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The NBA announced its opening-week schedule and Christmas Day slate today. To nobody’s surprise, LeBron James and the 76ers are featured heavily; they play the Knicks on opening night at Madison Square Garden, host the Cavaliers for their first home game and face the Lakers on Christmas. See all the details of the schedule release here.
RIP, Nellie
Don Nelson was a legendary figure
Hall of Fame coach and five-time NBA champion (as a player) Don Nelson died over the weekend. He was 86. Getting news of basketball legends passing away always sucks. Despite not having any kind of personal or working relationship with Nelson, for some reason this one made me sadder than the others.
Nellie was a basketball lifer. From 1962 to 1976, he was a really good role player on five championship teams. Then from 1976 until 2010, he was an NBA coach. He was an assistant through part of that first season (1976-77) before he took over the Milwaukee Bucks 18 games into the season. He remained there until 1987, amassing a 544-340 record. A year later, he went to the Golden State Warriors. He had a brief stop in New York and then a long stint in Dallas before returning to the Warriors to finish his career.
Nelson sits second in NBA coaching victories with 1,335. Only Gregg Popovich (1,390) has more. Only Lenny Wilkens (2,487) coached more games than Nelson (2,398).
Nellie was an innovator. He’s credited with bringing the point forward into acceptance as a position/role with Marques Johnson on those Bucks teams. He was a big-time proponent of small ball with his Warriors squads. He helped set the stage for Dirk Nowitzki becoming one of the greatest scorers in NBA history.
His fingerprints are all over the game. Yesterday, I talked to Nick Van Exel, who played for Nellie from 2001-03, on SiriusXM NBA Radio. Van Exel has nothing but respect for his former coach:
“Nellie was a baller. Nellie won five championships. He had the calmness in him way before he started coaching because there’s nothing you’re that gonna surprise him with that he hadn’t seen already. He’s been through every situation as a player, and that helped him into coaching. Because nothing really bothered him, nothing really moved him, unless it was Karl Malone.”
Nellie really didn’t like Malone. He once even physically backed Malone up when he took issue with an elbow from Malone to Shawn Bradley:
Nellie taught players how to be better, but he also empowered them to be themselves. It’s why guys like Van Exel could seamlessly transition into a sixth-man role for the first time when joining Nellie’s Mavs via in-season trade. It’s why he could get the No. 8 seed Warriors to believe they could and would beat the No. 1 seed Mavericks in 2007.
No, he never won a championship as a coach. Never even reached the NBA Finals. But he had the respect of the players he coached and the players he coached against. He was larger than life and down to earth. He was someone who wanted to care for the game we all love. Marc Stein covered Nelson for many years in Dallas and shared wonderful anecdotes about him this week. Including this one about him pranking Popovich.
If you got ejected in the same game that Nellie did, he’d share a six-pack of beers with you in the locker room and watch the rest of the game together. Don Nelson was a true basketball ambassador. He was a staunch innovator. He was a caretaker of the game. And the three-time Coach of the Year will be forever missed.
The last 24
😟 Worry time. My offseason NBA concern-o-meter is back. The Warriors, Nuggets and Blazers feature prominently.
🔥 Welcome to Miami. The Heat have Bam and Giannis, but are there enough shooters. Our Eric Nehm breaks down some of the roster questions.
🙌 Hall of Fame locks? Mike Vorkunov unveiled his Hall of Fame tiers of current stars. Have Luka and SGA done enough to make it?
🤝 Everybody love everybody. Jaylen Brown has a new take on who is Philly’s team. “It doesn’t have to be anybody’s team.”
📈 At the top. Just in case you missed HOFer David Aldridge’s offseason rankings … The Sixers are at the top.
Stream the NBA on Fubo (try it for free!) and catch out-of-market games on League Pass.
Investigation station
Another turn in the Kawhi/Clippers scandal
We got another twist and turn in the never-ending investigation into the LA Clippers and Kawhi Leonard. Since last September, the league has been investigating allegations — first reported by Pablo Torre on “Pablo Torre Finds Out” — that the Clippers partnered with a carbon footprint company, Aspiration, that gave a no-show sponsorship for Leonard reportedly worth $28 million.
