Angel Reese missed 10 shots against the Los Angeles Sparks on August 24. Normally, that would be where the conversation around a 4-for-14 shooting night begins. Instead, Reese grabbed 26 rebounds - eight offensive and 18 defensive - breaking Chamique Holdsclaw's 23 year old WNBA single-game record of 24. The performance also pushed Reese past A’ja Wilson’s single-season rebounding record, another milestone in a season that has increasingly turned into an assault on the WNBA record book.

Reese is officially listed at 6’4”, which is obviously tall, but hardly exceptional among professional frontcourt players in the WNBA. Brittney Griner is 6’9”, and Atlanta teammate Madina Okot is listed at 6’6”. Reese also doesn’t have an insane vertical and isn’t overwhelming opponents by jumping higher than everyone else. Yet through 39 games this season, she has collected 485 rebounds, and seemingly every few weeks another statistic appears demonstrating how far ahead of everyone else she is on the glass.

So where do all of these damn rebounds actually come from?

The easy explanation would be size, athleticism, and effort. All three matter, of course, but after looking deeper into Reese’s numbers, her college history, available play-by-play data and what coaches and scouts have said about her, that explanation feels very incomplete. Reese’s advantage appears to come from creating more opportunities to win the rebound in the first place: establishing position earlier, anticipating where the ball is headed, using leverage before the jump, pursuing balls outside her immediate area and getting off the floor repeatedly when the first attempt doesn’t work. Reese simply creates unique advantages.

Rebounding Isn’t Just About Height

It’s a rather obvious statement, but an important one. The first problem with traditional rebounding statistics is that rebounds per game doesn’t tell us how many rebounds were actually available. A player grabbing 12 rebounds in a game containing 60 missed shots hasn’t necessarily produced the same rebounding performance as someone grabbing 12 when there were only 40 misses. Minutes, pace, shooting percentages and teammates all affect rebounding opportunities. That makes raw totals useful for describing what happened, but incomplete for evaluating rebounding ability.

A better statistic is total rebound percentage, or TRB%, which estimates the percentage of available rebounds a player collects while she is on the floor. Reese’s 2026 TRB% sits around 24%, meaning she is personally collecting almost one out of every four available rebounds during her minutes. If that holds, it would be the highest qualifying single-season mark in WNBA history. Jonquel Jones reached 23.56% in 2017, Teaira McCowan posted 23.41% in 2019, and Chamique Holdsclaw reached 23.29% in 2002.

The remarkable part is that Reese doesn’t appear on the leaderboard once. She finished around 23.4% in 2025 and 23.0% as a rookie in 2024, giving her three of the most extreme rebound-rate seasons the league has ever seen. This matters because it largely eliminates one of the easiest explanations for her records: Reese isn’t simply accumulating rebounds because she plays heavy minutes in a longer WNBA season. Reese is winning a historically unusual percentage of the rebounds available to her.

When we look at offensive rebounding numbers, we can really see how much of a menace Reese is on the glass. She has already broken her own WNBA single-season offensive rebounding record, and her offensive rebound percentage has hovered around 18.5%. Yolanda Griffith’s 18.95% in 2001 is around the historical benchmark she is chasing, while Reese’s career ORB% already ranks first in WNBA history. If the question is whether Reese remains historically unusual after adjusting for opportunities, the answer is pretty clearly yes.

The Rebound Starts Before the Miss

We tend to imagine rebounding as something that happens after the ball hits the rim. The shot goes up, the ball misses, everyone jumps and whoever is most athletic or in the right place at the right time wins. But watch great rebounders closely and much of the possession has already been decided before the ball ever reaches the rim. There is a fight for geography happening while everyone else is watching the shot.

Within a split second of the shot going up, a great rebounder is processing where the shooter is, which direction the ball is likely to come off the rim, who has inside position and where contact can be made without committing a foul. These are small advantages individually, but they happen over hundreds of missed shots.

After Reese’s 26 rebound game, Sparks head coach Lynne Roberts highlighted her timing, strength, and physicality, but also something more interesting: Reese’s ability to lean into opponents and move them just enough to create the space she needs. That distinction explains why height alone tells us so little. Reese doesn’t always need to out-jump a taller opponent if she can ensure that opponent is jumping from a worse position than she is.

Watch Reese around the lane and you’ll see her establish contact early, locate an opponent’s hips and work toward the inside track while continuing to follow the shot. Her length and coordination also mean she doesn’t need to secure everything cleanly with two hands. Sometimes winning the possession means controlling the ball immediately, and other times it means simply making sure nobody else controls it.

That is something I like to call pre-emptive rebounding: improving your probability of winning the ball before the rebound technically exists.

During Reese’s college career, analyst Debbie Antonelli described Reese as someone capable of rebounding “out of her area,” which might be one of the most useful descriptions of her skill. Every player has a rebounding territory, or the physical area around her from which she can realistically compete for a missed shot. Average rebounders collect what falls into that territory; great rebounders expand it through anticipation, movement, contact, and pursuit.

And Reese’s territory is enormous.

Then She Jumps Again

There is another part of Reese’s rebounding that a box score can’t capture: sometimes the first jump doesn’t matter. Reese’s second-jump ability was a strength identified before she entered the WNBA, and coaches who have worked with her have emphasized the same trait since. The advantage isn’t necessarily how high Reese gets on her first leap, but how quickly she can land, reorganize her body and leave the floor again.

This is especially valuable on the offensive glass, where the defensive player normally begins with the positional advantage. Reese may not be able to cleanly grab the ball on her first attempt, so she keeps it alive instead. A tip creates another opportunity and a second jump creates another. Suddenly the defender who technically had better rebounding position has to win the same possession two or three times.

This is why saying Reese has a great “motor” is selling her short. Motor is often basketball shorthand for this player has great hustle and tries really hard, which doesn’t explain much at the professional level. Reese’s activity has a measurable basketball mechanism. She creates additional rebound attempts for herself. If another player concedes after losing the first contest while Reese creates a second or third, her effort has changed the probability of the possession. That advantage compounds over hundreds of misses.

So What About the “Mebounds”?

One of the most common criticisms of Reese’s rebounding is that her offensive numbers are inflated because she misses shots around the rim and grabs her own misses. The “mebounds” nickname was created around exactly that idea. It is usually deployed as an insult rather than analysis, after all she isn’t missing on purpose, but underneath the joke is a claim we can actually test: How many of Reese’s rebounds come directly after her own missed shot?

An independent play-by-play project reconstructed Reese’s WNBA possessions and classified a self-rebound whenever the player collecting the rebound was also responsible for the immediately preceding missed shot. Through July 25 of this season, it identified 32 Reese rebounds following her own misses. Those represented roughly 11% of her rebounds at the time and about one quarter of her offensive rebounds. Reese was recovering around 18% of her own missed shots, compared to a league rate closer to 5%.

So there is a legitimate finding buried underneath the discourse: Angel Reese rebounds her own misses unusually often.

But that is very different from saying her rebounding dominance exists because she misses her own shots. Roughly three quarters of her offensive rebounds in that sample came from somebody else’s miss, and the proportion of her offensive boards generated by self-rebounds had already declined from her first two seasons while her overall offensive rebounding dominance increased.

There is also a strange assumption embedded in the criticism that a self-rebound somehow isn’t a basketball event worth counting. If Reese misses a layup, grabs the ball and Atlanta retains possession, the first shot was still inefficient. We shouldn’t erase the miss. But we also shouldn’t erase the fact that a possession which otherwise might have ended is still alive.

That certainly doesn’t mean rebounding your own miss makes the miss harmless. Reese’s finishing efficiency should still be evaluated normally, and an offensive rebound followed by another miss can still produce a bad possession. But basketball possessions don’t end when a field goal attempt is recorded. They end when possession changes, a score occurs, or another terminating event happens, and Reese is unusually good at preventing possession from changing after misses.

So the “mebounds” phenomenon is real, but the idea that it explains her historical rebounding profile is not.

Not All Rebounds Are Worth the Same Thing

This leads to what I think is the most important distinction in the entire conversation around rebounding. Imagine an opponent misses a jumper and Reese grabs an uncontested defensive rebound while two Atlanta teammates are standing beside her. Reese gets one rebound in the box score, but if she disappeared from the possession entirely, Atlanta probably still gets the basketball.

Now imagine Atlanta misses a layup and Reese fights through two defenders, tips the ball on her first jump, gets it on her second and resets the offense. Without Reese’s involvement, the opponent probably gains possession. Reese again gets exactly one rebound in the box score. But the basketball value of these two events is clearly not identical.

A couple of months ago, I read The Midrange Theory by Seth Partnow, the former Director of Basketball Research for the Milwaukee Bucks and one of basketball’s most respected analysts. Partnow uses Russell Westbrook and Steven Adams to demonstrate why individual defensive rebound totals can be misleading. From 2016–17 through 2018–19, Westbrook averaged more than 10 rebounds per game in each season, yet a large share of his defensive rebounds were uncontested. Adams occupied almost the opposite end of the spectrum, collecting a much larger percentage of his defensive rebounds in traffic. The point isn’t that Westbrook’s rebounds didn’t count; it’s that the two players were often solving different rebounding problems.

A defensive rebound often secures possession for a team that was already favored to get it. An offensive rebound can reverse the expected ownership of the possession entirely. Defensive rebounding still matters - especially contested defensive rebounds that prevent an opponent from creating a second chance - but the marginal value of individual rebounds depends enormously on context.

Reese is averaging more than five offensive rebounds per game. We shouldn’t simply multiply that number by Atlanta’s average points per possession and claim she personally creates five or six points every night, because that would assume every one of those rebounds otherwise belongs to the opponent. Some would have gone to teammates, some of the resulting possessions lead to turnovers or additional misses, and some occur with multiple Atlanta players already in position to recover the ball. But the mechanism is still important: Reese repeatedly converts possessions that are close to ending into additional scoring opportunities. She is repeatedly changing who gets the next possession.

But Does Atlanta Actually Rebound Better?

This is where the analysis becomes a bit more complicated. If Reese is one of the greatest individual rebounders in WNBA history, it seems reasonable to assume Atlanta would become dramatically better at rebounding whenever she is on the floor. Basketball-Reference’s 2026 on/off data, however, doesn’t show anything close to the massive swing her individual totals might make us expect.

With Reese on the court, Atlanta has collected roughly 31.8% of its available offensive rebounds. Without her, that number has been around 29.8%. That is a meaningful positive difference, but nowhere near the size of Reese’s individual advantage. More surprisingly, Atlanta’s defensive rebound percentage has actually been slightly lower with Reese playing, at approximately 78.6% compared with 81.0% when she sits.

Reese’s rebounding isn’t fake, empty, or irrelevant. But these statistics reveal the difference between individual rebounding and team rebounding. If Reese and a teammate are both beneath an uncontested defensive miss, it doesn’t matter which one records the rebound. The individual statistic changes, but the team’s probability of gaining possession does not.

There is also a major limitation here: on/off data is not a controlled experiment. Reese doesn’t randomly alternate between participating and sitting while Atlanta keeps the other nine players identical. Different frontcourt combinations play in those minutes, opponents change, game states change and substitution patterns matter. We should therefore interpret the numbers as a warning against attributing every Atlanta rebound to Reese rather than evidence that she somehow doesn’t help.

Her rookie season demonstrates how much context can change the answer. The Chicago Sky collected 55.1% of available rebounds with Reese on the floor in 2024 and only 45.1% without her, an enormous difference. Same rebounder, radically different on/off result. That should make us skeptical of any attempt to convert individual rebound totals directly into team value without considering lineup context.

The Skill Keeps Following Her

One of the best ways to distinguish an individual skill from a favorable environment is to change the environment. If Reese’s rebounding were mostly a product of Atlanta’s scheme, unusually favorable teammates or a particular shot profile, we would expect the numbers to move considerably as those variables changed. Instead, elite offensive rebounding has followed Reese everywhere she has played.

As a sophomore at Maryland, Reese averaged 10.6 rebounds and 5.3 offensive rebounds in only 25.8 minutes per game. Then she transferred to LSU, changed conferences, teammates and coaches, and averaged 15.4 rebounds with 6.4 offensive boards per game during the Tigers’ national championship season. As a senior, she averaged another 13.4 rebounds and 5.5 offensive boards. Then came the WNBA: 13.1 rebounds per game as a rookie in Chicago, 12.6 in Year 2, and more than 12 again after moving to Atlanta.

