If you’re shopping online, or just trying to access certain websites, and things aren’t loading properly, it’s (probably) not your internet: Amazon is down. As of Thursday afternoon, Amazon services, including both Amazon.com and AWS, are having issues loading and running.
It’s not clear what’s causing the issues just yet, but it’s not the first time Amazon has made headlines for outages. Back in October, AWS had a major period of downtime, taking down much of the internet. Many sites and services rely on AWS to operate, so when Amazon has issues, all of these companies have issues too.
I’m sure we’ll learn what the issue is in due time, and Amazon will undoubtedly issue a fix soon after. But it goes to show that even the largest companies in the world aren’t immune to problems. And when those problems do arise, it affects a lot of users.
Cooper Flagg returned to the Dallas Mavericks’ lineup for Thursday night’s game against the Orlando Magic and quickly reached a milestone in his very young NBA career.
Flagg reached 1,000 career points on his first basket of the game, laying in a shot after rebounding a miss by Khris Middleton. That made him the second-youngest player to achieve quadruple figures in his NBA career, following LeBron James.
James was 19 years and 41 days old when he reached 1,000 points during his rookie season of 2004. Flagg scored his milestone basket at the age of 19 years and 74 days.
The next youngest players to score 1,000 points were Kobe Bryant (19 years, 127 days), Kevin Durant (19 years, 146 days) and Devin Booker (19 years, 162 days).
Flagg, the 2025 No. 1 overall draft pick has missed the Mavericks’ previous eight games with a left mid-foot sprain.
The rookie star was upgraded to doubtful for Dallas’ loss Tuesday to the Charlotte Hornets and was listed as questionable for the Magic game before the Mavericks confirmed he would play. Head coach Jason Kidd told reporters that Flagg will play 20 to 25 minutes versus Orlando before seeing an uptick in minutes Friday at the Boston Celtics, his favorite childhood team.
The Mavericks won only two of the eight games they played without Flagg during this most recent injury. He also missed time this season with a sprained ankle and an illness.
Through 49 games this season, Flagg is averaging 20.4 points, 6.6 rebounds, 4.1 assists and 1.2 steals per game. With 21 games remaining in the regular season, Dallas is 21-40.
The 2026 MLB season is almost here and that means you’re likely prepping for your fantasy baseball draft. One of the best ways to prepare is to do as many mock drafts as possible. Of course, sometimes it’s tough to find an accurate representation of your league settings by using the public mock draft lobby.
Not to fear! If you’re a Yahoo Fantasy+ subscriber, you have access to the Instant Mock Draft tool, allowing you to practice your draft in seconds. You can test different strategies, pick from various draft slots and experiment with roster construction as many times as you want, anytime, instantly. Now is a great time to subscribe to Yahoo Fantasy+, so you can use the wealth of tools for your draft prep
In this series, we’re going to be using the Instant Mock Draft tool to pick from each of the 12 slots in a 12-team fantasy baseball league — other mock drafts: No. 1, No. 2. Up next is drafting from the No. 3 overall pick. Which route do you take after Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani are off the board? Let’s get into it.
Note: We’re using Yahoo’s default points league settings for these mock drafts.
Round 1 dilemma: Once you get past Judge and Ohtani at 1-2, things can get sort of interesting, if you want them to. Scott Pianowski and Fred Zinkie like Bobby Witt Jr. at No. 3 overall. But the late, great Peewee Herman once said, “I’m a loner, Dottie, a rebel.” So we opted to select Juan Soto over Witt in the 3-hole. In my defense, the projections like Soto over Witt. The Mets slugger had a “down” year in terms of WAR, going from 7.9 with the Yanks to 6.2 in his first season at Citi Field. Soto still led the League in walks, stolen bases and OBP while belting a career-high 43 homers. He’s also still just 27 years old, so perhaps we haven’t seen Soto’s ceiling yet. I’m willing to roll the dice there and take him just a pick early.
Dodgers duo: Let’s talk about the back-to-back champs because nobody does that anymore. We’ll start with Betts. He can’t be done, right? It was only two seasons ago he led the NL in WAR at 8.6 and finished second in MVP voting. I’m gonna bank on a bounce-back season for Betts. His strikeout rate has been down the past few seasons despite his power draining.
I worry a little bit about Yamamoto’s innings if L.A. opts to rotate a lot of starters to stay fresh for October. But even in 30 starts last season, Yamamoto got past 170 IP and won World Series MVP. Maybe the Dodgers allow their ace to go after an NL Cy Young next?
Catcher depth: I find myself grabbing either Langeliers or Contreras at catcher around the 6-7 rounds consistently. So we may need to break that habit and wait on catcher one of these drafts. I do like my catcher depth with the Rice pick. He should rotate in at C, 1B, OF and DH for the Yanks. Rice should also have a great lineup slot and has been mashing in spring. If Rice takes another step forward at the plate, he could break the 30-homer mark.
