2025-26 Team Developments: Trades / Free Agents / News / Rumors / Ideas

So Ballmer knew Aspirations conned him in 2022... Yet, he was donating millions of $ to Aspirations Co-Founder, Joe Sanberg, after he knew he was being conned..

https://x.com/i/status/1972632618962411525

And this is info that Pablo has obtained through public investigations... Imagine what the NBA and third-party private investigators could find if they had access to their private info via text, phone calls, wire transfers, bank accounts, etc.,...

How is the NBA allowing Kawhi to even play for the upcoming season?

 

What does that have to do with the Hyena? Did he receive another 1.875 M as payment?

 

Which golf courses, if any, could Walters purchase in SoCal for a player that’s going to get paid this summer?
I’m sure the one I used to live near in Oceanside, CA could easily be had for less than $30 million or so since it could use some love.

 

he didn't miss much time due to eye injuries here, and he never had anything as serious as what led to this choice. i wonder how he'll play with the goggles. his shot is kind of a fickle thing already these days.

 

I always thought even those sculpted type sunglasses (clear of course with impact plastic shaped perfectly for him) …. that have the lenses shape close to cheeks and eye sockets might be an option over goggles, secured with bands over back of head also. Numerous ways with either I’d imagine to keep from fogging.

 

What ?
Milwaukee Bucks forward Giannis Antetokounmpo will miss the start of training camp managing COVID-19, according to Bucks general manager Jon Horst.

Antetokounmpo is still in Greece, Horst said, with COVID-19 keeping him from traveling to Milwaukee.

Giannis Antetokounmpo: "I'm just waiting for a negative test, so I can leave my house and get on a plane and travel. I don't want to put anybody at risk." https://t.co/Q6l7tJvIql

— Eric Nehm (@eric_nehm) September 29, 2025

 

about halfway through you can watch him cook us in la last year.

and now for the bad news:



for comparison, here's everyone's favorite washout from the same draft:

 

I agree with you Tatum and Brown in a vacuum are nice, but not ground breaking. They’re not that much better than Bridges and OG or Barnes and Ingram. But my oh my did the C Bags do a wonderful job of surrounding them with talent.

Tatum (54.1m)
Brown (53.1m)
Jrue (32.4m)
Porzingis (30.7m)
White (28.1m)
Horford (10m)
Kornet (11m)
Hauser (10m)
Pritchard (7.2m)
plus all the minimums to round out the roster

That’s a legit 9 man rotation and was the best team in the league. Their cumulative bill would of been $513 million in payroll and taxes.

Once Tatum went down, I thought they were going to trade Brown, but they let Kornet and Horford walk, traded Jrue for Simons and dumped Porzingis. That team lost Horford, Kornet, Jrue, Porzingis and retained Tatum, Brown, White, Hauser and Pritchard. They’ve gone from the top to a top 6 eastern team. Tough loss and the punitive tax doing its thing.

 

They realized after the 2022 Finals that Tatum and Brown as your Top 2 leaves a bit to be desired from a playmaking/creation standpoint, so they needed to go true 5-out with higher level guards than Smart to grease the wheels of the offense as much as possible. I wonder if they go a different route this time and go after a more dynamic PG that sets the table for Brown and Tatum. Like maybe they're the team that trades for Young or Garland. We'll see, I agree it's going to be really hard to find the new equivalents of Porzingis/Holiday/Horford again, and that's assuming they keep White which I'm not sure they will.

 

jrue/white/horford/zinger is just an insane 3-6. then the exciting whites as the fill-ins worked wonderfully.

so much hinged on horford for me, though, as i've repeated many times. they got him on a good deal due to their history, and then he lasted longer than anyone expected. they were always going to have to pay that piper, imo. even if tatum doesn't get hurt, if horford takes even a small step back, they're just not the same, imo. holiday, too, and both had already started receding a bit last year.

they got their ring, and that team was dominant and deserved it. but it wasn't built to last because tatum/brown isn't jordan/pippen by any stretch of the imagination. it's like pippen/xavier mcdaniel or something.

simons can do some things offensively like garland (he's not the passer, though, which matters a lot with tatum/brown), but yeah, i just don't see the path. we'll find out if stevens is a genius soon enough. my guess is he's just a guy like the rest of them, including rob.

 

That team really benefited from some things falling their way. Picking up White & Porzingis for peanuts and Horford just deciding he wasn't going to answer Father Time's phone calls is really hard to predict. I actually thought Porzingis and Kornet were a really nice two man rotation for even when Horford left. Porzingis is unfortunately ill/injured quite often and never made good on his potential. Kung Fu Jrue's wheels may just be about falling off, so he would of been a tough loss regardless.

Thinking about their team made me reflect on our surprise additions this off season, I think Smart & Ayton can be just as impactful for us at basically minimum pickups.

Lebron & Luka > Tatum & Brown
AR & Ayton = Jrue & Horford
Rui & Smart < White & Porzingis
LaRavia, Gabe & Vando < Pritchard, Hauser & Kornet

I think it's a fair argument that White is better than Smart and Porzingis when healthy is better than Rui. I think LaRavia matches Pritchard, while Hauser & Kornet are better than Gabe & Vando. If we could package Gabe & Kleber for one more impact player, we should be one of the favourites.

 

We should be the best passing team EVER.



Make it so JJ

 

we need to turn the expirings and all firsts + knecht into our version of derrick white. that was what got them over the top. well, that and jrue falling into their laps due to their chief rival's complete misstep. man, they had some luck...

but porzingis types are always available, imo. we can get that, but we should be holding out for a white.

 

Yeah he obviously got conned, he lost 60M dollars. As far as this charity, was it legit? Was he the only person that donated to it? The bigger question is, what exactly does that have to do with the Hyena and circumventing the salary cap? Those are the questions Silver is going to be asking.

 

unless he considered it part of his clippers operating costs. which he did.

 

How do you KNOW that? That's your assumption.

 

The fly in the ointment to that theory, is that it looks like Ballmer, is one of the people that reported Aspiration to the SEC. So if he reported them, what does the CEO gain by keeping his mouth shut? If it was a scheme all along, what's the point of reporting them in the first place? Once again, was this charity actually legit? Did the CEO actually run it? Founding and running aren't the same thing.

So a big mega church pastor, was found to be scamming some of his church's wealthiest members, in some kind of investment fraud. At the same time, the church has an outreach program, that is actually legit, and does good work. Are the scammed church members dumb for still supporting that? The people the program helped, had absolutely nothing to do with, the scam the pastor ran. Correct?

This reporter is just reporting public information. Nothing he has put out is to be considered an inside scoop. Where is the actual link to the Hyena? I don't think this is some kind of smoking gun either. All we see is the reporter's angle, I'm sure Silver is going to get the full story. I'll wait until that happens, this stuff might not be as cut and dried as it looks to you afterwards.

 

Forget about Jokic