Winners: Philadelphia 76ers and Toronto Raptors

Let’s start with the blockbusters. The depth of the Eastern Conference is going to be harrowing next season, and two teams have gotten meaningfully better in the past few days. One came completely out of nowhere. The 76ers were forgotten. Not only had they not been linked to Jaylen Brown before they acquired him from their rival, but they had also been widely regarded as perhaps the least interesting team of the offseason. They were basically stuck with the same roster core that got swept by New York in the second round — two of the most burdensome, seemingly untradeable contracts in the NBA (Joel Embiid and Paul George), and two of the most electrifying, untouchable young guards in the league (Tyrese Maxey and VJ Edgecombe). At both ends of the spectrum of trade potential, zero maneuverability.

Then the Celtics came along. They were floating Brown to anyone willing to listen (including Denver). — the 36-year-old George, two first-round picks and two second-rounders — was an astonishing package that revealed Boston’s desperation and Brown’s sparse market. It was understood that Philadelphia would need to attach at least one first-round pick, probably more, to get off George’s contract. If that accounts for the two first-rounders in the deal, then the 76ers essentially got Brown for nothing.

Whatever the analytics community thinks of his value as a supermax player, one thing Brown does is play. He’s been available for 82% of regular-season games in the past five years and hasn’t missed a playoff game during that time. The 76ers just got a durable Finals MVP who’s seven years younger than the aging star they sacrificed. They have a team that should win a lot of games next season, even if Embiid is in and out of the lineup.

Toronto’s trade to reunite with Kawhi Leonard was likewise an absolute home run. Leonard does have his injury demons, but he’s such a perfect fit with the Raptors’ current roster that he’s well worth the risk (Brandon Ingram, Gradey Dick, two firsts, two seconds). An emotionally satisfying trade for the city, and one with legitimate upside. Leonard and Scottie Barnes will be fun to watch.

Losers: Miami Heat and Milwaukee Bucks

The biggest trade of the offseason has turned out to be one of the most underwhelming. The Bucks were obviously going to be losers no matter what they got back for Giannis Antetokounmpo. Tough to feel excited about three first-round picks right after you’re forced to trade a franchise icon.

Miami, meanwhile, gave up a lot of young role players and walked away with a pretty stripped-down roster that … doesn’t seem that much better than the Milwaukee team Antetokounmpo is leaving?

Certainly, if LeBron James jumps on board, the 2026-27 iteration of the Heat will suddenly look more compelling. But this looks like an incomplete team right now, especially after losing free agent deadeye Norman Powell to Chicago. Pat Riley’s vision for the Giannis era probably involves multiple transaction cycles. Every trade deadline and offseason going forward is an opportunity to keep building out the supporting cast.

And even when that vision starts to come into everyone else’s view, there’s the question of whether Giannis and Bam Adebayo can fit together as a pair of non-shooting bigs in the modern game.

Miami can’t be called an outright loser after acquiring a top-five player in the league. But it’s not an immediate championship contender either.

Winner: The whiteboard and someone on it

Wearing a Wimbledon bucket hat, superagent Rich Paul went on his podcast Friday, rolled out a whiteboard and provided a literal illustration of his client LeBron James’ free agency options, including the perks of various potential destinations. (Steph Curry? Oil? Golf? Africa?)

As a piece of NBA content: 10 out of 10, no notes.

The whiteboard is an instant classic meme that will live on in the social media era of basketball fandom. And one of the 10 teams listed on it will eventually be rewarded with arguably the most valuable bargain in the history of NBA free agency. Depending on who you ask, James is still generally considered a top-20 or top-30 player in the league, even at 41 years old. He’s very likely to sign for less than $20 million (maybe even for the veteran minimum salary) to play with a contender.

From a basketball standpoint alone, it will be a staggeringly team-friendly deal. That’s before considering the merchandise and ticket sales, especially if James announces that his 24th season will be his last.

Someone will win big. In the meantime, James and Paul can relish being the center of attention in an NBA offseason, one last time, for old time’s sake.

Loser: Buyers being sellers

At the trade deadline in February, we wrote that one of the big winners was the trend of “sellers being buyers.” Tanking teams like Washington, Utah and Indiana collected win-now talent to stash for the next season. Now the Wizards can unleash Anthony Davis and Trae Young alongside No. 1 overall pick AJ Dybantsa and recent No. 2 pick Alex Sarr. The Jazz will play a starting lineup with Jaren Jackson Jr., Lauri Markkanen and newly drafted Darryn Peterson. The Pacers, even after losing their pick to lousy lottery luck, will add Ivica Zubac to a core that reached Game 7 of the Finals a year ago.

We’re seeing the inverse of that strategy from multiple would-be contenders this summer.

Boston’s decision to trade Brown was jarring in large part because it signaled a willingness to take a step back next season. Brown and Jayson Tatum never ended up getting a chance to play to the final buzzer of a season together after they won the championship. Tatum was out for the end of the 2025 New York series and the 2026 Philly one. Who’s to say they couldn’t have won the title in 2027 with Tatum fully recovered from his torn Achilles?

Equally fascinating is Charlotte’s decision to sell high on LaMelo Ball after the best season of his career — and his first with 50 or more games played since 2021-22. We’re not too far removed from Ball being perceived as a losing player with negative trade value. The Hornets jumped at an opportunity to get back a starter-level role player (Naz Reid), a first-rounder, three first-round swaps and three second-rounders for him. That could very well prove to be a shrewd if cold-hearted decision.

But for us neutrals, it’s a shame that nobody will ever know what would’ve happened had Charlotte decided to run it back with a starting lineup that posted a league-best 25.7 net rating from Jan. 1 through the end of last season. Ball was the engine of that offense, a brilliant playmaker with positional size and a talent for making his teammates better (when he wasn’t launching one-legged logo 3s early in the shot clock).

Just one scribe’s hunch: The Hornets will miss him. They have an abundance of shooting but not much shot creation, especially after flipping Miles Bridges for Royce O’Neale and Grayson Allen. That trade was another savvy bit of business by a front office that seems to know what it’s doing. Still, it indicates an organizational willingness to temporarily regress — and a belief that last season wasn’t real.

This approach could become more common. Trades and extensions are the new free agency in the current CBA landscape. When playoff teams get antsy under pressure to offer long-term max extensions to second-tier stars, they might simply opt to trade those players. Get something back while you can; make the contract negotiation someone else’s problem. The difference in the two situations this summer? One team sold high; another team miscalculated and thought it was.

Winner: Walker Kessler

The biggest individual winner of the offseason, and it’s not particularly close. Nothing about Kessler’s situation said “four years, $130 million, player option.” He was a restricted free agent coming off a season-ending injury. He played five games for Utah last year.

But the Lakers had cap space, and Luka Doncic wanted them to get him a shot-blocking, rim-running center to catch his alley-oops. That manufactured leverage for Kessler, who ended up in Hollywood via sign-and-trade. The Jazz made the most of it, getting back two first-round picks and two swaps — basically an added payment from Los Angeles to guarantee safe delivery of the asset, rather than dealing with the risk and suspense of an offer sheet.

Think about what those picks say: Kessler (at $32 million per year) was deemed more valuable than Jaylen Brown (at $60 million) this week. It’s an incredible career move for the 7-footer, who got paid handsomely — maybe even overpaid — and should automatically look good playing with Doncic.

An admittedly biased take from someone who covered Kessler in college: That contract isn’t as much of a reach as most NBA observers have labeled it. His job next to Luka will be simplified — roll, catch, finish — and he’s got a burgeoning jump shot that could diversify what the Lakers are able to do with him. Defensively, he’s already one of the best rim protectors in the game. (I should know. I’ve tried to score on him.)

