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If you’re a Suns fan who isn’t living under a rock, you’ve probably heard that newly re-signed center Mark Williams will be out until at least the All-Star Break with a torn labrum, if not longer. This leaves Oso Ighodaro and Khaman Maluach as the only centers left on the team, and Ighodaro is more of a PF/C size-wise.

Williams had been the presumptive starter for the team, and Oso the back-up, with Maluach getting spot minutes here and there. This was despite Maluach’s dominant summer league performances where he resembled nothing so much as Will Ferrell in Elf. There was significant debate as to where Maluach would find playing time, but Williams’ injury just opened things up.

The presumptive starter on opening day is Ighodaro, but I believe that would be a mistake. Ighodaro has absolutely no shooting range, no three-point shot to speak of; he’s undersized and doesn’t rebound. His strengths are based around his mobility, high basketball IQ, and willingness to play the team game. The problem is that his weaknesses exacerbate the problems with the (presumptive) rest of the starting unit of Green, Booker, Brooks, and Bridges.

As many others have written about these four, they’re not great three-point shooters, undersized, not good rebounders, and lack the size to protect the rim. Ighodaro takes all of those issues and either makes them worse or does nothing to address them. Maluach, on the other hand, seems like a better fit.

First and foremost, he looked like a legitimate three-point threat in summer league (8 of 20 for 40%), and given his work ethic, age, and rapid development so far, I suspect that won’t be a mirage. Adding a legit 40%, three-point shooting center to the starting lineup will help create space for the supposed offensive goal of getting more penetration drives for shots at the rim. Playing Oso allows the opposing center to camp in the paint, mooting the entire point of trading for guys who are supposedly better at getting shots at the rim.

It’s hard to overstate the value of centers who provide space: back in the day when Steve Nash and Channing Frye were on the team, they were always neck-and-neck for who would lead the team in box plus/minus and net plus-minus per 48. Which is a fancy way of saying that statistically, Channing Frye was as important to the team’s winning as Nash was, and all he really brought to the table was being a switchable 4/5 that could hit threes and provide spacing.

Conversely, Oso seems like a better fit with the second unit of Gillespie, Goodwin, Kennard, and Fleming. All four of them are somewhere between good at three-point shooting (Fleming), to God-tier (Kennard, Gillespie). Fleming is long, tall, and heavy enough to play a little small-ball center, meaning that this unit doesn’t suffer some of the size issues as the starters. Oso’s lack of shooting range doesn’t matter nearly as much, but his ability to facilitate offensive flow will work well with a bunch of players who aren’t stars who can create their own shot but can absolutely hit open threes at a deadly rate.

Maluach doesn’t have to close out games either: he’s very young and still going to be pretty raw. That’s a problem for a competitive team going into crunch time in the fourth quarter.  I suspect as the season wears on, and some of the issues with the Suns rotation become more apparent (I wrote about issues with how Green and Bridges fit here), we could see Gillespie, Kennard, Goodwin, and Fleming getting minutes late in the fourth quarter when the team needs stops on defense and spacing for Booker to operate on offense.

Oso makes more sense in these sorts of situations where they need a more polished, reliable, high basketball IQ player to close out games if there are better three-point shooters on the floor with him. It wouldn’t be the first time the Suns have started games with one center and finished with another: Jarron Collins and Robin Lopez usually got the starting nod over Channing Frye from 2009-2011, but it was almost always Frye on the court to finish the game.

Of course, the Suns are going to experiment with lineups a little in pre-season, and we will see how the dynamics of the starting unit will play out in the first month of the season. But if things aren’t gelling (and I’m skeptical that they will), Jordan Ott might be wise to shake things up and see if Maluach is indeed a better fit with the rest of the starting unit.

Albert Ghim writes for No Ceilings, one of the more sophisticated NBA sites, and last week, he got a rare chance to check up on veteran players working out on the West Coast, particularly those charges of personal trainer Zach Gonzalez. Among those who he’s been focusing on in Gonzalez workouts and the runs at the NBPL’s new training facility in Playa Vista, an L.A. suburb. has been Egor Demin. To say Ghim is enthusiastic about the Nets second year guard would be an understatement. He just raves about him!

Ghim described how the 20-year-old has been working out in L.A.

“He is absolutely locked in, laser-focused, a man on a mission,” Ghim began. “He is so hard and ferocious on himself. I asked him what is your day-to-day look like right now. He’s working out with Zach in the morning, he playing the pro-runs at the new NBPA facility, getting in a lift. He’s doing extra workouts at night when possible.

