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So he’s not LeBron James.

But is Trey Lyles the next best thing? It’s entirely possible! We’ve seen the beating he’s put on the Wolves in recent years, but for those who wiped their memories opted out of watching any Kings games the past three to four years, I decided to find out more about the 30-year-old.

Lyles’ last NBA stint was with Sacramento from 2022 to 2025. Joining me is The Kings Herald’s Will Griffith. He has covered the Sacramento Kings closely for over 10 years and hosts The Kings Herald podcast, a bi-weekly podcast about the Kings.

Will graciously spent some time with me to talk about the Wolves ninth-ish man in the rotation:

Leo Sun: First and foremost, a big congratulations to you for surviving another season of the Sacramento Kings. That’s no small feat! You’ve watched and covered god knows how many years of dysfunction there. You’ve also seen a lot of players come and go along the way. The Wolves signed Trey Lyles to a veteran minimum contract last week. His last NBA stint was with the Kings, where he played over three seasons. How would you summarize his time in Sacramento?

Will Griffith: Trey Lyles’ time in Sacramento was a mostly positive experience that was hindered pretty much only by his injuries and subsequent lack of availability. Beam Team season Lyles was looking like he’d quickly be an all-time role player fan favorite – a great locker room vibes guy, who spread the floor, opened the lanes for Fox to spray out to and could, on occasion, give you small-ball center time without being a total sieve out there.

After that, there’s a LOT of “What If?” when it comes to Trey. ‘23-24 was a season where the Kings were doing everything to keep their heads above water, Trey missed 24 games with a calf injury that lingered all season and then eventually an MCL sprain. His numbers were similar enough when he played but he just never quite looked right.

That third full season was a shit show franchise, with a civil war in the locker room and Trey on the losing side and I really do think that the eventual firing of Mike Brown, trading of De’Aaron Fox, promotion of Doug Christie to head coach and the lack of a point guard really killed what was left of the positivity that Lyles brought to the team. He was a professional, never spoke out of turn, but Kings fans in the know understood that Lyles was gone as soon as De’Aaron Fox was.

Sun: That’s great context to know. A good basketball player. Injury worries. Inter-team drama. Sounds like a Timberwolf to me! So you mentioned his basketball ability briefly. Can you expand a little more about his greatest strength(s) and weakness(es) on the court? Or if it’s easier, is there a player comparison that comes to mind?

Griffith: There isn’t a great deal of mystery with Trey. He’s a good-to-very-good shooter when healthy, he’ll pull down rebounds at a healthy level and he won’t make a lot of mistakes. He’s a below average defender, but not a pushover.

I don’t have a player comp for him but I’d say as someone looking from the outside, I’d rather Lyles than a guy like Kyle Anderson. He’s in Minnesota to eat minutes while the starters are resting and he’ll do just that, and with flying colors. If at any point in the season, he’s expected to be anything more than a pinch starter for you for a game or two, I’d start to get a little worried. 

Sun: We don’t tolerate SlowMo slander here at Canis. You’ve been warned. Alright, well floor spacing is an absolute must for this iteration of the team, so that sounds like a good start. However, did he ever have any frustrations in a limited bench role as a 7th-8th man? Now that he may be in a even more limited 8th-9th man role for the Wolves, do you think he could grow discontent?

Griffith: I have zero worries about that from Trey Lyles, especially after coming back to the NBA and to a very good professional situation in Minnesota, after a nice season with Real Madrid. Trey’s a good locker room guy and I have only good things to say about him in terms of his personality and his fit with the Wolves.

Remember: his last NBA experience was with a Sacramento Kings squad with more pressure and ego, and less logic leading it than the OceanGate submersible. If Trey left without incident there, he’ll be fine in this franchise’s more than capable hands.

Sun: That’s good to hear. If things went so well there in Sacramento, then why did his time come to an end?

Griffith: The business answer: the Kings knew they were going into a rebuild and Trey is very much a complimentary piece on a team with playoff or championship aspirations.

The more complicated, but just as truthful follow-up? He was a Fox guy and every single Fox guy outside of Keegan Murray was purged as quickly as possible from the Kings franchise. He would have been a perfectly fine vet for a bad Kings squad, his loyalties, however, weren’t toward the right Kings star. 

Sun: Is that “Kings star” in the room with us, right now? Sorry, low blow. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a John Calipari Kentucky Wildcats connection between Fox and Lyles. Well, let’s move past that and focus on the now. How do you like Trey’s fit with this Timberwolves roster, existing as one of the few bigs on the team?

Griffith: In a limited, clearly understood role off the bench? I love it. He won’t replace Naz Reid, but he will fit in, hit open shots, and provide the spacing that LaMelo and Ant need. He won’t wow you on defense, but his rebounding is a little underrated and he can give you some minutes as a small ball five. As a 7th-9th guy, he’s perfect for LaMelo and Ant. 

Sun: This is the second time you’ve mentioned his defense. It’s a perfect segue for my next topic: the Wolves recent success as been synonymous with their excellent defensive acumen. You already foreshadowed your answer, but just how would you sum up Trey Lyles on that end of the court?

