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Now the question was whether a backdoor deal was struck by Fertitta and the WNBA before the Pagliuca offer. A source close to the issue said Fertitta was livid when Houston was not awarded an expansion franchise — Philadelphia, Cleveland, and Detroit were — and then shifted his focus to purchasing the Sun.

It’s widely known around the WNBA that the league prefers teams to governed by NBA owners, and the Sun was offered to appease Fertitta — and Boston paid the price for his eagerness to revive the Comets.

And, of course, there is a financial component to this treatment of Boston. The only benefactor from the purchase of the Sun is the Mohegan Tribe. The remaining league owners will not financially benefit from this sale. But that will not be the case if Boston is allowed into the league as an expansion franchise in 2033, a ballpark time when WNBA plans to expand again if the six expansion teams added in the past two years flourish.

The Golden State Valkyries enjoyed a sparkling first season in San Francisco, and the hope is Portland and Toronto will continue that trend. Such success from expansion teams undoubtedly will boost the value of every other WNBA franchise, which then leads to the league’s plan for Boston.

If the Sun could fetch a $325 million price tag in 2026, how much would a Boston expansion team procure in seven years? And remember, the price of a new Boston franchise would be split amongst the league’s owners. So why would the league’s owners agree for the Sun to move to Boston when the tribe would be the only beneficiary from that deal?

The WNBA has Boston in its sights, but the owners want to profit off such a valuable market. So Boston’s overall value damaged its chances of getting the Sun, to the point where it never really had a chance — especially with Fertitta’s determination to bring a team to Houston and being squeezed out of the expansion race.

The WNBA’s statement after the Pagliuca deal admonished Pagliuca and his team for not applying for an expansion team. The league said it views expansion and relocation in the same light, meaning Boston was not considered for the Sun because Houston was on the expansion list.

Also, there is definite league interest in having Celtics governor Bill Chisholm as a participating party in bringing a team to Boston. The WNBA is banking on its recent success with the influx of great talent such as Caitlin Clark, Paige Bueckers, A’ja Wilson, Angel Reese, and the drafting this week of Azzi Fudd, Flau’Jae Johnson, and Lauren Betts as building blocks for long-term success. And in coming years, players such as Hannah Hidalgo, Sarah Strong, and JuJu Watkins will also enter the league.

So if all goes as planned, the WNBA will eventually come to Boston, but it will also pad the pockets of more than one party.

Now the only party that could potentially have an issue with the Sun’s sale is the tribe, which lost out on $25 million because of the WNBA’s hardball decision. But their desire to get out of the WNBA business superseded their need for the extra $25 million that a sale to Pagliuca would have garnered.

So Boston will now have to wait, and WNBA and basketball fans will have to suffer because the league’s owners all want a split of the healthy relocation fee.

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander has once again led the Thunder to the best record in the NBA. Caroline Brehman/Associated Press

NO-DOUBT FAVORITE

Thunder roar back to top seed

With Jalen Williams back, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander likely to win his second MVP award, and a supporting cast that has been nearly flawless, the Thunder raced to the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference for the third consecutive year and clinched the NBA’s best record.

But now comes the most arduous task, becoming the first team since the 2017-18 Warriors to repeat as champions.

“Yeah, it’s a great accomplishment,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said. “No two seasons are the same, and this season was a lot of different experiences. We obviously started really hot, and then dealt with a lot of missed games (injury), especially in the middle of the season. … And when you win the championship, that kind of hangs over you as a team the next year.

“Meaning everybody, including ourselves, you judge yourself against that, and it’s incredibly hard to be present in the next regular season. And I learned so much from this team because of their ability to come in every day and just embrace the day and the challenge that we had that day and not look backwards, not look forwards. To attack every challenge together with a level of zest and joy, is really impressive, and it’s why I think we have had the season we did because they bring that kind of energy to it. And I think it’s really hard to do. So I give them a lot of credit, they are really deserving.”

