Fred VanVleet Rumors

Jorge Sierra: Shortest NBA champions in the last 20 years: Jose Juan Barea 🇵🇷 Jose Alvarado 🇵🇷 Kyle Lowry, Fred Van Vleet,

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Houston, by contrast, has not been mentioned much as a possible addition to that group, which actually might not be as a surprising as it sounds on the surface given that the Rockets are said to be quite optimistic about how much they will benefit from Fred VanVleet's return to the floor next season.

marcstein.substack.com

Per league sources, Rockets coach and former Spurs assistant Ime Udoka was a huge fan of Stephon Castle’s (which Castle said he was well aware of). But with veteran Fred VanVleet manning the point guard position and young Jalen Green at the two-guard spot, Castle and his camp sent the kinds of signals Houston’s way that eventually led to him landing in San Antonio. Just as he’d hoped. “I think being (in San Antonio) was always number one on my list,” said Castle, who won Rookie of the Year in 2025. “Internally, I always felt like I was the best player in that draft. (But) I didn’t know what could happen. My agent always told me, like, anything can happen in a draft. Like, you could not work out for a team, not have talked to a team, and they can still take you. So, I mean, I wasn’t really planning on playing in Houston. I didn’t really know how any of that worked. I was kind of hoping I could slide my way to San Antonio. It kind of worked out for me.”

New York Times

Anunoby, despite being robbed of an opportunity that some players 15 years his senior never got to experience, remembers that time fondly. He looks back and reflects on all that he learned from his teammates about how to be a pro, how to prepare at the sport’s highest level. The players on that team were so influential on who Anunoby is today that he wanted to list the entire roster, as many as he could recall while put on the spot, to show appreciation for what that experience meant to him as he sat on the sideline and they went to fight on his behalf. “Jeremy Lin was a great teammate,” Anunoby said. “I had Jodie Meeks, Norm Powell, Fred VanVleet, Marc Gasol, Serge Ibaka, Kyle Lowry, Kawhi Leonard, Pascal Siakam and Danny Green. I learned a lot from those guys. I learned so much being out.”

New York Times

In the latest episode of his “Unguarded” podcast, VanVleet was asked about the role Durant’s alleged burner accounts played in the Rockets’ unceremonious end to the 2025-26 campaign. VanVleet kept things cryptic at first, claiming “lies” were “more appealing than the truth.” The Rockets guard then spoke about the “curse” Durant carries. “I think that the gift and the curse with KD is that he’s so open,” VanVleet said of Durant. “He’s so authentic and he’s so approachable, and he’s so him that it leaves room for the f–king clowns to jump in and add their own twist on the s–t, and then if he doesn’t come out and directly say no or go against that, which is what they want. There’s just so much room for like clickbait farming and s–t like that when it comes to him. He makes it easy for that.”

Larry Brown Sports

Myles Turner: These refs are human, bro. And they have human emotions as well. So if you go out there and cuss a ref out, or front him out in front of people, they’re going to remember that shit. There’s a perfect example of this. I think Fred VanVleet — this was like two, three years ago, right? He said he went off in his postgame presser about one of the refs. Went crazy. He didn’t get calls for three months straight, boy. Because I’m going to tell you right now, I told you the refs are like the police. If you fuck with one of them, you fuck with all of them, you know? And it’s like they band together, and it’s like, “Nah, he’s not getting no calls.” And I’ve seen it actually happen, bro. It’s crazy. And one thing you’ll see, too, is like the rookie refs, or the younger refs, the veteran refs really look out for them. So if you go after a rookie ref, or cuss them out — or the female refs as well, like on our side — if you go after the female refs, the veteran refs will come in and step in, and basically fuck you out of the game.

YouTube

Fred VanVleet: "I know I add value. I know what I bring to the table, and I know that we will be a better team with me on the team. That has been the case for me on every team I’ve ever been on. I’m going to make the team better just by virtue of me being available, being around, and bringing my energy, before you even get to the game. My leadership and competitiveness, that’s what I do. I try to make everything I touch better. That’s my mindset. Not saying I do or I don’t, but that’s how I view it when I go in."

