Advertisement - scroll for more content
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement - scroll for more content
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Dante Exum was coming off an injury-plagued season in which he had only played 14 games. Dario Saric, Jakob Poeltl and Juancho Hernangomez signed while the league was still in the middle of figuring out COVID. Coming off the bubble, some players took what money they could while they could. Isaiah Jackson signed when coming off a torn Achilles’ tendon. The major takeaway here: Restricted free agency isn’t necessarily preventing players from getting paid. But it is preventing players from changing teams. Which is kind of the idea! Overall, restricted free agency can be tough on players. It seems to be getting tougher on players. But there have been adjustments. In our four-year sample size under the current CBA, only 24 players out of 120 have reached restricted free agency. That means that extensions are happening at a greater rate than ever. That’s in addition to teams cutting loose players they aren’t going to extend or re-sign.
Now that Bob Iger and Josh Kushner have taken center stage, Lakers fans are keen to know about their respective backgrounds. They’re not going to like comments Iger made about his NBA fandom during a 2021 interview on “The Old Man and The Three” podcast, which have resurfaced on Reddit on Wednesday. When speaking about his relationship with Chris Paul and his involvement in the notorious NBA bubble in Florida during the COVID 2020 season, Iger said, “I am a Clippers fan. Having moved from New York to Los Angeles back in 2000, and being a big NBA fan, I needed a team to root for. And in my youth, the Lakers were a big rival of the Knicks, the team I grew up rooting for. So I couldn’t root for the Lakers very easily; it just was not in my DNA. So I decided to adopt the Clippers, which was actually a good thing, because their seats were a lot cheaper than the Lakers,” Iger added.
MrBuckBuck: Jaylen Brown talks about Kyrie Irving being blackballed after not taking the COVID Vaccine: "During the trial, Fauci pleaded the 5th; it leaves speculation for what was real and what wasn't. Imagine losing hundreds of millions of dollars for what you believe in. Imagine losing endorsements; Nike dropped him" Via @FCHWPO (https://x.com/FCHWPO)
Marc Lasry: “I think COVID, what it did was, it could either split apart a team or it brings everybody together. Bud did a great job of keeping everybody together. We talked about it. Look, ‘We need to do this. We’re going to try to do team dinners, we’re going to try to do all these different things so the team could feel we’re all in this together.’ I think that ended up working well. I think Bud did a great job, but I also think the players understood what it meant and the players bought into it.“
Jazz owner Ryan Smith: "I don't want to set expectations, but like we need to start winning. I think that's that's that's kind of where we're at. When we took over, I took over what was the number one team in the regular season and we got, I mean, it was interesting. My first day was like post-COVID. We were kind of into COVID and I had like two weeks to get a deal done with Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell. It was really complicated because normally you have a long time to do this, but that team came out, we were number one in the regular season the first year and just got bounced early."
Advertisement
Then on the team’s media day on Sept. 30, on a Zoom call from Greece because he and the team said he contracted COVID-19, Giannis Antetokounmpo challenged the veracity of Edens’ statement that they had the on-court “meeting” at the practice facility in early May. Edens was annoyed, but two high-level team sources said he did not carry a grudge. Rivers held another remote training camp in 2025, this time in Miami. Even with a roster that had been completely turned over from the one he took over in 2023-24 (only two rotation players remained), Rivers and the Bucks were still chasing the culture they tore down.
![“The painting of the nails, the TikTok [dances] and …](https://sportsdata.usatoday.com/gcdn/content-pipeline-sports-images/sports2/nba/players/1458807.png?format=png8&auto=webp&quality=85,75&width=140)
There is no question Jared McCain is comfortable in his own skin. It was also apparent the 22-year-old was comfortable playing for the Thunder during a 122-113 victory over the San Antonio Spurs during Game 2 of the Western Conference finals Wednesday. “The painting of the nails, the TikTok [dances] and being able to do that, I definitely got hate for it,” McCain told Andscape after Game 2. “But it wasn’t an in-your-face kind of thing because I started it during COVID [the coronavirus pandemic]. It’s something I like doing. But basketball has always been the main thing, and people try to deteriorate that and make it about other things. “I’ve always been comfortable doing it and comfortable in my own skin. I credit my parents and my family for providing me that confidence.”