Griffith: Underwhelming. He’s a touch slow, not an eyepopping athlete, so he won’t be blocking many shots. He’ll put a body on someone and try, but he’s not making an All-Defensive Team any time soon.

Sun: I guess that’s fair, considering he’s a 30-year-old NBA journeyman on a vet minimum. What about the intangibles? Was Lyles a good “veteran presence” in the locker room, or have much of a voice? The Wolves recently lost Mike Conley and Kyle Anderson in free agency, and only have 1 player over 30 on the team. Lyles would be the only other.

Griffith: I’d say Lyles is a good vet presence but not overly loud or showy with it. It was obvious that he was well liked by his teammates and press and had zero off-the-court issues in his time in Sac. When times are good, he’ll be very popular with his teammates, he just isn’t giving you the Captain America hype moments during a seven-game losing streak.

Sun: There’s going to be a lot of loud personalities in that Wolves locker room, so it might behoove Minnesota to have that calm presence. Well, let’s wrap up with this: if there’s something Wolves fans should know about Lyles, what would it be?

Griffith: In the Mike Brown years, the Kings would hand out a Defensive Player of the Game chain and crown and the whole team would take a picture, and Trey, no matter where he was in the picture, flashed fours on his hands. It took all of like 3 games into the gimmick where the entire team was hitting this pose, holding four fingers out on each hand, and despite a lot of bad times in the seasons that followed, he was well regarded enough that players still held up 4’s out of love for him. On the off chance that the Wolves suddenly have a gimmick like that, or start popping locker room pictures after the game, Trey will throw up those 4’s and you will ask yourself, what the hell does that even mean?

It means “4 Life”. It was just a thing he started in high school and has kept it going ever since.

Sun: Wow, that’s some Adam Silver stuff right there. I love that story and it’s cool to get to know a little bit more about the end of bench addition. Here’s to hoping he’s a likeable big man that can help us “rebound” from the loss of Naz Reid.

Again, I can’t thank Will enough for the conversation. You can find his content on the Kings Herald website, or on BlueSky/Twitter.

SAN FRANCISCO — Cameron Carr is present. 

With the adjustment process that comes with being the Lakers’ first-round pick in the 2026 NBA Draft. With his summer league teammates. With the tasks at hand.

So present that he told The California Post he wasn’t on social media when it was revealed June 29 that LeBron James wasn’t going to return to the Lakers for his 24th NBA season after eight seasons with the franchise. 

And because he’s as present as he is, he didn’t think too much about the news despite expressing excitement about the idea of playing alongside James, as well as Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves, during his June 26 media availability.

“In all honesty, [I] was probably thinking more about how this was going to go,” Carr told the Post. “Me and my [summer league] teammates, I wasn’t really caught up in the moment of everything going on. Just to be present and be engaged with what’s going on, especially with this team. Got a lot of older guys, things can pass by really fast. And so I was just trying to be in the moment and learn as much as I can and don’t get taken away from outside distractions of what’s going on.”

What’s going on now for Carr is his ongoing acclimation from college basketball player to NBA prospect to NBA player, with him officially becoming a Laker on Thursday after signing his four-year, $16.8 million rookie scale contract. 

He took another step in the process by making his summer league debut in the Lakers’ California Classic loss to the Warriors on Friday.

“It’s really just been trying to be a sponge, soak as much as I can in,” Carr told the Post of his approach. “Just learn. I feel like this team that I got around me right now, they’ve got a lot of vets that I can learn from, ask questions to. So just trying to catch up and [not] look like a rookie, stand out. That’s been my emphasis.”

The 6-foot-5 Carr stood out in his first summer league game, scoring a game-high-tying 19 points on 7-of-15 shooting and making 5-of-11 3-point attempts. 

He followed up with an even stronger performance in his second outing, recording 26 points on 7-of-16 shooting (4 of 9 on 3s) and 8 rebounds in Sunday’s double overtime win over the Spurs.

Proclamations about a soon-to-be rookie’s NBA career can’t be made during summer league.

But Carr showed off the skill set that made him such an intriguing prospect that led to him being projected to be selected just outside of the lottery, between picks Nos. 15-20, before the Lakers traded up one spot to select him at No. 24. 

He made spot-up catch-and-shoot shots, including deep 3s, but also showed off his abilities to be a threat off movement when the Lakers involved him in their off-ball actions — sets he’ll likely run with the NBA team. 

Carr made multiple good passing reads when running the pick and roll, including pocket passes to the roll man after drawing a second defender. Being a primary or even secondary ball handler won’t be his responsibility as a rookie because the Lakers already have multiple guards higher than him in the pecking order, but it was still an encouraging sign.

“You try to blend them, you try to give them a little bit of both,” Lakers summer league head coach/assistant coach Ty Abbott said of Carr’s role. “Obviously, it’s different here. He’s super talented, and you want to try to play through him and give him opportunities to play, feel free, score. And it’s a really good way for him to build confidence going into our training camp or our season. But you also have to put him in a position to be playing off the ball and give him a taste of what it’s gonna be like when he gets to that big team so he can be successful when that time comes.”