This portability is important because it is one of the strongest tests of whether a basketball skill actually belongs to the player. Reese has changed roles and environments repeatedly without the core result disappearing. Whatever contextual factors help or hurt raw totals in a particular season, the underlying ability to win an unusual share of available rebounds appears remarkably stable.

So How Does Angel Reese Keep Getting Every Rebound?

She doesn’t, of course. And strangely enough, that might be the best way to understand how dominant she has become. The most useful number I found while researching this article wasn’t 26 rebounds in one game, 485 in one season or even her offensive rebounding record. It was 24%.

Angel Reese is collecting roughly one quarter of every available rebound while she is on the floor. More than three quarters still go somewhere else, but she has pushed her share of available rebounds to a level the WNBA has essentially never seen. And she appears to do it without one overwhelming physical advantage that explains everything.

Instead, Reese stacks smaller advantages on top of each other. She establishes position early, anticipates misses, creates contact before the ball arrives, uses leverage to shift opponents away from ideal rebounding spots and pursues balls outside her immediate area. When she can’t secure a rebound cleanly, she keeps it alive. When she loses the first jump, she gets off the floor again.

That is why describing Reese as someone who “just wants it more” undersells what she does.

Height gives a player access to more balls. Length expands her rebounding radius. Strength helps preserve space. Positioning improves the probability before the miss occurs. Anticipation determines where she moves, timing determines when she jumps, hands turn contact with the ball into possession, second-jump speed creates another attempt, and motor determines how often she is willing to repeat the process.

The box score compresses all of that into three letters: REB.

Angel Reese is currently producing one of the highest available-rebound capture rates the WNBA has ever seen, after already producing two other seasons near the top of the historical leaderboard. She did it in college before she entered the league, did it in Chicago, and is doing it again in Atlanta. The records tell us how many rebounds she gets.

The interesting part is understanding why. And the answer isn’t that Angel Reese is simply bigger, stronger or more determined than everyone else. It’s that when a shot goes up, she creates more ways to win the possession than almost anyone else.

For years, one of the NBA’s most repeated roster-building principles has been that big, athletic wings are basketball’s scarce resource. Everyone wants players who stand somewhere between 6’6” and 6’9”, can move, score, defend multiple positions, and survive the increasingly positionless nature of playoff basketball. In theory, Jonathan Kuminga should be exactly the kind of player teams fight over.

He’s 6’7”, 23 years old, an absurd athlete, a former seventh overall pick, and already has five NBA seasons behind him. He’s averaged 16.1 points per game in a season, has shown legitimate ability to overwhelm defenders going downhill, and once scored 30, 26, and 23 points in consecutive playoff games against Minnesota. Yesterday, Kuminga agreed to join those same Timberwolves for two years and $12.4 million.

That doesn’t make much sense if our definition of a valuable NBA wing is simply big + young + athletic + can score. So maybe our definition is wrong.

“Wing” Doesn’t Mean Much Anymore

The strange thing about NBA positions is how little they tell us about what players actually do. Nikola Jokić and Clint Capela are both centers, yet they perform completely different basketball functions. The same problem exists with wings.

OG Anunoby and Jonathan Kuminga are both roughly 6’7” forwards. So are Jaden McDaniels and Trey Murphy III. Toumani Camara fits comfortably into the category too. But describing all of them as “big wings” hides the characteristics NBA teams actually care about.

Anunoby will make $42.5 million this season. Murphy will make $27 million and McDaniels $26.2 million. Kuminga’s first year salary will be around $6.1 million. Those numbers aren’t pure rankings of player quality, and contract circumstances matter enormously, but they should at least make us question what we mean when we say NBA teams “pay for wings.”

NBA teams aren’t simply playing a player for their position but rather their function.

And the most valuable complementary wings tend to provide several functions simultaneously: enough shooting that defenders can’t abandon them, enough defense that opponents can’t hunt them, enough size that they don’t compromise lineup construction, enough decision-making to keep an advantage alive, and enough creation to punish a defense when the stars have already force it into rotation. None of those skills individually explains the wing market but the combination of them does.

The Kuminga Problem

Kuminga possesses a skill NBA teams absolute value: force.

Put a smaller defender on him and he can physically overwhelm the matchup. Give him an open floor and he’s devastating in transition. Let him get downhill and very few forwards combine his strength and explosion around the rim. During one seven-game stretch before his ankle injury in 2024-25, Kuminga averaged 24.3 points, eight rebounds, and ten free throw attempts per game. That scoring upside still exists within him.

But look at what happens when the environment becomes less accommodating: Kuminga shot 33.3$ from three last season and is a 33.2% shooter for his career. He’s improved as a passer, but isn’t an offensive organizer. his best basketball generally involves getting downhill and attacking mismatches, while receiving enough possessions to weaponize his physical advantages. Last season, he averaged 12.2 points across 36 games, with a 51.5% effective field goal percentage (eFG%). Does this make Kuminga a bad player? No. But it does mean he creates constraints.

If one of your forwards isn’t a respected shooter, you need more shooting somewhere else. If he generates his greatest value with the ball, you need to decide which player’s possessions he’s taking. And if his defensive tools don’t consistently become elite defensive results, you still need someone else to handle your greatest perimeter assignment.

Every roster can accommodate limitations, but the question is how many accommodations one player requires.

Scalability

This leads us to a concept I think is more useful than simply calling somebody a good or bad fit: scalability.

Scalability asks how much of a player’s basketball value survives as the quality of his teammates increases and his role decreases.

Imagine a 20-point scorer on a bad team who needs 17 shots, frequent isolations and the ball in his hands. Now put him beside Anthony Edwards and LaMelo Ball. Minnesota doesn’t necessarily need another player to create 20 points using 17 shots. Every possession given to that player comes at the opportunity cost of a possession initiated by Edwards or Ball.

Now imagine a 13-point wing who guards the opponent’s best scorer, shoots 39% from three, cuts when defenders turn their heads, attacks closeouts in two dribbles and moves the ball immediately when the advantage isn’t there.

His box score production might be lower, but his value might actually increase beside stars. That’s scalability at its finest. And Golden State spent several years unintentionally running one of the better scalability experiments imaginable with Kuminga.

Golden State Already Showed Us the Problem

The Warriors never struggled to understand Kuminga’s talent. They just seemed to struggle to find the right context for it. I believe this became especially obvious after Jimmy Butler arrived in 2025. Butler, Draymond Green, and Kuminga gave the Warriors three talented and physical forwards, but none demanded constant attention behind the three point line. Steve Kerr eventually admitted the obvious: the trio didn’t fit particularly well because the Warriors needed more spacing.

Golden State has Stephen Curry, one of the greatest offensive players to grace a basketball court, and later Butler, another high level creator who willed the Miami Heat to the finals on two occasions. The Warriors didn’t desperately need someone else to dominate possessions. They needed Kuminga to create value around those possessions.

Kerr later described the pathway pretty clearly, defend actively, rebound, run the floor and move the basketball. Golden State wanted Kuminga to become useful when nothing was being called for him.

There were nights when it worked beautifully. There were matchups where is athleticism gave Golden State something nobody else could provide. And when Curry went down against Minnesota in the 2025 playoffs, suddenly there were possessions available and Kuminga responded with scoring performances.

So Golden State proved Kuminga can become more productive if the opportunity expands for him. But contenders don’t necessarily have lots of valuable opportunity available.

The Best Wings Remove Problems

The idea of “wing scarcity” can be misunderstood.

Team’s aren’t desperately searching for anyone who measures 6’7” with a 7’0” wingspan. They’re searching for players who allow coaches to build lineups without creating any new problems.

Jaden McDaniels is one of the best examples of this. He can take an extremely difficult perimeter matchup without needing many possessions. He provides size while stretching defenses beyond the arc. McDaniels can defend across positions and physically survive playoff basketball without an offense being constructed around him.

A player like McDaniels creates optionality.

Put McDaniels beside a heliocentric center like Jokić and his play style doesn’t change. Put him beside another wing and he still defends the other team’s premier player. Want to go small? McDaniels can slide to the four with ease. Are we playing against size next game? That’s fine, throw McDaniels at the three and now we have a 6’8 small forward.

No matter what the situation is, wings who provide optionality and portability are the best in the league because they are ideal in so many different circumstances.

All That Being Said, $6 Million is Still Crazy

There is an important danger in this argument: using Kuminga’s contract as definitive proof that NBA teams agree with everything I’ve just written.

They don’t necessarily. Kuminga’s free agency was really bizarre.

Only one year ago, Golden State offered Kuminga a three year framework worth $75.2 million. Kuminga prioritized control over his future, signed a shorter deal, was traded to Atlanta, and then became unrestricted when the Hawks declines his $24.3 million option. By the time his 2026 market developed, much of the league’s money was already committed.

He also reportedly turned down a longer Lakers offer worth more than $12 million annually in favor of Minnesota’s shorter contract and player option. So his $6.1 million first year salary isn’t simply the NBA declaring, “Jonathan Kuminga is worth $6 million.” In fact, Minnesota may have gotten a ridiculous bargain.

The NBA’s salary cap is $164.96 million this season. Kuminga’s salary represents less than 4$ of that. He’s essentially being paid around league-median money while entering his age 24 season with elite physical tools and demonstrated NBA scoring ability.

In my mind that’s a pretty easy gamble. The interesting part is what has to happen for Kuminga to make sure his next contract looks nothing like this one.

Minnesota’s Bet

Minnesota has already given Kuminga something Golden State struggled to provide consistently, and that’s clarity. Kuminga is expected to start alongside LaMelo Ball, Anthony Edwards, Jaden McDanaiels, and Rudy Gobert. Edwards even reportedly helped recruit him. Essentially, the Wolves are buying a year to find out whether an unusual talent can become an easier player to build around and that’s what makes this fit so interesting.

Kuminga doesn’t need to become Klay Thompson and he doesn’t suddenly need to become a 40% three point shooter or elite point guard.

But just imagine if Kuminga can become a respected enough shooter that defenders have to stay attached. Imagine the defensive tools become consistent enough to have a real impact. Or imagine he makes decisions half a second faster after Edwards or Ball bend the defense in mystifying fashion, as they do.

Suddenly Kuminga moves from a talented athlete to the type of wing everyone claims NBA teams are always searching for. That’s what gets him paid next time he’s a free agent.

What Teams Are Actually Paying For

So I don’t think Jonathan Kuminga’s strange free agency proves the NBA stopped valuing big athletic wings. It exposes how incomplete my original description was.

Size is valuable. So is athleticism and scoring. But none exists independent of the other four players on the floor.

The truly scarce wings are valuable because their skills survive almost anywhere. In other words, they impose very few constraints. Jonathan Kuminga already has the body and athleticism we associate with the NBA’s most coveted archetype. Minnesota is now betting $12.4 million that the rest can still arrive. And if it does, his next contract won’t look anything like this one. Because NBA teams don’t really pay for wings, they pay for players who make everyone else easier to fit.

And yet, as late August arrives, Duren and Detroit still have not agreed on a new contract. The Pistons reportedly remain in the mid-$30 million-per-year range, while Duren’s camp has pushed for something closer to 25% of the cap, a deal that would put him above $40 million annually. Restricted free agency gives Detroit enormous leverage, but the disagreement itself is revealing.

There are two easy ways to look at this:

1. We say that Duren is 22, already All-NBA, and nearly averaged 20 and 11 with remarkably efficient scoring

2. We say that Duren is a non-shooting center who does not create much offense for himself, struggled badly in the playoffs, and plays a position where teams routinely find useful players for a fraction of the price

But as I did research for this article and tried to develop a thesis, I realized both of these arguments miss the more interesting question: What is an NBA center actually worth?

Because the answer, increasingly, has less to do with whether a center is “good” and more to do with something NBA teams care about even more: how expensive it would be to replace what he actually does.

The NBA Never Stopped Paying Centers

There is a common modern basketball narrative that centers became less valuable once the league moved away from post-ups and toward spacing, switching and perimeter creation (a.k.a. the Steph Curry era). That is only partly true.

The NBA did not stop paying centers, but it most definitely became more selective about which center skills deserve premium money.

For example, Nikola Jokić will make roughly $59 million in 2026-27, Bam Adebayo is near $50 million, Chet Holmgren will begin his new deal above $40 million, Alperen Şengün is in the mid-$30s, and Rudy Gobert has spent years among the highest-paid players in basketball. Teams are clearly willing to devote massive portions of the salary cap to the position. What has changed is the standard to reach that level.

