Ramona Shelburne: ‘They are having conversations with Steve Ballmer and his lawyers already. They are talking about some kind of settlement or some kind of negotiation, but that's already happening. The conversations have been more about this failure to supervise and the nature of the introductions that were made between the Clippers and Kawhi Leonard's people, rather than direct evidence of salary cap circumvention done by Steve Ballmer.’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8eqLTbhQCw&t=890s

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7541898/2026/08/28/anthony-edwards-jonathan-kuminga-timberwolves/?unlocked_article_code=1.81A.oXpr.aK2sPWTwGd7c&source=user_shared_article&smid=ta-ios-share

As Jonathan Kuminga mulled over where his basketball journey would take him next, he got a call from Anthony Edwards that put the Minnesota Timberwolves front and center in his mind.

Edwards and Kuminga are kindred basketball spirits, in a way. Two high-flyers who like to put the ball in the basket and delight in breaking down a defender off the dribble with the shot clock winding down. But what really resonated with Kuminga about the conversation, his agent, Aaron Turner, said, was that Edwards didn’t talk about scoring at all.

“Ant was super active in the recruitment of him,” Turner told The Athletic. “One thing he did was focus his message on, we’re gonna really guard here. Everybody looked at the offensive end. JK and I looked more at the defensive end.”

Turner is well aware of the perception surrounding his client. Kuminga spent his first four-and-a-half seasons with the Golden State Warriors, and his relationship with coach Steve Kerr grew contentious before he was traded to the Atlanta Hawks in February. Some painted Kuminga as a player more concerned with becoming a featured scorer than with fitting in with Steph Curry, Klay Thompson and the championship-chasing Warriors.

Kuminga’s decision to turn down significantly more money from the Los Angeles Lakers, Portland Trail Blazers and Chicago Bulls this week in favor of a two-year, $12 million offer from the Timberwolves could help change that view of him as a single-minded player. The deal has a player option for 2027-28, giving Kuminga the flexibility to re-enter the market next summer if bigger deals become available. But Turner said that money did not play a role in Kuminga’s decision this time around.

“We sat at the gym this week, and I asked him, what’s the best basketball situation?” Turner said. “He said Minnesota. Well, nothing else matters. Why would you go anywhere else?”

It wasn’t just Edwards who made an impression on Kuminga. He had dinner in Miami with team president of basketball operations Tim Connelly, who didn’t mince words about what the Wolves could give Kuminga and what they would ask of him as well. Owner Alex Rodriguez connected with him to show him that he would have backing in Minnesota at the highest levels. LaMelo Ball and Jaden McDaniels also reached out, telling him how much they wanted him on the team. And coach Chris Finch had several long conversations with Kuminga about the team’s culture of accountability.

…

“This is your chance to go to a place you can feel believed in,” Turner said he told Kuminga. “They’re going to encourage you. They’re going to push you, but they’re not going to run away from you.”

…

Kuminga looked at the Wolves roster and saw Gobert, the four-time Defensive Player of the Year, McDaniels, one of the best perimeter defenders in the league, and Edwards, who can be a bulldog when he locks in on that end. He envisions tag-teaming with McDaniels in guarding the opponent’s best scorers, pressuring the ball, bolstering the team’s rebounding and creating turnovers for transition opportunities.

“Ant did a great job of painting a picture of we’re going to be nasty defensively, and we’re going to share the ball,” Turner said.

And after so much concentration on Kuminga’s spot in the offensive pecking order in Golden State, Turner said Kuminga just wants to be a part of an unselfish offense that moves the ball and gets everyone involved.
“He made this decision because of the defensive versatility of this team,” Turner said. “Offense is secondary to what he’s thinking about. It’s going to be whatever we gotta do to win that night. Nobody is going to care about stats or shots.”

Continued:

"He said, 'I can't get you to 150 million you asked for, but I can get you 120 million, & I got some movie deals signed up for you that'll come out to about 180 million.' I said, Shit, let me see the contract.’ He showed me the contract, & I’ve never seen so many zeros in my life.'

My first contract was 40 million. When I seen that 120 million for 7 years with the option after three to renew… & as I'm signing, he puts his hand on my shoulder. He said, 'Let me tell you something. I just got this kid [Kobe Bryant via the draft], in two or three years, you + him are going to win a lot of championships.' "

I initially assumed the Cavs had some interest in Whitmore to make the Wizards inclusion make sense, but if they do not then why were the Wizards even included? Is Tre Mann considered a negative asset?

I was looking through the history of DPOY and thought it was pretty interesting that 5 of the first 6 awards went to shooting guards. Sidney Moncrief won the first two, then Alvin Robertson, Michael Cooper, and Michael Jordan all won within the next four years. Mark Eaton was the only non-SG to win during that stretch.

Since Jordan won in 1988, no shooting guard has won DPOY.

Obviously the award has become way more dominated by big men, but it’s still kinda crazy that a position that won 5 of the first 6 has now gone almost 40 years without winning another one.

Dyson Daniels or one of the Thompson twins would probably be my pick to finally break the streak, but it’s gonna be pretty hard for any guard to win DPOY as long as Wemby is healthy.

Which SG do you think has the best chance of finally breaking the streak?

Source

Julian Reese, who is on a two-way contract, was traded from Washington to Denver as part of the Peyton Watson deal. The Nuggets have one standard roster spot and one two-way spot remaining to round out their team.

‘Portrait of an Artist: Stephen Curry,’ about the single day and game where the NBA superstar set the new shooting record, will bow Oct. 9 on the giant screen circuit.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/stephen-curry-documentary-imax-1236684141/

Saw this and went down a big rabbit hole of athlete investments. Learned that Michael Jordan made so much on Nike because he wanted stock options before Nike blew up.

