(5) GH + Bertans + 2023 1st (the O'Neale pick) to LAL for Westbrook

From Utah's POV, that's 5 guys going out, 4 coming back (3 if Westbrook bought out). If the Lakers aren't willing to pay Indy's price for Turner/Hield, this is another possibility. They add needed shooting, and get a 1st, which is face-saving for both the team and for Russ.

Unlike old-timey baseball sites - those are awesome!

:)

Chicago Bulls @chicagobulls ·4m
Injury Update:

Lonzo Ball will undergo an arthroscopic debridement of his left knee on Wednesday, Sept. 28 in LA.

He will be re-evaluated in 4-6 weeks.

Sarver is doing the right thing by selling the team, but even in doing the right thing, he has to blame the "unforgiving culture." What a ####. Saying you're a christian is not a blanket excuse for 20 years of treating everyone around you like lesser beings.

197: Those guys just aren't worth swaps imo unless the swaps are protected for the top 3-5 picks. I dunno, maybe teams won't value the swaps properly, but it feels a bit optimistic to me.

Not good news per se, but good news that there's some sort of news.

Shams Charania
@ShamsCharania
·
39m
Celtics coach Ime Udoka had an improper intimate and consensual relationship with a female member of the team staff, sources tell
@TheAthletic

@Stadium
. It’s been deemed a violation of franchise’s code of conduct.

Meanwhile, Suns managing partner Robert Sarver donated at least $13,800 to Martha McSally’s two Senate campaigns in 2019, according to FEC filings. Sarver has also supported Republican political action committees like the National Republican Senatorial Committee and DefendArizona, which support the current Senate, which has delivered no action when it comes to criminal justice reform since Floyd’s death on May 25.

In an exclusive comment to Bright Side of the Sun, here’s how Sarver explained his support for McSally:

“Martha McSally has been a supporter of equal rights. Deciding on what candidate to support is not about one issue, it’s about many issues that impact our country and our state. Social justice is ONE issue along with job creation, education, and healthcare that are paramount to me.”

To be fair, Sarver has donated on both sides of the political spectrum, including large sums to U.S. Senator Kyrsten Sinema, an Arizona Democrat, and Sen. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat. And in 2020, Sarver’s political action has waned. The FEC shows no political donations from Sarver this year.

While no final decision has been made, internal discussions have included scenarios that would keep Udoka out for the entirety of the 2022-23 season, sources said.

Doesn't Boston (the city, not the C') have some recent experience with this? It's not the same thing, but what happened with Cora and the Red Sox could be a blueprint here for him coaching for them again.

Whole thing is weird.

If you think of it as the Timberwolves and not the Celtics it makes much more sense.

Also maybe the man has been a saint for the past decade plus since the incident, I have no idea, but they very obviously can't go into the season following this stuff with an interim coach who has a domestic violence arrest in his past.

Yes, this. It actually makes me nervous that something even weirder and even worse is about to drop in Minnesota.

We already did the inappropriate relationship angle, so we have to ratchet it up to something even more shocking. It's like Mankind watching Shawn Michaels getting thrown from the side of the Hell in a Cell and saying, "what if I went off the top?"

A-Rod having a human/equine/human threesome. That's my final offer.

(fun fact: i haven't thought of that in like 15 years. but as soon as you triggered my memory of it, i knew to google "seattle horse death" and i found it literally 3 seconds.)

The very definition of "weird flex."

rather than suspend Udoka and leave him in limbo with a damaged reputation, Smith said, the Celtics should have either quietly fired him or quietly kept him as head coach if they didn’t think whatever he did merits firing him. He’s not wrong to point out the central mystery of the saga: What could be so severe as to warrant a one-year suspension but not severe enough to fire him?

Unfortunately, though, Smith is also totally incapable of making a delicate point. Just as quickly as he stumbled into insight, he veered into offense: “It said, in the numerous news reports, it was a consensual relationship that violated organizational policy. So only he is in violation of company policy? The woman who elected to have a consensual relationship with him is not in violation?” ESPN reporter Malika Andrews joined the show right after he said this and heroically told Smith, “Stop.”

Smith snapped at Andrews for “telling me to stop on my show,” and insisted that he was not blaming women but instead meant that the Celtics shouldn’t have made any part of the story public.

Maybe there’s more to the story. A full year suspension for a consensual relationship doesn’t make sense.

Last night, Charania walked back his earlier characterization in a story for The Athletic. “At that time, team leadership was led to believe by both parties that the relationship was consensual,” he wrote. “But sources said that the woman recently accused Udoka of making unwanted comments toward her — leading the team to launch a set of internal interviews.”

Glad jerry Buss didn’t react the same way when Phil Jackson coached the Lakers.

A full year suspension for a consensual relationship doesn’t make sense.

Early in the week, Doc had an issue where someone pointed out that he had been liking porn on Twitter

Smith snapped at Andrews for “telling me to stop on my show,” and insisted that he was not blaming women but instead meant that the Celtics shouldn’t have made any part of the story public.

If the Celtics really are leaking this in order to try to get a discount on firing him, that's pretty gross.

I'm also not really sure this makes sense- surely the man's contract doesn't protect him from being fired for cause due to sexual misconduct at work?

That said, I think with hindsight it looks like Udoka's people were more than likely responsible for the initial leak? Given the emphasis on the relationship being consensual and that his job was not in danger.

