Category: Sports News

Las Vegas Summer League is only days away and suspense is starting to build as rosters, schedules, and media continues to be released. 

The Raptors first game will be against Boston this Friday at 9pm ET. Leading up to this, let’s take a look at five outcomes we’d like to see from this year’s roster:

1 – A Summer League championship

This one is obvious. Last year we were close, but eventually lost the semifinal game to Sacramento. The roster construction isn’t dissimilar, but had the benefit of a few more players with past NBA experience.

Like most Summer League Teams, Toronto has a combination of sophomore players, this year’s draft picks, undrafted players, and guys with previous NBA or G-League experience looking for a spot. 

Collin Murray-Boyles, Alijah Martin, and Chucky Hepburn, last year’s rookies, will all make an appearance. How much they play is still up for debate, especially CMB, given his phenomenal playoff performance. This could also change based on whether or not they clinch a playoff spot. If they do, it wouldn’t surprise me to see them get extra time.

This year’s draft picks, Allen Graves and Jaden Bradley, should see significant minutes as they already have contracts worked out for next year and this will be their first chance to play against NBA guys. 

Seth Lundy is the only other rostered player with previous NBA experience, who was drafted in the second round in 2023 by the Clippers. The remainder of the roster is composed of rookies: Brandon Angel (previous Summer League experience), Aziz Bandaogo (Raptors 905 G-League international draft pick), Nate Bittle, Nimari Burnett, Jalen Celestine, Tyson Degenhart (905 last year), AJ Hoggard (905 last season), Tyreke Key (905 for the last two seasons), Jamarion Sharp (prior G-League and professional experience), and Malik Thomas. 

While a lot of those names may not be familiar to you or jump off the page, this roster has lots of potential. Solid guards, size, and enough experienced guys to keep them competitive.

2 – Promising back-up guard play

One of the obvious questions about the Raptors’ current construction is at the guard position. Shead is improving in leaps and bounds and hopefully Quickley will have fewer injuries this year. Even still, having another option to slot in behind those guys or in the event of injuries is a must. Alijah Martin is the most obvious choice, especially with his G-League performance last year.

This is the perfect opportunity to let some of these guys get some run against NBA competition. Decision making, distribution, and long range shooting will all be things Toronto can use this season, and any of the guards on this roster could make a case for being the next guy up.

It would also be awesome to see a little bit more of this:

3 – Potential for a seven-footer

The other obvious question about the Raptors’ current construction is centre depth. Losing Mamu is definitely a blow, meaning CMB who’s a bit undersized and Jackson-Davis who barely saw the floor last season. The League seems to be slowly shifting to requiring a 7-footer, in part to guard guys like Wemby, Holmgren, Kessler, and (when he’s healthy) Porzingis. The Raptors don’t have anyone to fit that bill right now, and while it may be a bit of a long shot, there is a trio of 7-footers on this roster that will be fun to watch and could, at a minimum, have potential to make a two-way spot or the 905 roster. This will be a great opportunity to see how these guys are able to 

So far, Jamarion Sharp looks like the frontrunner right now (as you will see in a second), but Nate Bittle, and Aziz Bandaogo both have the height and build to fit the bill.

4 – Allen Graves in a Raptors uniform

Nothing like seeing your first round draft pick suiting up to build suspense for the upcoming season. Plus, like most years, at least half of the fan base has questions about Toronto’s pick, so it would be nice for him to silence some of the doubters with a strong Summer League performance. 

He’s shown a lot defensively, from long range, and operating off the catch from the point in college. Seeing how that could potentially work in our system is super exciting. 

5 – An absolute defensive clinic

If there’s one thing Toronto hangs their hat on, it’s defence. Last year they started rough, but had the fifth-best defence by the end of the season. Martin, Hepburn, Murray-Boyles, and Sharp are among the players on this roster that prioritize and are known for their defensive prowess. Ultimately, everyone here is trying to prove they’re fit for this system and it would be nice to see the guys coming up the pipeline have the same mindset and ability at that end of the court.

It’s also the most fun part of Toronto’s game to watch.

The NBA Draft has come and gone, Free Agency is open, and you all are talking to one another A LOT. 1500 comments on this last discussion page.