Carr has emphasized the importance of his defense, saying he wants to show he can be the team’s best defender.

He wasn’t put in a lot of positions in which his on-ball defense was tested during the California Classic, but he had a signature blocked 3-pointer against the Warriors and Spurs. Carr knows he needs to get stronger to become the defender he’s striving to be.

The Lakers are confident he’ll become that even as a rookie.

“His mindset, the fact that he said that that’s something that he wants to do is a great start,” Abbott said when asked what makes him confident Carr can be a positive defender during his first season. “Physically you see the length, you see the athleticism, he’s got an ability to read the game. He’s not out there and completely lost. He kind of understands, and if he does make a mistake, he recognizes it pretty early. So for him, it’ll just be about probably adding some strength, maybe some weight and then just getting the reps. Getting the reps, you just gotta go out there and do it. There’s no better way to learn how to guard good players than to guard good players.”

While there are five more summer league games in Las Vegas, the Lakers have undergone a roster reconstruction that’s currently left a need on the wings.

Does Carr, whose 7 ¼-foot wingspan was the longest among players 6-6 or shorter at the combine, see that as an opportunity for him to take advantage of?

“Man, at the end of the day I start from ground zero,” Carr told the Post. “I’m a rookie, so I got to come and prove everything: What I can be or what I can do. So first thing I’m gonna do is just try to be the best, most consistent dude I can defensively and not bring as many lapses. And when they rely on me, step up in those areas, especially defensively.”

Carr’s not looking too far ahead.

He’s present. 

“Just get into the rhythm,” he told the Post on the feedback he’s gotten. “Fall into the rhythm, especially at this level. It’s not college anymore. That was the biggest thing I had to learn, it’s a different game, more physical. So just get used to those types of bumps, that hand-to-hand combat and stuff. Just trying to catch up. I feel like it’s all about learning, being a sponge, being in the moment.”

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It’s a Tuesday morning. 4:51 a.m. The time of day that doesn’t really exist. The streets are quiet, save for the sound of a car door closing, a motor willing itself uphill in the distance. Then nothing, just the gentle caress of the passing wind. 

Inside, you lie in bed, watching as the black begins to fade, thinking about the day ahead, the jobs to do, why you’re awake at this godforsaken hour. Where the time went. 

Your mind wanders.

Then it hits you: Kel’el Ware is now a Buck. And he’s about to break out. 

The prelude

Hailing from Little Rock, Arkansas, Ware was destined for big things from birth, his mother naming him after Superman’s Kryptonian name, Kal-El. And by the time he was a high schooler at North Little Rock High School, he was already doing supernatural things, averaging 16.2 PPG, 9.1 RPG, and 4.1 BPG per game as a junior before upping those numbers to 20.3 PPG, 12 RPG, and 5.7 BPG as a senior. 

A consensus five-star recruit, Ware began his college career playing for the Oregon Ducks but transferred to Indiana after a second-half-of-the-season reduction in playing time saw him finish the campaign averaging just 15.8 MPG as the backup centre. For the Hoosiers, Ware got back on track, putting up 15.9 PPG, 9.9 RPG, and 1.9 BPG, production that earned him the 17th spot on NBADraft.net’s 2024 Big Board and a comparison to All-Star big Jarrett Allen. 

Heating up

Drafted 15th overall by the Miami Heat, Ware has played 141 games (70 starts) over his two-year career, averaging 10.3 PPG, 8.3 RPG, and 1.1 BPG in just 22.2 MPG during that span—numbers that compare favourably to Allen’s first two seasons as a pro. Standing 7’0” tall, he’s a walking double-double and an absolute monster on the glass, vacuuming in rebounds last year at a better rate (21.1 TRB%) than any Buck has since Giannis in his 2019-20 MVP season (22.1 TRB%), per Basketball-Reference. 

Offensively, Ware is not a shot creator by any means—68% of his twos and 100% of threes were assisted—and he could certainly better leverage his physical gifts, using his size and athleticism to go through defenders more than he does. In fact, according to Cleaning the Glass (CtG), he drew fouls on just 6.6% of his shot attempts, placing him on the 16th percentile for bigs, right between ex-Buck Brook Lopez (6.8%) and new Hornet Naz Reid (6.6%). 

Ware is, however, a finisher at the rim and a lob threat at all times, ranking eighth in the league with 137 dunks on the season despite playing at least 162 fewer minutes than everyone ahead of him (besides Giannis). That is, he’s a vertical spacer. He’s an analytics darling too, at least in terms of his shot profile, with 50% of his shots coming at the rim, 16% coming from the midrange, and 34% coming from three (per CtG). More importantly, he makes his long-range shots, hitting from both the corners (27/67, 40%) and from above the break (61/152, 40%). 