The Lakers will attract a range of opinions for the next three months. They’ve used their cap space to overhaul their team around Doncic and Austin Reaves, despite the fact that they seemed content to move on from arguably the best player in this free agency class. Can the combination of Kessler, Quentin Grimes, Sandro Mamukelashvili and Collin Sexton raise this team’s ceiling? Or will Los Angeles remain a clear level below OKC and San Antonio?

Loser: Julius Randle (and Tim Connelly if this doesn’t work)

The way this turned out for Randle in Minnesota is pretty tough. Two years after the Knicks traded him for Karl-Anthony Towns, he watched his former team end a 53-year championship drought, then immediately got traded — not just traded, but salary-dumped — to the other team in New York that might as well not exist compared to the Knicks. He’ll get to experience the city’s joy during their victory lap next season. He just won’t get to take part in it.

Randle was excellent for the Timberwolves in the 2025 playoffs. Not so much in 2026. Getting rid of him was the means by which Minnesota acquired Ball. It was also Connelly’s way of admitting that he lost the KAT trade.

The Wolves had clearly reached their ceiling with a Randle-Rudy Gobert frontcourt, getting crushed in the Western Conference Finals two consecutive years. They felt like they had no choice but to pivot. Now they’re pretty much out of draft capital and out of methods to improve their roster around Anthony Edwards if the Ball experiment crashes and burns. No pressure.

Under-the-radar winner: Chicago Bulls. They’re under new front office management, and it shows. With a new lottery system that “relegates” the odds of the worst teams, they can’t be excessively bad next season. But they’re not trying to be a true playoff contender, either. Enter Norman Powell and Nic Claxton, two solid players on good contracts to help Chicago have an identity in the first year of Caleb Wilson’s career. Poaching coach Tiago Splitter from Portland was a nice touch. Nothing extravagant this summer, but smart moves and a sense of direction.

Under-the-radar loser: Detroit Pistons. Until further notice. Patience at the trade deadline last season was one thing. The No. 1 seed in the East was comfortable with the likelihood that its flaws would be exposed in the playoffs. They were. So now … still nothing. Running it back with Jalen Duren on a more expensive contract and swapping out Tobias Harris for John Collins isn’t going to cut it. The East will be too good. It’s time for the Pistons to go get a secondary scorer.

At least, that’s what Rich Paul’s visual aid suggests.

James is indeed considering the Nuggets as a potential free agency destination, his longtime friend and agent said on “,” a podcast that Paul hosts with Max Kellerman.

As a discussion guide for the show’s LeBron segment Friday, with James’ name at the center and 10 teams orbiting it. Five of those teams were scribbled on the outer edges of the board: New York, San Antonio, Dallas, Boston and Golden State, the last of which caused Kellerman to wonder aloud if Paul was trying to throw people off the scent. The Warriors have been widely considered one of the favorites to land James for his 24th season.

Then there were the five teams closest to James’ name, expressed as quartets — the projected starting lineups that LeBron would hypothetically be joining.

Cleveland, Philadelphia, Miami, Minnesota, Denver.

“Is Denver actually a legitimate destination?” Kellerman asked.

“It wouldn’t be on the board (if it wasn’t),” Paul replied.

The four players listed to represent Denver were Jamal Murray, Cam Johnson, Aaron Gordon and Nikola Jokic — a decision almost as curious as the one to relegate Golden State to the exterior. Notably absent was Peyton Watson, a restricted free agent who is also Paul’s client. The Nuggets entered this offseason prepared to trade at least one starter (with Johnson seen as the most likely candidate) to help them re-sign Watson, wanting to signal that he was their top priority.

No such trade has materialized two days into free agency, and no contract agreement has been reached with Watson yet.

That Denver has seemingly taken a step back on the trade front, at least for the moment, can ironically be interpreted as an aggressive stance. The Nuggets aren’t required by rule to clear out any salary to make room for a new Watson contract. They have Watson’s full Bird rights, having drafted and developed him over the last four years. They can spend as lavishly as they want to keep him — even into the second apron. It’s just that NBA owners, including the Kroenkes, have shown a tendency to treat the second apron as a self-imposed hard cap.

The Nuggets are projected to be a second apron team if they re-sign Watson and don’t cut any other salary. They would also be paying repeater tax penalties.

But in a crowded field of LeBron suitors, perhaps that’s the best way to stand out as a committed championship contender. For now, Paul’s omission of Watson on the whiteboard reads as a leverage play.

“They’ve got one big hurdle,” he said of the Nuggets’ offseason, referring to Watson.

The Denver Post first reported on Wednesday that the Nuggets had contacted James to show interest in the 41-year-old forward, who’s nearing the end of a legendary career. Paul’s whiteboard confirms that the interest is mutual, even if Denver isn’t the frontrunner. He has said that James is willing to sign a low-cost deal and that his decision will be based on “happiness.”

The superagent also wrote the name “Kroenke” on the board, referencing James’ friendship with Nuggets president Josh Kroenke, then taking note of owner Stan Kroenke’s recent track record of winning championships in various sports leagues.

The four players listed for Cleveland were Donovan Mitchell, James Harden, Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen.

For Miami: Davion Mitchell, Andrew Wiggins, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Bam Adebayo.

For Philadelphia: Tyrese Maxey, VJ Edgecombe, newly acquired Jaylen Brown and Joel Embiid.

For Minnesota: Anthony Edwards, LaMelo Ball, Jaden McDaniels and Rudy Gobert.

Hardaway, 34, spent one season with the Nuggets on a veteran minimum deal. He averaged 13.5 points off the bench on 40.7% perimeter shooting, helping Denver lead the league in 3-point efficiency. The 6-foot-5 guard played 80 games and finished third place for NBA Sixth Man of the Year. He made the second-most 3s ever for a Nuggets player in a single season (224), trailing only Jamal Murray — who amassed 245 the same year.

The Nuggets had to Hardaway because they hadn’t rostered him for three seasons, limiting their ability to compete with other offers like Miami’s. The free agency moratorium began Tuesday evening (4 p.m. MT), with Hardaway at the top of the Heat’s priority list. Due to CBA restraints, the Nuggets will need to be largely dependent on veteran minimum signings this week as they fill out their roster.

“I think it¶¶Òõap the best contract in the league right now,” Aaron Gordon said in April when discussing Hardaway’s vet minimum.

When asked about his rationale for signing with Denver at training camp last September, Hardaway told The Denver Post he hadn’t considered that players tend to get paid more after playing alongside Nikola Jokic.

“I didn’t even think about that until you asked me that question,” he told The Post at the time, laughing. “I wasn’t even thinking about that. I mean, I knew coming here and playing with Jok, Jamal (Murray) and AG (would be good for me). Being on an opposing team, you get tired of guarding that stuff. You get tired of guarding backdoors, back screens, slips. And then you’ve got a big like that who’s throwing the ball any type of way right on the numbers. That’s what I was looking at more so than making a bag.”

The Heat will be Hardaway’s sixth team. He becomes the first player to be teammates with Jokic, Luka Doncic and Giannis Antetokounmpo, three of the biggest stars of the 2020s. He has also crossed paths with Dirk Nowitzki, Carmelo Anthony, Dwight Howard, Jalen Brunson and Kyrie Irving over the course of his 13-year career.

By suiting up for Miami, Hardaway follows in his father’s footsteps. Tim Hardaway Sr. made three All-NBA teams with the Heat in the 1990s.

As of late Tuesday, the Nuggets had nine players under contract (not including their own free agents, such as Peyton Watson and Bruce Brown). They have at least $203.4 million in guaranteed salary committed to those nine players, making them a luxury tax-paying team already with six more open roster spots.

Hardaway joins Jalen Pickett, whose $2.4 million team option was declined on Monday, as players from the 2025-26 team who won’t return next season.

That would be Celtics wing Jaylen Brown, who has emerged as a trade candidate over the last week since Boston’s unsuccessful attempt to offer him to Milwaukee for Antetokounmpo. The Bucks ultimately chose Miami’s more robust package, leaving Boston with an awkward dilemma.

