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Hoops Rumors Live Chat: 3/30/2026
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Luke Adams
3:02
Happy Monday, all. Let's talk NBA!
Edwill
3:02
Do you agree that the magic are the most disappointing team in the NBA this season. They made that bane trade last year which signal a win now move and this has been a very average season from them. Also do you think coach Mosley is on the hot seat.
Luke Adams
3:05
I'd put the Clippers up there as well, especially with the Aspiration situation still looming over them. But yeah, would be hard to say any team has been more disappointing than the Magic. To some extent, injuries have been to blame -- they haven't really had Franz Wagner for months. But other teams have overcome major injuries more deftly (think OKC with Jalen Williams) and Orlando is good enough that it should've been able to do a bit more without Wagner.

I do think the odds are at least 50/50 - and maybe higher - that we'll see a coaching change for them this spring unless they have an unexpected playoff surge and make the second round.
theBigLip
3:05
With anti-tanking rules likely to go in effect, does this make future draft picks more valuable? Will GMs be trading differently this offseason?
Luke Adams
3:08
Hard to say for sure until we know exactly what the new rules look like, but expanding the lottery should introduce a little more variability to the process, which should definitely make mediocre teams' picks slightly more valuable.

It's interesting to me that there was no mention of rules related to the pick protections in the three concepts reported last week. It seems to me that those picks those top-six, top eight, or top-10 protections would still drive tanking under the new proposals, so I'm curious to see if that will be accounted for at all in the final version.
Julian
3:08
Will the Sonics come back? KD to Sonics?
Luke Adams
3:10
Would be surprised if the Sonics aren't back in action in the fall of 2028. Whether Durant returns to Seattle before calling it a career is an open question, but it would be a fun move (and good PR) for a player who has earned his share of criticism for how he's managed his career since leaving OKC.
MkeMike
3:10
Wow, the Bucks have really become a mess quickly. Is there a path back to at least respectability? Or is a long teardown looming?
Luke Adams
3:16
It's pretty hard for me to envision a path back to title contention for them with Giannis on the roster. Respectability? That's certainly more viable, but if they want to hang onto Antetokounmpo, the goal has to be much higher than that. He doesn't want to stick around for 45-win seasons and first-round exits.

I think it'd probably be better for them in the long run to trade Giannis to the highest bidder, especially if they get some lottery luck this spring (though it'd take quite a bit of luck to get a top-four pick). It just feels to me like the longer he sticks around, the more they keep bleeding assets and flexibility that would be more valuable if they were put toward a rebuild.
Silver
3:16
How realistic is the idea of the Warriors targeting both Kawhi and LeBron in the off season?
Luke Adams
3:20
LeBron will be a free agent, so it'd be easy enough to target him if he's willing to take a significant discount on his current maximum salary.

Kawhi, I assume, will still be under contract, unless the NBA goes scorched earth with its response to the Aspiration stuff and voids his contract. If the Warriors are willing to give up some first-round picks, I think they could easily put together a pretty compelling offer for a 35-year-old on an expiring contract. Worth reiterating though that his $50MM+ cap hit means they'd have to either give up Draymond (plus other salary) or Butler to make it work.
Morgs
3:20
Do u think silver is making a mistake by prioritizing fixing tanking??? 22-23 season pistons and spurs were last in conference. They are currently both top 2 seeds with #1 overall picks recently(Cade/Wemby)
Luke Adams
3:24
I wouldn't necessarily say that's an argument in favor against fixing tanking. It's proof of how valuable the No. 1 pick can be and shows the lengths teams would be willing to go to get it if the odds are in their favor.

