Category: Sports News

In a pool full of lottery guards in this draft, Mikel Brown Jr. may have the biggest upside of them all when looking at the talent that he possesses. Many look at what he did for Team USA in the U19s, and he was arguably the best player on the floor, even with AJ Dybantsa on the roster. He was able to show some of those skills with Louisville in his freshman year, but a lingering back issue held him back. Outside of the injury, Brown has the intangibles of a strong combo guard coming out of the draft.

What makes Brown stand out from the other projected lottery guards is his size, as he stands close to 6’5 with a 6’7 wingspan. Add his athleticism to that, and you have a guard who can score at all three levels, making it easy to shoot over some of his defenders and also finish at the rim. Brown has a nice twitch in his game that helps him get to the lane, and whether it’s a flashy move or a deceleration, he’s going to find a way to get to his spot.

His ball-handling might be the best in the class, which allows him to create his shot at a high level and score wherever he wants. The most intruging part of Brown’s game is his 3-point shooting, and his green light is undeniable. Whether it was a side step or a step back, he was going to launch the shot if he felt like he had the space. He took close to eight attempts per game and made 34% of them, and though his percentages could be better, the hope is that his decision-making gets better in the big leagues.

Brown’s 3-point shooting came most out of the pick-and-roll, and his quick release allows him to be more dangerous in those situations. In a league where perimeter shooting has become key, Brown can definitely make a difference on any team he goes to, but his upside in that area is why he could be one of the better guards in the draft.

The shooting is nice, but Brown’s playmaking also makes him special as a prospect. He has shown the ability to make simple reads, but he’s also not shy about making advanced passes to his players. He averaged 4.7 assists per game at Louisville, and there’s no doubt they trusted him with the ball in his hands. There are some things to worry about in that front, as sometimes he can try too hard to make the perfect pass, which in part led to his 3.1 turnovers per game.

In the NBA, defenses are only going to get tougher, which might make it hard to decide early on if Brown can be a lead guard in an offense or more of a combo guard.

Brown’s defense will also be something to watch out for, as he has the length to make an impact on that side of the ball, but his frame is what will need to fill out in order for him to take that next level. With his back injury, it might be beneficial for him to grow his lower body, but his upper body will help him against some of the more physical players in the league.

It’s uncertain where Brown could land in this draft: he could either go as early as No. 5, or he could still be there when the Hawks draft at No. 8. If he is still there for the Hawks, it wouldn’t be a surprise if he were their pick. He gives the team another ball handler who can create their own shot and offers perimeter shooting, which is the Hawks’ bread and butter.

Good day, Pounders. I was scrolling through social media and found this post:

I remember early in Wemby’s NBA career seeing him enter press conferences with a book. I have asked a few times what he was reading and considered reading along. I found his creating a book club with the Spurs to be on par with his personality.

As a high school teacher, I tend to look for summer activities to keep me from binge watching television for two solid months. So here is my proposal — let’s start a PtR book club.

Who’s with me?

My first proposal is Expensive Basketball by Shea Serrano. Previously I have read his 2017 book Basketball (And Other Things). Serrano’s writing is humorous and informative, hard to put down once you get into his flow. The chapters are short, most are 10-12 pages, so we can break it up over a few days/weeks.

The first chapter of Expensive Basketball is “The Erosive Terror of Tim Duncan,” which seems like a good omen.

If you are interested and have any books to add to the list for consideration, please join in the comments.

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Kristaps Porziņģis, Warriors reportedly have ‘growing momentum' toward new deal originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

With the 2025-26 NBA season officially over, it’s time to shift gears to what is a pivotal offseason for general manager Mike Dunleavy and the Warriors.

One of the biggest offseason questions for Golden State is what the organization will do with center Kristaps Porziņģis. ESPN’s Anthony Slater reported Wednesday, citing team and league sources, that the two sides are progressing toward a contract resolution.

“The Warriors, team sources said, want to bring back Porziņģis but prefer it to be on a short-term deal at a reduced rate from the $30.7 million he played for last season,” Slater wrote. “There is growing momentum toward a deal to bring Porziņģis back, league sources said.”

