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

It's not so much doing the opposite as I just kind of reject the idea that there's a "blueprint" to win. People do this in every sport - a team wins the championship and has X characteristics, so now you need X characteristics to win. Never mind the fact that the 2025 Thunder were very different than the 2024 C Bags, and both were very different than the 2023 Nuggets.

The only real "blueprint", I think, is consistent advantage creation on offense and versatility on defense. On offense, can you reliably create an initial advantage against multiple different types of coverages that puts the defense in rotation and forces them to make choices. And then of course you need guys that can semi-consistently convert scoring opportunities off of the advantage creation. On defense it's the opposite - can you deploy different types of coverages effectively enough, and do you have the personnel to effectively deploy multiple kinds of coverages, to consistently prevent advantage creation. If you can check both boxes you can win a championship, and I don't think the only way to check both boxes is to have one superstar, a couple of other All-Star types, and like 7 other rotation guys like SA and OKC do. I still think that if you have the right combination of Top 5-7 guys at the top of your roster, you can get away with some lesser players down the roster.

 

Every time a new dominant team emerges, people start talking about how the league has changed and how you need to adapt. No, you don’t. Each of these cases stemmed from unique circumstances that aren’t necessarily replicable.

Curry was the all-time best shooter, and on top of that, he played with Klay, who is perhaps No. 2 in that category. Jokic is a unicorn and was supposed to dominate the league for years, but he’s won only one title, and it looks like that might be the end of it.

SGA and Wemby are also very unique situations. You can’t just assume you’ll be equally lucky in the draft, even with the best scouting. Plus, players of this caliber come along once every few (SGA) or even several dozen (Wemby) years. This isn’t a formula you can simply apply to your own team and successfully replicate. The Spurs, aside from drafting well, had incredible luck. OKC made a lot of good moves and drafted well, but they also got lucky by ripping off an exceptionally desperate Clippers team.

In this context, in my opinion, it’s not the case that you can only build a team through the draft now. The draft is incredibly important under the current CBA, but once you have a star in their prime, it’s not time to play around with the draft—you need to build the strongest possible roster around them. It’s also not the case that a deep team is universally better than one built around stars. Both elements are important, and both models can work in today’s NBA; the key is to build a team of compatible, versatile players who will give you a shot at the title while you have Luka.

BTW, Jason Timpf said something on the podcast yesterday that made me dislike SGA even more. I didn’t know this / I probably forgot, but apparently for two seasons, even though he was healthy and able to play, he sat out a large portion of regular-season games to support the tanking process. It resulted in today’s team, but in this situation, I respect that model even less. Weak as hell.

 

i'm not sure who's being accused of the "blueprinting" anyway. i'm not sure there's anyone that has said there's only one way to build a contender.

the two points i've seen made that i agree with are that just collecting stars without depth doesn't work anymore and you can't win unless you have a respectable defense.

i still believe both of those to be generally true, whatever blueprint you choose.

of the many blueprints out there, the one we're closest to being able to emulate is 2023 denver right now (or i guess 2021 milwaukee maybe). this is why i keep focusing on finding 2 two-way starters that fit with our stars and at least 3 bench two-way bench players you can trust in the playoffs.

i don't think your 10th guy has to be good; okc and the spurs just happen to have that. they could win without it; it just further insulates them against injury.

anyway, without the multi-year tank, you can't get to that, but you can scrape your way to adding some starting caliber talent, imo.


edit: btw, my opposition to giannis isn't that luka/giannis couldn't form a contender--it's that it would be very difficult to get the right pieces around them before giannis's decline really kicked in. add in the general difficulty we'd have in even executing the trade, and i just think there are better avenues.

 

Our only hope is wemby gets injured

 

yeah, that's the only thing standing in the way of a spurs dynasty unfortunately. guy is a human cheat code

 

Sadly, and with that body and the way he plays it seems like injuries are inevitable in his future, knees especially.

 

If Wemby stays healthy and he breaks through with his first ring this year, geez.

Nothing we can do about it. Just wish he would have went out East when he was drafted.

F me.

 

Dillon Brooks can put pressure on wemby and get physical on him. He can try to frustrate him. Lakers

 

if you can get murphy and jones for a couple of low first rounders and the Lakers' trash heap - I mean I just don't see how that is not a no-brainer. You get to keep all the players who mattered on a 4th seed that despite getting swept played an OKC team well without it's MVP candidate and another of their guy coming off an injury. Missi I'm meh on but still he's a playable body and at worst you can flip one of these guys for something elese

I mean what more do people want realistically (and I think it's very unlikely that NO says yes to this type of deal)
AR/Smart/Jones
Luka/Murphy
Lebron/Rui
Ayton/Hayes/Missi

Jesus you can keep Lebron at 30 mpg and Luka below 40mg and you got enough horses where instead of Jake/Vando/Bronny/Theiro you got Jones and Murphy. That's just a lot of good basketball players in the right roles/situations. you improve positional size, athelticism, shooting, and defense

 

Alex Caruso scored 31 points vs. San Antonio last night.

