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

...well, and I really hate to throw this out there with no evidence at all, but if I were in the league and I was trying to get Balmer to back down and accept a punishment without suing everyone, I might have someone who used to work there make a call or two.

 

Completely agree.

Its clear Balmer did absolutely nothing to try and cover his tracks in all of this which is just wild to me.

 

technically, we only have the minimum and zero roster spots to boot. other teams could also work S&Ts and could theoretically get his number up as high or higher than we can, else they wouldn't be in the bidding on watson (word is denver had already offered watson more than the mle).

i'll repeat that people need to be patient and not consider the wait as some sort of sign. he's trying to get closer to his on-court value, which is actually higher than most think, imo.

this is what i mean--what trouble can they cause? if he's a malcontent next year, he's going to be on his way out of the league. whoever gets him is going to get the best-behaved version. and i will also repeat that most of the negative stuff about him has been quite minor. like, he wanted to play more and have a bigger role...like...every young player (i'll add that at least two prominent, experienced teammates agreed with him on this!). and then his entourage took too much food.

this requires milwaukee and NO wanting do these things.

vando/hardy/knecht for kuzma/sims would be ok by me, but again, milwaukee has to be on board. they have a roster crunch like we do and also might not feel like eating vando's last year.

i think we're in a good spot right now, save for the fact that we signed 16 players. i think teams can use that as leverage against us in trade talks right now. that said, the reason we're in that position is that we made two great vet min signings in thybulle and williams.

anyway, everyone should chill out and wait instead of claiming kuminga's the devil because he hasn't taken whatever our offer is yet (again, we don't even know what it is at this point).

 

Crazy ha. You would think he's educated about washing money

 

nothing really new here, but one part struck me:

this has always been my suspicion. yes, he wanted more money, but all routes to more money left us unable to get atlanta to agree. i feel like a lot of the commentators don't quite grasp that part or gloss over it. atlanta is under the tax right now, i believe, and historically they don't pay much in tax. taking back any salary for kuminga means they're going into the tax (and possibly approaching apron 1) for that player. that's why all my hypotheticals involved shipping guys to third and fourth teams. as the market dries up, those avenues get narrower, too.

that's why i said earlier that it's unclear what the offers are/can be for kuminga. i've outlined some that would get him near 17-18 starting while adding nothing for atlanta. but that would require two teams taking knecht and either hardy or laravia, probably with 2nds. i identified sac for knecht and the wizards for laravia. the last second would go to atlanta for facilitating.

but that's just my idea. could be that the best we can do is move only jake, which leaves us having to just cut knecht and kuminga's starting salary starting at below mle. my feeling is that's where it stands now, and he wants more than that because S&Ts require 3 years.