Porziņģis was on an expiring $30.7 million contract and is slated to become an unrestricted free agent this offseason. The 30-year-old originally signed a two-year, $60 million extension with the Boston Celtics in 2024, then was acquired by the Atlanta Hawks in July 2025 in a three-team trade.

Golden State acquired Porziņģis in an NBA trade deadline deal with the Hawks in exchange for forward Jonathan Kuminga and guard Buddy Hield in February.

In 15 games and 11 starts with the Warriors, Porziņģis averaged 16.1 points, 5.3 rebounds, 2.3 assists and 1.1 blocks per game.

Keeping the 7-foot-2, 240-pound big man would make a lot of sense for a Golden State team that needs more length and size on its roster.

Porziņģis, with his ability to stretch the floor as a 3-point shooter, offers a unique skill set that makes him a solid fit alongside Warriors stars Steph Curry, Draymond Green and Jimmy Butler.

With momentum building toward a new deal between the two sides, and with Golden State’s front office expressing high interest in a reunion, it will come as a surprise if Porziņģis is not on the Warriors’ roster come next season.

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There have been 75 first-round picks in the long, 80-year history of the New York Knicks.

Some of them have been iconic. Some of them made the Hall of Fame. Some of them went on to be known as something other than a Knick. And, as we all know, a lot of them were pretty forgettable.

There’s an exclusive list of those 75 within Knicks lore. In the first 79 years of the franchise, only eight of them had ever won a title with the franchise that drafted them, all between 1965-72:

Bill Bradley (2nd overall, 1965)
Dave Stallworth (5th overall, 1965)
Cazzie Russell (1st overall, 1966)
Clyde Frazier (5th overall, 1967)
Bill Hosket (10th overall, 1968)
John Warren (11th overall, 1969)
Dean Meminger (16th overall, 1971)
Tom Riker (8th overall, 1972)

But now, as we bask in the glory of the end of a 53-year title drought, a ninth name has been added to the list.

Pacôme Dadiet was born on July 27, 2005, in Aubagne, France, a decent-sized town of 50,000 in southern France, just a few miles from the Mediterranean coast and the city of Marseille. Basketball ran in the family. His older brother, Maxence, represents their dad’s home country internationally, representing Côte d’Ivoire.

As one of the four foreign-born players on the roster, his journey to this moment was a lot different than most. He didn’t go through the American AAU and high school circuits before embarking on a college career, he played for youth clubs as a teenager and built his NBA stock overseas.

In fact, from the age of 6, he played in the Saint-Charles Charenton development program, similar to the way the big European soccer clubs do with young players. By the time he was in his teens, he was rubbing elbows with some of the best young talent in France, including future teammate Mo Diawara and lottery pick Tidjane Salaün.

He moved on in 2020, joining the youth program of Centre Fédéral before eventually joining Paris Basketball in 2021-22, where he was a star for their U21 team at just 16. In that season, he was even recalled for eight games to play sporadic minutes for the premier club in LNB Pro A as one of the youngest players in Europe.

His upward trajectory was stalled when he looked to leave France as a whole, signing with Ratiopharm Ulm in Germany, but his debut was delayed several months due to a contract dispute. He was also relegated to their farm team, which played in Germany’s third level of competition.

In 2023-24, he finally got a chance to be a regular starter for a strong European club, and while his stats didn’t pop out, he fit the mold of what teams were looking for in an international player: a raw, versatile wing with all the right physical traits.

After Victor Wembanyama and Bilal Coulibaly went in the lottery in 2023, there was a run on top French talent in 2024, with Alex Sarr, Zaccharie Risacher, and Salaün all going in the top 10. Add in the non-French prospects going in the lottery, like Matas Buzelis and Nikola Topić, and the conditions were right for Dadiet to slip into the first round, so after the Knicks traded out of No. 24 (and later No. 26), they decided to use their first first-round pick in three years on Dadiet at No. 25.

The Knicks have had a history of drafting French natives in the first round, a history that has, unfortunately, been pretty bleak. Frédéric Weis is one of the most infamous picks in franchise history, selected 15th overall in 1999 just after the team’s improbable run to the NBA Finals. We all believed in Frank Ntilikina, who was picked eighth in 2017, but he was out of New York after his rookie contract.

