2026-27 Team Developments: Trades / Free Agents / News / Rumors / Ideas

f*** the Warriors. I thought LeBron was thier guy.

 

If Luka or Austin misses games like last season and no sexton who will be the other ball handler and scorer? We also had no reliable scorer off the bench last season so at the deadline went out and got Luke K. Before that he had jr and Smith jr filling in.

 

Crossing my fingers we can get Thybulle for the vet minimum. Still haven’t found an adequate replacement for what Smart brought to the table on the court and in the locker room.

 

PG: Luka Doncic / Collin Sexton / Bronny
SG: Austin Reaves / Quentin Grimes / Carr
SF: Jake LaRavia / Adou Thiero/ Dalton
PF: Mamu / Jarred Vanderbilt
C: Walker Kessler / DeAndre Ayton

Ill say if there is a way to trade Van/Dalton into a reserve PF. then they can fill out with vet min or undrafted rookies. Unless we have no plans to play Adou and Carr Tybullie then yeah

PG: Luka Doncic / Collin Sexton / Bronny
SG: Austin Reaves / Quentin Grimes
SF: Jake LaRavia / Tybullie/ Cam Carr
PF: Mamu / PF/ Adou
C: Walker Kessler / DeAndre Ayton

 

Stephen A. Smith is doubling down on his racist commentary, insisting the Los Angeles Lakers cannot succeed if their top three players are White.

On Wednesday, Smith mocked the team's trade for Walker Kessler, pairing him with Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves.

"Where the hell the Los Angeles Lakers think they are going with a bunch of White dudes?" he asked on his podcast. "Your three top players are White dudes. Really? This is basketball."

He then asked, "In NBA history, when has a team led by three White dudes ever gone to the promised land? Somebody gotta say it."

After facing criticism, Smith responded Thursday by declaring he "ain't backing down." He argued it's "just facts" that championship teams need "Black brothers" to help "White dudes" win.

https://www.foxnews.com/outkick-spo...-down-racist-remarks-white-basketball-players

 

If they can somehow swap Van and Dalton for Thybullie and Zaire Williams that would be nice.

 

I'm sensing we will try to trade Ayton. I think he's the only one with some trade value. But we'd need a backup C, even if we're planning to use Mamu at the 5 rotation.

From value alone, Ayton is a great backup. But not sure we'll be able to extract value from him in that context. Very curious to see how we manage the next moves to close out the roster.
He's also a good safety guard whenever Kessler is unable to play, that's important with this roster construction.

Another thing I'll be curious about is if we'll leave an open roster spot as we usually do. I'd rather not, with such a thin roster I'd rather get someone we can play with.

But let's see, there's a few pending situations in our roster to define:
1) 2 open roster spots
2) decide if Vando, Knecht, Bronny, Ayton and LaRavia will stay

If any of the 2) goes away, it opens an additional roster spot. Hoping we add 2 playable guys until the end of the month

 

don't say Cracker. That's our word. lol silly man, Stephen A.

It would be fun to see those guys succeed just to prove moronic statements like that false.

If you are a baller, you are a baller. Doesn't matter the color. Are our 3 best ballers good enough? Completely unproven, but it should be fun to find out.

 

that’s a dodo starting lineup. How you getting scoring going against the Thunder? You better add a Kaminga or Hachimura in there. LaRavia ain’t no starter.

 

If we keep Ayton I wonder how his mental effort will be as a backup?

 

haven't had time to dig into milwaukee's, cleveland's, and atlanta's roster/finance situations and might not today, but i'm very interested.

https://www.spotrac.com/nba/transactions/trade-exceptions

that's not fully up to date, but it's close.

https://www.salaryswish.com/mid-level-exception

not sure about this, but it looks pretty accurate.



stein said milwaukee had trade exceptions (guessing from giannis trade), but i don't think either is bigger than the mle. and cleveland hasn't used their mle and has 25 million in apron room...but that's without re-signing harden. atlanta has 27m in apron room, but also has a full roster and a recent number 1 overall pick who plays the same position as kuminga (not to mention jalen johnson).

