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Just 71 days ago, the Los Angeles Clippers selected star All-American guard Keaton Wagler with the No. 5 overall pick.

A lot has changed in the roughly two months since they made that pick, however, and right now is not a great time to be a Clippers fan.

There have been speculations for a long time that the team’s owner Steve Ballmer and the organization as a whole did some shady things to circumvent the salary cap and sign forward Kawhi Leonard.

These theories started to gain even more traction this summer, and just today, Commissioner Adam Silver and the NBA levied their official punishments.

The Clippers will lose five first-round picks, be fined $30 million, Ballmer will be suspended for a year and Leonard will be forced to pay back $700,000 in restitution.

And now, enter Wagler, caught in the middle of it all.

The 19-year-old former Illini is weathering a heck of a storm for his first year in the league, something that could end up having an impact on his rookie season.

But Illinois fans and Clippers fans agree on one thing, they’re hopeful that it won’t.

Following last year’s historic run to the NBA championship, there’s little a critic can say to Jalen Brunson. New York’s captain averaged 28.4 points, 3.2 rebounds, and 6.1 assists en route to a Knicks championship, hitting clutch shots and stringing together all-time performances along the way.

With training camp still a month out, fans have had to occupy their free time with the sort of debates a run like that naturally sparks. One of those debates is where Brunson now ranks among the best point guards in the league.

Truthfully, 45 points in a close-out Finals game against the best defense in the league should earn you best player in the world discussions, but much of that talent resides at his position anyway. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was one win away from being New York’s Finals foe after winning the 2925 championship. Luka Doncic is still a machine when healthy. Cade Cunningham had another stellar year, and Tyrese Haliburton is returning from injury after absolutely haunting the Knicks in back-to-back Playoffs. 

Let’s break down the competition and see where Brunson shakes out.

Honorable mentions are owed to Stephen Curry and Tyrese Maxey, but consensus puts them just outside this group. Curry’s aging has caused his rim pressure and durability to decline, while Maxey’s playmaking and defensive limitations were exposed against Brunson in the Playoffs.

Haliburton is a legitimate wild card. The last we saw of him, he piloted the NBA’s most dangerous offensive system and was nailing big shots in a legacy-defining Game 7 of the NBA Finals.

His size and playmaking advantages over Brunson are indisputable, there’s few passing equivalents to him, and he’s proven the ability to take over with his scoring, especially in the clutch. The only question is if he can walk back into this production coming off injury with a slightly rejiggered roster.

A big argument for Brunson is his aversion to disappearing. Haliburton had a handful of high-stakes single-digit performances, whereas Brunson will shoot his way out of just about any stupor, never shrinking to the sidelines. 

Cunningham, keeping with the trend, also has an advantagel of height and weight on Brunson. His production is also especially impressive working with spacing similar to Brunson’s before Karl-Anthony Towns and Mike Brown arrived. 

But there’s a clear separator between the two, and that’s ball control. Cunningham’s averaged four turnovers a game over his career and closer to six in the Playoffs, the latter making for a much worse assist-to-turnover ratio compared to Brunson’s.

That poise was much of the difference in Brunson facing the Cavaliers in this year’s Conference Finals instead of Cunningham’s Pistons. While Brunson rose to the occasion, Cunningham faltered in the biggest games of his career, though he’ll surely be back more motivated than ever.

The real conversation is where Brunson belongs in the MVP tier of guys - Doncic and SGA. Unfortunately when the latter is on and healthy, there’s almost nobody that can outplay him.

But Brunson’s been more available, and more dependable on the biggest stages defensively. Doncic got worked in the 2024 NBA Finals on that end, couldn’t do enough in the first round of the 2025 Playoffs to top Minnesota, and outright missed the 2026 postseason due to injury.

While he’s a walking 30-point triple-double, he is entering somewhat of a prove-it year with the major milestones of MVP or a championship still in reach. Brunson spent last season proving all he needed to in ways Doncic never has, such as on the defensive side of the ball or as an off-ball offensive threat.