It didn’t help that the team’s aversion to the second apron contributed to them drafting Dadiet. He agreed to a buyout with Ratiopharm Ulm to immediately sign with the team instead of being a draft-and-stash, and as such, the team asked him to take just 80 percent of his Year 1 slot value, the absolute minimum, to save $900,000 against the salary cap.

He agreed to the move, one that’s relatively unprecedented, and it resulted in the Knicks being able to acquire Karl-Anthony Towns. How about that?

Dadiet had a quiet Summer League, and it was pretty clear that he wasn’t going to play much as a rookie, especially with Tom Thibodeau as coach. He was raw, he wasn’t really ready, and his minutes were limited, even if he was technically in the Opening Night rotation in the 2024-25 opener against Boston, albeit briefly.

In his first two seasons, it’s been more about what he’s done down in the G-League and over the summer. He had consecutive 30-point games down in Westchester in March while occasionally suiting up for the big league club.

Over the last two seasons, Dadiet has only played in 47 games, scoring just 78 points. He’s scored double figures just twice, and one was in a garbage-time barrage in Denver. Even in this postseason, where he’s played seven games and has put up a higher points-per-game average due to just how many blowouts the Knicks had, he didn’t log a minute in the NBA Finals.

He still has two years remaining on his rookie contract, but even as the first two years of his NBA career haven’t resulted in much, he’s made some history.

Because newly drafted players come into the league much younger than they did in the 1970s, Dadiet is the youngest NBA champion in Knicks history, barely beating out his countryman Diawara. He’s not able to buy a drink in the United States until late July.

He’s also added his name to the list of Knicks’ first-round picks to win a title, a list that includes a legend of the game in Clyde Frazier. He also now has a 12.5% chance of becoming a senator like Bill Bradley, if the rules follow accordingly.

Congrats, Pacôme!

–

(P&T will be doing player-by-player article tributes over the next few weeks to commemorate the special team that ended our long, half-century nightmare)

Seeing the New York Knicks become world champions for the first time since 1973 with my own eyes was easily the most chaotic 24 hours of my life — and perhaps the best.

The drama absolutely wasn’t limited to the San Antonio Spurs hardwood as New York’s orange and blue heroes pulled away in the dying seconds to win Game 5, 94-90 in an explosive 16-point comeback.

Diehards who made the last-minute trip to Texas endured travel nightmares — and a share of distasteful fans who didn’t quite extend southern hospitality after the loss.

Bad actors behaved in a deplorable manner, just as pseudo-Knicks fans did terrible things in NYC to Spurs faithful.

I saw a lunatic in a white pickup truck laugh and point a gun at two Knicks fans minding their own business waiting to cross a street — and other New Yorkers told me they got egged like Victor Wembanyama during the finals while in Manhattan, among more stupidity over a damn game. 

What did the group do? They sprayed a bottle of champagne and smoked cigars on the San Antonio Riverwalk as if nothing had happened. 

The duo briefly held at what the driver thought was a humorous little gunpoint incident shook it off right after too. Some true and good-hearted Spurs fans — like the vast majority Saturday were — even waited with them until their car arrived.

No New Yorker cared about the nonsense, which plenty back in the Big Apple were equally, if not more, guilty of that night.

The Knicks were finally kings of the NBA again.

That’s what I’ll remember about my impromptu and haphazardly planned trip, one that cost a pretty penny but was still a discount compared to a good seat at Madison Square Garden.

I don’t care about the 4 a.m. wakeup call and early bird flight to Dallas Saturday, where a good friend of mine drove us the next four hours down I-35 to the greatest live game either of us ever witnessed. 

We stopped at a Buc-ees 146 miles north in Temple and saw several other Knicks fans en route to the Doobie Brothers’ beloved city as part of New York’s takeover. 

After road tripping the four hours back to Dallas Sunday morning, it’s an afterthought that my 3:36 p.m. flight home landed almost exactly 12 hours later at around 3:36 a.m. 

We had a series of nightmare delays, starting with air traffic control issues, then weather, and finally hearing our pilot “rejected” the plane we were supposed to take.

But hey, 12 hours is a lot quicker than 53 years.

More than thinking about the aimless time wasted and changing terminals at Dallas-Fort Worth, my mind goes to the tons of Knicks gear I saw throughout the airport of happy fans heading back home — eventually, that was.

