The league announced it will be investigating<\/a>. As it only involves one team, one player and his agency, and no outside companies like Aspiration, this appears to be a much easier investigation for the league and (possibly) Wachtell than the Leonard case. They can probably wrap this up in a tidy 17 months or so.<\/p>\n Jokes aside, one key section of the CBA is likely to hurt the Bucks\u2019 case: The league\u2019s \u201cif it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it\u2019s a duck\u201d section on circumvention in Article XIII, Section 2d:<\/p>\n \u201cA violation of Section 2(a) or 2(b) above may be proven by direct or circumstantial evidence, including, but not limited to, evidence that a Player Contract or any term or provision thereof cannot rationally be explained in the absence of conduct violative of Section 2(a) or 2(b).\u201d<\/p>\n Four years and $64 million for Gray Trent Jr. is the definition of \u201ccannot rationally be explained.\u201d My BORD$ valuation had him rated as a minimum.<\/p>\n Of course, the biggest penalty the league could impose is making the Bucks honor this contract. It would be doing Milwaukee a huge favor if it doesn\u2019t decide to void the deal, essentially letting the Bucks get away with signing Trent to a minimum a year ago. If you\u2019re wondering about other penalties, Milwaukee has traded most of its future draft picks but still possesses firsts in 2031, 2032 and 2033.<\/p>\n In the meantime, this is another case where swiftness matters. Will Trent be on the Bucks\u2019 roster on opening night?<\/p>\n \n The Pelicans didn\u2019t have Jeremiah Fears or Derik Queen take part in this year\u2019s summer league in Las Vegas. (Mark J. Rebilas \/ Imagn Images)<\/p>\n What are the Pelicans doing?<\/p>\n The league\u2019s most puzzling franchise continues to amaze onlookers. New Orleans held out second-year pros Jeremiah Fears and Derik Queen from summer league despite less-than-dominant rookie seasons. While the case can be made that they could use the break after playing more than 2,000 regular-season minutes during the 2025-26 season, other high-minutes rookies from their draft class played this summer, notably Utah\u2019s Ace Bailey and Memphis\u2019 Cedric Coward, who were picked in the same range as Fears and Queen.<\/p>\n But what really amazed people was not the Pelicans\u2019 summer-league choices, but their roster moves \u2026 or lack thereof. New Orleans went 26-56 last season and only reached that lofty total because several of its rivals were blatantly tanking in the second half of the season. Despite that, the Pelicans have made no trades or free-agent signings this offseason and, as of today, would be running it back with 14 of the same 15 players who finished the season a year ago. Kevon Looney, who played 308 minutes, is the only departure, and the only new face is 59th pick Jaron Pierre Jr.<\/p>\n New Orleans even went to the trouble of bringing back soon-to-be 38-year-old center DeAndre Jordan on a two-year minimum deal, one that would cost it nearly double per season what he\u2019d get on a one-year pact because of the discount on one-year vet minimum contracts. While Jordan commands respect in the locker room, he only played 12 games last season. It\u2019s not clear why they felt the need to go that far to retain him.<\/p>\n More glaringly, the Pels still haven\u2019t addressed their lack of a starting-caliber center and appear set to begin the season with what is, on paper, the league\u2019s 30th-best collection of fives.<\/p>\n Perhaps a late-summer deal emerges. The Pels still have their exception money, an open roster spot and $8 million breathing room below the tax line. Chatter about a Trey Murphy trade, while lessened, hasn\u2019t vanished and is one of many potential pieces of league business that could resurface once LeBron James\u2019 next destination becomes clear.<\/p>\n At this point, however, I would be hard-pressed to name a worse-performing team in recent history that brought back the exact same roster from a year earlier.<\/p>\n What are the Lakers doing?<\/p>\n The Lakers\u2019 contractual choices have also been a hot topic \u2014 one that seemingly underscores the pressure the front office feels to deliver for a new owner and to impress superstar guard Luka Don\u010di\u0107 as he winds toward the end of his current contract. He can be a free agent in 2028.<\/p>\n In a summer where most role players, and even some starters, had to either take short deals or accept longer ones without full guarantees, the Lakers raised eyebrows by giving out fully guaranteed four-year deals with player options to three different players in free agency: Walker Kessler, Sandro Mamukelashvili and Quentin Grimes. They also gave a player option on Collin Sexton\u2019s two-year deal for the room exception.