For those reasons, one can argue Brunson over Doncic in a battle over former teammates.

But what about Gilgeous-Alexander?

That’s a tougher argument to make. The reigning MVP has the added inches but none of the drawbacks when put side-by-side with Brunson.

His shot making is unreal, his passing and defense is reliable, and he has the resume to back up the complete package. He put together his own heroics against the Spurs last Playoffs, scoring 35 points and dishing nine assists in his Game 7 loss despite a lack of secondary weapons.

Brunson is the bigger threat to pull up from three and is less free throw dependent, but Gilgeous-Alexander is the superior defender with gaudy efficiency numbers. At the very least, last year made this a real race.

Wherever you place Brunson in the rankings, 2026 was validation that he belongs among the best names this league has to offer at the position. And this upcoming season should only need to serve as a reminder.

When Steve Ballmer bought the Los Angeles Clippers for $2bn in 2014, it was widely regarded as a coup for the NBA.

Not only is Ballmer one of the richest men in the world – worth an estimated $152.7bn – but his passion and enthusiasm for the sport stood in stark contrast to the team’s embattled former owner. Donald Sterling, who bought the Clippers for $12.5m in 1981, was forced to sell after being handed a lifetime ban by the NBA in response to a series of racist comments.

Ballmer was the kind of owner NBA fans dream of, especially ones as downtrodden as the Clippers. He invested hundreds of millions of dollars towards improving the roster, growing the brand, and developing the new state-of-the-art Intuit Dome in Inglewood, California. When it opened in 2024, it gave the Clippers a home of their own for the first time since moving from San Diego in 1984. Ballmer’s Clippers constantly pushed the envelope, installing the first “halo” scoreboard, a wall of a supporters’ section strategically positioned to throw off opponents, a team with future Hall of Famers Kawhi Leonard and Paul George. Ballmer turned a laughingstock that had been living in the shadows of the crosstown rival Lakers into a relevant organization.

Related: Clippers docked five first-round draft picks and fined $30m over Kawhi Leonard scandal

But on Wednesday afternoon, after a year of allegations that Ballmer’s Clippers circumvented the NBA’s salary cap to pay superstar Leonard back in 2021, it was confirmed that Ballmer had taken it all a little bit too far. NBA commissioner Adam Silver handed down the harshest punishment in league history, stripping the Clippers of five first-round draft picks and fining them $30m, while suspending Ballmer for a year.

“The NBA’s collectively bargained system for determining player compensation is a fundamental component of the basketball competition that the league oversees for the benefit of the teams and players and ultimately the fans,” Silver said in a statement. “I am deeply disappointed by the flagrant violations of our rules and by the Clippers’ institutional and leadership failures that led to this misconduct. The severity of the penalties reflects the seriousness of the violations.”

NBA fans have been looking for clarity for a year. Last September, journalist Pablo Torre released the first in a series of podcast episodes alleging that Ballmer’s Clippers violated the salary cap circumvention rules designed to punish teams for spending too much on player salaries. Citing legal documents, Torre claimed that Ballmer went under the table to sign Leonard to a no-show endorsement deal with Aspiration – a now-bankrupt sustainability services company that Ballmer invested in to pay Leonard $28m.

The NBA-hired New York law firm of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz has been conducting an independent investigation into the allegations since then, saying on Wednesday that the Clippers violated “the circumvention rules in numerous independent ways by (i) affirmatively initiating off-court income opportunities between Mr Leonard and four different companies doing business with the team: Aspiration, Boingo Wireless, Daktronics, and Lockton Insurance.” It also found that the Clippers facilitated the fulfillment of those endorsement agreements and induced the companies to enter into the agreements by offering and providing them with business from the Clippers, such as an Aspiration jersey patch and Daktronics scoreboard.

