CHICAGO — Dear Readers …

I just witnessed history.

Allow me to relive it with you now that I have retrieved my cell phone from a large manila envelope that was in the NBA's possession for nearly 90 minutes once I was granted admittance to the sealed-off room where the league's annual draft lottery actually takes place.

I used the word history because the Washington Wizards on Sunday became the first team under the NBA's current lottery system — last significantly tweaked going into the 2019 draft — to win the rights to the No. 1 overall pick after posting the league's worst record.

The previous three teams with the worst record in the NBA (Utah and Detroit twice) fell as far as they could in the lottery to No. 5 overall.

I write history, too, because the league's most recent move to flatten lottery odds — affording an even 14.0% shot at No. 1 to the teams with the three worst records — is going out of business. We're less than three weeks away now from a specially convened Board of Governors session at which teams are expected to vote in a new system that will give the NBA's bottom three teams — Washington, Indiana and Brooklyn this season — only a 5.4% shot at the No. 1 overall pick … while teams with the fourth-though-10th-worst records get an 8.1% shot at ultimate lottery glory.

Let's get into it all here. Lottery reform, Sunday's standout developments, draft and trade rumbles already in circulation … everything I picked up from the sequestered room where it all goes down.

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Sorry, Moms.

Mother's Day doubles as an NBA holiday in 2026.

That's certainly not the first time I've used that line in recent weeks, but there's really no other way to say it when the league's Draft Lottery — which also happens to be one of the most anticipated lotteries ever as well as the last edition under the current system before major changes are instituted — is scheduled for Sunday at 3 PM ET.

Our twice-a-week contributor Jake Fischer will be one of the 16 reporters allowed in the sealed-off, no-phones-allowed, pen-and-paper-only drawing room in Chicago where the lottery takes place before the results are revealed on live TV. Can't wait to read and hear what Jake sees.

In the interim?

Here are a few quick Friday footnotes from an incredibly busy week:

🏀 No resolution yet on Steve Kerr's status going forward as the coach in the Bay Area after 12 seasons and four championships. The expectation within the Warriors, as covered Sunday in my Intel-packed piece above, is that Kerr's return is seen as more likely than not at this stage ... especially since the sides are still actively working through next steps when the Warriors are a full three weeks removed from their last game of the season. Yet it looks increasingly likely that the wait for official clarity on Kerr's status for Year 13, barring an unexpected weekend announcement, will drag into next week. As in after Golden State learns its fate in Sunday's lottery.

🏀 Even before the Knicks' impressive Game 3 victory at Philadelphia on Friday night without the injured OG Anunoby, they had seized clear-cut Favorites in the East status. They won't lose that from us, either, even if they have to take on the Detroit/Cleveland winner without Anunoby, who obviously has to be handled with extreme caution and patience after sustaining the same sort of dreaded injury (hamstring) that has tormented the likes of Luka Dončić and Jalen Williams this spring.

🏀 The aforementioned Young Jake likewise packed a ton into his latest around-the-league compilation of Intel that dropped Thursday … most notably his reportage about the stumbling Cavaliers and the daunting 2-0 series deficit they face heading into Saturday's Game 3 in Cleveland against top-seeded Detroit. Check out all of Fischer's latest handiwork here ICYMI:

🏀 There were so many must-see news conferences throughout the week featuring lead decision-makers from various front offices. The latest: Josh Kroenke spoke at length Friday afternoon about the Nuggets' disappointing first-round elimination and acknowledged that the early exit compels Denver to consider any incoming trade pitch that does not involve Nikola Jokić. Watch it in full here:

🏀 Playoff Math, as featured in last week's Friday Freebie, will indeed return during these playoffs, but the contribution from longtime NBA advanced stats maven this week is a graphic that simply illustrates how the aforementioned Pistons — as well my beloved Buffalo Sabres — have removed themselves from an unwanted list across the four major North American team sports in terms of ending a torturous drought by finally winning a playoff series:

Yes: Sacramento and Orlando are still very much stuck on that dreaded list.

The Stein Line is a reader-supported newsletter with both Free and Paid subscriptions available … and those who opt for the Paid edition are taking an active role in the reporting by providing vital assistance to bolster my independent coverage of #thisleague. Feel free to forward this post to family and friends interested in the NBA and please consider becoming a Paid subscriber to have full access to all of my posts.

As a reminder: Tuesday editions on this and every Newsletter Tuesday go out free to anyone who signs up … just as my Tuesday pieces did in their New York Times incarnation. Unless, that is, they are shifted to Friday like this one.

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Thanks for reading The Stein Line! This post is public so feel free to share it.

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Programming Note

We regrettably had to scrap Community Predictions for the second round of these playoffs.

Monday was so dang newsy — with Dallas (Masai Ujiri) and Chicago (Bryson Graham) making headline hires and Orlando creating a coaching vacancy — that there was simply no time to publish a community-wide call for picks like we did before the first round. The Committee (of One) ultimately decided that it just didn't make sense to do so Tuesday after two of the four Round 2 matchups were already underway.

I should have just asked for predictions via Substack Notes on Monday once it became apparent that it was the only time-friendly option. Rest assured that we'll bring the tradition back for the conference finals and NBA Finals … and at least we can share some highlights from the Round 1 predictions as compiled by our longtime trusty tabulator Deven P:

Irrational eBay Purchases (Cont’)

Saw this gem that I shouldn't have even been looking for:

Can't say I needed it or that I managed to negotiate a decent deal ... but you also don't see a Buffalo Braves basketball from the 1970s in pretty pristine condition very often.

So, yeah.

Snapped it right up.

NBA Draft Lottery Weekend is almost here.

We are just a few days away now from the final Ping Pong "air mix" machine drawing in Chicago under the league's 14-ball, 1,000-combination lottery system, which will determine the fates of AJ Dybantsa, Darryn Peterson, Cam Boozer and the many franchises hoping to obtain one of them. And I will be in the sealed-off room to witness proceedings for the fifth time.

Lottery outcomes have naturally been a dominant topic in my recent conversations with NBA executives on top of ongoing coaching searches throughout the NBA. Anticipation builds as we draw closer to every team knowing exactly what their draft positions will be on June 23-24, accelerating how numerous offseasons will play out.

We'll get to more on the lottery in a bit, but let's lead off in Milwaukee, where Bucks leadership just introduced new head coach Taylor Jenkins ... and made some revealing comments about the future of Giannis Antetokounmpo.

Bucks general manager Jon Horst spelled out to reporters what we've been hearing for days now: Giannis did not take an active role in their pursuit of Jenkins.

As for Antetokounmpo himself …

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Three recurring whispers consistently circulated during the past week as months of mystery about the Dallas Mavericks' search for a new lead decision-maker in the front office finally came to a head:

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Around-the-league NBA notes on a Sunday?

Dropped between a pair of Game 7s?

And on the day after Jake Fischer published 2,500 words' worth of his own around-the-league notes?

Yup. That much is happening in #thisleague right now.

So now it's my turn. I encourage you to click on Jake's piece above if you missed it and also read on here for more on Orlando, Chicago, Golden State, Dallas, Minnesota, Denver and, well, you get the idea:

It happened again. A 3-1 lead in the first round for the eighth-seeded Magic over the No. 1 Pistons was all the way vanished by dinner time Sunday with a Game 7 loss in Detroit.

Just like it played out in 2003 when the NBA went to a best-of-seven format in the first round for the first time.

The outcome will naturally lead to a zillion questions about what happens to Orlando’s roster after another season filled with injuries and capped by crushing disappointment after an all-in trade last June for Desmond Bane, but attention will rivet first to the Magic bench.