The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal from Gonzaga and NBA legend John Stockton in his lawsuit against the Washington Medical Commission and the Washington State Office of the Attorney General regarding doctors who were sanctioned for COVID-19 misinformation. The case is one of dozens the court declined to hear on appeal. The court did not elaborate.
Stockton, a vocal critic of COVID-19 policy and vaccination requirements, first filed a lawsuit in 2024 which claimed the pandemic-era rules restricted doctors from speaking against “the mainstream Covid narrative.” Stockton filed the suit alongside several doctors who faced state sanctions for unprofessional conduct after they published opinion columns and other blog posts downplaying the effectiveness of COVID tests and vaccines and promoting alternative treatments.
Craig Melvin: How could you say that you’re not where you want to be right now? You’re an NBA champion, All-Star, like NBA 75. You’ve got gold medals. Seems like you’ve kind of got it. What’s left? Anthony Davis: It’s a lot. I haven’t got MVP. I haven’t got Defensive Player of the Year. I want the parade for a championship, so I want to be able to do that again. Craig Melvin: That’s right, because when you won, that COVID year— Anthony Davis: Yeah. So, I mean, it’s still things I want to try to get. I want to get 20,000 points. I want to play 20 years. Craig Melvin: So you’ve got a list. Anthony Davis: Yeah, I have a list of things that I still want to do.
Advertisement
Saurabh Rane: To Nate's point, we saw 582 guys log NBA time this year! Second most ever, only to the COVID-plagued 2021-22 season. You can really see the impact of two-way contracts in 17/18
To Nate's point, we saw 582 guys log NBA time this year! Second most ever, only to the COVID-plagued 2021-22 season.
— Saurabh Rane (@SaurabhOnTap) April 13, 2026
You can really see the impact of two-way contracts in 17/18 https://t.co/jUDr4KvwJi pic.twitter.com/Hogad8SeGr
According to a source, Karnisovas and Eversley’s talent evaluation was questionable right away, going back to the 2020 draft — the duo’s first bite at the apple. Holding No. 4, Karnisovas settled on Patrick Williams. There were multiple scouts and other personnel in the draft room, however, that wanted Tyrese Haliburton. Now, the entire draft process was messed up because of Covid, but Karnisovas specifically was not only fixated on Williams, but didn’t even consider Haliburton a serious prospect. The source indicated that Karnisovas didn’t even feel like Haliburton would be a top four talent on the Bulls roster at the time.
Nicolas Batum: COVID happened, I was stuck in Stockholm for like eight months. And then I like I get a big depression. I want I gained like 45 pounds. That was insane. Q. And when did you get when did you when did you uh snap out of it? Batum: Mid October. I got a call from my agent, like a group call, and there's like six people on it like, ‘We need to talk to you.’ I was like 270 lbs. I was crazy. Like no, it was rock bottom.
Rudy Gobert: “That was one of the hardest moments of my life, that’s for sure. It was a real ordeal. It’s a period that made me grow a lot. Everyone saw that video—yes, where I touched the press microphones—but it was clearly a mistake to do that. At the time, though, my intentions were good. When I made that video, I didn’t know I had COVID. I just knew that everyone was telling us there was a virus, but at the same time we were still playing in arenas filled with tens of thousands of people. The video was just meant as a message, just support for the media members—like, ‘It’s nothing serious, we’re all in this together.’ That was really the intention at first: to try to reassure people. Then a few days later I tested positive for COVID, and it was crazy to see how all the media lined up to use that video as if I had done it on purpose, when actually I hadn’t. It came from a good intention, and it ended up turning against me.”