Let’s look at Jokić. Denver pays him the second highest salary in basketball not because he has the traits of a traditional center (rebounding, interior defense, above-the-rim play, etc.) but because he is one of the greatest offensive engines basketball has ever seen. The Rockets pay Şengün his salary because he can do more than just score efficiently in the post; you can run an offense through him. OKC pays Holmgren his millions because he is an incredibly rare combination of rim protection, shooting, mobility, height, and offensive skill.

The modern center market therefore looks less like one continuous salary scale, as it did in the past, and more like a series of economic classes. At the bottom, teams can buy competent size for relatively little. In the middle are good starters and complementary bigs. At the top are the players who fundamentally alter what their teams can do. The difference is the key to understanding Duren’s value.

The Difference Between Centers: There’s Levels To This

The problem with comparing centers is that the position label hides wildly different basketball jobs, more than any other position in basketball.

Jokić and Clint Capela technically play the same position. So do Bam Adebayo and Luke Kornet. So do Şengün and Jarrett Allen. But economically, they are not competing in the same labor market.

Some centers are offensive engines as we previously looked at. Their teams can run possessions through them because they create advantages through passing, post scoring, face-up attacks, or playmaking. Jokić is an extreme example, while Şengün belongs to the same broader category. Others are two-way structural bigs. They change both lineup construction and defensive strategy because of unusual combinations of mobility, rim protection, shooting, and skill. Holmgren, Victor Wembanyama, and Adebayo fit different versions of this model. Then there are elite defensive anchors, skilled complementary centers, and finally the more traditional vertical production centers who derive much of their value from screening, rim running, rebounding, lob finishing, and interior physicality.

The final category is where Duren currently belongs, although the word “traditional” undersells how good he has become. He is already one of the league’s most dominant young interior finishers and rebounders, and his defense improved significantly last season. But should the market pay him like the best version of that archetype or like a player who is beginning to graduate into a rarer one?

The Cheap Stuff

One of the clearest findings when you look across the league is how much conventional center functionality can be acquired cheaply.

Teams don’t need to spend $35 million to find a player who can rebound, set screens, be a lob threat, or provide competent drop defense. There is a surprisingly deep pool of centers earning modest salaries who can give teams legitimate NBA minutes while performing one or several of those jobs.

Someone like Luke Kornet can provide size, rim protection and efficient finishing. Clint Capela can still rebound, screen and protect the paint in a smaller role. Daniel Gafford played major minutes on a Finals team while offering elite vertical finishing and shot blocking without consuming anything close to a star share of the cap. Ivica Zubac spent years giving the Clippers high-level traditional center play at a salary well below the star tier.

This does not mean those players are 80% of Duren in some universal sense, but the better question is to ask how much of each function they can reproduce. A cheaper player like some of those mentioned above may give you 75% of the rebounding, much of the screening, enough rim protection and a reasonable amount of interior finishing for $5-10 million. Duren does those traditional center tasks better than almost everyone else. The harder question is whether the value he provides beyond those functions is scarce enough to justify moving from ordinary starting center money into the $35-40 million range.

The Expensive Stuff

If basic center functionality is relatively abundant, what actually commands premium salaries? The answer appears to be scarcity of combinations.

Finding a center who can rebound, protect the rim, be a mobile defender, and shoot and pass at a high level is very hard to do. That’s why a player like Chet Holmgren is expensive. He has rim protection plus mobility, plus offensive skill and stands 7’1". If we look at a player like Bam Adebayo, his mobility allows him to play in any variety of defensive structures Miami draws up, which allows him to stay on the floor regardless of the matchup.

The center market’s scarcity is not any one skill, but combinations of skills that allow one player to fill multiple roster functions at once.

Finishing Versus Creating

This is probably the best case for why Detroit hasn’t extended Duren yet. A finisher converts an advantage someone else has already created. A point guard beats the first defender, draws help, throws a lob and the center finishes the play at the rim. The center’s contribution is valuable, but the defense was initially compromised by somebody else.

A creator produces the advantage himself. Duren is not a creator. At least not yet. A player like Nikola Jokić can manipulate five defenders with his passing. He controls the floor like no other and can anticipate where defenders will be at any given time. Jokic is always one step ahead.

This is why creation commands such a premium. Finishing ends an advantage but creation produces one.

Duren is an elite finisher. His combination of size, hands, vertical explosion and physicality provides more freedom to Cade Cunningham who is lethal in the pick and roll, but much of Duren’s scoring depends on his teammates generating the initial opening.

This creates an unusual valuation problem. Duren can be one of the league’s best at his job while still performing a job for which the league has more substitutes than it does for primary creation. The good news for Detroit is that Duren has shown signs of expanding beyond pure finishing. His passing has improved and his face-up game flashed more frequently last season. Head Coach J.B. Bickerstaff has discussed the growth in his ability to put the ball on the floor and attack. These developments matter because every additional way Duren can create value independently makes him harder to replace.

The Playoff Test

There is another easy narrative around centers that doesn’t hold up particularly well: traditional big men simply get played off the floor in the postseason. But that’s far too simple.

Jarrett Allen plays major playoff minutes, Ivica Zubac has played deep into series while carrying large workloads, and Gobert has spent years playing 30-plus postseason minutes. On the Bucks, Brook Lopez helped anchor a championship defense without becoming a switch-everything five.

Fantasy football often asks whether a receiver is quarterback-proof: can he maintain his production regardless of who is throwing him the ball? A similar concept applies to NBA centers: Is a center scheme-proof? How many different strategies can an opponent use before the player becomes materially less useful? Can he remain valuable against five-out spacing? Can he punish small lineups? Can he defend the pick and roll in more than one coverage? Can the team still close games with him when opponents deliberately attack his weaknesses?

These questions are not so easily answered in Duren’s case.

His regular-season true shooting percentage was 68.8%. In the playoffs that number fell to 55.3%. Duren’s scoring dropped from 19.5 points per game to 10.2. His playing time actually increased slightly, but his usage fell and his dominant regular-season scoring became much easier to suppress in a playoff environment.

One playoff run does not define a 22-year-old. But if Detroit is going to invest nearly a quarter of the salary cap in him, it cannot pretend those 14 games didn’t happen.

Some Contracts That Teach Us Something

History gives Detroit some useful warnings moving forward.

The most obvious positive comparison is Jarrett Allen. Cleveland gave Allen five years and $100 million when he was 23, a deal worth roughly 18% of the cap at signing. Allen developed into an All-Star and one of the league’s better interior defenders, and eventually earned another large extension.

That’s what a successful conventional center contract looks like. Cleveland didn’t need Allen to become a three-point shooter or offensive hub. The Cavs paid a meaningful but manageable cap share for elite finishing, rebounding, and defense.

Andre Drummond is a more negative example. Detroit gave Drummond a contract worth roughly 23.5% of the cap in 2016 after he had already made an All-Star team and All-NBA. He was one of the league’s most dominant rebounders and remained wildly productive statistically. When Detroit finally traded him in February of 2020, he was averaging 17.8 points and 15.8 rebounds per game. Simply elite counting stats.

But the return was not elite. In return for the most dominant rebounder in the league that season, Detroit received Brandon Knight, John Henson, and a second-round pick. Knight and Henson played a combined 20 games for the Pistons and both didn’t play another full season in the league. The second-round pick was used as a minor trade piece when Detroit acquired Caris LeVert two years later. The box score heralded Drummond as a star, and yet his elite but limited skill set translated to poor trade value.

Deandre Ayton is a tale of more modern caution. Indiana offered him a deal worth 25% of their cap in restricted free agency and Phoenix matched it. Ayton was young, efficient, productive, and had already played an important role on a Finals team. The contract nevertheless became difficult enough that Phoenix eventually moved him, and the value attached to his archetype never matched the price implied by the deal.

Why Detroit Should Pay a Premium

There is a major difference between what Duren is worth in a vacuum and what he is worth to Detroit.

The Pistons are not a rebuilding team anymore. They just won 60 games, after all. Detroit now has a real competitive window, and Duren is already integrated into it. Replacing him would not mean finding another 7-footer who can rebound.

Detroit would have to replace a 22-year-old All-Star who has years of chemistry with Cade Cunningham, dominates the offensive glass (3.0+ offensive rebounds per game every season of his career), creates vertical pressure above the rim, and is still improving defensively.

Even if Detroit slightly overpays Duren relative to his archetype, a productive 22-to-26-year-old center can remain a valuable asset in ways an older free-agent center cannot. Losing him, or damaging the relationship badly enough that he eventually wants out creates its own opportunity cost.

That gives Detroit a rational reason to pay above generic center-market value.

Why Detroit Should Still Be Careful

The Pistons also have good reasons not to simply hand over everything Duren wants.

Ausar Thompson will eventually need a new deal, and he enters year four as a top-five perimeter defender in the league. Ron Holland may follow, and Cunningham’s own salary rises substantially over the life of his contract ($61,240,212 by 2029). So even if Detroit can afford Duren now, every large contract gradually narrows the number of future choices available.

There is also the question of basketball fit. Duren does not space the floor, and Thompson is a poor shooter. Building around Cunningham, Duren, and Thompson therefore creates natural spacing constraints. Detroit can overcome those constraints by surrounding them with shooting, but every additional limitation placed on the rest of the roster has a cost.

Then there is the question of the second apron. Paying a center $40 million not only costs $40 million, but it affects which wings Detroit can retain, which guards it can add, and how much flexibility remains when the rest of the young core gets expensive.

What is Jalen Duren Actually Worth?

There is no objectively correct number, but the research points to a fairly narrow range. Based purely on basketball impact, I would value Duren at roughly 19-21% of the cap, or about $31-35 million annually. Once you account for his age, All-NBA season, development curve, and broader market dynamics, that moves closer to 21-24%, or roughly $35-40 million. Detroit-specific factors like chemistry with Cade Cunningham, continuity, age alignment, and the difficulty of replacing a 22-year-old All-NBA center justify pushing toward the upper end of that range. My preferred outcome for the Pistons is therefore $36-39 million annually, ideally with incentives that can push the deal above $40 million if Duren reaches meaningful milestones.

Throughout the background work done for this article, the broader research changed for me. The NBA does not undervalue centers, it discounts center functions that are readily available elsewhere. Rebounding, screening, rim running, and basic interior defense all matter, but competent versions of those skills can often be bought relatively cheaply. The biggest premiums go to centers who provide something much harder to reproduce: offensive creation, elite defensive infrastructure, genuine shooting gravity, scheme independence, or some rare combination of those traits.

Duren already separates himself enough from the generic vertical-center market that treating him like an ordinary starter would be a mistake. What he has not yet proven is that the most valuable parts of his game are truly irreplaceable. Detroit’s decision therefore is not whether Duren is good or even whether he is great. It is whether the next version of Jalen Duren becomes difficult enough to replace that dedicating roughly a quarter of the cap to him makes sense.

Irreplaceable production gets you paid the most in the NBA. Duren now has to convince Detroit that his production is becoming exactly that.

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Charlie Stevens spent the past five seasons in San Antonio, rising from a basketball operations strategy and scouting assistant to Director of Grassroots Scouting. Now, he is leaving the Spurs to replace the retiring Tom Moore as UConn’s general manager.

The most important part of Stevens’ move from the NBA to the NCAA is that college basketball now has a job for Charlie.

NCAA basketball has spent most of the last five years discussing the professionalization of its players. Athletes can move more freely via the transfer portal, earn NIL (Name, Image & Likeness) money, negotiate financial opportunities and receive direct revenue-sharing payments from their schools. As much as those changes affected the athletes, they changed the job of building a basketball team as well.

Keep in mind, a modern high-major program has to evaluate thousands of potential transfers, recruit high school prospects, monitor an expanding international talent pool (Illinois has been especially proactive on this part in recent years), retain its own players, navigate NIL, and rebuild a substantial portion of its roster every year due to players transferring and recent graduates.

In short, college basketball accelerated a professional-style player market faster than NCAA programs could become capable of managing one. Finally, it seems schools are allocating the proper amount of resources required in today’s landscape.

The Former Front Office Model

For most of college basketball history (Vanderbilt, by the way, became the first known college team to play an outside opponent on February 7, 1893, beating the Nashville YMCA 9-6), the organizational structure was simple. There was the head coach, his assistants, then some combination of directors of operations, video coordinators, graduate assistants, and support staff.