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There's a lot bubbling beneath the surface of the NBA's surprise-filled postseason right now.

Saturday night delivers the prospect of a thrilling Sixers/Celtics Game 7 in Boston. RJ Barrett's (still?) bouncing miracle 3 booked a Raptors/Cavaliers Game 7 in Cleveland on Sunday on top of a Pistons/Magic Game 7 in Detroit. San Antonio's Victor Wembanyama has already won his first playoff series. Jaden McDaniels, Rudy Gobert and the Chris Finch-coached, injury-battered Minnesota Timberwolves, meanwhile, have gone on quite a ride themselves to set up Wemby vs. Rudy in Round 2.

All that said ...

So much is percolating already about the 19 teams that have been sent home for the summer. And that's why I'm back with another around-the-league notebook so soon after Thursday's (which can be found right here ICYMI):

On the list of teams with fascinating offseasons ahead, Portland is high up there on The Stein Line's ladder.

Part of that undoubtedly stems from all the attention that has been generated in Tom Dundon's first official month of Blazers ownership ... specifically all the ink already spilled on various cost-cutting measures he has instituted.

Blazers general manager Joe Cronin pushed back on that stubborn storyline Thursday at the team's end-of-season interviews, insisting that the barbs Dundon has been increasingly subjected to are undeserved.

"Seeing those reports and some of those things, for me it was somewhat disturbing because I've gotten the opportunity to know Tom Dundon really, really well these last nine, 10 months and it's just not an accurate depiction of what his goals are," said Cronin, who also insisted that the team's decision not to travel two-way players early in the San Antonio series was his call rather than the new owner's.

Dundon's supporters have long maintained that, in running the NHL's Carolina Hurricanes, he has not been shy about spending to back on-ice matters and focusing on talent. Cronin himself chimed in Thursday by saying: "He's gonna spend when it touches the players and the players are always gonna be supported."

To that end …

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Trying something new in this edition of the Friday Freebie.

Roland Beech is the early 2000s founder of 82games.com and ranks as one of the pioneers in the NBA advanced stats space, having emerged as the league's first so-called "analytics coach" by earning a spot on the bench with the Dallas Mavericks, working his way up to a vice president of basketball operations title with the Mavericks and later moving to Sacramento as vice president of basketball strategy and data science.

Beech reached out recently to share some of the new playoff content concepts he has been working on by utilizing manual charting — which he hopes to someday marry in automated fashion with the new optical tracking data available leaguewide — to try to quantify some frequently cited (but obviously broad) basketball concepts: Physicality, Playing Hard and Shotmaking.

Beech's methodology defines Physicality — something head coaches are constantly and openly pining for in the modern NBA — as any kind of physical player-on-player activity ... whether that's going vertical at the rim, create/contain situations on isos (like a Shai Gilgeous-Alexander space-creating forearm to set up a mid-range jumper) or simply trying to break free from being held off the ball. Under the banner of Playing Hard, Beech lists examples that exemplify energy and movement: Cutting, running in to chase an offensive rebound or being quick to move to the right help spot defensively. His focus on shotmaking is made shots from at least 10 feet out …excluding free throws.

Using those parameters and looking to create a Three Factors framework by combining those focal points, Beech has passed along his personal statistical analysis from the San Antonio/Portland series that the Spurs won in five games and the ongoing Lakers/Rockets series that would stunningly head to a Game 7 on Sunday in Los Angeles if Houston — once trailing 3-0 in the series — can win Friday night at home.

Each of the following three graphics Beech furnished is accompanied by some collaborative analysis:

The Spurs won all three factors across their five games with the Trail Blazers and Victor Wembanyama led all players in the series in terms of Physicality and Playing Hard despite missing Game 4 entirely after that haunting Game 3 fall that inflicted a concussion.

In various key-sub categories that Beech tracks — At Rim, Bumps & Grabs, Level 2+ Force Wins* and Defensive Playing Hard — Wemby was the series leader in all of them.

"He is simply spectacular already," Beech said.

A potential concern as the playoffs continue? Wemby fell to the floor 20 times in first four career NBA playoff games per Beech's tabulations and his current per-36 minute fall rate would have placed the Frenchman sixth leaguewide among all players in the 2024 playoffs as tracked via 82games.com.

Something that you suspect will continue to be monitored and discussed as part of Wemby's quest to lower his injury risk.

*Beech explains that he tracks Level 2+ Force wins as a scaling of "force" measured from four separate levels. He classifies typical physicality as Level 1. Rising up and dunking over two defenders on Beech's scale would require Level 2 force. A hard screen that crumples the defender can also often be classified Level 2 … as can a chasedown block on a fastbreak. An example of Level 4 force, Beech says, was the Steven Adams/Mason Plumlee tangle in March 2025 when Adams held Plumlee firmly on a crashing takedown all the way to the floor.

The Blazers' overall season was an undeniable success. Especially after head coach Chauncey Billups was placed on indefinite unpaid leave just one game into the season as part of a federal gambling probe.

Who had Portland snagging the West's seventh seed in those circumstances?

Yet their struggle to keep up with the Spurs, even after stealing Game 2 in San Antonio, illuminates just how far the Blazers still need to go to compete with the West's elite twosome at the top.

Some positive takeaways for Portland ...

🏀 Even tasked with trying to finish over Wembanyama at the rim, Blazers All-Star Deni Avdija led all players in the series in Drive Physicality (+23 in net wins) and gave them an overall +1 edge in this category over five games.

🏀 The series also showed us what The Time Lord can do when healthy: Robert Williams III led Portland in "Roland Hard Play" rating per 36 minutes at 106. (Wemby, by comparison, registered a 130.) The Blazers were actually +3 points per 100 possessions for the series with Williams on the floor and he led the Blazers in the series in At Rim Physicality and the Create/Contain metric even though all of Williams' data under that banner came at the defensive end when containing one-on-one matchups that created jump shots.

🏀 After missing so much of the season, Scoot Henderson put both his potential and volatility on display against San Antonio. In the first three games of the series, Henderson averaged 23.3 points per game and posted a +15 plus/minus. In Games 4 and 5, he averaged just 2.5 points per game and was a -41. "There are still reasons to be excited about Scoot after some rough early days," Beech said. "With some dialed-in player development to shore up his weaknesses, I think he can be a Physicality/Playing Hard stud in due time."

The Shotmaking winner has prevailed in every game in this series in which the Lakers are suddenly clinging to a 3-2 lead.

The short-handed Lakers, in fact, likely masked the depths of their vulnerability without the injured Luka Dončić (and minus Austin Reaves for the first four games of the series) by posting a huge Shotmaking edge in Game 1 (+17 in a game that the Lakers won by nine points) and Game 2 (+19 in a game they won by seven).

Even without the injured Kevin Durant, Houston has surprisingly prevailed in the Shotmaking category in its two wins to create some real hope as the Rockets seek to become the first team in league history to successfully rally from 3-0 down in a best-of-seven series.

PS — Beech says he tracks the win/loss records for teams based on how they fare in each category (and sub-category) of these Physicality and Playing Hard realms. Shotmaking is fairly predictive in terms of winning that category also usually means winning the game in question, but Beech notes that the higher Playing Hard score between the two teams has been the most reliably predictive indicator in his early research at more than 85% in terms of winning the game over the past few seasons.

The Stein Line is a reader-supported newsletter with both Free and Paid subscriptions available … and those who opt for the Paid edition are taking an active role in the reporting by providing vital assistance to bolster my independent coverage of #thisleague. Feel free to forward this post to family and friends interested in the NBA and please consider becoming a Paid subscriber to have full access to all of my posts.

