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Shams Charania: Magic president Jeff Weltman, who signed a contract extension just before Orlando’s run to the NBA Cup final four, will lead the team's search for the next head coach. Mosley led the Magic to two division titles and three consecutive winning seasons while dealing with a litany of injuries to key starters, particularly over the last two years.
Weltman does not appear to be in jeopardy of losing his job. Two league sources said Weltman signed a contract extension during the first half of the season, around the time the team reached the NBA Cup semifinals.
The Bucks announced Rivers’ departure in an April 13 statement. Milwaukee will pay Rivers his eight-figure salary for the 2026-27 season, sources told ESPN. The recently named Naismith Hall of Fame coach told Andscape it was “100 percent my decision” to leave. Rivers had a 97-103 record during his two-plus seasons with Milwaukee, leading to two first-round playoff exits and missing the postseason this season. The Bucks won the 2024 NBA Cup under Rivers, but they had a 32-50 record this season, with All-Star forward Giannis Antetokounmpo playing just 36 games. “It wasn’t a hard decision. It’s probably on your mind your last couple years,” Rivers said. “It had nothing to do with the season or anything like that. There’s times where you feel like you’ve had your run. I still love it. I still love coaching. But I don’t ever want my job to become work. I guess that is the best way of saying that. It’s more of a labor of love. So, I just felt like it was time. It was not like some lightning strike or something like that. I told ownership that a while ago.
Antetokounmpo: "Anybody that thinks that without having a person next to you, to share that load, and to bounce off ideas and play - he does not know basketball.” At least one. Antetokounmpo: “Yes. You have to have to have a guy. Like, the period that me and Dame was healthy, we won the NBA Cup. Ying and Yang. You need to have that guy and then you need to have everyone fill their roles.”
By suiting up Saturday against the Magic, LeBron James not only became the player with the most regular-season games in NBA history... he also became the winningest. The Lakers' win against Orlando, courtesy of a Luke Kennard three-pointer, was the 1,074th of his career in the regular season. Adding his 184 playoff wins (tops all-time), three play-in victories, and one NBA Cup final triumph brings his combined total to 1,229 - one more than Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's 1,228 across regular season and postseason.
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The lawmakers urged Silver to consider Las Vegas’ 20-year partnership with the NBA through hosting the Summer League and NBA Cup championships. “As you consider the future of the NBA, we strongly urge you to build on the League’s local momentum by selecting Las Vegas as a site for a future league franchise,” the letter reads in part.
League sources said some of the proposals being discussed include lottery odds being allocated based on two-year records, flattened and/or frozen by the trade deadline or another in-season date. There is also discussion of extending the lottery to include the eight Play-In Tournament teams. Several other changes are also being considered. Among them: • Limitations on first-round pick protections; • Teams not being allowed to pick in the top four a year after making the conference finals; • Teams being prohibited from selecting in the top four in consecutive years; • Teams being prohibited from selecting in the top four after consecutive bottom-three finishes.
Streaming still cannot yet match the drawing power of linear television. Nine of the ten most-watched NBA game windows this season have not only aired on linear TV, but on over-the-air broadcast television — the five Christmas Day games on ABC (and ESPN), the two Opening Night games on NBC, and the premieres of NBC’s “Sunday Night Basketball” and “Coast 2 Coast Tuesday.” The lone exception was the NBA Cup Final on Prime Video.
Stefan Bondy: Media Day at NBA Cup an influencer put on a Josh Hart jersey asked Josh Hart for a picture. And that was the extent of his question. Another influencer went around asking about Phillip Rivers and another influencer wanted to know about Christmas gifts. This is the NBA’s way now.
NBA Base: Bill Simmons on the state of the NBA and Adam Silver’s leadership: “It’s the first time I’ve really wondered like, do we have the right guy running the league? Because he doesn’t seem interested in actually fixing real problems that everybody can see. And it’s not about like, look at the NBA Cup... Your schedule is too long. You have to fix this.” (Via The Bill Simmons Podcast)
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The most tense flare-up in what team sources otherwise described as a relatively cordial cold war between Jonathan Kuminga and Steve Kerr came on the afternoon of Dec. 10. The Golden State Warriors had been eliminated from the NBA Cup two weeks earlier, giving them a rare break in the schedule. They'd won in Chicago the previous Sunday night and didn't play again until Friday. Kuminga was prepared for the conversation. He knew management wanted to ding him for missing a team-requested event and alert him that someone around him was taking too much food from the family room. The gripes between player and organization, as multiple sources said, had become "petty" in the fifth year of a relationship many believed should've ended years before.
But the Knicks were mauled 114-97 Monday night at Madison Square Garden, extending their losing streak to four. It’s their second four-game skid in their past 11 games. They went 2-9 in those 11 games and are now 7-11 since their NBA Cup triumph. In a season that was set with Finals-or-bust expectations, the Knicks sit just 1 ¹/2 games above the play-in. “We didn’t show up,” Jalen Brunson said. Any idea why? “No,” he responded. It now feels like ages ago that Brown was being praised when his Knicks were firing on all cylinders. The alarm bells around his team keep growing louder, and it was Mavericks coach Jason Kidd — who The Post previously reported the Knicks had strong interest in hiring but were denied permission to interview — who delivered the latest gut punch to Brown’s team.
Ian Begley: Ty Lue credits his players & assistant Jeff Van Gundy for LAC’s improved defense after NBA Cup. Clips have won 8 of 9 & have No. 8 defense in that span. “Over the last 10-12 games, we’ve put ourselves in position to be really good defensively & that’s because of JVG.”
Ian Begley: Lue said Van Gundy, the last coach to lead NYK to a Finals, adjusted Clips’ defense during their days off amid NBA Cup. “JVG, the work he puts in, studying all the different teams, studying the league, how the game is being played and now” was critical, Lue said.