Presumably Ime Udoka is not the first person in the Celtics org to dip his pen in the company ink.

I will say, a whole lot of people are going to get uncomfortable with this. If you think there are a lot of rich white dudes who have done similar stuff to Sarver, I think 90%+ of the NBA has some kind of affair or sexual harassment incident.

Adrian Wojnarowski @wojespn
New Orleans Pelicans guard CJ McCollum has agreed on a two-year, $64 million extension that’ll take him through 2025-2026, his agent Sam Goldfeder of @Excelbasketball tells ESPN. New deal ties McCollum to Pels for four years and $133M.

Keith Pompey @PompeyOnSixers
#Sixers coach Doc Rivers: “I couldn’t be happier in the way Tisse has attacked the summer. He’s been one of our hardest workers. He’s worked both on the things we needed him to work on on the floor, and on his body and strength.” inquirer.com/sixers/matisse… via @phillyinquirer

Shams Charania @ShamsCharania
The Phoenix Suns and Jae Crowder have mutually agreed that the veteran forward will not participate in training camp as the sides work on a trade, sources tell @TheAthletic @Stadium.

Crowder + Saric + Shamet + Craig is enough salary to get Harris + Thybulle from the 76ers, should 57i66135 somehow acquire the reins.

That CJ deal seems totally fine to me.

Noah Levick @NoahLevick
Paul Reed says he's increased his vertical leap eight inches (28 to 36) and "it's going to keep going up."

Austin Krell @NBAKrell
When asked how much weight he lost: Harden: 100 pounds. Tweet that.

Austin Krell @NBAKrell
Embiid jokes that he spent the whole offseason on the couch and didn't work on his game. "We just gonna have to wait and see how the season goes."

Why is Phoenix hot to trade Crowder? Or is it that Crowder wants to get traded?

Their comments at media day indicate that Ben Simmons and Joe Harris are ready to play. That should make the Nets' defense and spacing, respectively, look considerably better than what they threw out there last season.

Any indication as to what position Simmons will play, to the extent positions still exist?

Literally all of the Nets guys are risks to play less than 40 games

Will Gottlieb @wontgottlieb ·1h
Caruso said he couldn't change his jersey number from 6 because he is in the top 75 in jersey sales

"Shoutout to me"

Will Gottlieb @wontgottlieb ·1h
Dragic on the time D-Rose dunked on him

"This is my nightmare"

He says it was the only time he's been dunked on in his career

That's one way to point out your limited impact on defense.

LSU women’s basketball coach Kim Mulkey can be awfully loud when she wants to be. We’ve heard it—when she’s berating officials, or complaining about masks, or negging reporters at press conferences. But she can also be conspicuously quiet. Today, at the team’s media day, Cory Diaz, who covers LSU women’s basketball for the Lafayette Daily Advertiser, asked Mulkey for her thoughts on Brittney Griner, who has been detained in Russia for more than seven months.

Griner, Mulkey’s most famous former player, headlined the Baylor team that went 40-0 and won Mulkey her second NCAA championship as head coach in 2012. “I just wanted to get your thoughts on Brittney Griner’s situation,” Diaz began. “I don’t think I’ve seen anything from you on that, and—”

Mulkey interrupted, “And you won’t.” She answered his first question about roster-building instead.

Really? pic.twitter.com/ISJGuhUImE

— Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) September 26, 2022

Beginning this season, there will be a heightened penalty (1 free throw + possession) for intentional fouls committed by defenders which deprive the offensive team of a fast-break opportunity. See below for an educational video regarding "Transition Take Fouls":

Beginning this season, there will be a heightened penalty (1 free throw + possession) for intentional fouls committed by defenders which deprive the offensive team of a fast-break opportunity. See below for an educational video regarding "Transition Take Fouls":

“I really can’t run or jump,” Ball said when asked about whether he can participate in any basketball activities. “There is like a range between 30 to 60 degrees when my knee is bent that I have no force, and I can’t catch myself. Until I can do those things, I can’t play. I did rehab, and it was getting better, but it was not to a point where I could get out there and actually go out there and run at full speed or jump. So surgery is the next step.”

“It’s every day. Even going upstairs and stuff is painful,” Ball said on Tuesday. “Like I said, it’s definitely something I’ve never dealt with. Even the doctors are surprised about it a little bit. But we’re all working together to figure this out.”

Color Star Technology Co., Ltd., the Cayman Islands-registered, possibly Dubai-based ready-mix concrete company that scrapped its legacy business and recently launched its own extremely janky digital metaverse, continues to struggle with executive turnover. On Aug. 5, Color Star quietly filed paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission noting that Biao Lu and Jehan Zeb Khan had resigned simultaneously from their roles as co-CEOs of this strange company, and were replaced by a man named Farhan Qadir. Even by the standards of Color Star, which has now had seven CEOs in just over two years, this is abrupt [...]this is now the second time that [Biao Lu has resigned from the position of Color Star CEO].
[...]
Followers of this extremely normal business story will recall that Color Star’s fascinating young CEO, Sir Lucas Capetian, the man who spearheaded the launch of the company’s signature Color World app, resigned suddenly and left the company due to “personal reasons” back in June. [...]It was during Capetian’s eventful stewardship that Color Star entered into the now-infamous sponsorship partnership with the Philadelphia 76ers