Torre had more to report about another deal on a recent episode. Daktronics — the company that created the incredible halo jumbotron for the Clippers’ Intuit Dome — allegedly had a sponsorship deal with Leonard for “millions of dollars.”
When the podcast asked the company to confirm if Leonard had an endorsement deal, it referred them to a spokesperson for a crisis management firm who said, “My understanding is Daktronics doesn’t have a deal with Kawhi right now.” When asked for clarification, the spokesman said, “I don’t know what the company wants to say, or can say, given the Wachtell investigation and all that.”
That final part makes me wonder if this information is already in the Wachtell investigation. It’s also incredible to have a professional crisis management spokesperson say, “I don’t know what the company wants to say …” Isn’t that the job?
If this is new information, it makes me feel even less like this thing is getting wrapped up before the regular season begins. It also makes me feel like Toronto may have to pull the plug on its Kawhi reunion. Then again, we don’t know if the league will severely punish the Clippers if they are found to have circumvented the cap.
We … still don’t know much about any of this!
Pablo Torre sheds new light on the Kawhi Leonard / Clippers investigation
Tradeback Tuesday
The ’07 Garnett deal had a long tail
Every Tuesday during the summer, we’re doing Tradeback Tuesday, in which we examine and remember a massive trade from NBA history. This week, we’re going with the 2007 deal between the Minnesota Timberwolves and Boston Celtics.
Former Celtic Kevin McHale traded with his old teammate Danny Ainge to bring one of the best players in the league to the Celtics. In exchange, the Wolves received Al Jefferson, Gerald Green, Sebastian Telfair, Ryan Gomes, Theo Ratliff and two 2009 first-round picks.
It was a move that set the Celtics up to become champions for the first time since 1986. And the Wolves were hitting the reset button after failing to put decent rosters around KG for pretty much all but one of his (first) 12 seasons with Minnesota. The Wolves’ front office would soon be taken over by infamous executive David Kahn, and that would lead to a trade bonanza down the road.
The Celtics’ side of this is pretty straightforward. The organization had just traded for Ray Allen, which finally helped convince Garnett to accept a trade to another team. He didn’t want to leave the Wolves and was threatening teams with not signing an extension if they traded for him. However, once Allen was on board, the Celtics convinced KG to accept a new organization. They immediately won 66 games and the 2008 championship over the Lakers. They’d make the finals again in 2010 but lost to the Lakers in seven games.
As for the Wolves, things got extremely complicated. Kahn was notoriously smarmy and difficult once he took over in May 2009. As you can see in the chart above, the Wolves didn’t take great advantage of the trade package:
- Green was flipped for the final days of Kirk Snyder’s career.
- Telfair was moved in a deal for Mark Blount, the second time Minnesota acquired him in his career.
- Gomes was used in the acquisition of Martell Webster.
- And, of course, the notorious selection of Jonny Flynn stems from this trade.
That was originally the Wolves’ pick. It was sent to Boston in a deal that netted Minnesota Ricky Davis, Blount, the second-round pick that became Nikola Peković and more. Minnesota got the pick back in the Garnett deal, which led to Kahn selecting Flynn No. 6 in the 2009 draft, right after taking Ricky Rubio fifth. And, yes, Steph Curry went No. 7.
You may also notice the “next slide” part for what Jefferson was flipped for after he spent three years in Minnesota. That’s where things get complicated. This is everything that stemmed from the Wolves moving Jefferson in 2010:
Confused? Me too! At least a dozen trades happened from 2010 to 2019, all in some way relating to Jefferson, whom the Wolves dealt to the Jazz in 2010.
Researching this required me to open about 15 tabs on prosportstransactions.com to figure out what happened. I feel confident in saying this is what the Wolves ended up with, in total, for Garnett:
- Seven fringe role players
- Six different cash acquisitions
Going from KG to Kahn was not the way to rebuild the Wolves’ organization. But at least the Celtics returned to prominence.