Priority pitching target: Gore is a pitcher I wanted to make sure I snagged in one of these mocks, a top breakout candidate for Yahoo analyst Corbin Young this season. Gore misses a lot of bats with multiple pitches and, at age 27, is finally playing some meaningful baseball with Texas. Being on a better Rangers team should lower Gore’s ERA and he should get more wins as well. He feels like a great target outside of the “SP dead zone” that could pay dividends.
Planning ahead: I’m very excited to talk about my final two picks. Both are stashes/anticipatory moves. Personally, I don’t think the Pirates keep Griffin at the start of the season, but he could get a call-up soon. That’s rarely the case for teenagers but Griffin has a bright future and Pittsburgh needs to sell tickets. For Cole, I’m cool throwing him in an IL slot and leaving that final bench spot open for streamers (both hitters and pitchers). The Yankees could have their ace back at some point this summer and that could be huge for my roster later in the year.
Takeaways with drafting No. 3: The player pool still felt pretty similar in this slot compared to picks 1 and 2. I tried to stack my OF early on so I didn’t have to worry as much about that in the later rounds and could focus on pitching and grabbing some sleepers. In the next couple of mocks, we’re going to mix up the strategies a bit more. Stay tuned!
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Apple announced new products this week, all of which are all already available for preorder and will be released on March 11. But before you place your order, it’s best to compare the preorder deals from various retailers. Walmart has the best iPad Air preorder deal, for example, offering $40 off the listing price. If you’re interested in a new MacBook, however, Best Buy is the place to look: it’s the only major retailer offering any preorder deals for all three new MacBooks.
Apple A18 Pro chip with 6‑core CPU and 5‑core GPU – 8GB Memory – 256GB SSD – Indigo
13-inch MacBook Neo ($25 Best Buy Gift Card)
$599.00 at Best Buy
$599.00 at Best Buy
Apple M5 chip with 10-core CPU and 8-core GPU – 16GB Memory – 512GB SSD – Midnight
13-inch MacBook Air ($50 Best Buy gift card)
$1,099.00 at Best Buy
$1,099.00 at Best Buy
Apple M5 Pro chip with 15-core CPU and 16-core GPU – 24GB Memory – 1TB SSD – Space Black
14-inch MacBook Pro ($100 Best Buy gift card)
$2,199.00 at Best Buy
$2,199.00 at Best Buy
Previously, anyone looking for an affordable MacBook looked toward older models, like the M1 and M2. The MacBook Neo is changing that, along with the personal computing market in general. The Neo isn’t breathtaking in specs—it has the A18 Pro processor, the same chip as the iPhone 16 Pro—but the price is what makes it enticing. At $599, I can see a lot of people opting for this MacBook over other budget laptops, especially with the $25 pre-order gift card. (You should still consider the M1 and M2 as good options if you find good deals, though.) The Neo is also missing some premium features you’d expect from other MacBooks, like a backlight for the keyboard, Touch ID, and MagSafe charging. It’s also limited to 8GB of RAM, which in today’s standards, is subpar.
The M5 MacBook Air is tempting, starting at $1,099, but you shouldn’t be swayed if you already own an M4. The rest of the laptop is virtually the same. Of course, the basic starting model doubles the storage to 512GB, which is nice and only $100 more than the listing price when the M4 was released. Add a $50 gift card, and this is a great option for someone upgrading from the M2, M1, or getting their first MacBook.
The new MacBook Pro is a beast. It starts with 1TB of storage, the M5 Pro chip with a 15-core CPU and a 16-core GPU. The RAM is 24GB, which offers people all the multitasking and smoothness they need to run multiple programs at once. Starting at $2,199, the $100 gift card doesn’t soften much of the blow, but it’s $100 more than anyone else is offering.
Anthony Davis, out with ligament damage in his left hand, will be re-evaluated again in two weeks, the Wizards announced Thursday, hours before their home game against the Utah Jazz.
The 32-year-old Davis was re-evaluated Wednesday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, per the team’s statement.
“He continues to progress as expected and has been cleared to begin limited individual on-court basketball activities,” the statement reads.
Following that shocking deal, the former No. 1 overall pick was healing up from an abdominal injury. He hurried back and instantly starred with a dominant first half on Feb. 8, 2025, against the Houston Rockets, but an adductor strain related to the injury he was recovering from spoiled his night.
Davis was back in the lineup on New Year’s Day, except a week later he picked up the hand injury that’s now dragging into his second month with the Wizards.
If your outdoor spaces are anything like mine, they’re currently half-covered with ice and snow, and the spots that have thawed are muddy messes. You probably can’t do a whole lot about that until warmer weather comes, but if your house has a lawn, it’s already a good time start thinking about what you’ll need to do to whip it back into shape.
You probably already have the basic tools you need, though those will often require a lot of sweat equity and aching muscles to produce results. These days, you can get a lot of lawn work done easier and more quickly by picking up a few tools and gadgets designed to help make the process less painful (literally). Here are 10 to consider.