The Clippers “vehemently reject the NBA’s punishments,” according to a statement released by the organization, calling them “the result of a heavily biased investigation seeking to justify a predetermined narrative rather than facts and evidence.” Leonard, meanwhile, announced on Instagram that “I accept full responsibility for lapses in judgment by people within my inner circle,” referring to his uncle and former business manager, Dennis Robertson, who solicited these agreements on Leonard’s behalf and was banned from the league for five years as a result.

Leonard appears to be on his way to Toronto, as the previously announced trade between the Clippers and Raptors is expected to go through within the next few days, according to ESPN. The Raptors will send Brandon Ingram, Gradey Dick, two first-round picks, two second-round picks and a pick-swap to Los Angeles to reunite Leonard with the franchise he won an NBA championship with in 2019. The deal was put on hold in late July after the NBA announced that the Raptors had to commit in writing to assume any risk of penalties Leonard might incur from the investigation. But given that Leonard basically got off scot-free – his only punishment is to pay the league $700,000, probably because the league wanted to avoid a battle with its Players Association – the Raptors will be incentivized to see the deal through while the Clippers will have a hard time going back to the negotiating table given that most of their front office has been suspended.

Still, the Clippers are desperate for a way out of this situation, and for good reason. After having to forfeit five first round draft picks, the Clippers now have no natural pick in the draft from 2029 through 2033. It’s a dire situation considering that the franchise only recently pivoted to a rebuild after trading veterans James Harden, Ivica Zubac, and (almost certainly) Leonard – leaving them without any superstars or bluechip prospects to build around. They can’t really attract veteran talent given the damage this year-long soap opera has done to their brand, while finding good young players through the draft just became nearly impossible.

“We intend to vigorously challenge these findings and penalties through every avenue available to us and look forward to an ethical and impartial arbitration process,” announced the Clippers, who also sent a letter to Silver confirming that “we are exploring every legal remedy to address this gross injustice.”

Prolonged litigation between one of the world’s richest men and one of its wealthiest sports leagues could be ahead of us. But while this all may seem like a harsh penalty for an organization that only recently climbed out of the dregs of the NBA – one that could be forced to sell or relocate in the aftermath of this news in the worst-case scenario – Silver had no choice but to drop the hammer on Ballmer given what he represents not only to sports fans, but to the swell of big-pocketed owners who have recently bought into the NBA as well.

“Many fans have expressed apathy about the entire cap circumvention fiasco,” Stephen Noh wrote in Sporting News. “But if the league simply gave a finger wag, then other deep-pocketed ownership groups would surely have started their own cap circumvention techniques.”

Whether it’s Bob Iger and Josh Kushner buying the Lakers for $12.5bn this summer, or casino mogul and Donald Trump megadonor Miriam Adelson buying the Dallas Mavericks for $3.5bn in 2023, the new wave of NBA owners have a lot more in common with Ballmer than they do with the previous generation of NBA owners like Sterling and former Lakers owner Jerry Buss, who ran mom and pop shop operations after buying their teams for, as ridiculous as this sounds, “mere” millions.

Following in Ballmer’s footsteps, the new money entering the NBA is tied to tech billionaires, sovereign wealth funds in the Gulf states, and private equity firms in America that have seemingly unlimited amounts of money and power. Silver had no choice but to make an example out of the Clippers, theoretically setting a precedent that is harsh enough to keep the rest of the owners in line to ensure parity and integrity for the NBA.

Hopefully it’s not already too late.

In the summer of 2019, the Los Angeles Clippers grabbed every single chip they could find and pushed them into the middle of the table. 

The result was Kawhi Leonard, Paul George and a revamped roster ready to compete for an NBA championship. A complete transformation of the team and superstars to put on the marquee.

But in the NBA, when you go all-in to win a championship in the present, there’s always a price to pay down the road. 

And now somebody has come to collect and count those chips. 

The total cost to sign Leonard and trade for George is almost impossible to comprehend: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, five first-round picks sent to Oklahoma City, two first-round pick swaps, another five first-round picks forfeited to the NBA and a $30 million dollar fine. 