"Fixing tanking" is an admirable goal. I'm just not sure there's a way to do it without also providing a viable path to competitiveness for the teams that are actually just bad and need to use the draft to dig themselves out from the bottom.
Bball fan
3:24
Do any teams in the east outside the Celtics (if they are fully clicking) really have what it takes to knock off either the Thunder, spurs, or Denver (if they get healthy) in a 7 game series? I can’t really take Detroit, NY, or Cleveland seriously as a legit title contender without some serious injury luck on their side. And is the 4 seed in the east better than the 3 seed? I would way rather see Toronto in a series than the hawks or sixers. 4 seed also doesn’t see the Celtics until the conference finals which I’m sure they would rather play Detroit who only has one guy really who can beat you
Luke Adams
3:27
I generally agree with you on most counts, though I wouldn't rule out those non-Celtics teams so quickly. I would've felt the same way about last season's Pacers, and they managed to get through the East and push the Thunder to seven games. You could argue that they needed injury luck (and some Haliburton buzzer-beater luck) to get that far, but they were still able to get within one win of a title as a major underdog. If a team like the Pistons or Cavs starts building some momentum and confidence through the first two rounds, they'll be a tough out no matter who they face.
reggiemiller
3:28
who should indy take with #1 overall pick? boozer? or dybantsa?
Luke Adams
3:30
I don't think they could go wrong with either of those guys, but there was a report earlier this month suggesting that Boozer might be atop their board.

I get the thinking -- he fits in pretty well with their current roster, and he seems polished enough to contribute right away to what could (in a best-case scenario) be a title contender in 2026/27. I do view Dybantsa's long-term ceiling as higher though.
Small market teams
3:30
Are the anti tanking rules just awful? They create less parity than already exists. It punishes the small markets that are genuinely bad. Why can’t Adam silver just go back to the old lottery odds (that created parity) and actually punish teams who are egregiously tanking? Hire independent doctors to investigate injury reports? And like have real punishments such as moving draft picks or taking away lottery odds for every tanking violation? Some teams are flat out bad and or actually hurt (nets and kings) but what the wizards, jazz, and pacers have been doing all year is the actual issue. Just punish the teams with something that’s more than a pascal siakiam game check. It’s
Luke Adams
3:35
It's a good idea in theory, but it'd be difficult to enforce those penalties consistently, since player health isn't a black and white issue -- it's not as if a star player is either healthy enough to play 35 minutes or unhealthy enough that he has to sit.

Do tanking teams take advantage of that gray area to handle their "injured" players more conservatively than they would if they were contending? Absolutely. But I think it's a slippery slope for the NBA to step in with its own doctors and tell teams how they should be handling their own players. Imagine if the league forced a tanking team to use a player and he suffered a major injury.

It does seem like there must be better systems than the one they're using now and some of the ones that have been suggested, but it's definitely not easy finding a catch-all solution.
theBigLip
3:35
Assuming Cade and Stewart come back 100%, how far do you expect the Pistons to go in the playoffs?
Luke Adams
3:37
I'm confident they'll make it out of the first round, even if there's potential for a difficult matchup coming out of that No. 8 seed in the play-in. I'd probably feel OK picking them over the Cavs in round two too, though that's a series that could go either way if Cleveland has hit its stride.

If they were to make the Eastern Finals, I'd want to reassess based on their opponent and how each team has played through the first two rounds. I'd probably pick the Celtics over Detroit, but I do really like this Pistons roster and don't think a Finals run is impossible.
Brian
3:38
You think anyone will take a run at Jaden Ivey in RFA? It might not take much to get him away from Chicago.
Luke Adams
3:40
I'm not even 100% sure at this point that the Bulls will give Ivey a qualifying offer, given his health issues. But that QO will come in below $9MM and they have more than enough cap flexibility to roll the dice on him, so I'm assuming they do it.

In that scenario, it's hard for me to picture a rival team making a serious play for Ivey. You'd have to overpay him to make sure the Bulls (who, again, are in a great cap situation and are well positioned to take a shot on young talent) don't match an offer sheet. And that's just a huge risk for a guy who hasn't really looked like himself for the past 1.5 years. Won't surprise me if he ends up either accepting the QO or staying on the market for a while like Grimes, Thomas, etc. did last year.
DJ Clutch
3:40
How did things go so wrong it Houston?  GetOffMyDickerson?  Ime?  No true PG?  Is it all imagined and they're just what their record says they are (which is better than it feels)?
Luke Adams
3:43
The vibes have definitely felt a little off in Houston for months, and I'm not confident about their chances of getting through round one. But I'd also be wary of overreacting to a season that I'd consider to be only mildly disappointing.

