The days of James holding up an entire league while he mulled his options are clearly over, but you could still hear a whole lot of sighs when news broke minutes ago that he was joining the 76ers on his classic 1+1 deal (two years with the second a player option) for $8 million.

It seems likelier than not that Philly will be James’ final stand as a basketball luminary (ceremonial retirement as a Cavalier notwithstanding). "This is my last decision,” he wrote on X. What does this mean for Philly? What does this mean for James?

Even with a playing career older than Victor Wembanyama, James is still an elite player. He was a deserving All-Star last year, averaging 21/6/7 on above-average shooting efficiency, and he led the Lakers to an upset playoff series win over the Houston Rockets without much from Austin Reaves or anything from Luka Doncic.

Last year proved that James is open to a secondary role. His 29.2% usage was his lowest since his second year in the league, and his 22.6 field goal attempts per 100 possessions were the fewest of his career. His shot selection changed, too. For the first time ever, more than half of his two-point attempts were assisted.

While James may have been carrying a (slightly) lighter load, there were some fun upticks in his numbers, too. A whopping 26.7% of his finished plays came in transition, the highest level since at least 2015-16, when the NBA’s tracking data starts. That helped him tie his career-best dunk frequency (which never happens to old guys! Your average NBA player starts dunking less after their rookie year!).

James spent far more time off-ball and in the corners than in years past. When he was on the court with Reaves and Doncic, James looked like… well, like a particularly capable third banana, which is exactly what he was.

He’ll be third or fourth in Philadelphia most nights, too, but in a dramatically different fashion.

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First, the deets:

OKC receives: three second-rounders (‘27 CHI, ‘31 best of Hawks/Rockets, ‘32 best of Hawks/Lakers)
Atlanta receives: Lu Dort, Ryan Nembhard
Dallas receives: Zaccharie Risacher

This is a perfectly understandable, if all-around depressing, trade for nearly everyone in question.

For Oklahoma City, the writing’s been on the wall in non-washable marker for a while now. Ever since they picked up Dort’s option and paid out a big number to re-sign Isaiah Hartenstein (and went higher-than-expected on Kenrich Williams), it was nearly certain that they’d be angling to move Dort.

Sam Presti, thankfully, didn’t blame the aprons, calling it purely a “financial decision.” The Thunder saved close to $100 million in salary and taxes with this move alone. Technically, this creates a ~$18 million trade exception, but I’d be flabbergasted if the Thunder did anything with it. Championship contenders should be willing to pay more to field a team, but how many people would want to pay almost nine figures for a player who might have been eighth or ninth in OKC’s pecking order?

On a night-to-night basis, the Thunder don’t need Dort anymore. He did not have his best season last year on either end of the ball. His three-pointer didn’t quite abandon him, but it definitely glanced at the back door a little too often for comfort:

Only 14% of his shots came at the rim, the lowest share of his career, and for the first time since the Thunder became The Thunder, the team was significantly better with him off the floor than on (although they were plenty good with him playing).

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Cason Wallace and Ajay Mitchell are likely better players overall. Alex Caruso can do what Dort does (albeit in fewer minutes), and Jared McCain’s shooting will be even more important to OKC without Isaiah Joe around. Dort became expendable. It’s important to note that Dort is in the last year of his deal, and with the Thunder getting even more expensive next year (when Shai’s supermax brings his salary from $40 million to $60 million), it’s hard to see a world where they could have retained him. Perhaps they wanted to get whatever value they could, and the seconds they got back are relatively juicy (for seconds).

Still, Dort is ingrained in the Thunder’s culture. He brings an alley-fight edge that they’ll miss. Even after a down year, I hold his defense in high regard, particularly against strength-based players, and he’s at least a willing three-point shooter. There will be playoff nights where OKC has a Dort-sized hole on the court.

The Thunder are an inner-circle contender. Every move on the margin matters, and I don’t want to celebrate cutting costs for one of the few teams that could justify going into the second apron and paying a big tax bill. But there’s also a real case to be made that, even beyond the obvious financial motivations, there simply wasn’t a big enough role for Dort to justify keeping him. It seems plausible to me that if Dort’s options were being traded or accepting a middle-of-the-bench role, he might’ve preferred an opportunity somewhere else.

To paraphrase Pina from the top: This trade is sensible. But it’s still a little bit depressing. And if the team doesn’t “re-allocate [the savings] to future teams,” as Presti suggested they will, I’ll feel a whole lot harsher than I already do.

OKC grade: C-

Historically, doing business with the Thunder has been a dangerous game. But Atlanta, understanding OKC’s financial predicament, has now done it twice in one offseason, first with Aaron Wiggins and now Dort. I like both moves just fine for them.

The Hawks are setting up a live-wire electric fence around their paint. Pity the poor ballhandlers who have to navigate Dyson Daniels’ reaching, stretching arms, Nickeil-Alexander-Walker’s ceaseless pursuit, and now Dort’s controversial physicality and strength. Onyeka Okongwu and Jalen Johnson aren’t the world’s most intimidating rim protectors, so the Hawks have compensated by going all-in on perimeter defense.

Unless Dort’s shot recommits to their relationship, the fit here isn’t perfect. The Hawks’ wing rotation is nearly as crowded as OKC’s. I bet Dort and Daniels platoon a little bit, as Daniels is the trigger-unhappy cutter and screener while Dort is more comfortable bombing away from deep. The two guards are about as different as high-level perimeter defenders could possibly be, which gives coach Quin Snyder pleasing optionality.

The Hawks could absolutely use an infusion of nasty, which Dort will apply.

This is the final year of Dort’s deal, and Atlanta’s done a fantastic job of maintaining their books. They should try to extend him on the cheap, although the 27-year-old might want to bet on his shot in hopes of scrounging up another big payday. There’s always a chance he leaves in free agency next summer, which would be a small letdown, but it’s a perfectly reasonable risk to run.

Ryan Nembhard is a small but solid backup point guard with real passing chops and a hint of an outside jumper. With the Hawks re-signing CJ McCollum to a one-year deal, rookie Kingston Flemings likely to assume a prominent role sooner than later, and guys like Alexander-Walker, Daniels, and Devin Carter absorbing the rest of the ballhandling duties, I don’t see a lot of room for him here. I think Nembhard has a future in this league, but we’ll see if he makes it through the season on Atlanta.

I am a little bummed that the Hawks cut bait with Zaccharie Risacher already. Risacher’s second season was hardly the most inspiring. He landed on my list of the season’s biggest disappointments; it’s kind of telling that this article wasn’t called “Zaccharie Risacher trade grades,” right?

But 6’9” players with a half-decent three-point shot and some off-ball defensive skills don’t grow on trees, and it’s not like he’s been a disaster. This almost felt like ATL just wanted to get away from the optics, the story of a number-one pick who hasn’t lived up to lofty expectations.

Risacher is striving and failing to find his standout NBA skill, the thing that lets him make an impact every night. Atlanta got tired of waiting, and given how they invested a number-one pick in him (a different front office, but still), that should be a warning sign to the rest of the league.

In the end, the Hawks make an upgrade for a reasonable cost. If you flap away the smell of sadness, it’s hard to argue against this move.

Atlanta grade: B

Ah, Dallas, the one team for whom this trade is neither sad nor particularly sensible.

I have a piece half-written, one I teased a little during a conversation in the comments with a reader, about how Masai Ujiri is re-making the Mavericks in the image of his old Raptors team. Project 6’9” (Part Deux) is here!

However, it’s currently unclear whether Ujiri learned any lessons from his original go. It’s great to have a team full of power-forward-sized guys, as long as at least a couple of them have disparate skill sets to fill traditional basketball roles. Ryan Nembhard was a perfectly solid reserve floor general; he’s gone now, which means the team’s point guard depth is a hoary Kyrie Irving coming off a torn ACL, shoot-first Marcus Sasser, who struggled to find any consistent role in Detroit, and late first-rounder Sergio De Larrea.

I like the idea of buying low on a former first overall pick, as Dallas only had to give up a backup point guard and a single second-round pick. I haven’t given up on Risacher yet, even if I understand why the Hawks did. A new environment could be exactly what he needs.

But this team seems hell-bent on collecting as many forwards as it can. It’s starting to seriously concern me. Ujiri’s family might need to hold an intervention.

I will go deeper on the Mavs later this summer, but I’m waiting. I just can’t imagine that this is the final roster. There’s a lot of talent on this squad right now, but it’s like doing a jigsaw puzzle in the dark. It’s impossible to tell how the pieces fit.

Dallas grade: C+ (for now)

Even with the tickets rising to $68 ($50 + $18 in fees online, or a straight $68 at the in-person box office, which seems wrong), it’s the only place where you can get ten straight hours of NBA-adjacent basketball per day. And for one weekend, the wider Las Vegas ecosystem allows you to consistently rub shoulders, sometimes literally, with the league’s high and mighty.

Example: While I pounded away on a story, my traveling buddies were prowling the Aria Friday night, looking for a craps table. They found one with a solitary vacant spot, which happened to be next to Jamal Murray.

It’s not uncommon to catch players at various games on the Strip, although they aren’t always slumming it on the (relatively) lower minimum tables. My friends slid in and started rolling.

The dealers changed, and the new one asked everyone what they were in Vegas for. A bachelorette party, said a trio of happy, constantly losing ladies. To catch Summer League, said my guys, glancing knowingly at Murray.

Rocking a resplendent Jujutsu Kaisen shirt, the Nugget quietly replied,

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Salary cap circumvention, the practice of manipulating player pay in such a way as to get around luxury taxes, aprons, and cap restrictions, is strictly forbidden in every sport. For “fairness,” all teams must be on a level playing field. Part of that leveling includes paying players what they’re worth.

Since the turn of the century, the NBA has handed down only two punishments for salary cap circumvention. David Stern smacked the Wolves with a cartoonishly huge hammer (five first-round picks were initially stripped!) in 2000 for secretly agreeing to pay Joe Smith nearly $90 million if he took a couple of cheap one-year deals first. Then, in 2015, Adam Silver fined the Los Angeles Clippers (!) for offering to hook DeAndre Jordan up with a Lexus endorsement if he re-signed with the team — an offer, hilariously, that wasn’t enticing enough to keep Jordan but was large enough to invite the league’s wrath.

Victor Wembanyama

Anyway, Victor Wembanyama just signed a five-year maximum contract worth 25% of the salary cap (with a player option at the end). He eschewed the “escalator” clauses that would have raised his contract to 30% of the cap if he’d made an All-NBA Team or won Defensive Player of the Year next season.

I’m a little surprised at the discourse around this contract. A few thoughts:

1) That 30% max was not guaranteed. It’s fairly treated as fait accompli that Wemby would win DPOY and make an All-NBA team if he plays 65 games next year, but that’s a huge if. Wembanyama has played 71, 46, and 64+1 games in his three years.

(Why did I say 64+1? He actually played in 64 of 82 regular-season games, but the NBA decided that the NBA Cup Final, which doesn’t count for anything else, does count for awards eligibility — which it should! It’s all rather silly.)

In other words, Wemby's qualifying for awards isn’t a guarantee, which brings us to…

2) I’ve seen too many people say that Wemby won’t feel pressure to make the qualifying benchmark now because there’s no money tied to it. In theory, perhaps he’ll take it easier if an injury puts him on the precipice of missing the cutoff.

But from everything I know about Wembanyama, that stance misses the important point that he still wants awards. Wemby is a legitimate cold-blooded competitor. Just like last season, he will push for 65 games if there’s any chance he can reach that threshold. Removing money from the equation won’t make Wemby take his foot off the gas in that regard.

He wants to be the Greatest of All Time. The only pathway to that hallowed ground involves accumulating accolades like Xbox achievements. Both require playing games.

Pushing too hard for an arbitrary number of matches played can increase injury risk (decreasing championship odds), and that’s part of the equation here. But players like Wemby don’t view the math the same way that we do.

