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Denver Nuggets forward Peyton Watson is expected to return Sunday against the Portland Trail Blazers after missing more than six weeks due to a hamstring strain, sources told ESPN's Shams Charania on Saturday. Watson's return would mark the first time the Nuggets have had their full roster available since early in the season. Several players, including three-time MVP Nikola Jokic, Aaron Gordon, Cameron Johnson and Christian Braun, have all missed extended time this year.
Lou Williams when Sixers traded Allen Iverson: So, I had 40 on Monday. I had 40 on Wednesday. I had 40 on Friday. Got on a bus. 9 hours drive to Little Rock, Arkansas. I wasn't in my room 30 minutes. I get to my room in Little Rock, Arkansas. 30 minutes somewhere nearby. The GM called my room from the Philadelphia 76ers. He said, "Hey, there is a noon flight. We got to get you to Philly ASAP." I said, "What's up?" They said, "We ain't got time right now, but turn ESPN on." They had traded Allen Iverson. So the one week that I leave to the D-League, AI had got traded. So they scrambled. I get to Arkansas at 9:30. I'm on a flight at 12:00 going to Philly. I get there at halftime. They playing against the Washington Wizards. I played the whole third and fourth quarter and never turned back.
Multiple sources across the league said the Bucks' asking price was enormous, with an executive from a third team describing the Bucks' process as "gauging the market" and their price as "all our draft picks and good young players." The Golden State Warriors offer included four unprotected first-round picks in pursuit of Antetokounmpo, sources said, but never seemed to gain much momentum on a deal. The players the Bucks did seem interested in were younger building blocks such as VJ Edgecombe of the Philadelphia 76ers or Evan Mobley of the Cleveland Cavaliers, sources said.
So far, the Bucks' play on waiving-and-stretching Lillard in order to sign Turner has backfired. Antetokounmpo has missed 32 games with various injuries, Turner has not been impactful, and the Bucks have struggled to find any consistency. After a season like this, multiple league executives made the case that the Bucks' best strategy would be to trade Antetokounmpo for a haul of draft picks and strong young players rather than doubling down on this season's failed experiment and offering him a massive extension. "He's still a game changer, but he's 31 with a history of leg injuries," a rival executive said. "And now you'd basically be trading for a guy on an expiring deal, so I'm not sure the offers they'll get this summer are going to be better than what they already got."
"It's not an accident that teams like the Lakers, Clippers, Heat and Warriors all have lined up to have cap space in 2027 when Giannis can be a free agent," one NBA executive told ESPN. "A player like Giannis can tilt the balance of power in the league for years to come. "What nobody knows yet is whether they'll really trade him before he gets to free agency -- and how they're making that decision."
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Those who have done business with the Bucks, including teams that inquired about Antetokounmpo before the trade deadline, told ESPN that Haslam was more involved in decisions than before. One team owner even had direct negotiations with Haslam rather than Edens about a potential deal for Antetokounmpo, multiple sources with knowledge of the discussions told ESPN. "We mostly dealt with [GM Jon] Horst," an executive with one of the teams that heavily engaged with the Bucks told ESPN. "But our impression was that Jimmy was really the one who would decide this."
While hailed for its boldness and potential at the time, not only did it not work out as planned, it diminished the team's assets as the pressure built to win with Antetokounmpo in his prime. To add insult to injury, Holiday ended up winning a title with the Bucks' Eastern Conference rival, the Boston Celtics, the next season. Subsequently, sources told ESPN that Antetokounmpo confided to Holiday how much he and the Bucks missed Holiday's defense and leadership.
Golden State Warriors center Kristaps Porzingis left Friday night's road loss in Detroit with lower back spasms and said postgame he will "probably" miss Saturday night's reunion game in Atlanta against a Hawks team that traded him in February. "We'll see," Porzingis said. "Maybe it loosens up tomorrow. Who knows? But right now it's pretty stiff." Porzingis said he first felt his back tightening up in the first quarter, but the problem worsened late in the second quarter after back-to-back plays bumping with Pistons big man Jalen Duren.
Porzingis said he didn't believe the back issue to be serious, saying that he'd dealt with similar trouble early in his career and knew how to keep it calm. "I would say I'm pretty good at managing it, keeping my back strong," Porzingis said. "Little tight now. Once I cool down, it'll tighten up more."
“How much, at this point, are you kind of like, ‘I actually really care who the seventh pick is,’ versus, ‘If I get it, I get it. If I don’t, either way we’re going to find out in 30 seconds anyway’?” Shams Charania: “The nature of who I am is that I care. I care beforehand, as much in advance as I can get it. Even last year, when we had the draft on ESPN, I was hearing the picks maybe one, two, or three minutes before they were made. Obviously, I’m a team player, so I thought it was best for the network to allow Adam Silver and all of us to break it down. “And I think the way I viewed my role was: how can I give the ‘why’? If there’s a big move, a big trade, if there’s a draft-pick trade, or anything like that, how can I explain it and give behind-the-scenes coverage on the overarching sentiments about the draft around the league? That’s really where I focus my attention.”
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Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson on Thursday previewed an upcoming meeting with NBA Commissioner Adam Silver ahead of a planned vote on league expansion that could bring men’s professional basketball back to Seattle. ESPN has reported that the Tuesday and Wednesday meetings of the NBA’s board of governors next week in New York would include a vote on initiating expansion to Seattle and Las Vegas.
Basketball Hall of Famer Dennis Rodman will be inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame, sources told ESPN's Shams Charania on Friday. Rodman, a five-time NBA champion with the Detroit Pistons and Chicago Bulls, has a four-match pro wrestling career, with three of those coming in WCW. He made his WCW debut in 1997 and famously skipped a practice during the 1998 NBA Finals to appear on "WCW Monday Nitro," where he set up a tag team match in which he partnered with Hulk Hogan to face Diamond Dallas Page and Karl Malone.
Milwaukee Bucks co-owners Wes Edens and Jimmy Haslam told ESPN in a joint 90-minute interview that they will decide the path to take with their two-time MVP together, and the most important factor will be whether Giannis Antetokounmpo signs the four-year, $275 million extension he is eligible to receive on Oct. 1. "Giannis is going into the last year [of his contract]," said Edens, the team's controlling owner until April 2028. "So one of two things will happen: Either he will be extended or he'll be traded." "The likelihood you'll let him just kind of play out the last year, we can't afford that. It's not consistent with what's good for the organization. That's not a Giannis issue. That's any player that's in their last year."
Yet team sources, rival executives and league insiders question whether the situation is that simple. Interviews with more than a dozen people with knowledge of the situation say what's happening in Milwaukee goes beyond a typical NBA franchise's struggle to maintain a winning roster: A unique ownership structure has made it difficult for opposing franchises to identify who is actually running the team. "This has nothing to do with Giannis and whether he asks out," said one source with knowledge of the team's operations. "It's about who's making the decision on whether to trade Giannis, and I don't think anyone knows that. I deal with them all the time and honestly it depends on the day. "They're not even close to being ready to make a decision like that."