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Dang I wonder what the LA Clippers are up to after the Golden State Warriors buried their season last year! Continuing our Rival Report series, we’re getting you up to speed on Pacific Division foes’ moves in the draft so you can know who the heck they’re loading up with for the future.

It’s time to check out the fascinating situation with the Clips.

First, some necessary context. Yes, the Warriors sent the Clippers home in the play-in tournament last April. We remember. More importantly, so do they. But knocking a team out of a play-in game also means they weren’t good enough to avoid one. The Clippers finished 42-40, started the season 6-21, and mounted a genuinely impressive second-half run that ended the moment real stakes arrived. They showed you something; but was nowhere near enough.

That tension is what the entire offseason is built around. Seems like we’re pretty close to the end of the Kawhi Leonard-era in LA. Kawhi is entering the final year of his deal at $50.3 million, coming off a career-high 27.9 points per game season, and the exit signs are everywhere.

This is what a franchise transition looks like when nobody wants to say it out loud yet. Which brings us to Keaton Wagler. A 19-year-old guard from Shawnee, Kansas who entered college ranked 261st in his recruiting class. That kind of rise doesn’t happen by accident. One season at Illinois later, he’s the fifth pick in the country, the Jerry West Award winner, the Big Ten Freshman of the Year, and the author of a 46-point game against Purdue where he went 9-for-11 from three. He led the Illini to their first Final Four since 2005 while averaging 17.9 points, 5.1 rebounds, and 4.2 assists on 44.5% shooting from the field and 39.7% from beyond the arc. This is the franchise’s highest selection since Blake Griffin went first overall in 2009.

Keaton Wagler is a 6’6” point guard who is a triple-double threat and possibly the best shooter in the class

His incredible shooting, court vision, and rebounding has landed him 5th overall to the Los Angeles Clippers pic.twitter.com/sj33Ct7qYC

— clippa twitta (@clipfullyloaded) June 24, 2026

Every evaluator comes back to the same point. He already plays like an NBA guard. The vision is real. The handle is tight. He drills pull-up threes, makes the right read under pressure, and does it all while playing off the ball, which matters enormously next to Darius Garland. The concerns are legitimate too. He weighed 188 pounds at the combine. He barely ran a fast break all season. The floor will get faster and the bodies will get bigger and strength is the work that’s ahead of him. But the floor is high because the tools are real.

The second round added frontcourt depth in Baba Miller and Nick Martinelli, a direct acknowledgment that the center position is where this roster breaks down most visibly. The draft-and-stash of French center Narcisse Ngoy, who heads to Auburn next season before his NBA rights ever get exercised, is the kind of patient asset management you do when you’re thinking in years, not months.

The honest counterpoint is that losing Kawhi might actually accelerate the thing they’re already building. And even the people who cover this team closest seem to understand that. Robert Flom at 213hoops, one of the sharpest Clippers-specific voices in the game, laid out the offseason roster picture plainly after the draft concluded:

Considering Wagler will play a lot of shooting guard next to Garland, and Sanders, Christie, and Miller can play up or down, the Clippers are relatively set at wing, even if they probably would prefer to bring Dunn off the bench. Garland and Wagler together also make the Clippers ready to go at point guard, though they could probably use a third-string veteran in case of injury.

The obvious areas of need are in the frontcourt, especially considering Yanic’s injury and Baba Miller probably not being ready for NBA rotation minutes. Bringing back John Collins and Brook Lopez would pretty much round out the roster, but that would mean running back the same team from last year, more or less, with only the draft picks being new pieces of note. I can’t see the Clippers going in that direction based on how they’ve talked about their roster and pivoting towards more of a Garland-centric timeline.

The Clippers are molting as the Kawhi-era begins to evaporate dramatically. It’s being replaced, piece by piece, with something younger and leaner and less certain. Wagler and Garland are a real backcourt and the draft capital is stacking. The plan is visible if you squint at it right.

Keep your friends close. Keep the Clippers close enough to know that the most dangerous version of this team isn’t the one saying goodbye to Kawhi Leonard. It’s the one that’s already moved on without admitting it. In the NBA, “not yet” has a funny way of becoming “right now.”

To paraphrase the words of international assassin hero John Wick, “Yeah, I’m thinking I’m running it back.”

The Detroit Pistons are re-signing free agent wing Kevin Huerter to a three-year, $27 million deal. That’s a decent return for a core rotation player and represents about a 40% paycut from the long-term deal Huerter just concluded.

The 6-foot-6 Huerter was acquired at the trade deadline for Jaden Ivey, Dario Saric, and a pick swap. Huerter played about 500 minutes across 25 games for the Pistons, averaging 8.6 points, 2.8 rebounds, and 2.5 assists. Heurter started his career as a noted 3-point marksman, but the shot has abandoned him over the years, including his time in Detroit.

He shot just 29% from deep on over four attempts per game for the Pistons. He did shoot 61% on twos and has been a high-efficiency interior player because he knows how to take advantage of his opportunities.

It might be a sign that the Pistons are largely OK with running back a 60-win team and hoping the addition of another shooter — in this case Isaiah Joe, is the piece that makes everything else fall into place.

Or perhaps this is a precursor to something larger. The calm before the storm.

His shot has never looked broken, it’s just been unreliable. And even without his three going down consistently, he provides enough on both ends of the court to make him a valuable rotation piece. However, I struggle to understand a lineup that employs all three of Duncan Robinson, Kevin Huerter, and Caris LeVert. Obviously, you’d take Robinson of any of the three, but it makes me wonder if Detroit is keeping Heurter because they have plans to route Robinson or LeVert in a separate deal.