If he can do it all, he will.

3) As expected, the NBAPA came out against this contract, railing against the second apron (but not so much the burdensome luxury tax penalties that I believe drive far more contract hesitations than any apron). It’s the Player Association’s job to steer every player toward the biggest possible dollar amount.

But this isn’t purely about reallocating money from Wembanyama back to the Spurs’ ownership group. He’s undoubtedly had conversations with ownership and management about where the saved money (which, if he qualifies, amounts to roughly $10 million per season) could go. I — and Wemby — expect that money to be distributed to other parts of the roster, like Steph Castle and Dylan Harper’s upcoming extensions.

Wembanyama, like Jalen Brunson, Spurs legend Tim Duncan, and many other stars before him, made a decision that opens up more pathways to team success. And who is to say that won’t make better financial success for him in the long run, anyway?

Whatever marketing opportunities Brunson had before have undoubtedly doubled thanks to his legendary playoff run. That championship halo means he’s even likelier to earn bigger contracts later in his career, too. Earning a ring brings a whole host of ancillary, harder-to-quantify benefits, not least of which is the respect from fans, media, and fellow players around the league.

Winning a championship is hard. Winning multiple, for this generation of superstars, has proven impossible. As long as Wembanyama is confident that his potential sacrifice will be reinvested in the team, this is a very logical decision all around, one that could benefit all parties involved.

It would be lovely if we lived in a world with no spending constraints at all, and every player was paid exactly what they were worth. But it’s worth remembering that NBA players receive ~50% of basketball-related income from the league every year, regardless of specific player and team financial situations. Wembanyama’s sacrifice will change overall compensation to the players zero dollars.

But it could change his individual compensation, paying him below what he could have been making. Which…hmm.

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Gary Trent Jr.

It’s funny that Wembanyama’s sacrifice is explicitly legal, while Gary Trent Jr.’s contract is explicitly illegal. Wemby is potentially leaving money on the table he will never be able to get back; Trent was basically just delaying earnings that he eventually realized (if the league doesn’t void his contract, that is).

Let’s back up. I was at Summer League when the Shams tweet broke, announcing that Milwaukee had awarded GTJ a four-year, $64 million contract. The incredulous guffaws from the media section were audible throughout the arena.

Low-level salary cap circumvention is a much more common thing in the NBA than most people realize. Think of all the whispers around players sitting out for a year for tanking purposes and then being rewarded with eye-popping offer sheets, all the handshake deals honored even after a player has a down year. Really, I can think of only one prominent example of a rumored premeditated deal not being followed through.

Milwaukee probably should’ve been the second. This whole situation is insane. I said Trent was “certainly worth more than a minimum deal” at the time of his initial signing in Wisconsin two years ago, and he went on to shoot nearly 42% from deep while averaging a whopping 19 points in Milwaukee’s five playoff games (including two separate 30+ point outbursts).

His reward? $3.7 million the next season, another seemingly shocking underpay. Of course, the 2025-26 season went terribly for everyone in Milwaukee, culminating in Giannis literally asking for an investigation into the team. Trent’s play dropped off a cliff; even while the team was still trying to win games, he eventually fell out of the rotation. His three-point shooting fell to 36%, and his two-point shooting remained below-average. His defense went from overrated to straight-up bad. Without Giannis around, and with a bevy of younger and/or better shooting guards on the roster, the Bucks seemed primed to let Trent walk to another team for something around the minimum.

Instead, he was lavishly rewarded.

There is simply no basketball reason to justify this. Even a one-year, prove-it deal for $10 million would require a reading of Trent’s play charitable enough to convey sainthood; to get four years of midlevel money is ridiculously out of left field.

Truthfully, I don’t really care about this. We’re not talking about the Kawhi Leonard situation, in which a team allegedly paid someone off the books. That’s a far worse offense. Trent’s contract, on the other hand, is simply a deferred payment. If a player is willing to forgo current earnings to maximize future ones, is it really that bad of a thing? The Bucks are paying the piper now, after all, and Trent’s (more than) being made whole.

I understand that in a luxury-tax-and-apron world, this sets a bad precedent, and the league will need to come down on the Bucks (and perhaps Trent). I get it, I do. Fairness, competitive integrity, etcetera. In truth, though, I kind of admire the creative accounting and the trust that both sides had in the other. After all, the money is still being counted against the salary cap eventually.

There’s an argument that this isn’t as bad as having superstars take less than they’re worth, right?

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Bam Adebayo and Tyler Herro

While I mostly wanted to talk about the fascinating financial decisions of the last few days, the Bam Adebayo/Tyler Herro altercation is worth discussing.

Adebayo and Herro are interesting players, particularly in the context of Heat fandom. I’ve always felt that both have been somewhat unfairly maligned (for different reasons) by large parts of the fanbase.

Still, it’s indisputably true that Adebayo has been raised up by the organization as a pillar of HEAT Culture, while Herro has spent years as trade bait. Both are All-Stars, while neither has ever made an All-NBA team. I can somewhat understand Herro (a well-known hard worker behind the scenes) feeling put out by the praise the team has always lavished on Adebayo.

Unfortunately, he let it fester in the wrong ways. Badmouthing former teammates ain’t a great look, especially to random fans online, and especially when said teammate is objectively better.

Even more unfortunately, Adebayo responded in the worst way possible. Putting hands on Herro (particularly in front of a bunch of Herro’s teenage AAU players) is the wrong decision no matter what Herro said, and frankly, most of what we know transpired has seemed relatively minor and restricted to on-court complaints. I’d expect Adebayo to be annoyed, but not nearly to this degree.

While the story has understandably titillated the online masses, as someone who grew up in South Florida, I’ve found it all to be a little bit of a bummer.

One of the many reasons Vegas Summer League is so delightful is that you never know who will pop. Everyone expected AJ Dybantsa and Darryn Peterson to have cool moments (and they certainly did!), but no one was ready for Noah Penda’s fancy new footwork or for Liam McNeeley to become the greatest shooter alive.

But let’s back up. The headliners from Day 1 put on a show.

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Japan was great fun, thanks for asking. Aside from waking up every morning to a deluge of Shams alerts, I had no interaction with the NBA besides being stuck on a purgatorially delayed plane back to the States with Onyeka Okongwu.

I talked about the fascinating LaMelo Ball deal right after disembarking from a long-ass flight, and I was thankfully around for the Giannis Antetokounmpo and Julius Randle moves. But since then, so much has happened! Taking in everything that changed is both thrilling and overwhelming.

Rather than try to catch up on every bit of old news, I’m going to run down a few of my favorite and least favorite moves from a wild week of basketball transactions.

My favorite moves

The Clippers reset

The Kawhi Leonard trade broke right as I was spooning into some breakfast miso soup, causing me to reflexively curse out loud in the middle of a pleasant Tokyo diner. (I fear I did nothing to dispel the noisy American stereotypes.)

Leonard went where? And for how much?

I don’t hate the move for the Toronto Raptors. Kawhi Leonard was one of the five best players to squeak his shoes last year, and Toronto (led by Scottie Barnes) was readier for primetime than I had expected. They desperately need a halfcourt scorer who can generate more efficient offense when their transition game breaks down. If the Raptors get 95% of what Leonard brought last year, they could make plenty of noise in the jazzed-up Eastern Conference (and they still have several first-round picks available to make future moves).

On the other hand, the Clippers were going nowhere with Leonard, as proven by their play-in bounce-out. They reset the board and enter next season with Brandon Ingram (technically an All-Star last year, even if I didn’t pick him as one), Gradey Dick, unprotected firsts in 2031 and 2033, a swap in 2027 (which seems unlikely to convey but is a nice hedge against Leonard injury), and two seconds.

That’s a pretty excellent return for a guy who just turned 35, is the league’s most infamous health risk, and is still under investigation for his starring role in the salary-cap circumvention Aspiration scandal. It’s even more impressive when you consider that Leonard is in the final year of his contract and leaked that he only wanted to play for Toronto or LA, undercutting the Clippers’ trade leverage.

Ingram is a decent offensive innings-eater. He can shoulder enough usage to make things a little easier for Darius Garland and rookie guard Keaton Wagler, but this was all about the picks. Those unprotected selections will take a while to convey, but Leonard won’t be a factor by the time they arrive. Who knows what the Raptors even look like five years from now? Given that the Clippers still don’t control any of their draft picks through this decade, adding slots in the early 2030s, when they can rebuild in earnest, makes cold, calculated sense.

Tearing things down is always easier than building something up, and the Clippers face a long road back to relevancy. This move makes that road a little bit smoother.

Josh Okogie to the Jazz

Okogie has a nose for the ball. He’s also got the elbows, fingers, and teeth for it, too.

I’ve always been partial to guys with mismatched bodies and skills, and despite his 6’4” height, Okogie might be the best inch-for-inch offensive rebounder in the NBA. Is it possible for someone’s signature move to be the baseline sneak?

Okogie has consistently posted some of the best defensive playmaking and hustle rates around, too. The Utah Jazz are hoping to make some playoff noise this season for the first time in many moons, but their roster — filled with high-octane scorers like coach Keyonte George, Jaren Jackson Jr., Lauri Markkanen, and exceedingly talented rookie Darryn Peterson — lacked a wild card, a f***-s***-up kind of guy. Sometimes in the NBA, you need to throw a little variability into the mix. Okogie brings the chaos like few others.

On a cheap two-year contract with a team option at the end, there’s nothing but upside here.

Dean Wade and Anfernee Simons to the 76ers

Trading Paul George and some juicy draft capital for Jaylen Brown dominated the headlines and will have massive ripple effects throughout the Eastern Conference for years to come. It’s a wonderfully complicated transaction that could go tremendously well or exceedingly poorly.1

What’s less complicated: the surprising success Philadelphia has had filling out its depth. Losing Kelly Oubre and Quentin Grimes hurts, but the 76ers did a fantastic job landing Dean Wade and Anfernee Simons to replace them.

Wade is a defensive analytics deity and a career 36% three-point shooter. He can’t really dribble, pass, or do much of anything else, but even limited 3-and-D guys with Wade’s size (6’10” in shoes) are hard to find, much less at $10 million per year. He’ll be the perfect frontcourt complement to Brown as a capable on-ball defender who can guard one through four and an awesome off-ball team defender.

Simons, meanwhile, has never been my kind of player — largely because the price tag previously exceeded $25 million per year. I like his off-the-dribble bombing and renewed (if still lackluster) defensive efforts far more at less than a quarter of that cost ($12 million over two years). In short, Simons is an inflammable bench scorer signed to a contract that he almost can’t help but outplay.

I’ll be writing a bigger piece on Brown and the 76ers at some point this summer, but I didn’t want to let these two moderate wins slip under the radar.

Marcus Smart to Houston

On the surface, Smart doesn’t make a ton of sense on a Rockets team already brimming with defensively-minded, shaky-shooting wings like Amen Thompson and freshly re-signed Tari Eason.

But I’ve previously called the Houston Rockets an exoskeleton team — they’re completely lacking in connective tissue and heart. Smart brings those things like he’s conducting an AP Biology lab.

Although Smart is a 32% career three-point shooter, he’s certainly not afraid to take big shots. He’s a savvy passer, and while his vocal leadership has occasionally rubbed teammates the wrong way, this Houston squad desperately needs Smart’s try-hard grit. Defensively, Smart had a very strong numerical case for an All-Defensive team last season. Effort won’t be an issue with Smart on the floor, and I have no doubt he’ll worm his way back into former coach Ime Udoka’s good graces immediately.

(One potential downside? With Smart’s addition and now-healthy point guard Fred VanVleet re-entering the fold, it will be all too tempting for Udoka to go back to burying Reed Sheppard on the bench. Sheppard’s development is still critical to Houston’s present and future success.)

My least-favorite moves

The Blazers trade for Ja Morant

In most cases, I’d applaud a team for snagging a buy-low guy with star upside like Ja Morant. This isn’t most cases.