Gilgeous-Alexander was able to back up a stellar 2024-25 season with an even better one, breaking Wilt Chamberlain’s 60-year-old record for most consecutive games with 20 or more points.

“It feels better for sure, not only because we had to weather it a little bit more, but just like repeating something and doing it again is always a little bit harder,” he said. “It’s a little more challenging. The league gets better, players get better. For us to still have the best overall record through that, and the ups and downs, speaks volume to the team, speaks volumes to the guys in the summer time, getting better individually, coaching staff, getting better individually.”

A key to the Thunder’s success is the step forward taken in Year 3 by Chet Holmgren, who earned his first All-Star berth and also carried more of a responsibility when Williams missed considerable time with wrist and hamstring injuries. Holmgren is shooting a career-best 55.7 percent from the field this season.

“I feel like my understanding of urgency with patience has gotten a lot better,” he said. “I feel like, earlier on, I’m trying to win the Super Bowl on every single play. And now that I’ve played a lot of games, I understand a lot more than just putting pressure on other teams all 48 minutes. They’re going to make mistakes, you’re going to find cracks, you’re going to have opportunities. So it’s not always about trying to force anything on one single play, but more so just about having the right amount of pressure that you put on the other team.”

Draymond Green always speaks his mind, no matter the consequences. Godofredo A. Vásquez/Associated Press

ETC.

Questioning NBA’s motives

Just minutes after his team registered a rather unimpressive win over the lowly Kings, Golden State forward Draymond Green was asked about the play-in tournament, created several years ago to provide two extra playoff spots.

The Warriors are locked into 10th slot, and it’s been that way for weeks. The teams behind Golden State — Memphis, Dallas, and New Orleans — all are in tank mode or just aren’t very good. With no incentive to win in the final three games, the Warriors rested superstar Stephen Curry for their nationally televised matchup Thursday with the Lakers.

Golden State will start its play-in journey on the road, but it’s been evident for weeks it would be relegated to the NBA’s version of the First Four — and that doesn’t thrill Green.

“It’s not exciting,” he said. “It’s not. I’m a competitor, and going into the game I’m going to do all I can do to win, but it’s not that exciting. You go on the road in a game you need to win, as a competitor, you’re going to rise to the challenge. But I’m not going to sleep saying like, ‘Man we got this play-in next week, I gotta get my rest.’ It ain’t that exciting.”

Like the 65-game rule and the revised draft lottery, the NBA has devised ways to increase competitiveness and prevent tanking. Obviously these plans have failed, and the final few weeks of this regular season has been an abysmal example of porous competition and listless matchups.

“I think [the play-in] worked initially, and now to have a team stuck in 10th, it ain’t working,” Green said. “We could have lost our last 15 games and been stuck in 10th. It ain’t working. The play-in was made for teams not to tank.

“I think that’s the part that everyone forgets. The play-in was made for teams that were like 12th or 13th to keep going, and they ain’t keep going. They slowed down and then they hit the brakes.”

And then Green addressed the Sacramento game — where the Kings, ahead by 1 with 3:15 left, intentionally fouled Seth Curry with the Warriors in the bonus. Sacramento coach Doug Christie said he was unaware the Warriors were in the free throw bonus and wanted to stop the clock so he could take his use-it-or-lose-it timeout before the 3-minute mark.

Some viewed it as the most disrespectful form of tanking. But Green lamented the lack of league discipline for teams who tank in comparison to players who commit flagrant fouls or are ejected from games.

“I saw a team tonight foul Seth Curry with three minutes to go in the game for no reason, in the penalty. It ain’t working, but we want to make the playoffs, so it works, I guess,” Green said. “I get fined when I do wrong. They fine the hell out of people. We love taking money from players. Keep fining teams. I’ve seen two teams [get fined] and we all know everybody’s tanking. But you’ve seen two fines. If it was players, we’d snatch that money in a heartbeat. Why isn’t it the same?