As a reminder: Tuesday editions on this and every Newsletter Tuesday go out free to anyone who signs up … just as my Tuesday pieces did in their New York Times incarnation. Unless, that is, they are shifted to Friday like this one.

Subscribe now

Thanks for reading The Stein Line! This post is public so feel free to share it.

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Top of the Charts

Sportico's Lev Akabas does tremendous data visualization work to explain important NBA stuff that makes me so envious. It's simply not a skill I possess.

Just this week he posted a flurry of helpful graphics to conceptualize the proposed changes to the NBA draft lottery that will be voted on by the league's Board of Governors on May 28, star injury absentees plaguing the playoffs and the Nuggets' woeful 3-point shooting that cost them so dearly in the Minnesota series.

One more time …

One more time for a comprehensive look at various coaching and front office searches underway that I co-scribed alongside Jake Fischer:

And one more time for pieces from on Nuggets restricted free agent-to-be Peyton Watson and a slew of contract matters that are already piling up at this early juncture of the offseason:

Let's also not forget this entry of historical Playoff Math from my Prime Video colleague :

(Substack) Note(s) of the Week

Recent declarations of note via Substack Notes:

Every Eastern Conference first-round series, for the first time since the spring of 2003 when best-of-seven play in Round 1 was introduced by the NBA, has been stretched to six games.

Two more matchups in the West have also been extended that long.

A fresh batch of around-the-league notes to complement Thursday's tripleheader drama of Knicks-at-Hawks and Celtics-at-76ers followed by Nuggets-at-Timberwolves was clearly a must given what's on the line.

To the latest, then, from my notebook on a slew of contract decisions that already have people around the league talking as the calendar flips to May and offseason business becomes as prevalent as the high-stakes games:

The aforementioned Hawks, who I've been writing about frequently since March, have to win a home game Thursday night to keep their season alive after the Knicks' best performance of the series in Game 5 nudged the East's No. 3 seeds into a 3-2 series lead from an initial 2-1 hole.

Of prime importance for Atlanta win or lose:

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The NBA's fiercest rivalry of recent vintage resumes tonight with Minnesota on the brink of Round 2, Denver seeking its first road win of this first-round rumble and neither Anthony Edwards nor Donte DiVincenzo available to the home team.

It's the sort of predicament that the visiting Nuggets can certainly identify with. The West's No. 3 seeds will have their best player for Thursday night's Game 6, but they certainly haven't been healthy all season and could well be without Aaron Gordon as well as the player they hoped would be their X-factor in this series.

Peyton Watson.

Officially Watson is week-to-week thanks to a stubborn hamstring injury. Yet league sources have maintained from the jump that Watson, last seen in uniform on April 1, was always likely to miss this entire series. The question now is whether Denver can take advantage of Minnesota's compromised state and extend its season long enough for Watson to re-emerge.

As much as the Nuggets have missed the sight of a full-speed Gordon, they have pined for Watson, too, over the past month. Cam Johnson wasn't the only Nugget they were counting on to try to fill the perimeter void left behind when Michael Porter Jr.'s floor-stretching capabilities were shipped off to Brooklyn. Watson's own gravity and ability as a half-court creator were among the factors that helped convince Nuggets officials that they could withstand Porter's departure in the name of creating some additional financial flexibility with hopes of assembling a more balanced roster.

"I think that I'm going to be a big part of that and I think that my play will really help determine whether or not we win it all," Watson told The Stein Line in February before those nagging hamstring issues derailed his strong fourth NBA season. "So I'm preparing myself for the biggest moments of the season and just taking this time now to get better but also to learn. And come June, hopefully we're raising our second banner."

Rest assured that both Nikola Jokić and Jamal Murray wish they could lean on Watson's assistance in these elimination game circumstances. The read here, though, is that Watson is headed for a significant summer whether or not he can make it back onto the floor in these playoffs. His name comes up often in leaguewide conversation when the topic turns to July's most coveted free agents.

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Around-the-league NBA notes on a Sunday?

Notes published on a Sunday via joint Fischer/Stein assembly?

On a Sunday adorned with four NBA playoff games as well?

As it should be!

To the latest from the notebooks of two reporters on the considerable coach, executive and player personnel chatter piling up as the second week of the playoffs beckon:

The Timberwolves should be joyous. After sputtering to a 9-10 finish to the regular season, they're one win away from winning a Round 1 duel with Nikola Jokić and his Nuggets in what many regard as the league's fiercest current rivalry.

The problem: Minnesota just lost both Anthony Edwards (knee) and Donte DiVincenzo (Achilles) to presumed season-ending injuries in its Game 4 win at home Saturday night. How competitive can the Wolves really be in Round 2 — likely against San Antonio — without their star and their glue guy?

That's the immediate nagging question. Then there's the uncertainty that lingers in the background …

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BUFFALO, NY — Even in my late 50s now, I'm learning new things about professional sports.

Until this week, I had amazingly never seen a playoff game in person starring my beloved Buffalo Sabres.

Until this week, I had never gone to both Game 1 and Game 2 in a playoff series of any kind exclusively as a fan.

Until this week, I had never stopped on my way into an arena because I was irresistibly drawn to a game outside before the game inside that had a surrounding circle of fans roaring and recording everything on their phones.

On the list of great things about independent journalism and having the freedom to go where you want to go when you are the publisher, this is all way, way up there. I recently took a four-day detour to The 716 after receiving a wonderful invite to the first two games of the Sabres' first taste of the playoffs in FIFTEEN years from Jake Vernon, their new chief commercial officer after Vernon's lengthy stints with the Timberwolves and Pacers.

I've been a Sabres fan since the early days of the franchise in the 1970s … as cemented during our family's seven (or so) years residing in Western New York before Dad got us traded to Southern California just like the Buffalo Braves. Yet attending a home (or road) playoff game was never really possible before this spring. For starters, I've been covering the NBA since February 1994 and the basketball and hockey postseasons obviously overlap. Also: I never had the independence (or financial wherewithal in those early years) to sneak away from the NBA playoffs — even for a bit — until I launched this publication in June 2021. By then, of course, Buffalo's eventual 14-season playoff drought was only in Year 10.

I was locked into the San Antonio Spurs' championship beat for The Dallas Morning News when the Sabres came right to my city of residence in Dallas for the Stanley Cup final in June 1999, so even that opportunity eluded me. Yet it finally all came together for me now. The Sabres not only made the playoffs at last after that record-setting playoff drought but also won the Atlantic Division to clinch home-ice advantage in Round 1. My new favorite Jake told me he had a prime seat saved for me for the first two games against Boston if I could just get myself there. Mrs. Line duly blessed the trip, sensing how much it would mean to me given that our closet, for all the Manchester City kit that it stores, is teeming with Sabres stuff, too.

And the trip itself was indeed as blissful as you can imagine despite a 4-2 defeat in Game 2 ... along with the fact that it took the home team a full 2 1/2 periods in both home games to steer a puck past the utterly demoralizing Jeremy Swayman.

I reveled in The Fifth Line and what they did to that punch dummy clad in a Cam Neely jersey. I danced like never before at a sporting venue when the Sabres assembled a historic comeback flurry of four goals in less than seven minutes of the third period in Game 1. I twice had the Beef on Weck (plus onion rings and some glorious peameal bacon in a nod to our neighbors to the north) from Gabriel's Gate. I sheepishly signed the very bottom of an autograph board in the new Sabres Live studio at KeyBank Center because I didn't feel as though I belong in the same space, sentence or tweet as the legendary Lindy Ruff. And I savored every second of the chance to meet and visit with '70s Sabres ledge Danny Gare.