At his peak, Morant was a living paint touch, generating shots at the rim for himself and his teammates while producing some of the most live-wire highlight reels the NBA world has ever seen. He was, at worst, one of the three most exciting players in the league.

But that was several years ago, and even then, there wasn’t much evidence that his style of play led to any postseason success. The Grizzlies produced exactly one playoff series win in those days. While there are some mitigating circumstances, we simply haven’t seen Morant stay healthy and effective enough when the going gets tough.

Morant can still razzle, still dazzle. There’s a slippery creativity to his game that only true artists have:

But reality keeps intruding upon basketball fantasy. Right now, Morant is a player who can’t shoot, defend, or stay on the hardwood, and that’s not even including his various off-court troubles (which hopefully are a thing of the past, but who knows?).

Even more confusingly, the Blazers already had several good players who need time at point guard, from the stalwart Jrue Holiday to returning franchise icon Damian Lillard to rising fourth-year Scoot Henderson (who really came on defensively down the stretch). Morant could, perhaps should, be better than them. But point guard wasn’t exactly a position of need for Portland, and he won’t be spacing the floor for Deni Avdija’s steamrolling drives to the rim. I’m not sure there would be a worse-defending backcourt in the league than Lillard and Morant.

To be clear, I am jonesing to watch Morant play in Portland; like an addict, I still remember the highs. I’m just not particularly optimistic we’ll capture that feeling again.

Kevin Huerter returns to the Pistons

The Pistons retained Huerter’s services by offering him a three-year, $27 million contract. Did they not watch Huerter play basketball for them last season? Was anyone else likely to offer Huerter anywhere near this much money?

Huerter is a shooter who has forgotten how to shoot, and while he’s not as bad defensively as some other players of this archetype (like, say, teammate Duncan Robinson), he’s certainly not in the league for his lockdown capabilities.

It’s possible Huerter regains his form from a few years back, when he was buzzing around dribble-hand-offs with Domantas Sabonis, but this contract pays him like that’s a sure thing instead of a gamble. The best-case scenario here is that Huerter ends up fairly paid, while the worst is that he’s unplayable even in the regular season.

Perhaps the Pistons are so light on shooting that they felt compelled to bring back someone with even a glimmer of a hope for a three-point shot, but I’d rather give Huerter’s minutes to freshly inked sharpshooter Isaiah Joe.

The Mavericks trade for Santi Aldama

Aldama is a perfectly solid player who makes very little sense in a crowded Mavericks frontcourt.

I’ve highlighted Aldama positively several times over the last few years. He’s tall, a reasonable shooter, and has a little bit of off-the-bounce playmaking. He averaged 14 points for the Grizzlies last year as a high-level backup big capable of starting in a pinch.

But the Mavericks have so many power forwards. PJ Washington, my guy Naji Marshall, first-round pick Morez Johnson Jr., sharpshooter Klay Thompson, Caleb Martin, Max Christie… who am I forgetting? Right, budding superstar Cooper Flagg! Those are all players (of varying type and quality) who could play minutes at the four. Some of those guys can play other positions, of course, but the logjam up front doesn’t need another mouth to feed. There isn’t enough Tex-Mex for the mouths they have now!

The Mavericks didn’t give up much for Aldama, including a top-20-protected first from Golden State in 2030 (which seems likely to convey into a second-round pick the following year) and two additional seconds. But in-name-only first-round picks are still valuable trade chips. Even if we assume Dallas sends out some of the aforementioned guys, giving up anything at all for the position the Mavericks need the least help with baffles me.

The Suns trade for Miles Bridges

Baffling move from Phoenix here. Swapping two quality rotation players in Royce O’Neale and Grayson Allen plus an unprotected first-round pick in 2033 for Bridges and a heavily swapped pick in 2029 (which is almost guaranteed to be bad) makes little sense.

Despite his superficial per-game box-score numbers, Bridges was arguably the weakest two-way link in the Hornets’ starting five. Bridges is a career 34% three-point shooter who doesn’t do nearly enough defensively or on the boards at the power forward position to complement Devin Booker. The shot selection will drive Suns fans wild:

Plus, you know, he’s Miles Bridges.

Bridges is a jack-of-all-trades without a standout NBA skill (besides being an excellent lob finisher). He was maximized playing in a free-flowing Hornets system that had shooting and passing at nearly every other position. Unfortunately, the Suns just traded away two of their most reliable perimeter threats, and as good as Booker is, he’s not nearly as clean a fit next to Bridges as LaMelo Ball had been.

The Suns’ delightful season last year was built on a defense-first identity and a barrage of threes from everyone around Booker. Bridges doesn’t fit that identity whatsoever. In a league where losing is finally disincentivized, Phoenix won’t find nearly as many easy wins as last year. Downgrading draft capital for an ostensibly win-now move that at best makes the team marginally better and at average eats into the team’s culture and depth is depressing as hell.

If you’ve been around for a while (thank you!), some of the following paragraphs will sound familiar, so feel free to skip to the good stuff. If you’re new or need a refresher, however, stay right here.

There are many ways you could define consistency. For ease of comprehension, I leaned on John Hollinger’s old Game Score metric1 for this analysis. Game Score is a game-level (duh), all-in-one metric that tabulates a player’s box score contributions. It roughly scales with point totals, so Game Scores of 30+ are great and Game Scores of <10 are terrible (by this group’s standards, anyway).

I limited the population just to the league’s top 50 qualifying scorers, since points are the primary driver of Game Score. Feel free to plow past the following italicized paragraph if you don’t care for the nitty-gritty methodology.

Boring math: I took every NBA player’s stats from every game last season and whittled it down to the top 50 point-scorers in the NBA, min. 41 games played. I excluded games of <20 mins played to remove injury-truncated performances. I then adjusted Game Scores to a per-36-minute number, took the standard deviations of each player’s adjusted Game Scores, and normalized them by dividing the standard deviation by the player’s mean Game Score per 36; this helps stabilize comparisons between players whose average Game Score is 15 and those whose average Game Score is 25.

It’s important to note that the standard deviation divided by the average doesn’t mean anything tangible in and of itself, but it is useful for rank-ordering players. A lower number indicates more consistent output; a higher one indicates greater nightly variance.

Now, let’s look at the league’s least consistent stars! As I typically do, I’ll also include a scatterplot with all 50 players at the bottom for paid subscribers.

The 13 least consistent NBA stars of the 2026 season

I want to caution against using inconsistency as a pejorative, at least as we’re framing it here. The bottom of these rankings is riddled with perimeter players who rely upon the high-variance, low-accuracy three-point shot. Shooters have a vital role in a functioning NBA offense, even on off nights; do defenses leave Steph Curry open to double-team Draymond Green even when Curry is 2-for-11 from deep? Of course not. Game Score is a box score metric, so it can’t account for on/off data or anything more complex. Therefore, floor spacers are unfairly penalized by this analysis.

Typically, lower-scoring players are at the bottom of this list, too, as they’re more likely to be relatively volatile from one night to the next than the unquestioned alpha dogs.

Still, there are always interesting players at the top and bottom of this list. Here’s the latter:

We see several small guards like CJ McCollum (congrats on the new deal!) and Darius Garland, but there are still some fun quirks.

For example, all three of the Hornets’ ballhandlers are here! LaMelo Ball, Brandon Miller, and Kon Knueppel are all eager bombers from deep. It’s a credit to the Hornets’ ecosystem that when one guy had it going, the other two were happy to feed the hot hand. I suspect Knueppel would’ve ranked much higher for the first two-thirds of the season before he hit the rookie wall — his two least efficient months shooting the ball were March and April.

Cooper Flagg’s presence reflects how his efficacy waxed and waned throughout the season. He was always a force, but having to play point guard for the first part of the season (and then again at the end) and being the focal point of every defense’s attention as an 18-year-old made for a roller coaster box-score season. I don’t expect him to linger at the bottom for long.

I’m a little surprised Austin Reaves is here, as his ability to earn free throws should be a steadying force. But he’s somewhat a victim of having too high of highs, as he memorably dropped a number of 40+ scoring performances in the absence of Luka Doncic and/or LeBron James early in the season. His ceiling significantly receded when the team was healthy.

Speaking of too-high highs, Bam Adebayo’s 83-point game represented the highest raw game score of the season (60.5, in case you’re wondering). Adebayo may have been here anyway, as his dramatic increase in three-point volume meant his stats swung wildly from one night to the next. Big men who aren’t uber-efficient rarely fare well in this exercise (in fact, Alperen Sengun was just one spot ahead of Adebayo).

Big men who are efficient and prolific? We’ll see a few of them with one more swipe-to-scroll.

The 13 most consistent NBA stars of the 2026 season

Your most consistent NBA players are often the MVP candidates, but there are always a few unexpected names in the mix. This year, there were more than a few! Behold:

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I had prewritten this article and one other to send out while I was overseas. Mrs. Poetry threatened to become ex-Mrs. Poetry if I spent five hours in a Tokyo hotel room writing about free agency’s best minimum deals or whatever, and I couldn’t tell if she was joking. And frankly, I don’t know s*** about the draft, so you’re not missing anything from me there.

Then, LaMelo Ball got traded approximately five seconds after I put my phone on airplane mode for the endless journey overseas. So I had to tack a few thoughts in here while the rest of my traveling party sleeps through jetlag.

I’ll be back after the 4th of July to write about whatever shenanigans the league gets up to in the first few days of free agency.

LaMelo Ball traded to the Wolves

Wow! I could talk about this move for an hour, but I have roughly 20 minutes to jot down some thoughts. Let’s move quickly.

LaMelo Ball has a unique relationship with risk. He drives coaches and teammates batty with some of the worst shots you’ll see, then mollifies them with some of the most inventive passing in the league. It’s a tricky tightrope to walk. In previous seasons, he went a little too far in the Let’s-see-what-I-can-do direction, but last year saw him reel in his worst tendencies to a more manageable level.

That said, I haven’t forgotten early reporting that Ball and coach Charles Lee were clashing, and I’m not referring to the literal collision. Ball’s rambunctious style of play feels destined to put him at loggerheads with every coach he will have. Still, the Hornets’ strong finish down the stretch of the season — even with obvious areas for improvement in the frontcourt — seemingly engendered Kumbaya feelings for everyone involved.

Apparently not. Ball is now a Timberwolf, along with Josh Green. In return, the Hornets get virtually everything of value the Wolves had left: Naz Reid, a 2033 first-round pick, three first-round pick swaps (2028, 2029, 2030), and three second-round picks (2029, 2032, 2033).

The Wolves entered the summer with a glaring hole at point guard and a whole lot of big men. After the Julius Randle move and this one, they now have little depth in the frontcourt and one of the most intriguing backcourt combos in the league.

It’s hard to imagine two players more different than Ball and Edwards, outside of their propensity for taking and making three-pointers. Ball’s hit-ahead passing and ability to absorb a high level of defensive attention should make for wonderful offensive chemistry with Edwards and Jaden McDaniels. Rudy Gobert must have shed a tear — Ball promises to spoon-feed him alley-oops that nobody on the Wolves would have even seen, much less executed:

Defensively, Ball had the best season of his career by a mile last year. It was still bad. If Edwards can lock back in on that end, however, a Gobert/McDaniels/Edwards and presumably /Dosunmu starting lineup around him should still be quite solid (if a bit small). I’m fascinated to see how consistently they can reach their ceiling on that end.

Ball has a few years left of a maximum contract, and he’ll want another. I think the Hornets saw Trae Young (!!) get $212 million and were deeply worried about Ball getting that kind of money when the Brandon Miller and Kon Knueppel extensions are coming up. Even Ball defenders like myself note that his game could struggle to bloom in the playoffs, where he has yet to make an appearance, and Ball’s health will always be a question mark. He’s only two seasons with more than 51 games out of six.

