If the Tanks Succeed, then Victory Follows ····· · · · NBA Offseason 2026

Indiana Pacers
Washington Wizards
Brooklyn Nets
Chicago Bulls
Utah Jazz
Sacramento Kings
Memphis Grizzlies
New Orleans Pelicans
Dallas Mavericks

Welcome to the offseason.

Shams Charania @ShamsCharania

BREAKING: The Chicago Bulls have dismissed executive vice president of basketball operations Arturas Karnisovas and general manager Marc Eversley, sources tell ESPN.

gotta give em a lil more time

fascinated to find out how they'll hire someone even worse

this draft is funny theres the consensus top 3 then its possible that 6 of the next 7 picks will be guards and what order theyll go in i dont think anyone knows

even though the atl pick isnt gonna be amazing for sa this year (probably #20) im kinda fascinated by what the sopurs will do bc theyve always committed to best player available and now that seems kinda stupid this year bc they really do not need another guard but desperately need a guy with size who can shoot and rebound, and there might be some options there at that pick if they keep it.

cameron carr could be nice for them hes not the big wing/pf that they really need but he is a wing who can shoot which they need, crazy athlete too

i could see it, spurs play a pretty small lineup anyway (usually two guards, two small wings, and a big), harrison barnes might be the only guy who is a true pf although that is almost exclusively where 6'6" carter bryant plays too

at some point theyre prob going to need to back the truck up for a big wing who can play the 4 rebound shoot and so forth, those guys are in demand

they may already have that guy in carter. he plays bigger than his height would suggest. super strong, very defensively active, and has put together a few pretty nice games in recent weeks. if he turns a corner and becomes a consistent day in day out guy, he’s gonna be a really really good role player for them.

yeah could be he is quite robust hes pretty raw tho and youd like him to be a lil bigger for the 4

the madison square surveillance state

On May 5, 2021, the Rangers were playing the Washington Capitals. The game started out nuts, with 14 players fighting in the first five minutes. But Eversole's crew was more concerned with policing the fans when the Capitals took a commanding lead into the third period.

“Just heard a sell the team. Any idea who screamed it,” Eversole asked a Signal group chat of MSG security staff reviewed by WIRED. Two minutes later, he added: “Now Dolan sucks. Where is it.”

https://www.wired.com/story/madison-square-garden-jim-dolan-surveillance-machine/

lol

MSG Entertainment declined to specifically comment on WIRED's reporting about Dolan and the activities of his security teams. A company spokesperson said in a statement that “this story is built on false, misleading and unverified allegations, including claims drawn from lawsuits filed by rapacious litigators. We categorically reject such reckless reporting and are actively evaluating our legal options against WIRED.”

embarrassing.

i'm sure we talked about this at the time but here's an article from a few years ago about MSG using facial recognition as a tool in their valiant mission to eliminate any mindcrimes against James Dolan happening on their property

WIRED exposing all the psy ops this week

i wonder if zohran & lina kahn will take an interest in this…

hornets shameful quarter

oops

no it's correct because the hornets will be in the offseason shortly

that is true

sad way to go out but one would think theyve got a nice shot at making the real playoffs next year

yeah we'll see, i think they're still a very high-variance team given their youth and style of play

think if they can stay healthy theyll prob be good ball and miller are kinda injury prone tho

i dont really understand miller as a player he puts up good numbers but he seems pretty passive a lot of the time, they dont really use him as a ball handler seems like hes mostly either hanging out in the corner or coming off of screens cutting etc, is he not good the with the ball

ball balls, miller mills

ha nice

the roles they were mfin born to play

billy donovan exiting the bulls, apparently being the most important person in their basketball op was not compelling enough

one could see how coaching the bulls might get tiring after a while

pretty funny for the guy who runs the bulls to be like "if a candidate doesn't think billy donovan is one of the best coaches in the nba then he isn't right for this job!" and then like a week later billy donovan quits. great franchise

kudos to the bulls for developing a new kind of worst team the always slightly below average worst team, it doesnt seem like a team thats slightly below average can be a worst team how can they compete with the wizards or kings who are frequently very bad but after a while of watching them put up 39 wins a year it starts to seem somehow worse than being really bad

pretty funny for the guy who runs the bulls to be like "if a candidate doesn't think billy donovan is one of the best coaches in the nba then he isn't right for this job!" and then like a week later billy donovan quits. great franchise

― slob wizard (J0rdan S.), Tuesday, April 21, 2026 1:21 PM (twenty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Is it possible the guy who runs the Bulls was having difficulty finding candidates who thought Billy Donovan was one of the best coaches in the NBA so he went to Billy Donovan and suggested he quit before he was fired. I'm probably assigning to much logic to the guy who runs the Bulls.

kudos to the bulls for developing a new kind of worst team the always slightly below average worst team, it doesnt seem like a team thats slightly below average can be a worst team how can they compete with the wizards or kings who are frequently very bad but after a while of watching them put up 39 wins a year it starts to seem somehow worse than being really bad

This was m/l the warriors for a decade straight before curry’s first good year (‘13). It’s real painful to go through.