Brown led the Celtics to 56 wins and the No. 2 seed in the East while co-star Jayson Tatum was rehabbing from an Achilles injury last season, only for them to lose in the first round of the playoffs to seventh-seeded Philadelphia. The disappointing result had already sparked a wave of uncertainty about the future of Boston’s core — a situation reminiscent of the Nuggets’ crossroads after their own shocking first-round exit.

Both teams rode their star duos to championships this decade, and both have regressed in the years since.

The Nuggets have registered mild interest in Brown, having internally discussed whether they would have a realistic chance to acquire the All-NBA swingman if they were to actively pursue him, as NBA insiders Marc Stein and Jake Fischer first reported over the weekend.

But all indications, for now at least, are that no such pursuit is likely to occur. Multiple team sources relayed early this week that their reported interest in Brown has been overstated. And two other league sources who spoke to The Denver Post were highly skeptical that the Nuggets would be able to complete a deal for the 2024 Finals MVP. Boston reportedly wants up to four first-round draft picks for Brown. While that’s widely viewed as an unreasonable asking price — Milwaukee got three back in the Antetokounmpo deal — the Nuggets don’t have first-rounders available to trade.

Lead executives Jon Wallace and Ben Tenzer made it a priority to replenish their depleted asset pool when they traded out of the first round of the NBA Draft last week. Where does that leave them? With three second-round picks once the new league year begins in July, plus .

That’s all to say that Brown’s market would need to continue to dry up, or Boston’s priorities would need to shift away from a picks-based package, for the Nuggets to truly have a chance to pounce. Even then, there’s no certainty they would make an aggressive push.

What would a trade look like?

Even if nothing comes of the recent smoke, it shouldn’t come as any surprise that Denver has contemplated a player of Brown’s pedigree. When a sixth-place MVP finisher becomes available, it’s due diligence. Kevin Durant was discussed internally last year before Phoenix traded him to Houston, team sources told The Post at the time.

So what would a Nuggets package look like? And would Brown meaningfully improve their roster? If these questions are worth exploring inside the front office, then they certainly are outside the walls of Ball Arena as well, as Brown represents the most dramatic roster-building avenue hypothetically available to the Nuggets at this point.

As The Post reported in April, Cam Johnson has long been considered the most likely Nuggets starter to be traded this offseason due to his expiring contract, though multiple key players could be on the move this week. Johnson and Christian Braun have been the front office’s primary focus amid efforts to reconfigure Nikola Jokic’s supporting cast — and shed enough salary to ward off Peyton Watson’s suitors in restricted free agency.

The Nuggets have been far more reluctant to include franchise cornerstones Aaron Gordon and Jamal Murray in trade conversations, league and team sources have told The Post — ready to listen, not so much to shop them, . But there have also been plenty of murmurs around the league speculating about Denver’s willingness to consider a large-scale roster overhaul.

Brown is on a supermax contract, with a $57.1 million cap hit next season that makes him the seventh-highest-paid player in the league. The Nuggets could aggregate several smaller contracts to match salary in theory, but if they acquired Brown without including Jamal Murray in the outgoing package, they would have three players occupying 100.7% of the salary cap — $166.2 million in combined 2026-27 salary.

Just one month ago, team president Josh Kroenke was reflecting on Denver’s rationale for trading Michael Porter Jr. when he said: “We had to take a hard look at where we had committed ourselves from a salary standpoint, and understanding that having three max players was probably not something that was gonna be continuous for us going forward. … That was something we felt the organization needed to do to maintain a roster going forward, to establish more depth.”

Consider it unlikely, then, that Denver would trade for Brown without Murray’s $50.1 million salary going the other direction. Building out a deep rotation would become immensely challenging, even if Wallace and Tenzer get a green light from ownership to spend over the $199 million luxury tax line.

This leads to the delicate dynamic of a trade rumor like this: Murray. He’s an all-time Denver sports great, a surly but selfless star who speaks lovingly of his basketball bond with Jokic. He helped the Nuggets win their first championship. They would never take the possibility of trading him lightly, and the last thing they want to do is make the same mistake Boston just made with Brown — alienating a longtime star by offering him in a trade and failing to complete the deal.

If the Nuggets ever have plans of escalating trade talks involving Murray, they must be careful not to misread the situation.

Would the Celtics bite at the opportunity to upgrade their backcourt with a newly minted All-NBA point guard? Keeping in mind that Denver ideally wants to shed salary, there would probably need to be supplementary pieces involved, likely hard-capping both teams at the second apron.

For example, Murray and Johnson for Brown and a cheap role player of the Nuggets’ choosing — let’s just say Baylor Scheierman — would be allowed under the league’s trade rules, netting a $13.3 million salary reduction for Denver. Murray and Gordon for Brown and Sam Hauser would result in a $14.2 million reduction.

Obviously, if this is a two-team hypothetical trade, Boston would have to be comfortable with eschewing first-round draft compensation in order to land a player of Murray’s caliber.

It would obviously be a bold move from both sides, a swap of home-grown stars signaling belief that both the Jokic-Murray and Tatum-Brown partnerships have gone stale.

Murray and Brown are a strangely fitting trade match, in many ways. They’re three months apart in age, so neither team would be disadvantaged in that regard. They were drafted four picks apart in 2016 — Brown third overall, Murray seventh. They’ve enjoyed arguably the two best pro careers in that class. They both have three years remaining on their current contracts, with no player or team options.

For Boston, it would be a different look for Tatum: a skilled guard who initiate the offense and create, who can play off the ball and hit 3s at a blistering rate, who’s unusually accustomed to screening for a bigger ball-handler in inverted pick-and-rolls. The Celtics love to play the math game. Murray was the most efficient high-volume 3-point shooter in the sport last season, 43.5% on 7.5 attempts per game.

Then again, there’s this recent quote from Celtics president of basketball ops Brad Stevens: “One of the things that we’ve gotta figure out is how to have more of an impact at the rim, and I think we do need to add to our team to do that.” That’s as much of a sign as any from Denver that this (hypothetical!) trade probably doesn’t have legs.

For the Nuggets, it would be a sacrifice of unparalleled pick-and-roll chemistry in exchange for a secondary star who can defend at a way higher level than Murray. (Brown proudly touts himself as the best two-way player in the league right now.) For years, the Nuggets have had to contend with opponents’ desire to put their two best players in every action. Jokic and Murray have dazzled offensively and stumbled around in the dark defensively. Brown was responsible for guarding Luka Doncic in the NBA Finals two years ago. He has switchable size and a chip on his shoulder to uphold his self-appointed label.

It would be a fascinating stylistic experiment. Brown’s playmaking ability has improved over the years, but his instinct is generally to use a ball screen to hunt a mismatch in isolation, as opposed to Murray’s bob-and-weave deployment of Jokic in the two-man game. The Nuggets would also desperately need to make other moves to find a new point guard; one league source doubted that a Jokic-Brown-Gordon frontcourt would mesh well without a table-setter.

Brown’s shot selection was more midrange-heavy than Murray’s last season, with 23.7% of his total field goal attempts classified as midrange by NBA tracking data. He’s a bona fide tough shot maker, but the burden of efficiency is heavy when taking what’s considered a low-percentage shot. Murray took 19.6% of his shots from that range last season, as the Nuggets were encouraged by his uptick in 3-point attempts.

Brown’s shot selection was also more paint-heavy — 50.1% of his attempts were in the lane and 22.4% were in the restricted area, compared to 39% and 17.1% for Murray. The Nuggets know they need more rim pressure off the dribble. Murray is a more skilled ball-handler than Brown, but Brown uses athleticism and physicality better to get downhill.