I even convinced myself that, yes, it was OK to accept an autographed hat from the former captain who had two 50-goal seasons as a Sabre. Even at my age.

The problem now, utterly spoiled as I am, is figuring out how I can make it back to Buffalo for one of the later rounds if we can keep this run going. The Sabres take a 2-1 series lead into Sunday's Game 4 at Boston and, well, let's just say I have the fever.

This has already been a record-setting City season for me: I've somehow managed to attend a career-high 11 of the Blues' 53 competitive matches in 2025-26 (plus their lone preseason friendly at Palermo in Italy). Two regular-season Sabres games and two playoff games, by comparison, just ain't enough.

Of course, if it doesn't happen again this spring, how can I possibly complain? The totals in the above paragraph tell you how far I have gloriously pushed the limits lately. I had more fun on this last trip that I rightfully deserve and, most importantly, have reaffirmed this season — probably more than any other in my life — how glorious it is to be a sports fan (when it comes to City, Cal State Fullerton and the Sabres) whenever possible no matter how serious, curious and impartial I have to be as an NBA scribe.

I never want to forget how fun it can be to ditch the press pass, notebook and laptop and just celebrate or agonize with the teams I love. Fandom can certainly be heartbreaking, too, but it's such a welcome risk after waiting literally decades for this experience.

The Stein Line is a reader-supported newsletter with both Free and Paid subscriptions available … and those who opt for the Paid edition are taking an active role in the reporting by providing vital assistance to bolster my independent coverage of #thisleague. Feel free to forward this post to family and friends interested in the NBA and please consider becoming a Paid subscriber to have full access to all of my posts.

As a reminder: Tuesday editions on this and every Newsletter Tuesday go out free to anyone who signs up … just as my Tuesday pieces did in their New York Times incarnation. Unless, that is, they are shifted to Friday like this one.

Subscribe now

Thanks for reading The Stein Line! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Share The Stein Line

Film Session

They're a bit old now, but for posterity's sake I wanted to drop in a couple of video pieces I did recently so they're forever stored in my archive here:

(Substack) Note(s) of the Week

Recent declarations of note via Substack Notes:

NEW YORK — The sliding doors of NBA history open and close with greater velocity during the postseason. When fourth quarter comebacks swing a series like whiplash, aftershocks can shake franchise structures forever.

Look at Golden State. The Warriors fell short of the No. 8 seed and immediately the prospect of a dramatic new day in the Bay Area — without head coach Steve Kerr — becomes a widespread talking point from the moment that final buzzer sounds.

Around the league, NBA personnel are watching the latest installment of Denver vs. Minnesota not only for the compelling basketball these two teams always seem to deliver. The ramifications that follow for the losing team in a first-round matchup deadlocked at 1-1 as the battle moves to the Twin Cities with Thursday night's Game 3 are a source of considerable curiosity. What happens next for two teams with real championship aspirations ... and only one winner?

Nickeil Alexander-Walker, once a key cog in back-to-back trips to the Western Conference finals for the Wolves, was streaming Game 2 of their stirring come-from-behind victory over the Nuggets on his phone as he dressed following Atlanta's own Game 2 road victory Monday night in New York.

Alexander-Walker is well aware that the Timberwolves allowed him to exit via free agency last July in part because of the money Minnesota committed to Naz Reid ... plus their belief in Donte DiVincenzo and his cheaper contract. Those circumstances led to Alexander-Walker, now the heavy favorite to win the NBA's Most Improved Player race as a Hawk this week, being sacrificed in the Wolves' build around Anthony Edwards.

“Nobody really expected me to be doing this," Alexander-Walker told The Stein Line, referring to the 20.8 points per game he posted this 2025-26 campaign — nearly double his highest single-season average during any of his prior six seasons.

Alexander-Walker will find out Friday whether the MIP trophy is indeed his. Mark that down as just one fascinating outcome when it comes to all the doors that have opened and closed and connected Golden State and Minnesota to Atlanta and Milwaukee and a few more teams.

Let's trace these interlocking paths …

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BUFFALO, NY — Around-the-league NBA notes on a Monday?

After I spent Sunday in a state of extreme sports fandom that began with a Game of the Year contender in the Premier League (Manchester City 2, Arsenal 1 via TV-only for yours truly) and then as an actual ticket-holder Sunday night for the first Buffalo Sabres playoff game in 15 years?

As it should be!

I will naturally share more about my excursion to The 716 after Tuesday night's Game 2 against the Boston Bruins, but this Monday has been a wildly busy one, trying to making up for Sunday's play time.

So after Jake Fischer assembled a very newsy notebook Saturday filled with around-the-league Intel that I've linked to below in case you missed it, now I am following up with my own entry.

To the latest from my notebook on various big names (potentially) on the move, more on the mounting scrutiny of new Portland Trail Blazers majority owner Tom Dundon and additional chatter topics from the league's personnel grapevine:

As covered in last weekend's Sunday Best notes, three marquee names are mentioned often by executives around the league when it comes to looking ahead to try to forecast the foremost stars who could potentially leave their current teams in the offseason.

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It's the opening weekend of the NBA playoffs and that is naturally where the focus should be trained for the basketball public.

Executives around the league, mind you, are tracking other things as well.

Numerous team officials and scouts spent the latter part of the week at the annual Portsmouth Invitational Tournament in Virginia to get an up-close look at the college seniors who will be part of June's draft pool.

There are also two head coaching vacancies (Milwaukee and New Orleans) in addition to two franchises (Chicago and Dallas) looking for a new head of basketball operations.

In less than a month, of course, Mother's Day will double as an NBA holiday (as our publisher likes to put it) when the league's draft lottery is held in Chicago on May 10. (I am once again hoping to be in the sealed-off drawing room to witness how the lottery actually plays out off screen.)

This year's lottery, meanwhile, could be the last iteration of the format as we know it depending on how a special Board of Governors vote scheduled for May 28 plays out in terms of changes to the system that NBA commissioner Adam Silver has vowed to implement.

Let's dive into everything I’m hearing about all of the above ...

The only change so far in Milwaukee is on the bench. Doc Rivers has stepped down as Bucks coach and told Bill Simmons in a podcast appearance this week that he doesn't expect to coach again at the NBA level.

Next up?

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The NBA Play-In Tournament and the win-or-go-home stakes attached to its six games have proven to be a (mostly) magical combination.

LaMelo Ball's uncalled tripping penalty that felled Bam Adebayo was way over the line and can make you want to affix an asterisk of some sort to Charlotte's `127-126 triumph over Miami on Tuesday night in what otherwise had all the substance of an OT thriller, but the prevailing sentiment still holds for the bulk of this week's basketball: It's been riveting.

Especially after so many games during the regular season so often left us all wondering who was actually trying to win.

I must confess, though, that there is one small thing I definitely don't like about the P-I-T: Friday night's deciding games in each conference, followed by an early Saturday start to the playoffs proper, leave almost no time to make a community-wide call for First Round Predictions.

So …

We've decided to issue that summons now before Friday night's games tip off even though the top seeds in each conference — Oklahoma City and Detroit — don't know their first-round foes yet. We'll be taking your predictions until Saturday's first game begins.

Let's focus on the six first-round matchups that we do know. Who you got?

For tallying purposes, which will be handled as always by longtime subscriber/trusty tabulator Deven P., please list your winning team only and the number of games for each of the Round 1 pairings that have been confirmed in the East and the West.