Ball also hasn’t played with a teammate nearly as talented as Edwards. He was generally good last year about deferring to Kon Knueppel or Brandon Miller on nights where those two guys had it cooking, but that was still a first-among-equals kind of thing. There is a clear hierarchy in Minnesota, and Ball ain’t at the top. He will need to adjust.

All that said, the Wolves were unlikely to find another player with this much talent with their relatively meager remaining resources. Now, they have virtually nothing left to trade. There’s definitely a hint of desperation to what they’re doing here. Still, they’d clearly hit their ceiling in the Western Conference and needed to take a shot before Anthony Edwards starts getting a wandering eye.

Also, the Wolves are now quite expensive again! I had my doubts they’d be willing to pony up this much cash after they dumped Randle, and I was wrong. So apologies to Alex Rodriguez, Marc Lore, and team.

Losing Reid will hurt. He’s a cultural icon in Minnesota and one of the best-shooting big men in the league. The Wolves’ offense hits a new gear when he’s on the court, and they will miss him. But they needed a change. Whatever else Ball provides, you never quite know what he’ll do next. In this case, that’s maybe, possibly, sort of a good thing.

Minnesota grade: B-

For the Hornets, Naz Reid should provide a huge boost in the frontcourt as a sniper and one-on-one scorer. I assume Reid will start over Miles Bridges at power forward immediately or eventually, but coach Lee will probably toggle through all two-man combinations of Reid, center Moussa Diabate, and Bridges until he finds a pattern he likes (or until Bridges is traded).

The Hornets are now Brandon Miller and Kon Knueppel’s team. As well as those two played last year, that’s a real gamble. Neither is a point guard, which means the re-signed Coby White — only sort of a point guard himself — will likely get the reins of the offense. White is a good shooter and scorer who is a little steadier than Ball on both sides, although his ceiling as a playmaker is far lower.

Yozzi Gozlan at The Third Apron wrote that the Hornets created the league’s largest-ever traded-player exception with this move. They’ll have tons of financial flexibility and draft capital now to make further moves to bolster, well, any position they want. I’d bet on the Hornets making another splash sometime this season, whether now or at the trade deadline.

This new Charlotte roster has plenty of promise of its own. Miraculously, the Hornets were the 11th-best defense in the league last season; swapping Ball for Reid is a modest upgrade in that regard, but I still don’t really know how they’ll stop people in important games.

On offense, the paper roster looks incredible. But Ball was the drink-stirrer for this Hornets team, and frankly, I’m not sure how much of their incredible success last season can be replicated without him. Still, there is an incredible amount of high-level shooting on this team, and they’ll have plenty of nights where their joint firepower looks unsolvable.

Zooming out, the Hornets took a hard look at a team that, for all its chemistry and vibes, lost in the play-in. They decided to get out of the Ball business while the getting was good. They know better than we do what kind of player and person he is, and it’s telling that they decided to stockpile assets and flexibility.

I’ve always been a little sweeter on Ball than consensus, and I hate to see a team blow up its first good core in a decade. But they’re selling early rather than late. There aren’t many trades in NBA history where that’s proven to be the wrong strategy.

Hornets grade: B-

The 2025-26 season’s biggest disappointments

Anyone else feel like the 2025-26 season was here and gone in a flash?

In my six years covering the league, this season was the one that felt like it understayed its welcome the most. We had plenty of fascinating storylines and unexpectedly delightful surprises, some of which I tabulated here.

Now that the draft is in the books (and what a draft it presumably was! I can’t believe Team X picked Player Y, and I’m sure Player Z will be a sneaky sleeper), everyone’s starting to look forward to next season. Hope is in the air, etc. So let me bring the mood down by discussing last year’s biggest disappointments!

From underperforming teams to injuries to the online discourse, there were plenty of things that left a Warhead-sour taste in my mouth. Remember, disappointment is all relative to expectations. You might well disagree with this list or have your own disappointments, so feel free to chime in with a comment!

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And hey, Julius Randle will be moving, too! Let’s grade some trades.

Trade 1

Heat get: Giannis Antetokounmpo and Bobby Portis

Bucks get: Tyler Herro, Kel’el Ware, Jaime Jaquez Jr., Kasparas Jakucionis, three first-round picks (unprotected in ‘31 and ‘33 and #13 today), a swap in ‘30, and a ‘33 second

Maybe all that last-minute flirting with the Boston Celtics paid off for the Bucks. This is a great haul for Milwaukee but still a worthy (if expensive) swing for Miami.

I thank the basketball gods we no longer have to endure the endless swirl of media coverage around Giannis’ every comment, Instagram like, and eyebrow twitch. The tasseography was exhausting, as it is for every mega-superstar who starts to get a real or imaginary wandering eye.

Now, we can focus on the rather fascinating basketball dynamics!

When healthy (the two most dreaded words in basketball; we’ll expand on that thought below), Antetokounmpo began the year having arguably the best season of his incredibly illustrious career. His 35.3 points per 75 possessions were a career high, and his two-point field goal percentage was downright diabolical — 65.0%, also a career high. That shouldn’t be even theoretically possible for a 31-year-old who was already an absurdly efficient player.

One interesting quirk: much was made, both here and elsewhere, about Antetokounmpo’s midrange jumper improvement in 2024-25. He nailed 47% of long midrange jumpers while shooting four per game, excellent accuracy on relatively huge volume.

Last year, his accuracy fell to just 28%, and the volume (appropriately) dried up. Whatever else you want to say about the Bucks, they did a good job surrounding Giannis with capable three-point shooters, and he took advantage by steamrolling to the rim on 70% of his shots, yet another career high. While I’d love to see him continue to nail the Nowitzkian one-footers he toyed with two seasons ago, I love even more that he’s simply decided to abandon that shot for higher-outcome looks at the basket:

Antetokounmpo’s willingness to experiment with his shot diet and abandon what isn’t working for him has been an underrated part of his development over the years.

Defensively, Antetokounmpo had fallen off over the last few years, but he started the season very strongly. That didn’t sustain, in part due to his injuries and in part due to the natural dissociation that players develop when they know their time in a city is short. A motivated, healthy Antetokounmpo is still a very impactful player on that end, but it won’t be as consistent as Miami fans might expect.

Still, Giannis is one of the few true world-devourers. He was a top-four MVP finisher seven years in a row until last season’s injury-shortened campaign, and there’s no reason to think a healthy Giannis will fall off dramatically next season.

But just like the Greek Freak’s joints, “healthy” is carrying a heavy load. While Antetokounmpo has largely avoided the catastrophic long-term injuries that have beset so many of his peers (he played at least 61 games in every season of his career up until the last one), his body has consistently failed him in the playoffs. Bad luck? Or the inevitable result of endless wear and tear, the bitter fruit borne from six months of the most physical play in the league? The more often it occurs, and the older he gets, the more likely the latter answer is the truth.

Giannis will also want a big payday, as he has a player option in 2027-28. I have concerns about his availability as he ages, but there’s no reason to think he won’t perform at an MVP level for at least the next couple of years if he’s upright. Unfortunately, that’s typically the cost of doing business with superduperstars.

The fit on the Heat is fascinating. They don’t have the kind of shooting around him that Milwaukee offered, but I do think the hit-ahead, pell-mell offense they ran last season should work to his benefit.

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Below are five players who proved me wrong in various ways. This is a highly subjective exercise that is entirely dependent upon my own personal expectations entering the season; your mileage may vary dramatically, so feel free to drop an “I told you so” in the comments or chime in with your own surprises.

I spoke at length for RealGM Radio on all of the guys below, so go to [YouTube, Spotify, Apple Pods, etc.] if you’d prefer the audio version.

Let’s start with the player who changed my mind the most…

1) Michael Porter Jr.

MPJ became a Net last offseason, shipped away with a first-round pick for Cam Johnson. Denver was hoping for a more dynamic playmaker and to avoid paying the last two years of Porter’s massive contract, while Brooklyn was looking to stockpile assets. New York City felt like an obvious pit stop for Porter, a place for him to take a breather while the Nets shopped him around to get even more draft capital.

I assumed that the sharpshooting wing would score a ton of inefficient points while coasting on both sides of the ball. Instead, MPJ, freed of the stationary shooting role he’d occupied for so long in Denver, metamorphosed into a do-it-all offensive engine.

It’s not so much that Porter dropped 24 points per night; everyone knew he would fill up buckets like a fire brigade. But Porter’s usage rose by a massive 10% without sacrificing much efficiency, even surrounded by an incredible lack of talent. He had the second-highest rebounding and steal rates of his NBA life and doubled his career assist rate. Look at this gorgeous OOB play from coach Jordi Fernandez, which leverages the off-ball attention Porter receives to open up a quick alley-oop to a rolling Nic Claxton:

Most importantly, Porter did all that without ever hijacking the offense. It rarely ever felt like he was playing outside himself or puking up terrible shots. Critics will point out that the Nets were very bad with MPJ on the floor; smarter people will note that they were cataclysmic with him off. His +9.8 on/off split was the seventh-highest in the entire league.

It makes you wonder just how much more the Nuggets could have or should have featured him.

After the trade, Porter ruminated on his situation:

“When you’ve got a good team like [Denver], and you’ve got so many guys who are capable on the floor together, there’s gonna be guys that sacrifice… That’s the nature of when you’re on a championship team, and that happens throughout the league,” Porter Jr. said. “But I just think for me, you know, I averaged 21 [points] one year. Last year, I was around 18 as the third option. I just feel like I have more in my tank still. I don’t feel like I’ve reached my peak, and I’m excited to grow my game, expand my game, explore my game, and see what I could do.”

Just like with his shotmaking, Porter was right on the money. The Nets surprisingly held onto MPJ through the trade deadline last year, but his combination of off-ball shooting, size, and there-if-you-need-it creation skills again will make him highly sought after in February.

2) Amen Thompson

Look, I’m not gonna hate on Thompson too much. A third-year player averaging 18 points per game while shooting 57% from two-point range on a team with no spacing is nothing to joke about. He showcased some newly developed post footwork and dramatically increased his free-throw percentage.

I’m not even disappointed in the three-pointer failing to develop. I’ve said for his entire career that Thompson’s long-ball will never be a weapon; you’re more likely to catch a glimpse of Santa Claus than see Thompson shoot 35% on real volume for a season. Stop asking for it, stop hoping for it. I don’t want to hear one more “If the three-pointer ever comes along…” because it won’t.

Regardless, Thompson was my Defensive Player of the Year two years ago, and I still think he’s an incredible player. But.

But, but, but.

This year felt like a golden opportunity to step into a perfect role. The Rockets lost Fred VanVleet, their point guard, to a torn ACL in the offseason. Coach Ime Udoka openly despised playing second-year guard Reed Sheppard, and there were no other starter-quality point guards on the roster. Could Thompson step into a point-forward role and initiate the offense? My heart answered yes.

The reality was no. Thompson had his opportunities and failed to make the most of them. I still believe the passing vision is there, but he doesn’t have the ballhandling or technical craft to do more than execute the most basic passes out of the paint. Defenders obviously go under every pick, so he can’t exactly lean on the pick-and-roll game, either:

I’d hoped Thompson could manifest enough dribbling ability to lever his jaguarian athleticism into an advantage-creating weapon, gnawing open cracks in the defense’s shell and spraying out to what passed for Houston’s shooters on the perimeter. At the least, I wanted him to pair with Alperen Sengun for a little of the tiki-taka interior passing that Bam Adebayo and Jimmy Butler developed in their heydays for the Heat.

He demonstrated none of those things. By the end of the season, he was mostly back to skulking in the dunker spot.

Thompson is an elite perimeter defender, clever cutter, and transcendent transition player. Greedily, I’d just hoped that, coming out of his third season, he’d have shown the ability for even more.

3) Scottie Barnes

Mea culpa, Raptors faithful. You were right, and I was wrong. Barnes is awesome.