I know things start to break, so here’s a new one.

As I’m publishing this, the NBA Free Agency moratorium is ending shortly. That means a lot of reported deals get signed, but perhaps there will be surprises too. Then later this week we’ll have NBA Summer League to cover. Dallas plays Thursday, Saturday, and Monday. A significant cohort of Mavs Moneyball staff is going, so if you’re going, let me know.

The Mavericks actually have a pretty good team, so expect decent enough basketball.

As usual, have fun within this space. Let me know if there are issues.

There’s a specific kind of anxiety that lives in your phone now.

You’re at the grocery store or walking the dog or doing whatever normal people do in July when basketball isn’t happening, and a notification slides down from the top of the screen. Shams Charania, ESPN. You see a player’s name. Kyle Anderson. You see the years. You see the dollar figure. But you can’t see the team. Not until you tap it. Not until you open the app and let the full post load and your stomach does that little half-second gymnastics routine while your brain screams please don’t be Dallas, please don’t be Dallas, please don’t be…

Toronto Raptors.

Oh, thank the basketball gods.

This has happened to me at least five times in the last week. And every single time, the relief has been real, physical, almost spiritual. Because the Mavericks are having a quietly excellent offseason, and a huge part of what makes it excellent is what they haven’t done.

Masai Ujiri’s front office drafted Morez Johnson Jr. at nine. They grabbed Sergio de Larrea later in the first round via trade. They appear committed to holding onto Kyrie Irving as he returns to the floor this year. They traded a heavily protected first-round pick and two future seconds for Santi Aldama, a 25-year-old combo forward who averaged 14 points and nearly seven rebounds last year. They have a year-two Cooper Flagg who won’t turn 20 until December. Dereck Lively II is reportedly 7’3” now with a 7’9” wingspan. The positive ledger is long and it’s real.

But I want to talk about the negative space. The signings that didn’t happen. The alternate timeline.

The Darkest Timeline Has a Name

Because here’s the thing: as dark as the actual timeline got after the Dončić trade, we can imagine a darker one. A timeline where Nico Harrison and Jason Kidd are still running this franchise, scrolling through free agent lists with the same philosophical blinders that produced the worst trade in franchise history and perhaps in professional sports.

Harrison’s front office had a type. If you came up through the AAU circuit, if you were a sneaker-convention fixture, if you were a recognizable NBA name who could be acquired through a relationship rather than through rigorous evaluation, you were in the pipeline and on the dubious trade-target list, where Jrue was perilously close to the Joker. If you were a 20-year-old guard lighting up the ACB in Spain? Probably not on the radar.

The Harrison regime shed its European connective tissue and never replaced it with an overseas find of its own. There was no impactful effort to scout or recruit international talent from overseas that turned over a single gem during that era. The scouting lens was narrowed in its final analysis to who Nico knew or approved of in the abstract, and the results looked like it.

So let’s play a game. Let’s look at a few free agent moves from the last week, imagine how each one might have played out in the somehow-still-here Harrison timeline, and collectively exhale.

Kyle Anderson → Toronto Raptors (1 year, $3.9 million)

Anderson is 32, entering his 13th season, and has been traded to five different teams in the last two years. He’s a solid, unconventional player. In the Harrison timeline, Slow Mo might have been the starting small forward, with Nico calling it “veteran leadership.”

Have a nice season in Toronto, Kyle.

Mike Conley → Boston Celtics (1 year, minimum)

Conley is 38 years old and entering his 20th NBA season. He averaged a career-low 4.5 points in 18 minutes a game last year. He is, by all accounts, a wonderful human being and a respected locker room presence.

He is also the exact player Nico Harrison would have signed instead of trading for Marcus Sasser. I can see the press conference. I can hear the phrase “championship run.” I can feel my soul leaving my body.

Enjoy Boston, Mike.

Keon Ellis → Brooklyn Nets (2 years, $18 million)

Ellis is 26 and a perfectly useful 3-and-D wing who’s a little undersized at 6’4” and not much of a playmaker. He’s not a bad player. He may even be a helpful one in Brooklyn.