Oh, and toss in Danilo Gallinari, multiple front-office executives suspended — including the team owner in Steve Ballmer — and the fact that one of those picks to OKC became Jalen Williams, and what once looked like the greatest night in Clippers history has now aged like milk under the boiling Southern California sun. 

All that for one Western Conference Finals appearance and still zero NBA championships in franchise history. 

The Clippers technically signed Leonard as a free agent in July 2019, but by acquiring George from the Thunder, they lost out on four unprotected first-round picks, a future MVP in SGA and several players. Leonard was the one who reportedly wanted George, and made it a condition of his signing with Los Angeles. 

That signing, and ultimately his re-signing in 2021, has now made us all look back on this controversy under a microscope. 

The NBA concluded Wednesday that the Clippers and Leonard violated the league’s salary-cap circumvention rules, hammering LA with the forfeiture of five more first-round picks — 2029 through 2033 — and a $30 million fine. Ballmer was suspended for one year, president of business operations Gillian Zucker for one year without pay and president of basketball operations Lawrence Frank for six months. Meanwhile, Leonard was fined $700,000.

Put everything together and the Leonard pursuit can reasonably be framed this way: 10 first-round picks lost, two additional first-round pick swaps, 2024 & 2025 MVP Gilgeous-Alexander, Gallinari, $30 million dollars and multiple suspensions.

Of course, the human cost of that 2019 roll of the dice by Ballmer and the Clippers looks even worse. 

Gilgeous-Alexander became a superstar. Williams became an All-Star-caliber cornerstone. George eventually left Los Angeles without delivering a championship. Leonard’s Clippers tenure became defined as much by injuries and postseason absences as the brilliance that convinced Ballmer to mortgage the future for him in the first place.

There once was a time when the Clippers could defend the price they paid. Leonard was fresh off an NBA championship with the Toronto Raptors, taking down the Golden State Warriors dynasty in the process. George was once an MVP finalist and from LA. For perhaps the first time in franchise history, the Clippers appeared to have assembled the perfect superstar pairing since Shaq and Kobe. 

But they never reached their full potential; their high-water mark was the 2021 Western Conference Finals, reached after Leonard tore his ACL and never even played in the series. 

Now the final accounting of that 2019 summer looks like something pulled from an NBA horror story. 

And not a single NBA Finals game to show for it. 

Seven years ago, the Clippers swung for the fences. 

And now they’re paying the price for it.

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“I can’t believe this just happened!”

You either said it or you heard it, on a day you never thought would come—when the Bucks traded away a player we got to watch grow up, a player who became a multi-time All-Star and fixture in the community, and who helped Milwaukee raise its first championship banner as an organization in 50 years.

That day was February 5th, 2025, when the Bucks traded away Khris Middleton. Some fans could claim that the writing was on the wall, but I, for one, buried my head in the sands of the second apron and never thought, injuries and all, they could trade away the franchise’s all-time greatest Robin to our all-time greatest Batman. I mourned the loss of our champion with what is probably a familiar pattern for most Wisconsinites who are grieving: shouting the lyrics of “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” while nursing a High Life.

Afterward, I began bargaining with myself and the entire basketball world that Kyle Kuzma could help the Bucks chase one more ring so long as health was on our side. Through the blown Achilles, a waive-and-stretch, and countless Shams bombs that gave me heartburn, it was not until around the trade deadline this year that for me the reality sank in: the championship era was over. Looking back on it now, however, the real end of the era was February 5th, 2025. June 22nd, 2026, then, was a bittersweet day, marking a new beginning. Many outlets have extensively covered the bitter, so instead let’s focus on the sweet, and how that day came to mark the new beginning for the Milwaukee Bucks.

Growing up a Bucks fan and watching us move through the different eras of coaches and potential franchise faces, I can think of many times that felt exciting as a fan, especially the early years of Giannis and Khris that were first overshadowed by the sale and potential relocation. Once that passed, however, watching what Giannis and Khris were able to do was nothing short of exhilarating. Now that we are in the new halcyon days, I am looking at a roster and coaching staff that is full of positive questions and upside potential.