Use the Lawn Liberator to apply weed killer with precision
Weeding is one of the most tedious aspects of lawn care. Those little invaders can be quite insidious, and if there’s one weed in the middle of healthy plot of lawn it can be difficult to apply weed killer without destroying the grass itself. A Lawn Liberator will allows you to paint your weed killer onto the offending weeds only, without risking exposure to the rest of your lawn.
Use a stand-up weeder to save your back
If you’d rather pull weeds than unleash chemical warfare on them, then you’d better have a good supply of painkillers for the consequences of all that bending and kneeling. Or, you can invest in a stand-up weed puller, like this one. This tool allows you to yank invasive weeds out of your lawn, roots and all, from a comfortable standing position, saving your back and knees significant strain.
Manage your sprinkler system with a smart controller
If you’re still watering your lawn manually, or even using a sprinkler system you have to remember to turn on and off, it’s time to upgrade to a smart sprinkler system, like this one from Rachio. Not only does it give you multi-zone control over your lawn’s watering schedule from anywhere via a convenient app, it’s also smart enough to skip watering when it rains or freezes, protecting your lawn from overwatering or ice damage.
Handle all your trimming needs with a combination tool
Lawn care isn’t all about grass. There are trees to trim, shrubs to cut, and edges to sculpt, and you could buy separate tools for all those tasks—or you could buy a combination tool like the Makita LXT Brushless Couple Shaft Power Head Kit, which combines them all into one cordless tool. Attachments include a string trimmer, a pole saw, and a hedge trimmer, so you can burn through your lawn to-do list without pausing to switch out your tools.
This ProPlugger will make your spring planting easier
If part of your lawn plan involves planting some flowers or other decorative plants, you could whip out a trowel and get down in the dirt to do it, or you could pick up a ProPlugger. This five-in-one planting tool allows you to make perfect holes from a standing position, so you can drop your bulbs into place easily. The tool can also be used to remove weeds and move sod plugs from one spot to another; it stores the plugged dirt in its shaft until you dump it out, so cleanup is easier too.
This lawn sweeper can help you tidy up before and after yard work
A lawn sweeper is a tool often overlooked by DIY lawn care folks, but it shouldn’t be. A simple push sweeper like this one makes it simple to scoop up dead leaves and other loose debris that collects on your lawn, sparing you the sweaty work of raking.
This mulcher will transform dead leaves into something useful
Once you’ve swept or raked up all those dead leaves, what do you do with them? If you’re throwing them away, stop. Those leaves are valuable as mulch for your lawn and other plants, and you can make quick work of them with a cordless vacuum mulcher like this Ryobi model. Nothing you’ll do in your yard will be more satisfying than sucking up all those leaves and turning them into a bag full of useful mulch as a reward. (If you don’t want to go for the full Ghostbuster look, you consider a standing mulcher to get the job done instead.)
This lawn striper gives your grass a professional, finished look
Do you want your lawn to look like a professional sports field, but you can never get a good stripe when you mow? This striping attachment for your lawnmower will take care of it for you. Once attached to your mower, you can use it to stripe your lawn in a variety of patterns, making your yard the envy of your neighbors.
Employ a robot lawnmower to do the hard part for you
You might not be sold on self-driving robot cars, but a self-driving robot lawnmower? Yes, please. While it’s a big investment—the Eufy E15 is one of the cheaper models, but will still run you around $1,000—these little guys really will save you a lot of outdoor labor. Unlike some other models that have complex setups requiring beacons or satellite connections, the E15 is easy to set up because it relies on sensors to operate, like a robot vacuum does. Once it maps your yard, it will do the mowing for you.
Last week, the athlete training platform TrainingPeaks launched GPXplore, a new feature that lets you import any GPX route and ride it virtually. If you can pull a GPX from Strava, Garmin Connect, Komoot, or anywhere else that exports standard GPS files, then you could be pedaling through its real elevation profile in your TrainingPeaks Virtual account. Whether you’re a triathlete scouting race courses, a cyclist chasing that Strava segment you’ve been dreaming of, or a coach building specific workouts tied to real terrain, this is a nifty feature to have.
How GPXplore works
This feature takes GPS coordinate data to give you real-world elevation and curvature, while also attempting to blend satellite imagery as your basemap. TrainingPeaks Virtual then layers 3D graphics on top to simulate the surrounding landscape, so that you can experience the gist of that route’s real-world scenery. And hey, I’d imagine seeing a 3D-rendered approximation of Tuscany while you grind through a 12% ramp is more motivating than staring at a power graph.
GPXplore offers two modes, each aimed at a different kind of athlete motivation.
World Routes: These are pre-loaded rides from around the globe, allegedly with accurate topography so you can experience legendary climbs and famous races from your living room.