atlanta didn't exercise the team option on kuminga, but they could have. they had room under the apron and then some. that was for 24m. it's possible that they just feel like he's not worth that, but that's a slightly strange move to turn around and re-sign him for slightly less. further, if they viewed him as a long-term part of the plan, why not just immediately re-sign him at the lower number like most teams who exercise a team option and then re-sign. also, their roster is full, so that clearly wasn't the plan, unless there's some pending deal nobody knows about (possible). just feels like signing kuminga to a one-year deal would be another gs hostage situation that nobody wins from.

my very biased opinion is that atlanta has a roster that could use a laravia (low-money backup forward with size who won't fuss for touches on offense and will do dirty work), and that kuminga can't make more than mle-ish in milwaukee or cleveland.

if it's about players, i guess cleveland could trade strus for kuminga, but why? i don't think atlanta takes schroder back when just drafted flemings and traded for devin carter. i'm sure milwaukee would gladly move kuz for kuminga, but again, why would atlanta do this?

i'm obviously biased, but i think either a straight laravia for kuminga deal that gets kuminga 13 per or a knecht/laravia deal that gets kuminga 17 and routes knecht into a small exception or space somewhere makes a lot of sense.

i also wonder if because the clock re-set if someone would sell us a couple future seconds that we could add to the package.


anyway, if all that fails, i start looking at scarier options like...taking kuz back ourselves (i'd make milwaukee take vando). *shivers* but we do have to do something about the forward spot.

i like ziaire williams, too, but we can't pretend he's ready to play big minutes on a team with big aspirations.

edit: i lied; i made time. now i must go.

 

Hey the best team will be on the court. If your top 3 players are green thier green.

depends on what type of white guys you have?. Are they slow? Are they athletic.

it’s a stupid answer and statement because if you have Luka Doncic and Cooper Flagg and Nikola Jokic you’re winning the championship.

I don’t see a big deal with this. I wasn’t harping on the race thing. We got the best Center on the market. Basketball is basketball. You need a brotha in there because you have two traffic cones at guard who happen to be your two top players. It’s just fact.

Lebron was a traffic cone.

This Kessler stuff is ignorant. Look how they’re acting on the Utah message board. They want him back. They’re going nuts. Saying how did they let the Lakers do that. Kessler was the best free agent on the board.

What!!!!!! He’s a stiff??? That’s inaccurate. When you’re in a big man league with Wemby and Holmgren and Jokic. The Lakers were smart to do what they did. You have to pay for greatness.

The Lakers do have to sign Kaminga or Hachimura though. They know they need a small forward.

 

Boston really torpedo’d their team. It wasn’t even two years ago that they had a starting lineup of White - Jrue - Brown - Tatum - KP with Pritchard, Hauser, Horford and Kornet off the bench.

Life comes at you quick. I remember when Tatum tore the Achilles I was saying how that was the end and they might trade Brown to get out of his supermax. Well they traded Jrue, Horford and KP first. Then a year later Brown himself. That second apron just tore through what would of been a dynasty even 10 years ago.

 

https://x.com/i/status/2072726696948568220

This guy writes great stuff.
Seems like a JJ team, we're going to chuck 3s all game. Kessler will have a ton of rebounds

 

Aytons our backup and one of the best backups in the league.


Why can’t we have a good one. Look at OKC with Jaylin Williams. We need that to combat what other teams have.

Timberwolves had Naz Reid.

did you see Wemby gassed in the playoffs???? No I don’t want that to have Kessler like that. The Spurs had no one to go to. We can now take Kessler out get him a rest and let Ayton play 15 minutes to keep Kessler fresh for the stretch run. It’s a great luxury to have.

 

Prime example of the C Bags squeezing the most out of their role players. I’ll give credit where credit is due.

 

It would be so ******* beautiful if this reverse racist moment torpedeo’d this loudest of mouths jacka*s’s career and got him fired. One can dream.

 

But that would be racist to fire him. I’m told it’s not possible to be racist to privileged groups though.

 

I changed the spelling above to not equate it with the real deal, but let’s keep it on Stephen A Jacka**