Is this not exactly what the NBA needed? Lost amidst disingenuous ratings babble, the soul of the league is, was, and always will be its blistering humanity. At its best, the NBA is a reality TV drama series highlighting the conflicts both within and between some of the world’s greatest athletes, one which weaves an ever-constricting web of denigration as their underachievements mount. NBA superstars, by virtue of the robust nightly burden they shoulder playing both offense and defense, unilaterally influence the outcome of games to a greater extent than their counterparts across nearly all other team sports, but their blade is double-edged. 

When an elite hitter underperforms in an MLB playoff series, they are protected by the mercy of only appearing on screen once per every nine at-bats, as well as by baseball’s baseline expectation of a 70-75% failure rate. When dominant starting pitchers struggle, they are afforded a week’s worth of games to rest and lick their wounds. Even legendary quarterbacks, as they ‘choke,’ have their meltdowns partially concealed beneath helmets and pads, as well as extended spotlight reprieve when their defense takes the field. 

Basketball is different: there is nowhere to hide. As great players falter, laid bare in oft-radiant tank tops and shorts, imprisoned on your screen for every possession, their zoomed-in faces having attracted the unceasing scrutiny of broadcast surveillance, they are rapidly rendered the recipients of ruthless, ritualistic humiliation. The routine play-by-play commentary dissipates into concerned psychoanalysis. On-court interviews between quarters feature players and coaches uncomfortably deflecting questions of what is wrong with their teammate. 

“He’ll get it going in the second half. I have to do a better job putting him in positions to succeed.” Clang. The star, growing increasingly distressed, commits a foul trying to make up for his miss on the defensive end. He lashes out at the official in frustration, unsure of the authenticity in even his own incredulity as he labors to suppress the embarrassment. *Whistle* – technical foul. The announcers lick their lips as his coach joins the chorus of derision, his job security hanging in the balance as the deficit mounts. The star player passes up an open shot on the next possession. “His confidence is gone, you can see it on his face.” The broadcast again fixates on his expression as he jogs back to play defense. 

He is benched for a brief spell as his coach looks for a spark, and the team starts to climb back into the game. After every single basket, the camera pans to his face. Is he happy? Should he be happy? If he celebrates when the team scores without him, is it an indication that he is scared of the big moment? Is he a bad teammate if he doesn’t celebrate? Is he a bad leader if he doesn’t celebrate? A bad person? Hours earlier, this man was a revered titan of the sport, a perennial All-Star, the beloved franchise-leading scorer, yet suddenly he faces a referendum on his entire life’s work. If he loses this game, he will never be looked at the same way again. Pundits will suggest the team move on from him. What does this mean for his legacy? 

On May 30th, 2024, Luka Doncic scored 36 points on 77% True Shooting against the league’s best defense to deliver the Dallas Mavericks their third trip to the NBA finals in franchise history. Eight months, a finals loss, and a frustrating calf strain later, Luka gets blindsided with a trade to Los Angeles by a disillusioned General Manager who characterizes him as a pot-bellied, alcohol-obsessed sloth on his way out the door.  

On May 29th, 2023, Jimmy Butler capped off one of the most improbable finals runs in NBA history with 28 points, 7 rebounds, and 6 assists on the road in Game 7 against the reigning Eastern Conference champion Boston Celtics, marking the second time in four years that he had helped lift an unheralded Miami Heat roster to the NBA finals. One season later, Jimmy is labeled a self-interested diva and a locker room cancer, suspended by the team for double-digit games as his relationship with Pat Riley fractures beyond repair, and ultimately shipped off to the Golden State Warriors for spare parts. 

It is my preference not to “grade” these trades. I don’t have the requisite information to pontificate about alternative trade packages and squabble about insufficient draft compensation, nor do I find that particularly interesting. Instead, I’m just going to spew my various excitements and indignations at the page in the hope that from it can be gleaned some interesting or enjoyable basketball insight. 