“Everybody loves money. The punishment for players is always let’s take the money. Now it’s times to punish teams and nobody knows what to do. Why not?”

NBA commissioner Adam Silver levied fines to the Jazz ($500,000) and Pacers ($100,000) for their actions in either holding players out of key stretches of games or holding out healthy players entirely. After a brief investigation, the league cleared the Kings of any intentional wrongdoing.

“The league’s investigation determined that Christie mistakenly believed that the Warriors were not in the penalty and therefore instructed his team to foul in an attempt to stop the clock and utilize one of the team’s remaining timeouts. The investigation found that Christie made no intentional effort to give the Warriors a shooting foul, or to cause the Kings to lose the game.”

Basically, Christie didn’t tank, but he did commit coaching malpractice, which isn’t finable.

“We know exactly what to do when somebody gets a technical foul or suspended for a game,” Green said. “But all of a sudden we’ve got team issues and nobody knows what to do. What happened to the take the money stuff? Everybody’s trying to reach a quota too, but when it comes to player discipline, you want to snatch the money as fast as we can.

“Come to team discipline, when you’ve seen 12 teams tanking, you’ve seen two fines. If my math serves me correctly, that’s 10 that ain’t been fined. We don’t keep that same energy when it comes to teams, when it comes to officials. Everybody but players, we don’t keep that same energy, but it’s a player’s league.”

Shockingly, Pistons star Cade Cunningham (left) returned to the lineup Wednesday against the Bucks, even though he was expected to miss more time due to a collapsed lung.Duane Burleson/Associated Press

The next few days will be interesting in Detroit as Cade Cunningham returned to the lineup Wednesday, making a remarkable recovery from a collapsed lung. Cunningham was expected to miss the rest of the regular season and perhaps the first round of the playoffs. But he’s back, and now the NBA may have an issue on its hands. If Cunningham plays in the Pistons’ final three games, he will reach 64 games played — one game shy of the league minimum mandated for winning awards. Would the NBA play hard ball and not allow Cunningham on the MVP or All-NBA ballot, perhaps impacting his future earnings and a super max contract? Can the Pistons’ lobby for Cunningham to be included? The NBA appears content with the 65-game rule, but it hasn’t faced a situation like this where an MVP candidate could finish one game short. Meanwhile in San Antonio, Victor Wembanyama reached his 65-game plateau in Friday’s win over the Mavericks to be eligible for awards such as MVP and Defensive Player of the Year awards. Wembanyama left San Antonio’s win over the 76ers with a bruised rib and missed Wednesday’s game against the Trail Blazers … Remember Tyler Burton, the Uxbridge native who scored a career-high 23 points against the Celtics while on a 10-day contract with the Grizzlies? Well, since many NBA teams would rather sign players to 10-day deals rather than rest-of-the-season contracts, the Grizzlies allowed Burton’s second 10-day deal to expire and signed former first-round pick Dariq Whitehead to a 10-day deal to finish the regular season. The Celtics liked center Charles Bassey, but did not want to commit to a rest-of-the-season contract, so they allowed him to join the Warriors and opted for a standard NBA deal with Ron Harper Jr., making him eligible for the playoffs. In Houston, former Celtic JD Davison, on his third year of a two-way contract, hit his 50-game limit with the Rockets and signed a standard NBA deal, making him playoff eligible … Now that the WNBA has reached a new collective bargaining agreement with the players, free agency began Monday, with more than 75 percent of the league on the market. One player who is committed to a contract is Angel Reese, who was traded by the Chicago Sky to the Atlanta Dream for two future first-round picks … Farewell and kudos to the all-time great NBA play-by-play man Mark Jones, who will announce his last game for ESPN on Sunday, calling Magic-Celtics in Boston. He is expected to call Kings games full-time, but the national NBA audience will miss out on his creative style that opened doors for a new generation of play-by-play callers, especially of color and women.

Gary Washburn is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at gary.washburn@globe.com. Follow him @GwashburnGlobe.