Jokic’s ability to draw double-teams — and his eagerness to pass out of them — would open up a lot of driving angles and attacking opportunities for Brown, who has a strong appetite for the ball. In Denver, he would be a clearer No. 2 on the roster hierarchy than he was before, but he’d be playing alongside a primary option whose first instinct would be to help him score a ton of points.

The list of pros and cons goes on from there. Brown gets to the foul line at a better frequency than Murray. Murray has a higher assist rate and lower turnover rate than Brown. Brown has proven he’s a winning player, given that his crowning achievement was a playoff trophy — but there’s also that whole pesky war on analytics that he’s been waging online. Should Denver be concerned that Boston routinely has a better net rating when he isn’t on the floor? Or that Brown has been so easily provoked by such an obviously silly discourse? (This all started with a quote that the entire basketball community knows is ridiculous, suggesting Brown is the seventh-best player on a team.)

In Murray, the Nuggets have a known entity on the court and a buy-in they trust behind the scenes. The risk factor in trading him would be considerable. The ripple effects on Denver’s roster and system would be substantial.

It would be an arrangement born of two teams in a similar predicament, trying to figure out which cards to play next in an era of parity that¶¶Òõap threatening to leave them in the dust.

Or maybe this is nothing, and one of the longest-standing active tandems in the NBA will live to fight another day together. Even if Boston’s doesn’t.

Meanwhile, Denver’s roster remains unchanged. Teams are officially allowed to negotiate with free agents starting at 4 p.m. MT next Tuesday (because they definitely haven’t already been negotiating with anyone; that would never happen). It’s the epicenter of transaction season, with a number of trades also likely to take place in the surrounding hours and days.

The Nuggets are expected to remain engaged in trade talks as much as any team during this time, with looming luxury tax constraints ²¹²Ô»åÌýPeyton Watson set to become a restricted free agent. Before the critical week arrived, co-general managers Jon Wallace and Ben Tenzer spoke to reporters after the draft. While they made a point of not going into detail on specific plans, here are a few takeaways from their comments and other relevant notes to Denver from around the league.

Wallace wants ball-handling, ‘creativity’

After being named captain of his national team, Nikola Jokic recently took part in a rare interview scrum with reporters in Serbia, where he has no contractual media obligations (unlike those required of him during the NBA season). With his usual bluntness, Jokic said the Nuggets weren’t a good enough team to win last season based on the results.

Denver’s brass was asked about those comments on Wednesday, and Wallace responded by sharing some thoughts on the team’s internal and external goals.

“I think for your leader to say that, you can’t deal with a problem until you acknowledge it as a problem. And he did that,” Wallace said. “I think any time you get bounced in the first round like that, everyone’s gotta look themselves in the mirror. I think a large part of that is health. I think a large part of that is, as our team has entered into a more seasoned state individually, the type of basketball we play. The way we prepare, the way we attack teams is gonna have to change a little bit. And I think our guys were able to kind of have that opportunity to communicate amongst themselves about what’s gonna be needed from them this summer.

“Obviously, what we did (in the draft) was trying to plug a couple of holes in that … guys who can help with the toughness, defensive ability, rebounding. And now from there, we’ll look to see what we can do in terms of adding the creativity. … The ball-handling.”

From coach David Adelman to Wallace, the Nuggets have been unafraid to admit they want more players who can create a shot or an advantage off the dribble. That seems to be a theme around the league after recent playoff runs by Oklahoma City (SGA, Jalen Williams, Ajay Mitchell, Cason Wallace), Indiana (Tyrese Haliburton, Andrew Nembhard, TJ McConnell, Bennedict Mathurin) and San Antonio (De’Aaron Fox, Stephon Castle, Dylan Harper) — teams that had a surplus of ball-handlers capable of taking over for a possession.

Wallace said the Nuggets tried to move up in the draft for a point guard. Now that they were unable to accomplish that, they’ll be eyeing creators on the trade market in free agency. Wallace’s allusion to “the type of basketball we play” was probably in regard to that; Denver’s lack of quickness and rim pressure stood in stark contrast to Minnesota’s aggressive downhill attack during the playoffs.

Peyton Watson’s free agency landscape

Part of Denver’s vision for a team with more shot creation involves Watson, of course. Multiple team sources have reiterated to The Post in recent days that the 23-year-old wing is a top offseason priority. The front office’s comments on Wednesday also indicated as much.

“We feel good about where that’s at,” Tenzer said, “and we hope Peyton is here a long time.”

“A lot of the guys that we already have in-house, we expect to have those guys here for a long time, as Ben mentioned,” Wallace added later, not mentioning Watson by name but clearly referencing him. “And so a lot of that is just, make sure we communicate. We already have good relationships with those guys. Really following up, making sure they’re in a good spot and good space for us to hopefully get something done in the future.”

A couple of recent transactions bode well for Denver. Coming into the offseason, the Lakers, Bulls and Nets were seen as the biggest threats to throw a big offer sheet at Watson because of their financial flexibility. But Minnesota’s salary dump of Julius Randle last Monday took a chunk out of Brooklyn’s cap space and Chicago’s. The Bulls acquired Nic Claxton’s $23.3 million salary in the trade. The Nets absorbed about a $10 million payroll increase by turning Claxton into Randle.

Later in the week, Los Angeles agreed to a max extension with incumbent free agent Austin Reaves that will pay him an estimated $41.3 million next season, . The Lakers have more moving parts to sort out next week, most importantly, LeBron James. They’re also reportedly under pressure from Luka Doncic to pursue a rim-running center.

Nuggets ‘confident’ they can re-sign Spencer Jones

He’s been much less discussed than Watson, but Jones will also be an important restricted free agent for the Nuggets next week. He emerged last season as a viable 3-and-D wing who plays with a physicality that Denver otherwise lacked.

After earning a standard contract, he told The Post that he wanted to enter restricted free agency this summer rather than take more guaranteed years with the Nuggets. Now is his chance to test the waters and find out if any suitors will approach him with an offer sheet. Denver doesn’t have much financial wiggle room for the back half of the roster, but Wallace had this to say on Wednesday:

“I think Spencer’s done himself a lot of favors this past year, specifically how he stepped in and defended, made shots. He was just a big part of what we did. But we feel confident. He’s a homegrown guy. You want to reward those guys for sticking to the plan and really developing themselves. So we feel confident in where we are with him.”

Like Watson, Jones is due a qualifying offer by the end of Monday.

Jonas Valanciunas reportedly Europe-bound

According to an overseas report by BasketNews, Denver’s backup center is prepared to sign a contract with the Lithuanian Euro League team Zalgiris Kaunas — an unsurprising development after Panathinaikos tried to lure him away from the NBA after the Nuggets traded for him last summer.

In 2025, they had no reason to release him from his contract. This time, due to the payroll crunch, it’s a near certainty that Denver will let him go — whether via trade, waive-and-stretch or clean release. Tenzer said the team is still evaluating how to handle the situation. Valanciunas has a $10 million non-guaranteed salary for next season, with $2 million of it guaranteed.

“We saw the reports, too,” Tenzer said. “But you know, we saw that last summer, so it’s all good.”

Tim Hardaway Jr. free agency

Late last season, Adelman said unprompted that he would love to have Hardaway back for a second year. The veteran guard joined the Nuggets in 2025 on a one-year veteran minimum contract and went on to post one of the best shooting seasons of his career. After finishing third place for NBA Sixth Man of the Year, he might have priced himself out of the minimum, which is what Denver will be relying on to fill out roster spots.

One potential Hardaway suitor to watch is Miami. The Heat will be looking for spacers to put around Antetokounmpo, who might already be dealing with crowded driving lanes because Bam Adebayo is his new frontcourt partner.

Hardaway has feasted on open shots created by Jokic and Doncic in recent years. Giannis would be a nice addition to his collection of superstar teammates in a city he calls home. Tim Hardaway Sr. spent parts of six seasons in Miami, making three All-NBA teams with the Heat. If they approach Tim Jr. with a marginal pay increase, it might be a natural fit.