My Routes: Your own GPX files, on demand. Import from Strava, Garmin, Komoot, or any platform that exports GPX.
In short, whether you’ve already ridden a road and saved it on Strava, or you’re eyeing a race course halfway around the world on Komoot, you can now pull it straight into TrainingPeaks Virtual, clip in, and go. For triathletes and cyclists prepping for a specific event, this is a great way to train with the actual elevation profile and sequence of climbs on the real course. Want to know exactly how punishing the bike leg of Ironman Arizona feels at kilometer 140? Load the course GPX and find out before race day.
How to use the GPXplore feature
It looks like GPXplore’s real value is functional, not aesthetic: Your smart trainer responds to the route’s actual grade changes in real time, simulating resistance on every climb and letting you spin out on the descents.
Download the TrainingPeaks Virtual app to your desktop or mobile device, then log in with your existing TrainingPeaks credentials. If you’re new to TrainingPeaks entirely, you can create an account directly inside the Virtual app and access a free trial of TrainingPeaks Premium features. Check out this video from TrainingPeaks for a step-by-step guide.
Apple’s MacBook Neo is exactly the laptop many budget-conscious people have been looking for. It’s priced under $500 for students ($599 for everyone else), and has decent enough specs to be a great starter laptop for most users. To make it a ‘budget laptop,’ though, a few corners had to be cut. As a result, the MacBook Neo is lacking a few features that you might have come to expect from a MacBook. Here are the biggest trade-offs Apple is making to hit the Neo’s lower price point.
No Touch ID in the base model
The MacBook Neo’s base model doesn’t have a Touch ID sensor, which means you’ll have to type out your passwords every time you need to enter them. Some people might prefer this over using a fingerprint sensor, but I’d rather pay the extra $100 for it. This variant also comes with 512GB of storage, while the base model only has 256GB.
It lacks a backlit keyboard
Traditionally, Apple’s MacBooks have come with backlit keyboards to help you see what you’re typing while you’re in low light. Unfortunately, the MacBook Neo has cut this feature to help save costs, but it won’t make much of a difference in bright environments or to those who don’t look at their keyboards while typing.
You won’t get a True Tone display
Apple’s True Tone display feature automatically adjusts the color and intensity of the display to match the ambient light wherever you are. This means that your display won’t be blindingly bright in low light, and colors will appear more natural across a number of lighting conditions. The MacBook Neo doesn’t ship with an ambient light sensor, though, so don’t expect True Tone support here.
There are no RAM upgrade options
My daily driver laptop is still the M1 MacBook Air with 8GB of RAM. I have no complaints about this laptop, but a couple of times, it has slowed to a crawl while running many apps at once. Sometime, I wish I’d spent a bit more to get 16GB of RAM. Unfortunately, there’s no such option for the MacBook Neo. 8GB should be adequate for now, so long as you stick to light use, but it could become an issue in the long run.
Fast charging is missing
Unlike most other MacBooks, the Neo doesn’t support fast charging, and ships with a 20W USB-C adapter. However, that should be good enough to charge the 36.5-watt-hour battery, which is smaller than the M5 MacBook Air’s 53.8-watt-hour battery.
You won’t get any Thunderbolt ports
The MacBook Neo has two USB-C ports (one USB 3, and one USB 2), but neither of these support Thunderbolt. This won’t be a problem for most people, but if you use any Thunderbolt-exclusive accessories such as docks or external displays, they won’t work with the MacBook Neo.
The Force Touch trackpad has been removed
The MacBook Neo’s trackpad doesn’t have Force Touch. This means that the trackpad isn’t pressure sensitive like those on other MacBooks. It won’t support pressure sensitive drawings, multi-touch gestures, or Force clicks.
Other missing features
While I’ve covered the missing features average users are most likely to notice above, there are a few additional cuts that might impact power users especially. Here are the remaining features the MacBook Neo is missing:
It’s been a month since the 2026 NBA trade deadline, which might not be quite enough time to find out whether my Winners and Losers column was completely wrong, but does seem like enough time to take stock of the early returns on some of the bigger moves of what was a historically busy transactional period.
Since some of the bigger names on the move — Trae Young, Anthony Davis, Darius Garland, Kristaps Porziņġis, Ivica Zubac, et al. — have either yet to play or just returned to the fold, we’ll have to reserve judgment on how they’re fitting in. (Although, for what it’s worth, Trae sure seems to be bought-in enough to defend his new teammates!) Let’s take a spin through some of those who have suited up, though, starting with the only former MVP to (once again) find his way to a new destination:
The individual numbers aren’t quite as gaudy as we’ve come to expect from the 11-time All-Star: 19.1 points, 7.9 assists and 5.1 rebounds in 33 minutes per game. But Harden’s shooting 45.6% from 3-point range, getting to the foul line about six times per 36 minutes — a rate that, history tells us, will likely increase — and providing a just-what-the-doctor-ordered jolt to Cleveland’s offense. He’s isolating less and movingfaster, dropping his usage rate from his customary superstar level (31.3% in L.A. this season) down to a more complementary, second-banana tier (23.5% thus far in Cleveland). It’s working: The Cavs are scoring 122.5 points per 100 non-garbage-time possessions with him on the floor — a rate of offensive efficiency that would lead the NBA over the course of the full season.