Assistant coaches would recruit, the operations directors handled logistics, and video staffs prepared scouting reports, but the basketball authority remained concentrated in the head coach. However, the head coach was not merely an NBA-style coach responsible for scheme, development, and game management. NCAA coaches also operate as chief recruiters, lead talent evaluators, roster architects, and program CEOs all wrapped into one. At the time, roster construction was more stable, and this was a manageable (yet still burdensome!) workload.

That world is gone.

Buzz Williams, the head coach at the University of Maryland summarized the shift better than almost anyone when discussing the modern coaching profession in 2025, stating:

“The skill set that was required to be a good coach 10 years ago, very little of that applies anymore” (AP News).

College Basketball Created a Player Market

The transfer portal was first introduced in 2018. It did not immediately create the current system, that took time, but it built the infrastructure through which athletes could formally declare their intention to transfer and become visible to other programs.

An increase in player mobility quickly followed, and in 2021, NIL arrived, allowing NCAA athletes to monetize their names, images and likenesses. Transfer rules became increasingly permissive, and eventually, a market that had once predominantly revolved around high school recruiting became an economy.

By the 2025 NCAA Tournament, 53% of key rotation players had previously played for another Division I school. Among SEC tournament teams, that figure was 68%. Across the conference as a whole, 65% of rotation players had previously suited up somewhere else in Division I, compared with just 13% only five years earlier (Washington Post).

The modern portal can contain thousands of players. A sophisticated program might have to filter 2,000-plus available players in the transfer portal into hundreds worth tracking, then dozens who fit their program, a smaller group whose roles and financial expectations make sense, and then finally only a handful worth actively recruiting. This is a fundamental change from maintaining a traditional high school recruiting board that would have populated athletic facilities across the nation in years past.

There is another problem too: the market just moves fast, maybe even too fast. Beginning in 2026, the men’s basketball notification-of-transfer window opens the day after the national championship game and lasts only 15 days. Players do not necessarily have to choose their new school during those 15 days, but if a program waits for the window to open before beginning its evaluation process, it is already behind. Suddenly, there is an organizational premium on maintaining scouting databases, evaluating players year-round and preparing contingency plans.

The Money Problem

The portal changed who was available to teams, NIL changed the financial element of acquisition, and revenue sharing has changed it again.

In the post-House era, participating schools can now directly share athletic revenue with their athletes. For 2026-27, the College Sports Commission estimates the school-wide revenue-sharing ceiling at roughly $21.3 million per institution (collegesportscommission.com). However, this does not mean college basketball has a $21.3 million salary cap. The revenue-sharing ceiling covers the athletic department, not just men’s basketball. Schools determine how to distribute those resources across sports, while qualifying third-party NIL opportunities can exist separately.

So, in today’s college basketball landscape, programs now have finite resources across finite roster spots. Give more resources to one player and, all else being equal, you have less to deploy elsewhere. Retain an expensive Senior and perhaps you cannot pursue another portal target as aggressively. This is starting to sound a lot like the NBA…

The modern collegiate roster builder now has to ask: How much would replacing this player cost? How much of our available resources should he consume? Would those resources be better spent at another position? These questions may have been asked prior to the NIL-era, but the financial consequences attached to answering them poorly are much larger now.

Recruiting Isn’t Enough Anymore

Historically, recruiting often began with a question like “Who can we get?” Increasingly, modern roster construction has to begin one step earlier and ask “Who should we even want?”

That’s why Charlie Stevens’ hiring is so interesting. Grassroots scouting exists earlier in the professional player-evaluation pipeline. NBA teams increasingly track prospects before they reach draft eligibility, building long-term evaluations of high school and grassroots players. UConn didn’t hire Stevens because Dan Hurley suddenly forgot to recruit (he would be the last person I’d expect to do that), but rather Stevens is coming from an environment where the job is to identify and evaluate talent before a transaction occurs.

Syracuse is an example of a school who made the same logic much more explicit when it hired former New York Knicks scout Alex Kline as general manager in 2024. The university literally titled the announcement “Kline Named General Manager to Reimagine Recruiting.” Kline had spent four years with the Knicks evaluating players around the NBA Draft, trade deadline and free agency. Syracuse said his new responsibilities would include scouting, recruiting, transfer-portal management, NIL and fundraising (Cuse.com).

These changes in the economics of college basketball are in turn creating jobs that never existed.

The Transfer Portal is Better for Scouts

The portal gives programs dramatically more players to evaluate, but it often gives them better information on each individual player. Evaluating a 17-year-old high school prospect can require enormous projection. Competition is inconsistent, physical development is nowhere near complete, roles differ widely and statistics can be incredibly hard to contextualize.

On the other hand, a transfer might arrive with 2,000 minutes of Division I basketball experience. Now a program can study his shot profile, usage, assist and turnover rates, rebounding, lineup performance, and so on in a context and environment that is easily translatable to their own.

Services like CBB Analytics, Bart Torvik, and Hoop Explorer have made the college data environment increasingly sophisticated. The personnel question becomes less about what he averaged and more so about why he averaged it, and will it survive when his environment changes?

Let’s do a quick thought exercise. Imagine two portal guards. One averages 18 points per game for a mid-major but dominates the ball, struggles defensively, and shoots 31% from three. Another averages 11 points but shoots 40% on catch-and-shoot opportunities, defends two guard positions, makes quick decisions and rarely needs the ball. The first is the more accomplished scorer, but the second contributes to winning, a substantially more valuable skill at the high-major level. Getting a scouting judgement like this wrong can be very expensive for a program.

Case Studies of College Basketball GMs

Now that we understand the market, recent hires look a lot less strange. Let’s look at some examples.

Indiana hired Ryan Carr in February after Carr had spent more than two decades with the Indiana Pacers, climbing from regional scout to Senior VP of Player Personnel. Indiana’s official description of his new job is wonderfully direct: his role “will focus on roster building.” He reports directly to head coach Darian DeVries (iuhoosiers.com). The Hoosiers also employ a separate Director of Player Personnel and Director of Operations alongside their coaching staff. DeVries described the program’s portal work as a staff-wide process and credited Carr’s contribution (iuhoosiers.com).

North Carolina hired Jim Tanner in 2025 as Executive Director and GM after Tanner had spent 28 years representing NBA players. His official responsibilities include helping construct the roster, negotiating contracts, identifying and hiring scouting and analytics personnel, and supporting player development (goheels.com). If you removed the words “North Carolina” from the job description, it would sound right at home in the context of an NBA team.

Lastly, Utah hired Wes Wilcox as GM in 2025 after five seasons as assistant GM of the Sacramento Kings. Before that, Wilcox had served as GM of the Atlanta Hawks and held multiple scouting and personnel jobs with Cleveland (utahutes.com). Then Utah added Rico Sylvester to its player-personnel structure after he had worked in Sacramento’s basketball operations office, where he coordinated scouting logistics and prepared pre-draft dossiers.

College Basketball is Also Going Global

The 2025 men’s NCAA Tournament included 134 international players, representing roughly 14% of the field (ncaa.org). The introduction of more international players into the US collegiate mix creates another evaluation problem. Sure, schools can stick to scouting through Nike EYBL, Adidas, high school basketball, etc. but it increasingly needs awareness of European development systems, FIBA tournaments, and NBA academy prospects whose development paths do not resemble the traditional American recruiting pipeline.

Illinois is a prime example. Brad Underwood’s recent rosters have increasingly tapped into international talent, including players from Croatia, Serbia, and Montenegro, illustrating how far the modern college recruiting map has expanded in recent years. This is another reason why professional scouting experience can transfer so well from NBA to NCAA. The broader the talent market is, the more valuable dedicated coverage becomes.

What Does an NCAA Front Office Actually Buy You?

Well the most obvious advantage is specialization. Basketball has already accepted specialization in the NBA. Nobody expects the head coach to also be the strength coach, athletic trainer, video coordinator, sports psychologist, and academic advisor. Yet historically, we have often expected the head coach and assistants to handle almost every part of talent acquisition.

As the job expands, this becomes harder to justify. A dedicated GM can wake up thinking about the roster. A scout can wake up evaluating players. An analyst can build transfer models. An assistant coach can spend more time teaching basketball and maintaining recruiting relationships.

The second advantage is speed. A 15-day transfer portal window places an enormous value on knowing what you want before everyone else.

The third is information. More evaluators can cover more players, leagues and countries.

Lastly, the fourth is not so obvious, but it’s institutional memory. College basketball staffs turn over constantly. If every scouting opinion, recruiting relationship, and personnel philosophy lives inside individual assistant coaches, much of the organization’s knowledge leaves when they do.

A truly great program anywhere in the country should be able to build systems that survive staff turnover, integrating databases, evaluation frameworks, historical comps, portal boards and international networks that remain with the team indefinitely. Institutional knowledge becomes the program’s property rather than one coach’s Rolodex (I’m young enough that I have never used a Rolodex, but the point still stands). At the end of the day, a college basketball program is an organization, just like Walmart, Apple, or Goldman Sachs, and requires the same baseline systems and structures to be successful.

What’s Next for College Basketball?

An arms race of sorts. For decades, arms races within college basketball centered upon which schools built the bigger arena, renovated the locker room, added a nutrition center, or constructed the most top-of-the-line practice facility; all symbols of program investment.

I believe college basketball is headed towards an era of intellectual infrastructure.

Who has the best scouts? Who has the best portal database? Who identifies the undervalued transfer before anyone else? Who has the best network for recruiting international prospects? The answers to these questions may very well lead us to the next NCAA champion.

However, it’s not all fair. The wealthiest schools can now potentially compete in two talent markets at once:

1. The market for players

2. The market for people who evaluate players

A wealthy program can afford a GM, an assistant GM, player-personnel directors, analysts, scouts, NIL specialists, international coverage and expensive data infrastructure. A smaller program may still have a head coach and assistants trying to do all of it themselves. The result will be a greater power divide.

UConn’s hiring of Charlie Stevens isn’t really about UConn, or about Charlie Stevens, at least when we zoom out. It’s about why his résumé suddenly makes perfect sense in Storrs. Stevens came from a top tier organization in San Antonio where specialized people identify talent, gather information and think about players years before transactions actually occur. UConn exists in a college environment where its roster can change dramatically every spring, and the program has only weeks to make decisions that can determine an entire season - so of course it wants another evaluator, and a talented one at that.

The point of this article is not to say that college basketball is becoming the NBA. It’s not. They are two completely different products. In the NCAA, head coaches remain more powerful, its compensation system is different, recruiting relationships are integral to success, and donors and campus culture create problems that no NBA team encounters in quite the same way. But the line between coaching a basketball team and building a basketball team becomes more clear by the day.

NIL and the transfer portal did not simply change where players play. Revenue sharing did not simply change who pays them. Together, they helped create a year-round college basketball player market. And once college basketball created a professional player market, it was only a matter of time before it started building professional front offices to manage it.

For those of you looking for jobs in professional basketball, there may be more opportunities than you think.

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The league decides who opens the season, who receives 30-plus national broadcasts (for the purpose of this article, “national broadcasts/games refers to games carried nationally on ESPN/ABC, NBC/Peacock, or Amazon Prime), who gets Saturday night primetime showcases, who plays on Christmas, and which players are repeatedly placed in front of the largest possible audiences.

National attention is a scarce resource.

Anyone who has taken Economics 101 knows that economics is the allocation of scarce resources, and the NBA at its core, is an economy and a business.

The NBA’s 2026-27 schedule reveals a league in the middle of a transfer of national relevance. Victor Wembanyama, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and Anthony Edwards are pulling traditionally smaller-market franchises toward the center of the NBA universe, while players like LeBron James and Giannis Antetokounmpo demonstrate that superstar relevance can migrate from one franchise to another. At the same time, the Lakers, Warriors, and Knicks show that some brands have accumulated enough cultural gravity to remain nationally important almost regardless of circumstance.

The NBA’s Attention Economy

There are a few ways a franchise can become nationally relevant, but the simplest way is obvious: winning games.

Build a contender, make a deep playoff run (or two or three, etc.) and eventually the NBA has little choice but to put you in front of national audiences. At some point, the success can’t be ignored. But basketball quality is not the only factor - not even close.

Market size, team history, rivalries, superstars, and even the possibility that something memorable might happen matters. So we need to stop looking at National TV, Opening Day, and Christmas Day schedules like a power ranking, but rather an inside look into the NBA’s investment portfolio.