Barnes’ season went sort of under the radar; although he did make the All-Star Team and garner a Second Team All-Defensive nod, you’d have been hard-pressed to find any casual fans mentioning the Raptor in any context.

His regular-season numbers aren’t that different from his past exploits. With Brandon Ingram on the court, he actually shrunk away from the three-point line and accepted a slightly smaller offensive role, instead focusing on his immeasurable defensive gifts. He even played a decent amount of center early in the season!

But that all changed in the playoffs. With Immanuel Quickley out for the series and Ingram hampered by a foot injury, Barnes upped the aggression to heretofore-unseen levels. His shooting efficiency and his usage both rose (typically, those are inversely related), and his assist rate went through the roof (including games with 11, 14, and 11 dimes).

The mental pivot from guard dog to attack dog was delightful:

With few other options, Barnes stopped relying upon everyone else and became a legitimate two-way monster, outplaying draft-class nemesis Evan Mobley along the way.

Barnes’ postseason could have been even stronger if he hadn’t sustained a quad injury of his own late in the series. The contusion visibly slowed him, allowing the heavily favored Cavs to steal a first-round series they didn’t really deserve.

Yes, I’m banking on Barnes sustaining this level of play into next season, which might be a tall task. That’s still a much happier spot to be in than this time last year. I had worries about Barnes remaining an impact player in the playoffs. Now, I can’t wait to see him there again.

4) Paolo Banchero

This one hurts.

The debate online between Paolo Banchero supporters and Franz Wagner stans has raged almost since Day 1 of their partnership. I generally side with the analytical folks, who were universally on the Wagner bandwagon, in these sorts of debates, but I continually stuck my neck out for Banchero.

It’s a bummer to be both contrarian and wrong.

Frankly, neither wing covered themselves in glory for the Orlando Magic this season. Now, the debate isn’t so much Banchero vs. Wagner; it’s whether Banchero is any good as an alpha player at all.

I’m frustrated because Banchero actually did make strides in some areas. The criticism of Banchero was often misdirected this season. He was far less reliant upon his midrange jumper, which made up just 11% of his shot attempts (down from 17% the prior two years), and he attempted a whopping 42% of his field goals at the rim. His overall efficiency numbers were the best of his short career, even as his three-pointer abandoned him. His average touch time dropped from 4.2 seconds last year to 3.6 this year, indicative of a noticeable effort to move the ball more quickly.

But Banchero looked a little out of shape, or at least lacking in explosiveness. His turnover rate skyrocketed, and he fell into his hero-ball tendencies at inopportune moments. Worst of all, he took a dramatic step back defensively (something that could be said for much of Orlando’s roster, to be fair).

Too many times, he couldn’t break his man down with a dribble. Too many times, he got blown by defensively. Too many times, he couldn’t finish bunnies:

Banchero’s highs are still cloud-strewn. He had games of 45 and 38 points in the playoffs against a brutish Detroit defense. Then again, those alternated with matches shooting 4-for-20 and 4-for-18. The thrills of that roller coaster ride are why I can’t quite quit Banchero, but they’re also what kills me.

I haven’t given up on Banchero entirely. The Magic looked like a different team in the playoffs, and they almost certainly would’ve beaten Detroit if Wagner hadn’t gotten hurt in Game 4, causing Orlando to drop three straight matches.

But I think it’s both interesting and depressing that Banchero played a whopping 72 games this season and didn’t come close to an All-Star team, much less an All-NBA squad. Has he peaked? Is this just who Banchero is?

23-year-olds still have plenty of chances to write their history, but Banchero needs to overcome his writer’s block.

5) Devin Vassell

Vassell is a different case.

Vassell’s scoring declined as Wemby, Castle, Harper, and Fox took center stage. But his efficiency improved (38% from deep on a lot of attempts) and his defense bounced back in a huge way. All season long, I’ve loved the way he rotated off the ball, appreciating in particular how he plays off Wemby’s roaming around. He was attentive and engaged:

Someone who was once pegged as a weak link became the Spurs’ go-to guy for playoff stretches on Anthony Edwards and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. And while you shouldn’t expect these too often, he even had a couple of monster stuffs at the rim:

Advanced stats had Vassell making a huge leap from below average to above average on D, so it’s not just my lyin’ eyes.

Mostly, I admired the way Vassell condensed into his role. Like a coiled spring, he never lost his energy. He simply learned how to channel it more effectively, maximizing its impact on the game.

You don’t go 16-3 in the playoffs without everyone having their moment. It takes a village to break down 53 years of failure and build up success. Here’s my attempt at rank-ordering them by importance; Knicks fans, feel free to drop your own lists in the comments!

Before we begin, a quick honorable mention to Mike Breen, who didn’t contribute on the court but has been one of the best play-by-play guys for years. The Yonkers-born broadcaster has been announcing Knicks games since the early ‘90s, and he’s had to watch the absolute worst that NBA basketball has to offer in the decades since. His ability to stay calm and composed on the mic as his lifelong team finally broke through and won a championship was incredibly admirable. I was happy for him.

Now, to the official list.

14) Wu-Tang Clan

Wu-Tang was the halftime entertainment at Game 4. As the legendary performers walked off the stage, with the home team down an unreal 27 points and the crowd uneasily picturing a 2-2 split going back to San Antonio, Method Man predicted, matter-of-factly, “Knicks in five, what y’all talkin’ about?”

There was magic in those words. The rest is history.

13) Deuce McBride

The Finals weren’t McBride’s best showing, but he’s been an important cog for the team for three years now. And lest we forget, he had his playoff moment, too — McBride’s 25-point explosion against Philadelphia in the closeout Game 4, including a tone-setting 12 in the first quarter, was a huge part of ensuring his team was well-rested going into the Eastern Conference Finals.

12) Jose Alvarado

All but out of the rotation in earlier playoff rounds, Alvarado’s massive fourth quarter in the Knicks’ historic Game 4 comeback earned him an indelible place in Knicks history. The scoring, the passing, the cutting, the hustle, the raw emotion — that’s how folk heroes are made.

And while I don’t condone wrestling moves like this one, Alvarado’s takedown of Wemby in the second quarter (and subsequent stepover) sure brought out the Internet’s schadenfreude:

Like the vast majority of NBA players, Alvarado will never be an All-Star or sign a maximum contract. But for a few caught-on-fire moments, he was one of the most important players in the world.

11) Mitchell Robinson

Playing with a broken hand, Robinson wasn’t in top form in these Finals. The Knicks likely could have won this series without him, but would they have ever gotten here in the first place?

New York’s longest-tenured player helped cement his team’s blue-and-orange-collar reputation with his historically great offensive rebounding and toughness. He provides such a different look from Karl-Anthony Towns, but they both bring unrelenting physicality. If nothing else, he bruised and battered Wembanyama, giving no quarter.

And Mitchell did have his highlight on the biggest stage, securing one of the most important offensive rebounds in NBA Finals history in Game 5 as the Spurs desperately sought a comeback:

Who else can turn offensive rebounding into a highlight?

(Well, I suppose there’s one other guy… and we’ll get to him a bit further down.)

10) Landry Shamet

Perhaps no player this side of Karl-Anthony Towns changed their public perception more in these playoffs than Shamet.

Shamet’s 11-for-12 three-point performance in New York’s sweep of Cleveland was utterly remarkable, and his hot start to the Finals (a triplet of threes in each of the first two games) was a major impetus for the Knicks’ running out to a 2-0 lead.

Just as importantly, Shamet established himself as a legitimate perimeter stopper. He was a fixture in Mike Brown’s late-game all-defense lineups. Not bad for a guy signed to a one-year minimum contract, huh?

Shamet was fighting for his NBA life. Now, he’ll likely have a bevy of suitors in free agency, and he seems all but certain to lock up some real money in New York or elsewhere.

9) Tom Thibodeau

I feel for Tom Thibodeau. The Knicks were an abject disaster before Thibodeau took over. All he did was lead them to the playoffs in four of his five years, including an Eastern Conference Finals appearance, while establishing a top-flight culture of professionalism and all-out effort.

His early partnership with Julius Randle (who won Most Improved Player in Thibs’ first year and earned three All-Star nods for the Knicks) was a big part of dragging New York back to respectability. “The magic is in the work,” after all.

Eventually, both Thibodeau's and Randle’s limitations became too apparent to ignore. The Knicks don’t regret moving on from either — there is a reason both were replaced by guys lower on this list. But Thibodeau, in particular, architected the foundation for success. His contributions to the team shouldn’t be forgotten.

8) Mikal Bridges

Bringing in Mikal Bridges shook the basketball world.

Leon Rose, the president of basketball operations, had slowly and painstakingly built a good team from the wreckage of the late 2010s. Smart, patient moves had been his hallmark.

Patient went out the window after a seven-game loss to Indiana in the second round of the 2024 playoffs. The Knicks traded a whopping five first-round picks (and a swap!) to the unloved cross-town “rivals” in Brooklyn for Bridges’ services. Shortly thereafter, out went Randle for Towns, a seismic — and real-dollar costly — move. Taken together, Towns and Bridges were meant to deliver a championship to New York. Now, they have.

I never saw Bridges as the kind of lockdown defender that others did, but he was a reliable three-point shooter who showed some off-the-dribble pop running a bad Nets team. Rose thought he was the perfect complementary piece, and he was willing to go further than anyone else to get him.

It’s not Bridges’ fault that Rose mortgaged the team’s future for him, but his two years in New York have been a roller coaster. He started burning under the magnifying glass like a dry leaf. Plenty of fans and analysts called for his benching multiple times in his tenure.

Bridges’ nadir was a 0-point performance in the Game 3 loss to Atlanta, a humiliating effort, and a subsequent 19-minute allowance in Game 4. But after that, Bridges buckled down and showed out. He redoubled his efforts on defense (most notably on Philly’s Tyrese Maxey) and ripped off a half-dozen monster shooting games over the next two rounds. For most of the Knicks’ playoff run, he looked exactly like what New York always hoped he would look like.

Bridges could have cracked under the pressure. For a minute, it seemed like he might. But when the going got tough, Bridges got going. His rather unhinged, delightfully celebratory post-championship Instagram livestream (none of it is safe for work, but it’s not hard to find the highlights) showed a man standing two inches taller without all that weight on his shoulders.

No, Bridges isn’t worth as much as the Knicks paid in a vacuum. But thankfully, given our dependence on oxygen, we don’t live in a vacuum. Great teams have to pay a premium for any upgrade. Bridges was a man on fire for much of the 2026 playoff run, particularly against Philadelphia and Cleveland. It’s hard to see how the Knicks could’ve won the championship without him.

F*** them picks, indeed.

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Alright, fine, so this is a slight step above the NBA Cup. Congratulations to all of you Knicks fans out there!

The New York Knicks didn’t just win the NBA Finals. They sliced through their playoff competition like a hot knife through those tasty cheese biscuits you get at every churrascaria. They won in utter, dominating fashion, dropping jumpers like raindrops while preventing their foes from doing the same.

New York ends with the highest point differential in NBA playoff history. They had the best offensive and the best defensive rating of any playoff team in this year’s field. They won 13 straight playoff games, many by obscene margins.

Remember when they were 1-2 against the Hawks, bullied by CJ McCollum? Remember when Josh Hart and Mikal Bridges were struggling so badly that fans wanted them benched (and not for the first time)? Yeah, me neither.

Sure, opening blips caused Mike Brown to re-install a scrapped offense around Karl-Anthony Towns (one he scrapped again weeks later!), but in retrospect, there was a whole lot of LeBron-tied-2-2-with-Toronto energy: “I’ve been a part of some really adverse situations. And I just didn’t believe that this was one of them.”

The Knicks spent the rest of the playoffs looking for a greater challenge. Boston's inexplicable fall to a battered Philly team rendered the second round moot before it began. New York, bored, spotted Cleveland a 22-point Game 1 lead in the Eastern Conference Finals, but that still wasn’t enough of a handicap.