As a coach, Taylor Jenkins has a pedigree for building teams that push the pace, are defensive minded, and show a ton of grit. At their peak under Jenkins, the 2021–22 Grizzlies became the first team in the NBA’s recorded steals-and-blocks era to lead the league in rebounds, steals, and blocks in the same season. This hardworking, relentless, possession-hunting style feels like what he was referencing when in his opening press conference he talked about the team making Milwaukee proud. Of course, in his first year as a head coach with Memphis he had Ja Morant coming in as the second overall pick to headline the roster. The Bucks’ roster does not have Darryn Peterson incoming, but Jenkins still chose to come back to the NBA with the opportunities he saw on this roster, even without having Giannis (or Khris) around.

That could be because, in a player like Ryan Rollins, Jenkins knows he will have an incredibly intriguing young guard to work with. Nathan Marzion recently noted that since 1994 there have been just 10 players who, at age 23 or younger, notched a season with at least 17 PPG and 5 APG, while shooting a 55% eFG (with a minimum of 50 games played):

• Penny Hardaway
• Tony Parker
• Steph Curry
• Nikola Jokic
• Domantas Sabonis
• Bam Adebayo
• Luka Doncic
• Tyrese Haliburton
• Alperen Sengun
• Zion Williamson

Rollins became the 11th last season, and given his 27.1% assist percentage last year, he won’t need to take a drastic step forward to become one of the better two-way lead guards in the NBA. On the defensive front, Rollins ranked 10th overall in steals last season with 110 and 13th in steals per game for players with at least 2,000 minutes played last season. For good measure, Rollins also had one more block last season than Dyson Daniels, which speaks to his ability to effectively guard above his size. At 23, it is pretty safe to say he has likely not yet found his ceiling.

Alongside him, Rollins will get to work with Kel’el Ware as his five of the future, who brings something different to the role. Brook Lopez is a Bucks legend, but in his 469 games played for Milwaukee he averaged just 5.2 RPG. Last season, Myles Turner became the butt of many jokes while on his way to averaging 5.3 RPG. The Kryptonian is not merely unique for Bucks fans because he is another stretch big, but because he is an elite rebounder. Last season, his total rebound percentage was 21.1%, good for fourth overall just behind Victor Wembanyama, Karl-Anthony Towns, and Donovan Clingan, and was sixth in offensive rebounding rate at a clip of 13.1%. Prior to Jenkins’ time in Memphis, offensive rebounds were not as highly valued as other aspects of the game, and they were certainly a weak point for the Bucks last season, so getting a specialist on the offensive glass is definitely exciting. Rollins and Ware, therefore, are able to bring familiar ingredients to Jenkins’ recipe for success: extra possessions, rim pressure and protection, floor spacing, and a capable playmaker. It might not be same exact cake as in Memphis, but I am sure it will make for a sweet combination.

Now, this is not to say there is a clear path ahead, because there isn’t: we don’t know who will start around these two for the short or long term, and we likely still have some deals to be made this summer. But even so, there are plenty of other players worth getting very excited about. Going back to 2022 we have added a player selected in the first-round every year: Ousmane Dieng in 2022 (Ryan Rollins in the second round), then Jaime Jaquez Jr., Ware, Kasparas Jakucionis, and, of course Brayden Burries and Nate Ament in 2026. Together, these represent an impressive young cohort with the potential to be at least high-level role players. Overall that feels like a great way to speed-run a rebuild—oh, and we have that guy named after a Jack Harlow song returning home on his Herro’s journey. At what point would keeping him become a long term asset? Could he net a big return at the trade deadline? These are exciting questions to begin to wonder about and find answers for.

