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

Def an unstable ballecule

sweet post about russ by KD, one thing about KD is that we know he loves posting so much that he isn't running anything thru AI, dude is doing real typing

I remember asking assistant coach Mo Cheeks, what’s harder to do? Workout after practice or before?? I only asked cuz by time I would get to the gym, Russ was already done in the morning and I usually got mine in after practice. Mo like, “coming in before practice is probably…

— Kevin Durant (@KDTrey5) August 13, 2026

awww

I just remembered when they changed the name to Crypto arena and a reporter asked Russ about what he thought and it and he thought that the guy said "Crip arena"

lmao

lmao.

also good kd post imo hes the most likable of the three and the most relatable, despite his obv flaws. i think hed be the best one to meet in the open.

Yeah, that was good.

KD's flaws are what make him extremely relatable imo. He's a defensive shitposter just like us!

there was no funny business going on with the Clippers and Kawhi, the NBA has found. such a relief! I'd hate to think of the poor innocent salary cap being circumvented

lol

ballmer has some very good lawyers

golden age of rich guys getting away with it

totally exonerated (no wrongdoing)!

the kawhi trade to the raptors put a lot of pressure on the league to let the whole matter drop and they complied. after all, the owners really run the place; silver is just their employee.

I still think it's so weird how much the other NBA owners were on Ballmer's side. If this had happened 30 years ago, the other owners would have wanted Ballmer's (beautiful shiny) head. I guess the Joe Smith contract was in writing, but that's the precedent for a punishment. For today's billionaires impunity is more important than competitive balance. The only value is being able to do whatever they want.

why even have a salary cap if owners treat it as a joke? it's not fair to players, and good teams like Boston are being taken apart by the second apron. I'm a parity sicko, but I don't think most NBA fans are into this era.

It's pretty funny that Glen Taylor and Kevin McHale took notes on a criminal conspiracy and actually created a physical contract for Joe Smith outlining how they would underpay him

def not experts on how to do crimes good

that era Wolves' commitment to bungling everything ran deep no matter which side of the law you were on

ftr the NBA is now claiming that the ESPN article is all wrong

I still think it's so weird how much the other NBA owners were on Ballmer's side. If this had happened 30 years ago, the other owners would have wanted Ballmer's (beautiful shiny) head. I guess the Joe Smith contract was in writing, but that's the precedent for a punishment. For today's billionaires impunity is more important than competitive balance. The only value is being able to do whatever they want.

― symsymsym, Monday, August 17, 2026 10:34 AM (forty-eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

haven’t read the story yet, was this in the story? all I’d heard in pods and stuff the last year is other team wanted the hammer dropped. but maybe that was FO people

I still think it's so weird how much the other NBA owners were on Ballmer's side. If this had happened 30 years ago, the other owners would have wanted Ballmer's (beautiful shiny) head. I guess the Joe Smith contract was in writing, but that's the precedent for a punishment. For today's billionaires impunity is more important than competitive balance. The only value is being able to do whatever they want.

― symsymsym, Monday, August 17, 2026 10:34 AM (forty-eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

haven’t read the story yet, was this in the story? all I’d heard in pods and stuff the last year is other team wanted the hammer dropped. but maybe that was FO people

ftr the NBA is now claiming that the ESPN article is all wrong

― symsymsym, Monday, August 17, 2026 11:05 AM (nineteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

chaos lol. love it

the other owners being on team Ballmer wasn't in this story, I guess it's my inference based on the lack of public comments from other owners and Marc Cuban advocating for Ballmer. I wouldn't think he'd be out on a limb from the NBA ownership class.

I would be pretty mad paying Wachtell rates for an entire year and they don't find anything. Unless, of course, that was the intention all along.

Rodger Sherman on Bsky just made this point more articulately than I did:

Rodger Sherman
@rodger.bsky.social
· 1h
I’m a little surprised the other 29 owners are on board with the league office letting Ballmer get away with it. Aren’t they mad their richest rival is showing that they could spend more money on their basketball teams if they wanted to? Don’t they want everybody to think the cap is super real???

In this case, Ballmer is the one interfering with the method of screwing others over. The salary cap is a system to artificially depress player wages! Why would they let anybody mess it up? Now they’re going to be expected to pay their employees more money!

I guess I'm also inferring where other owners' sympathies lie based on the investigation being so slow and grudging and toothless. I can't imagine Silver running an investigation like this if he was defying 29 angry rich guys by doing so.

yeah that is contrary to everything I’ve heard, though again most of the sources have been front office types

Marc Cuban advocating for Ballmer.

conveniently a guy no longer in the business of paying nba players though, his relationship with balmer at this point is fellow billionaire friend

it's a house of cards for the ol' billionaire brotherhood.

observing their dealings as a whole i think its safe to say billionaires tend to prefer they all get away with it over policing each other in order to maintain good functioning of the systems that produced their wealth

seems pretty obv the owners and players association have a mutual interest in not really looking into things too hard, esp if the richest owner and one of the highest paid players are involved. they want to grow the pie and this stuff is bad for business

with how big this story is imho its clearly worse for business to sweep it under the rug but they do not care because their ideology requires elite impunity

the classic move wouldve been a slap on the wrist but apparently were past the point where even that is acceptable

what’s anyone going to do about it? it’ll be in the news for a few days and then something else will take our attention

theyll lose trust in the league and stop watching

what, and miss out on all the same day parlays?

I agree btw I just suspect this is the conclusion the league/PA has come to so as to ruffle the fewest feathers

they successfully kicked this down the road long enough for people to be just flat out tired of hearing about it.

or fully incorporate it into their worldview of the nba being just another corrupt billionaire enterprise

one of the aspiration founders is already in prison wonder what the feds think about the legality of ballmers actions

remember when the NBA found no wrongdoing with terry rozier and then the feds came knocking lol

that was some very goofy stuff

fwiw pablo torre released yet another kawhi ballmer episode three days ago which currently has 174k views on youtube alone which looks above average for him

in other news the last gasp of buss family drama, rip

Shams: Buss family decides to sell remaining 17.8% ownership of Lakers to new majority owners Josh Kushner and Bob Iger.

Jeanie Buss will no longer have required ownership percentage to remain governor.

Shelburne: Jeanie Buss did not vote to sell.

The other five Buss siblings did.

Aww, Jeanie's going to have to go out and get a real job.

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/17/jeanie-buss-opposes-sale-family-stake.html

drama we can all enjoy innocently

Speculation from Henry Abbott that the Lakers are actually owned by a wealth fund guy from Abu Dhabi and that ultimately the debt owed to this dude is simply shifting from Walter to Kushner

https://www.truehoop.com/p/whos-actually-buying-the-lakers

Mubadala is a sovereign wealth fund owned by the government of Abu Dhabi. Mubadala is chaired by Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan while Khaldoon Khalifa Al Mubarak is managing director and group CEO.

Khaldoon—he’s often referred to as Khaldoon—will be important. He went to college in Boston, and attended NBA games. Khaldoon lived in Los Angeles where he became so close to Ari Emanuel (the agent who cooked up the idea for LeBron’s Decision and was the model for Ari Gold in Entourage) that Emanuel found doctors when Khaldoon’s kids got sick. Khaldoon funded Emanuel’s ascension to run a giant sports conglomerate, but appears to have a particular interest in the NBA.

nba teams getting bought by gulf petrostates its just like the premiere league

Hope Windhorst doesn't end up chopped up in suitcase somewhere.