But it hasn’t all been highlight flushes and swats into the stands. Ware’s 2025-26 season was marred by a fluctuating role—he was in and out of the starting lineup (34 starts in 77 games)—and inconsistent minutes. Some nights, he’d play north of 30 minutes; others he’d be relegated to totals in the teens. There were even occasions he wouldn’t play at all. At its worst, Heat coach Erik Spoelstra publicly criticised Ware following a loss to the Boston Celtics in which Ware played fewer than nine minutes, saying, “I get it with young players—you sometimes subconsciously play poorly to say ‘Hey I’ll play poorly until you play me the minutes I think I deserve.’ That’s not how this works.”

Whatever the reason, one trend is impossible to ignore—Ware is far more productive when playing heavier minutes:

Cream City rise?

Now in Milwaukee, traded for the franchise’s best ever player—who just so happens to also be a seven-footer taken with the 15th overall pick in the draft—Ware has big shoes to fill. And while no one in their right mind expects him to replicate what Giannis did for Milwaukee and the Bucks, he is expected to help this team rise back to prominence. To do so, he’ll need to tap into all that potential.

First, he’ll need to find his role. As things stand, the Bucks have multiple options at the five, with Ware, incumbent starter Myles Turner, and Jericho Sims, who received increased playing time as last season went on and picked up his player option earlier this offseason. The simple answer is to embrace the youth movement—start Ware and move Turner for draft capital, but that doesn’t appear to be happening anytime soon. According to The Stein Line’s Marc Stein and Jake Fischer, “Sources say that the Bucks have indeed received some trade interest in veteran center Myles Turner in the wake of the Giannis Antetokounmpo blockbuster, but one league source asserted Friday night that Milwaukee is not actively engaged in moving him.”

Realistically, this is the right move by Jon Horst and the Bucks. After a disappointing first year in Milwaukee, Turner’s value is likely at an all-time low, so holding onto him and rebuilding his trade value could be a shrewd move. On another line of thinking, as one of the team’s few veterans, Turner has value as a mentor to Ware—after all, he knows a thing or two about being a versatile centre who can protect the rim and space the floor. Retaining Turner also puts Sims in a better position too, as the team’s third-string centre who can step into a bigger role in case of injury (and/or trade). The internal competition between the three also cannot be overlooked; the Bucks need Ware to ascend and this won’t happen without him being tested.

What the Bucks can’t afford, however, is to stunt Ware’s development by holding him back. That is, he needs minutes—plenty of ‘em, and preferably as a starter. Turner might be better than Ware now—not in this writer’s opinion, but there’s certainly a case—but he won’t be better in a few years’ time and he certainly isn’t going to lead Milwaukee back to relevance. Neither will Sims. Ware, at least, has a shot at it.

This season, then, expect a breakout. Watch as Ware collects double-doubles like Turner does Lego, drop your jaw when he stuffs one home or sends one flying, hold your friends back when he hits his fifth or sixth or seventh three in a game. But pay attention to the little things too. Keep an eye on his free-throw rate, nod approvingly when he makes the right rotational read, pump your fist when he sprints back in transition defence. Rejoice when he does all of these things consistently.

When he does, 4:51 a.m. won’t bother you no more.

How do you see Ware faring in Milwaukee? Share your predictions in the comments.

Jazz fans could not have asked for anything more than what we have seen during the first two games of the Salt Lake City Summer League. On day one, Ace Bailey looked both huge and improved. On day two, Cody Williams flashed confidence and capabilities beyond what we have seen during his first two seasons. And on both days, Darryn Peterson has been electric – spectacular shotmaking and better than expected playmaking combine to paint the picture of the birth of a star.

Not to dampen any enthusiasm for the team’s final outing in the 2026 Salt Lake City Summer League, but, according to Sarah Todd, we will not be seeing any of the Jazz’s July Big Three in their against the Thunder.

This is not to say that there’s nothing to watch for. Three players who have not been ruled out have stood out to me so far, and each should have bigger roles without Darryn, Ace, and Cody taking shots and playmaking opportunities.

Players to Watch

1. Blake Hinson

Hinson began proving himself at the end of last year (to the extent that we couldn’t play him and accomplish our tanking-centric goals), and the Jazz have rewarded him with a two-way contract heading into the 2026-2027 season. That confidence has been rewarded thus far in Salt Lake City Summer League. While he’s not putting up double-take worthy numbers (11 points per game on pedestrian efficiency), he has popped off the screen during his playing time. Reports that he has lost weight and gained muscle over the summer appear accurate, and he’s moving around the court with pace and force. I attended the Jazz game on Saturday versus the Hawks, and my friend, introduced to Hinson’s game for the first time, gave him the nickname of “the trebuchet”, for two reasons – his confidence from downtown, and the reckless abandon that he threw himself into the action while fighting for rebounds. While the nickname may not have much staying power, Blake Hinson might. He will likely be the #1 option for the Jazz against Oklahoma City, and a Utah win may depend on the efficacy of Hinson’s explosive shooting.