Finally, it is probably safe to assume that Jenkins did not take this job just to guide the team through a long, cumbersome rebuild. We all should maintain realistic expectations about the wins this year could yield, of course, but I also don’t see Jenkins spending half or more of his contracted years in Milwaukee wasting away outside of the play-in, either.

So, the question analysts seem to be asking now that the dust has settled is “Who are the Bucks after trading away Giannis?” Thankfully, that is an answer we already have: we are Milwaukee, a big small town where folks work hard and genuinely care about how their sports teams represent them. We want to play a hardworking, gritty style of basketball that does not lack effort. The product last year certainly did not pass the sniff test, but despite the future being unclear, through the beer goggles that were needed to get through last season, the future is certainly bright.

Blurry, but bright.

Of course, an essential component to that bright future is Brayden Burries. Let us know what you believe his ceiling is below:

You got to hand it to baseball on this one, the dog days of August sounds a lot better than the dog days of March. This is the conclusion to our 2026-27 schedule preview; previous installments can be found here, here, and here. The Sixers’ final 20 games of the upcoming season will feature their final West Coast trip of the season along with three back-to-backs.

This final stretch of the season will start just like the previous, with a nationally televised bout in Boston against Jaylen Brown’s old team on March 7. They’ll have to come right back down to Philly to play the Utah Jazz on the 8th. With the Celtics game being on ABC that game will surely be the priority when it comes to player participation, but the Jazz could be a trickier opponent than in years past. The only saving grace for this back-to-back is that the game in Boston is a 1:00 p.m. ET game, so the Sixers can get a couple extra hours of rest on the front end.

After that they’ll head up and down the middle of the country for more games on national television against the Spurs in San Antonio and the Timberwolves in Minnesota. After coming home to take on the Raptors, they’ll get a bit of a reprieve with a home game against the Bulls and a train ride to D.C. to take on the Wizards, but those games are also a back-to-back.

Once they get back from the nation’s capital, they’ll see the Spurs for the second time in 10 days. For whatever reason the schedule seems to bunch opponents together like that, but it gives us two chances to see the Joel Embiid vs. Victor Wembanyama matchup.

After facing the reigning Western Conference champions at home, they’ll set out for their final trip out West of the season. It’ll start with a back-to-back against the Jazz and Warriors before circling back to hit Portland and Denver. There’s one off day before the Nuggets game and two after, so they’ll be eagerly waiting to see if Embiid plays his first game in Denver since 2019.

They’ll come back home to see the Warriors and Atlanta Hawks again with another trip to Washington in between. Their final road trip of the regular season will go to Toronto and Miami before finishing up the regular season against the Charlotte Hornets.

Between the Spurs, Wolves, and Celtics there are some tough teams to close out the season, as well as some teams like the Raptors and Heat that could be frisky. This is typically the time of the year you want to play those teams as they’re in cruise control trying to get to the playoffs healthy.

The games against non-playoff teams will be pretty telling in how the new lottery rules have changed the league. Usually by this time of year, lottery-bound teams have thrown in the towel, but the league really wants that to be different this season.

In this stretch of games, the Sixers will already be playing two teams that have lived in the lottery this decade, but look to be giving things a proper try this year in the Jazz and Wizards. They’ll see the Hornets again who will have a tough time cracking the postseason in this Eastern Conference, but surely they’ll be vying for Play-In tournament positioning for the second year in a row.

Of course with the amount of miles on the Sixers’ stars, they will probably be one of those teams just trying to get through this part of the season to make it to the playoffs healthy. Making a top-six spot looks to be a tricky task in this Eastern Conference, but as long as the Sixers are able to do that, their biggest concern will be getting to the playoffs in one piece. With the Eastern Conference being perhaps the deepest it’s ever been and the league really shaking up lottery rules, the end of this regular season could look a lot different than what we’ve become accustomed to.