That’s the point. A disciplined front office can pass on a decent player because he doesn’t quite fit the build. The old Mavericks too often treated available and familiar as if they were synonyms for sensible. Sometimes the sign of a grown-up front office is not that it avoids obvious disasters. Sometimes it just declines the wrong perfectly fine player at the wrong perfectly fine price.

Good luck in Brooklyn, Keon.

Javonte Green → Detroit Pistons (1 year, $3.95 million)

Green re-signed with Detroit at 32, and this is the one that you can imagine easily in a post-Luka delusional Nico timeline. If he were still here, Harrison could easily be envisioned welcoming Javonte Green as the quintessential “win now charade” signing.

A 30-something journeyman role player who fills a roster spot and lets a GM gesture toward activity without actually building anything. In the Harrison timeline, Green is your sixth man and you’re being told to feel good about it.

Tobias Harris → San Antonio Spurs (2 years, $31 million)

Harris signed with a division rival for $31 million fully guaranteed, pushing his career earnings past $330 million. He’s turning 34 this month. He’s a fine player who will give San Antonio respectable minutes next to Wembanyama.

He’s also the kind of name and price tag that would have had Harrison feeling great about himself at the introductory press conference and Mavericks fans doing cap sheet math by December.

The Spurs can have him. Bon appétit.

Kyle Lowry → Retired

And then there’s Kyle Lowry, who announced his retirement this week. He’s 40 years old. He played 14 games last season as a locker room mentor in Philadelphia. The Raptors are signing him to a one-day contract on Monday so he can retire in Toronto, where he belongs.

In the Harrison timeline, Nico is on the phone before Kyle even gets the chance to schedule that ceremony. He’s pitching a championship run. He’s talking about those 40-year-old knees having one more season in them. He’s describing a veteran mentorship role that somehow also involves 22 minutes a game.

The Raptors are trying to set up a podium, and Nico Harrison would be trying to talk Kyle Lowry out of using it.

What the Negative Space Tells You

None of this is meant to disrespect any of those players. They’ve all had real careers and earned their money. The point is about organizational philosophy, and what it reveals when a front office consistently declines to do the thing that the previous regime would have done reflexively.

The Ujiri front office didn’t sign a single one of those players. They drafted a dynamic frontcourt player from Michigan, whose coach they just hired. They drafted a guard from the top Spanish league who’s drawing blatantly unfair early comparisons to another nifty passer with a Euro league past. They traded for a young combo forward on a team-friendly deal. Everything they’ve done has felt intentional. Even the things that haven’t worked out feel like they came from a plan rather than from panic.

John Hollinger of The Athletic named the Mavericks free agency “losers” this week, arguing that the frontcourt additions are making Cooper Flagg’s development trajectory as difficult as possible.

I think that read misses the phase of the build.

The Mavericks are rebuilding. You don’t pass on Morez Johnson Jr. at nine because Daniel Gafford is still on the roster. You don’t decline to trade for a 25-year-old combo forward at Aldama’s price because PJ Washington is still here. Those are veteran contracts, and veteran contracts move. There are months between now and the start of the regular season, and there is at least another year before genuine playoff aspirations should extend beyond a first-round exit at best.

Ujiri has been in the job for five proverbial minutes. The roster has open surgery scheduled. Diagnosing the patient mid-procedure and calling it a failure is the kind of analysis that sounds smart in a column and evaporates the moment a single trade clears the logjam that everyone, including the front office, already knows is there.

I’d love to be proven wrong on the timeline and see meaningful basketball deep into the playoffs out of nowhere. But calling this offseason a loss because the rebuild isn’t finished in week one? Bleak and dour stuff from a guy who should know better.

The Mavericks aren’t done building. The offseason still has moves to make and questions to answer. But right now, every time a Shams notification slides down your screen and the team turns out to be someone else, you can exhale.

The adults are running this.

Have a nice season, gentlemen. Genuinely. Just not here.

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It's a 6-pack of action in the NBA Summer League on Monday, with most eyes set on a dynamite matchup between No. 2 pick Darryn Peterson and No. 3 pick Cameron Boozer, as the Jazz take on the Grizzlies.