2. Jaxon Kohler

The hometown kid! Kohler attended American Fork High School before heading East to attend Michigan State University, and showed out in front of his day-ones on Monday verses Memphis. He poured in 11 points (including a three-pointer), grabbed 7 rebounds, and played impressive defense against talented and ginormous youngster, Cameron Boozer. Thurl Bailey correctly referred to him as a “true energy big”, which he’ll need to be if he wants to gain ground in his uphill battle to make the big leagues. It’s true, it’ll be a tough translation for the not-too-athletic, not-too-long Kohler to carve out a spot in the NBA, but huge humans who know where to be, play hard, and can hit three pointers sometimes just make it all work. Kohler has a chance to make a name for himself in the post against OKC and their lottery-selected Giant Aday Mara (assuming that he plays). In particular, keep an eye out for his jump shot looks – that’s the ultimate X-Factor for his NBA transition.

3. Justin Harmon

Harmon has been chugging along on the Salt Lake City Stars for the past two years, and has quietly starred for the Jazz’s Summer League Team in their first two games. He’s a well-built 190 pounds at 6’4, and has been a clear positive on both ends of the court so far. He got three steals in the first game, and 2 blocks in the second, always moving and using his athleticism to make his presence felt defensively. On offense, he’s impressed me with his physicality and aggression, bullying his way into the paint, especially in the first game against Atlanta. I’m not sure there’s something here outside of Summer League – the jump shot has been inconsistent throughout his career, and he’s a bit too poor of a playmaker for someone that small – but he may be able to take a path to the league similar to the one walked by Elijah Harkless, as a bulldog defender who succeeds with physicality. I’m interested to see how he performs as a primary ball handler without Peterson or Williams to take the ball up the court.

How to Watch the Salt Lake City Summer League?

Who: Utah Jazz vs Oklahoma City Thunder

When: Tuesday, July 7th | 7:00 MT

Where: Jon M. Huntsman Center, Salt Lake City, UT

How to watch: Prime Video, ESPNU, League Pass, KJZZ, Jazz+

Phoenix didn’t have a first-round pick on draft night. They bought one.

To get Koa Peat at No. 30, the Suns sent their own No. 47 back into a four-team knot with the Knicks, Mavericks, and Lakers, and attached two future second-round picks — 2029 and 2033 — to close it. That’s a real toll for a player who, seven months earlier, looked like one of the safest bets in the draft.

Trace the arc, and the price tag starts to make sense as a story rather than a stat line. In November, Peat dropped 30 points on defending national champion Florida in his college debut and was being talked about as a top-14 lock. By June, ESPN handed Phoenix a D for the pick (tied for second worst in the entire draft) while CBS Sports’ Adam Finkelstein handed out an A- and predicted a decade-plus career. Two credentialed evaluators, same player, same 48 hours. That’s not a disagreement about box scores. It’s a disagreement about whether the league still has room for what Koa Peat actually is.

What he is, is a bully (in the nicest possible way). The question is whether that’s still a job title in this league.

The Frame Nobody Argues About

Start with what nobody contests, because for a divisive prospect, it’s unusually uniform. Peat measured 6’7″ barefoot at the combine (6’8″ in shoes), 245 pounds, with a 6’11.25″ wingspan and an 8’8″ standing reach, numbers that, paired with a bloodline that includes an NFL offensive lineman brother in Andrus Peat, produce a frame scouts keep calling “NBA-ready” before they’ve said anything else about him. Finkelstein’s post-draft line was basically a thesis statement: strength, physicality, and readiness to play through contact right now, jump shot notwithstanding.

The résumé backs it up, and it’s not projection. It’s a paper trail. Four straight Arizona state titles. Four USA Basketball gold medals. A Final Four run in his only college season, on an Arizona team that finished 36-3, the best record in program history, with Peat named West Regional Most Outstanding Player. Suns GM Brian Gregory leaned on exactly this after the draft, framing the pick around makeup and work ethic rather than a finished offensive game.

That’s also, not coincidentally, the exact résumé that turned Paul Millsap into a four-time All-Star out of the back half of a draft, and made Carlos Boozer a leading man in Utah and Chicago despite never being the shape of player front offices say they’re building around anymore. Which is the real premise here: the league’s stylistic pendulum has swung hard away from Peat’s archetype over the last decade, and his rookie year is an early test of whether it’s swung back far enough to make room again.

The Shot Everyone Keeps Talking About

Here’s where the room actually splits. Peat shot 35.0% from three at Arizona on 20 attempts, seven makes, across a full season. 7 makes? You could fluke 7 makes. The more honest tell at that sample size is free-throw shooting, and his 62.3% mark there is the number that’s been flashing yellow all along.

Then, instead of protecting that number, Peat’s camp did the opposite of what fringe-lottery prospects usually do in a pre-draft process: he rebuilt the shot from scratch. After the Final Four, he hired shooting coach Chris Johnson and reworked his mechanics — lower release, more arc — and unveiled the new version for the first time in NBA Draft Combine shooting drills, mandated under the league’s collective bargaining agreement, in front of every team in the league. It did not go smoothly. Peat shot 24% in the spot-up drill, 28% in the three-point star drill, 40% in side-mid-side, finding rhythm only off the dribble (50%) and at the line (70%). The Athletic’s Sam Vecenie reported that evaluators were less bothered by the misses than by the mechanics themselves — a shot that looked, in his framing, still under construction rather than simply cold.