The league and its broadcast partners are deciding which teams and players are most deserving of their finite supply of exposure every season. Some franchises are reliable blue-chip assets. Others are emerging investments. Some have suddenly become much more attractive because a superstar has arrived - the Heat and 76ers. Others are declining properties that once commanded enormous attention, but for one reason or another no longer do.

There are three ways to acquire national relevance:

1. Inherited Relevance

2. Imported Relevance

3. Earned Relevance

The new schedule for the 2026-27 schedule provides examples of all three. Perhaps the easiest place to start is with the NBA’s most famous regular season stage.

Christmas Day: The NBA’s Most Exclusive and Jolly Club

Christmas Day is special in the NBA. Fans around the world open gifts and spend time with family in the morning, and then many sit down in front of their TVs for an afternoon slate of basketball that runs deep into the evening. For people like me, and perhaps like you, it’s heaven on Earth.

However, Christmas is also very useful analytically. There are five game slots, and ten teams who play, which means 2/3 of the league automatically get excluded. Christmas is one of the clearest examples of the NBA’s scarce attention economy.

The 2026 Xmas Slate:

1. Spurs @ Knicks - 12:00 ET

2. Heat @ Celtics - 2:30 ET

3. 76ers @ Lakers - 5:00 ET

4. Thunder @ Timberwolves - 8:00 ET

5. Nuggets @ Warriors - 10:30 ET

Let’s look closely at every method the NBA’s schedule makers have used to generate national relevance through storylines and narratives:

1. A Finals Rematch from last season to start the day

2. Giannis Antetokounmpo, on his new team, enters the stadium of the 5th most valuable franchise, and the other most probable team he was rumoured to be traded to

3. LeBron James returns to Los Angeles

4. Young marketable stars (SGA and Anthony Edwards) and Northwest division rivals go toe-to-toe

5. Jokić vs. Curry, two of the league’s most transcendent stars and former MVPs, take the stage for what should be an electric nightcap on the west coast

But looking at one Christmas isn’t nearly as interesting as looking at the last ten:

The Lakers and the Warriors are in a class of their own. Both have appeared in every season of this ten-year sample. They also happen to be the two most valuable franchises in the league (Lakers: $12.5B, Warriors $11B). Neither team has been a championship contender in all ten seasons. Their basketball quality has fluctuated considerably (for example, the Lakers have had three losing seasons in this timeframe) but their place on Christmas hasn’t.

For certain franchises, national relevance no longer needs to be earned every season, but rather is inherited. The Lakers are perhaps the purest example of franchise equity in professional basketball. Whether players change, coaches change, the front office changes, or contention comes and goes, the spotlight always remains. The Warriors’ success has been so intertwined with Steph Curry and his international appeal, but ten consecutive appearances demonstrate how dramatically the Warriors’ place in NBA culture has changed during the Curry era. After all, before Steph was drafted in 2009, the Warriors hadn’t played an Xmas Day game since 1984 (a 97-106 loss to the Portland Trail Blazers. For those interested, the box scores of both teams on that day are below. Note that zero three pointers were made, and only six were attempted).

Six franchises have appeared on Christmas in each of the last three seasons:

1. Lakers

2. Warriors

3. Knicks

4. Nuggets

5. Timberwolves

6. Spurs

New York makes intuitive sense. The third most valuable franchise in the NBA, Madison Square Garden (MSG), and a championship calibre team now defending an NBA title.

Denver has spent years earning its place through Nikola Jokić and sustained contention (including a championship).

Minnesota and San Antonio are much more interesting cases, however, and require a further deep dive. The Timberwolves’ three-year Christmas run reflects Anthony Edwards’ rise alongside sustained contention, similar to the Nuggets, and the addition of LaMelo Ball only makes the Timberwolves more marketable.

But no franchise demonstrates the changing hierarchy better than San Antonio. From 2017 through 2023, the Spurs played zero Christmas games. Then Victor Wembanyama, the youngest and most transcendent superstar the league has seen since LeBron James arrives.

• 2024: vs Knicks in MSG

• 2025: vs Thunder

• 2026: finals rematch vs Knicks in MSG

When we zoom out from Christmas, the Wemby effect and the Spurs’ return to relevance becomes more noticeable.

The NBA’s Biggest Investment is San Antonio

If national attention is an economy/currency like we have established, the NBA is spending an extraordinary amount on the San Antonio Spurs. For example, the Spurs had 22 nationally televised games in 2025-26. This season: 34 nationally televised games. That is the maximum allocation, tied with the Knicks, Lakers and 76ers. That’s certainly elite company. New York is the defending champion playing in America’s largest market, Los Angeles is basketball’s strongest global franchise, and Philadelphia just acquired LeBron James.

Because I wanted to, here is a comparison of each of those four metropolitan areas’ populations:

• New York: 21,000,000

• Los Angeles: 12,678,000

• Philadelphia: 6,329,118

• San Antonio: 2,763,006

It is clear that the Spurs are being transformed into a national property around a generational basketball player. We can go one step further and look at the rest of the season for San Antonio. The Spurs host Oklahoma City on Opening Night, following their seven-game series in the Western Conference Finals this last season. The NBA even described their 12 (!!!) combined meetings across last season as a series of must-see matchups. They also play Houston, a Texas rival during Opening Week, and in January the Spurs travel to Paris, just 12 miles from where Victor Wembanyama grew up, to face the New Orleans Pelicans, with the NBA explicitly marketing the Paris game around the return of its French superstar.

San Antonio is going global. It also brings along an important part of my research and realization that was made: NBA schedules do not just measure relevance but also can manufacture it. If the NBA wants a star to be more popular, just put him in front of more people, in more marquee matchups, and in more legendary locations. Put him on Opening Night and Christmas and National TV, and maybe even send him to the capital of France. The attention he gets creates familiarity, which in turn creates storylines. The NBA, more than any other league on Earth, knows storylines generate interest and demand. No franchise is benefitting from it more right now than the San Antonio Spurs.

The NBA’s Other Max Investments

Other than the Spurs, three teams received the maximum allotment of nationally televised games. The Lakers and Knicks are almost inevitable, after all, LA has had the maximum allotment every year since 2018, and New York is fresh off of a championship.

Philadelphia however, is a different case. The 76ers increased their national TV games from 14 to 34 after acquiring LeBron James this offseason. This is an example of the second way to acquire national relevance: importing it. LeBron’s national relevance is extremely portable. He is not famous in one market or region and is highly marketable globally. If LeBron signed with Sacramento there is no doubt in my mind their nationally televised games would also be somewhere in the 30s. Additionally, the Lakers lost no national TV games after LeBron left, further exemplifying their gravity as a franchise.

Along with the Spurs, we can also identify smaller markets like Oklahoma City and Minnesota, who are examples of the third type of relevance: Earned Relevance. Under normal circumstances, these teams would never play 27+ nationally televised games, but consistent success and marketable stars forces the NBA to recognize them. Additionally, Detroit entered the 2024-25 season with only four national games. After a breakout season from Cade Cunningham and the Pistons team itself, the NBA increased their number to 16 last season, and have once again increased it to 19 leading into this season.

San Antonio, Oklahoma City, and Minnesota prove the NBA isn’t unwilling to promote small markets. But their paths also demonstrate that the price of national relevance is not entirely equal. The Lakers can survive mediocre seasons and remain a national property. Oklahoma City needed an MVP and championship contention. San Antonio needed a generational superstar. Minnesota needed Anthony Edwards and repeated deep playoff runs. Big markets don’t have a monopoly on attention, but rather a much larger margin for error when it comes to the NBA’s attention.

You can also see who the NBA no longer values as much as they once did. The Milwaukee Bucks and LA Clippers both lost 16 and 13 national TV games, respectively. The Bucks in particular show just how hard it is to maintain national relevance when a star leaves a team. In this case, the Bucks lost two-time MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo after trading him to Miami. Smaller markets simply have much less room for error before losing attention. In contrast, the Heat earned 20 new national TV games. Giannis is yet another example of portable marketability.

Opening Night

Christmas Day Games have history and cultural prestige, however, who plays on Opening Night is always a very intentional decision made by the league. It is essentially the NBA deciding which teams will introduce its product to the world.

The Opening Day Slate:

• Celtics @ Pistons

• 76ers @ Knicks

• Thunder @ Spurs

These are six teams who all represent something a little bit different. Boston is a foundational brand, Detroit is an emerging contender, Philadelphia has LeBron, New York is the defending champion, OKC has the reigning two-time MVP, and San Antonio has the most intriguing young player in the league.

The NBA could have included their two most valuable franchises, the Lakers and Warriors, but decided to position other teams in marquee matchups. After looking at this scheduling, it seems like the league is attempting to balance its inherited audience with the audience it wants to build next, and is using these six teams to do it.

So Who Owns the NBA’s Attention Economy?

To measure this, I decided to create the National Relevance Index (NRI); a weighted scoring system to determine which teams the NBA is valuing the most this season.

The scoring works as follows:

• 100 points per team available

• National TV Volume: 50% Weight

• National TV Momentum (whether the league is increasing/decreasing its investment): 20% Weight

• 2026 Christmas Day Appearance: 15% Weight

• Opening Night/Week Appearance: 10% Weight

• Christmas Persistence (2017-2026): 5% Weight

National TV Volume

Formula: (Team National Games) / (34) x (50)

34 is the highest allotment of games, so teams like the Knicks, Spurs, Lakers, and 76ers would receive the full 50 points.

National TV Momentum

With this measure, we are comparing the year-over-year (YoY) change in National Games between the 2025-26 and 2026-27 seasons.

A team with unchanged exposure receives 10/20 points, and each national game gained/lost is worth ±0.5 points, capped between 0 and 20.

For example:

• Philadelphia went from 14 to 34 games and would receive the full 20 points.

• San Antonio increased from 22 to 34 games, and so would receive 16/20 points.

• Milwaukee decreased from 18 to 2 national games and so would receive 2/20 points.

Christmas Day Appearance

• Christmas Appearance = 15 points

• No Appearance = 0 points

Opening Day/Week

• Opening Night = 10 points

• Opening week = 6 points

The NBA categorizes opening week as the three nights between opening day (October 20) and October 22.

Christmas Persistence (2017-2026)

Formula: (Christmas Appearances) / (10) x (5)

For example:

• Lakers: 10 appearances → (10)/(10)(5) = 5 points

• Knicks: 8 appearances → (8)/(10)(5) = 4 points

National Relevance Index

One important distinction. The NRI is not a popularity ranking. It measures how aggressively the NBA is allocating national attention to each franchise entering this season. A high score can therefore reflect established relevance, rapidly increasing exposure, or both.

Below is the NRI for the 2026-27 season:

The NBA schedule is ultimately much more than a list of 1,230 games. It is a map of sorts pointing to where the league believes attention is most valuable.

Some franchises inherit attention, others import it, and the unlucky majority have to earn it through strong team-building and consistent success. As San Antonio shows, the NBA can take existing interest and amplify it until a traditionally smaller-market franchise becomes one of the central properties in the league.

However, the hierarchy is never permanent. Things move fast in the NBA. Ten years ago, Giannis was an exciting and rising superstar and Milwaukee was becoming a fixture on the league’s biggest stages, Philadelphia wasn’t receiving anything close to the maximum national-TV allotment, and the Denver Nuggets couldn’t buy a Christmas Day game if they tried. Today, those realities have flipped. How the tables turn…

That is what makes national attention such an interesting resource. It is scarce, valuable, and constantly being redistributed. The 2026-27 schedule tells us where the NBA is placing its bets. Over the next few years, we’ll find out which of these bets win or lose.

Last season did not go as planned for Indiana. One season removed from an NBA Finals appearance, the Pacers 2024-2025 and 2025-2026 campaigns could not have looked more different. After Tyrese Haliburton tore his right achilles tendon in that fateful Game 7 in Oklahoma City, it was inevitable that Indiana would have a down year in his absence.

Just how important is Tyrese Haliburton to the Pacers? Here are some of Indiana’s team ranks between 2024-2025 and 2025-2026:

• Points Per Game:

  • 2024-2025: 117.4 (7th)

  • 2025-2026: 112.4 (27th)

• Field Goal %:

  • 2024-2025: 48.8% (3rd)

  • 2025-2026: 45.8% (26th)

• Assists:

  • 2024-2025: 29.2 (3rd)

  • 2025-2026: 27.7 (12th)

Of course there were other injuries and conditions that played a factor, but none with more repercussions than the loss of Haliburton.

