We just watched the torch being passed from LeBron James to Victor Wembanyama in real time. 

Wembanyama is next.

He rubbed it in our faces. He made it impossible to second-guess. He all but etched his name on the metaphorical baton.

It happened in Game 1 of the Western Conference finals between the Spurs and Thunder. The evening began with Wembanyama watching NBA Commissioner Adam Silver hand Shai Gilgeous-Alexander the MVP Award he coveted.

It ended with our jaws on the floor. 

Wembanyama had 41 points, 24 rebounds and three blocked shots in the Spurs’ 122-115 double-overtime win over the Thunder on Monday. He followed that by a 21-point, 17-rebound, six-assist and four-block performance in the Spurs’ 122-113 loss on Wednesday.

If anything, Wembanyama was underhyped when he was touted as the best prospect since James.

He’s not like anything we’ve seen before.

He was dominant in Game 2, constantly chasing down any missed shots with unreal timing. But Game 1 was his magnum opus. That was his official coming out party He made the reigning champions look vulnerable. He made Gilgeous-Alexander look like he pulled a fast one on MVP voters. 

Wembanyama was the human incarnation of opposing teams’ nightmares. 

The 7-foot-4 anomaly imposed his will everywhere. The paint belonged to him on both ends of the court. He was an unsolvable math problem for a Thunder team that had the NBA’s top-rated defense two straight seasons. 

But what makes Wembanyama especially dangerous is he isn’t chained by the typical restraints of big men. He can dribble. He has a soft touch. He defies the rules. 

Wembanyama transformed into Steph Curry in Game 1 with 27 seconds left in overtime and the Spurs trailing by three points, 108-105. He caught the ball just past half court. He fired a 28-foot 3-pointer. The ball swished through the net, forcing double overtime. 

Plays like that make you wonder about Wembanyama’s ceiling. What isn’t he capable of doing? If he stays healthy, could he soon nip at the heels of LeBron James and Michael Jordan? 

Then, in the second overtime, Wembanyama single-handedly outscored the Thunder, 9-7. He went 3-for-3 from beyond the arc. He had as many rebounds (four) as the entire Thunder team. 

In the final minute of that period, Wembanyama was fouled on a made dunk and completed the three-point play. He made an alley-oop dunk. And he concluded his one-man symphony by blocking and grabbing a shot attempt by Jalen Williams. 

Spurs coach Mitch Johnson said what impressed him most wasn’t even measurable. 

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“His level of physicality and execution through physicality was tremendous,” Johnson said. “His rebounding obviously showed in the box score, but what was off the charts was defensively, he was in his stance almost all night. That’s 49 big minutes, and it was high level for the majority of those.”

Wembanyama has said he wants to be the next face of the league. This season, he argued his case for the MVP Award, finishing third for that honor. He won Defensive Player of the Year. 

He wants this so bad. 

There’s nothing nonchalant about him. There’s nothing halfhearted. He’s all in, and he has the skills to be transformative. 

He didn’t even sugarcoat things when asked if Game 1 felt personal after he witnessed Gilgeous-Alexander receive the league’s most prestigious individual award.

“Yeah, for sure,” Wembanyama said. “Everything you just said.”

Watching Wembanyama is exciting for so many reasons. 

But above all, he’s this good — and he’s only 22 years old. He became the youngest person to record at least 40 points and 20 rebounds in a playoff game on Monday. And on Wednesday, he had game-highs in rebounds and blocks while making three 3-pointers.

This is only the beginning. 

It feels as though we’re witnessing magic. We’re watching a masterpiece being painted in real time. 

We’re witnessing history. 

The 41-year-old James has made it clear he’s going to retire soon. But we can all breathe easy because the league has been handed over to a guy who’s going to take good care of it. 

He’s going to give it his all. 

And if everything goes as expected, he’s going to become one of the all-time greats. 

The Spurs stole home court advantage in game 1, but had no delusions of taking game 2 without a fight.

Oklahoma City reset and were able to recreate the kind of game that kept them at the top of the Western Conference all season.

De’Aaron Fox did not suit up for the second straight game with a right high ankle sprain.

