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

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:f5vknjyo6v6ctlf7hernwc3q/bafkreifzm2ys3swj6yh5ibilm3egi2w4g4ucyuatiyn2ena4rgcadl7tzy

to da hornets

my son is becoming a big hoops buff who could now probably name the starting lineups of half the teams and just yesterday he forgot the Hornets even exist

heh

many celtics fans are convinced that espn is at war with jaylen, which tbf they would do that

if the celts could get back brandon miller in a trade with hornets, that would be a decent return for jaylen imo

i mean, i don't like the idea of trading him at all if i'm a celtics fan, but if he is def gonna be traded, i'd take a very young, ridiculously athletic guy with size and some experience being an overqualified second banana

kinda doubt the hornets would do that seems like they should just build around their youngs guy

I'm really mystified by the whole Celtics/Brown saga, like they did way better than expected and he really great this year and you'll have Tatum coming back at full health. Is it just that his Online Brain Syndrome is too much now? I would feel pretty good about running back the same core with a healthy Tatum in the East next year.

also yet to see if tatum really is the same level player as before.

kawhi floating out possible preferred trade destination as...toronto or sa lolllllllll

wants to stay in his comfort zone

tatum was so good after he came back that theyre prob feeling pretty comfortable as far as that goes, tho i could def see him losing a little bit of athleticism, jaylen situation is odd and complicated, he seems like pretty mad at the celtics and its been building for a long time, also hes made it pretty clear that he very much enjoyed being a #1 option so theyre prob like well if he doesnt want to be here, also his trade value is at an all time high, and hes eligible for some insane $70m a/y extension they no doubt dont want to give him, also the celtics do not think the team is good enough which is fair after two years of disappointing playoff exits tho there were extenuating circumstances in both, theyre def not going to just dump jaylen but if they can get a deal they like which is possible considering hess a player teams would like to employ it seems like theyre ready to move on, which i dont love but i get it sometimes its like that

friends I gotta be honest, I hate the new blazers ownership situation so much I hope they just move the team to Kansas City or whatever. they’re total pieces of shit. the future sucks so bad lmao

damn that sucks fuck all billionaires and so forth

the dude did just win a stanley cup with the carolina hurricanes

so if the blazers start playing hockey, things might start looking up

I think having the main guy for a couple years be an IDF freak has been boiling away my ability to enjoy them, I’m in boycott mode

the coach contract thing is the straw here, total disrespect for the league and the profession, ✌️ happy to keep watching the league of course but fuck portland lol

rip failblazers ;_;

sorry clay, that all sucks

the blazers ownership situation does seem pretty dire

It sucks to see one of the best fanbases in the league get treated this way

Micah Nori seems like a genuinely good human being and I think he's really smart and funny and good at communicating, I think you'll like him, sad to see him go

many celtics fans are convinced that espn is at war with jaylen, which tbf they would do that

― lag∞n, Thursday, June 25, 2026 1:29 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

i mean stephen a. smith is cutting pro-wrestling style promo rants against jaylen on his show

stephen a is def at war just a question of whether his colleagues are rolling with him

big perk will probably tell him something like "just because you throw a pumpkin in the swamp that don't make it a watermelon"

hard to argue with

I'm really mystified by the whole Celtics/Brown saga, like they did way better than expected and he really great this year and you'll have Tatum coming back at full health. Is it just that his Online Brain Syndrome is too much now? I would feel pretty good about running back the same core with a healthy Tatum in the East next year.

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, June 25, 2026 11:44 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I agree that the if the celtics just run it back they’re going to be in the mix to win the east, but jaylen is on a really expensive deal and is a polarizing player in terms of his valuation, so if brad found a sell-high opportunity he couldn’t pass up it would be understandable (from a non-celtics fan POV).

It's cool that JB's trade value is so high, but who are they really going to trade for that would realize that value? Seems like they'll be lucky to grab a lesser player and some picks.

Also Rudy, ANT, and LaMelo are going to be a hilarious rage bait trio.

nice pickup for the pistons, okc happy to let other teams pay their role players and cycle to the next cheap contract

shams: The Oklahoma City Thunder are trading sharpshooter Isaiah Joe to the Detroit Pistons for two future second-round picks, sources tell ESPN.

btw was wondering if jaylen had made a behind the scenes trade demand but according to recent reporting he has not

the D+ grade on the Lamelo trade for the Timberwolves from ESPN is actually pretty comforting for me

lol

idk who zach kram is we used to have kevin pelton in this country

okc with 3 max deals is gonna be fascinating moving forward, if any org can nail deals on the margins its them, but i do wonder how they plan to find the hartenstein and caruso type role players that are so critical to their postseason success without going into the second apron.

yeah i think they can stay under the 2nd apron for now but prob going to have to move off of one of their big three eventually

like their draft pick situation is drying up eventually (he says before they flip cason wallace for 3 first rounders next year).

2027:
spurs 1st rounder acquired from atl, likely back 5 pick
den (top 5 protected), probably a back 10
own pick with lac swap rights (could be decent, especially with new lottery rules)

2028:
swap rights with dal, could be really good depending on how rebuilt dallas is by then

2029:
own pick
den (top 5 protected)

from 2030 on, they only have their own 1st rounders (shitload of 2nds though)

other thing is being over the 1st apron is bad too seems like most teams are treating that as a break glass only in emergency type situation

idk who zach kram is we used to have kevin pelton in this country

― lag∞n, Friday, June 26, 2026 12:54 PM (twenty-five minutes ago)

you may remember zach kram from his famous article on the ringer declaring cade cunningham a bust in his second season because his finishing percentage at the rim was too low, while playing w/ the worst spacing in modern nba history

ha oh no

I hate the new blazers ownership situation so much I hope they just move the team to Kansas City or whatever. they’re total pieces of shit.

otm. at this point curiosity and force of habit will keep me somewhat engaged and because the nba is still an inherently interesting league. but the idea of emotionally investing in this team has taken a huge leap downward. every word I hear from Tom Dundon shows he is an enormous self-admiring asshole who thinks his assholery is what makes him a 'winner'.

Sounds like Thunder just extended Hartenstein. They now have a lot of guys who can play centre - Chet, IHart, JWill, Thomas Sorber, and Aday Mara.

I wonder if they'll look to move off Hartenstein if the rookies look capable?

They might also be assuming the apron rules will change sometime, since everybody seems to hate them.

The Antetokounmbro era will NOT be continuing in Miami, per @ramonashelburne

“There won’t be anymore Antetokounmpo brothers in Miami. That whole ‘we have Kostas and Thanasis on the team,’ I don’t think that’s going to continue from what I understand.”

#HeatCulture

hartenstein deal is good. they'll likely flip him for like 2 picks in a year or so

giannis bros gonna have to get a job, sad

riley said not on my watch fellas

who do they think they are, udonis haslem??

udonis made a deal to be made whole later for being underpaid during the prime of his career, thats just my theory but it seems pretty obvious, he worked for his money he wasnt some freeloader

i know just acknowledging the heat are not above goofing with the end of the bench