Everyone you passed had a smile and offered a fist bump — high-spirited TSA officers in Dallas gave me a Knicks cheer and high five as well. Plus, I struck up fantastic conversation with fellow fans waiting for the same flight.

I must have heard “are you going to the parade?” at least a dozen times.

We were all overjoyed, chatting about coach Mike Brown’s fabulous core, including the legend himself, Jalen Brunson, who is expected to return next season when the banner goes up at MSG. 

Nobody was thrilled about being stuck, but if you have to be in an airport for hours, doing it with a unanimously united bunch of New Yorkers is the way to go.

Knicks lovers overran the Alamo Saturday afternoon as you couldn’t turn a corner in San Antonio without seeing team gear at Riverwalk bars, restaurants, hotels, or, truthfully, anywhere.

It carried over at the Spurs’ home court inside the Frost Bank Center, where New Yorkers owned the noise factor and booed Wemby during warmups to an almost ground-shaking decibel level. 

Just about my entire section in the rafters was filled with journeying Knicks fans, standing with palpable nervous energy almost the whole game, eager to witness long-awaited history.

I’ll never forget the pure elation on the away crowd’s faces when OG Anunoby hit the title-clinching free-throw with 7.7 seconds to go. 

Seeing the Larry O’Brien trophy hoisted at mid-court was a family affair as owner James Dolan got a fever pitch of electric praise from the huge crowd that remained. 

Strangers in the stands cried, hugged, shook hands and offered congratulations to one another as if it were a personal achievement like delivering a healthy baby or getting a major promotion at work.

If you yelled “Go New York Go New York Go!” on your way out of the arena, 50 voices would send it back.

It gave you chills — and a glow that will last much longer than memories of the grueling voyage there and back.

Two Max, or not Two Max? Celtics face difficult roster decisions originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston

As the Boston Celtics plot what the core of their next title team might look like, the pursuit of any marquee talent on the trade market doesn’t necessarily answer the biggest question facing the team. 

Is it still feasible to have two max-money superstars as the long-term centerpiece of a championship roster?

Whether it’s leaning into the familiar superstar tandem of Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, or any new-look superstar duo as rumors swirl about Boston’s potential pursuit of Giannis Antetokounmpo, the Celtics are navigating the math problems created by a prohibitive new collective bargaining agreement. 

The Celtics already felt the CBA squeeze last summer. Boston got ahead of the crunch and delivered the 2024 title season by building a deep and expensive roster. The team is now paying the late fees on that splurge, not in dollars but in diminished depth. Boston had to watch key pieces from that title team walk away, and traded others, to shimmy down off the second apron last summer. 

The Celtics can reset the pesky repeater penalties that make sustained spending nearly impossible by staying out of the luxury tax again this season. That’s a rather annoying hurdle for a team that has superstar players in their prime and yearns to build the best core around them immediately. Stomaching two max contracts — and putting a strong cast around them — becomes easier in the two years after the reset button is hit, but the new CBA is setting up a cycle where it’s basically impossible to splurge for more than those two seasons (teams pay the steep repeater rates for being in the luxury tax in three of four consecutive seasons).

Before last summer’s teardown, the Celtics were staring at a projected $540 million roster cost. Brad Stevens won Executive of the Year, as voted by his peers, in large part due to maintaining a competitive team despite chopping over $350 million off the books.

And while Boston’s younger players thrived throughout the 2025-26 season, and the team displayed unexpected depth while finishing second in the East, the absence of those veteran players was accentuated as Boston came unglued and kicked away a 3-1 series lead against Philadelphia in Round 1 of the Eastern Conference playoffs.

That delivered the Celtics to this latest offseason crossroads. For the better part of the past half-decade, it’s been a no-brainer decision to build the best possible team around the Jays core. Now, Boston has to ponder if that’s still the most prudent path. 

Roster building gets a lot more complicated when two players account for 70 percent of the salary cap.

The question becomes, in what feels like a new parity era of basketball, are teams better off building around one big-money star? And are the most valuable players in the league now the superstars that only command, say, 25 or 30 percent of the cap?