MIAMI — Giannis Antetokounmpo is getting traded to the Miami Heat in a blockbuster move that will send Tyler Herro and a slew of other players and draft capital to the Milwaukee Bucks, a person with knowledge of the move said Monday night.

Bobby Portis is coming to Miami with Antetokounmpo, with Herro, Jaime Jaquez Jr., Kel’el Ware and Kasparas Jakucionis going to the Bucks, said the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the trade had not been finalized by the NBA.

Milwaukee is also getting three first-round picks in the deal, including the 13th selection in Tuesday’s draft.

And just like that, the Heat have another superstar — as they pursue what would be a fourth championship and eighth trip to the NBA Finals since 2006.

A lot of trade concepts league-wide are percolating around the first round of the draft, set to air Tuesday (6 p.m. MT) on ESPN. The Nuggets possess the 26th overall pick, which they were barred from trading — until draft day. For one night only, the pick offers them a variety of options that weren’t previously available. It’s an important moment for a team faced with a dwindling asset pool.

How will Denver approach it? Here are three avenues Jon Wallace and Ben Tenzer could take with their first draft pick since taking over as co-general managers last summer.

Trade up

The Nuggets have indeed explored the possibility of trading up from No. 26, a league source told The Post last week, confirming a report by The Stein Line. This would be a clever way to kill two birds with one stone, in theory — shed a chunk of salary and improve your chances of drafting a viable contributor. Is Cam Johnson’s expiring contract appealing enough to get Denver into the lottery, or at least the late teens? Would any teams feel inclined to ask for Aaron Gordon instead? Denver is understood to be more reluctant to give him up.

The premise is easier said than done. You have to identify a team drafting higher than Denver, with a reason to want one of Denver’s starters and room to take on more salary. There’s an interesting window of teams from No. 17 to No. 21: Thunder (via Philadelphia), Hornets (via Orlando), Raptors, Spurs (via Atlanta), Pistons (via Minnesota). But Oklahoma City is in cost-cutting mode right now, as evidenced by the Aaron Wiggins trade on Sunday. San Antonio, like OKC, is a direct threat to the Nuggets. They might not want help improve either of those rosters. Detroit’s pick is only five before Denver’s, which is simply a less meaningful jump.

The Hornets might be the most feasible trade partner to watch. They own the 14th and 18th picks, making it more sensible for them to move one down in exchange for a win-now player. They’re one of the NBA’s most interesting on-the-rise teams, they have more financial flexibility than most, and they could use a forward upgrade to pair with Brandon Miller. Johnson or Gordon would be a good fit in their lineup, offering veteran playoff experience to a young roster that’s ready to contend in the East. The Nuggets would have to take back some salary, but Charlotte can make the math work with a bench piece like Grant Williams, who has only one year and $14.3 million left on his contract. The Nuggets could negotiate for No. 14 instead of No. 18 on the basis that Johnson for Williams is worth more than an eight-pick leap, and Charlotte could walk away with another pick in the same range regardless.

With this type of framework, Denver would essentially be turning one player into two roster spots at a cheaper combined cost — the player received in the trade (like Williams, to use the Charlotte example) and the drafted player’s rookie-scale contract.

Alternatively, could Johnson or Gordon land the Nuggets a second, separate first-round pick? A hypothetical example of this: Gordon to Detroit in a framework involving Isaiah Stewart or Caris LeVert and the 21st pick. If the Nuggets could pull off something along those lines, they could use both of their picks, or they could even package them in a subsequent trade to move up closer to the top 10.

Getting into or close to the lottery would ultimately improve the athletic ceiling of Denver’s pick in a loaded class. For instance, Texas wing Dailyn Swain is reportedly considered unlikely to fall out of the top 20 at this point, after having been linked to the Nuggets early in the pre-draft process. What Denver doesn’t want to do is get married to the idea of one prospect, as former general manager Calvin Booth did two years ago, spending three second-round picks to move up six spots for DaRon Holmes II.

Trade down, or out

Here’s a much less satisfying approach that would have terrible optics, particularly at the ownership level. The idea would be to use the 26th pick to execute a salary-dump trade, attaching it to a contract that’s perceived as bad money — namely, Zeke Nnaji or Christian Braun.

This can’t be ruled out because the Nuggets have burned through several draft picks in recent years to rid themselves of other unsavory salary figures. They traded three second-rounders in 2024 to dump Reggie Jackson, then used a 2032 first-rounder last summer to balance the scales on their MPJ-for-Johnson swap.

If they choose this direction on Tuesday, they would be foregoing an opportunity to improve the roster and wasting an asset almost entirely for luxury-tax savings (barring an unexpected and bizarre trade return). Even if they ended up re-signing Watson afterward and keeping other starters, it would be insufficient justification; sacrificing the pick without getting a rotation player back would be a cost-cutting move and nothing more, whereas trading up would also have productive implications for the team’s competitiveness.

Nnaji has two years remaining on his contract. He’s set to make $7.5 million next season. Trading him would help the Kroenkes avoid the second apron but not the luxury tax entirely.

Braun will make $21.6 million in the first season of a five-year ascending extension. Until the new league year begins at the end of June, he has a “poison pill provision” on his rookie contract, which means his current rookie-scale salary ($4.9 million) would count as the outgoing money in a trade for salary-matching purposes, while the incoming money for Team B would be calculated as an average of his current salary and his total extension pay, divided across the duration of the two contracts ($21.7 million). The purpose of the poison pill provision is to provide players some temporary security from being traded after they sign an extension with the team that drafted them.

Stand pat

If the Nuggets stay at No. 26, that doesn’t mean they won’t be active on the trade market going forward. They’ll be seeking opportunities to trade a starter for cap relief both on draft day and afterward, to discourage other teams from pursuing Watson. They can help themselves by telegraphing their ability and intent to match any offer sheet before free agency begins. Denver must extend a qualifying offer to Watson to officially trigger his restricted free agency.

The 26th pick is unlikely to yield a starter-level NBA player, but Watson is a convenient example of how valuable late first-rounders can turn out to be. Drafted 30th in 2022, he used all four years of his rookie deal to develop into a confident two-way talent, and now he’s going to shape the Nuggets’ offseason.

¹ó¾±²Ô²¹±ôÌý projected Denver to pick a range of players, including Texas’s Swain (CBS), Arizona’s Koa Peat (ESPN), Stanford’s Ebuka Okorie (Yahoo!), Kentucky’s Jayden Quaintance (The Athletic), and Louisville’s Ryan Conwell (Ringer).

In the lead-up to Tuesday’s draft, the Nuggets have primarily been gauging the trade market for Cam Johnson and Christian Braun, league sources have told The Post, confirming reports from other outlets. But Braun’s current value as a trade asset has been in question since the end of the season, and team president Josh Kroenke has said on the record that “everything is on the table” except for trading Nikola Jokic — a statement that raised eyebrows regarding the team’s willingness to listen to offers for Aaron Gordon and Jamal Murray as well.

Whoever ends up getting moved, lead executives Jon Wallace and Ben Tenzer will have a difficult needle to thread: shave salary ²¹²Ô»åÌýbring back rotational talent (and perhaps recoup some of the draft capital Denver sacrificed during the previous front office regime).

Who might they be able to target? Here’s a comprehensive list of 50 players the Nuggets could consider, broken down into three tiers, ordered from highest to lowest 2026-27 salary.

Note: Free agent sign-and-trade candidates not included — only players who are already under contract in 2026-27.

High-risk star player shake-ups

Remember, Kroenke has rationalized the 2025 Michael Porter Jr. trade by pointing out that it’s no longer viable to build around three max players under the current collective bargaining agreement. (Porter was signed to his max contract extension before this CBA.) With that in mind, if the Nuggets are going to roll the dice on an expensive star this offseason, it would almost certainly be in exchange for Murray’s $50.1 million salary. These 10 players are worth mentioning, but consider them the least likely on this list.