But now he returns, and with an improved roster. Indiana has retained many of the players from its NBA finals team, including important starters and role players like Pascal Siakam, Andrew Nembhard, Aaron Nesmith, Obi Toppin, and none other than the scrappiest player in the league T.J. McConnell. In addition, they have added a former all-defensive big man in Ivica Zubac and bucket getter Kelly Oubre Jr.

The Pacers are expected to return to form, and anything less than a conference finals appearance would be a letdown. They get some leeway since the team will need time to gel with Haliburton back, and the east is far more stacked than it was two years ago, and so they place 7th on this list.

6. Washington Wizards

The Washington Wizards are completely new team. I took a random game from this previous season to compare the Wizards’ starting lineup then to the projected starting lineup now.

Starting Lineup - Sunday, February 22nd, 2026 vs Charlotte Hornets:

• PG: Bub Carrington

• SG: Tre Johnson

• SF: Bilal Coulibaly

• PF: Kyshawn George

• C: Tristan Vukcevic

Wizards Projected Starting Lineup - 2026-2027:

• PG: Trae Young

• SG: Tre Johnson

• SF: A.J. Dybantsa

• PF: Anthony Davis

• C: Alex Sarr

What an improvement! Obviously, the acquisitions of Young and Davis were huge, and Washington GM Will Dawkins masterfully got both of them for pennies on the dollar. However, adding #1 pick A.J. Dybantsa guarantees this team’s wing depth and makes them a threat to any eastern conference contender.

After eight straight losing seasons, and three straight with less than 19 wins, the pressure is on for Washington. This is the most competitive roster the Wizards have fielded since John Wall was their starting point guard. Suddenly, winning is the expectation. For a franchise that is so used to losing, a glimpse of hope is sometimes all it takes to get the fans fired up as well. Washington hasn’t cracked the top 20 in attendance since 2018.

As long as Washington stays healthy, they SHOULD at least be a play-in team, but with the east so strong this year and many high-impact new faces, there could be some growing pains. The pressure is on.

5. Cleveland Cavaliers

As our third straight eastern conference team, the Cavaliers are in a different position than its fellow list-mates so far. Cleveland has been a dominant regular season team. After acquiring Donovon Mitchell ahead of the 2022-2023 season, Cleveland has achieved a regular season record of 215-113, the third best in that span (Boston and OKC have been #1 and #2, respectively). What do they have to show for it in the playoffs? A 19-25 record and one conference finals appearance - a sweep at the hands of the New York Knicks this last year.

Ahead of the 2026-2027 season, Cleveland essentially returns the same roster, losing only Dean Wade (a playoff starter) and Keon Ellis. The only real notable addition is Meleek Thomas, the 34th overall pick in this year’s draft who led all of Summer League in scoring with 27.3 PPG. I could see him cracking the rotation this year.

The X-Factor for this year’s team is James Harden. Harden will be 37 when the season starts but is still capable at performing at a very high level. The Cavaliers also performed much better in the regular season after Harden joined the team, going 19-7 in games he played. Without Harden, the Cavs were 33-23. That’s a .142% improvement in Win %. With Harden playing, Cleveland also improved their net rating (3.8 to 4.8), offensive rating (118.7 to 121.2) and committed less turnovers (14.5 to 12.9).

Cleveland should stay a dominant regular season team, but pressure to perform in the playoffs has never been higher.

4. Minnesota Timberwolves

LAMELOOOOOOOOOOO! The Timberwolves have been relatively successful in the last three years, coming off of two conference finals appearances and a 2nd round exit and they just got much better. Their projected starting lineup this season is:

• PG: LaMelo Ball

• SG: Anthony Edwards

• SF: Ayo Dosunmu

• PF: Jaden McDaniels

• C: Rudy Gobert

That is one of the best starting lineups, both on offense and defense in the league. They are athletic, they have multiple dawgs, and they are going to be extremely fun to watch. But can they get over the hump? In a conference that boasts the OKC Thunder and the San Antonio Spurs, not the mention other dangerous teams like the Denver Nuggets, Houston Rockets, and the Luka Doncic-led Los Angeles Lakers, the T-Wolves have their work cut out for them.

Rudy Gobert is still an all-defense level player but is only getting older, there is a sense that Anthony Edwards is getting impatient, and Minnesota just dumped $112 million on Ayo Dosunmu. LaMelo also needs to prove he can win, especially in the playoffs, where he has never been in his career. Additionally, the depth is for the most part, unproven. The bench consists of Donte DiVincenzo, Terrence Shannon Jr. (who has a big opportunity to step up this season), Jaylen Clark (another big opportunity), Josh Green, Joan Beringer, Trey Lyles, and a myriad of end of bench players. I am excited to see new rookies Isaiah Evans and Trey Kaufman-Renn. I was very high on Evans in the pre-draft process.

Minnesota is good, great even, but I’m probably not alone when I say I’m not quite convinced they are better than the likes of OKC and San Antonio. I really hope they prove me wrong, but there is a mountain of pressure on this team to perform.

3. Orlando Magic

This team is one first round exit from a fire sale. You can just feel it. In Paolo Banchero’s four seasons in Orlando, the Magic missed the playoffs once and have lost in the first round of the playoffs in three straight years, placing 5th, 7th, and now 8th this most recent season. In short, they have gotten worse over the last three years, and have yet to prove anything.

Management has done an average job surrounding Banchero with a competitive team. Jalen Suggs, Franz Wagner, and Desmond Bane (who they gave up a king’s ransom to acquire) are a solid foundation but they don’t jump off the page. Anthony Black blew up this year in a good way and will be an important part of the team moving forward.

Perhaps the most important addition to the team this offseason is new head coach Sean Sweeney. Sweeney was the lead assistant for San Antonio this previous season. He has an impressive resume; before San Antonio he was a key assistant for the Dallas Mavericks under Jason Kidd and was in player development during Giannis Antetokounmpo’s growth years in Milwaukee. He is a program builder and culture setter. I assume Orlando’s front office will give him a relatively long leash in his first year, but this team in general is in a pressure cooker and if things go south this year, we could be looking at some changes in O-Town.

2. Houston Rockets

Where do I begin? After losing in six games to a Luka Doncic-less Lakers team, the Rockets are back to the drawing board. That series loss wasn’t all due to the Rockets level of play. Kevin Durant sustained an ankle injury and was kept out of all but one game, and Fred Vanvleet missed the entire season due to a knee injury in an offseason workout. The Rockets were without their two veteran leaders for a playoff series in which they faced THE veteran leader: LeBron James. That’s an important part of the Rockets season tale last year.

Now they (should) return with a fully healthy roster and bar is set high. The strong young core of Alperen Sengun, Amen Thompson, and Jabari Smith Jr. (add Tari Eason in there too after his 5-year, $81m contract) will be looking to prove themselves and will have the support of Kevin Durant and Fred Vanvleet. Depth pieces like Marcus Smart and Bogdan Bogdanović were added in the offseason, and bench players like Clint Capela, Reed Sheppard, and Jae’Sean Tate have remained with the team. The Rockets have no more excuses, and will have to battle with the Thunder, Spurs, Nuggets, and Timberwolves for home court advantage come playoff time. This is the Rockets strongest team since the James Harden era, and with Kevin Durant’s player option and Fred Vanvleet’s expiring contract looming, this may be their last time to compete at this high a level in the west for years.

1. Philadelphia 76ers

Who else but? Philadelphia has formed a lineup of death. After acquiring Jaylen Brown and LeBron James, the stakes have never been higher in the city of brotherly love. For years, Philadelphia and its fans have been trusting the process and for years the Sixers have come up short. So short in fact that in the Embiid era, Philly still has yet to make an eastern conference finals. This team is the best of any of The Process teams, rivalling the 2018-2019 team featuring Ben Simmons, JJ Redick, Jimmy Butler, Tobias Harris, and Embiid.

Suddenly the 76ers have gone from championship hopefuls to true championship contenders, vaulting themselves into the NBA’s elite once more. LeBron is set to run the offense, according to Nick Nurse, and that should open more opportunities for Embiid and Maxey, who are both elite off the ball. Another key part of adding more talent is that it provides the 76ers the opportunity to load manage Embiid in preparation for the playoffs. Sit Embiid for 30 games in the regular season and Philly still probably wins 45+ matchups.

Quite frankly, I don’t think the Sixers will have any issues regarding “too many chefs in the kitchen”. These players are talented enough to make it work. However, that talent also sets expectations sky high. Anything less than a finals appearance, would be a disappointment for the most talented 76ers team on paper… ever.

There was some chalk and there was some surprises, so let’s talk about every pick and their fit on the teams that drafted them.

Below is my post-Giannis trade mock draft. For my second mock ever, I am actually really happy with how I did. I hit on some picks and was one off for a lot of them.

1. Washington Wizards

AJ Dybantsa | BYU | SF | 19 Years Old | 6’8” | 217 lbs

My Mock: 2 | Drafted: 1

The top 4 in this draft went just the way most thought it would. Personally, I had Darryn Peterson mocked to Washington simply because I thought it was a coin flip and I would have liked to see him go there, but there’s no doubt that Dybantsa was a great pick. AJ provides the best mix of floor and ceiling in the draft and is an explosive and agile athlete with the shotmaking skills and defensive energy to match. Even at his floor Dybantsa will be a very solid and impactful player and Washington fills in their starting SF with their best player at that position since… Otto Porter Jr.? Maybe Beal if you count him as a wing.

I can’t give Washington too much credit here, but they didn’t screw up massively.

Grade: B+

2. Utah Jazz

Darryn Peterson | Kansas | SG/PG | 19 Years Old | 6’4” | 198 lbs

My Mock: 1 | Drafted: 2

Utah gets their guy. Obviously Utah was not deterred by the quad, hamstring, ankle, and cramping injuries that set DP back during his college season, and neither was I, as he was #1 on my big board. There was a world where the Jazz take Boozer here and unite him with his father Carlos who sits in an advisory role with the team, but Peterson provides next level shotmaking and plus defensive potential. It’s a huge upside pick, much like Ace Bailey last year.

I believe Peterson has the highest ceiling of the draft and will have the opportunity to complement Keyonte George in Utah’s backcourt.

Another chalk pick so I won’t be giving the Jazz too much credit, but Peterson was my favourite player in the top 3.

Grade: A-

3. Memphis Grizzlies

Cameron Boozer | Duke | PF | 18 Years Old | 6’9” | 252 lbs

My Mock: 3 | Drafted: 3

Boozer is one of my favourite prospects in recent memory and I love the team fit in Memphis. In my opinion, Boozer provides the safest floor in the draft. As was said when he was drafted by the broadcast team, skills-wise Boozer is an A- across the board with a few A+ traits. He’ll pair well nice to Zach Edey in the frontcourt and may already be the best playmaker on this Memphis team the minute he steps on the floor.

Boozer is my early pick for Rookie of the Year.

Grade: A

4. Chicago Bulls

Caleb Wilson | North Carolina | PF | 19 Years Old | 6’9” | 210 lbs

My Mock: 4 | Drafted: 4

There was a time earlier in the pre-draft process where I had Caleb Wilson as my number 1 prospect in this year’s class. I still believe he has the potential to be the best player out of the 2026 draft and the fit in Chicago propels that opinion. Since Derrick Rose, there has not been a player who has this much star potential in Chicago. The Bulls have been middling for the better part of the last decade and select the player with the highest athletic upside in the draft. Wilson should immediately slot in at the starting power forward spot.

This was perhaps the easiest pick in the draft. Wilson was in his own little bubble after the Big 3 of Dybantsa, Peterson, and Boozer and before the rest of the class, but it was the right pick.

Grade: A

5. Los Angeles Clippers

Keaton Wagler | Illinois | PG | 19 Years Old | 6’5” | 188 lbs

My Mock: 7 | Drafted: 5

I had Wagler mocked behind both Mikel Brown Jr. and Darius Acuff, not for a lack of talent or potential but simply that’s how I thought things would shake up. Although slim in build and baby in face, Wagler is an elite processor and decision-maker. He strictly plays under the rim and is one of the few elite prospects in the last two decades who had 0 dunks in college. He’ll need to get stronger to hit his full potential and I’m not sure what the short-term (or potentially long-term) fit with Darius Garland will be like but I don’t mind the pick here for LA.

Wagler should be at the very least a serviceable point guard in the NBA after leading the number 1 offense in the country at Illinois, but it’s a good bet for a Clippers team lacking a true playmaking guard.