Long one of the NBA’s premier pick-and-roll facilitators, Harden predictably wasted no time in developing a rapport with center Jarrett Allen. He’s assisted on 21 of the screen-and-dive big man’s 66 baskets during their shared floor time, lofting lobs, slinging slick pocket passes and delivering on-point entries to reward Allen for rolling hard to the rim, establishing deep position in the paint, and making himself a threat lurking along the baseline:
While spoon-feeding Allen — and off-ball shooters Sam Merrill and Jaylon Tyson, for whom he’s already set up 21 combined 3-pointers — represents an important slice of Harden’s playmaking responsibilities, Job No. 1 for the new arrival is to make life easier on incumbent superstar Donovan Mitchell. The early returns there are promising: While Mitchell has yet to shoot the ball particularly well while sharing the floor with Harden, going just 4-for-27 from 3-point land, his overall shot quality, the share of his attempts that come at the basket and the share of those up-close tries that have been assisted are all up significantly with Harden on the floor, according to PBP Stats.
The general idea behind the deal was simple: Adding Harden to Mitchell should both make the Cavs better when they’re both on the floor and allow for a staggered rotation ensuring that they’ve always got an elite shot creator on the floor. Through the first seven games in which they’ve both appeared, Cleveland has blitzed opponents by 11 points-per-100 when Mitchell and Harden play together and by 23.2 points-per-100 in Mitchell-solo minutes, with Harden-alone lineups getting outscored by a single point in 98 minutes. Blow the opposition’s doors off for most of the game and tread water for the rest of it, and you’re probably going to be a pretty damn good team — which is precisely what the Cavs have looked like since their big trade-deadline swing.
Which, we should remember, wasn’t their only bit of deadline business.
Keon Ellis and Dennis Schröder, Cleveland Cavaliers
Since coming over from Sacramento, Ellis has rolled up 19 steals, 15 blocks and 33 deflections in just 252 minutes of work off the bench, during which the Cavs have outscored their opponents by 41 points. With him on the floor, Cleveland has forced a turnover on 19% of opponents’ offensive possessions (a rate that would lead the league for the full season) and has allowed just 112.2 points-per-100 (right in line with No. 5-ranked Houston’s full-season mark).
Whether Ellis can consistently knock down the open 3s he gets (he’s just 11-for-36 from deep in Cleveland so far) and continue to serve as a ball-mover and when-necessary complementary playmaker (a very nice 21-to-8 assist-to-turnover ratio with the Cavs) will likely determine how much head coach Kenny Atkinson will be able to rely on him come the postseason. If he can keep opponents honest offensively, that penchant for creating disaster on the defensive end could be a huge boon for Cleveland’s chances of making a deep playoff run.
“Unique, unique player,” Atkinson said after a recent win over the red-hot Hornets, according to Danny Cunningham of The Inside Shot. “Sometimes he gets his deflection and you don’t even see how it happened. Like, his hands are so fast, you don’t see how he got the deflection. Then he’s a quick jumper off the floor to get contests. He’s obviously got good length. Man, what a unique player, really. Game changer.”
Schröder can be one of those, too, both with his ability to provide instant offense off the bench — to wit: his 15-point, five-assist performance in Tuesday’s win over the East-leading Pistons — and his work as something of a defensive change-up at the point of attack. Or, maybe, more of a fastball: The well-traveled German has picked up opposing offensive players in the backcourt and pressed the length of the floor on nearly 15% of Cleveland’s defensive possessions since joining the team, according to Synergy.
Ramping up the pressure doesn’t always produce the desired result; in fact, Cavs opponents have scored more than 1.1 points per possession with Schröder pressing so far, well below Cleveland’s full-season defensive efficiency mark. It’s a long game, though, and Atkinson and Co. saw first-hand last postseason just how valuable length-of-the-floor pressure can be in wearing down opposing ball-handlers when the Indiana Pacers used it on the Cavs in the second round. Having Schröder — whose full-court hectoring as a member of the Pistons made Jalen Brunson work overtime in the opening round last spring — and Ellis on hand to pick up the full 94 feet puts another arrow in the Cavaliers’ quiver.
Jaren Jackson Jr., Utah Jazz
Jackson logged just 72 minutes across three games in a Jazz uniform before being shut down to undergo season-ending knee surgery; we’re not going to draw any grand, sweeping conclusions from that microscopic sample. We’ll just note that Utah outscored its opponents by 48 points in those 72 minutes, that the early defensive returns on big-ball lineups featuring JJJ and Lauri Markkanen alongside a center looked promising, and that we’re eager to see a healthy — and presumably actually-trying-to-compete — Utah team next season … if only to find out whether they can cheer head coach Will Hardy up.
