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

anyway i dont think a lone playoff run with an unstoppable offensive force on board can really be used as proof of coaching competence, tho if i had to give kidd credit for something i do think he gets his teams to over perform on defense via high effort play which certainly isnt nothing

yeah i mean, the guy got to coach luka doncic; however he has been the best, so far, at coaching luka doncic, at least in terms of team success. the idea of kidd being competent is more just from watching those playoff runs and not remember feeling like i was watching someone who was incompetent.

i'm here scrolling twitter today seeing all these posts about how james harden was put in iso 37 straight possessions or whatever as the cavs blew the biggest 4th q lead in nba history w/ their best player never touching the ball in overtime and their coach was named coach of the year last year, and i think what kidd showed in dallas certainly clears whatever that bar is

i mean no one coaches luka you just give him the ball which does make life easier in some ways

is kidd a better coach than carlise of course not, did luka play identically under both to similar results yeah he did

now has jason kidd over the course of his career left a lot of people saying this guy is a bad coach and sucks yeah he has, did he just get fired with $40m left on his contract yeah

nobody coaches luka tactically but there's obv other aspects of like... parenting him basically? which carlisle who is a better tactical coach than kidd failed at, to some degree, but kidd seemed better at? also kyrie went from the most drama inducing player in the nba to basically a nun in dallas, maybe that was partly his relationship w/ nico or realizations about himself, however i think kidd is just one of these coaches who knows how to wrangle these kinds of players and personalities, which in the NBA, in certain situations, is a necessary skill set

kidd having simpatico with kyrie does make a lot of sense because they are both weird dudes, carlise made the conf finals with luka kidd made the finals but couldve been out in the second round if one shot fell differently their success was about the same

will kidd be able to mindfuck another sociopathic owner into hiring him almost certainly, will that be his last coaching job probably yes unless he can get on a team who has a guy like luka or giannis you can just give the ball to, this has been the jason kidd faq

currently employed coaches i would say are definitively better than jason kidd

daignault, spoelstra, mazzulla, kerr, carlisle, finch, ... will hardy? ty lue?

i just think there is a handful of great coaches and there are bad coaches and then there's a huge glut in the middle of guys who might be good or bad depending on the situation and i think kidd falls squarely in that middle group. again if anyone can articulate the reasons why guys like atkinson, donavan, snyder, nick nurse etc are definitively better coaches than kidd i'm all ears but i don't think one exists bcuz they're all mostly the same guy

kidd has the stink of being part of luka trade on him, plus he's an asshole, i think those are the reasons.

i understand why the mavs fired him bcuz he shouldn't be coaching a team w/ a bunch of 22 year olds on it but that's not really what we're talking about

i just think there is a handful of great coaches and there are bad coaches and then there's a huge glut in the middle of guys who might be good or bad depending on the situation and i think kidd falls squarely in that middle group. again if anyone can articulate the reasons why guys like atkinson, donavan, snyder, nick nurse etc are definitively better coaches than kidd i'm all ears but i don't think one exists bcuz they're all mostly the same guy

― slob wizard (J0rdan S.), Wednesday, May 20, 2026 9:56 AM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

I think this is basically right but also if you’re “just a guy” you’re expendable especially if the team is looking to start a new chapter with a presumably younger whiz kid like some of the ones you mentioned. if your owner is willing to eat 40M then really no sense keeping him around

i just think there is a handful of great coaches and there are bad coaches and then there's a huge glut in the middle of guys who might be good or bad depending on the situation and i think kidd falls squarely in that middle group. again if anyone can articulate the reasons why guys like atkinson, donavan, snyder, nick nurse etc are definitively better coaches than kidd i'm all ears but i don't think one exists bcuz they're all mostly the same guy

― slob wizard (J0rdan S.), Wednesday, May 20, 2026 9:56 AM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

I think this is basically right but also if you’re “just a guy” you’re expendable especially if the team is looking to start a new chapter with a presumably younger whiz kid like some of the ones you mentioned. if your owner is willing to eat 40M then really no sense keeping him around

nick nurse won a title w/ one of the greatest players of all time at the peak of his powers, subsequently has never made it past round 2, missed the playoffs in half those seasons, and the sixers fanbase has been trying to fire him for 2 straight years

quinn snyder coached one of the best teams in the west for 5+ years, never made it past round 2, lost in the first round as the higher seed numerous times, got the franchise blown up, got hired to save the hawks, missed the playoffs in his first two seasons