3/7: @Celtics

3/8: V Jazz (B2B) 

3/11: @Spurs

3/13: @Timberwolves

3/15: V Raptors

3/17: V Bulls

3/18: @Wizards (B2B)

3/21: V Spurs

3/23: @Jazz

3/24: @Warriors (B2B)

3/26: @Trail Blazers

3/28: @Nuggets

3/31: V Warriors

4/2: @Wizards

4/4: V Hawks

4/6: @Raptors

4/8: @Heat

4/11: V Hornets

In the early 2000s, the Minnesota Timberwolves committed one of the biggest scandals in NBA contract history. The confusion first started when forward Joe Smith, a former first overall pick, signed a small deal with the Timberwolves.

Now, players taking pay cuts is nothing new, and certainly not illegal by any means. However, then General Manager Kevin McHale had promised Smith a larger deal when the Wolves acquired his Bird rights after three seasons of minimum deals. With the typical restrictions lifted, McHale promised Minnesota would give Smith the deal he so badly wanted and may have even deserved.

The Wolves were docked five first-round picks, Glen Taylor was fined a lot of (and still not enough) money, Joe Smith’s deal was voided, and McHale was banned from team operations for a year.

You know who probably should’ve brushed up on their NBA history?

The Los Angeles Clippers.

Funny enough, if they had done that, they’d realize that they could’ve asked so much more of Kawhi Leonard than they ended up doing if they were going to cheat this badly anyway. Instead of asking Kawhi for a pay cut, they gave him the biggest extension they could, and then gave him even more money (hence the cap circumnavigation).

Instead of asking for anything back, the Clippers gave Leonard everything and more. Unfortunately for them, the more is not allowed. Between no-show endorsement deals and funneled funds to Swiss bank accounts (okay, they may not be Swiss), Kawhi had fewer responsibilities off the court than he did on it.

If we’re still comparing these Clippers to those early 2000s Minnesota squads, Los Angeles rolled out the Joe Smith offer to someone they were already treating like Kevin Garnett. They somehow above-and-beyonded themselves into a crippling punishment.

Despite sacrificing so much more than those Wolves teams, the Clippers will be giving up five first-round picks, the same initial punishment as Minnesota received. While the Wolves had two of those picks returned based purely on how god-awful they were, the Clippers will continue to try to push for playoff contention.

Additionally, owner/team governor Steve Ballmer will pay a 30 million dollar fine and will be suspended from team events for a year. While the Kawhi Leonard trade will still go off without any real hitch, this leaves the Clippers with just two first round picks in the near future, both from the Toronto Raptors, whose young core likely outgrows any costly regression from Leonard.

All of that is fine and good, but there’s a far more important question to be asked for Wolves fans…

Are we finally not the most pitiful team in NBA history?

Your next SB Nation collapse video, and subsequent hatewatch, is here

It’s hard to imagine that Minnesota could finally not be the most snakebitten team in the NBA. Hell, the Washington Wizards haven’t done much since Wes Unseld in the 60s and 70s, with deserved credit given to Elvin Hayes. The New Orleans Pelicans can’t even put together an all-time team without stealing history from the team whose identity they adopted.

For years, deservedly or undeservedly, the Wolves have carried that weight. They’re still last in franchise winning percentage after all. However, maybe we need to recontextualize this. Bad teams waste fans’ time. Awful teams waste talent and the optimism that it brings, while also wasting everyone’s time as well.

In that way, who is better suited for this role than the Clippers? The aforementioned Pelicans have wasted more young talent and draft picks than any other franchise in the 21st century, but have they ever had the expectations to crush optimism? No, they exist in perpetual basketball purgatory, feeling joy only when they know it will end crushingly and soon.

Could it be our very own Wolves, who wasted away for 20 years before they took a high schooler built like a string bean and watched him turn into one of the 20-30 best players of all-time? They built up a contender around him, and then ruined everything by trying to beat the proverbial NBA dealer to sign a player who barely even fit their team.

They wasted prime after prime. Karl-Anthony Towns, Kevin Love, and Andrew Wiggins all came and went without meaningful difference to the sad, cold status quo.