The spotlight on roster building is brighter now in the aftermath of the Knicks’ title season. New York has one max-money player in Karl-Anthony Towns, who commands 34.6 percent of the cap next season. Jalen Brunson only accounts for 22.9 percent of the cap after agreeing to a team-friendly extension in 2024 that could have been far more lucrative if he had waited another season.

Brunson has been celebrated for giving the Knicks financial flexibility, though his decision had plenty of other factors — including injury risk management and the potential to get back to the table and negotiate a true max deal sooner. Undeniably, Brunson’s lower salary has allowed the Knicks to build out a deep roster with OG Anunoby (25.8 percent of the cap next season) and Mikal Bridges (20.3 percent of the cap next season) also on reasonable deals. The Knicks swung big on those two trades and were rewarded. 

New York will start to feel the squeeze of the tax moving forward, particularly if it yearns to keep all the pieces of its championship core. But the construct of the team this past season begs the question of money allocation.

Which brings us back to the Celtics. It’s somewhat maddening that Boston built a homegrown core and is essentially being penalized for those players becoming All-NBA talent. The league should take measures in future CBAs to limit the tax penalties on teams that draft and develop. But that’s not going to solve the current roster riddle.

Neither does trading for someone like Antetokounmpo. The presence of any two max-contract players leaves the Celtics tiptoeing around the tax line this season. They could potentially scale above the tax to start the year, assess their title chances, and plan to dip back below the tax line before season’s end.

But the reality is that Boston — and the rest of the league as well — is now limited in how it can build around two stars, and teams are going to ride a wave of spending to avoid apron penalties and brutal tax bills. 

Whether the Celtics keep the Jays core, or pursue Antetokounmpo or any other max-money star, they will be banking heavily on internal development of younger players. Guys like Neemias Queta, Baylor Scheierman, Hugo Gonzalez, and Jordan Walsh might need to make another leap beyond the large strides made last season and greatly outkick the value of their current contracts. There are tougher choices about the futures of players like Derrick White (18.4 percent of the cap next season) and Sam Hauser (even at only 6.6 percent of the cap next season). 

The Celtics have access to both the mid-level exception and a big-money traded player exception that could allow them to add impact talent this summer. But just how much they can spend must be balanced against the need to avoid the tax again. It’s a funky jigsaw puzzle, but one that won’t get easier to solve until next summer. 

No one wants to wait, though. Not with the Jays in their prime. Not with Tatum healthier after missing much of last season while rehabbing from an Achilles tear. Not with the Knicks parading around Manhattan with their first title in a half century.

The Celtics have intriguing choices to make this summer. So much of the attention will fall on the names of potential pursuits, especially given the megawatt star power of someone like Antetokounmpo. But this puzzle is bigger than that one piece. It’d be a lot easier to make that sort of move if the Celtics were in position to spend big to maximize what might be a limited window of a player on the backside of his career.

Boston’s path back to title contention hinges heavily on figuring out a math problem that the entire NBA doesn’t quite have an answer to yet.

Warriors reportedly consider Clippers star Kawhi Leonard win-now trade to make originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

The Warriors could take another crack at pursuing an NBA superstar they targeted before the league’s Feb. 5 trade deadline last season.

Golden State reportedly discussed a trade with the Los Angeles Clippers for forward Kawhi Leonard in the final days ahead of the deadline before Clippers team owner Steve Ballmer stepped in and essentially killed any potential deal.

However, ESPN’s Anthony Slater reported in a story published Wednesday that, despite Ballmer still firm in his preference not to deal Leonard, the Warriors once again view the seven-time All-Star as the ideal win-now move this offseason.

“Team sources continue to indicate [Leonard is] the type of established wing talent they would pursue in a win-now maneuver, depending on the price point,” Slater wrote. “The problem: League sources said Ballmer has maintained a firm stance against a Leonard trade, preferring to continue building around his star forward.”

The soon-to-be 35-year-old averaged a career-high 27.9 points, 6.4 rebounds and 3.6 assists per game on 50.5-percent shooting from the field and 38.7 percent from 3-point range in 65 games with the Clippers during the 2025-26 NBA season.

Leonard instantly would provide Golden State with one of the most lethal scoring tandems in the league alongside Steph Curry if the Warriors were to make a deal with their Western Conference rival, but for now, it seems unlikely.

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