“I realized: ever since I started working, every single day of my life has been worse than the day before it. So that means that every single day that you see me, that’s on the worst day of my life.” pic.twitter.com/Do7LwRTZi0
Rather than push a lot of chips into the middle in pursuit of a big swing aimed at addressing the lack of bankable shooting on a roster that ranks 28th in made 3-pointers, 27th in 3-point attempts and 25th in 3-point percentage, Detroit flipped about-to-enter-restricted-free-agency guard Jaden Ivey to Chicago in exchange for Huerter — a 37% career 3-point shooter with playoff experience from his time in Atlanta and Sacramento.
The eight-year vet’s season-long struggles with his shot have continued with the Pistons, though, as he’s missed nine of his first 10 triple tries. Those early misfires, combined with a strong and entrenched perimeter rotation for the East’s No. 1 seed, have led to limited opportunities: Huerter has seen the floor in just five of his 11 games as a Piston, and has topped 15 minutes just once.
“He’s in a difficult spot. It’s not his fault,” Pistons head coach J.B. Bickerstaff told reporters last week. “Our guys have been playing well, so trying to find somebody who doesn’t deserve to play to give him minutes isn’t going to be always easy. […] We believe in his ability. I just gotta find a way to balance his opportunity versus what the other guys have earned.”
If Bickerstaff finds that balance, and Huerter rewards it by rediscovering the long-range stroke he’s shown for most of his career, he could be a valuable bench piece for a Pistons team intent on making a long playoff run. For now, though, we’ll grade this one “incomplete.”
Jared McCain, Oklahoma City Thunder
In fairness, who among us could have foreseen McCain — who’d looked like a Rookie of the Year favorite before suffering a season-ending meniscus tear, and missing the start of his sophomore season after tearing a ligament in the thumb on his shooting hand — starting to look much better once he got a steadier stream of minutes, touches and opportunities in Oklahoma City?
[looks down, puts finger to earpiece]
Sorry — I’m hearing “everyone.” The answer to that question, apparently, is that everyone could have foreseen that. Even the dummies!
— Basketball Performances (@NBAPerformances) March 4, 2026
Injuries to top facilitators Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Jalen Williams and Ajay Mitchell left a shot-creation void in the Thunder’s backcourt, and McCain has quickly set about filling it, averaging 11.9 points in 19.2 minutes per game, shooting 54% on 2-pointers, 42% on triples and 90% from the foul line. After spending large chunks of the first half of the season stuck behind Tyrese Maxey, VJ Edgecombe and Quentin Grimes, parked in the corner and/or in Nick Nurse’s doghouse, McCain seems to be relishing the chance to stretch his legs a bit, moving more with and without the ball and has sprinted out en route to scoring 20 or more points three times in his first 12 games with the Thunder.
Jared McCain comes off the hand-off, drives, kicks it out & relocates for the 3.
It’s reasonable to be skeptical that McCain will stay this hot and this productive if and when the Thunder’s perimeter corps gets healthier and his opportunities dwindle. If nothing else, though, this smooth start to his tenure in Oklahoma City has offered evidence that the prospect McCain appeared to be didn’t just disappear; the high-level movement shooter who can run a pick-and-roll, knock down pull-ups from the midrange and get to the paint to finish on the interior is still in there.
Dudes like that can be awfully valuable weapons — especially on cost-controlled rookie-scale contracts. It’s possible that Philly flips the draft compensation McCain returned into something bigger and better come the offseason. Right now, though, it feels equally possible that McCain could play a significant role in the Thunder’s attempt to repeat as NBA champions — and the just-turned-22-year-old could wind up making the Sixers regret the choice to move him for a long, long time.
Jonathan Kuminga, Atlanta Hawks
As with JJJ in Utah, three games is obviously not enough time to draw real conclusions about Kuminga’s fit and future with the Hawks. I will say, though: It’s been a pretty friggin’ cool three games.
Kuminga has opened his Atlanta account with alacrity: 64 points in 80 minutes, two 20-point performances in three games, shooting 16-for-22 inside the arc and 5-for-9 beyond it, generating more than seven free throws a night. That isn’t particularly surprising, though; the 6-foot-8 über-athlete’s always been able to get buckets when given minutes, touches and a runway to the rim. The more noteworthy — and potentially encouraging — part is what else he’s shown his new club in the early going.
“The things we talked about as a team, clearly it was a focal point for [us],” Hawks coach Quin Snyder told reporters after Kuminga’s emphatic debut. “Playing with the pass, as you heard me say it since October, and [Kuminga] really demonstrated that right away, to the point where I told him, ‘It’s OK to shoot.’ But he let himself get into the game and got connected with his teammates, and just let the game come to him. […] I think that shows a lot of maturity on his part, and shows a lot of kind of how he feels about the group.”