Lakers <-> Mavs

Lakers receive: Luka Doncic, Markieff Morris, Maxi Kleber

Mavericks receive: Anthony Davis, Max Christie, 2029 unprotected 1st round pick

Jazz receive: Jalen Hood-Schifino, two 2025 second round picks

Mavericks outlook

Let’s play a little game. I’m going to describe the first six seasons in the careers of three anonymous players, and you are going to guess who they are. 

Player A was drafted with the 1st overall pick. He was named the Rookie of the Year following his debut season. Over the next five years, he averaged 29 points, 7 rebounds, and 7 assists per game, earning three All-NBA First Team honors and two All-NBA Second Team selections. These averages improved to 30, 8, and 8 across four postseason appearances, runs which included one trip to the NBA finals and another trip to the Conference Finals, but no championship rings. 

  Player B was drafted with the 3rd overall pick. He was named the Rookie of the Year following his debut season. Over the next five years, he averaged 32 points, 6 rebounds, and 6 assists per game, earning four All-NBA First Team selections. These averages improved to 35, 6, and 6 across six postseason appearances, runs which included two trips to the Conference Finals but zero NBA Finals appearances and zero championship rings. 

Player C was drafted with the 3rd overall pick. He was named the Rookie of the Year following his debut season. Over the next five years, he averaged 30 points, 9 rebounds, and 9 assists per game, being named to the All-NBA First Team in all five seasons. These averages improved to 31, 10, and 9 across four postseason appearances, runs which included one trip to the NBA Finals and another trip to the Conference Finals, but no championship rings. 

Player A is Lebron James. Player B is Michael Jordan. Player C is Luka Doncic. 

In the next four seasons of Lebron’s career, he won three league MVPs and two championships.

In the next four seasons of Jordan’s career, he won two league MVPs and three championships. 

In the next four seasons of Luka’s career…

There are only so many ways I can say this. The Dallas Mavericks fucked up. Luka Doncic, on track to becoming the greatest player in franchise history, is just 25 years old. He is under contract for 2.5 more seasons. He wanted to stay in Dallas for the rest of his career. He led the team to the NBA Finals eight months ago. 

It would be one thing if a team simply overwhelmed them with value. Had Oklahoma City approached the Mavericks with an offer of 15 first round picks and Chet Holmgren, it would be understandable for General Manager Nico Harrison and company to at least hold a meeting. Instead, Nico Harrison approached the Lakers himself, insisting they keep their negotiations secret, god forbid they start a bidding war. Not only did he trade Luka, he utterly blindsided him in the dead of night, shipping him halfway across the country for a 31-year-old injury prone center (when they already have two good centers) and a single first round pick, all while publicly humiliating Doncic about the weight he gained while rehabbing from a recent injury (from which he is recovered). Oh, guess what? The center they traded for is already injured. 

Nico Harrison’s actions were ruinous, his conduct behind closed doors has been outrageous, and his public-facing statements have revealed him to be a disrespectful, egomaniacal fool. Have I made myself clear? Now, with all of that out of the way, I will reluctantly share some thoughts on the Mavericks chances to contend with this reworked, defense-oriented roster in 2025 and beyond. 

Anthony Davis, his talents lost in the hysteria of Luka’s departure, remains in his own right a comprehensively oppressive defensive anchor and 25 point per game scorer whose performance sharpens across the board in the postseason. The Mavericks have expressed the intention to deploy him at his original position of Power Forward alongside Kyrie Irving, Klay Thompson, P.J. Washington, and Daniel Gafford in a starting lineup that now prioritizes rim protection and rebounding above spacing and shot creation. In theory, this pivot reduces the imagined redundancy of Luka and Kyrie’s overlapping on-ball skill sets, empowering Kyrie to elevate his usage rate to a level commensurate with superstar lead guards across the Association. 