Just like so …

Celtics in 5

Knicks in 7

Cavaliers in 6

Spurs in 5

Nuggets in 5

Rockets in 5

We decided it's best to try to collect as many predictions on the six matchups that have already been locked in before locking this file at 1 PM ET on Saturday just before Cleveland plays host to Toronto in Game 1 rather than post this file late Friday/early Saturday when the Play-In bracket is complete and presumably shrink the turnout.

Please register your picks in the comments section below and share this piece with a friend, too. The process is more fun when we get a good turnout.

PS — If you want to include Thunder and Pistons predictions even without waiting for a confirmed opponent — like we did on the DLLS Mavs podcast earlier Friday as shown in the above graphic — go for it.

The Stein Line is a reader-supported newsletter with both Free and Paid subscriptions available … and those who opt for the Paid edition are taking an active role in the reporting by providing vital assistance to bolster my independent coverage of #thisleague. Feel free to forward this post to family and friends interested in the NBA and please consider becoming a Paid subscriber to have full access to all of my posts.

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One more time …

For the season's final helping (and nearly 5,000 words' worth) of 1-to-30 NBA Power Rankings exclusively from The Committee (of One):

(Substack) Note(s) of the Week

Recent declarations of note via Substack Notes:

One more serving of Power Rankings for the season?

One more 1-to-30 ladder to ensure that every outpost on the NBA map is covered?

One more meaty rankings dispatch to try to make up for the fact that our annual goal of doing this once per month during the regular season inevitably gets derailed in January by unavoidable intrusions/competing journalistic quests?

Better late than never.

The original plan, in truth, was to uncork our final rankings pour before the Play-In Tournament started Tuesday night. When those unavoidable intrusions inevitably intervened, The Committee (of One) decided to run these rankings specifically on this Thursday to help fill the void on a gameless evening as we wait for Friday's two Play-In deciders and Saturday's launch of the playoffs proper.

The mission as always that we hope to achieve with our monthly(-ish) rankings cadence — as opposed to the weekly rankings I cooked up for 15 years in my ESPN days — remains unchanged: Establish a 1-to-30 order (at least somewhat) independent of the standings which measures big-picture potential and expectations alongside short-term results. Injuries and other off-court developments, positive and negative, are factored in as well … with some sprinkles of Committee whim mixed in.

You are asked, as always, to register your questions, quibbles or any other pertinent thoughts in the comments section below so we can respond and expound upon our thinking. And remember: Rankings posts are incredibly long. So just click on the main headline to get the web or app version instantly if it proves too unwieldy to consume as an email.

1️⃣ Oklahoma City Thunder

What is more impressive than a 24-1 start? Perhaps this: San Antonio went 30-4 from Feb. 1 onward and still couldn't overtake the Thunder for the West's No. 1 seed. From Chet Holmgren's 13 missed games to Jalen Williams' 49, so many key Thunder contributors missed regular season time, but the defending champions managed to hold off the hard-charging Spurs with their own 24-5 closing argument and a No. 1 finish in defensive rating. OKC also came away with the most favorable possible path to the conference finals now that San Antonio and Denver are likely to run into each other in Round 2.

Last ranking (Feb. 19): 2

2️⃣ San Antonio Spurs

Can the Spurs, back in the playoffs proper for the first time in seven seasons, really hush the incessant questions about their lack of playoff experience as a collective? This might prove to be a good season to try their luck with a playoff experience deficit when every other playoff team in the West (outside of OKC obviously) has daunting injury or inconsistency demons to contend with. Only one team since the NBA/ABA merger in 1976-77 has ever started four players 25 or younger and won 60 games: This Spurs team that features Stephon Cassell, Devin Vassell and Julian Champagnie alongside a certain Victor Wembanyama.

Last ranking (Feb. 19): 3

3️⃣ Detroit Pistons

I know, I know: The Celtics are the favorite to win the East for much of the basketball public. Doesn't matter. The Committee simply wasn't putting the Pistons any lower than No. 3 on this ladder after they were the best story in basketball (regular season division) for the second consecutive season. An 8-3 surge after Cade Cunningham sustained a collapsed lung — and after Pistons players heard all season that there isn't enough shooting or secondary playmaking around Cunningham — ultimately nudged Detroit to a 60-win campaign that has J.B. Bickerstaff at the forefront of the Coach of the Year race once again. Now to see if the Pistons can muster some long overdue playoff success to validate all the 82-game glory.

Last ranking (Feb. 19): 1

4️⃣ Denver Nuggets

You still can't describe the Nuggets as healthy — not with Aaron Gordon (hamstring) clearly operating at less-than-full capacity and Peyton Watson (also hamstring) out indefinitely — but a tidy 12-game winning streak to close out the regular season has re-established the 2022-23 champs as the NBA's foremost threat to preventing Oklahoma City or San Antonio from winning it all. History says that Denver is unlikely to overcome its bottom-10 ranking in the defensive rating charts (No. 21). History, of course, has never seen anything like Nikola Jokić, either, given that The Joker just became the first NBA player ever to lead the league in rebounds per game (12.9 RPG) and assists per game (10.7 APG).

Last ranking (Feb. 19): 6

5️⃣ Boston Celtics

We all got it wrong with all that Gap Year talk ... didn’t we? Joe Mazzulla has an excellent shot to win the Coach of the Year trophy that he insists he doesn't even want to be asked about by the pesky media because the Celtics finished in the top five in both offensive and defensive rating — something no other team but San Antonio can claim this season — and are routinely billed these days as the true Eastern Conference faves after the March acquisition, er, return of a guy named Jayson Tatum. Who do you have winning the East if not Boston?

Last ranking (Feb. 19): 5

6️⃣ New York Knicks

For the longest time, The Committee believed that this season represented the Knicks' best shot to win a championship since 1994. You hear that less and less these days now that the playoffs are actually here, with Detroit and Boston perceived to have moved ahead of New York in the Eastern Conference pecking order and the reigning champs from Oklahoma City sitting atop a West that also features imminent threats from San Antonio and Denver. Yet when it comes to the Under Pressure Rankings, New York is way higher than No. 6. James Dolan made that clear in his WFAN Radio interview in January after the Knicks won the NBA Cup in Las Vegas: He's the one who said this season is Larry O'Brien Trophy or Bust in Gotham.

Last ranking (Feb. 19): 4

7️⃣ Cleveland Cavaliers

The Cavaliers have reached the conference finals only twice without LeBron James on their roster: 1975-76 and 1991-92. Donovan Mitchell, meanwhile, has yet to go beyond Round 2 in any of his nine previous trips to the playoffs. So who's touting Mitchell and the revamped Cavs to go that far this spring? Cleveland was much better in the second half of the season (30-11) and the uptick began even before its Darius Garland-for-James Harden swap, but we've only seen occasional glimpses (less than 80 minutes' worth) of Harden alongside Mitchell, Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen. Skepticism about this team thus naturally persists.

Last ranking (Feb. 19): 8

8️⃣ Atlanta Hawks

Did The Committee get too carried away with the Hawks' placement on this ladder? I suppose that's a fair question, but how can you not be romanced by Atlanta's 20-6 surge after the All-Star break — and after a trade deadline that suggested they were tearing things down by shipping out Trae Young and Kristaps Porziņģis — when there were so many teams leaguewide trying not to win throughout the season's second half? While undeniably true that a Hawks/Knicks first-round series won't be the same without Ice Trae, one suspects that the East's surprising No. 6 seed will be thrilled to settle even deeper into the Jalen Johnson Era as its new star man steps onto the brightest of postseason stages. Johnson, remember, averaged 22.5 points, 10.3 rebounds and 7.9 assists during the regular season. That's Jokić/Russ/Big O kind of stuff.