Grade: B

6. Brooklyn Nets

Mikel Brown Jr. | Louisville | PG | 20 Years Old | 6’3” | 190 lbs

My Mock: 5 | Drafted: 6

Mikel Brown Jr. was drafted one spot after I had him mocked, but I love this pick for Brooklyn. MBJ is my favourite guard prospect in the draft. He has the best frame to work with out of the crop of point guards drafted in the lottery and has elite range and playmaking capabilities. After five first round picks last year with almost zero high upside swing, the Nets take who should be their franchise lead guard.

MBJ can struggle with some processing and can settled for ill-advised jumpers in college, but the potential is sky high. I’m a big fan of this pick for Brooklyn.

Grade: A

7. Sacramento Kings

Darius Acuff Jr. | Arkansas | PG | 19 Years Old | 6’2” | 185 lbs

My Mock: 6 | Drafted: 7

I am fairly low on Acuff as a prospect compared to others in the industry. Smaller guards typically don’t fair as well in the NBA and get hunted on defense. This is a problem for Acuff as he might be the worst defensive player in the NBA on day 1. Sacremento will need to build a team around his defensive concerns if he doesn’t improve on that side of the floor and could be a detriment to his NBA success. On the flip side, Acuff is an incredible shotmaker and I put him in the same category offensively as guys like Jalen Brunson, Trae Young, etc.

If Acuff becomes even a below average defender and the Kings build a team around him that can compete (which believe it or not I have more faith in the former than the latter), Acuff can become a superstar in the NBA… but the line is thin.

Grade: B-

8. Atlanta Hawks

Kingston Flemings | Houston | PG | 19 Years Old | 6’2” | 183 lbs

My Mock: 8 | Drafted: 8

Finally I got one of these guards right in my mock. After the Trae Young trade, Atlanta has been in need of a lead guard and I love the fit in Atlanta. Flemings is the fastest prospect in the class and has that DAWG in him that is few and far between from a player this young. Every player who plays under coach Kelvin Sampson at Houston needs to be a top-level defender or they won’t see the floor very often, and Flemings saw the floor VERY OFTEN. The defense is there, despite the smaller stature. He’s got a rockstar personality and is the only prospect I’ve ever seen publicly write a letter to NBA GMs speaking on why he should be drafted. Flemings is an elite creator with all-star potential if development goes right in Atlanta.

I wouldn’t see the Hawks drafting any other way with the eighth pick.

Grade: A+

9. Dallas Mavericks

Morez Johnson Jr. | Michigan | C/PF | 20 Years Old | 6’9” | 250 lbs

My Mock: 25 | Drafted: 9

WOW. My first and only real major miss of the first round. This was a surprise to me for multiple reasons. Firstly, I don’t exactly see the all-star upside with Johnson. He’s not nearly as polished as some of his peers, including fellow Michigan lottery picks Yaxel Lendeborg and Aday Mara, and is undersized as a five and doesn’t have the offensive prowess to play the four. Dusty May was officially announced Dallas coach on draft day so it was almost a sure thing he would draft one of his Michigan players, but I never would have thought it would be Johnson.

That being said, Morez is an incredibly versatile defender, an awesome interior finisher, and is an intelligent and coachable player. Dusty May obviously saw something in him and maybe even did some convincing in the Mavs draft room prior to the draft. I’m sticking with my mock and ranking of Morez for this grade, which is the lowest so far.

Grade: C+

10. Milwaukee Bucks

Brayden Burries | Arizona | PG/SG | 20 Years Old | 6’3” | 215 lbs

My Mock: 10 | Drafted: 10

Another pick I got right and for good reason. Burries plays an aggressive and tenacious style of basketball that is perfect for a Milwaukee team that will be trying to find their new team culture after the departure of Giannis Antetokounmpo. I see Burries as an elite culture setter. He can score on all three levels and will be a high-level point of attack defender in the NBA. I would have taken Burries as high as 6 after Mikel Brown Jr. and love love love this pick for the Bucks.

He should slot in next to Ryan Rollins in the starting lineup if Tyler Herro is moved. If not, he should be a solid contributor off the bench in his first season.

Grade: A

11. Golden State Warriors

Yaxel Lendeborg | Michigan | PF | 23 Years Old | 6’8” | 241 lbs

My Mock: 11 | Drafted: 11

Was it ever going to be anyone else? At this point of the draft I thought maybe the Warriors would take a shot at Aday Mara as they are perpetually in need of big man help and rim protecting, but they go with the proven elder of this year’s draft. Lendeborg is a monster on offense and can defend 1 through 4 with ease, with the ability to guard some NBA 5’s. Lendeborg improved in every year of his collegiate career, going from Arizona Western (a school with just over 2,000 full-time students), to the University of Alabama-Birmingham where he won the American Athletic Conference DPOY two years in a row, and finally stopped at Michigan to win the National Championship.

The Warriors needed someone who could contribute right away and will get to learn from Steve Kerr, Steph Curry, Jimmy Butler, and Kristaps Porzingis in his first season. Not a bad mentorship group.

Grade: A+

12. Oklahoma City Thunder

Aday Mara | Michigan | C | 21 Years Old | 7’3” | 259 lbs

My Mock: 9 | Drafted: 12

The player who I thought Dusty May and the Mavericks would select at pick 9, Mara provides size, passing, defense to an already stacked OKC squad. I feel this pick was solely a Wemby stopping move. That, and insurance if Isaiah Hartenstein leaves in free agency. Mara is a little bit slow for the NBA at his current state, but is a fantastic get later than I had anticipated him going in the draft. I could even see the Thunder using him in a similar way as Hartenstein, playing some lineups with Chet Holmgren at PF while Mara takes the bulk of the physicality at the C position. The Thunder somehow got even more scary.

Grade: A-

13. Milwaukee Bucks (via Miami)

Nate Ament | Tennessee | SF | 19 Years Old | 6’9” | 210 lbs

My Mock: 13 | Drafted: 13

2/2 on Bucks picks this draft! I might as well have been in their scouting department this year. Ament did not have a great season in his lone year at Tennessee, and fell below expectations. Part of me thought he would stay another year in the Volunteer State. Ament is still a raw player but can pass and handle the ball at a high level. Milwaukee takes their high upside swing at 13 using the pick relayed to them in the Giannis trade and I believe they used it well. Ament is more of a project than any other lottery pick, but if he hits his full potential, Ament will be an incredible value pick for the Bucks.

Grade: A+

14. Charlotte Hornets

Hannes Steinbach | Washington | C | 20 Years Old | 6’10” | 248 lbs

My Mock: 12 | Drafted: 14

While making my final mock I had considered Steinbach to the Hornets but thought against it because of the Kalkbrenner pick last year and the emergence of Moussa Diabate this season in Charlotte. Obviously it doesn’t matter what I think because the Hornets took Steinbach anyway. Hannes led the NCAA in rebounding and was productive both in Europe and in his lone season at Washington. I don’t necessarily see all-star upside with Steinbach, but I think he will be a very serviceable starting level big. Think a Jakob Poeltl type of ceiling, who was drafted 9th in his respective class.

Grade: B

15. Chicago Bulls

Dailyn Swain | Texas | SF/SG | 20 Years Old | 6’6” | 211 lbs

My Mock: 14 | Drafted: 15

Death to Patrick Williams! The Bulls take two wing/forward types with their two first round picks. I’m a big fan of Swain. He was one of the best drivers in the NCAA averaging 6.6 baskets at the rim this season and showed playmaking upside. I could see Swain becoming a pseudo-PG at the nest level and secondary playmaker on a competitive team given his size and passing chops. The jumpshot is slow and a tad bit janky but many have made it to the NBA and improved their shooting ability.

This was a safe pick and right around where I had Swain mocked. Good draft so far for Chicago.

Grade: B+

16. Oklahoma City Thunder (via Phoenix)

Bennett Stirtz | Iowa | PG | 22 Years Old | 6’2” | 186 lbs

My Mock: 17 | Drafted: 16

I may have gotten the pick wrong, but I got the team right. OKC traded up one pick to swoop in and take Stirtz. From what I heard, the Raptors were high on him after his workout up north and the Thunder wanted to guarantee they got their guy. Not the first time the Raptors planned on taking someone OKC wanted, as they were trying to move up to take Collin Murray-Boyles last draft.

The reason I had Stirtz going to the Thunder was simple. He is a talented older guard who can take some of the playmaking responsibility off of SGA’s hands. One concern I have with Stirtz is he has had the same coach throughout his entire collegiate career, Ben McCollum. They both started at D-III Northwest Missouri State, both moved to Drake University, and then moved to Iowa together. Do they need each other? That remains to be seen. Either way, I like the pick from OKC and the strategy of moving up to get their guy.

Grade: A-

17. Detroit Pistons (via Philadelphia)

Ebuka Okorie | Stanford | PG | 19 Years Old | 6’1” | 186 lbs

My Mock: 18 | Drafted: 17

The second player ever drafted from New Hampshire (Matt Bonner)! Another pick I was close to getting right. Detroit moves up from pick 21 to get their guy. I like the thought of adding more guards around Cade Cunningham. Daniss Jenkins was a gem of a find for the Pistons last year and they add to their backcourt with one of the best offensive players in the country. Okorie led the ACC in scoring and is one of 17 freshmen since 2008 with an Offensive Box Plus Minus of 8.0 or higher. Okorie provides elite rim pressure but will need to become a better finisher at the rim to have any real success in the NBA. I believe in Okorie but he strikes me as the type of player to be a journeyman type player in the league.

Grade: B

18. Charlotte Hornets (via Orlando)

Christian Anderson | Texas Tech | PG | 19 Years Old | 6’1” | 180 lbs

My Mock: 16 | Drafted: 18

One of the cooler stories of the draft was seeing Anderson reunite with Steinbach in Charlotte. Both players have spent time on the German national team. Anderson is a smaller guard but is the best shooter (41.5% from 3) in the class. He’s also an elite playmaker after averaging 7.4 assists per game. He’s a threat in the pick and roll since defenders need to be wary of his shot and that opens up great passing lanes for him to show off his superb passing skills.A weakness of his however is his small size. He isn’t as bad of a defender as Acuff but he provides little upside on that side of the floor. I don’t see all-star upside in him, but that is hard to find at this point in the draft anyway.

Grade: B-

19. Toronto Raptors

Allen Graves | Santa Clara | PF | 19 Years Old | 6’7” | 225 lbs

My Mock: 20 | Drafted: 19

This is such a tough pick to evaluate. I am not one of the people freaking out over the Raptors drafting another wing, and generally I have trust in the Raptors front office and scouting department when it comes to drafting. Would Jayden Quaintance made more sense on paper? Maybe. Would the Raptors have benefitted from a lead guard like Philon? Perhaps. Regardless, I think he will gel well with this current Raptors unit.

I don’t need to tell you Graves is an analytics darling because that has been what everyone has said about him, but he truly has an unprecedented case from an advanced statistics case. There have only been 12 freshmen since 2008 to record a Box Plus Minus of 12.0 or higher. Graves is one of them, and the other 11 were all drafted at least 5th in their respective classes. Graves was drafted 19th. If Graves improves athletically, he can take full advantage of his shooting and incredible intangibles/activity on both ends of the floor. I don’t mind this pick for the Raptors at all.

Grade: B+

20. San Antonio Spurs

Jayden Quaintance | Kentucky | C | 19 Years Old | 6’9” | 253 lbs

My Mock: 19 | Drafted: 20

JQ was originally mocked as a lottery pick, but an injury setback pushed him into the early 20s of the draft. For context, Quaintance suffered a torn ACL in his right knee during his freshman season last year at Arizona State. He was shut down in February of 2025 and had a successful surgery in the following month. After transferring to Kentucky for his sophomore season this year, he returned for four games and re-aggravated the injury, and was shut down yet again.

If Quaintance can become healthy and sustain it during his time in the NBA, he has all-star and all-defensive team upside. The good news is the Spurs are well ahead of schedule and can afford to be patient with him after just making the NBA finals with a team led by 22, 21, and 20 year old players. I love this as a high upside swing for the Spurs, especially with the moves they made later in the draft.

Grade: A

21. Memphis Grizzlies (via Minnesota)

Karim López | New Zealand | SF | 19 Years Old | 6’8” | 221 lbs

My Mock: 23 | Drafted: 21

Finally, the first prospect who played internationally is drafted. After taking a safe floor bet in Cameron Boozer at pick 3, Memphis takes a high potential swing with Karim López at 21, and a lot of mock drafts had him going way higher. I’m not the biggest fan of López personally. He has great a great size and frame but lacks intangibles, especially on defense and doesn’t play as well as I’d like off the ball. I think this is an alright spot for him, but I would have drafted López later on.

