NBA-ийн зуны шилжилт хөдөлгөөний тойм

The Bounce Newsletter| This is The Athletic’s daily NBA newsletter.Sign up hereto receive The Bounce directly in your inbox.

We all consume a lot of media platforms in a lot of different ways. I’m definitely not someone who watches Twitch streams or live YouTube shows. It just isn’t in my rotation of platforms I frequent for content, let alone for sports. However, right now, if you told me that Jaylen Brown was going live, I might drop everything to see what he has to say.

Fork in the road

How do these 5 teams spend their summers?

The draft is over, and we’re headed toward an eventful offseason within the normal chaos of the NBA summers. We’ve already seen Giannis Antetokounmpo moved to Miami, the Celtics’ Brown be offended by trade rumors and LaMelo Ball shipped to Minnesota. We’re still four days away from free agency actually opening.

Pistons: Remember the Pistons? It feels like they’re gearing up for something big with their offseason moves so far. They sent Isaiah Stewart to Memphis to clear up some cap space. Now we’re monitoring whether they’ll land Tyler Herro (if Milwaukee flips him), Brown (if Boston decides they need to move him), Kawhi Leonard (if he and the Clippers don’t work out a deal) or Norman Powell (if Miami is truly losing him to free agency). The Pistons desperately need some offensive help for Cade Cunningham. They proved that the hard way in the playoffs.

Also, don’t forget they still have a very important restricted free-agency for Jalen Duren, who had an awesome regular season and then ruined all that public goodwill with a disastrous postseason. Duren’s Detroit future is in doubt as he and the team remain far apart on extension talks, Sam Amick reports.

Offensive creation and shooting are musts for the Pistons now.

Celtics: Speaking of Brown, what in the heck is going to happen in Boston? They tried to get Giannis from Milwaukee, and the only way to do that was to dangle the 2024 NBA Finals MVP. That didn’t work. Now Brown seems pretty perturbed by the trade rumors and the reaction online. I would also add that Brown seems to be too online right now. It may benefit him to just relax with online content and reading comments. That’s tough to do as a Twitch streamer, though.

The Celtics are roughly $13 million under the tax, $21 million under the first apron and $34 million under the second apron. So they have some wiggle room if they want to add a significant player. It may behoove them to give Brown that $142 million extension for two years to ease some of the tension and then figure things out from there.

Thunder: Oklahoma City has to make some kind of cut to its roster for a few reasons. It went into this offseason with 15 players under contract, two first-round picks and a second-round pick expected to be good enough to make the roster. The Thunder were also $28 million into the second apron and $41 million into the first apron. They’re sending Aaron Wiggins to the Hawks to dump one roster spot. That will also shave $9 million off those aprons.

The Thunder have team options on Isaiah Hartenstein ($28.5m) and Lu Dort ($17.7m). They selected Aday Mara 12th and Bennett Stirtz 16th in the first round. They are not expected to move on from Hartenstein, so it looks like Dort might be the odd man out. They can pick up that option and send him out for second-round picks. They’ll still be in the second apron if that happens, but it’ll be something they can navigate out of before the trade deadline is over.

Clippers: There is so much to be determined. We still do not have a resolution to the investigation of alleged cap circumvention by Steve Ballmer, the team and Kawhi Leonard. Assuming we don’t get a punishment that includes voiding Leonard’s contract, the Clippers face some important decisions. Leonard is going into the final year of his contract and is seeking an extension. If the soon-to-be 35-year-old doesn’t get that two-year extension, might we see the Clippers move him in a trade?

Could that be a move to Detroit? Do the Raptors want to have a reunion? The rumor mill is going to get pretty wild if Kawhi becomes a trade asset. Yes, he still has injury and availability concerns, but with the way he played this past year, teams will want to roll the dice.

Heat: Their work is not done yet, as acquiring Giannis was just the beginning of this roster reshaping. Because of some CBA stuff that I won’t bore you with because it’ll take too long to explain, the Heat are hard-capped at the first apron. So they have $18.1 million to fill four roster spots. That’s not a lot of money in 2026! That’ll make it tough to re-sign Powell, unless he’s feeling incredibly generous.

Miami can figure out a longer-term deal with Andrew Wiggins and have him decline his $30 million option to sign at a lower salary. Maybe that could net the Heat an extra $5-to-10 million to utilize?

With Bobby Portis on the roster, they could try to move Nikola Jović’s contract for a lower-salaried player or just for space. That would help them re-sign Powell and still fill out the roster. Miami needs some help for next season, though.

The last 24

🔮 Who’s next? Is it too early to do a 2027 mock draft? Not for Sam Vecenie. Tyran Stokes is the prospect to watch.

🏀 Report cards. Vecenie also isn’t done with the 2026 draft. He gave out grades for every team’s picks, with the Grizzlies, Bulls and Kings at the head of the class.

✏️ We love to judge. The Ball trade to the Wolves confused a lot of us. I did not give the Wolves a high mark.

😢 Forty years ago. The 1986 draft had so much potential and tragedy. Jason Jones offers a great retrospective.

💰 Get that bag. Need a point guard? There are several options on the free-agent market, our John Hollinger writes.