Anthony Davis, Wizards F, $58.5 million: Ever since Dallas traded him in February, there’s been a lot of buzz that Davis might not want to stay in Washington long-term. If he wasn’t so pricey and injury-prone, he’d make a lot of sense as a complementary two-way big to pair with Jokic.

Jaylen Brown, Celtics F, $57.1 million: If the All-NBA wing is leaving Boston, it’s probably as part of a Giannis Antetokounmpo trade.

Kawhi Leonard, Clippers F, $50.3 million: Embroiled in a cap circumvention scandal but fresh off the best offensive season of his career at 34 years old, the two-time Finals MVP is the type of ceiling-raising gamble that a lot of teams could talk themselves into.

De’Aaron Fox, Spurs G, $49.5 million: The Spurs have signaled that they plan to stand by Fox after his rough Finals — but what if, instead, they wanted a guard who’s better from 3-point range and more versatile off the ball to fit with their young backcourt? And what if Denver wanted a quicker downhill guard to provide better paint penetration?

Zach LaVine, Kings G, $49 million: Ex-Nuggets GM Calvin Booth flirted with the possibility of LaVine a couple of years ago. Now he’s an expiring contract. Twelve years in, the two-time All-Star is yet to prove he can be a winning player.

Kevin Durant, Rockets F, $43.9 million: Probably not a fit with what Denver needs in a star shot creator right now, but also, it’s Kevin Freaking Durant.

Ja Morant, Grizzlies G, $42.2 million: Is there anything left in Morant’s legs? This would be the ultimate buy-low move.

Zion Williamson, Pelicans F, $42.2 million: If it’s rim pressure you seek, few can do it more explosively than Williamson. Work ethic and injury concerns have followed him for years.

Franz Wagner, Magic F, $41.8 million: A secondary scorer who can defend, but he played only 34 games last season.

Kyrie Irving, Mavericks G, $39.5 million: The 34-year-old is coming off a torn ACL, but he’s shown throughout his career that he can be a match made in heaven for other generational superstars (LeBron James, Luka Doncic).

High-end role players, $20 million+ division

The more expensive a role player’s contract is, the less that player should generally cost from a trade standpoint. That’s the appeal of some of these 15 candidates. But can the Nuggets make the math work if they don’t want bigger salary figures on their roster to begin with?

Jrue Holiday, Trail Blazers G, $34.8 million: A consummate winner, with two rings this decade and two years left on his contract. You’re not getting any younger, though.

Jordan Poole, Pelicans G, $34 million: Poole is one-dimensional and overpriced, but he’s also going to be an expiring contract next season.

Dejounte Murray, Pelicans G, $32.8 million: Another buy-low option, the one-time All-Star has played in only 27% of games over the last two seasons.

Immanuel Quickley, Raptors G, $32.5 million: David Adelman has made it no secret how much he wants more ball-handling on the roster next year.

Jalen Suggs, Magic G, $32.4 million: Orlando is another team that wants to shed salary on the trade market this summer, and Suggs is the obvious candidate to shop. Injury-prone and inconsistent offensively, he’s also a capable table-setter and one of the best defensive guards in the league at his best. His contract is descending over the next four years. One to watch, for sure.

Andrew Wiggins, Heat F, $30.2 million: The former No. 1 overall pick is a sturdy, veteran two-way wing on an expiring contract. And Miami might be looking to make a few corresponding moves to build out the roster around Giannis if he ends up there.

RJ Barrett, Raptors F, $29.6 million: Probably less enticing to Denver than Quickley would be, but Barrett has averaged over 19 points per game in five straight years. Unfortunately for both he and Quickley, their current legacy is having been the trade package for OG Anunoby in 2023.

Jarrett Allen, Cavaliers C, $28 million: Just hear this one out: If the Nuggets really want to get creative in rethinking how to build around Jokic, one way to try is by using the most position-defying center of all time as, well, not the center. Put Jokic at the four, and go double-big with a traditional drop-coverage big for rim protection and vertical spacing.

Trey Murphy III, Pelicans F, $27 million: The belle of the ball this offseason — positional size, scoring and spacing for great financial value. If the Nuggets try to get into a bidding war for Murphy, they will probably lose. Doesn’t mean it’s not worth trying.

DeMar DeRozan, Kings F, $25.7 million: The Nuggets were monitoring his situation before the buyout deadline in March, but Sacramento didn’t waive him. This salary figure might be too much.

De’Andre Hunter, Kings F, $24.9 million: Sacramento makes sense as a trade partner because it has several players in this salary range (Keegan Murray and Malik Monk also among them).

Jonathan Kuminga, Hawks F, $24.3 million: Kuminga might have outsized ambition for himself, but he could provide some much-needed youth in Denver.

Nic Claxton, Nets C, $23.3 million: Same idea as Allen, equally unlikely.

Dillon Brooks, Suns F, $21 million: You don’t want to rely too much on Brooks in the playoffs like Phoenix just did, but he’s coming off his first 20-PPG season and — more importantly — brings a bit of a deranged edge to any locker room he enters.

Shaedon Sharpe, Trail Blazers G, $20.1 million: Scoring guard entering a four-year, $90 million rookie extension.

Role players, sub-$20 million division

There are dozens of players closer to the bottom of the NBA salary scale that could make sense for Denver to acquire entirely because of contract-matching. Here are 25 of them.

PJ Washington, Mavericks F, $19.8 million: The streaky shooter got hot at the right time in 2024 when he helped the Mavs reach the Finals. Washington will be 28 in August.

Grayson Allen, Suns G, $18.1 million: Previously a 41.4% career 3-point shooter, Allen took a dip last season (34.9%) when his attempts increased.

Keldon Johnson, Spurs F, $18 million: The Spurs probably wouldn’t trade someone so important to their team culture, but what if they had an opportunity to get Gordon? Then again, why would the Nuggets help them get even better?

Lu Dort, Thunder G, $17.7 million: Welcome to the second apron, OKC. Are you willing to pay up? Jokic’s newest enemy is one of the role players who could be on the chopping block if not.

Klay Thompson, Mavericks G, $17.5 million: The future Hall of Famer is a bench player at this point, and his salary is a lot to pay for a bench player. Still, volume shooting is a nice luxury.

Nikola Jovic, Heat F, $16.2 million: Jokic’s Olympic teammate is coming off a down year in Miami.

Duncan Robinson, Pistons G, $16 million: Detroit has room to spend a little more on a wing upgrade. Denver needs a cheaper one to help make room for Peyton Watson. Robinson for Cam Johnson, anyone?

Obi Toppin, Pacers F, $15 million: If the Pacers want to create more playing time for Jarace Walker, Toppin is their most likely trade candidate. Key contributor to their 2025 Finals run.

Herb Jones, Pelicans G, $14.9 million: His three-year, $68 million extension takes effect in 2027. In the meantime, this is one of the best bargains in the NBA for an elite 3-and-D guy.

Bobby Portis, Bucks C, $14.5 million: Not that the Nuggets need another small-ball big, but this is an affordable salary with a 2027 player option.

Jonathan Isaac, Magic F, $14.5 million: Despite flashes of extraordinary defense throughout his career, Isaac averaged only 10 minutes off the bench in the 52 games he played last season.

Grant Williams, Hornets F, $14.3 million: Expiring money for a hard-nosed bench player with Finals experience (and an extensive injury history).

Corey Kispert, Hawks G, $14 million: The 6-foot-6 shooter was traded from Washington to Atlanta at the deadline last season.

Moses Moody, Warriors G, $12.5 million: Moody’s status entering next season is unclear after he ruptured his left patellar tendon in March, a grisly season-ending injury for a solid role player.