The problem with this is that Kyrie is simply a worse offensive creator than Luka in every single capacity. For one, Luka is five inches taller and forty pounds stronger than Kyrie while  retaining most of his superhuman handle and shooting touch, which, combined with his dizzying deceleration, makes him a universal mismatch – too big for elite defensive guards and too shifty for elite defensive wings. In nine career playoff series, Doncic has never dropped below 25 points per game, dominating matchups against Mikal Bridges, Kawhi Leonard, and Jaden McDaniels, among others. Irving, on the other hand, has been consistently throttled by All-NBA defensive guards in the postseason. Just last season, Oklahoma City’s hyenic perimeter pressure defanged Kyrie altogether, limiting him to just 15 points per game on 52% True Shooting across their six-game playoff series, which was followed weeks later by a 19 point per game on 48% True Shooting dud of a series at the hands of Jrue Holiday and Derrick White in the NBA Finals. In his lone experience (2019-2020) as the primary scorer for a playoff team, Kyrie was embarrassed by Milwaukee, converting shots at a Cousy-like 44% True Shooting on mortifying splits of 34% from the field and 20% from three. He is not a particularly gifted passer, limited by stubby length and occasionally adventurous shot selection, and he has never demonstrated the ability to consistently generate contact such that he could offset these deficiencies with production at the charity stripe. 

Dallas thus needs two things to make up for this downgrade; they must become a ferocious offensive rebounding team to bolster the output of an offense that is going to be relying heavily on contested jump shots, and they must fulfill the promise of world-class interior defense. With both of these aims achieved, I would begrudgingly concede that the pivot plays to their advantage in a hypothetical matchup with Denver, the team that takes the fewest threes per game in the league and has been twice thwarted by double-big defensive constructions in the playoffs (once to Minnesota last year, once to the Lakers in 2020). With Gafford and Lively serving as the primary Jokic defenders while Anthony Davis assumes the Free Safety position, patrolling the paint in lieu of staying attached to the non-shooting Aaron Gordon, I could see the Mavericks disrupting Denver’s offensive process enough to flip the series, particularly in the absence of perimeter hounds to contain Irving. Still, they would be hopelessly outmatched against OKC, and I’d pick against them out of concern for an offensive power outage against both Memphis and Minnesota. This leaves them less likely to win a championship this season, in my estimation, than they would have been by keeping Luka, and their window of competitive viability has been slashed by a half-decade. 

Lakers outlook

Regrettably, the enthusiasm of overeager pundits in reacting to Luka’s debut against the droopy, comatose Utah Jazz (12-40) has forced me to play the role of party pooper, if only for a paragraph or two. To be clear, I will be vociferously rooting for this Lakers team to succeed, I just… don’t think they are going to be very good? This defense, on paper, is a bottom-five unit in the league. Austin Reaves is a below-average defender for his position at just 195 lbs, Luka is a notoriously flat-footed and lapse-prone perimeter defender, Lebron James is a forty-year-old man, and Jaxson Hayes might be the worst starting center in the NBA. Am I supposed to believe you can build the entire plane out of Dorian Finney-Smith? Can Dalton Knecht and Alex Len squeeze into the same jersey, using Dalton’s arms on offense and Alex’s arms on defense? 

Shannon Sharpe recently said, on national television, “If the Lakers get the OKC Thunder in the Western Conference Finals, we are going to the NBA Finals.” With respect, the Thunder would meticulously and without relent depants this Lakers team. Nikola Jokic would wear Jaxson Hayes like a father carrying his child’s backpack. With a defense this pathetic, I would be hard-pressed to pick them in a playoff series against anyone in the Western Conference playoff picture, and I admit the sudden fever of optimism has taken me by surprise. 

Thankfully, not a single word of that matters at all. The Lakers, who just weeks ago were a declining team facing a harrowing rebuild with the looming retirement of Lebron, have been given a gift of unprecedented proportions. With Luka Doncic, their fortune is robustly secure for the next decade, throughout which they will have ample time to acquire a suitable PnR partner and a handful of championship-caliber defenders. 

As an exercise in open-mindedness, however, I will try to outline the ways in which I could imagine this 2025 roster succeeding, beginning unsurprisingly with their offense. The Luka-Lebron duo will easily and immediately be the greatest passing duo in the history of organized basketball. They are, for my money, the second and third best passers in the league today, and Lebron’s late-career surge as a jump shooter (39% from three) nullifies any concern about their ability to play off of each other effectively. Jaxson Hayes is a surprisingly gifted lob threat (given his non-possession of other talents), and there are zero shooting deficits at the other guard and wing spots, which differentiates this Lakers roster from all of its recent predecessors. Electrified further by Coach Redick’s willingness to play small-ball (Rui, DFS, or Lebron at the 5), this offense appears more optimally structured than any Lebron has played with in his entire career. If that materializes, then it is conceivable to me that the Lakers could simply overwhelm many of these Western Conference contenders (the Rockets, Grizzlies, Timberwolves, and Clippers come to mind) with raw scoring output and unsurpassable half-court efficiency. 