“He’s going so hard. He is truly a man on a mission. This is a guy who knows where he needs to grow, spending a ton of time on his ball-handling, a ton of time on physicality, his jumpers, different types of jumpers — jumpers off movement, jumpers off the dribble. jumpers from the mid-range, from the outside, playing through physicality, embracing physicality. Initiating physicality is a big one to watch as well.

Ghim also spoke about how Demin has bulked up.

“For Brooklyn Nets fans who are watching this right now, I want you to know that Yegor’s body is absolutely destroyed. It is beaten. He is so hard on himself. He does not care if he’s hurt or if he’s slightly hurt or not feeling well, he is looking himself in that gym and to watch him work.”

And like Ben Saraf in an interview with the Jerusalem Post last week and Julius Randle’s Q-and-A at the Brooklyn Basketball Training Center Saturday, Demin told Ghim he and his teammates are dismissing the naysayers. Ghim recounted what Demin told him about how commentary about last season

“He said, ‘look we get it. We’re not idiots. We hear what people are saying on TV, saying we don’t want to win, we don’t care. We care,” Ghim quoted Demin.

Ghim also relayed what may have been the most interesting point of his 12 and a half minute commentary, how veterans are respecting Demin in the pro runs.

“Initially, early on, some of the veterans didn’t want him to play. They were like ‘he’s too young. we want to keep the younger guys off, keep it to veterans.‘ Then, he got in and he absolutely started torching guys. Guys like Norman Powell and Kyrie Irving have had a lot of praise for Egor. And in one of the games, he was playing with Norman Powell and he went off for like 30 plus and they won. And as he walked off the floor and they were all saying, ‘this kid is going to be an absolute problem’ and they are very, very impressed with him…

“He looks like a guy who absolutely wants to turn the narrative of the Brooklyn Nets. He’s already spent time in Texas with Julius Randle, working out with him, building that rapport, that relationship and he is a man on a mission that wants to bring Brooklyn back to winning basketball.” Ghim added. “He wants to be a leader. He wants to be a leader by example.

Finally, Ghim offered a little intel on the relationship between Demin and Mikel Brown Jr. who’s only a month younger than Demin.

“He’s telling me about Mikel and he’s saying, ‘Mikel is a freak.’ And the stuff Mikel cares about — his intel, his knowledge, his IQ of the game is extremely, extremely high. He feels like the fit between him and Mikel is going to be like a glove.

“It’s going to be a perfect pairing between the two and he’s talking about how Mikel has so much ability, on and off ball, which makes their pairing so interesting as Egor continues to grow as a ball-handler, as a creator himself. If I was a Brooklyn Nets fan, I’d be absolutely through the moon with the young core they’re building over there … Egor looks like a man on a mission and he’s coming for blood.”

Ghim’s No Ceilings colleague, Corey Tulaba, added that there’s other aspects of what’s going on with Brooklyn that need to be understood like the addition of Julius Randle who, despite Michael Porter Jr.‘s jump last year, is something the Nets — and Demin — didn’t have last year: an established NBA star.

“This is an all-NBA player who can make an impact on winning and has done that at multiple stops,” Tulaba argued. “So now, you’ve got a chance to go other there not just with a bunch of guys who are maybe learning how to play together or guys who are playing for themselves. You’re going to play with veterans who know what to do. They’re really building something cool in Brooklyn and it feels organic.”

To that point, Ghim noted that Demin shouted out other members of the Flatbush5, specifically Nolan Traore and Ben Saraf moving forward.

The two writers agreed that there’s not much likelihood that things in Brooklyn will take a big leap this year but as Ghim concluded, continuity should be a big help as they move along their NBA careers.

“The team feels they are building out a team of guys that can do stuff,” he noted. “Bring different layers, different styles as a team and them being so young as they are and building together and them really believing in themselves and the group that they have, obviously it won’t be this year, but in the next couple of years this may be a real team to watch in the East.”

But, wait, there was more!!

David Thorpe of True Hoop this week did a list of Ten guys who might make a big difference and he raved about the possibility that the Nets eighth youngest player, barely 22-year-old Noah Clowney, could have a breakout season. (We’ve written about Clowney several times this summer, most recently in these pages just a week ago but Thorpe’s analysis is new.)

The take has one fun fact we were unaware of which we highlighted as well as a possibility we hadn’t thought much about. Thorpe starts off by noting that he thought Clowney may have made a mistake declaring for the 2023 NBA Draft where the Nets took him with the 21st pick, making him the fourth youngest player in the NBA. He was also their first return on the Kevin Durant trade with Phoenix. But as he also notes, that’s what over the dam:

I thought it odd that Clowney left a terrific program at Alabama, fresh off a Final Four appearance, after one season. He was probably too young to succeed in the NBA, and could have made a ton in NIL money!