Kuminga won’t continue to make two-thirds of his shots, but if he continues attacking while working to make more of an impact in the other facets of the game — tracking back on the defensive glass, using his size and athleticism to body up opposing scorers, sprinting out in transition, moving the ball and his body quickly in the half-court — he’ll have a chance to make a real impact on a Hawks team that, perpetual midness notwithstanding, is in line for a spot in the play-in tournament (and just 2.5 games out of sixth in the East). Keep that up, and he could earn himself a spot alongside Jalen Johnson, Dyson Daniels and Nickeil Alexander-Walker (and possibly ahead of struggling former No. 1 overall pick Zaccharie Risacher) in Atlanta’s core — and, along with it, perhaps a longer and more lucrative deal than the one he had to grind out in restricted free agency last summer.
Ayo Dosunmu, Minnesota Timberwolves
The Wolves had three goals at the 2026 trade deadline:
Add another ball-handler who would represent an improvement, both right now and in the future, over Rob Dillingham;
Add another source of reserve scoring punch who could ease Minnesota’s overreliance on Naz Reid and Bones Hyland for points off the bench;
(You can add “shed enough salary to get under the first apron while still having enough financial wiggle room to add someone on the buyout market” as a fourth goal, if you want. But it’s not the Comedy Rule of Fours, y’know?)
Dosunmu — a bigger, stronger, more defensively capable guard than Dillingham, who also gets to the rim more and shoots the 3 better — represented a tidy path to achieving those first two goals. And while Minnesota hasn’t been better overall with Dosunmu on the floor, getting outscored by 41 points in his first 236 minutes in town — a crooked number largely resulting from the Wolves getting torched by a god-mode Kawhi Leonard in his first appearance, and blown out by the Sixers without Reid or a suspended Rudy Gobert — he’s shown signs of being able to offer the sort of off-the-bench bump that the Wolves will need to go toe-to-toe and blow-for-blow with the best out West.
The 26-year-old is averaging 11.4 points, 2.9 assists and 2.0 rebounds in 26.2 minutes per game as a Wolf, shooting 58.5% on 2s, 37% on 3s and 92% from the charity stripe. He’s driving to the cup just under seven times per 36 minutes of floor time and taking 47% of his shots within 4 feet of the basket — a necessary source of rim pressure for a team where nobody but Anthony Edwards and Julius Randle really takes it to the rack.
Dosunmu gives head coach Chris Finch another defensive option on the perimeter — one quick and active enough to stick with movement shooters like Corey Kispert and Klay Thompson, physical enough to body up the likes of Jrue Holiday and VJ Edgecombe, and disciplined enough to pull shifts on stars like Jamal Murray. His combination of quickness, shooting, size — 6-4 and 200 pounds with a 6-10.5-inch wingspan — and physicality also opens up the possibility of Finch rolling out three-guard lineups with Edwards and Donte DiVincenzo against the right matchups. It’s still early days, but in 55 minutes, lineups featuring that trio have outscored opponents by 19 points, scoring at an elite level despite not shooting well from 3-point range.
Finch clearly already trusts Dosunmu: During a vital game last weekend against the rival Nuggets, when the coach tightened up to a playoff rotation and went just eight deep, the newcomer was one of the three reserves he tapped, chipping in 9 points, 4 assists, 2 rebounds and 2 steals in 21 minutes off the bench in what could prove to be a critical win in the tightly packed Western Conference standings.
“It is a real weapon,” Gobert said of the contributions of Dosunmu, Reid and Hyland in the Denver win, according to Dane Moore. “I think championship teams need bench. And I think we do have a really good bench now.”
Whether the Wolves have enough to push past the conference finals berths of the last two springs and break through to the NBA Finals remains to be seen. But Dosunmu — who made just one postseason appearance during his tenure in Chicago — sounds eager to meet the challenge of helping them get there.
“I want to be labeled as a guy who plays in the playoffs, a guy who’s a winning player, a guy who does whatever it takes to help the team win,” Dosunmu told reporters last month. “So now that I have the opportunity, don’t take it for granted.”
Coby White, Charlotte Hornets
A left calf strain kept the Hornets from finding out just what they got in White for the first three weeks after the trade. (It also led to them keeping one of the second-round picks they’d dealt for him, so hey: no harm, no foul.) In the early going, though, he’s been a high-volume, high-level pick-and-roll ball-handler; a shot creator adept at both driving to the basket to pressure the rim and stopping on a dime to pull up and nail a jumper; a facilitator capable of setting the table for teammates; and a credible accelerant capable of keeping the pedal smashed to the metal for one of the league’s highest-octane offenses.
All of which is to say: White’s been pretty much precisely what the Hornets had hoped … because he’s been kind of like having another LaMelo Ball to put on the court when you take the first one off of it.
