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There’s no clear basketball reason for LeBron James to stop. “He’s going to pass a lot of marks,” Lue said. “First of all, he’s great. One of the greatest players to ever play the game. And then two, just the longevity. The more you play, the more records you’re going to break. But for him, like I said, it’s all about his mental space, about how he wants to put work into his body, how he ate every single day, every single night. And it’s a tough regimen. It’s a tough discipline to be able to do that. To be able to eat great every single day, to be able to work out every single day, to do your correctives every single day. It’s a hard process. So for him to be able to do that, just shows you what type of player he is.”
Watching the Wolves come out flat against the Blazers, giving up 68 points in the first half and turning the ball over five times in the first quarter, apparently was enough for Finch to go somewhere he rarely goes. Julius Randle did not argue with Finch’s assessment. “Just gotta go get the ball,” he said. “Sometimes it’s not tactical or all that stuff. We just gotta go get the ball out of the air. They are quicker to the ball than us right now. We shouldn’t lose games from rebounding.” But they do. The Wolves are 15th in the NBA in second-chance points allowed. Only five teams behind them have winning records. They are 17th in defensive rebound percentage, and 24th over the last 15 games.
The partnership reached its end with a trade demand, which led to the Warriors sending Jonathan Kuminga and Buddy Hield to the Atlanta Hawks just before last month’s trade deadline in exchange for Kristaps Porziņģis. When asked about what goes through his mind the most in advance of Saturday’s reunion game against Kuminga in Atlanta, Kerr answered through the lens of a coach trying to navigate his own team through a losing skid at the end of a long season. “To be honest,” Kerr told The Athletic with a chuckle, “I haven’t given it much thought because we’re trying to win a damn game. But I can tell you that everybody likes JK. Everybody on our team wants the best for him. I want the best for him.”
“I think the trade was a good one,” Kerr said. “Both guys are very talented. I think everything in the NBA is circumstantial. I think players need the right set of circumstances to thrive. And the trade made sense because these were not the right circumstances for JK. And you can see right away that Kristaps has a very clear role on this team, something we’ve needed for years. And we’re looking forward to getting him out there with Steph. And so in the end, hopefully it’s a trade that works for both guys and both teams.”
Surely, Cade Cunningham has grander goals, such as a deep postseason run. According to NBA injury expert Jeff Stotts, the average time missed because of a collapsed lung is 26 days, which would set Cunningham for a return just before the playoffs. The Pistons will need him then more than they do during the close of the regular season. Playoff defenses, even low-seeded ones, lock in on weaknesses. If Detroit can neither shoot nor create, the offense could turn to sludge. And maybe an upset could follow.
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The Rockets host the Atlanta Hawks on Friday, then the Miami Heat on Saturday. Houston then travels to Chicago for a game Monday against the Bulls. The 16-time All-Star and 2014 NBA MVP accomplishing a milestone so revered at the United Center — “The House That Jordan Built” — would make for a new core memory. “Michael Jordan has always been my inspiration. There’s a reason why I wanted to be able to knock down those shots,” Durant said in a one-on-one interview with The Athletic. “He was always unstoppable, but when he became a midrange maestro, you never knew how he would attack you. You never knew what MJ was going to do. “He scared defenders every night, and I wanted to put that same kind of fear in the defender who’s guarding me.”
Durant credits the long hours he’s spent in the gym and the attention to detail put into his craft for the confidence he’s developed in the most crucial part of his game. “It’s a tedious process to master your touch. I’m not saying I’ve mastered shooting in general, but (the shots) that work for me, I feel like I’ve mastered,” Durant said. “I learned how to be more patient, to be more decisive with my movements and with my decisions. Just having confidence that, if I don’t have anything, I can rise up and shoot the middy. I can shoot over my guy. I can shoot over two or three guys. When you’re confident in getting to those shots, you can try different things.”
They kept competing, against Texas and against their diminishing hopes. Ultimately, they were a ragtag outfit, even though Dybantsa made them seem stylish. Does that make the whole adventure a failure? No. Does it make any reasonable basketball mind doubt Dybantsa’s NBA potential? No. Does his phenomenal freshman season still feel a little empty? Yes. Yet the phenom has no regrets. “I love this place,” Dybantsa said. “I’m happy I chose here. I definitely made the right decision. I knew coming in I made the right decision. Ever since my visit with the coaching staff, how it’s just a family atmosphere, talking to the academic adviser, everything about this place, I’m just happy. “As far as the season, it’s tough dealing with that type of adversity, but I’d rather do it with nobody else.”
Rod Strickland was not the Hall of Fame-level player that those three were — though he did have his number 10 retired by DePaul this season. LIU is a long, long way from the big stages on which he is accustomed to performing, but he’s embracing a new sense of accomplishment. “I think it’s different probably because as a player, that was a comfort level,” Strickland said Thursday. “I’ve been playing basketball all my life. I think being a coach, that coach bug kind of hit me at the end of my career, after my career. So it feels good to be able to lead a group of young men and get to them to a point where they’re somewhere where they’ve never been before. And I can see it every day, like, since we got the bid. You can see the excitement.”
The Warriors under Kerr have been widely praised for building an inclusive, psychologically safe culture — one that emphasizes finding joy, empowers player voice and accommodates strong personalities such as Draymond Green. Kerr seemingly solved the Chorus Paradox by erring on the side of enabling distinct voices. This culture unlocked extraordinary performance and sustained excellence, including four NBA titles. Yet even in this celebrated environment, the Harvest Paradox loomed. The Warriors once famously suggested that they were managing two timelines. But Kerr coached with a focus on younger players fitting into a system designed for older players. Rather than balancing the present and the future, Kerr was harvesting now without planting for tomorrow.
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Tafur: There is a growing sense of pride in Las Vegas as a new sports capital of the country, full of new stars. The Raiders haven’t been able to capitalize on that, but the NBA is a different animal, and there should be some excitement for the nightly arrival of the league’s best players, even if the new team doesn’t have any at first. It will be a good fit with all the sparkle on the Strip. The different sports seem to do a good job of cross-promotion as well, as Mark Davis can be seen ringside at all the big boxing matches.
James, 41, who still stars for the Los Angeles Lakers as a player, is worth $1.4 billion as of Wednesday, according to Forbes. But his personal worth is not nearly high enough to cover the cost of the expansion fee, and he was always going to need to join a team of investors to make his bid come true.