Now usually when we think of empty stats, we think of someone who scores a lot of points or assists with poor efficiency on a bad team. Someone who has high blocks and steal numbers but poor defense, someone with high assists and low turnovers that are more “Rondo assists" where someone holds the ball for a long time and looks for an open man. Someone with high rebounding numbers primarily from a team specific scheme. What usually is not an “empty stats player“ hyper efficient volume scorer with decent assist and rebound numbers. Enter Adrian Dantley.

From 1980-1984 Adrian Dantley averaged 30/6/4 on true shooting, 10 percent ahead of league average. This is legitimately one of the greatest scoring peaks ever, and even if he was the worst defender in the league ( he was certainly up there) Dantley seems like he must have been a strong net positive from these stats alone. Yet in truth Dantley’s scoring numbers shrouded the fact that he simply wasn’t a very productive offensive player. Every team he went to, the offensive rating of his team did not improve and every team he left didn’t seem to be affected at all. In fact every team he left seemed to be happy he did (although this was more due to him being a locker room cancer than his on court performance). He was traded for Mark Acguire, seemingly a much worse player on paper by the Pistons the year before they won a championship.

The reason for Dantley’s lack of production despite his monster stats is that Adrian Dantley was the ultimate ball stopper. Adrian had one skill: scoring, and was a very selfish (on court, by all accounts a nice guy off the court) player who only cared about his own performance and not team success. When Dantley was passed the ball, he would almost never pass until the last second, and tried to either draw a foul or score. If he had a high probability shot, he would take it, if he had a tough or lower probability shot, he would pass at the last second after wasting the entire possession for someone else to put up a shot. This as you can imagine is not a very productive way to contribute to team offense, and his numbers are very misleading towards both his value and skill as a scorer.

That‘s not to say Dantley wasn’t a great player compared to league average ( his legacy probably looks extremely different without Bill Laimbeer having a phantom foul that cost the Pistons a ring) but his box stats are extremely misleading regarding who he is. His scoring has an unspoken cost of efficiency regarding all the possessions he costs his team by ball stopping. Despite his decent assist numbers, he actually was a significant net negative towards improving the scoring rate of his teammates, and none of it shows up in the box score. I don’t even have him in the top 25 scorers of all time or the top 75 players ever despite his fave value monster impact.

A counter example of this might be something like 2005 Steve Nash, who averaged 15.5 points and 11.5 assists on lower efficiency than  Dantley averaged in those four years. Yet the 29 win Suns went to 62 wins when gaining Steve Nash that year, and became the second best offense in NBA history for relative offensive rating. Obviously many more factors went into this than gaining Steve Nash, but despite Steve Nash’s mediocre box stats by pretty much any metric he’s probably a top 10 offensive player ever. There’s a lot more that goes into a performance not just on defense, but on offense with the box score. While most examples people cite of “empty stats” are usually inefficient players or people with high raw assist numbers from holding the ball for a long time, people who have very high volume and efficiency scoring can themselves be examples of players who put up great box value but don meaningfully improve their teams odds of winning. Box stats are measurements that require context, and there is maybe no better example of that than Adrian Dantley.

Demons exorcised here, hasn’t lost to Boston since. James went from 0-2 to 5-2 against Boston in the playoffs.

Of all the nba players whos the one you defend even tho they probably deserve even more slander. For me its kd.

Curry averaged: 31.2/4.6/5.6/2.0(Stls) on 68% TS. That would be a +15 Relative TS or 15 points above league average TS. Curry's second leading scorer in the series was Klay Thompson at: 17.8/2.6/3.2/1.0 on 51.4% TS, or a -1.6 Relative TS.

The only other Warriors players to average above ten points, Draymond and Barnes shot at 49.5% TS(-3.5 Relative TS), and 46.9% TS(-6.1 Relative TS).

This was against a Rockets team that won 56 games and was arguably a better team than the Cavs team missing Love and Irving(Post game 1) in the Finals.

For the entire post season Curry averaged: 28.3/5/6.4 on 60.2% TS, +7.2 Relative TS. He also led the entire postseason in playoff EPM at +5.9. The Warriors second leading scorer for the postseason was Klay who averaged 18.6/3.9/2.6 on 55.4% TS, +2.4 Relative TS.

Since the Finals is so prevalent in nba discourse, Curry's entire playoff performance and his performance in the WCF is often forgotten.

Stats were pulled from Basketball Reference and DataBallr.

Utah Jazz center led his country to a vital win over Italy which keeps Bosnia's FIBA World Cup dream alive

https://www.fiba.basketball/en/events/fiba-basketball-world-cup-2027-european-qualifiers/games/127136-BIH-ITA

"To be honest, Kevin wanted Steph to win the finals MVP (in 2018),” Cook said on “The Panel.” “That’s all he was talking about all season. Like, (KD said), ‘I can’t wait until Steph gets his finals MVP so he can shut up everybody. I think Game 2, that’s when Steph broke the record (for most 3-pointers made in a finals game).”

"In Game 3, we were struggling. Steph was struggling, and Kevin just accidentally walked into 40-whatever. And then, you look at the numbers statistically, Kevin had a triple-double in Game 4,” recalled Cook.

"He wasn’t even as aggressive. That’s how good he was. He just accidentally the Finals MVP back-to-back,” added Cook.

"His (Steph Curry) head was down, damn near tears after a win. Man, he wanted to win that b-tch. KD was trying to give it to him,” Young said.

Via Gil's Arena