Led by a precocious, unprecedented physical specimen, the San Antonio Spurs promised to be a real test. They stormed out to big leads in all five games, finally corked New York’s effervescent offense, and even earned the aid of some questionable officiating at times. Simply looking at mid-game win probabilities, I’d probably be praising the Knicks’ resiliency and stick-to-it-iveness if they were heading to Game 6 down 3-2!

The Spurs won all five first quarters handily. They even held the lead or were tied with fewer than two minutes remaining in all five games. After going up 2-1 in the series, New York dialed up the difficulty sliders to their highest level, spotting San Antonio a 29-point third-quarter lead in Game 4. Jalen Brunson took every first quarter off and turned his ankle multiple times. Karl-Anthony Towns battled foul trouble. Only two Knicks (Towns and OG Anunoby) posted a true shooting percentage above league average for the series, and the pair combined for a grand total of 13 points in the closeout Game 5.

Didn’t matter. Nothing could stop the Knicks, not even themselves.

New York kept their composure where lesser teams — hell, where New York three months ago — would’ve fallen apart. Jalen Brunson, the deserving 2026 NBA Finals MVP, found his shooting touch whenever it was needed most, and he grew stronger as the series went on. Anunoby and Towns and Bridges (worth those picks after all!) and Hart and Jose Alvarado and Mitchell Robinson and Landry Shamet and De’Aaron Fox and Jordan Clarkson and Deuce McBride and even Ariel Hukporti all had their moments for the blue and orange. Some bigger, some more, but each can say they contributed to the NBA’s freshest banner.

Perhaps no one save Brunson was more important to the Knicks’ run than Mike Brown, who finished the playoffs on a coaching heater the likes of which we haven’t seen in years. Every rotation choice was golden, every strategic adjustment perfect.

Remember, Brown was something like New York’s fifth choice in the initial interview process! And now, my lasting memory of Brown will be him holding a baffled-looking child while inexplicably singing “Who Let The Dogs Out?” at midnight on a confetti-strewn stage. I did not expect this much Baha Men in my NBA in 2026, but I’m not complaining. There’s no sound in GIFs, but I know you know the song:

“Damn, don’t it look good when it says ‘Champions’ on a shirt?” asked Towns back after the Knicks beat these same Spurs in the NBA Cup championship game. Now, he can ask it again, with feeling this time.

New York spent all postseason looking for a challenge. It’s the ultimate testament to them that they never found it.

The Spurs have held a lead with fewer than two minutes left in all four games of this series. They’re now 1-3, preparing for Game 5 with a broken heart after blowing a Finals-record 29-point cushion.

I wonder, and I guess we’ll find out, if a team this young is more or less resilient than a veteran group? The Spurs have reasonable hopes of making it back to the Finals again in the near future, but there’s also the knowledge that they just made history in the worst way possible. Does that hit 22-year-olds harder than 30-year-olds?

The Knicks, on the other hand, will need to avoid an emotional hangover in Game 5, but they’re sitting pretty. They’ve lost three times in these entire playoffs; San Antonio needs to beat them three times in a row.

That’s an order tall enough to overshadow even Victor Wembanyama. But if Game 4 proved anything, it’s that nothing is impossible.

Let’s walk through some stats explaining why and how the series is the way it is. If you’d rather/also want to hear my unhinged, delirious reactions to Game 4’s comeback, watch my post-game reaction podcast with Wes Goldberg on RealGM YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever. It’s a lot of me stifling curse words and looking up stats on the fly (did you know the Spurs shot 20.5% over the entire second half?); if you’re not a San Antonio fan, you’ll enjoy it. If you are, uh, maybe steer clear.

133

Okay, so this is less explanatory and more, “Holy s***!”

The San Antonio Spurs have led for 133 minutes in this series. That’s 69.3% of the 192 minutes played so far. If Kenny Atkinson were still here, he might say that, analytically, the Spurs should be the team up 3-1.

I already talked about Jalen Brunson and New York’s slow first quarters, and Game 4 was the most extreme possible example of that. Jalen Brunson made zero field goals in the first (he’s now 5-for-25 to start each game in the series). The Knicks have been outscored by 47 points in first quarters and have subsequently had to spend the rest of each game digging themselves out of holes ranging from shin-deep to coffin-sized.

And yet! We know how these games have generally ended. Call it inexperience; call it killer instinct; call it a lack (or surfeit) of optionality and depth; call it exhaustion; call it bad (or good) luck. When we’re talking about samples this small, it’s hard to draw sweeping conclusions, but it’s clear that something is happening.

If this series goes the way that history suggests it will, the Spurs will have an offseason full of regrets. I’m not sure whether losing in the Finals fits the “young team taking its lumps” narrative we always talk about, but I am sure that San Antonio coach Mitch Johnson, Wembanyama, and the rest will take plenty of lessons away from this experience.

Meanwhile, New York will have to settle for taking away a banner.

59.6%

Alright, let’s dive a little deeper. The Knicks are shooting 62.6% at the rim, which is way below their season average and actually a tad worse than what San Antonio allowed during the regular season (which makes sense, given Wemby’s increase in minutes). 62.6% would’ve been the lowest rim accuracy of any regular-season team.

But the Spurs are shooting a paltry 59.6% at the rack, highlighted by a sub-50% shooting performance in Game 4! New York’s stellar rim protection has been a hugely underrated part of their success.

Some of that number is a bit overblown. Wembanyama tallies a couple of misses each game on wild putbacks; the Spurs have missed some absolutely inexplicable bunnies. But in the aggregate, the Knicks have met the Texans at their greatest strength and been more than their equal.

Despite those basement-level shooting percentages, this hasn’t been a block party of a series; the Spurs have 22 blocks, and the Knicks have 20, both of which are right around what you’d expect.

But New York has had a lot of success bringing extra bodies on every Wembanyama roll and post-up. They’re even helping off of shooters like Julian Champagnie and Devin Vassell far more than I would have expected:

Sometimes, Wemby can’t even get a shot up to miss. OG Anunoby, in particular, is a master of the help-and-recover. Watch him slam Wemby with a vicious shoulder tag (right after Brunson did the same!) and then fly back out to the three-point line:

Those aggressive tactics can leave New York vulnerable to an explosion from downtown, as we saw in the first half of Game 4. But the Knicks are betting that bringing all this pressure will help more than harm, and so far, they’ve been proven right.

12

Let’s talk more OG.

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There are plenty of reasons for fear and optimism on both sides, and I’ll explore some of those later this week more in-depth. But something that’s stuck out is how consistently the Knicks’ Jalen Brunson has struggled out of the gates.

Breaking news: It’s hard to score against the one-two punch of Steph Castle and Victor Wembanyama. But it’s not always hard for Brunson! In classic Captain Clutch fashion, he has lit the Spurs up in fourth quarters so far. Through three games, 32 of Brunson’s 82 total points have come in the final period, papering over his chelonian starts.

For the entire game, Brunson is averaging 27.3 points per 75 possessions in the Finals, right in line with his regular-season averages. However, his efficiency has plummeted to a ghastly 46.3% true shooting overall, and it’s flatlined at 33.1% in first quarters. With their best player using the first quarter as a warm-up, it’s no surprise the Knicks have been outscored by eight, nine, and 11 points to start these three games.

Then, Brunson transforms. Still per 75, Brunson is averaging a whopping 43.6 points on 57.0% true shooting in fourth quarters. He’s saving his best for last.

That’s a dangerous game to play.

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He’s a supremely talented seven-footer with a jumper 95% of guards would kill for. 247Sports had him as the #2 player in his high school class. He earned All-American honors for a ridiculously star-studded Kentucky team that eventually sent nine players to the NBA1. The Timberwolves were delighted to draft him first overall, and he’s rewarded them (and subsequently New York) with multiple All-Star and All-NBA selections.

In other words, he’s got a hell of a pedigree.

But Towns never really connected with most NBA fans. Outside of a pocket of supportive Minnesotans, people were far more likely to mock the big man than celebrate him. Hell, he didn’t even really connect with his teams. The Timberwolves signed him to a super-max contract and almost immediately got buyer’s remorse, trading him before the extension even kicked in2. His tenure with the Knicks has been up-and-down relative to expectations — just last summer, he was listed as one of the league’s worst contracts.

He is emotional, wearing his heart on his sleeve and showing vulnerability before Wemby made it cool. He briefly forgets the rules of basketball and then pleads for calls. Early in his career, he had some terrible playoff moments. He is confident to a fault in a discourse that too often refuses to acknowledge greatness without corresponding championships.

At his worst, he complains about his role, then coasts on defense and disappears on the other end (or, worse, loudly commits some of the worst offensive fouls ever seen). He makes funny voices, has an extremely expressive face, and is consistently meme’d by fans (often in a blatantly homophobic way), opponents, and even teammates.

In a league with a handful of players who have black holes for souls, one writer decided a few years back that KAT was “the most annoying player in the NBA.”

Somewhere along the way, Towns became, if not an underdog, underappreciated. And yet, he has persisted, improving and growing step by step. Two straight Conference Finals appearances (one in the West, one in the East) set the stage. Now, this magical postseason run has seen KAT upend every narrative.

This is one case where the stats tell much of the story. He’s willingly excised his worst shots to focus on playmaking and defense:

That’s a dramatic uptick in efficiency and playmaking (on both sides of the ball). New York has dominated in these playoffs to an unprecedented degree, and Towns has the best on/off of every Knicks rotation player. To put it in exact terms, the Knicks have a +25.2 net rating when Towns is on the floor in the postseason, ranking in the 95th percentile on the attack and 96th percentile when guarding yard.

His offensive role changes have been covered to life, here and elsewhere, although it’s worth noting that we saw significantly less of Towns-as-hub in the Cleveland series and last night than we did in Rounds 1 and 2. His passing has been sharp, his shooting immaculate, and his decision-making cleaner than ever before.

The Knicks razed the Eastern Conference like they were riding fire-breathing dragons, and Towns proved in Game 1 that he isn’t ready for a Wembanyama coronation just yet. I can’t remember the last time we saw a big man — scratch that, any player — face up and so casually destroy Wemby off the dribble, which Towns did three separate times early last night:

But nobody has ever doubted that KAT could score. The big shock has been the way the defense has leveled up, culminating in a whopper of a performance Wednesday night against a tired-looking and increasingly frustrated Wembanyama.

Pre-series, everyone was calling for OG Anunoby to guard the MVP finalist. Good thing Mike Brown is the coach, because nobody on Earth or beyond could have done a better job on Wemby than Towns did last night.

At one point in the game, the broadcast reported that Wemby was 1-for-8 with Towns guarding him. He finished the game going 6-for-21 overall (he did have 12 free throws, but only two of those shooting fouls were on KAT). Even when Wemby did score, it was a high degree-of-difficulty attempt over excellent defense:

Controlling a force of nature like Wembanyama is never a one-man effort, and the Knicks deserve credit for their aggressive dig-downs and gapping efforts. OG Anunoby, in particular, was a terror helping off of various guards:

The Spurs as a whole made just two shots outside the paint in the second half. That’s not good enough to open breathing room for Wembanyama. Take away Julian Champagnie’s 5-for-10 performance (man, that guy sees blue and orange like a gamecock sees red), and the Spurs shot just 6-for-33 from deep. Yikes.

But Towns was as strong at the point of attack as any Wembanyama defender we’ve seen yet. Wemby is too good to be denied forever. We saw him eventually figure out the Isaiah Hartenstein matchup, and he will do the same to Towns. But the Knicks have other curveballs to throw Wemby’s way, from Anunoby to Mitchell Robinson; they’ll keep him guessing.

Towns won’t win every battle, but after securing a Game 1 victory, he won’t have to. The Knicks, who have now won 12 straight playoff games, need to go just .500 the rest of the way to win the NBA Finals.

