Basketball Intelligence For 8/24/25
Today's Best NBA Reporting And Analysis
*FEATURE OF THE DAY*
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander's championship homecoming, our addiction to telegraphing success, and whether achievement has to be loud to count.
Katie Heindl, Basketball Feelings
TEAM-SPECIFIC
BKN: Terance Mann has become a role model in his hometown of Lowell, as he always dreamed
Gary Washburn, Boston Globe
CHI: Bulls front office still star gazing as NBA fall camps draw closer
Joe Cowley, SunTimes
Executive vice president of basketball operations Arturas Karnisovas insisted at the end of the season that he had a plan when it comes to lifting the Bulls out of mediocrity, but with camp just over a month away it feels like the same old same old.
MIA: What’s next for revamped Heat? EuroBasket could offer intriguing insights
Ira Winderman, SunSentinel
MIN: Terrence Shannon Jr.'s scoring gives him a bright future
Eamon Cassels, Dunking With Wolves
MIN: Timberwolves' young talent shines in new two-way database
Eamon Cassels, Dunking With Wolves
OKC: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander's championship homecoming, our addiction to telegraphing success, and whether achievement has to be loud to count.
Katie Heindl, Basketball Feelings
This past season there was plenty of discourse around his candidacy for MVP — whether it was time, whether he was ready. All awards require a certain amount of legwork, PR, showboating, the media machine of the NBA no different than that of the film circuit. Yes, there are statistical benchmarks — Nikola Jokic’s career-best numbers this season made a complete numerical case — but the crux of MVP, the naming of it, has always hinged on the exponential. A feel.
Does achievement have to be loud to count? Can it stand quietly, a pillar, a column, foundation for the future, or does it need to be lauded, personally broadcast, to last? Gilgeous-Alexander has always broadcast his exceptionalism at a frequency dialled low, trusting that anyone interested will tune in. The implicit bias in this, as has become clear throughout the seasons, is that this interest directly correlates with aptitude. If you watched, if you really watched, then it’s likely you already knew. He didn’t need to tell you (side note: he wouldn’t have, the one time he did the air in the room contracted, cringed with the obviousness, the deigning to have him say it out loud).
The rest of today’s team-specific stories as well as the leaguewide, international and draft stories follow for paid subscribers