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

i will say one bad thing about this whole situation is my dad is trying out his maybe they should trade tatum takes on me

there's been several athletes over the last few days who have come out and said the number one issue when you come back from a severe leg injury such as an achilles is injuries to the other leg because of overcompensation. also frankly tatum's quotes after the game were puzzling to me, the fact that he was like "you know something was inevitably gonna happen to me" which on the one hand sure it's the playoffs everyone gets banged up. however....

dru smith came back on the same timeline as tatum but w/o the night of surgery so i feel like that whole idea was always kinda specious and as is typical w/ injuries the medical community figures out over the span of decades how to get players to recover faster and tatum was just benefitting from that. however i did want to tie a bow on that whole notion because it was something that was repeated a lot

yeah im sure ultimately there were a bunch of factors that contributed to his fast recovery and the quick surgery is maybe one of them, would for sure be cool if achilles ruptures are getting figured out and wont be career killers going forward

well the stated reason was that the quick turnaround on the surgery meant less time for the muscle to atrophy. i am not a kevin k. so have no idea if that’s true but it was grounded in something beyond just “he had surgery faster”

anyway an opposite knee injury could be overcompensation! we have no idea. there have been a lot of injuries in the playoffs already and the most obvious reason is the level of intensity and exertion is way up from where it had been for the last two months.

the mavs are hiring masai urjiri to run stuff

the stated reason was that the quick turnaround on the surgery meant less time for the muscle to atrophy. i am not a kevin k. so have no idea if that’s true

same! and i had never in my life heard this before until jayson tatum tore his achilles so i've always wondered whether it was true or not

breaking Mavericks hire Masai Ujiri as president https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/48676414/sources-mavericks-hire-ujiri-president-alternate-governor

xp

who knows if masai still has his fastball but i am positive he knows how to impress a rube like patrick dumont

very weird tenure in toronto

from what i can tell from consuming jayson tatum injury media theres one major achilles surgeon who has made himself available to the media and is pushing the faster surgery thing and theres been a study that backs it up too but it doesnt seem like a universally accepted idea in the achilles worker community

macmahon let it slip last week on hoop collective pod that the mavs were trying to poach tim connelly, so they -- i would say smartly... -- were targeting very experienced GMs who can get dumont tf out of the picture

from what i can tell from consuming jayson tatum injury media theres one major achilles surgeon who has made himself available to the media and is pushing the faster surgery thing and theres been a study that backs it up too but it doesnt seem like a universally accepted idea in the achilles worker community

― lag∞n, Monday, May 4, 2026 12:59 PM (forty-nine seconds ago)

cheers sir

masai shd convince dumont to trade cooper flagg to the lakers

will say that I’m not a surgeon or a sports medicine physician, but my basic understanding is in line with what CAD says. the involved muscles will start to atrophy once they lose their normal attachments, and the rupture will also trigger inflammation in the area, both of which complicate the repair work that needs to be done. I dont work with patients with achilles or ACLs but I do take care of a lot of patients immediately after a hip fracture, and the goal is usually surgery within 24 hours for similar reasons

im not achilles or his mother but when my tooth got knocked out the dentist wanted to put it back in straight away (it still died though)

bulls new GM is some guy whose claim to fame is working for the pelicans for 20 years... i'm sure it will go great

He knows what not to do!

pelicans to bulls pipeline. sacramento is next up

are the celtics going to trade jaylen for giannis kinda feel like they might

can't think of many better realistic scenarios for the Bucks

if i were the bucks id be looking for a picks and young guys type deal since their cupboard is so bare i dont see how swapping giannis for jaylen and whatever is going to make them better but they might see it differently

not a fan of any of this

xpost I feel like the Bucks are going to want a big name back

also somewhere Giannis actually wants to go

the bucks have basically only made extremely short sighted decisions in the last 5 years, and though you could view that w/in the context of "do anything to keep giannis" it's more so the GM trying to save his job, and so i don't see why he would suddenly put himself on a 5 year rebuilding plan that involves a bunch of losing, even if that's the most prudent longterm decision for the franchise. also keep in mind the bucks owner is the guy who directed his GM to trade for deshaun watson and give him the most insane contract in NFL history, this is not someone who has previously displayed measured, longterm planning

yeah it is true that we cant rely on the bucks to have a good long term plan

not a fan of any of this

― call all destroyer, Thursday, May 7, 2026 1:59 PM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah id prefer they upgrade the roster around the jays which is prob most likely they have the assets to make a big trade without including a jay but the way brad was talking in that press conference idk, also getting the feeling jaylen liked being the man this season and might be ok with moving on

also might be the case that even if both teams want to do this trade that the bucks might want so much back along with jaylen that it ends up just not making sense for the celtics, like if they have to give up jaylen and two firsts does it make more sense to just keep jaylen and use the two firsts on a different deal

answer: yes

fun fact jaylen is only 2 yrs younger than giannis, but the 2 yrs from age 29 to 31 are a pretty significant couple of years

i'd be pretty spooked by how poorly the dame thing went if i was trying to pair giannis w/ another ballhandler scorer. tatum now is obv better than old dame, but the bucks were at their best w/ an extremely defined role player situation around giannis & flopped when they tried to upgrade by pairing him w/ another scorer. tatum in theory could really work as an extremely overqualified version of khris middleton but why would you want to trade a bunch of stuff in order to turn jayson tatum into that?

i don't necessarily love the idea of the heat trading for giannis but at least in that arrangement you basically place bam in the brook lopez/chris bosh role that he has kinda spent two years training to become

i think the celtics could make it work tatum is so versatile and boston is a smart org with good coaching itd be interesting to see what they come up with, and taking a little primary creation off of tatums plate wouldnt be the worst thing

i think it could work i would just find it to be an unnecessary risk for where they are as a franchise

yeah all things considered particularly giannis injury sitch its prob too risky

thing brad said in his press conference that made me think about this is that the celtics rim pressure just wasnt good enough, now he did say thats a team not individual responsibility but still when you think rim pressure you think giannis

its also not something thats easy to upgrade due to it being prob the most valuable skill in the league, now you could try to add a norm powell level good but not great player who is good at getting to the basket but a lot of those guys are flawed players which is why they arent stars, maybe they shd try to get norm powell not sure its possible but would be pretty cool

lagoon can I interest you in a deal centering around jamal murray for white/pritchard

murray isnt the most rim pressuring guy out there but he is generally good at basketball so yeah might be worth talking about

the situation with derrick is distressing he was so bad at offense this year what happened is he going to get good again

https://www.spotrac.com/nba/trade-machine/_/year/2026/team1/bos/team2/den

ok it’s a deal

oh that’s annoying it doesn’t save the trade but it’s murray for pritch/white/garza

hmm i dont you can have both white and pritchard

looking at the celtics salaries its difficult for them to put together a big trade without including one of tatum brown white, maybe they can extend vooch and that would help idk

suspect unless theyre doing a blockbuster that theyd rather send out young guys and picks

I forgot the Celtics had Luka Garza, Wolves Reddit would be upset that Mazzulla is continuing Chris Finch's campaign to stop the progress of this sure thing NBA superstar

he was actually good for them this year, obvs a limited player but he played with crazy high energy and hit a lot of shots cant complain, i went into the season thinking i was going to hate him but he won me over

I like Garza, fun player like you said he can be good in stretches, defense I don't think will ever be good enough to be more than that. I dunno, I suppose every fanbase gets these weird fascinations with bench guys they think are not being given a fair shot.

ha yeah harboring underground faves

Harden another more-turnovers-than-made-fg playoff game. It’s quite weird how he turns into a pumpkin