I think I’m becoming a big Darius Acuff Jr guy

not saying it cant work, jalen brunson, but taking a small guard who cant defend is just so dicey, trae young

these six guards who are going to go somewhere soon after the top three is kind of a crazy sitch which one of them is best which is worst who is to say

think im gonna go

mikel brown
kingston flemmings
labaron philon
keaton wagler
darius acuff
brayden burries

i have absolutely no confidence in this it could be perfectly wrong

think brown and flemmings are the only guys of the group who have legit nba size athleticism and creation ability, philon and wagler are unathletic and weak acuff is small and burries is prob more of a complimentary player in the league

not saying it cant work, jalen brunson, but taking a small guard who cant defend is just so dicey, trae young

― lag∞n, Thursday, April 23, 2026 4:14 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is bad real bad michael jackson

i will say that ultimately the teams have to decide who they like, size athleticism etc are all just heuristics so far as projecting being good at nba goes, for instance steph curry does not have elite nba physical gifts and yet he is still very good at basketball, and draft history is littered with athletic freak busts

^ all of which are good arguments against tanking as a surefire way to accelerate a rebuild. it only works as well as your scouting team and general manager's abilities allow. it also helps a lot if the owner doesn't get involved in making the final decision.

even if you have good decision makers a full teardown tank is pretty risky okc did it, celtics traded away their aging stars then started building towards being a winning team almost immediately, spurs just kinda had a bad team and then tanked for wemby, nugs didnt tank, minny was bad for a couple years dont remember what they did as far as tanking to get ant, cavs tanked for a few years post bron i think, indy tanked this year but didnt really tank to get their finals team last year

so the only top team that really did the full on multi year bottom out plan was the thunder, most of the others did some lesser spot tanking, denver drafted the best basketball player in the world at the end of the second round during a taco bell commercial

tbf cleve mightve been a full teardown and then they just moved their acquired assets for a quick return to form dont really remember the exact circumstances other than lebron wasnt on the team anymore

that last year of cleveland lebron was a bizarre roster https://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/CLE/2018.html

cleveland thought they were setting themselves up for life post-lebron better than they had the first go around but they didn't count on kyrie being a weirdo and requesting a trade, then getting fleeced by danny ainge as one does when they actually traded him

OKC only bottomed out for a couple of seasons - they were in the 2020 playoffs, and back in the play-ins in 2023. They fast tracked their rebuild with the lopsided Clippers trade, but haven't had many high draft picks. Chet was #2, the next highest pick in their squad is Cason Wallace (#10).

In comparison, Rockets got four consecutive top 4 picks, while Spurs got three top 4 picks, including a generational big man at #1. Not sure why the Thunder are the poster boys for tanking...

because teams want to believe that they can just throw in the towel and not try to win and it will lead to becoming the thunder

so crazy it just might work

tho it is true the thunder rebuild was really more like the celtics than it was the process

Taylor Jenkins new Bux coach. Ja / Giannis pairing loading

could see VVD on a court

soccer on the brain

Michael Scotto
@MikeAScotto

The Denver Nuggets signed Trevon Brazile to a 4-year, $9.3 million deal, which includes the first two seasons fully guaranteed, league sources told
@hoopshype

this could be interesting, i hear he's one of the best midfielders in europe

lol

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7434475/2026/07/14/kawhi-leonard-aspiration-nba-investigation-second-sponsorship/?source=user_shared_article

yeah the hammer might actually come down

lol its taking so long cause they keep discovering new parts of kawhis crime empire

an NBA player running an expense fraud scheme is hysterical

I wonder how hard things will come down on Uncle Dennis specifically

he should be banned from the nba for life

uncle dennis laughed on his way to the bank 6 years ago and there is nothing the NBA can do to rewind that clock...

yeah I think he’s set haha

uncle dennis is an all time nba supporting actor

the amount of mischief he gets up to my lord

hes a menace!

because even most NBA diehards couldn’t pick him out of a line up he has the quality of a mythical figure. some
people HAVE seen him, but most of us haven’t, however we all know he’s up to evil

Uncle Dennis the Menace.

Shams reporting that the nba is looking into the Gary Trent contract shenanigans

much like the rest of the country the nba has become a disgusting pit of corruption

funny to see people on twitter being like "this needs to be investigated!!" and the league being like "yeah actually it does"

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/49378298/lebron-james-not-ready-reveal-next-team-fun

NEW YORK -- Making his first public appearance since he informed the Los Angeles Lakers he would be leaving to join another team via free agency, LeBron James did not reveal his decision Thursday at a live taping of his podcast at Fanatics Fest, the annual sports lifestyle festival.

It's not that Tyrese Haliburton, the guest co-host for the "Mind the Game" podcast -- and the crowd -- didn't try to pry it out of him.

"Is there a decision that still has to be made?" Haliburton asked, just minutes into the program in front of a crowd of about 5,000 people gathered in front of the stage at the Javits Center.

James didn't bite.

