, had a rocky start in Minnesota, but rounded into form after the All-Star break and had a scintillating star turn in the first two rounds of the postseason. The conference finals, where he scored fewer than seven points in two games and looked lost for much of three of them, were a different story. Randle is on an expiring contract with a player option this summer, and the Wolves will have to take another gamble in guessing which version of Randle is to come, and if there’s a place for him moving forward.

Naz Reid, a beloved fan-favorite and former sixth man of the year, may have cost himself a pretty penny with his disappointing showing throughout the playoffs, but he’s still expected to forgo his bargain $15m player option and enter free agency this summer, another tough call for the Timberwolves to make. Nickeil Alexander-Walker (who, as ESPN is quick to remind us, is MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s cousin) is also a free agent this summer, and has likely earned himself a bit of a pay bump over the course of his stint in Minnesota. Then there’s Rudy Gobert, whose albatross of a contract would most likely be difficult to move, even with his multi-time Defensive Player of the Year bona fides. But he’s been a clunky fit with Edwards, is a general liability offensively, and was mostly played off the floor by Thunder. Tim Connelly, the president of basketball operations the ‘Wolves wooed away from Denver, has done a mostly bang-up job to this point in Minnesota. But if he wants to steward Edwards’s potential, he has difficult decisions this offseason.

No one wants to see their favorite team outclassed in the manner the Timberwolves were in Oklahoma City on Wednesday evening. And the summer ahead is a murky one for the direction of the franchise and its roster. But to go from the butt of every NBA joke, whose claim to fame, for many fans, was either alienating Kevin Garnett or passing, twice, on Stephen Curry in the draft, to a perennial championship contender with a budding homegrown superstar, is a win. Or, one might say, a success.

How SGA can achieve rare Steph feat with OKC NBA Finals win originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and his Oklahoma City Thunder are on a historic run to the 2025 NBA Finals.

After leading the Thunder to the NBA’s best 2024-25 regular-season record behind his proficient play, Gilgeous-Alexander was awarded the NBA Most Valuable Player award.

And by sweeping the Memphis Grizzlies in the first round of the Western Conference playoffs, knocking out Nikola Jokic and the Denver Nuggets in seven games and then dominating Anthony Edwards and the Minnesota Timberwolves in five games to earn a trip to the 2025 NBA Finals, Gilgeous-Alexander now has an opportunity to achieve a rare milestone last completed by none other than Warriors superstar Steph Curry.

If Gilgeous-Alexander and his guys can defeat either the Indiana Pacers or the New York Knicks on the biggest stage in basketball, the 26-year-old guard would become the first player to win NBA MVP and the Finals in the same season in 10 years.

Curry and the Warriors dynasty won their first championship during that 2014-15 season, when he averaged 23.8 points on 48.7-percent shooting from the field and 44.3 percent from distance, with 4.3 rebounds, 7.7 assists and 2.0 steals in 32.7 minutes through 80 regular-season games.

The Warriors guard won his first of two NBA MVPs that year, and his second in the following season.

Gilgeous-Alexander has put on a show through 16 playoff games with the Thunder, averaging 29.8 points on an efficient 47.1 percent shooting, with 5.7 rebounds, 6.9 assists and 1.6 steals in 36.5 minutes.

And now, he’s four wins away from being in the same company as the greatest shooter of all time.

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