Ahead of a big storm, there are signs. The temperature drops. Clouds gather. The air feels different.

When it comes to the NBA, something similar is brewing.

For the last few weeks, there has been an eerie silence around LeBron James, who has been the center of the NBA’s universe for two decades. Initial talks with the Lakers went nowhere. James has apparently gone radio silent.

It’s the quiet before the storm.

On Monday, the warning alarms were blaring.

Draymond Green declined his $27.7 million player option with the Golden State Warriors to become a free agent. His motive is clear: If Green re-signs with the Warriors for less money, they’d have the financial flexibility to offer James the $15.1 million non-taxpayer midlevel exception.

To increase the atmospheric pressure, the Warriors are pursuing a deal to acquire Anthony Davis from the Wizards in exchange for Jimmy Butler, whose salaries ($58.5 million and $56.8 million, respectively) are nearly identical, though the latter’s agent rejects this narrative.

The Warriors also have four unprotected first-round picks they could use to sweeten the pot on a trade involving Butler, who’s recovering from a torn ACL, though it’s unclear how much of their future they’d be willing to leverage for this.

James and Davis won a championship together in 2020. They’re good friends, having spent five-and-a-half seasons together.

In other words, the Warriors are putting together a full-frontal blitz to lure James from Los Angeles, where he has spent the last eight years, his longest consecutive stretch in any city over his 23-season career.

This is the once-in-a-lifetime storm no one saw coming. It was talked about. It was imagined. But no one actually thought it could make landfall.

Not even James, who said on his 40th birthday that retiring with the Lakers “would be the plan.”

Not even Green, who told The California Post last season, “I’ve always wanted to [play with James],” but added, “I don’t see a path to it.”

The weather has shifted. The perfect conditions were created. And now it’s time to brace for impact.

For James, going to the Lakers makes the most sense for his brain, but going to the Warriors would make the most sense for his heart.

With the Lakers, he could earn the most money; say, something in the ballpark of $25-$35 million. His family lives in Los Angeles. He arguably has the best chance to win a championship alongside the 27-year-old Luka Doncic.

But if he chooses the Warriors, he’d finally be rid of the omnipresent awkwardness that hung over LA’s locker room like a dark cloud after they made Doncic their priority.

If he chooses the Warriors, it would wash away the resentment of having to nickel-and-dime with a Lakers franchise he led to its first championship in 10 years.

With Golden State, everything would be clean. There would be no pollution.

Golden State is where he’d have the most fun. James has said Steph Curry is the player he’d most like to play alongside. James and Green are so close that they call each other brothers, and James and Davis would be reunited after the latter was traded from the Lakers to the Dallas Mavericks.

Sure, the Warriors would be fielding a geriatric starting lineup next season with James turning 42, Curry turning 39, Green turning 37 and Davis turning 34.

But they’re all winners. There’s enough institutional knowledge there to take over the league with their creaky bodies. No one would want to face them in the postseason.

They’d be a walking ad for muscle relaxants. They’d be the Old Men Versus The Sea, if you will. They’d be so much fun.

Ten years ago, NBA commissioner Adam Silver would’ve probably had to figure out a legal way to block James from teaming up with Curry. But now, that would be a fascinating experiment. Could the league’s biggest legends overtake the young bucks?

James has already started leaning into that narrative.

His obsession is golf. Since the season ended, he has allowed his beard to turn gray. He’s somehow both a 65-year-old retiree and an elite athlete with 2% body fat who can still single-handedly lead a Lakers team past the Houston Rockets in the playoffs.

In other words, he’s unpredictable. This could be the version of a midlife crisis for arguably the greatest player of all time.

Perhaps at this point in his career, chasing happiness is more important than chasing championships. Perhaps joining the enemy would be his path to the most joy.

James played the Warriors in four straight Finals from 2015 to 2018. He called himself the greatest player of all time after leading the Cleveland Cavaliers to overcome a stunning 3-1 series deficit against them en route to the franchise’s first championship. The Warriors have been his ultimate measuring stick.

Now they could become something else — his final act.

Everything we thought we knew could be in flux.

The water is receding. The tidal wave is building. The Western Conference could look very different next year.

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Spurs forward Julian Champagnie agreed to a three-year, $45 million contract to stay in San Antonio, according to ESPN’s Shams Charania on Monday.

In doing so, they locked down a critical piece of their young core through the 2028-29 season.

The Spurs declined Champagnie’s $3 million team option to construct a new deal.

Champagnie, who turned 25 Monday, gets a new contract with a unique structure that gets him paid early, with $42 million in new money, and gives his team flexibility as it look for a title.

Champagnie has come a long way since being waived by the 76ers in 2023. In the Spurs’ run to the NBA Finals, Champagnie averaged career highs in minutes (27.6), points (11.1), and rebounds (5.8). He played in all 82 games and set a franchise single-season record with 195 3-pointers.

Champagnie moved to the starting lineup in February and the Spurs went on a tear as the best team in the NBA in the second half of the season.

Spurs head coach Mitch Johnson has called Champagnie an “unsung hero” for the team this past season, where they made it all the way to the NBA Finals before falling to the Knicks in five games. In the Western Conference Finals against the Thunder, Champagnie averaged 17.3 points per game over Games 5-7.

Champagnie went undrafted out of St. John’s in 2022 before entering a two-way deal with Philadelphia, which waived him the following year to make room to sign Mac McClung.

The Spurs claimed Champagnie two days later, and he’s there to stay for the next three years.