Other top 10 players that should be in action include Sacramento's Darius Acuff Jr, the debut of Brooklyn's Mikel Brown Jr (no. 6), and Atlanta's Kingston Flemings, the no. 9 pick.

Check out my NBA Summer League Predictions and free NBA picks for Monday, July 6.

NBA Summer League predictions for July 6

Pick
Memphis Grizzlies moneyline	-133
Sacramento Kings moneyline	+150
Atlanta Hawks moneyline	+100

Today's Summer League Picks

Grizzlies moneyline (-133 at Kalshi)

Utah Jazz rookie Darryn Peterson starred in his debut in an overtime win over Atlanta, pouring in 21 points on a cool 11-for-21 shooting.

Cameron Boozer looked great in his debut too, piling up 15 points on 7-for-11 shooting, four boards and four assists in a blowout win over OKC.

Different positions, but this is the first of many head-to-head matchups we will see at the pro level, and I think both want to shine.

Peterson wins the duel, but this Memphis Grizzlies roster is a little supercharged, with legit star Cedric Coward on the roster, and former 2023 Round 1 picks Olivier Maxence-Prosper and Taylor Hendricks battling for roster spots.

Kings moneyline (+150 at Kalshi)

Darius Acuff quite literally fit his pre-draft profile to a T in his debut: he led the Sacramento Kings in scoring with 25 points and wasn't bashful about hoisting them up, going 9-for-29 from the field while also adding three assists.

As I predicted, the hungry Milwaukee Bucks hammered the split Warriors squad, but then followed that up by getting beaten by 20 points by the Nets.

Acuff sat out the Kings' 91-85 win over Warriors Blue, and they may have unearthed a rotational big in Victor Lakhin.

The 6-foot-11 Russian, who went undrafted last year, led the Kings with 12 points, six rebounds and an assist.

The Bucks have yet to showcase their lottery picks, Braydon Burries and Nate Ament, in Summer League play, but the Kings should roll here.

Hawks moneyline (+100 at Kalshi)

The Oklahoma City Thunder Summer League roster consists of their three 2026 draft picks: Aday Mara, Bennett Stirtz, and Otega Oweh; 2025 2nd-Rounder Brooks Barnhizer; and 14 undrafted players, ranging from as far back as 2022 (Buddy Boeheim!) to eight from this last draft.

It's an experimental roster – as the Thunder are contender-ready, with even their top draft picks likely riding pine behind a slew of talent.

It's a different story for the Atlanta Hawks, who need their picks to fill legit roster spaces on a team that should be in the NBA Eastern Conference mix.

The three expected to make the most impact looked great in their debut.

No. 9 pick Kingston Flemings had 14 points, nine assists and four steals, while 13th pick Zuby Ejiofor had eight points and 11 boards (seven on the offensive end). Second-year man Asa Newell tied for the scoring lead with 15.

They should again be prominent over a Thunder side that's really just trying to catch some kind of lightning in a bottle.

Monday’s NBA Summer League parlay

Grizzlies moneyline

Kings moneyline

Hawks moneyline

+776 at Kalshi

This article originally appeared on Covers.com, read the full article here and view our best betting sites or check out our top sportsbook promos.

After two summer league games — and two DNPs for Mikel Brown Jr. — Nets fans may finally get to see their prized rookie on Monday.

The Nets split their first two contests tilts at the California Classic, dropping their opener Saturday at Sacramento before beating Milwaukee 89-69 the next day.

Brown, Danny Wolf and Nolan Traore all sat out against the Kings, while they had an even more threadbare lineup Sunday. But Brown — the No. 6 pick in last month’s draft — is expected to make his pro debut Monday against Golden State.

“The approach for the last game, have our roster guys back into the rotation. The hope is that Mikel is ready to play,” Nets summer league coach Dutch Gaitley said. “We’ll see about Danny, see how his back’s feeling.

“But these guys did a great job of setting the tone of ‘this is how we play Brooklyn basketball.’ And we need our guys to continue to strive for what our guys did today. And if our Brooklyn roster can play how our guys played [Sunday], we’re gonna have a lot of success.”

Brown missed a total of 14 games during his freshman campaign at Louisville with a lower back injury — eight games from December to early January, then six at the end of the season.