So last season he entered this tier of players from whom I had no idea what to expect. And out of those players … he impressed me more than anyone when I got to see him play in games. Only three players 21 or younger averaged at least 12 points and took at least 3.4 or more free throws per game: Clowney, Cooper Flagg, and Stephon Castle And he did that in only 27 minutes per game.

He is not a good shooter. But at 33 percent from 3, where he’s been for his two seasons, he’s not bad and there’s every reason to think he is due for a big improvement. He has a lot of game cutting, driving, slashing, and drawing fouls off those attacks. If his shot improves, I doubt it’ll be too long before he gets a chance to start ahead of Julius Randle. His defense will have to keep improving, but to me Clowney has the look of a starting level power forward who might even play some small ball five.

For the record, Clowney averaged 12.3 points on 40/33/80 shooting to go along with 4.3 boards, 0.8 steals and 0.7 blocks. As every Nets fan knows, there have been games or series of games where he’s gotten us all excited, like the final week of the 2023-24 season when he had games of seven and four blocks and the 14 games last season where had four or more 3-pointers go in, including games of seven and six in a 10-day, five-game stretch.

He does that consistently and his restricted free agency will be interesting come July. The Nets can match any offer he might get (and there were rumblings last season that the San Antonio Spurs might have interest.) Still, it was good to see the Thorpe analysis. He did not include rookies or second year players, it should be noted.

That’s your weekly dose of optimism. Now you can read what Channing Frye has to say about the Nets being “straight garbage.” We won’t. We’ve been inundated with the negative. We trying for balance.

Hair style updates

Combing the Internet this week, we found video of both Mikel Brown Jr. and Grant Nelson in barber chairs. No, nothing escapes the ND Dragnet…

We found the first on HoopChina…

And the second onFargo, N.D. barber Landon Lopez’s Instagram account…

Are these the final cuts? What you think?

Final Note

You won’t see Pooch’s byline on ND for a while. He and his new wife, Gabrielle Galluzzi, are on a honeymoon in the Caribbean! Anthony and Gabrielle were married Saturday afternoon at St. Francis de Chantal R.C. Church in Wantagh, N.Y.

The happy couple have known each other since childhood, attending the same schools.

We like all their friends wish the couple all the best! So congratulations!

Steve Kerr candidly reflects on Warriors' failure to get younger this offseason originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

Steve Kerr hoped the Warriors could add some “younger legs” this offseason, but the Warriors coach knows addressing the need was easier said than done.

As Golden State approaches the 2026-27 NBA season with a roster closely resembling the aging group that competed last campaign, Kerr explained why on Friday’s episode of the “Tom Tolbert Show.”

“Having been a GM, I know how hard it is to just magically say, ‘All right, we’re going to get younger,’ ” Kerr told Tolbert. “We obviously tried to get younger, but stuff has to materialize. You have to have the assets or the cap room to be able to do certain things.

“The stuff that came our way, I mean, it’s [Mike Dunleavy’s] job and [Joe Lacob’s] job, but they obviously run everything by me. I mean, there was nothing that made sense to me to make this huge move. So, look, we did the best we could to put together the roster.”

In addition to bringing back veterans like Al Horford, De’Anthony Melton, Gary Payton II and Kristaps Porziņģis, the Warriors added Georges Niang and Brandon Williams in free agency after drafting Yaxel Lendeborg No. 11 overall in the 2026 NBA Draft.

It’s Kerr’s hope that the current roster, anchored by Steph Curry and Draymond Green, has enough depth to overcome its age as the team waits for Jimmy Butler and Moses Moody to return from their respective injuries.

“I think Yaxel’s going to help quite a bit,” Kerr continued. “He’s a really good player. He’s older, he’s mature. Watching him work out with our guys, he’s going to help us. Gui Santos, Brandon Podziemski, these guys are going to help us. George Niang, Brandon Williams, new signees. Nothing earth shattering, but really good players who can play a lot of minutes.

“And so I think our depth is the answer to the question you asked. We’re going to have to rely on our whole roster, including our two-way players at times. And fortunately, I do feel really good about the guys we have who have kind of filled out the back end of the roster. And I think they can help us hold down the fort until Jimmy [Butler] and Moses [Moody] get back the second half of the year.”

For the first time since the 2021-22 season, the Warriors are fielding a full 15-man roster to start the campaign in an attempt to make up for Moody and Butler’s absences.

Despite the odds — and Father Time — seemingly stacked against them, Kerr and the Warriors certainly hope they can recreate some of the magic from that championship year.

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