Jarred Vanderbilt, Lakers F, $12.4 million: Probably can’t be trusted to stay out of foul trouble or stay in your playoff rotation, but Nuggets fans know this defense-and-energy wing well. Los Angeles might have to attach picks to get off his contract.

Davion Mitchell, Heat G, $12.4 million: Another ball-handler Denver could take a chance on. Showed flashes of big-game potential in the 2025 playoffs.

Isaac Okoro, Bulls G, $11.8 million: The Bulls are under new management. What direction will they choose this offseason?

Sam Hauser, Celtics G, $10.8 million: Boston and Denver would make natural trade partners, as the two championship contenders that had the most disappointing playoff results last season.

Naji Marshall, Mavericks G, $9.4 million: Marshall has torched Denver’s shaky perimeter defense a few times in recent years.

Aaron Wiggins, Thunder G, $9 million: OKC is bursting at the seams with playable guys who don’t play. Wiggins and Isaiah Joe ($11.3 million) faded from the rotation in key playoff games, which is more of a commentary on the Thunder’s depth.

Tre Mann, Hornets G, $8 million: Charlotte is an ascending team with a surplus of rotation guards and a shortage of high-quality forwards. Could be allured by Johnson or Gordon.

Goga Bitadze, Magic C, $7.6 million: Easy salary filler, a potential cheap backup big to replace Jonas Valanciunas.

Gradey Dick, Raptors F, $7.1 million: Might be time for a fresh start for the 22-year-old wing who was drafted 13th overall out of Kansas in 2023.

Jake LaRavia, Lakers F, $6 million: LaRavia played in all 82 games last season, but defenses are rightfully skeptical of how threatening his 3-point shot is.

Kris Dunn, Clippers G, $5.7 million: The Nuggets played him off the floor by the end of their 2025 first-round series against Los Angeles, illuminating offensive deficiencies. But his point-of-attack defense might be more than worth the flaws.

With a Game 7 upset over top-seeded Oklahoma City, Victor Wembanyama and the San Antonio Spurs guaranteed that an eighth different team in as many years will be crowned champion of the NBA. Such variety seemed impossible as recently as 2018, when the Golden State Warriors were at the height of their reign and decades of history suggested the NBA would always be the American sports league most characterized by dynasties.

But with a collective bargaining agreement averse to super-teams, everything changed. New luxury tax thresholds were introduced, imposing punitive roster-building restrictions on big spenders, scaring teams away from keeping their championship cores intact. The second apron became the boogeyman to front offices. Unrestricted free agency has crept toward extinction. The art of roster architecture has been replaced by the tedium of money management in many cases.

The Nuggets have been profoundly impacted by a system designed to make it harder for them to win Nikola Jokic a second ring. Other repeat dreamers have been thwarted as well. Boston essentially salary-dumped multiple Finals starters last offseason. Even the indefatigable Thunder will face uncomfortable decisions this summer (and next) as its payroll spikes into the second apron.

Titles are not to be taken for granted anymore. One is the new two.

As the Spurs and Knicks tipped off their best-of-seven series this week, we endeavored to rank all 16 teams that have reached the NBA Finals (including them) during the eight-year era of parity, dating back to 2019. Thirteen different franchises have fielded a Finals team during that time, including seven different Western Conference champs in the last seven seasons.

Which one-hit wonders have stood out most in a decade defined by the elusiveness of sustained dominance?

1. Boston Celtics, 2024 

• Regular season: 64-18 (1st in East)
• Net rating: 11.7 (1st)
• Playoffs: 16-3
• Playoff net: 8.6

The only team on this list that won 60 or more regular-season games and never faced elimination in the playoffs. The Celtics are a fitting choice for the most dominant team of the parity era so far because they’re the rare case of an NBA champion without an inner circle Hall of Famer. Instead, they caught lightning in a bottle with a starting lineup featuring five All-Star-caliber two-way talents: Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown (the franchise cornerstones) were surrounded by Jrue Holiday, Derrick White and Kristaps Porzingis.

2. Oklahoma City Thunder, 2025

• Regular season: 68-14 (1st in West)
• RS net rating: 12.7 (1st)
• Playoffs: 16-7
• Playoff net: 8.6

OKC has a fair case for the No. 1 spot, but nitpicking is the only way to differentiate between this team and Boston. The 2025 champs are docked a few brownie points only because they had to survive two home Game 7s against hobbled opponents. That doesn’t make the banner any less valid, but it does leave room to distinguish between their regular-season dominance and their ability to close out a playoff series. Still, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Jalen Williams were brilliant throughout this run, and OKC’s depth (aided by a lopsided 2024 offseason trade for Alex Caruso) suffocated top-heavy teams like Denver.

3. Golden State Warriors, 2019

• Regular season: 57-25 (1st in West)
• RS net rating: 6.5 (2nd)
• Playoffs: 14-8
• Playoff net: 3.1

The most difficult team to place, for obvious reasons. Crushing injuries to Kevin Durant and Klay Thompson symbolically marked the end of Golden State’s dominion and the beginning of the post-dynasty NBA. But when the two-time defending champion Warriors were healthy, they were still, you know, arguably the greatest roster ever assembled. They still almost pushed Toronto to a Finals Game 7 even after Durant tore his Achilles and Thompson his ACL.

4. Denver Nuggets, 2023

• Regular season: 53-29 (1st in West)
• RS net rating: 3.3 (6th)
• Playoffs: 16-4
• Playoff net: 8.0

The Nuggets lack the eye-popping regular-season résumé of Boston or Oklahoma City, but they still controlled the No. 1 seed in their conference for the last four months of the season without dropping. More importantly, they proved their stature with the second-most dominant title run of the teams on this list, mowing through Anthony Edwards, Durant, Devin Booker, LeBron James and Anthony Davis in the West. Perhaps this will be the only year it all comes together in perfect harmony around Nikola Jokic, the most decorated player of the decade so far.

5. Los Angeles Lakers, 2020

• Regular season: 52-19 (1st in West)
• RS net rating: 5.6 (5th)
• Playoffs: 16-5
• Playoff net: 6.9

It’s hard to escape the skepticism that has greeted LeBron and the Lakers for years since they emerged from the bubble, where they won the pandemic championship in an empty gym. But make no mistake, this team was a wagon. Aside from James and Davis, Los Angeles had a stellar defensive supporting cast headlined by Alex Caruso and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, both of whom went on to solidify their status as winning players with other champions higher on this list.

6. Toronto Raptors, 2019

• Regular season: 58-24 (2nd in East)
• Net rating: 5.8 (3rd)
• Playoffs: 16-8
• Playoff net: 5.6

One of the wildest playoff runs in league history, from Kawhi Leonard’s four-bounce buzzer beater to win Game 7, to the 2-0 series comeback in the Eastern Conference Finals, to the upset of Curry’s injury-hampered Warriors. It was Leonard’s masterpiece, but the roster around him was deeper than it’s given credit for: Kyle Lowry, Pascal Siakam, Fred VanVleet, Danny Green, OG Anunoby (until he missed the playoffs due to appendicitis), Norman Powell, Marc Gasol and Serge Ibaka each left their marks. A delightful team.

7. Milwaukee Bucks, 2021

• Regular season: 46-26 (3rd in East)
• Net rating: 5.8 (4th)
• Playoffs: 16-7
• Playoff net: 5.3

Sure, if Kevin Durant’s foot was behind the 3-point line, Milwaukee’s season would’ve technically ended in Game 7 of the second round. But every champion needs a little bit of luck. The Bucks just got slightly more than most. They also got an absolute tour de force of a playoff run from Giannis Antetokounmpo, who scored 40 in that Game 7 against Brooklyn, then 50 in a Game 6 win over Phoenix to close out the best Finals of the decade so far. If the Giannis era is indeed about to end in Milwaukee, at least they’ll always have 2021, when the stars aligned for Antetokounmpo, Khris Middleton and Jrue Holiday.