Now the Nets hope Brown will make his pro debut, though Gaitley wouldn’t put a percentage on the point guard suiting up.

“That is above my pay grade,” Gaitley said. “I think the plan is that he is going to play, but I don’t make the final decisions.”

The Nets held the Bucks to just 32 .324 percent shooting Sunday. Ben Humrichous had 15 points, eight rebounds and shot 5-for-12 from 3-point range. Hunter Sallis — James Harden’s cousin — added 15 points, six assists and six boards while Dion Brown was a plus-27 before limping off at the end.

The Nets sat Wolf, Nolan Traore Trarore (knee scope), Egor Dëmin, Ben Saraf, Drake Powell, Tyler Bilodeau and Chaney Johnson.

The trade that brought the Nets rookie Joshua Jackson becomes official Monday. Milwaukee didn’t have rookie Nate Ament available for the same reason.

Five days ago, the Boston Celtics agreed to trade Jaylen Brown for Paul George and draft compensation. The trade could not be made official until today, so the team hasn’t been able to officially discuss the details or explain the thought process behind the trade. That airspace has invited rumors, inuendo, conspiracy theories, educated guesses (and some uneducated ones), and every opinion under the sun.

At 4PM today we’ll hear from Brad Stevens and Bill Chisholm directly. We’ll get their official statements on the trade and we’ll hear them respond to many questions. I’m just not entirely sure if we’ll hear the full truth of what transpired and what it means for the future of the franchise.

I don’t have a crystal ball, but here are some categories of subjects that are sure to be addressed.

Financial Flexibility

One reason they may have decided to move on from Brown was his contract. Several smart people have pointed out that he’s getting supermax money and probably wouldn’t be ranked by many as a top 5 player in the league (or pick your range). Which makes him a bit overpaid in a league where the 2nd apron is treated as a defacto hard cap. Sure, even the biggest Jaylen Brown fans might accept that, but that’s why you lean into cheaper, high value contracts (like the guys on rookie deals and Payton Pritchard who’s on one of the highest value deals in the league). It also doesn’t explain why you would take back Paul George, widely considered one of the worst contracts in basketball.

I have a feeling that Brad Stevens will talk about flexibility on some level, because flexibility is one of his favorite buzzwords. Chisholm will field questions about how much of this was an ownership mandate, but it doesn’t really come across as a cost cutting move because they didn’t actually cut much cost in the deal.

We probably won’t get the full picture of how much money influenced this deal.

Analytics

One of the most popular topics being discussed in the aftermath of this trade has been the role of analytics in the evaluation of Jaylen’s value. The “well actually” articles and data analysis deep dives have centered around his advanced analytics that can be looked at to paint a pretty negative picture of Jaylen’s value to a basketball team.

I’m not going to go into detail pro or con on those numbers. I think analytics are very much a critical part of the game today and need to be considered as part of the overall analysis. The limitations to Jaylen’s game are well documented and don’t always need numbers to back them up. But it has always seemed to me that his positive impact almost always outweighed his struggles.

This is going to be a very delicate thing to address at the press conference. How do they justify the deal with numbers without it looking like they are trashing their former pillar of the team going out?

If he is really a net negative on the court, why did the team invest so much into him in the first place? Why wouldn’t they have traded him earlier? What changed and when did it change? Again, I’m skeptical we’ll hear the full truth about how much the numbers influenced this decision.

The Human Element

There are a lot of other theories and rumors that I’m just going to lump together under the heading of “the Human Element.”

Did Jaylen want his own team? It has been reported that he never asked for a trade, so I’m guessing that won’t be a stated reason. We don’t know how much he indicated a desire to the team to move on or if he was planning on demanding a trade later.

Was the team frustrated with the way Jaylen spoke about the past season on his twitch streams? Honestly, this seems weak even writing it down. Many pearl clutching words have been written and spoken about his “favorite season” comments, which were addressed by him and easily explained away. I don’t buy that this was a big issue and I highly doubt that it will be named explicitly by the team as a reason for the trade.

Did Jayson Tatum want to move on? Personally, I doubt this has anything to do with it and even if it was, (for so many reasons) they would never admit it to be true or have anything to do with the trade.