Last ranking (Feb. 19): 20

9️⃣ Minnesota Timberwolves

The West's No. 6 seed was largely a six-man team this season. Can Ayo Dosunmu and Bones Hyland be playoff difference-makers in support of Anthony Edwards, Julius Randle, Rudy Gobert, Jaden McDaniels, Donte DiVincenzo and Naz Reid? Are Edwards and McDaniels healthy enough to shoulder their usual loads for the Wolves? The reality is, as well as Minnesota has played Denver in the recent past, this team finished the regular season in a 9-10 malaise that contrasts sharply with last season's 17-4 closing surge. A third successive trip to the Western Conference finals looks like a tall order.

Last ranking (Feb. 19): 7

🔟 Houston Rockets

As March was winding to a close, Houston was the top-six seed in the West that everyone not-so-secretly wanted to draw in the opening round of the playoffs. Less than three weeks later, because of the injury hammer blows that the Lakers have taken, it's the Rockets who will be on the favorable end of a Round 1 matchup against a severely wounded (and thus desirable) foe. The prize for taking advantage of this sudden turn of events is a likely Round 2 encounter with 64-win Oklahoma City for Thunder alumnus Kevin Durant and Co., but that would certainly represent a step forward for the West's No. 5 seed after Houston had to play the entire season without Fred VanVleet and half of it without key big man Steven Adams. Yet even after losing Adams, Houston still finished the season with an average per-game advantage on the boards of +8.6, which according to the Elias Sports Bureau ranks as the third-largest differential seen in that category since 1966-67 (topped only by Boston's +10.3 in 1972-73 and +8.7 in 1973-74).

Last ranking (Feb. 19): 9

1️⃣1️⃣ Toronto Raptors

The Raptors were one of four teams in the East (along with Charlotte, Philadelphia and Detroit) to improve on last season by at least 16 wins. They did so with Scottie Barnes and Brandon Ingram meshing well in their first full season together and by going 41-14 against the NBA's middle and bottom 10 teams to offset a 5-22 mark against the teams with the top 10 records. That 5-22 mark against the upper-third includes a 3-0 season sweep of the same Cavaliers that Toronto will face in Round 1 ... except that they're really not the same Cavaliers. All three meetings were before Thanksgiving and long before James Harden was a Cav. The good news for Canada's Team: Opening up against Cleveland has to be better than the first-round series with the Knicks that everyone was expecting. New York swept that season series 5-0.

Last ranking (Feb. 19): 10

1️⃣2️⃣ Los Angeles Lakers

LeBron James' 23rd season (at least the regular season portion) ended with Western Conference Player of the Week honors. The playoffs awaiting for James and what's left of the Lakers, by contrast, are bound to be rough with Luka Dončić and Austin Reaves feared lost for most (if not all) of the purple-and-gold's Round 1 matchup with Houston. April Fools' Day is an occasion many dread, but April 2 in Oklahoma City will be remembered with far greater contempt in Lakerdom thanks to the injuries sustained by Dončić and Reaves after a monster 15-2 March. The Lakers, as a result, are facing the prospect of a third successive first-round exit for the first time in franchise history.

Last ranking (Feb. 19): 12

1️⃣3️⃣ Philadelphia 76ers

Wednesday's Play-In victory over beleaguered Orlando ensured that the 76ers did not miss the playoffs in back-to-back seasons for the first time since the heart of The Process years. How much trouble they can now give second-seeded Boston, mind you, is difficult to project since we still don't know how much longer Joel Embiid will be sidelined by his recent appendectomy. This was the third straight season, sadly, that Embiid played in less than half of the Sixers' games … while Paul George has managed to appear in just 78 of 164 regular-season games as a Sixer. As electric as Tyrese Maxey continues to be as the highest-scoring Philly guard since Allen Iverson, availability issues are the storyline that won't go away for Boston's old friends.

Last ranking (Feb. 19): 15

1️⃣4️⃣ Portland Trail Blazers

It remains utterly staggering that A) Portland saw coach Chauncey Billups placed on indefinite leave because of a federal gambling probe before its second game of the season and B) Washington traded Deni Avdija to the Trail Blazers for a modest return package when Avdija was only 23 and the holder of a ridiculously team-friendly contract that is now inherited by new owner Tom Dundon. Interim coach Tiago Splitter went 42-39 and will now get to coach a playoff series against his former employers in San Antonio after the rampaging Avdija led the Blazers to their first playoff berth since 2020-21 via a stirring Play-In Tournament win Tuesday night at Phoenix. On top of all that, Damian Lillard will be back on the floor next season after recovering from an Achilles tear. Exciting times in the Pacific Northwest — even amid the uncertainty surrounding new ownership — for the first time in a long time.

Last ranking (Feb. 19): 16

1️⃣5️⃣ Charlotte Hornets

Encouraging news when you are tasked with winning one road game to end the league's longest playoff drought at nine seasons: Charlotte was the only team in the league this season to have a better record on their travels (23-18) than they did at home (21-20). Yet we can safely say that it's been a Cinderella season for the Hornets even if they can't win in Orlando on Friday night. This team was 11-22 when the calendar flipped to 2026. Then they went 33-16 to establish Charles Lee (Coach of the Year) and Kon Knueppel (Rookie of the Year) as serious season-ending award contenders. One of my favorite stats of the season: When Moussa Diabate starts alongside Knueppel, LaMelo Ball, Brandon Miller and Miles Bridges, Charlotte is 32-9 (including Tuesday's contentious 9 vs. 10 victory in overtime over Miami).

Last ranking (Feb. 19): 13

1️⃣6️⃣ Phoenix Suns

If the Suns fail to advance out of the Play-In Tournament after being presented with two home games to win one and spending seemingly the whole season in the West's top seven … man. That would unavoidably take some shine off of what has been a remarkable run of overachievement that was predicted by pretty much no one. Phoenix was routinely projected to finish in the 30-win range and at the bottom of the West and managed to claw its way to 45-37 despite Dillon Brooks and Jalen Green combining to miss more than 70 games through injuries. It was nonetheless an especially redemptive season for Brooks — who even got four technical fouls rescinded by the league office on top of averaging a career-high 20.2 points per game — and a breakout season for first-year coach Jordan Ott.

Last ranking (Feb. 19): 14

1️⃣7️⃣ Golden State Warriors

For all the years of cracks about how the Heat, Hawks and Bulls are always destined to end up in the Play-In, it's somehow the mighty Warriors — having won four titles in eight seasons at their apex — who find themselves in the PIT for the third season running and fourth time overall. This 37-45 outfit was actually five games over .500 with Stephen Curry was available ... but that was only the case for 43 games (24-19). A massive summer looms, no matter what happens as an encore after Wednesday night's thriller that ended the Clippers' season, to see if Golden State can assemble one more potential contender for Curry to carry and Steve Kerr to coach. If the Warriors can't pull that off, mind you, it's probably worth noting that next season will be Year 13 of the Curry/Kerr partnership. That's some serious staying power.

Last ranking (Feb. 19): 18

1️⃣8️⃣ Orlando Magic

When the list of this season's Most Disappointing Teams is drawn up, Orlando will certainly feature prominently. The Magic overcame their offensive shortcomings and various injury woes in the previous two seasons with a defensive rating that ranked in the top two leaguewide, but that figure slipped to 13th this season. Not what anyone was expecting after last June's trade splurge for Desmond Bane. The heat has been on coach Jamahl Mosley for months, but the future of the Paolo Banchero/Franz Wagner frontcourt tandem is what really generates leaguewide curiosity. The duo played in only 64 of a possible 164 games together over the past two seasons and only managed a 33-31 record (13-11 this season) when we did see them together. The Committee will be tracking what happens next in the Magic Kingdom — beyond the bench — all summer.