Building a winner in Minnesota was misery and seemed impossible for years. It’s not anymore. That optimism isn’t crushed and it carries a flame that changes everything.

Conversely, what about this is new for the Clippers?

This is a team that has frequently built teams good enough to win a ring that ruins their own chances. The Lob City era, the early 2013 days, or whatever this era was called, and even the last chance run with Kawhi and James Harden.

Each of those rosters had enough talent to finally break the drought that last the entirety of the Clippers’ franchise history.

And yet they didn’t.

Los Angeles is where optimism goes to die. When they’re bad, they’re hopeless (shout out Michael Olowokandi). When they’re good, they’re simply not good enough.

The NBA returned two of the Wolves’ five rescinded draft picks after everyone found themselves feeling pity for the team that had fallen below the dregs of the league.

The Clippers will get no such pity. They did each and every bit of this. They killed the hopes of their fans while cheating the whole time. They’re headed by the richest man in the sport, who has consistently used his checkbook to prove he is right.

The Wolves had their history saved because of empathy. The Clippers deserve none.

And shout out to Kawhi Leonard for wasting Steve Ballmer’s money and escaping to Canada. May he have an autobiography ghostwritten one day.

We begin ranking the individual tiers within SunsRank today with the depth pieces. I’ll start by acknowledging that this isn’t a perfect science, and it certainly isn’t a perfect polling system. There will be players you voted for in a different tier. That’s fine. I’m going off the majority of the voting for each individual player. So if there is somebody you believe belongs in the Wild Card tier and they ended up here with the depth pieces, rank them higher within the confines of this group.

The goal with SunsRank is to cut the steak into pieces rather than shove the entire thing down our throats at once. Stretch it out a little. Enjoy the meal. Then, once everything has been consumed, we can step back, look at the plate, and figure out how it turned out.

Based on the voting, here is everyone who landed in the Depth Piece tier. Need a reminder of what that means? Absolutely.

These are your end-of-the-bench players who provide depth when needed. Their roles may be limited, but injuries, matchups, and circumstances can create opportunities for them to contribute.

Get it? Got it? Good. Let’s eat.

The Depth Pieces

CJ Huntley

The second-year big man out of Appalachian State returns on another two-way contract. His journey has already been an interesting one. The Suns brought him in after he went undrafted and signed him to a two-way deal. They later waived him, only to bring him back once Jamaree Bouyea earned a fully guaranteed contract with the team.

He’s certainly a unique prospect, someone who brings strength, athleticism, power, and a touch of shooting. Given the right opportunity, he could thrive. The goal now is to continue developing him as a prospect in hopes that one day he can make a real impact.

Jamaree Bouyea

Bouyea will be an interesting player to watch this upcoming season because he provides depth at the point guard position. He has that dog in him that helped personify the 2025–26 Phoenix Suns, and with a pending decision still looming on a potential Jalen Green extension, Bouyea could eventually provide some long-term depth if needed.

His contract still isn’t guaranteed, though, so he remains one of those fringe players who will constantly be fighting to stay relevant and employed. If the Suns need to make any moves around the edges of the roster, Bouyea could find himself involved.

Koby Brea 

Another second-year two-way player, Koby Brea is an intriguing prospect because of the three-point shooting he can bring. But he still needs to continue developing other areas of his game, and we can expect to see plenty of him with the Valley Suns this season.

The hope is that he continues to grow, and we’ll be watching closely to see how much that development occurs and whether he can eventually become a long-term piece within the organization.

Pat Spencer

Pat Spencer comes to the Phoenix Suns with the most experience of anyone in this tier of depth pieces. He spent time with the Golden State Warriors and brings a hard-nosed approach at the point guard position while also being capable of knocking down the three-ball.

He may not bring much size, but he does bring heart, physicality, and effort. That aligns with the current direction of the Phoenix Suns and what this team is trying to be.

Those are the Depth Pieces. It is now up to you to put them in order of who is better than who.