Regardless, this all makes for enthralling entertainment, and a remarkable relief from the cumbersome, dispiriting negativity surrounding the half-season prior. Is it too much to ask for a Lakers-Mavericks Round 1 playoff series?

Spurs <-> Kings <-> Bulls

Spurs receive: De’Aaron Fox, Jordan McLaughlin

Kings receive: Zach Lavine, Sidy Cissoko, 2025 first round pick (top 14 protected via Charlotte), 2027 first round pick (via San Antonio), 2031 first round pick (via Minnesota), three second round picks (2025, 2028, 2028)

Bulls receive: Kevin Huerter, Zach Collins, Tre Jones, 2025 first round pick (Bulls pick via SAS)

Spurs outlook

Winter is coming. I haven’t actually watched Game of Thrones, but my understanding is that with winter comes existential threats to the survival of everyone. Such is how the league should dread the rising empire of Victor Wembanyama. 

He turned 21 years old less than four weeks ago and yet EPM (https://dunksandthrees.com/epm/actual) already paints him as the league’s third best player. Sixteen months before he would be expected to graduate from a typical American four-year college, he is the runaway favorite for Defensive Player of the Year while averaging 25 points per game on 60% True Shooting and leading his team in three-point shooting. Comparing his first 100 games to the legends of various statistical categories, he scored more points than Lebron James, accrued more rebounds than Anthony Davis, blocked more shots than Hakeem Olajuwon, and made more threes than Steph Curry. 

He is incomparable, but the latest comparison I’ve nonetheless been workshopping is that of Stockfish, the chess engine that has surpassed the ELO rating of five-time world champion Magnus Carlsen by nearly 1000 points. Much like Stockfish, Wembanyama’s approach to improvement appears unconstrained by conventional principles, a ruthless pursuit of optimization for his unique, supreme physical gifts. He will rotate 180 degrees from the elbow to block a wide-open baseline drive, snatch the rebound before it goes out of bounds, dribble the ball 64 feet against an NBA press, call for a screen as the PnR ball-handler, take one dribble to his left and shoot a one-legged floater from behind the three-point line. 

What, you say, most people don’t shoot floaters from 25 feet? Well most people aren’t seven and a half feet tall either, are they? 

Recently he has discovered that the backboard is merely another surface against which he is permitted to dribble. Running out of space in the paint? No matter, just throw it off the backboard and chase after it! At its extreme, this looks like Victor might as well be dribbling off of an invisible ceiling, suspending the ball at a plane high above the clouds, inaccessible to all but himself.

His further improvement is an utter certainty, barring injury. Soon, with a little training in the thespian dark arts of NBA legends, he is going to realize that his shot cannot physically be contested without fouling, at which point his pedestrian free throw numbers (4 per game) are going to skyrocket, supercharging his efficiency and further straining opposing defensive resources. 

Enter, now, De’Aaron Fox. I hardly know where to begin in discussing how excited I am to watch this duo. The fastest player in the NBA + the tallest player in the NBA. Last year’s league-leader in steals + this year’s league-leader in blocks. This has the makings of a dynamite PnR duo between two efficient 25+ PPG scorers, both of whom can shoot threes, with a lefty ball-handler driving to his strong hand while the right-handed alien Wembanyama rolls to his strong side. Wembanyama’s gravity as a roller, especially contrasted with the ground-bound Sabonis that Fox has gotten used to, is going to provide an already elite mid-range shooter (Fox) with more time and space than he’d have in shooting practice, while Fox’s electric burst off the dribble will force rim protectors to leave Wembanyama unsupervised on the offensive glass.   