YouTube

Fred VanVleet: "I think the gift and the curse with KD is that he’s so open, so authentic, so approachable, and so himself that it leaves room for clowns to jump in and add their own twist. And if he doesn’t come out and directly say, ‘No,’ or go against that — which is what they want — there’s just so much room for clickbait farming when it comes to him. He makes it easy. He makes it easy for that. I saw that for the first time this year with my own eyes. It’s something that I grew to appreciate with him: his personality, how he approaches things as a superstar. I don’t think people really appreciate it, and they won’t, because I don’t even know if there’s another guy who will do that like he does — how he engages in it. He’s super regular with it. I think people take advantage of that, and they know that you can run with his story.”

YouTube

Fred VanVleet: “You’ve got to remember, bro, for what we built here in a quick turnaround, basically, we took four of our five starters out: me, Dillon, Jalen, Steven. Essentially, right? So, adding KD, it’s a whole new team. We didn’t get one practice together. I got hurt before we started practice, so we never even got to see what it looked like. There’s no continuity. Our system changed. Everything changed. I’m just proud of the guys for hanging in there during the season, and also proud of the steps that the young guys made along the way. I feel like each of them individually grew a lot inside of what was ultimately kind of an up-and-down season.”

YouTube

Fred VanVleet: “If you told me in September that I would miss the whole season, Stephen would miss 75% of the season, and we would win 52 games and play the Lakers in a four-five matchup, take them to six without KD, I would probably say, ‘Okay, that doesn’t sound crazy to me.’ And it’s not a failure. I wouldn’t feel bad about that. Now, while you’re in it, it’s crazy, right? It looks bad some nights. You’ve got the blown leads, you’ve got the mishaps, you’ve got guys’ performances up and down. So, if you’re riding that roller coaster of emotion, then yeah, you’re going to feel some type of way. I know fans struggle with that sometimes because they’re just so passionate. They want everything to be perfect all the time. But all in all, especially now as I get older in the league, you have to be able to take away the positives: KD playing 78 games, Amen taking the growth that he did as a full-time point guard, Reed making a big jump in his development. We saw a lot of flashes. Alpie was up and down, but the way he started and the way he finished, you kind of saw it. And he’s still pretty damn young. Jabari, you know how I feel about Jabari, to see his progression. To see Tari’s progression in a real role, being a starter sometimes and playing real minutes. I think there are just a ton of positives that you can take away. We went through a lot. We tried a lot. We went through adversity. We had to come out of adversity. We had to battle through injury. We saw what worked and what didn’t work.”

YouTube

The NBPA: Statement from NBPA Executive Director Andre Iguodala and NBPA President Fred VanVleet on the tragic passing of Memphis Grizzlies forward Brandon Clarke.

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Soon after he was elected president of the National Basketball Players Association, Fred VanVleet, the stocky point guard of the Houston Rockets, walked to the front of a Las Vegas ballroom. It was July 2025, a few weeks removed from the Oklahoma City Thunder winning the NBA Finals, yet the ensuing season was already under way. Rookies had been drafted. Developmental prospects had come to Vegas for exhibition games. And with them had arrived a basketball establishment—coaches, executives, team owners—accustomed to flying high. Revenues were up. A collective-bargaining agreement was in place. The new media deal was kicking in. Nothing, it seemed, could stop the juggernaut inspired by James Naismith and his peach baskets back in 1891. Yet when VanVleet addressed the room in Las Vegas, his first words were a warning. “Don’t f--- up the game,” he said.

The Atlantic

Laughter filled the ballroom. Except VanVleet wasn’t joking. The 10-year veteran is a throwback: an unheralded recruit who grinded his way to All-American status at Wichita State, an undrafted rookie who willed his way to becoming a world champion. To him, basketball is not merely a business. It is a source of identity, the ticket he claimed to escape a troubled life. Anything that taints its beauty constitutes a threat. This season has demonstrated that the threats are real—and they are multiplying. Teams lost countless games on purpose in the pursuit of better draft positioning. Players—and, even more troubling, a head coach—were caught up in gambling-related scandals. The NBA’s wealthiest owner, former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who bought the Clippers after the Sterling fiasco, was accused of funneling payments to his franchise player via a third party to circumvent the salary cap, an allegation that continues to shake the foundations of the league. (Ballmer has denied any wrongdoing; the investigative journalist Pablo Torre’s podcast, which exposed the alleged cheating, was recently awarded a Pulitzer Prize.)

The Atlantic

Varun Shankar: Stone: "The offseason plan isn't, '[FVV/Adams are] coming back, it's fine.' "I think it's much more looking at our young guys and saying, 'You guys need to improve.'" Stone noted that the young guys showed improvement throughout the 25-26 season.

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