8. San Antonio Spurs, 2026*

• Regular season: 62-20 (2nd in West)
• Net rating: 8.4 (3rd)
• Playoffs: 12-7*
• Playoff net: 11.0*

They’re a few wins away from making eighth place look criminally low. For now, consider this one last gesture of trepidation toward a radically young team. By prevailing over Minnesota and OKC in back-to-back slugfests, the Spurs have shattered every precedent that experience is a non-negotiable playoff virtue. Victor Wembanyama is wise beyond his years, and Stephon Castle and Dylan Harper don’t seem to care that their combined age equals one LeBron.

9. New York Knicks, 2026*

• Regular season: 53-29 (3rd in East)
• Net rating: 6.4 (5th)
• Playoffs: 12-2*
• Playoff net: 19.8*

An 11-game win streak to bulldoze through the East playoffs forced NBA analysts to reconsider how good this Knicks team might actually be. If they can end Madison Square Garden’s title drought without needing a Game 7, they’ll join Denver and Boston as the only champions of the era to go 16-4 or better. Like the 2024 Celtics, they don’t depend on a bona fide all-time great (though Jalen Brunson will certainly achieve New York immortality if they finish this thing off). It’s the four-man core of Brunson, Karl-Anthony Towns, OG Anunoby and Mikal Bridges that has fueled this run, plus an unexpectedly free-wheeling use of the bench by first-year coach Mike Brown.

10. Golden State Warriors, 2022

• Regular season: 53-29 (3rd in West)
• Net rating: 5.5 (4th)
• Playoffs: 16-6
• Playoff net: 4.9

Of all the teams to raise a banner during this era, the Warriors probably had the flimsiest roster — the last remnants of their dynasty and some new friends they met along the way. That’s ultimately a credit to Curry, who averaged an efficient 31, six and five to knock off Boston. This championship is his greatest achievement. Klay Thompson and Draymond Green’s glory days were in the rearview mirror, Andrew Wiggins was the team’s second option, and Otto Porter Jr. started the last three games of the Finals.

11. Indiana Pacers, 2025

• Regular season: 50-32 (4th in East)
• Net rating: 2.1 (13th)
• Playoffs: 15-8
• Playoff net: 2.1

Basketball fans around the globe will never stop lamenting the timing of Tyrese Haliburton’s torn Achilles tendon, moments after an awe-inspiring barrage of deep 3s early in Game 7 of the Finals. Thanks in large part to their four ridiculous last-minute comebacks — one in each playoff round — the Pacers will go down in history as one of the most exciting teams that didn’t win the title.

12. Phoenix Suns, 2021

• Regular season: 51-21 (2nd in West)
• Net rating: 5.9 (3rd)
• Playoffs: 14-8
• Playoff net: 4.2

Up 2-0 on Milwaukee, then later down one point with the ball on the last possession of Game 5, Phoenix was as close to a ring as any Finals loser this century. Chris Paul and Devin Booker formed one of the best backcourts on this list. But 18 months later, the team was sold, and young role players Mikal Bridges and Cam Johnson were shipped off to Brooklyn in the fateful Durant trade.

13. Boston Celtics, 2022

• Regular season: 51-31 (2nd in East)
• Net rating: 7.4 (2nd)
• Playoffs: 14-10
• Playoff net: 3.9

Playing in their fourth Eastern Conference Finals together, Tatum and Brown finally broke through. Also buoyed by Defensive Player of the Year Marcus Smart, the Celtics survived Game 7s against Milwaukee and Miami to gain a 2-1 series edge over Golden State. Then they got fried by Curry.

14. Dallas Mavericks, 2024

• Regular season: 50-32 (5th in West)
• RS net rating: 2.1 (15th)
• Playoffs: 13-9
• Playoff net: 2.6

These regular-season numbers disguise a team that was altered at the trade deadline and dominated down the stretch. PJ Washington and Daniel Gafford were savvy acquisitions to assist Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving on an impressive playoff run, highlighted by a six-game upset of the top-seeded Thunder. Little did Doncic know it would be his last chance in Dallas.

15. Miami Heat, 2020

• Regular season: 44-29 (5th in East)
• Net rating: 2.7 (7th)
• Playoffs: 14-7
• Playoff net: 1.9

Playoff risers in the bubble. An unimpeachable Jimmy Butler performance made the Finals look closer than they were, forcing Game 6 and delaying LeBron’s fourth title.

16. Miami Heat, 2023

• Regular season: 44-38 (7th in East)
• Net rating: -0.5 (21st)
• Playoffs: 13-10
• Playoff net: 1.9

Props to the Heat for milking everything it possibly could out of the Butler era. This is the only Play-In Tournament team to ever reach the Finals. Butler, Bam Adebayo and Erik Spoelstra outdid themselves, needing only five games to upset the top-seeded Bucks in the first round.

Sean Keeler: Cale Makar turned 27 last October. No title window is officially closed on the Avs until Makar is either closer to 37 or 38 or no longer wearing burgundy and blue. Between Jokic and MacKinnon, you lean with Nate Dogg, if only because the Stanley Cup Playoffs are far more random than the NBA counterpart; because Cale is so young; and because the Nuggets’ path in the West now has more potholes than Monaco Street Parkway. The Wemby Era is officially upon us, my friend. Only it’s also coming at the apex of The SGA Era, which means there’s not enough room on the medal stand for everybody.

Renck: The answer is MacKinnon. He will have more legit chances than Jokic, even after the Avs wasted a prime opportunity last week against Las Vegas. No matter whether the Avs keep coach Jared Bednar or not, they will remain a contender for the next five seasons with MacKinnon and Makar. But the onus is on the 30-year-old MacKinnon to adapt to new tactics, to show he can lead a team to a title against opponents who control the middle of the ice. If the Avs remain stubborn and play a style that suits their stars in the regular season, MacKinnon might win another title, but will be at the end of his career with another team.

Keeler: After Nuggets-Timberwolves I (2024), I wondered if Jokic’s best chance for a second title might happen as a veteran big man off the bench for another franchise — think the Lakers’ version of Dwight Howard or the Celtics’ version of Bill Walton. Not anymore. I think the Joker is going to play out this next, massive contract extension, and try like holy heck to finish what he started here. And then that’ll be it — ring or no ring, it’s back to Sombor, to the horses, to family, and to the next chapters of his life.

Renck: Jokic, 31, cannot be considered a Top 10 all-time great without another ring, finishing in the rankings in the second tier a tick ahead of Moses Malone, Dirk Nowitzki, Giannis Antetokounmpo. Given how the NBA works and how the collective bargaining agreement is structured, teams don’t get title shots every season since owners view the aprons as hard caps. After capitulating against the Timberwolves, the Nuggets must take a step back, trade away Cam Johnson and Aaron Gordon, and load up for a three-year run in Jokic’s final sprint starting in 2029. Even then, there is a 7-foot-5 problem. Victor Wembanyama is now the face of the league (and everyone’s favorite player after eliminating the Oklahoma City Floppers). At 22 years old, Wembanyama is the youngest player to lead his team in points per game and rebounds in a season when his team makes the NBA Finals. He is not going anywhere. For Jokic to win, it will likely require a much different, more athletic supporting cast. MacKinnon, if he shows adaptability, probably only needs a different coach.

Keeler: Just because “everything” is on the table for Josh Kroenke doesn’t mean KSE is comfortable ordering the most expensive menu items in front of them. The greatest speed bump lodged between two of Denver’s all-time greats and a second ring might be the entity that owns them both. With the Nuggets, the Kroenkes are reluctant to splash serious cash to upgrade the coaching staff or the front office and reportedly unwilling to eat more luxury tax penalties. With the Avs, Stan and Josh seem content to know what they don’t know and let Joe Sakic run that branch of the family business. In both cases, the longer KSE remains resistant to change, the shorter Jokic’s and MacKinnon’s title windows become.