Jaylen was an extremely popular player with the fanbase and in the community of Boston. The team will undoubtably be very careful with anything they say about him. If anything, they could and should lean into celebrating him as a person and beloved member of the franchise. So if there’s anything personal going on behind the scenes, we won’t hear about it today.

Style of Play

This might be the only thing that makes some sense to me, but on the other hand it doesn’t. Maybe Jaylen shoots too many contested two pointers for the analytics team to be comfortable with. Of course, those are sometimes the only shots that you can get in the playoffs when all the better shots are taken away. So it helps to have a guy that can make those shots.

Brad Stevens stressed the need to put more pressure on the rim. Well, Jaylen does a much better job of that than Paul George, who has evolved into more of a deep threat perimeter player than anything else.

Maybe the team wasn’t confident that Jaylen would be ok sliding back into the 1B role he had before (related to the above section on The Human Element) and George will be happy being a 2nd or 3rd option. That’s not a great reason to make this trade either, and most likely won’t be named as a primary reason.

Timing

One big question that should absolutely be addressed is “why now?” The word that keeps coming to mind is “desperation.” By all accounts, it seemed like the team did not have good offers for Jaylen but were urgently motivated to complete a deal now. Why?

In any negotiation, you need to have a feel for what your walking away price is and be prepared to walk away if you don’t get it. Somehow, they either put a much lower value on Jaylen than most would have expected, or they were so desperate to get a deal done that they accepted under market value. Couldn’t they have gotten this same kind of deal later in the summer or even at the trade deadline?

Are there other deals coming? If so when? And why couldn’t this have waited to be combined with those additional moves?

Not sure if we’ll get satisfactory answers for this topic, but it will be interesting to hear their responses.

Must See TV

One thing I know, I will be watching and listening very carefully to what is said (and isn’t said). We need answers from the Celtics leadership. I’m just not sure if the answers will tell the full story or if they will be satisfactory to fans.

The cognitive dissonance of this still puzzles me. Brad Stevens has “won” so many deals over the years and has built up so much trust. It is just so jarring to see him “lose” one of this magnitude. What does that mean for the near and long term future? Is there anything that he can say in this press conference that is going to restore part of that trust? I guess we’ll see.

We will, of course, report on the presser. Feel free to use this post as an open thread for comments below.

Ex-Celtic reveals Jayson Tatum's reaction to Jaylen Brown trade originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston

It’s no secret that most Boston Celtics fans aren’t pleased with Wednesday’s trade that sent superstar Jaylen Brown to the Philadelphia 76ers. But what does Brown’s longtime teammate Jayson Tatum think of the move?

Tatum finally broke his silence on Friday with a social media tribute to Brown. On Monday, former Celtics guard Jeff Teague — an ex-teammate of Tatum and Brown in 2020-21 — shed more light on how Tatum feels about the C’s sending his co-star to an Eastern Conference rival.

“I talked to my boy yesterday, my boy JT motivated,” Teague said. “It ain’t no slight because he was legit like, ‘Damn, can’t believe that s— went down.’ You know what I mean? That’s some bulls—, really.

“You know what I said, I was like , ‘S—, what you gonna do? I was like, ‘S—, the pressure’s on now, killer.'”

You can watch the clip here.

Tatum has every reason to be irked by the trade. Not only did the Celtics part ways with Brown after 10 seasons, but they also shipped him to the team they blew a 3-1 series lead against in Round 1 of this year’s playoffs. With Brown now on their side, the Sixers will be an even tougher opponent in 2026-27.

Paul George will look to step up as the new 1B to Tatum’s 1A next season. The 36-year-old veteran averaged 17.3 points while shooting 43.9 percent from the floor in 37 games for Philly last season. Brown, meanwhile, set career highs in points per game (28.7), rebounds per game (6.9), and assists per game (5.1) in 71 games to propel Boston to the No. 2 seed in the East.

Tatum will have plenty on his shoulders as he looks to help the C’s overcome Brown’s departure. After missing most of the 2025-26 season with an Achilles injury, he’ll reprise his role as Boston’s No. 1 option.

The real question is, which members of Boston’s supporting cast will step up to help the team exceed expectations yet again?