DeAndre Jordan may wish he could create a better set of options, be 27 again. Or maybe this is a fine time to get out. Read more »

Free agency is undeniably overloaded but it is hardly with momentous, league-altering players as it was last decade. It is musical chairs with the music at 5X speed in which most fungible players feel compelled to take the best immediate offer as teams brutely replenish the end of their roster. Read more »

J.R. Smith going back to school and joining its golf team is a fine story for late August, which shouldn't contain much NBA news. Especially coming off a year-and-a-half jammed with more basketball than even the professionals who play it could handle. Read more »

If the offseason seemed like an anticlimactic change of pace, it speaks to how happy most of the contenders are with their current core and how the rebuilding teams are content to take their time. Read more »

The only option on the table right now for Lauri Markkanen is to accept the Bulls' qualifying offer and hope he has a healthy and productive 21-22, featuring for a team that hardly values him. Read more »

The media cycle that followed the Malice at the Palace did not correlate with the reality in the arena that night, aside from the magical one that racists are always manufacturing on the fly. Read more »

Ben Simmons, despite boasting many spectacular qualities as a player, is not close to LeBron James, but his experience as a public figure does share important common ground. Read more »

If Summer League has a utility, it's the taste of the extreme strangeness the NBA regular season doesn't quite brook. Janis Timma is too perfect and most likely not nearly talented enough for this world. Read more »

Victor Wembanyama is an exceptional rim protector and projects as the sort of defender who can elevate the level of the defense around him, while also looking like he'll be able to score at all three levels. Read more »

The Bulls are all in trying to win 50 games this year, and DeMar DeRozan will help considerably. There is a rung right below greatness, where some swell players hang out, but you can lose track of them. Read more »

This is not a team built for development, but to win. Not to win a title, per se, but certainly to win more games than it loses, and for a good number of those victories to leave an attractive stamp on the broader basketball imagination. Read more »

The advent of protracted trade demands and the play-in tournament and reshuffled lotto odds have conspired to incentivize goodness and punish intentional foulness. The NBA has pushed teams toward respectability. Read more »

John Collins, Lonzo Ball, Duncan Robinson, Devonte' Graham and Jarrett Allen are at the top of the restricted free agency board. Read more »

Chet Holmgren is a perimeter-oriented big man who can nail three-pointers on spot-ups and as the trailer in transition. He has good ball skills and coordination for someone his height to operate off the bounce on the regular. Read more »

We are going to realize, in time, that this gaggle of young guys provide new paths toward winning, that they have or will develop skills that we are not now properly considering the value of. That's what the draft is about, on the broadest possible level. Read more »

The appeal with James Bouknight is as a shotmaker off dribble moves and sleek footwork who can get promising looks in isolation. Even as teams have emphasized team-oriented offenses, the value of an individual scorer remains high. Read more »

The United States have become complacent again with a roster of abundant ability but not much synergy. Read more »

Giannis Antetokounmpo blends retro ideas of post dominance with conceptions of space and movement that could be revolutionary if only there was anyone else able to follow in his footsteps. Read more »

The appeal with Keon Johnson is as a tenacious on-ball defender who can envelope smaller point guards at the point of attack and elevate the level of the offense in transition, while holding some potential to become more physical by his late-20s. Read more »

One team wins it all and they are the happiest group of guys who ever lived, they are invincible and immortal and beautiful and exhausted. They vacation, extravagantly. And then we reset and go again. Read more »