The Spurs are too far back in the standings and retain too many deficiencies on the wings to be viable contenders this season, but with Victor on a rookie contract for another 2.5 seasons, their championship window swings wide open as soon as October of 2025.

Kings outlook

As mentioned earlier, I have no interest in playing armchair General Manager. I don’t know whether the Kings could have gotten more draft compensation for De’Aaron Fox and I am not going to pretend to. 

Fox wanted out of Sacramento. Doubtless, this was a depressing development. Two years ago, Fox was named the NBA Clutch Player of the Year for his repeated heroics in helping the 2022-2023 Kings break the longest playoff drought in NBA history. The ‘Light the Beam’ Kings generated the best single-season offensive rating of all-time at 119.4 and pushed the defending champion Golden State Warriors to Game 7 in an exhilarating playoff series. Between him, Sabonis, Monk, and Murray, the Kings appeared set up to contend for the next half-decade. 

From the outside, it’s difficult to diagnose exactly what went wrong. Sabonis and Fox have both improved since then, putting together the best 1.5 year stretches of their respective careers and cementing themselves as All-Star caliber players. The Kings won 46 games, a small step back from the 48 wins of 2022, but they avenged their playoff heartbreak by sending the Warriors home in the play-in tournament. 

Signing 35-year-old Demar Derozan in the offseason was a clear step in the wrong direction from a basketball perspective, though the crux of the issue appears to have been locker room discord and regression/stagnation from supposed sharpshooters Kevin Huerter and Keegan Murray. Mike Brown was shockingly dismissed after a 13-19 start to the regular season, Keegan is shooting an appalling 32% from three, and Kevin Huerter had found himself outside the rotation altogether before this trade to Chicago. 

Alas, here we are. Once a superstar wants out, it’s best (in my opinion) to grant them their wish, painful as it may be. This Kings team will scare nobody, but I have optimism in the following respects. 

1. Domantas Sabonis is having an unbelievably dominant season. He is the most efficient 20+ point per game scorer in the Association, the league’s leading rebounder, top 15 in assists, and a vastly improved defender, all while shooting 48% on a career-high volume of 3-point attempts. Any franchise should be ecstatic to have a player this good at 28 years old.
2. Malik Monk, already averaging career-highs in points, rebounds, and assists, will get the opportunity to be a team’s true lead guard for the first time in his career. I, counting myself among the Members of the Monastery, am thrilled about this development. Malik Monk is a spectacular athlete and underrated playmaker who I hope goes nuclear in this role. 
3. Zach Lavine, 29, is a wildly underappreciated player who fits the timeline of Monk and Sabonis. This is the fifth season in Zach’s career in which he has flirted with 25 points per game on over 60% True Shooting. This year, he’s scoring at 90th percentile efficiency (63%), knocking down a hilarious 44% of his 7.2 attempted threes per game. He has been one of the best shooters in the league since 2020 and, save further struggles staying healthy, should comfortably outperform the exaggerated concern about his contract. 

Heat <-> Warriors (+ multiple other teams and minor pieces to facilitate the finances)

Warriors receive: Jimmy Butler

Heat receive: Andrew Wiggins, Kyle Anderson, and a protected 1st round pick

Warriors outlook

The Warriors have had a strange run since losing Kevin Durant to the Brooklyn Nets in the summer of 2019. Coming off five straight finals appearances, co-occurring injuries to Klay Thompson and Steph Curry rendered them totally moribund; they finished last in the Western Conference with a record of 15-50 and their leading scorer was Eric Paschall, who, in his most recent professional basketball game, registered 2 points and 2 turnovers in a 44 point loss as a member of Pistoia, the basketball club that stands in sole possession of last place in Italy’s Lega A. The following season was an improvement, as they brought in Andrew Wiggins and Steph returned at his customary MVP level, but back-to-back losses in the play-in tournament meant no playoff berth for the second season in a row. The Warriors dynasty was conclusively and definitely over. 

Except, of course, for the NBA championship they would go on to win the very next season. Their defense anchored by Draymond Green was the single best in the league, Andrew Wiggins was a starter in the All-Star Game, and Otto Porter Jr, Gary Payton II, and Jordan Poole combined for more than 30 points per game on 70% True Shooting in the playoffs (including 47% accuracy on nearly 10 threes per game). 

