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

I'm patiently waiting on a Rui contract extension update myself.

 

Bring the Eagle home!!! Or one of their defenders good enough to make it more difficult for the best opposing PGs. Of course no one is always shutting them down. They just now signed Jalen Williams to 5 years at 55M average for the total …. 285M I saw.

 

What the hell
Is it AI generated virus signing new contracts for Oklahoma

 

Saw it pop up in The Athletic on my phone just then.

 

Oklahoma is finalizing contracts with their stars (Williams, Chet Holmgren, and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander). The total value of their deals could amount to around $822 million.

 

I don’t believe Vando is good enough offensively. If he comes back as a cutter who can finish and can hit the corner 3 - then sure. But I doubt it.

 

"Get Paid!! " " That's all he spoke", " lights out at your party", "that's all she wrote!"

(Scarface)

 

Makes sense to me. Lock in those three and cycle through the 4-10 guys in the rotation.

 

We don't need 5 scorers on the court at all times. We are built differently, than everyone else with Luka and Lebron. We were built differently with AD too.

We should won a chip already 2 seasons ago IMO.. It's more than one way to get it done.

 

There was a great moment in the new Mind the Game podcast with Lebron, Nash and KD where they talk about defenses and having non shooters on the floor. Basically they said with the modern defenses being pushed by coaches like Udoka and Spolestra (and JJ did this with his Roberson rule), if you have a non shooter on the floor - teams are going to play zone on that player or leave him totally unmarked to double up elsewhere.

So it’s not about the scoring you get from a Vando, it’s about what the defense can do if you’re a non factor to score and how it affects the rest of your team. Now you may argue whatever you want - but your opinion isn’t worth a damn thing next to the basketball minds of Lebron, KD and Nash. So you can’t argue this one.

 

Yeah, there's basically only room for 1 non-shooter on the floor, in the paint. So you can play Vando if you have a stretch 5. Since we don't, the only good Vando minutes I see are when the Lakers go small ball with Rui or LeBron at the 5. And I really like Vando and want to play him more. Just hard to do given the modern game and our roster.

 

You can maybe park that guy at the top of the key (Draymond) or free throw line (Hartenstein) too, but they have to be really good passers and screeners.

Even with a stretch 5, teams will usually dare that guy to knock down threes on volume rather than giving up rim-rolls to a non-shooting 4. Among 5s that can make threes, very few can make enough of them consistently enough to actually change how the defense guards them. Look at what happened with Turner in the Finals.

 

It depends on your guys playing their roles. Indiana should have won that series if Haliburton hadn't been injured.

We definitely would have beaten Denver if Tinkerbell hadn't choked down to a 1/3 of his playoffs avg, to 6pts and 3 assists.

I repeat that Vanderbilt hasn't been healthy much over the last two seasons. So trying to continue to say, that he can't do whatever is a false assumption IMO. The kid can impact a game with scoring a friggin point! The Boston game when he reinjured his foot is just a glimpse.

And NO..I absolutely do not think, that some team, is going to be able, to strategically take Vando out of some damn series, in the 20-25 mins a game, he's going to play.

Luka and Lebron ,both demand a double team on their own. Then we have Austin, Rui ,and now Ayton to contend with. Zone Vando specifically, if you like, let's see how that works out.

There are multiple combinations to fit Vando into, on the court.I think you cats are seriously overthinking this s***.

 

I agree. I brought this up before, but I made the mistake of saying Vando himself is best utilized as a backup center. I immediately got chastised and shut down for the comment. If I would have framed it like you did, meaning Vando woud be the power forward in the small ball lineup and Bron or Rui would be the center, then maybe it would have made sense to more people. But maybe not though, because folks totally looked over the small-ball component and were like : "No Vando is too small to play center". These were the same folks that wanted to put a traditional non-shooting center next to AD, so I probably would have not got the message across either way.

 

He can play in the regular season. Most teams aren't gameplanning a ton night-to-night. It's the playoffs where Vando's limitations become a concern. We literally saw this in 2023.

 

Yeah, we have a number of players who fit 1 role on offense and a different role on defense, and we have to account for both parts when looking at lineups.

Vando is better used as a 4/5 on offense, with 4 shooters around him. While he can guard 1-4 on defense, and there's a greater need for 1-3 defense on our team.

Luka is a 1 on offense and a 3/4 on defense.

Austin can be 1-3 on either but is better when not guarding the opponents best 1-3. Etc.

 

When he started 15 games in the playoffs? I don't know what the hell you guys are talking about. Jarred Vanderbilt is a 20-25 minute player. And that's absolutely fine.

2023 should have been a chip team..except we had that one choke artist

 

The Wizards have like 20 players now don't they? Lol