It's the best scoring mark ever by an undrafted player in the Conference Finals.
7:47 AM · May 19, 2026
P.S
·Caruso averages 10.2 points, 3.3 rebounds, 1.6 assists and 1.6 steals in 22 minutes in playoffs
I don't believe that he's ever going to repeat that ,but thanks Jeannie for THT and I didn't know that plays in Europe

 

i think NO wanted 3 1sts+ just for murphy at the deadline, right? i'm not sure how realistic that podcast guy's trade was.

i'm wondering about swapping like, vando/knecht/2nd for herb. does it require a 1st? if we give a lotto-protected 1st but get back 2 2nds does that make it work?

we'd be taking on the better player (albeit after a down year) but substantial financial risk. if herb's chief detractors are right, they could be just getting another year of herb at a low price, then flexibility!

 

this is debatable and a great discussion to have by the way! I hope our FO is having these discussions, because they have to figure this out!

by the way I did not say it's impossible to win without drafting stars, but it's obviously an uphill battle competing against teams whose 2 of their 3 best players are on rookie contracts since it gives them more flexibility to overpay for role players and complementary pieces.

Hartenstein is a good example. Everyone thought OKC were crazy paying a dude that was a backup center in NY, 30M per year. But they did it, because they could go and get whoever they thought was the best fit.

 

Last I heard at the deadline they wanted two firsts for Herb.

Also regarding Herb’s highlights from a few pages ago. Vando’s offensive highlights look good from last year too. (I do think he was more effective last year and looked like the second coming of Rodman for a few months when he got back)

Neither guy is good offensively at all, we’d be lying to ourselves if we said otherwise.

But yes, if New Orleans was happy to take junk and 3 firsts for Herb, Trey and Missi. I assume we do it.

If Herb doesn’t improve his shot though, we’re stuck with a Vando replacement twice as expensive that can’t be put out there due to his lack of offense. That’s worrisome to me. So in that trade all we really got was Trey, who may very well sprout into an ideal player next to Luka.

 

With the spurs, you need to draw Wemby out of the paint, so you want to play 5 out. I think a Adebayo/Horford/Green/Lebron archetype is perfect here. If he doesn’t defend you, you get wide open looks from 3, if he does, the paint is open.

On defense, you just have to push him around so he can’t get to his spots as easy, you want him shooting 3’s predominantly. At the same time you need to keep the guards in check.

 

Herb's offense is not Vando's. He makes 3 times the threes at almost double the efficiency. It's just not true that their offense is comparable

 

https://x.com/TheSteinLine/status/2056873246415294759

 

Kind of thought that might be next after he tried and failed to become the new president of basketball ops.

And then there's the factor of the new regime wanting to pick their own HC

 

Well first, and this is more just a pet peeve of mine, LeBron is not of the same archetype as those guys. Bam/Horford/Green have been power forwards that also played significant minutes as slightly undersized centers since the beginning of their careers. LeBron has been a wing for 23 years. You can't lump him in with those other guys because the height and weight are kind of similar. They have entirely different games/strengths/defensive instincts. It's why I don't really like the Draymond-role description for LeBron. It's like saying KD and Chet are of the same archetype, or that Rui is the same archetype of Bam/Horford/Green. They're just not.

That aside, I don't think 5-out is the way. Yes you want to pull Wemby out of the paint, but I think its fair to say that Luka and Austin are most effective when they're running P&R with a legitimate roll man. They each can just beat guys off the dribble in isolation, but I don't think that is their preference or how you optimize them. So if your best guys are best running P&R, and this other team you're chasing has maybe the best P&R defending big in league history, what do you do? I think the answer is actually off-the-dribble threes. Wemby is so big and has such good defensive instincts that he can hang near the basket and still deter midrange jump shots. But what if the ballhandler is really comfortable coming off that screen and immediately stepping into a three? That starts to force Wemby to start creeping up toward the level of the screen, and that opens up the roll man again or forces Wemby to switch onto them. So I think we'd need to set our ballscreens really high and Luka and Austin to bury a ton of off-the-dribble threes.