Last ranking (Feb. 19): 17

1️⃣9️⃣ LA Clippers

It was a season unlike any we've ever seen in Clipperland ... which is truly saying something. The Aspiration Scandal and allegations of salary cap circumvention in September that remain unresolved. A 6-21 start. The early injury loss of Bradley Beal and the banishment of Chris Paul. And then the 36-19 turnaround to clinch a record 15th straight winning season in a comeback that coach Tyronn Lue actually insisted would happen. The Clippers even traded away both James Harden and Ivica Zubac and seemingly overcame so much … only to sign off with a painful Play-In collapse Wednesday night against the visiting Warriors. Kawhi Leonard had what might just be the best regular season of his career, but don't forget: The Clippers even fielded trade calls on The Klaw in the final hour before the Feb. 5 trade deadline before ultimately deciding against moving him. They also hosted the All-Star Game at the Intuit Dome in there somewhere. The first team in NBA history to finish with a winning record after falling 15 games or more under .500 now proceeds to the lottery ... except that its pick is headed to Oklahoma City as a vestige of the Shai Gilgeous-Alexander trade. See? The Clippers' 2025-26 has been a movie.

Last ranking (Feb. 19): 14

2️⃣0️⃣ Miami Heat

Tuesday night's loss at Charlotte, with Bam Adebayo felled by LaMelo Ball's uncalled tripping penalty, ended the Heat's run of successful Play-In campaigns at three in a row. The reality, of course, is that even two more Play-In wins this week really couldn't have salvaged a wholly un-Heat-like season. They lost 10 of the next 14 games after Adebayo's historic 83-point eruption against Washington on March 10 and finished out of the top 10 in defensive rating for the first time in six seasons. Then they lost Game 83 in Charlotte. The summer on South Beach will thus be spent waiting to see if Pat Riley's front office can successfully mount a trade pursuit of Giannis Antetokounmpo or another star who can haul the Heat back to where we expect to see them: In contention.

Last ranking (Feb. 19): 19

2️⃣1️⃣ Dallas Mavericks

Nothing can compare to the (mostly self-inflicted) agony of the 2024-25 season, but 2025-26 was agonizing and chaos-filled in its own right for the Mavericks. And if Cooper Flagg is denied Rookie of the Year honors, it will essentially confirm that he was punished for the constant chaos around him (zero of it of his own making) that he played through admirably. The one thing that The Committee was sure of in Dallas this season was that Flagg would be named ROY. He wound up leading his team in points, rebounds, assists and steals — something only Michael Jordan managed as a rookie — and it still might not be enough. It's been a l-o-n-g 14 months in The 214.

Last ranking (Feb. 19): 22

2️⃣2️⃣ New Orleans Pelicans

Zion Williamson played in 62 games. That's the second-highest total of his career and one suspects that the Pelicans would have eagerly accepted that total had it been promised in September. The problem, of course, is that New Orleans went 26-56 even with a largely available Williamson and two promising rookies (Jeremiah Fears and Derik Queen) joining two vets coveted by countless other teams (Trey Murphy III and Herb Jones). The truth is they only finished this high in the rankings because, well, somebody had to with all the tanking going on. May 10th is when the Pels will find out how painful draft night in June will be since their first-round pick is owed to the Hawks thanks to last June's draft-night trade for Queen. Williamson, meanwhile, has to wait now until Year 8 to try to get himself out of an undesirable club that only features Zion and Anthony Bennett: The only two No. 1 overall picks in league history to never appear in an NBA playoff game.

Last ranking (Feb. 19): 27

2️⃣3️⃣ Sacramento Kings

The patience of Kings fans is forever tested. They watched their team sink to the very bottom of the NBA standings at 12-46 at the season's two-thirds marker and then, after getting very used to the idea of picking as high as No. 1 overall and no lower than fifth in June draft, were treated to a needless 10-14 finishing kick that could leave Sacramento with merely the fifth-best lottery odds in May depending on the outcome of a coinflip with Utah next Monday. Like New Orleans, Sacramento wound up this high essentially by default, which is yet another blow for the locals to absorb. The franchise is still trying to recover from its refusal to draft Luka Dončić because it already had De'Aaron Fox on the roster, then drafting and trading away Tyrese Haliburton to pair Domantas Sabonis with Fox, then trading Fox away in February 2025 in the belief that he no longer wanted to be there. The capper: Sacramento has reached the playoffs once in the past 20 seasons. Once. Not easy to be that cold in a league that sends 16 of its 30 teams to the playoffs every season.

Last ranking (Feb. 19): 30

2️⃣4️⃣ Chicago Bulls

Billy Donovan has managed just one trip to the playoffs in six seasons as the Bulls' coach, but his bosses revere him as though he's had a Phil Jackson amount of success. That much is clear after Bulls president and CEO Michael Reinsdorf told the world last week that he doesn't want to consider candidates to take over Chicago's front office who don't want Donovan to keep coaching this team. The Bulls' cornerstones going forward, in some order, thus appear to be Donovan, Josh Giddey and Matas Buzelis. Lots of roster work, then, will need to be done by the eventual successors hired to replace Artūras Karnišovas and Marc Eversley. We should note that Giddey ranked third in the league this season in touches per game (one of our favorite stats) behind only Denver's Nikola Jokić (100.8) and Philadelphia's Tyrese Maxey (95.3). Giddey clocked in at 94.1 per game.

Last ranking (Feb. 19): 23

2️⃣5️⃣ Milwaukee Bucks

The most monumental offseason for this franchise since Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was traded to the Lakers in June 1975 has already begun after a regular season more nightmarish than the Bucks could have ever imagined. Giannis Antetokounmpo appeared in only 36 games and Milwaukee was a middling 17-19 when their Face of the Franchise did play. Doc Rivers has already stepped down as head coach, countless rival teams are expecting Antetokounmpo to be dealt this summer at last and The Committee is struggling to process the very accurate answer to the question: Do you remember Giannis’ last significant involvement in the NBA postseason? You have to rewind all the way to 2022 for the last time we saw him playing after the conclusion of the first round.

Last ranking (Feb. 19): 21

2️⃣6️⃣ Brooklyn Nets

Remember: Team owner Joe Tsai made it public from the jump that the Nets were going to be playing for a draft pick in 2025-26. Now they really need some lottery luck now (and presumably a big trade on top of it) to upgrade the talent on this roster after none of last June's five first-round draft picks did much as rookies. It's a massive summer in Brooklyn ... especially when you remember that the Nets do not have control of their first-round pick in 2027. Will they extend Michael Porter Jr.'s contract after his strong maiden season as a Net? Or use his salary in that potential big trade?

Last ranking (Feb. 19): 28

2️⃣7️⃣ Utah Jazz

The Committee can understand why the Jazz and their fans feel so aggrieved by that $500,000 tanking fine assessed shortly before All-Star Weekend. They were the only ones making questionable playing time choices? We didn't see any other teams trot out some eyebrow-raising lineups across the season's final two months? (ESPN assembled quite a piece about that here.) One last huge day in Utah's 2025-26 campaign looms Monday, when a coinflip with Sacramento will determine which of the two teams has the fourth-best lottery odds (and which falls to fifth-best odds). If the Jazz win that coinflip it will be guaranteed that their first-round pick in June can’t slip lower than No. 8, ensuring that Utah will be adding another highly rated prospect to a core that suddenly features Jaren Jackson Jr. alongside Lauri Markkanen and the young trio of Walker Kessler, Keyonte George and Ace Bailey. If that pick winds up falling to No. 9 in next month's lottery, Utah would have to surrender it to (gulp) Oklahoma City.

