{"id":755260,"date":"2026-06-23T15:03:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-23T15:03:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/755260\/"},"modified":"2026-06-23T15:03:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-23T15:03:11","slug":"top-nba-free-agents-2026-rumors-and-predictions-before-nba-draft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/755260\/","title":{"rendered":"Top NBA Free Agents 2026 Rumors and Predictions Before NBA Draft"},"content":{"rendered":"

When assessing the Lakers’ roster, it’s hard not to notice their glaring hole on the middle. That’s apparently true for not only outside observers, but also players on the team, too.<\/p>\n

When Don\u010di\u0107 thinks about the kind of help he’ll need to contend, for instane, his “first and foremost desire is an A-list center,” a source told ESPN’s Dave McMenamin<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That might be a tricky wish to grant in this market, as the top available bigs are restricted free agents (Jalen Duren, Walker Kessler). Robert Williams III isn’t an A-Lister, but he is “an option” for the Lakers, per The Athletic’s Dan Woike<\/a>, who noted the Portland Trail Blazers are “expected to show interest” in re-signing Williams.<\/p>\n

Williams almost assuredly isn’t the first name that comes to mind in the Lakers’ search for a 5, but he’d fit a lot of the job qualifications as a chaos-creator on defense and a reliable play-finisher on offense. He’d also come with serious availability concerns, having never made more than 61 appearances in any of his eight NBA seasons.<\/p>\n

He’s still an interesting flier for some team to take, but that team probably doesn’t have as big of a budget to upgrade as the Lakers.<\/p>\n

Prediction: Williams signs a three-year, $39 million deal with the Boston Celtics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When assessing the Lakers’ roster, it’s hard not to notice their glaring hole on the middle. That’s apparently…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":755261,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":["post-755260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/755260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=755260"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/755260\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/755261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=755260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=755260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=755260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}