In addition, Dylan Harper went out with a hamstring injury. He appears to have initially aggravated it on this play:

He then collided with Chet Holmgren, forcing him out of the remainder of the game.

At the postgame press conference Spurs Head Coach Mitch Johnson stated he had not heard anything official and did not offer an update.

Spurs play-by-play announcer Jacob Tobey broke down the entire series of events quite concisely.

If the Spurs are without the services of Fox and Harper, it is likely Jordan McLaughlin will see more minutes. After game 1, Coach Johnson stated he and the coaching staff discussed bringing in J-Mac throughout the game but ultiamtely decided against it. For game 2, however, McLaughlin played seven minutes making an immediate impact on the game shooting 2 of 2 from beyond the arc. McLaughlin’s ball-handling skills may be of greater need for game 3.

Castle took the loss personally, referring to his nine turnovers as a key factor that left the door open for the Thunder to even the series. In his postgame conference, he was slumped behind the microphone. The former Rookie of the Year didn’t make a lot of eye contact and took the brunt of responsibility for the loss.

The 2024 NCAA champion did mention that with a series meeting every two days, there wasn’t time to wallow. A film study, some tweaking of the plans, and the Spurs head into game 3 in less than 48 hours. Memories have to be short as the team look to bounce back in front of the home crowd at the Frost Bank Center on Friday.

Meanwhile, Mitch Johnson called Castle a “warrior” and Victor Wembanyama praised Stephon’s game.

One thing for sure, the Spurs agree that whichever five players are on the court, they are connected and ready to play.

Go Spurs Go!

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How a quieter summer could slingshot Celtics toward future big moves originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston

In his end-of-the-season news conference, Boston Celtics president of basketball operations Brad Stevens noted he has a sign in his office with three questions that guide his roster-building process.

It reads: What do you want? What’s true? How do you get there?

The short answers: 1. The Celtics want more championship banners. 2. There are two teams out West making that goal feel a bit more distant, especially after Boston’s first-round playoff exit.

And the third question? Well, the fastest path back to true title contention might be patience.

Maybe that reads like an oxymoron. But as the Celtics navigate the NBA’s new financial minefield, a second season outside the luxury tax could open up the sort of big-splash pathways that recently paved the way to Banner 18.

Roll the clock back to the last time the Celtics dropped a Game 7 at home against a lower-ranked opponent. In the aftermath of a loss to the Miami Heat in the 2023 Eastern Conference Finals, Stevens made the bold choice to overhaul the team’s core, shipping out Marcus Smart and Robert Williams III while bringing back Kristaps Porzingis and Jrue Holiday.

The Celtics don’t have that sort of financial freedom this summer — but they might soon. If Boston stays below the tax for the 2026-27 season, it would open avenues to spending more aggressively in future seasons.

The Celtics saw a new punitive collective bargaining agreement steamrolling toward big-spending teams back in 2023 and got ahead of the curve. They launched into the 2023-24 campaign knowing their new-look core likely only had two seasons to chase a title. They got one and might have made a more serious charge at another if not for health woes.

Everyone knew a roster overhaul loomed last summer. Jayson Tatum’s rehab from an Achilles injury made it a little bit easier to stomach the possibility that Boston might take a step back. And while most expected the Celtics to morph into a lottery team, the Celtics stiff-armed all gap-year suggestions and stormed to the No. 2 seed in the East.

The 2026 playoffs, which ended in a first-round exit after Boston built a 3-1 lead against the Philadelphia 76ers, exposed some vulnerabilities that were otherwise masked during a vibes-filled regular season. The Celtics can start the process of patching some of those holes this summer and might still be a legitimate threat to emerge in the East, but it will be just the running start of what might evolve into a full cannonball back into the big spenders’ pool.

Let’s be clear here: The Celtics don’t do gap years. Their 56 wins last season — most of which came while Tatum rehabbed — proved that. We’re not saying they should punt on the 2026-27 season. The suggestion here is simply that, with one more year of financial restraint, Boston can position itself to splurge in a way that most contenders won’t often dare in the apron era.