Last ranking (Feb. 19): 23

2️⃣8️⃣ Memphis Grizzlies

The Committee had to go to London to do it, but I think we saw the high point of Memphis' painful season: Ja Morant ringing up 24 points and 13 assists in a win over Orlando across the proverbial pond. Morant, though, played in only 19 games beyond that overseas excursion, Zach Edey showed flashes of promise but played in just 11 games total and the Grizzlies entered full teardown mode by following up last June's trade of Desmond Bane to Orlando by dealing Jaren Jackson Jr. to Utah. Only the Grizzlies' late-season tanking went to plan and now they will try again to ship out Morant after finding no market for him at the in-season trade deadline.

Last ranking (Feb. 19): 26

2️⃣9️⃣ Indiana Pacers

The Pacers crashed to their worst regular season ever in the NBA in the wake of last season's storybook run to the NBA Finals ... worse even than a 20-62 mark way back in 1982-83. Some of that losing, though, was obviously by design with Tyrese Haliburton lost for the entire season and thanks to many more injuries along the way after a 1-13 start. The real pressure point, mind you, comes on May 10th, when Indiana has a 52.1% shot in the Mother's Day draft lottery to land a top-four pick. Put another way: The Pacers have a 47.9% chance of seeing that pick land in the Nos. 5-9 range, which would force them to give it up to the Clippers as part of the Ivica Zubac trade.

Last ranking (Feb. 19): 24

3️⃣0️⃣ Washington Wizards

The patience of Wizards fans has been sorely tested, too. Their team has failed to win 50 games for (whoa) 47 consecutive seasons. The Wizards also just became only the third team in league history to be outscored by more than 10 points per game in back-to-back seasons. And those fans will have to wait until October to see what the lineup looks like with Trae Young (who played in five games after being acquired from Atlanta in January) and Anthony Davis (who played in zero after being acquired from Dallas in February) in it. The solace for those who love the Wiz: Securing the league's worst record at 17-65 ensures that Washington can't fall lower than fifth in next month's draft lottery, meaning their top-eight-protected pick is safe and that the Knicks will have to settle for two second-round picks instead. They can certainly celebrate that triumph in the nation's capital.

Last ranking (Feb. 19): 29

It was supposed to be a milestone season.

This is, after all, Season No. 80 for the NBA.

Yet the regular season, I'm afraid, frequently had the feel of a millstone. Player availability issues, incessant Tanking Talk, blowouts galore ... these have all been the dominant discussion topics in pro basketball since the All-Star break.

Hopefully we're about to get to the good stuff. The annual Play-In Tournament, now exclusively on Amazon Prime, runs Tuesday through Friday. The playoffs proper begin Saturday. And the offseason — for 10 teams at least — starts now.

We moved the usual Sunday Best around-the-league notes compilation to Monday to get through Sunday's 15-game slate featuring all 30 teams. But things are about to get very busy ... off the floor as well as on it.

To the latest from my notebook on potential player, coach and executive movement:

Buckle up.

Read more

SAN ANTONIO — There's a saying at Stein Line HQ:

Once a season — every season — watching a game in person in the Alamo City is a must.

I love this place and have for as long as I can remember. My fifth road game as a Clippers beat writer way back in March 1994 brought me to San Antonio and the connection with the land of Fiesta teal, pink and orange was instant. (Maybe my fascination with my first George Gervin and Larry Kenon trading cards years earlier had something to do with it.)

Working for The Dallas Morning News in the late 1990s when the newspaper really covered the whole state, followed by my 15 years at ESPN, meant that I was dispatched to The 210 countless times to cover the entirety of The Tim Duncan Era ... with David Robinson still at his side for the first two of the Spurs' five championships.

I wrote about this career-long attachment (above) last April and couldn't resist retelling the tale after making a late-in-the-game decision to fly in for the Mavericks' final road date of another l-o-n-g season in The 214.

Some standout sights from this quick trip:

🏀 Victor Wembanyama rumbled for 24 points in the first half and racked up 30 points in the 20 minutes he needed to log in his likely final regular season appearance of 2025-26 to satisfy 65-Game Rule regulations ... and then came back when he was presumed to be done for the evening to finish with 40 points and 13 rebounds in San Antonio's 139-120 cruise. The Spurs will play in their first playoff game in seven seasons on April 18 or April 19. I personally wouldn't have played Wemby for an extra second beyond the 20 minutes required for year-end award eligibility … but I must say he looks more than ready for his maiden NBA postseason despite that recent rib contusion.

🏀 Cooper Flagg rang up 33 points of his own — 25 by halftime — to keep his Rookie of the Year duel with Charlotte's Kon Knueppel at the forefront of Awards Debate SZN. There is hope for the future of the longstanding Mavericks/Spurs rivalry.

🏀 I was sitting on the opposite side of the arena from Wembanyama's Jackals fan section but they made some good noise. A more credible source of atmosphere than anticipated.

🏀 San Antonio International is rising up the rankings ladder of my favorite airports, too, because of this unlikely taste of Inglaterra that can be found in Terminal B: Two machines that dispense legit Costa coffee.

DFW! We need a few of these!

🏀 One more time for the Basketball Digest cover on the back wall of the Spurs' press room starring the aforementioned Iceman:

I know I posted a snap of that wall last April but (sorry not sorry) I simply couldn't resist a repeat. Basketball Digest!

The Stein Line is a reader-supported newsletter with both Free and Paid subscriptions available … and those who opt for the Paid edition are taking an active role in the reporting by providing vital assistance to bolster my independent coverage of #thisleague. Feel free to forward this post to family and friends interested in the NBA and please consider becoming a Paid subscriber to have full access to all of my posts.

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One more time …

For my recent around-the-league notes that presaged Chicago's front office changes earlier this week:

And one more time for Jake Fischer's comprehensive look at the NBA's looming coaching carousel:

(Substack) Note(s) of the Week

Recent declarations of note via Substack Notes:

Our Hall of Fame proprietor tipped us off in his Sunday column that this would be a big week in Chicago:

By Monday afternoon, Bulls executive vice president of basketball operations Artūras Karnišovas and general manager Marc Eversley had been dismissed.

That means both Dallas and Chicago now have front office vacancies on top of the considerable activity expected leaguewide this offseason on the coaching front.

Stein also wrote in his Sunday Best piece that the Bulls hope to retain coach Billy Donovan and revealed the growing anticipation in Milwaukee that Doc Rivers won't be back on the Bucks' bench next season.

Now it's my turn to add to his reporting with lots more from the coaching carousel touching on numerous teams, with some experts in the field saying that it won't be surprising if the number of coaching changes ultimately strays into double digits.

"There's going to be 8 to 12 [changes]," one league source with direct knowledge of the coaching market told The Stein Line.

Why so much projected movement?

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Around-the-league NBA notes on a Sunday?

On Easter Sunday even?

As it should be!

To the latest from my notebook on Giannis Antetokounmpo as well as the maiden assemblage of meaningful whispers about what awaits this offseason when it comes to the league's coaching carousel (and other related changes) … plus an update on the forthcoming formal challenge from Luka Dončić's to the NBA's 65-game rule:

Giannis Antetokounmpo wants to play after missing the past 11 games in the wake of a knee hyperextension. The Bucks continue to say that Antetokounmpo is not healthy enough to play.

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