They're 45-29 and they have the fourth-best point differential in the West (behind only OKC, SA, and Den), despite the fact that they never really replaced the starting point guard who got injured just before training camp. This has hardly been a worst-case scenario for this group, and I think with a healthy VanVleet (and Steven Adams, for that matter), we could be talking about them right now as a No. 3 seed and a legitimate threat to make a deep postseason run.
Darin
3:44
Any thoughts about removing the 65 game limit for awards and also removing the bonuses? If players can't get supermax anymore they won't care about awards.
Luke Adams
3:46
I think they'd still care about awards! There are only a handful of players each year for whom the super-max criteria applies anyway.

In my opinion, the easiest fix for the 65-game rule would be to leave it in place for MVP (maybe DPOY too) and move the thresholds lower for awards like All-NBA and All-Defense. Something like 58 games makes sense to me, since that's 2/3rds of the season and is the threshold for qualifying as a statistical league leader.

In that scenario, a player like Cade Cunningham would be ineligible for MVP this season but could still make an All-NBA team, which seems right to me.
Chicago
3:47
Any idea on what the cap space will be?
Luke Adams
3:50
Will depend on exactly what happens with Ivey and where the first-round pick lands. But they have about $93MM owed to nine players for now (that includes Leonard Miller's $2.4MM option, which is looking lately like a safer bet to be exercised). The cap hold for the No. 10 pick would be about $6.4MM. Ivey's cap hold would be $30.3MM, which is a little problematic, since his actual salary would come in way below that, meaning you'd have a chunk of cap room that you couldn't use until his contract situation is resolved.

Anyway, if we assume, say, a $12-13MM salary for Ivey and a $165MM cap, they could have more than $50MM in room if they don't plan on bringing any other FAs back.
The Mayor
3:51
Which teams will have the most cap space?
Luke Adams
3:54
Bulls, Lakers, Nets for sure. Hawks and Pistons could create a decent amount of cap room but could also operate over the cap if they bring certain guys back.

Clippers are a wild card, but assuming Kawhi's contract isn't voided and they want to hang onto Mathurin, they're probably an over-the-cap team.
Maxime Raynaud
3:54
Who has the bleakest future in the NBA? Is it the Kings who have no real long term building blocks but do own all their picks and some other picks from teams? Or a team like the clippers or suns who don’t own picks and are going to max out as fringe playoff teams with their current rosters and having one star each with one being very old
Luke Adams
3:58
I think the Kings' situation is probably tougher than that of the Suns or Clippers. L.A. has a favorable long-term cap situation and an ownership group willing to spend. Phoenix has enough talent that if they did want to hold a fire sale, they could get a lot in return. The Kings, conversely, couldn't find teams willing to give up much of anything for their vets at last month's deadline.

The Bucks' situation also isn't great, though I at least think there's a road map for a positive rebuild there if they get a nice haul for Giannis.

Chicago doesn't really have as much young talent as you'd hope for a team in rebuilding mode, and they don't seem to be able to put themselves in position to be bad enough to get a franchise-altering player in the draft.
Bball fan
3:59
What are your predictions for the all rookie team?
Luke Adams
4:03
With the caveat that I haven't done a deep dive into this topic and am putting together an answer relatively quickly right now...

First team: Knueppel, Flagg, Edgecombe, Harper, Coward
Second team: Bailey, Tre Johnson, Raynaud, Fears, Kalkbrenner

This is definitely subject to change once I have a chance to put in more than three minutes of research. I'd also look at Queen, Murray-Boyles, and Demin, among others.
4:04
Thanks for the great questions today, guys. Apologies if I didn't get to yours, but we'll do this again next Monday, and Arthur will be holding his usual chat for Front Office subscribers this Thursday.

Have a good week!
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