Sit with how unusual that sequence is. Most prospects on the bubble play it safe in May — low-volume catch-and-shoot reps, nothing that risks moving the needle backward. Peat’s camp instead bet that a public rebuild, staged in the highest-stakes evaluation window of his career, was worth the downside of looking worse on tape than he actually is.

Read one way, that’s the kind of aggressive self-improvement plan player-development staffs love to inherit. Read the other way, it’s a tell that the old shot was unsalvageable enough that starting over was the only real option. Peat’s own explanation to CBS Sports split the difference: he described trying to “shoot the ball the same way every time” and, on the three specifically, “bringing it down a little bit lower” for more arc — a description that matches exactly what evaluators saw, even if the results hadn’t caught up yet.

Reading “Undersized” Correctly

The headline critique: undersized four, limited handle, a below-the-rim athlete, is fair. It’s also being used to answer a question it was never built to answer.

Block rate and vertical rim protection measure length and verticality. Peat was never going to win that test, and he doesn’t need to, because his defensive value was never supposed to come from help-side shot-blocking. It comes from strength at the point of contact and switchability that shows up in matchup data more than box scores — guarding a wing on a switch without getting hunted, banging with a bigger four in the post without losing the physical argument outright. Even the sceptical scouting reports kept circling back to the same word for his defense: versatile.

The real swing question is processing speed against NBA pace, and nothing in his résumé actually tests it. Late rotations, foul trouble against craftier post scorers, split-second discipline against NBA shot creators — that’s an experience gap, not a talent gap, and it’s the kind of gap a strong development environment closes with reps. It’s also precisely the stress test that four state titles and a stack of gold medals, for all they prove about makeup, cannot simulate.

The Comp Spectrum

Floor — early Carlos Boozer / Taj Gibson. If the jumper never becomes a real weapon and the athletic profile caps where it looks now, this is the outcome: a below-the-rim four who earns everything through post position and offensive rebounding. Still useful — a high-motor rotation piece who out-competes more talented players for loose possessions — just not a closing-lineup fixture on a good team.

Median, best fit — Paul Millsap. The comp worth sitting with longest, because it’s less about ceiling or floor than about a stylistic archetype that’s already proven durable in exactly this body. Millsap was never long, never a plus vertical athlete. What he was, for over a decade, was a strength-and-touch scorer who punished mismatches from the mid-post, rebounded above his size, and defended through anticipation rather than length — guessing right a half-second before the play developed instead of recovering with athleticism after the fact. If Peat’s shot lands anywhere between respectable and unspectacular, and his defensive processing catches NBA speed over a year or two, Millsap is about as close a stylistic match as recent history offers.

Ceiling — Draymond Green. The reach comp, and it should be treated as one. The connective tissue: an undersized four substituting brain for length, plus a passing feel that already grades above position average — Peat posted 2.6 assists per game as a college freshman, unusual production for his size and role. The Draymond outcome needs the playmaking to scale into real offensive initiation and the defense to scale into legitimate multi-position switching at NBA physicality, at the same time. Low probability for almost anyone. Worth naming anyway, because it’s the shape of bet the Suns are actually making by spending three second-round picks to move up for a player who fell all the way to 30.

Where He Actually Fits in Phoenix

The organizational logic is straightforward, even if the roster math is messier in year one. Phoenix leaned on Dillon Brooks and Royce O’Neale at the four for most of last season, played small most nights, and got exposed on size in a first-round sweep at the hands of Oklahoma City. Peat answers that specific problem directly: an actual power forward who can defend post-ups without conceding size on a roster that’s been thin at exactly that.

The traffic is real, though. Ryan Dunn and Rasheer Fleming — both still finding their NBA footing, both barely in the rotation down last season’s stretch — occupy adjacent lanes, something Gregory acknowledged himself after the draft. None of the three is a plus shooter yet. All three profile as high-motor, defense-first forwards still figuring out what they are. How much Jordan Ott is actually willing to play bigger — something Phoenix mostly avoided last season, even against a Thunder team that punished them for it — will decide how much runway any of the three gets, Peat included.

The Actual Bet

Strip away the report-card noise, and the pick reads as a single wager: that competitive processing and physical readiness are scarcer and more predictable than shooting touch at 19, and that shooting touch is the one variable in Peat’s profile most likely to move with patient, targeted development. Teams have been burned betting on jumpers that never arrived before. They’ve also spent the better part of a decade underrating exactly this archetype — the strength-first, feel-over-length four — in a league that occasionally overcorrects into smallball for its own sake.