kenny atkinson won coach of the year, his team flamed out in round 2 while straight quitting on the season, they came back the next year as the only team in the nba paying into the second apron, then finished fourth in the worse conference, and just blew the biggest lead in nba history

most of these guys can have good or bad resumes depending on how you want to look at it

i support teams taking shots on guys who haven't coached before -- jordan ott, charles lee etc these guys might be great coaches and better than jason kidd

but my point is more like coach bud, taylor jenkins, the guys i've mentioned above -- those kinda retread hires are obv in demand in the league, there are teams who seek out these kinds of coaches, for better or worse, i just find it hard to be convinced that kidd is like, somehow below this level of coach

i think kidd is bad at the tactical part of coaching and would prob be worse than all the mediocre coaches in their positions mentioned above, will be interesting to see what transpires in his next role, i will say tho that im open to the kidd approach of keeping it simple and playing hard could actually be better than the coaching a of supposed basketball deep thinker like atkinson, worth noting too that coaches who rely on their teams playing hard tend to have short shelf lives since players get tired of that shit

kidd playing flagg at pg right out of the gate was such weird dumb guy who needs attention behavior he was coaching so steven a smith notices him, just not a cool or normal guy

coaches who rely on their teams playing hard tend to have short shelf lives since players get tired of that shit

Being crafty is a super valuable basketball skill. Paul Pierce never ran when he could walk and get the same result.

kidd playing flagg at pg right out of the gate was such weird dumb guy who needs attention behavior

maybe. on the other hand the PGs on their roster at the beginning of the season were d'angelo russell, brandon williams, and ryan nembhard

yeah play one of the point guards at point guard not the 18 year old rookie forward, should also be noted that they got much better as soon as they did just that, and as a bonus youre not torturing the future of your franchise

masai was like get this freak away from my baby the minute he walked in the door

this is one of those “mutual partings” that i believe was actually mutual. i think when they went to kidd and were like “we’re gonna pay you $40 million to not coach one of the worst teams in the league for one of the most reviled and least competent owners in the league” im sure he was like “ok”

dallas job with masai and flagg has gotta be the best open position pretty easily, worth noting too that mavs ownership group is the second richest in the league

a ROCKET SCIENTIST is coming to save the Lakers

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/48845975/sources-lakers-hire-rohan-ramadas-assistant-general-manager

Everyone knows the Pelicans have the best analytics.

lol that was a great punchline

it seems good that the cavs keep on having to announce to audible groans that their guys are returning next year

harden should think hard about retiring, or just taking vet min and going back to a role as a 6th man.

theyre saying giannis wants to go to boston or miami

source: Jordan S. Lagoon

one of the sources is bill simmons lol but also marc stein

wouldn't touch giannis with a ten foot pole tbh

hasn't played a full playoff series in what, 4 years?

now if he'd sign for 30 million, sure

i've been telling locals not to bother with giannis pipe dreams when they bring him up as a longshot trade target. he's 32 in december, his game is all athleticism and he's hurt more and more, making 63 mil in 27-28...

he's due for a good year I think a team with a lot of draft picks should make an offer

so giannis wants to crash out to miami. dame wanted to crash out to miami. a trend? maybe not. jimmy wanted to crash out of miami. the real trend here is superstars not waiting out their contracts and entering UFA status as a method to switch teams any more. too many golden handcuffs.

all the injuries this year seemed fake idk

injuries are worrying but giannis still plays at mvp level when healthy

hard to get guys that good

yeah i think hes got some good years left

also maybe if he goes to a team where he isnt the entire offense that could reduce the strain on his body

it’s funny how injuries in the NBA are treated like embiid was seen as a real guy until recently, giannis seems like he’s seen as a guy, no one in baseball thinks of say mike trout this way…sometimes father time just comes

wouldn't touch giannis with a ten foot pole tbh

― k3vin k., Tuesday, May 26, 2026 7:01 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is where i am

can the pole hoop? might be a better option

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HJwESRWWkAApxfM?format=jpg&name=large

this is his version of 9/11 and the target is lebron's house

wouldn't touch giannis with a ten foot pole tbh

― k3vin k., Tuesday, May 26, 2026 7:01 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is where i am

― call all destroyer, Tuesday, May 26, 2026 7:34 PM (six days ago) bookmarkflaglink

can the pole hoop? might be a better option

― ciderpress, Tuesday, May 26, 2026 9:10 PM (six days ago) bookmarkflaglink

can't teach size

The Rehearsal Season 2 xp

RIP Rick Adelman

rip great coach who never really got his due even tho his teams played fun ball