Grade: C

22. Philadelphia 76ers (via Houston)

Labaron Philon Jr. | Alabama | PG | 20 Years Old | 6’2” | 176 lbs

My Mock: 15 | Drafted: 22

Six years after drafting Tyrese Maxey at 21, the 76ers take a similar guard at 22. I think this is a great value pick for Philadelphia and I’m sure they never would have thought Philon would drop to them at this pick. I could see a world where Philon goes in the lottery and personally, I never expected him to fall this far. Something must have turned teams off… but not Philly. Philon lacks size and top-tier athleticism but scores on all three levels and averaged a very respectable 22 PPG and 5 APG as the lead guard for Alabama. This was a great pick for Philly.

Grade: A-

23. Atlanta Hawks (via Cleveland)

Zuby Ejiofor | St. John’s | PF/C | 22 Years Old | 6’7” | 245 lbs

My Mock: 27 | Drafted: 23

ZUBY! I will always have a soft spot for hustle guys with high motors and Ejiofor is exactly that. I never would have expected him to be drafted so early, but I did expect him to be a first round pick. Ejiofor really impressed me during his senior season at St. John’s and I especially loved what he was able to do in March Madness. Ejiofor is a bruiser down low and will hold his own, and at times excel on defense. He does strike me as the type of guy who will have greater success overseas, but it would make me smile to see him succeed in the NBA. It’s a bit of a reach in my opinion, but the Hawks make two intriguing picks in the first round.

Grade: B-

24. Los Angeles Lakers (via New York)

Cameron Carr | Baylor | SG/SF | 21 Years Old | 6’4” | 184 lbs

My Mock: 21 | Drafted: 24

I had Carr a little earlier in my mock, but I love the fit in LA. Carr is that showtime type of player who hits big shots and will relish the opportunity to play in Staples Center. He’s one of those wings who is a terrific shotmaker who will fit well in the NBA, but has work to do on the defensive end. I think Carr will be much more of an elite role player than a starter in the league, but at pick 24 that’s really all you hope for. He’ll need to get stronger, but he is already explosive and his impact on/off the floor at Baylor was the best in the class (Baylor was 27.4 points per 100 possessions better with him playing than not).

Great pickup and value after LA traded back in the draft to get their guy.

Grade: A

25. Dallas Mavericks (via Los Angeles Lakers)

Sergio de Larrea | Spain | PG/SG | 20 Years Old | 6’6” | 204 lbs

My Mock: 2nd Round | Drafted: 25

The first player to go in the first round who I had as a second round guy. I understand the Mavs taking a player like De Larrea at the end of the first round. He’s worth the flyer and Dallas has a tendency to like their international guys (cough Luka Doncic, cough Dirk Nowitzki, cough so many more). I don’t mind this pick by any means. De Larrea is a skilled and large guard with a good height and a 6’9” wingspan who has great feel for the game. He’s a fantastic passer but his subpar handle leads to bad turnovers and he couldn’t force many mistakes on the other end of the floor. This is a classic late round dart throw, but the landing spot in Dallas and their pedigree for developing international players almost makes me optimistic.

Grade: C+

26. San Antonio Spurs (via Denver)

Tarris Reed Jr. | UConn | C | 22 Years Old | 6’9” | 263 lbs

My Mock: 24 | Drafted: 26

Annnnnnd now the Quaintance pick at 20 makes even more sense. The Spurs draft their short-term option while they wait for JQ to heal his knee injury. Reed did wonders for his draft stock during March Madness, and I distinctly remember his 26 points, 9 rebounds, and 4 blocks en route to an Elite Eight win against Duke. I really like Reed and I especially like him as a backup big man. Similar to fellow Big East center Zuby Ejiofor, Reed is incredibly strong and is an elite rebounder. That being said, his ceiling is capped by his lack of shooting, athleticism, and size. I think this is a fine pick for the Spurs, and a strategic one too.

Grade: B

27. Boston Celtics

Chris Cenac Jr. | Houston | PF/C | 19 Years Old | 6’10” | 239 lbs

My Mock: 26 | Drafted: 27

A good spot for Cenac, who is still raw but has plenty of potential. He averaged 13.8 PPG and 11.4 rebounds per game, and he was helped to those totals by his elite athletic tools. Cenac could have benefitted from spending another year in college and it might be a slow burn for him in the NBA, but I trust in the Celtics’ training staff and winning culture to get the most of him. I had them taking a similar player in Zuby Ejiofor in my mock and don’t mind this pick for Boston, who aren’t looking for an immediate contributor and can be patient.

Grade: B-

28. Brooklyn Nets (via Detroit)

Joshua Jefferson | Iowa State | PF | 22 Years Old | 6’7” | 246 lbs

My Mock: 28 | Drafted: 28

The Nets use their second pick of the first round to take Joshua Jefferson. Jefferson is one my more favourite forward prospects. He sprained his left ankle in the first few minutes of his first March Madness game with Iowa this season, so we were unable to see him play at the most competitive level, but Jefferson showed enough during his four year collegiate career between Iowa State and Saint Mary’s to justify a first round pick. Jefferson has solid positional size and great IQ, and he shows the latter through his ability as a high-level connective passer. I am a big believer in Jefferson and think he is the best passing big man in this class outside of Cameron Boozer.

Grade: A-

29. Sacramento Kings (via San Antonio)

Alex Karaban | UConn | SF/PF | 23 Years Old | 6’6” | 225 lbs

My Mock: 2nd Round | Drafted: 29

This to me was a puzzling move for the Kings at first. They traded to get this pick from Cleveland who had received it from San Antonio. Karaban is an older prospect and does not necessarily fit the timeline I feel the Kings should go for. The big selling point for Karaban is that he’s a hard worker with great character and most importantly is a WINNER. He is the winningest player in UConn history and is tied for the second most NCAA tournament victories with Bobby Hurley of Duke, his UConn coach’s brother.

Karaban can hit shots from the perimeter (37.4% from 3PT) and is a great positional defender. If anything, he’ll be a great culture guy for a team who has had little culture (other than THE BEAM) in the last two decades.

Grade: B

30. Phoenix Suns (via Oklahoma City)

Koa Peat | Arizona | SF/PF | 19 Years Old | 6’7” | 245 lbs

My Mock: 22 | Drafted: 30

Koa Peat doesn’t have to wait for his name to be called on Day 2 of the draft. I had him going much earlier, but I saw some other mocks that had him going closer to the second round. As for Phoenix, this move makes some sense. I believe they get good value for Peat here at 30. In a similar spot the Suns took Rasheer Fleming last year, so they double up on the the Wing/Forward position two years in a row.

Peat is not a shooter and has a bit of clunk to his game, but he’s strong and wills his way to baskets. Peat is another player who will probably have a slow development curve that in no way will be linear, but is good value for the Suns at 30.

Grade: B

In all seriousness this is massive news for the league and closure to a trade saga that has been ongoing for over a year and rumours that have been circulating for longer.

The full trade is below:

Miami Heat Receive:

• Giannis Antetokounmpo (!!!)

• Bobby Portis

Milwaukee Bucks Receive:

• Tyler Herro

• Kel’el Ware

• Jamie Jaquez

• Kasparas Jakuciunas

• 2026 No. 13 overall pick

• Two unprotected first-round picks (2031 and 2033)

• 2030 pick swap, 2033 second-round pick

It’s a blockbuster, and the trade we have all be waiting for to finally open the floodgates this offseason for every other team (or maybe Miami and Milwaukee were waiting for the Julius Randle move for all the dominos to fall…). One more point before we get started, RIP Boston. The Celtics were actually the favourite at one point to land Giannis, but weren’t willing to give up Hugo Gonzalez or Baylor Scheiermann. I’m not sure I agree with that, but if I was in the Milwaukee front office I would have taken this Heat deal regardless.

The “Why” for Miami

This is much more clear than the “why” for the Bucks. The Heat get their superstar, perhaps their best since LeBron made The Decision on July 8, 2010.

As it stands, the Heat have ten players rostered:

1. PF Giannis Antetokounmpo

2. C/PF Bam Adebayo

3. SG Norman Powell (pending free agent)

4. SF Andrew Wiggins

5. PG Davion Mitchell

6. PF Bobby Portis

7. PF Nikola Jović

8. SG Dru Smith

9. SG Pelle Larsson

10. SF Myron Gardner

The Heat have some work to do.

My first thought on this team is just how great defensively they are. Obviously a Giannis/Adebayo frontcourt immediately becomes one of the most terrifying big man duos to go up against in the league, but the “other guys” are all solid defenders too. Wiggins is active on and off the ball, and Davion Mitchell is an absolute savage as a point of attack defender. Pelle Larsson and Dru Smith both add plus defensive potential as well.

As for the offense, Miami will have to make some moves. Norman Powell played spectacularly en route to his first all-star season averaging 21.7 PPG, 3.5 RPG, and 2.5 APG on 47.0/38.0/82.7 shooting splits. However, Powell is set to be a free agent and the Heat can not afford him unless he takes a pay cut following his all-star season. Getting Portis in this deal was huge and has been one of the best bench players in the league over the past few years (and pairs nicely with Giannis given the option for kickout 3PT shots - Portis shot 45.6% from 3PT last season on 2 attempts per game, playing with Giannis).

I can see a world where Miami makes some saavy offseason moves, adds some impactful older players to minimum contracts (Seth Curry, Tim Hardaway Jr., Kelly Olynyk reunion??) and suddenly this roster is a little bit more filled out.

At the end of the day, Miami has a Top 5 player in the league in Giannis, a top 20 player in the league in Adebayo, and a middling supporting cast (especially if they lose Powell). That being said, I have faith in Pat Riley and his ability to fill out this roster. I could easily see this team as it stands being a top 3 seed in the East next season. Giannis is Giannis and will have a new fire in his belly now that he knows his team is going all out to contend with him. Before the draft, before free agency, my very early prediction is the Heat will finish 4th in the East behind the Knicks, Celtics, and Pistons.

The “Why” for Milwaukee

REBUILD TIME! This Bucks roster now looks completely different than it did 24 hours ago, essentially becoming the Milwaukee Heat. As it stands this is their roster:

1. SG Tyler Herro

2. C Kel’el Ware

3. C Myles Turner

4. PF Jaime Jaquez Jr.

5. PF Kyle Kuzma

6. SG AJ Green

7. PG Ryan Rollins

8. PG Kasparas Jakučionis

9. SG Gary Trent Jr. (Player option)

10. SG Andre Jackson Jr. (Team option)

11. SG Gary Harris (Player option)

12. PG/SG Kevin Porter Jr. (Player Option)

13. SF Ousmane Dieng (Team option)

14. Taurean Prince (Pending free agent)

15. Jericho Sims (Pending free agent)

A good starting point for a rebuild to be sure. Tyler Herro is rumoured to be on the move, perhaps to Detroit in order to add more draft capital. I would expect a player like Herro would be worth two first round picks, maybe a good developmental player and a first round pick.

Myles Turner is another player that is in trade talks (as he always seems to be). I’m not as big of a fan of trading him, because Turner fits in essentially any offense on the planet given his elite rim protecting and floor stretching ability. That being said, Milwaukee may see Kel’el Ware as their big man of the future and look to move Turner to a team in need of a center (Lakers, Raptors, etc.).

I can almost guarantee Kuzma is on the move. Given his age, he does not necessarily fit the Bucks new timeline.

Perhaps the most valuable asset in this deal is the 13th pick of the draft. Now Milwaukee can add two more lottery players (in a stacked class) to this young team, or use the No. 10 and No. 13 picks to move up (although I believe this is unlikely). In my most recent mock, I had the Bucks taking Kingston Flemings at No. 10 and the Heat taking Dailyn Swain at No. 13. One thing the Bucks lack is wing depth, so now I bet the Bucks go with a bigger upside pick at No. 10 and take Nate Ament and still take Swain at No. 13. At least that is what I would like to see them do.

I doubt Milwaukee is done making moves and will enter rebuild/almost retool mode moving forward immediately.

Giannis’ Legacy

Quickly, it’s worth mentioning what Giannis is leaving behind in Milwaukee. Underdog NBA summed it up quite nicely:

The resume speaks for itself. It’s a new chapter in Miami. It’s a new chapter in Milwaukee. I can’t wait for both.