Millsap is the version of this bet that pays off quietly, over years, in a jersey nobody outside Phoenix is thinking hard about. Early Boozer or Gibson is the version where the shot stalls and Peat becomes a useful reserve instead of a building block. Either way, the sample that actually answers the question — NBA reps, not combine drills or high school gold medals — starts this fall. Everything before it, reworked shot included, is still just scouting.

One thing you won’t be able to account for… is the smarts. That Koa will bring in spades.

“He’s really good. “I must say, strong, big brain, vocal. Kind of has everything on the floor. He’s really smart for his age. I think that he’s a great add-on.” — Rasheer Fleming

Celtics owner Bill Chisholm puts all his trust in Brad Stevens originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston

New Owner Syndrome is a very real thing, and we’ve seen plenty of billionaires make the sort of impulsive decisions that set their organizations back immeasurably. What’s ironic is that new Boston Celtics owner Bill Chisholm is seemingly doing the exact opposite, essentially putting all of his faith in president of basketball operations Brad Stevens to chart a path back to long-term title contention.

And yet there are still those who want to cry foul amid Boston’s admittedly jarring roster overhaul.

If you’re displeased about all of the talent that has gone out the door over the past two summers, we get it. The Celtics have had to make painful decisions about roster construction, first pivoting off key members of the championship core last summer, then trading Jaylen Brown for a questionable return last week. Stockpiling talent and raising banners is a lot more fun than trying to figure out how to navigate a restrictive new collective bargaining agreement designed to make it difficult for teams to stay atop the mountain.

But at a time when it would be easy to demand more immediate return on a $6 billion investment, Chisholm is allowing the Celtics to navigate the short-term pains that might afford the team the longest window to be a true championship contender. The team is steamrolling towards an opportunity to splurge next summer but has had to navigate sometimes unsavory choices to give themselves the best opportunity to maximize that moment when it arrives.

“I know people feel like, ‘Oh, there must be a smoking gun somewhere around the money.’ That’s just not what this is about,” Chisholm said at Monday’s press conference. “I can say it — and I’ll keep saying it — but I’ll also prove it to you. When we have the opportunity, we’re going to [spend]. And we’ve given ourselves the flexibility to do it now. So it’s fine to keep asking the question because I know we have to prove it. And we will.”

Even a few years ago, a team could simply open its checkbook and build a contender. But the latest CBA put in guardrails that don’t just punish teams financially for sustained spending, they basically cripple teams in terms of roster building. The NBA has entered a parity era.

The teardown of the 2024 championship roster in the summer of 2025 was happening regardless of who owned the Boston Celtics at that point. Boston got ahead of the new CBA in the summer of 2023, trading for Jrue Holiday and Kristaps Porzingis, the two highest-paid players on the team at a time before Jayson Tatum and Brown’s supermax extensions kicked in. Everyone knew the team had two seasons before the CBA taxman came knocking.

If Boston had repeated as champions in 2025, there could have been some consideration to lingering in the tax. But Tatum’s Achilles rupture — along with Porzingis’ health woes and a disappointing second-round exit — sealed the decision to start navigating some less desirable roster changes. We can certainly debate whether the Celtics should have been more willing to pay Luke Kornet’s next contract, particularly given how unexpectedly competitive the team was last season. But Boston clearly made the decision to get its finances in order and this roster overhaul was set in motion.

Yes, the Celtics saved $350+ million as part of the roster teardown. They went from a projected 2025-26 salary of $540 million with its title core intact and finished just below the $188 million tax line. The biggest gain wasn’t the financial savings but the ability to eventually reset the repeater tax penalties that were making the team prohibitively expensive in that moment.

If you want to quibble about last summer’s roster moves, you might suggest that Boston should have been more willing to move off Brown at that point. Maybe the trade packages would have been more enticing and Boston could have navigated a legitimate gap year, which could have also delivered a lottery player in a deep draft.

Instead, the Celtics waited until this summer to rip the Band-Aid with Brown.

Do we believe the Celtics could have gotten more in a Brown trade package? Absolutely. If we have one gripe it’s that Boston seemingly moved quickly to get a deal done early in the offseason when we’re not certain time would have diminished the return.

What really hurt the Celtics, though, were inflated expectations.

The expected return for Brown ballooned when Boston’s flirtation with Giannis Antetokounmpo became public. Even if you didn’t want the Celtics to push all in to get Antetokounmpo, you were conditioned to believe a top 10 player might be obtained in any Brown deal. That largely ignores that Boston would have had to include multiple first-round picks and young talent to entice Milwaukee to take its offer.

The expected return for Brown got further inflated when an older Kawhi Leonard and a much younger Walker Kessler each recouped two unprotected first-round picks and additional swaps as part of their hauls. It was reasonable, then, to expect that Brown, at age 29 and coming off a top six finish in MVP voting, would fetch a greater ransom.

It didn’t happen. Blame the contract. Blame the analytics. Blame Boston’s unwillingness to wait out the process. It’s fair to scrutinize whether the team could have better navigated the process.