If green runs deep in Boston, patience runs scant. The goodwill of the 2024 title is already erased by the team’s season ending earlier than expected in three of the past four seasons. No one wants to waste the prime years of the Jays. Not when Jaylen Brown will turn 30 in October, and with Tatum only 17 months behind him.

Alas, the new collective bargaining agreement, in the league’s never-ending quest to enhance parity, has created endless obstacles to crafting a roster that can compete for anything more than a two-year window. Teams that build through the draft could extend their windows — which is why San Antonio and Oklahoma City appear so daunting at the moment — but most teams will be doing the second-apron Hokey Pokey given the cost of carrying multiple stars.

We can see a pathway forward where the Celtics spend a bit this offseason, perhaps bolstering their frontcourt while hunting for players of all sizes who can help put pressure on the rim. Boston could utilize available exceptions to tweak their roster, scale above the luxury tax to start the season, then make an assessment of their title potential before the February trade deadline, with a willingness to trim salary if they’re not definitively in the title mix at that point.

The Celtics were trending toward a $540 million total roster spend if they had kept their 2024 title team intact entering the 2025-26 season. Hindered by repeater penalties for big spending while chasing titles in recent seasons, Boston was on pace to owe $240 million in luxury tax payments. Stevens won Executive of the Year, in large part, by trimming $350 million off the books, all while the Celtics remained competitive in the aftermath despite Tatum’s absence.

The Celtics need to examine all avenues this summer, even trade possibilities for core members like Brown and Derrick White. We suspect they’ll ultimately find it hard to deliver surefire upgrades to this roster, at least without taking on enormous risk.

Boston can shore up some weaknesses and utilize next season to figure out how to maximize both 1) a healthier Tatum and 2) a supercharged Brown coming off an MVP-caliber season where he was in the driver’s seat most of the year.

The Celtics can straddle two tracks. They can be competitive next season and be one of the favorites to emerge in the East, all while setting up the kinds of big additions that might position them to throw haymakers with Victor Wembanyama’s Spurs or Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s Thunder during the 2027-28 season.

One more year of keeping costs manageable might allow the team to load up the slingshot back to deep-pocket spending.

“Bucketheads” is LGHL’s men’s basketball podcast, hosted by Connor Lemons and Justin Golba. In every episode, they give you the latest scoop on the Ohio State Buckeyes and everything else happening in college hoops.

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On episode 205 of the Bucketheads Podcast, Justin and Connor welcome on Jam Hines from No Ceilings NBA to talk about the NBA Draft. Hines is one of the top NBA draft minds in the industry, and we picked his brain about all things Ohio State.

We talk with Hines about Bruce Thornton, John Mobley Jr., Anthony Thompson and Amare Bynum, as well as the overall 2026 NBA Draft and the current state of NIL and how it affects the draft.

Before that, we discuss John Mobley Jr. officially withdrawing his name from the NBA Draft pool and returning to Ohio State for his junior season.

Remember to like and subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen, leave a comment, and review! We have episodes every Thursday morning.

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Former Bulls GM Jerry Krause has never fully gotten the credit he deserved for building the Chicago Bulls into the second-greatest dynasty in basketball, behind only the Boston Celtics of the Bill Russell era, and it’s partly his own fault.

He was indeed a brilliant GM, but he was also an insecure man who wanted to make sure he got credit for his work. Champions, he insisted, were built by the front office, not the players. There’s truth to that, but it offended his players, notably Jordan, who derisively called Krause Crumbs, because he saw a bit of breakfast on Krause’s shirt one day.

But while Krause got very lucky when he got Jordan, since Houston and Portland both took big men in the 1984 draft, he built around his immense talent brilliantly.

Perhaps the greatest example of this was when Chicago traded for Scottie Pippen in the 1987 Draft, giving up Olden Polynice and some future draft picks.

Pippen, if you didn’t know, came out of Central Arkansas, and while he was the #5 pick, he was the furthest thing from a sure bet. How could you know? How could you be sure that a guy who spent four years off the radar at a minor NAIA school would turn out, that he could play at the NBA level and do so brilliantly?

Krause knew, and he moved decisively to get him. And in so doing, he created one of the most devastating pairs of defenders in the history of basketball.