“I just felt a calm and a peace that had to come from the woman above,” KAT said after the game, crediting his mother (one of more than a half-dozen family members who passed away a few years ago from COVID) for his collected play. “It was just fun out there.”

I flashed back to another Towns quote, from a different win over the Spurs: “Damn, don’t it look good to see ‘Champions’ on a shirt?” Online trolls, naturally, clowned him for the comment.

Perhaps all the doubt, all the hate, have polished the rough edges off of KAT. As we acknowledged up front, he’s not perfect.3 No one is. But unusually, as the lights have gotten brighter, his flaws are becoming increasingly hard to find.

KAT was never an underdog, which led to immense expectations and early let-downs. Now, finally, he’s no longer underappreciated.

[Note: I have a whole lot more thoughts on Game 1, including Jalen Brunson’s wild game, what the Spurs can do differently, and more! You can hear them on RealGM Radio at YouTube, Spotify, Apple Pods, or anywhere else.]

San Antonio and Victor Wembanyama have already skipped several steps in the traditional contender roadmap, and they’re poised to become one of the youngest champions ever.

On the other hand, the New York Knicks have unleashed their full arsenal on a hapless Eastern Conference, annihilating foes so thoroughly and so quickly that it’s almost a detriment to their standing; we simply haven’t had enough time to watch their greatness, let alone appreciate it.

Someone’s gotta give, but who? For the last time this season, let’s work through four Key Questions and four X-Factors for…

2) San Antonio Spurs vs. 3) New York Knicks

Season series: 2-1 Knicks

I love that we’re getting our first-ever NBA Cup Final rematch here. Out-of-conference foes typically only play twice per year, so it’s fun that we’ve actually gotten to see these teams battle thrice already.

The Cup Final and a rematch a few weeks later both featured limited Wemby minutes (he came off the bench in one and left early with a knee tweak in the other) and several players we likely won’t see much of this series (Mo Diawara! Harrison Barnes! Tyler Kolek!). However, the near-full-strength Knicks did whoop a healthy Spurs team on March 1st, 114-89. If scoring just 89 points doesn’t raise your eyebrows, well, it should.

Only two teams beat San Antonio in the regular season after my Far Side calendar flipped to February: Denver (three times! What a rock-paper-scissors matchup we had in the West’s top three this season) and New York, in this game. The Knicks put on a defensive clinic, forcing Wemby into seven turnovers and flying around on the perimeter guys. It helped that the Spurs also missed 74% of their three-point attempts.

Re-watching that game was particularly instructive for understanding how these two teams will initially try to match up. Unless stated otherwise, that’s the game I’ll refer to most often below.

Before we begin, I wanted to spare a moment for the coaches, Mitch Johnson and Mike Brown. Johnson was my pick for Coach of the Year over real-life winner Joe Mazzulla and JB Bickerstaff. I’ve been so impressed with his ability to maximize his players’ strengths and mitigate their weaknesses all year long. He deserves immense credit for alchemizing this hodgepodge of odd players into a top-five halfcourt offense.

Brown has bathed himself in glory-colored Gatorade since reinventing the Knicks’ offense on the fly during the Atlanta series. He’s had the Midas touch with every play call and every rotation change. The controversial switch from Tom Thibodeau to Brown could not have gone better, even if there were some bumps along the way.

Both coaches have been phenomenal, and I wanted to make sure they received their flowers before we spend two weeks criticizing them for every micro-decision that went wrong.

X-Factor 1: Josh Hart

Every conversation about New York circles back to Josh Hart eventually, so let’s just get it out of the way. Victor Wembanyama will spend large chunks of this series “defending” Hart so that he can protect the paint; the up-and-down wing has to make the big man pay.

It’s a strategy the Knicks have seen countless times, and Hart knows what to do. Set a million screens on and off the ball, attack the offensive glass, cut constantly, sprint out in transition, and, yeah, shoot a few long ones.

Hart’s impact waxes and wanes on a nightly basis, but the Knicks are unbeatable when he’s at full moon. Of course, Wembanyama isn’t your typical rim protector. He can sag off of Hart without fully ignoring him, guarding both man and space. It is at least a little interesting that Hart had a plus/minus of zero in 30 minutes despite the Knicks winning by 25 points in that March meeting.

Coach Mike Brown had a few nifty tricks up his sleeve to take advantage of Wemby’s inattentiveness, including this gorgeous play:

But bad Josh Hart still showed up plenty:

The Knicks have options if Hart is benched, but none are perfect. Deuce McBride is a heck of a shooter, but his short stature will leave him vulnerable to the bruising drives of Steph Castle and Dylan Harper. Landy Shamet went 11-for-12 from deep against Cleveland, but coaches haven’t always trusted his defense. Mitchell Robinson’s broken hand could limit his viability (more on that below).

Hart’s defensive size and versatility are crucial to containing the Spurs’ guards. He must stay relevant offensively.

Key Question 1: Can the Knicks keep tilting the map?

I wrote about how a key part of the Knicks’ remarkably hot shooting has been their dramatic increase in attempts at the rim in these playoffs, which has gone hand in hand with the shift to a KAT-as-hub offense focused on backdoor cuts and north-south actions.

But Victor Wembanyama is the ultimate force field. Against the Spurs, just 25.6% of OKC’s shots came at the rim, down from 31.6% in the regular season overall. That’s a very meaningful difference. And the Thunder made only 55.5% of those shots, a whopping -13.1% drop!

So OKC took fewer layups and made way fewer. That’s brutal. We saw Wemby’s effect against the Knicks, too. Look at poor Mikal Bridges freeze up like a mouse caught in an eagle’s shadow:

(Note, again, the way Wemby is comfortable playing off of Hart.)

New York actually does have some advantages here over the Thunder, though. The Knicks are a much more dynamic jump-shooting team — they can make the Spurs pay for gapping too heavily into the passing lane by bombing threes, and they can draw Wembanyama and Luke Kornet out of the paint with a barrage of 15-footers. Hart will have moments when his passing, cutting, and sheer activity open up opportunities.

Against Cleveland, New York also showed an ability to toggle between the Towns offense and their traditional heliocentric Brunson attack. That’s already more variety than the Jalen Williams-less Thunder could muster.

Outside of Alex Caruso turning into the sun for a few games, the Thunder didn’t have the horses to make SA consistently pay for over-indexing on the paint. New York does. Softening up the Spurs’ defensive shell from the outside should make it easier to pry open and get to the tasty meat in the middle.

X-Factor 2: Devin Vassell

I love when players make me look smart.

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It’s so hard to pick one moment. Every play flashes in my mind and is gone, a lightbulb jolting to life for just a second before flickering away, leaving spots and darkness before the next one pops.

Steph Castle and Dylan Harper grabbing each other’s jerseys and cheering, spittle flying, screaming raucously in each other’s faces. Luke Kornet, who had been the LVP of the series to this point, pulling off one of the greatest and most important chasedown blocks we’ve seen since guys named LeBron and Tayshaun (my god, look at the time and score in that clip) were doing their thing. The Harper three to put the Spurs up 12 that, in retrospect, put the final nail in OKC’s vampire coffin (despite some incredible Cason Wallace responses). Wemby dunking Chet Holmgren into oblivion yet again. An ailing Fox headily fouling in the last seconds to snuff out OKC’s last-gasp comeback attempt — arguably his best on-court play of the last two weeks.

I think, for me, it might be an earlier moment. An exhausted Wembanyama leaning with his full body weight on veteran Bismack Biyombo’s shoulders, catching his breath and, perhaps, some inspiration. It was a couple of seconds of on-brand but still unexpected vulnerability. A reminder that despite Wembanyama’s superhuman size and skill, he’s still a mere mortal, albeit one whose real power is not caring about outside judgment.1

Anyway, I’m rambling. The San Antonio Spurs triumphed in one of the highest-level series we’ve ever seen. They advance to the Finals to face the New York Knicks, the hottest-shooting team in NBA history (literally!). We haven’t seen a team this young and this untested advance this far in the modern era. Given their youth, cache of draft picks, and general awesomeness, there’s no reason to think a healthy-ish Spurs team won’t be a fixture in late-spring basketball for the next half-decade.

Except one. Because the Thunder aren’t done yet.

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Thunder vs. Spurs has had its ups and downs for everyone, even superduperstars Victor Wembanyama and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. As their teammates do their best to rise to the occasion, however, De’Aaron Fox and Chet Holmgren have been driving in a valley, admiring the mountain view.

It must be noted that Fox is playing through a high ankle sprain that caused him to miss the first two games of the series. Every camera close-up features him grimacing in pain as he runs up the court, and he has the vertical leap of an elephant right now.

I am sympathetic. However, he is out there. You can only excuse his performance so much. Fox is averaging just 10.3 points per game while shooting 33.3% from the field and going 2-for-15 from deep. Those are abysmal numbers by any standard.

It’s been particularly egregious in the paint, where Fox has looked perfectly spry getting to his spots before blowing looks he typically makes in his sleep:

The Thunder have increasingly taken advantage of Fox’s ailment, and he’s shot worse in each game: 50% from the field in Game 3 (his first), then 38.5%, then 26.7%, then 11.1% last night. That’s not the trendline San Antonio wants to see going into Game 7. And even those numbers might be whitewashing his impact; it’s felt like a disproportionate amount of his scoring has happened near the end of games, when they’ve typically already been decided.

Don’t get me wrong, Fox’s mere presence has had some positive halo effects. His return has sutured what looked like a deadly wound. As fantastic as Stephon Castle has been at times, he’s not yet capable of being the sole point guard for 40+ minutes per night. Castle had a record-setting 20 turnovers in the first two games, and the Spurs as a squad averaged 21 turnovers per match.

Live-ball turnovers are the petrol in Oklahoma City’s engine. Whatever else Fox has done (not much!), he’s cut OKC’s fuel line. The Spurs haven’t had more than 15 turnovers in any game since Fox’s return, and Castle has had just six turnovers in his last four games combined.

Still, Fox has to cook more with the opportunities he has. All-Stars need to do more than steady the ship if they’re healthy enough to play. Even just making the occasional stand-still jumper would be nice!

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Daigneault famously goes deep into his bench, but without the consistency that most players crave. Two years ago, in a playoff series against the Pelicans, he explained his philosophy:

“There’s advantages to having depth… You never know what a series is gonna deal you in terms of the hand you have to play. If we (played) 8 guys last night, and we had to pivot to 1 of the other 3/4 that didn't play, now you're like dusting them off. They haven't gotten in a game yet. They haven't touched the floor yet. They haven't gotten a taste yet. And now you're going to them and it's somewhat reactive.”

And last year, reserve Aaron Wiggins had this to say:

“Mark is gonna experiment… He’s gonna throw you in there when you least expect it. There’s gonna be moments where you might be ready and he doesn’t go to. And there’s gonna be moments when you’re not ready and he calls you. You gotta be as ready as you can be," Wiggins continued.

All this tinkering has led to a battle-hardened team, one where even the deepest bench guy can come in and produce. For example, Kenrich Williams played just two minutes in Games 1-3 combined before logging 23 in Game 4 and 12 in Game 5. Nearly all Thunder players get the call-up eventually; they just don’t know when.

I like perusing nbarotations.info to see how team minutes are distributed across games. It shows a stark difference in how Daigneault and his Spurs counterpart Mitch Johnson have managed their rotations:

On the left, the clusters of deep red highlight the heavy minutes load of the Spurs’ healthy starters. The smattering of orange on the right signifies how many more players have logged consistently inconsistent minutes for the Thunder.

Daigneault believes that all of his players have strengths and abilities worth utilizing, but when and how to deploy them may change nightly. That extends even to his superstar. Early in this series against the Spurs, Daigneault was subbing Shai Gilgeous-Alexander in and out to match Victor Wembanyama’s minutes; he’s since abandoned that philosophy.