Since then, Otto Porter Jr retired, Draymond Green punched Jordan Poole in the face, Klay Thompson joined the Dallas Mavericks, Gary Payton II forgot how to shoot, and Andrew Wiggins returned to being Andrew Wiggins (far, far removed from All-Star consideration). The Warriors missed the playoffs once again in 2024, and, with an aging Steph averaging his fewest points per game since 2011, arrived at this year’s trade deadline having lost 23 of their last 36 games. 

How much does Jimmy Butler change their outlook? My answer is both quite a bit and not at all. To start with the good news, I believe Jimmy remains an All-Star caliber basketball player when healthy and engaged, representing an enormous upgrade over Andrew Wiggins even at his advanced age. Per EPM, Jimmy has been one of the 25 most impactful players in the league every single season since 2015, peaking as the 6th highest rated player in 2020, the year he first took Miami to the finals. Typical Jimmy Butler production entails 20 points, 5 rebounds, and 5 assists per night on supremely high efficiency with a guarantee of focused excellence on defense. He is absolutely still capable of providing that, and his proficiency at getting to the free throw line fills a particularly critical void for Golden State’s scattershot offense. His skillset as an interior off-ball scorer makes him a theoretically terrific complement to Steph Curry and his 28-foot gravity – devoting additional resources to simultaneous threats at opposite depths while still effectively containing the ball will be an enormous challenge for disorganized defenses. I expect the Warriors to quickly climb back into playoff position, and I would not be surprised to see them push Memphis, Houston, or either of the Los Angeles teams in a theoretical first-round matchup. 

The bad news is that, for you championship or bust purists, this team is definitively not good enough to be taken seriously as contenders. The Jimmy-Steph pairing will ameliorate the spell of lifelessness the Warriors had fallen into, but they are altogether void of ancillary pieces. 34-year-old Draymond, Jonathan Kuminga, Buddy Hield, Brandon Podziemski, Trayce Jackson-Davis, Kevon Looney, and Moses Moody are each worse than any of 45 role players I could name across the eleven teams in the Western Conference playoff picture. Every single one of these players either can’t shoot, can’t defend, or can’t convince Steve Kerr to play them, which makes them particularly vulnerable targets in the postseason, which often comes down to exploiting the weakest link on both ends of the court. Personally, I’m still happy the Warriors did this, as it makes them fun to watch again, gives Jimmy an opportunity to silence the disrespect, and should allow for one final Steph Curry playoff run before the bittersweet, inevitable rebuild begins. 

Heat outlook

I hope we can move on from Pat Riley soon. In a superstar, personality-driven league, Riley’s retrograde obsession with obedience and egoistic belittling of his best players feel gross and racially charged. In under two decades, he has managed to feud with Shaquille O’Neal, Alonzo Mourning, Dwyane Wade, Lebron James, and Jimmy Butler. The platonic ideal of Heat Culture as a mantra of camaraderie and toughness has transparently failed to avoid the pitfall of making the athletes feel individually underappreciated and expendable. I’m thoroughly uninterested in the Miami Heat moving forward. Bam Adebayo and Tyler Herro are decent foundational pieces, not quite All-Stars in my estimation, and rookie Kel’el Ware has been a bright spot in a tumultuous season, but I can’t move past my discomfort with the owner, so I find myself rooting passionately for Jimmy Butler in the divorce. 