Stream the NBA on Fubo (try it for free!)and catch out-of-market games onLeague Pass.

So far, new Blazers owner Tom Dundon has built a reputation for being cheap. (Troy Wayrynen / Imagn Images)

Dundon dun!

New Blazers owners isn’t making many fans

Tom Dundon was supposed to be the savior for the Portland Trail Blazers. After a tenuous stint with Jody Allen following the death of her brother and beloved franchise owner Paul Allen, Blazers fans were hoping Dundon would put the necessary structure and systems into place for the team to contend. We’re barely three months removed from the approval of that sale by the NBA Board of Governors, and Dundon has already fostered a pretty brutal reputation.

Dundon’s Carolina Hurricanes recently hoisted the Stanley Cup, so he’s going to tell you he knows what he’s doing. And maybe he does. Maybe there needs to be discomfort and tough decisions to bring the Blazers organization to a higher level. Dundon doesn’t seem deterred by his reputation, but the perception of the organization is in a shaky situation.

Let’s review some of the big controversies so far:

• Layoffs: Dundon laid off at least 70 employees quickly, including basketball Hall of Famer and Blazers scout Tina Thompson, one of the most beloved and respected team communications around the league, Rahsaan Gethers, and fan-favorite team reporter Casey Holdahl (who had been there for nearly two decades).
• Leaving people behind: The Blazers didn’t bring their two-way players (ineligible for the playoffs) on the road for postseason games.
• No more late check-outs: As Jason Quick outlined, Dundon eliminated late check-outs at hotels for non-player staff on the road. This meant the team masseuse had nowhere to give massages at the hotel on game days.
• Rumors and reports of coaching offers: It was reported that Dundon was talking to a lot of coaches about the Blazers’ job. That included allegedly offering a college coach less money than he was currently making and offering interim coach Tiago Splitter the lowest head-coaching salary in the league. Splitter left for the Bulls’ head-coaching job.

More rumors and stories are going around, but let’s keep it to that for now. Needless to say, the perception of Dundon is centered around cheapness. And two more things have come up this week:

Micah Nori becoming Portland’s new coach was supposed to be a celebration about hiring arguably the best assistant coach in the NBA. Instead, the focus shifted to the ridiculous three-year contract given to the former Timberwolves assistant: one year of guaranteed salary, and then two team options. Coaches around the league are concerned.

The second thing was the news that Dundon does not want to put any of his own money into the $600 million renovations and upgrades to the Blazers’ arena. This quote is what worries a lot of Blazers fans:

“It feels like we’re making a pretty big investment by staying here and paying these tax rates,” Dundon said, according to multiple outlets, during Wednesday’s annual meeting of the Portland Metro Chamber being held at the Moda Center.

A lot of Blazers fans and plenty of people I’ve talked to around the league wonder if Dundon will try to move the team at some point. Portland is one of the best basketball cities in the NBA, and while the market may be tough to draw free agents, the fanbase is supportive and rabid. It certainly doesn’t sound like he enjoys Portland. But more importantly, the perception around the league is that Dundon does not want to spend. Plenty of people behind the scenes swear he’ll spend on players, and there were rumors he wanted to acquire Giannis.

However, players will not want to go to a team if they think you cheap out on the luxuries of NBA life. They want to trust you’ll do what it takes to win games and be a first-class organization. You can’t do that by spending so much time vacuuming loose change out of the couch cushions.

Mail time!

Revisiting my tax-apron relief idea

Reader Dan C. responded to yesterday’s newsletter with some fair questions about my idea to alter the first and second aprons by not counting the contracts of the players a team drafts and keeps versus players they sign or trade for. This is what he had to say:

“I get where you’re coming from, but is the downside that it creates a greater possibility for super-teams, ala the Warriors adding Kevin Durant to their otherwise homegrown team?

“I know some people look back on those 2016-18 Warriors teams fondly, but I also remember those seasons being slogs where we basically knew who the champion would be. I generally support rules that have the spirit to prevent that.

“If we create your rule proposal today, then a team like the Spurs that already got lottery/draft-lucky three years in a row would then ALSO have a free agency/salary cap advantage to go sign or trade for expensive players. It could risk the parity that the NBA has prioritized in the last 10 years (eight champs in eight years!).

“What do you think?”

It’s a good question, because so many people hated the way the Warriors “ruined the NBA” by signing Durant after going 73-9. It caused a lot of vitriol. Two things:

1) I want to clarify that I don’t think teams’ dollars should count differently under the salary cap. Just when it comes to penalizing teams in the aprons, which prevents a lot of roster movement. I don’t believe that plan would allow them to acquire players in the same way the Warriors did with KD. Or, I believe you could make a failsafe way of doing it. I just don’t want teams to have to lose players because they’re good at drafting.

2) This is a larger point that I think is important. KD to the Warriors was a one-off, fluke of a move because there was a salary-cap spike, and the Warriors just happened to be on a great contract with Steph Curry that allowed them flexibility. There are lots of rules in the CBA today that overreact to preventing that one-time fluke from happening again. I don’t think the NBA should overreact to stuff like that and should look out for the health of the league instead.