<\/p>\n The trade of Deandre Ayton also raised eyebrows, as it generated just $2.1 million in extra cap room. While that money (about $1.4 million of it, technically) was needed to complete their free-agent deals on the terms that were agreed to, the wiggle room could have been created in other ways, such as by trading or stretching Dalton Knecht. The Lakers also resisted using the stretch provision on Jarred Vanderbilt, which I think was probably wise. He can be a salary match next summer.<\/p>\n L.A. also could have generated room by the \u201cunlikely incentives\u201d cap-room trick \u2014 essentially putting in terms for the contracts of Grimes and Kessler that contained about $700,000 worth of incentives deemed unlikely by the league for cap purposes but still were very attainable for the player. A 60-games-played incentive for Kessler would have worked, for instance (he played a combined 63 games the past two seasons), or a 35 percent 3-point shooting incentive for Grimes, whose 33.6 percent mark last year was an outlier on the low side.<\/p>\n It seems quite possible the Lakers wanted Ayton gone anyway, so perhaps the cap shenanigans I mentioned above weren\u2019t needed. However, the loss of Ayton, in concert with a frothy backup-center market, also left the Lakers scraping the barrel in search of backup centers and ending up with Looney, who was all but unplayable for a 26-win Pelicans team last year. The Lakers are trying to assemble lob threats around Don\u010di\u0107\u2019s pick-and-roll wizardry, but Looney had one dunk in 308 minutes last season.<\/p>\n What are the Blazers doing?<\/p>\n Portland\u2019s new ownership under Tom Dundon has already raised eyebrows with his scorched-earth cost-cutting<\/a>; you half-expected to see new coach Micah Nori loading basketballs and equipment into a minivan to drive players to their summer-league games. The Blazers, for what it\u2019s worth, stayed at the high-brow Wynn hotel, although their traveling contingent was notably smaller than virtually every other squad\u2019s.<\/p>\n However, it\u2019s the Blazers\u2019 face-off with the city of Portland over renovations to the 30-year-old Moda Center that recently became the much bigger story. It seemed to have even perplexed Silver.<\/p>\n \u201cI was hoping more progress would have been made by now on that agreement,\u201d Silver said Tuesday<\/a>. \u201cIt seems to have gone off track in various ways.\u201d<\/p>\n While we\u2019ve seen this movie enough times to know that it likely ends with a resolution between team and city, there has been an underlying question<\/a> of whether Dundon secretly (or maybe not-so-secretly, given his extremely lukewarm embrace of the city) would prefer to relocate from Portland to someplace else.<\/p>\n But within NBA circles, the obvious question has been to ask where, exactly, he would go. Surely the league wouldn\u2019t let Dundon mess up a big expansion payday by grabbing turf in Seattle or Las Vegas. Some have suggested Austin or Nashville, but those two locales appear to be blocked off by the Spurs and Grizzlies, respectively, both of whom seem on track to play multiple \u201chome-ish\u201d games in those two cities in future seasons.<\/p>\n Others note that Dundon might access Lenovo Center in Raleigh, N.C., the home arena of the NHL\u2019s Dundon-owned Carolina Hurricanes. However, having been in that building as recently as March, it surely would be an immediate contender for the NBA\u2019s worst. It\u2019s also the old-style \u201cparking lot in the middle of nowhere\u201d model. A recently begun $300 million remodel<\/a> may improve things on the inside somewhat.<\/p>\n After that, the domestic pickings get slim. Kansas City? St. Louis? Bring the NBA back to Rochester or Tri-Cities? None of the places I\u2019ve mentioned appear obviously better than Portland \u2014 and a few seem demonstrably worse.<\/p>\n The most confusing team of the NBA offseason<\/p>\n Esfandiar Baraheni<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LAS VEGAS \u2014 \u201cWhat are they doing?\u201d In talking with NBA execs and staffers during my eight-day stay…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":773709,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[11952,1055,360,355,6932,6406,99,2970],"class_list":["post-773708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-los-angeles-clippers","tag-los-angeles-lakers","tag-milwaukee-bucks","tag-nba","tag-new-orleans-pelicans","tag-portland-trail-blazers","tag-sports","tag-toronto-raptors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/773708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=773708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/773708\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/773709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=773708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=773708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=773708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"New](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/260718-Jeremiah-Fears-Derik-Queen-scaled-e1784400340514.jpg\")
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