"We literally talked about this in the back, Rese," James said, reiterating that revealing his next team would not be on the agenda.

LeBron James said Thursday "it's going to be pretty fun" with whichever team he signs with but he's not yet ready to make that decision. Roy Rochlin/Getty Images for Fanatics

"OK, my fault, my fault," Haliburton replied. "I didn't know if you wanted to ... OK, OK, I'll leave it alone."

Later Thursday at the CNBC and Boardroom Game Plan Summit, however, James indicated the wait for his decision might not be too much longer.

"I won't hold you guys up too much longer," he said.

Since James' agent and the CEO of Klutch Sports, Rich Paul, informed the Lakers more than two weeks ago that James would be moving on, the 41-year-old star has been courted by many teams and players to join up next season.

Haliburton, who led the Indiana Pacers to the 2025 NBA Finals before tearing his Achilles in Game 7 and missing all of last season to rehabilitate, was one of them.

"I texted Bron maybe a month ago, before he even made his decision to leave L.A. and I said, 'Hey, if you want to come to Indiana, we can make something crack,'" Haliburton recalled.

"And he texted me back two laughing/crying faces and that's all I got. So, I decided from then on that I'm done pursuing him in free agency. I don't know if it's going to happen with Indiana."

i cant believe he did not reveal his decision Thursday at a live taping of his podcast at Fanatics Fest, the annual sports lifestyle festival.

i’ve been so tempted to put “where lebron plays next year” in that things you don’t care about thread

lebron is still pretty good but i dont think his arrival makes any team a title favorite unless he shocks the world and signs with the spurs

yeah honestly the spurs would be perfect lol

for at at least half the teams in the league his arrival would mean more sell-outs for home games and more merchandise sales. he could also start games for at least that many teams, too. it would be a good PR move for them, regardless of any effect on their W-L record.

he should play for the denver nuggets

he could do that

the timberwolves reddit is going to commit mass suicide when he doesn't come here lol

windy opening the hoop collective pod sounding the alarm on the blazers not being long for portland :-[

appreciated mcmahon being willing to basically call dundon a scumbag, windy wanted no part of that tho lol

why do billionaires hate the pacific northwest

i haven't listened yet but is there any sense of where they would move? as i understand it vegas and seattle are off limits for now.

they speculated that expansion is on hold in order to give the evil billionaire an easy place to move to or at least have the threat of moving to in order to extract a new stadium from the tax payers of the greater portland area

apparently there was just a expansion vote that they kicked down the road

gross

they did speculate on other locations but didnt come up with anything really better than portland, apparently austin and nashville are off limits due to being too close to other teams, i would say vancouver tho

yeah the whole situation is nasty

something windy mentioned that was interesting gossip was that people noticed when the seahawks won the super bowl that jody allen didn’t mention paul allen in speaking after accepting the trophy. the implication for portland being that paul allen likely would not have sold the team to someone who may have moved it but his sister doesn’t seem to be very connected to him and thus didn’t really care if dundon’s plan was to take them elsewhere

i'd like to see Dundon try to get a better deal outta Kansas City or St Louis or Nashville. I'm done with that guy. He'll probably start every home game with the announcer intoning, "...and... NOW ...introducing... TOM DUNDON'S... Trail Blazerrrrrss!!!"

I hate him so much and I’m getting the feeling all the local investors that jumped into bed with him have serious regrets. His request from the city and state essentially boils down to “give me a massive unaccountable slush fund”

sorry clay this shit sucks

ban billionaires from sports

yeah, a friend of mine from college has been doing a campaign to try to prevent the slush fund on the theory that a more reasonable deal would still net out better for dundon than what he would have to do to move the team. i haven't been paying close attention, but after listening to windy, it seems pretty grim.

Dundon thinks of himself as a hard-headed businessman with unimpeachable negotiating skills, but ultimately the other side will get a fair shake, because in his own mind he is a solid gold Winner, and if you give him exactly what he wants he will reward you with a WINNING Team, which is a deal no one can complain about.

He'll deliver the winning and everyone will be ecstatic and whatever profit he makes will be fairly earned because with him running the show the team will WIN and WIN BIG. How does he know this? Because, as they say say in all those stock brokerage ads, "Past results are a guarantee of future performance." Who could doubt it?

also regarding lebron gaining 7 pounds after a game, which did not happen, I have lost 7 pounds in a day after a very long match in a clay court tennis tournament, many years and pounds ago

Shams Charania
BREAKING: The Oklahoma City Thunder trading All-Defensive wing Lu Dort to the Atlanta Hawks in a three-team deal that sends three second-round picks to OKC, former No. 1 pick Zaccharie Risacher to the Dallas Mavericks and Ryan Nembhard to Atlanta, sources tell ESPN.

not really seeing the vision w/the hawks

The Hawks' vision seems to be giving up on Risacher, while getting back a solid piece in Dort and an intriguing (and cheap) player in Nembhard. But mainly giving up on Risacher.

dort+daniels = the brick (wall)

hawks-heat games this year are gonna set the NBA back 25 years from a shooting and spacing perspective