But we don’t quite understand the argument against ownership here. The Celtics, whether they traded for Antetokounmpo or George or any other superstar, were still paying $50+ million in any star acquisition. George, with a player option in 2027-28, has more available avenues to build the next iteration of this team, whether that’s flipping his deal in a quest for Tatum’s next running mate or trying to entice him to decline next year’s option in favor of a lower-money, longer-term extension.

That’s why “optionality” became the buzzword on Monday.

What’s clear from Stevens’ explanation is that this wasn’t just about Brown’s money or the total roster cost. It was about the amount of usage the Tatum/Brown combo consumed under this current roster construct, and certainly a reflection that the team believed it simply could no longer be a championship-level team with that combo.

The Celtics could have further slashed spending this year while waiting for the repeater penalties to reset. Instead, they signed Mitchell Robinson utilizing the midlevel exception. Boston is still lingering above the luxury tax line, and Chisholm noted that Stevens still has the green light to spend this year if it can improve the team.

There are limits to what Boston can spend this summer, particularly if the ultimate goal is to reset the repeater penalties. The Celtics are already hard-capped at the first apron after using the MLE. They could still flip George — and their new bounty of picks — if a new disgruntled star emerged on the market. But the plan for now is to evaluate how this team looks as currently constructed and ponder in-season options. The most likely outcome is ducking the tax again in order to set up a bigger splurge in the summer of 2027.

We’ve dubbed it the slingshot. Two years of pain points will allow Stevens the sort of flexibility to best build a true title contender. Boston had no clear path to tinkering on the margins around a Tatum/Brown core. Stevens’ challenge is putting the best possible pieces alongside Tatum.

That process has already started. The Celtics, having leaned heavier on player development in recent years, are locking up in-house talent. They’ve already inked starting center Neemias Queta to a long-term extension. Payton Pritchard could get his own extension later this summer. Ron Harper Jr. got a new deal this offseason as well. There is a lot of hope for what Hugo Gonzalez and Baylor Scheierman, still on their rookie deals, can contribute moving forward.

Stevens noted how recent champions like Oklahoma City and New York built deep rosters with diversified salaries. Those teams will soon feel the wrath of the second apron, with New York already letting Robinson walk after its title season.

Why does resetting the repeater matter? The Celtics can stomach, say, a $200 million roster in both the 2027-28 and 2028-29 seasons without fear of both basketball and tax penalties. Unlike the summer of 2025, every dollar won’t count 4.5-times as much given their recent spending. The Celtics still have to be braced to work themselves back down in the summer of 2029, but that’s just the new cycle under this CBA. Two years up, two years down — if you’re lucky.

Two years is an eternity in the NBA, anyhow. Two years ago, the Celtics were on duck boats. Now, only two of their top six players remain under contract in Tatum and Derrick White.

Stevens admitted none of this stuff is fun for fans. No one wants to trade established superstars like Brown for optionality. But there is a new set of rules the NBA is operating under. You either navigate the CBA or get steamrolled by it.

Stevens and Chisholm are betting on the team’s braintrust. They are betting that other teams will be forced into second-apron binds that might allow an opportunistic team like Boston to pounce.

Chisholm has promised to spend when the time is right. The time has not been right in either of his first two years at the helm. If the team doesn’t splurge next summer, we can all cry foul. Save your private equity conspiracy theories until then.

In Boston, we demand accountability. On Monday, at basically the very first moment that Stevens and Chisholm could tackle questions about the controversial Brown swap, the two parked themselves at a podium in the Auerbach Center and answered questions for 45 minutes.

We fully expect some will read this and decry how we’re pushing the team’s agenda. Take the time to study the CBA and you’ll recognize that there are few savory pathways to building a title contender.

We’re not even certain the Celtics made the right choice in moving Brown. But we at least understand the reasoning. As Stevens made clear on Monday, only time will tell if they’ve chosen the right path.

Chisholm noted it comes down to “trusting our process.” That’s maybe not the best choice of phrase after a deal involving the Philadelphia 76ers.

But one thing is certain: He’s putting all his trust in Brad Stevens. Celtics fans might have to do the same.

In Monday night’s NBA Summer League play, former Duke star Cameron Boozer continues to impress.

He finished the game against Utah with 18 points, 7 rebounds, 4 assists, hit 4-5 on his threes, and shot 6-9 overall, and did that in 27 minutes.

In a related note, former BC big man Quentin Post has signed an offer sheet with Memphis for a 3-year, $30 million dollar deal. Mike Dunleavy and Golden State can match it if they do so by 11:59 Tuesday night.

In the other Summer League game of note, San Antonio played the L.A. Lakers, and while Maliq Brown didn’t have a big offensive game, L.A.’s starters shot a collective 14-30, and the frontcourt combined for 5-19, and our guess is that Brown had something to do with that.

• Cameron Boozer Highlights vs. Utah Jazz
• Darryn Peterson and Cameron Boozer in a gladiator match at SLC Summer League
• Cali Classic, Game 3: Spurs Coach Corliss Williamson, Tarris Reed Jr., Maliq Brown
• Maliq Brown rocks the rim

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