Jordan was obviously the better player, but Pippen’s athleticism was not far behind, and when they decided that something wasn’t happening, well, it just didn’t happen.

This video starts with what they did to Toni Kukoc in the Barcelona Olympics, and goes on to show that these guys were nearly impossible to attack when they were fully engaged. And that was the vast majority of the time.

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The next Steph Curry. The next Steve Nash.

The next Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf…the next Brent Price.

The first Reed Sheppard – existentially speaking. He is not a Kevin O’Connor comparison – He is a solitary unit.

But what is he?

It seems like Rafael Stone has some lofty expectations. Rumors suggest that he sees Sheppard as a Nash-level talent. Stone publicly stated that this year, Sheppard made the Rockets’ offense better “whenever he was on the floor”.

Did he, though?

Rockets’ Reed Sheppard needs to grow

CleaningTheGlass says otherwise. The Rockets were -0.1 points per 100 possessions (PPP) worse when Sheppard was on the floor.

That’s nothing to worry about. Sheppard was a sophomore, and he got precious few reps as a rookie. Still, there’s no reason for me (and every reason for Rafael Stone) to exaggerate.

As a pick-and-roll ball-handler, Sheppard was fine, generating 0.90 PPP in those sets (62.1st percentile).

(Side note: Writing about this team is getting depressing. It feels like whenever I find a playtype stat, the Rocket in question is in the 60-something-ith percentile. Victor Wembanyama is probably in the 90th percentile in most defensive metrics before he gets out of bed. Le sigh).

Anyway, that’s a competent mark for a sophomore. For context, Tyrese Haliburton was in just the 51.4th percentile in pick-and-roll PPP as a sophomore.

That felt good to type. Of course, Tyrese Maxey was in the 85.1st. Oh God, the demons in my head! Sorry. Realistically, player development is too varied to expect much linearity. The lesson here is that Sheppard still has a lot of developmental paths he can take.

That makes assuming the best just about as irrational as assuming the worst. If we were to assume the median (which is either more rational or equally irrational, it’s a hard call), Sheppard is likely Abdul-Rauf-ish, or Payton Pritchard, or someone in that general tier. That’s fine, but the cornerstone Stone seems to see.

How does Sheppard hit that level?

Sheppard must be an all-time shooter

As a rookie, Sheppard hit 33.8% of his 2.7 triples per night. As a sophomore, he connected on 39.8% of his 7.0. That’s a massive leap:

He needs to make another one.

There’s ample room for Sheppard to generally improve. He needs to tighten up his handle as well. Yet, almost paradoxically, we’re looking at a shooting specialist whose swing skill is his shooting.

Sheppard is dangerous, but he needs to be lethal. Defenses respect his shot, but they need to fear it. It needs to consume their thoughts like the Telltale Heart. It needs to be understood that a Sheppard three that’s anything less than tightly contested is a worst-case scenario for any defense.

If that were the case, Sheppard’s handle suddenly matters less. A simple pump fake should be enough to free him up. He’s also a smart enough passer to run point if – and only if – his shot is that type of nuclear-level event.

Put differently: Sheppard has sufficient point guard chops to exploit an overly aggressive defense. He doesn’t (at least, currently) have enough in his bag to break down defenses that are responding to him relatively normally. We’ll never see another Steph Curry, but Sheppard’s shooting gravity needs to have a similar geometry-warping impact on the game.

Defensively? This may be who he is. Sheppard is small, and he’s not getting much bigger. He gets the steals and the blocks, and he also gets picked on. It makes him a questionable fit with Alperen Sengun, but that’s another article. Nobody should rule out any developments at this juncture, but the Rockets should be preparing for a world where he’s a long-term defensive liability.

So…Nick Van Exel? Mark Price? Chauncy Billups? Am I just practicing the ancient masculine arts of naming old athletes? Perhaps.

The point is there: There’s a large margin between Steve Nash and Payton Pritchard. Where Sheppard lands within that (arbitrarily defined) binary will determine whether he’s a star or a role player. If he falls into the latter camp, he’s simply not a cornerstone player.

No matter what Rafael Stone thinks.