Rumors

The Warriors and Kuminga — if you somehow haven't heard, read or watched this summer — remain at a contract impasse as Labor Day Weekend draws near. Golden State has not been willing to offer the 22-year-old forward more than $45 million over two years, league sources say, in what would be the second NBA contract for 2021's seventh overall pick.

marcstein.substack.com

From there, Fishburne went into story time mode, explaining how he met Rivers and got a feel for his personality. “Well luckily he’s still alive with us, he’s alive and well,” Fishburne said.” And we had mutual friends, so I was able to get his number and call him, talk to him briefly and I invited him to a Labor Day Party at my house. He and my friend Wynton Marsalis were there together and they immediately got into a debate about the late Bill Russell who had just passed away, about whether or not he was the greatest to ever play the game etc..”

Clutch Points

The Blazers have begun exploring scenarios beyond the Heat. "Portland is trying to put together a number of multi-team scenarios to see they can get the assets back in a trade for Damian Lillard," said Adrian Wojnarowski. "They have been aggressive here in the last weeks... only because the league started up again. Labor Day comes, teams are engaging again. I do think they're engaging. The question is do they find a deal in the next couple of weeks or do they have to bring Damian Lillard back to camp?"

RealGM

“My sense is that the Blazers have done a lot more talking with teams in the last say 10 to 14 days than they did probably in at least a month plus prior,” Woj said. “And a big part of that is the league is back to work now after Labor Day, and training camp is starting to approach. And that’s the next real deadline in this process.

NetsDaily

Fred Katz: Jericho Sims' new contract with the Knicks is for a little short of $6M over three years, sources say. Half the contract is guaranteed with triggers that would guarantee Year 2 and Year 3 to become fully guaranteed before Labor Day of 2023 and 2024.

Twitter

One of the most sought-after free agents of the NBA offseason won’t be a player. Yahoo Sports’ respected Senior NBA Insider Chris Haynes is poised to become a free agent around Labor Day, sources tell Front Office Sports.

Front Office Sports

Neil Dalal: As the Wizards usually do with a normal NBA season start in October, Tommy Sheppard expects the full roster to assemble in DC after Labor Day for some pre-training camp chemistry.

Twitter

Ratings increased 16% and viewership 34% from a similar Sunday night window on TNT last year (Nuggets-Blazers Game 4: 2.5, 4.06M). Compared to ABC’s lone primetime second round game last year, Warriors-Rockets Game 3 on a Saturday, ratings fell 34% (from 4.4) and viewership 25% (from 7.23M). Compared to the same Labor Day weekend window last year, ratings and viewership were off slightly from ABC’s Houston-Oklahoma college football game (3.0, 5.44M) — though the NBA performed significantly better in adults 18-34 (1.7 to 1.1), 18-49 (2.0 to 1.5) and 25-54 (2.2 to 1.9).

Sports Media Watch

Upon arrival at Disney World, Milwaukee’s coaching staff backed off for the first week and let its players engage in the sort of pickup games commonplace at team practice facilities after Labor Day in a typical year. The idea was to ease into structure. Tempting as it surely was to zoom right into practices after such a long layoff to make up for lost time, I’m told that the Bucks wanted to move cautiously and pace themselves in the belief that, if things go right, they will be in Florida for three months chasing a championship.

New York Times

Martins said the league now is looking at a possible return later in the summer and is considering pushing back the start of the 2020-21 season if that’s what it takes to complete the current season. He said the NBA is willing to extend the season into September if necessary. “Our league has decided that we’re going to try to get in as much of our season and playoffs as the data will allow us to,” Martins told the Orange County Economic Recovery Task Force’s Guidelines for Business Reopening Working Group Tuesday morning. “We’ll play as late as Labor Day if we have to and even delay, as was reported this past week, we’ve been having initial discussions about even delaying the start of next season based on trying to get as much as this season in as possible.”

Orlando Sentinel

Crowning an NBA champion was a rallying cry for one of the polled sources. Reports have the NBA considering the idea of finishing the season as late as Labor Day weekend in September. Another source echoed the talk of playing games in a centralized location like Las Vegas, but again, that risk of one person having the virus and spreading it is why some people are adamant about shutting down the season. The longer it takes to make that determination, the more crunched the NBA will be for time to make that happen, and that could easily impact when next season will begin.

Arizona Republic

NBA Central: Woj says the league would like to a crown a champion by Labor Day, per @GetUpESPN pic.twitter.com/MPZbPku9TV

Twitter

As one league insider cautioned me, we shouldn’t assume next year’s schedule will necessarily change as a result of this year. While all of us in the peanut gallery are jonesing to push the schedule back, that requires a massive undertaking from the league side at a time when it is already in the midst of another massive undertaking. The NBA could also do everything I outlined in this story and still kick off 2020-21 more or less on time this fall. If that’s the case, however, then that Labor Day timeframe becomes even more of a hard deadline for this season to end.

The Athletic

No one in the NBA wants to be tied to Labor Day weekend, because no one -- not the commissioner, not the teams, not the NBPA -- wants to limit the possibility of the NBA salvaging something of a season. If the NBA season could start later in July and finish later in September, well, no one is ruling out that idea either.

ESPN