Whatever the Milwaukee Bucks are doing

Bucks receive: Kyle Kuzma, Jericho Sims, and Kevin Porter Jr

Bucks lose: Khris Middleton, Delon Wright, AJ Johnson, Marjon Beauchamp, 2028 first round pick swap (WAS) 

GRADE: F-MINUS

VERDICT: JAIL

The actions of General Manager Jon Horst at the 2025 trade deadline flew under the radar due to the outright treason committed by Mavericks GM Nico Harrison, but make no mistake – this was a flatly apocalyptic mismanagement of assets in what may have been the final year of the Milwaukee Bucks’ championship window in the Giannis era. Before diving into the individual players, let me use my favorite catch-all impact metric (EPM) as a shorthand introduction to why you should join me in my vast agitation and distress. Nikola Jokic, the consensus best basketball player in the world, has a total EPM of +8.7, which I understand to mean that you would expect a team to perform 8.7 points better (per 100 possessions) with him on the floor than they would with a random, replacement-level center. Kyle Kuzma, Kevin Porter Jr, and Jericho Sims have a combined EPM of negative 9.7. Mind you, that is across over 2,300 minutes – no small sample size! This means that a starting five featuring Nikola Jokic and these three jackals would be a full Trae Young (1.5 EPM) below replacement-level. They have been measurably three of the worst basketball players in the league this season.  

First and most importantly, Kevin Porter Jr has an abhorrent history of violence against women and should be nowhere near an NBA roster on the basis of that alone. I don’t want to talk at length about his on-court ability for this reason, so suffice it to say that he is the single least efficient player in the league at 47% True Shooting on a sample size of over 400 shot attempts this season. He can’t pass, he provides nothing as a rebounder, and he is a defensive liability. Shame on Jon Horst for trading for him. 

Now, incredibly, Kevin Porter Jr does not even have an argument for worst player in the league this season, a relief he owes to his new teammate Kyle Kuzma and the civilization’s worth of stone brick houses Kuzma built in Washington. 48% True Shooting, the lowest among all starters in the league, does not begin to describe his struggles. He is 91st in three-point attempts per game but an impossible 177th in three-pointers made per game, the consequence of making the second-lowest percentage of all players taking at least 2.5 threes per game (28%). He is converting a similarly catastrophic 36% of his midrange attempts and performing substantially below league average at the rim, which he of course makes up for by turning the ball over on 13% of his possessions (bad), never getting to the free throw line, and also missing half of his free throw attempts even when miraculously fouled by a defender who it can only be assumed mistook him for someone else. Adding to the fun, Kuzma ranks 224th in offensive rebounds, below fringe rotation players like Kenrich Williams (14 minutes per game) and Jae’Sean Tate (11 minutes per game), he is allergic to passing the basketball, and he is a negative impact defender. 

Jericho Sims is not worth discussing, but he does currently hold the distinguished crown of highest turnover percentage in the league at 29.8%, so that’s marvellous. 

The Bucks functionally gave up two first-rounders to do this, as AJ Johnson was their first round pick eight months ago as a nineteen year old, and they shipped franchise legend Khris Middleton to Washington. It was sadly clear that 2021 Khris Middleton was never coming back, as age (33) and injuries to both ankles and knees have sapped his agility almost entirely, but in doing him wrong the Bucks also managed to find one of the only conceivable downgrades available that matched his salary at the position. As someone who was feverishly excited for this Giannis and Dame partnership, it has been dejecting to watch Milwaukee so robustly botch the surrounding roster construction. I think they are drawing dead to contend for a title this season and see them barrelling towards a franchise-altering 1st round playoff defeat. 

BRIEF NOTES / HONORABLE MENTIONS

Cavs <-> Hawks

Cavs receive: De’Andre Hunter 

Hawks receive: Caris Levert, Georges Nieng, three second round picks, two future pick swaps. 

Great get for the Cavs! A necessary attempt to answer the Tatum question. 

Lakers <-> Hornets

Lakers receive: Mark Williams

Hornets receive: Dalton Knecht, Cam Reddish, 2031 unprotected first round pick, 2030 pick swap

This was tragic, and robbed the Lakers of any real chance to contend this year. 

Raptors <-> Pelicans

Raptors receive: Brandon Ingram

Pelicans receive: Bruce Brown, Kelly Olynyk, 2026 1st round pick (via IND), 2025 second round pick

Hm. I am not a Brandon Ingram fan, but the Raptors were about as good a fit as I could have imagined for him. Not a fan long-term, but he could help with play-in viability next year. 

Thanks so much for reading! One day, perhaps, these won’t take me so long to make, but in the meantime I really hope you enjoyed or learned something 🙂