Injuries have played a part in both teams’ rotation decisions, of course. Jalen Williams, Ajay Mitchell, and De’Aaron Fox have missed multiple games, and Dylan Harper hasn’t been the same since tweaking his adductor in Game 2. Wembanyama has been holding his wrist, Holmgren sprayed blood all over the court in Game 4, and Alex Caruso tweaked an ankle last night. And that’s just off the top of my head!

But when it’s a battle of attrition, particularly one this physical, the deeper team has an advantage. In a series where neither Wembanyama nor Gilgeous-Alexander have consistently looked their best (that’s what happens when you’re the focal point of the league’s two most ferocious defenses), the Thunder’s supporting cast has been quicker to rise to the challenge. That’s particularly true for their trio of bench guards.

It starts with Caruso, whose performance this series has been volcanic. Caleb Martin’s explosion against the Celtics in 2023 and Danny Green’s preposterously hot shooting against Miami in the 2013 NBA Finals (he made 25 threes in the series’ first five games! And that was before Steph Curry changed basketball forever, mind you) have always been at the top of my “WTF” role player playoff power rankings. Caruso is fast on his way there.

In five games so far, Caruso is averaging 17 points while shooting 57% from the floor, and he’s somehow shooting a better percentage from three (he’s 18-for-31 from downtown). He’s long been one of the five best defenders in the NBA, and that hasn’t let up one bit. Add it all up, and he’s tied with Victor Wembanyama for the highest cumulative plus/minus in the series at +42. (It’s probably worth pointing out that five different Knicks had a significantly higher plus/minus than that.) It’s always been the case that good things happen for the Thunder when Caruso is on the floor, but it’s been particularly true now, at the most important times. His ability to scale up production to match circumstance is a superpower.

Caruso isn’t the only one. Jared McCain, acquired from the 76ers in a much-bemoaned midseason trade, has embraced the scoring role previously occupied by Williams and Mitchell with the gleeful abandon of a kid let loose in an amusement park.

McCain is averaging more field goal attempts per possession than Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. He’s not even pretending to pass, launching 70 often wildly errant field goal attempts to just five assists so far in the series (and three of those dimes came in Game 2). His shooting splits have been — oh god, my computer just screamed.

And yet, McCain has also done just enough at the right times to keep the Spurs on their heels. He’s always on the attack; it’s infectious. Nine invaluable points in the third quarter last night prevented San Antonio from making a run. 24 points keyed a Game 3 win, highlighted by this inspiring take right into the chest of Wembanyama:

(All that said, I thought of Dion Waiters on the Kevin Durant/Russell Westbrook teams after SGA had to tell McCain to “Calm the f*** down.”)

McCain has had some terrible nights. But role players aren’t expected to be stars all the time, and few have McCain’s ceiling as a scorer and off-ball shooter. When McCain plays well, the Thunder win. He only needs to play well in one of the next two games to power OKC back to the Finals.

And if things go really well, even that might not be necessary. Cason Wallace is getting his hands on every single ball like a basketball-obsessed octopus. He’s averaging 6.4 deflections per game, half again as many as his league-leading regular-season mark of 4.4. It’s unbelievable that the Thunder bring two of the league’s five best perimeter defenders off the bench. Wallace’s ability to evaporate passing lanes like an expanding sun has freaked out the Spurs ballhandlers. Even when you think he’s beat, check the rear-view mirror. He’s a homing missile locked onto the ball:

In the silver-and-black jerseys, the tale is different. Keldon Johnson and Harrison Barnes are shooting a combined 20-for-59, Luke Kornet has looked befuddled while putting up the worst plus/minus in the series, and Carter Bryant (who still deserves more time as a small-ball center) has alternated electric defense with soul-crushing mistakes.

Johnson’s struggles are both predictable and devastating. The Spurs desperately need his scoring punch, but Johnson’s straight-line drives won’t consistently work against a Thunder team filled with digging helpers and savage rim protectors. Last night was his first decent performance this series, and it still wasn’t enough. (I still can’t believe he won Sixth Man of the Year because he made some threes and makes people laugh.)

Kornet’s inability to impact the game in any way has been even more discouraging. The Thunder have largely spaced him out by putting Chet Holmgren and/or Jaylin Williams on the floor against him, forcing him to defend in uncomfortable places and dragging him away from the rim. But even when he’s matched up with a more traditional center like Hartenstein, he’s had no answers. I’m not sure he even knows he’s taking a test.

Unfortunately, coach Mitch Johnson doesn’t have many other options. The starters and Harper are already carrying a heavy burden. Jordan McLaughlin is chum, and the back end of the Spurs bench overflows with centers as useful as scarecrows. Eh, scratch that. Even the crows ain’t worried about Kelly Olynyk, Bismack Biyombo, and Mason Plumlee.

Without Mitchell and Williams, the Thunder still have 11 legitimately talented NBA players who are all ready and willing to step up. The Spurs, even with the limping Fox and Harper, have, like, seven?

In a battle between two teams this talented, optionality is so important. You need different tools to create new solutions or pose new problems. Daigneault’s tool chest is jam-packed. He can’t even close it properly. Johnson is down to a ratchet set missing the 10mm socket, a couple of screwdrivers, and a hammer he borrowed from his neighbor. That will get most projects done, but against this Thunder team, it might be a few pieces short.

Doesn’t matter. The Knicks might never lose again, because the Knicks don’t miss.

Some fun facts: New York is currently leading the playoff field with a 59.0% effective field goal percentage (which adjusts for the fact that threes are worth an extra point). That number would undoubtedly come down if they play against either of the grasping, nightmarish defenses out West, but still: the highest playoff eFG% ever recorded was Utah’s 58.3%, which they achieved in just one (losing!) playoff series all the way back in 2019-2020.

Many of the Knicks’ rotation players aren’t just shooting better than their regular-season numbers, they’re shooting way better. To wit:

(I’d never noticed before that the PowerPoint defaults are Knicks colors!)

And the Knickerbockers aren’t doing it on a million catch-and-shoots, which is typically the most efficient form of jump-shooting; only 27% of their FGAs are off the catch, the fourth-lowest figure of any playoff team (although they are leading by lacing more than 41% of their catch-and-shoot triples).

So what gives?

The mid-first-round shift to a Towns-hub offensive style that rewarded smart cuts and strong north-south actions (instead of the Brunson-ball-pounding, pick-and-roll-heavy, east-west approach the Knicks used for most of the season) has dramatically altered New York’s shot profile. Their share of shots at the rim has skyrocketed from 31% in the regular season (dead average) to 39% (tops among playoff teams).

Layups and dunks are usually more efficient than jumpers, so it’s had a cascading effect on their shooting percentages — and it doesn’t hurt that the team is splashing 40% of its deep balls, either. Neither Atlanta nor Philadelphia, New York’s first two opponents, are good rim-protecting teams. Coach Mike Brown smartly exploited that weakness, an advantage that has sustained even through two games against Cleveland (a much stouter defensive team in the middle).

The typically contact-averse Mikal Bridges’ cartographical transformation has been particularly pronounced. Remember, Knicks faithful were calling for Bridges’ head for most of the Hawks series, including multiple games where Brown benched him down the stretch (something we saw a few times in the regular season, as well). But he exploded for 24 points on 10-for-12 shooting in the clinching Game 6 blowout and hasn’t looked back since (except to see how much havoc he’s wreaked).

In summary, Bridges has shot a whopping 68% from the field (56-for-82) since the start of that game. A shocking number of his buckets look like this:

No, he’s not Giannis out there. Don’t mistake me. But he isn’t actively running away from the hoop, either, and it’s made a huge difference in his efficacy as a scorer. 37% of his playoff shots have come at the rack, compared to just 24% in the regular season, and his assertiveness has been eye-opening.

Anunoby’s shift inward hasn’t been quite that dramatic, but it’s not far off (48% in the ‘yoffs compared to 39% in the regular season). He is no longer primarily a stationary catch-and-shooter. Now, he gets the ball far more on the move, letting him leverage his cyborg strength and athleticism into real momentum:

Brunson, well, we know what Brunson does. His game hasn’t changed much since I wrote the Book of Brunson two playoffs ago, although it has perhaps clarified with age. But even Captain Clutch’s shot attempts have seen a dramatic relocation (28% at the rim compared to the paltry 16% he had in the regular season).

And Towns, despite a reduced scoring load, has placed greater emphasis on putting his head down and getting to the rim without stiff-arming the defender. He looks so much better when he plays within the rules!

Getting Towns the ball in his spots at the elbow or at the top of the arc allows the players around him to flow to the basket on back-cuts and hand-offs. Everyone (even Brunson! Perhaps especially Brunson) is setting off-ball screens to spring teammates free:

Even as the Knicks have reverted to their more traditional offensive style against Cleveland, there’s been an emphasis on attacking weaker defenders, like James Harden, to get two feet in the paint and make plays from there. This isn’t Catan; there’s no settling. It’s beautiful basketball to watch.

Those four, plus hot-shooting reserves Landry Shamet and Deuce McBride (whose eFG% drop is misleading; he’s still nailing 41% from downtown, he just can’t make a layup), have been melting defenses.

There is one noteworthy outlier. I have a group chat with a couple of Knicks fan buddies which exists solely to praise and/or dump on Josh Hart, depending on the night. Hart is shooting just 30% from deep in the playoffs even after his explosive Game 2 performance Thursday, a stark drop from his 41% accuracy in the regular season. But dropping a playoff-career-high 26 points in a sturdy Knicks win swings the hour hand to six on the clock:

The Knicks can win without Good Josh Hart; Game 1 turned in Gotham’s favor after Hart was sent to the oak for Shamet in the fourth quarter, opening up the space for Brunson to meme Harden to death. (Truthfully, I’ve found Hart’s defensive inconsistencies to be even more maddening than his offense over the years, but that’s a topic for another time.)

But the Knicks are unstoppable with Good Josh Hart. After Game 2, the Knicks are now 9-0 when Hart scores 20 or more points this season. While that’s not exactly revelatory information (most teams will win when their fifth option scores 20 points), it does point to just how dominant they are when he can flip defenses designed to ignore him on their head.

His mental resilience is the standout skill. These are the playoffs; coaches need to know they can play their five best players on a given night without worrying about hurt feelings. Other players, and even previous iterations of Hart, might’ve hung their heads at being benched and seeing the team roar back without them. Hart himself acknowledged how “difficult” watching from the bench is. But he was ready and willing to bounce back.

“I don’t have an ego,” Hart lied after Game 1. Every NBA player has an ego; self-belief is part of what makes a player successful in an insanely competitive job market. But the willingness to deprioritize ego for the good of the squad is a necessity for any role player. Hart’s as good at wearing different hats as anyone, and that includes being a bench cheerleader. He’s developed the fortitude to withstand being told occasionally that the team needs something else right now.

Look, there are myriad reasons for the Knicks’ playoff success. Their defensive improvement at both the team and individual levels has been incredible (their 105.2 playoff defensive rating lags only San Antonio); Towns and Bridges in particular have risen to the occasion on that end (Anunoby can’t rise further). They have not played against particularly fearsome rim protectors. Mike Brown has been masterful, switching offensive identities on the fly and managing rotations to find the hot hand(s) every time. They’ve protected the glass. Aside from Anunoby’s hamstring, they’ve been healthy.

But bucket-getting is still the most important part of basketball math; they say it’s a make-or-miss league for a reason. The Knicks becoming a make-or-make team has been the dominant storyline of the Eastern playoffs. And as much as we want to find logical reasons for New York’s Midas touch, luck is always a part of it. Right now, the Knicks are on a shotmaking run we’ve quite literally never seen. (I don’t want to discount the fortune factor, but there isn’t a lot to say about it. It’s better to be lucky than good, but it’s best to be both.)

The New Yorkers aren’t past the Cavs — who came back from down 2-0 just last round — yet, and the Spurs or Thunder will provide the stiffest possible defensive test. These things can turn with quickness, so maybe the heater burns out soon.

Maybe it doesn’t.