After a sterling 17-point, six-assist outing in Charlotte’s emphatic, 118-89 beatdown of the Celtics in Boston on Wednesday, White’s now averaging 13.5 points and 4.3 assists against 1.3 turnovers in 18.3 minutes per game off the Hornets’ bench, shooting 37.5% from 3-point land and 77.8% from the free-throw line. In the four games in which he’s played (all wins), the Hornets have won White’s 73 minutes by 42 points — and, most excitingly, are scoring a scorching 131.4 points-per-100 when he’s been on the floor without LaMelo.
Even with the emergence of rookie sniper Kon Knueppel and a healthy bounce-back season from Brandon Miller, those are the minutes that have been the most challenging for Charlotte this season: The Hornets’ offense has gone from the top of the pops to the depths of the dumps whenever Ball hits the bench, even if head coach Charles Lee puts his other two bright young wings on the floor in an attempt to stop the leaks. If White can keep serving as the Flex Tape that keeps that from happening, a Hornets team that has been as good as anybody in the NBA since Christmas becomes even better — and, potentially, all the more dangerous for some unlucky top seed come the first round of the Eastern Conference playoffs next month.
Luke Kennard, Los Angeles Lakers
The top-line takeaway to the start of Kennard’s tenure with the Lakers is that it’s looked broadly the same as his tenure everywhere else. He’s making 3-pointers at an elite clip (50%) while not taking as many as you’d like (just under five per 36 minutes), and his team scores really well in his minutes (125 points-per-100, which would rank No. 1 in the NBA for the full season) and defends really badly with him on the floor (118.5 points-per-100, which would rank 25th). Obla-di, obla-da, life goes on, brah.
There is this one thing, though. While everyone knows that Kennard is an outdoor cat, perpetually stationed beyond the 3-point line and almost never coming inside the arc, what his first 11 games as a Laker presuppose is … maybe he isn’t?
Kennard has actually taken more 2-pointers (37) than 3s (32) thus far in L.A., and he’s made a crisp and clean 70% of them. He’s looking to be aggressive off the catch, beating the sort of aggressive closeouts you get when everyone knows you make half your 3s, with a determination to take a couple of hard dribbles toward the rim in pursuit of paydirt. He’s also shown a good sense of how to remain threatening on a play, opportunistically relocating and hunting backdoor cuts, with the understanding that, if you just keep moving with purpose, there’s a really good chance that Luka Dončić and LeBron James will find you.
It’s reasonable to wonder whether Kennard’s L.A. story will also unfold in a similar fashion to his stints elsewhere, with his defensive shortcomings and relative shyness about letting it fly at a rate commensurate with his field goal percentage leading his coach to move him to the fringes of the playoff rotation. If Kennard keeps up the aggression, though, while continuing to scorch the nets from wherever he shoots, maybe this time around he’ll have a chance to write a different ending.
Nikola Vučević, Boston Celtics
Vučević hasn’t been quite the Al Horford Lite stretch-5 option some among the Celtics faithful hoped he’d be after arriving from Boston, making fewer than half of his shots seven times in 11 games with the C’s and shooting just 3-for-12 on pick-and-pop 3-pointers, according to Synergy. On balance, though, he’s been a useful complementary piece in Joe Mazzulla’s center rotation, kicking in 11.4 points, 7.8 rebounds and 2.0 assists in 23.4 minutes per game while offering a change-of-pace behind starting center/energetic revelation Neemias Queta. Opponents are shooting just 47.3% against him at the rim thus far in Boston, according to Second Spectrum — a wild and almost certainly unsustainable rim-protection blip, but one that the Celtics will gladly take for as long as it lasts.
Even with Vooch posting a .532 true shooting percentage that would be his worst in nearly a decade, the Celtics are winning his minutes handily — all you can ask for in a backup big man. The occasional 28-and-11 might be tougher to come by in the postseason, where he won’t be seeing the moribund Nets:
If he does manage to swing a playoff game at some point over the next couple of months, though, the Celtics will … well, they won’t build a statue or retire his jersey, because they’ve already got, like, a ton of those, and they have to conserve space and availability. But it’ll sure make the deadline pickup look awfully good!
Jose Alvarado, New York Knicks
It was a mortal, no-doubt-about-it, absolute-lead-pipe lock that Alvarado — a diminutive Puerto Rican dude from Brooklyn who has carved out an NBA career by leading with his heart, his chin, his hustle and his defense — would be an instant fan favorite at Madison Square Garden. Immediately coming up with a pair of steals and a pair of 3s to beat the hated Celtics …
… and then doubling down with a 26-point, five-steal masterclass in a blowout win over the also-hated Sixers …
… only further solidified the 27-year-old’s claim to the hearts and minds of Knicks partisans. New York has gone 7-4 with Alvarado in the lineup, playing even or better in his minutes in seven of 11 appearances and outscoring opponents by nearly 21 points-per-100 with him on the floor, all told — monster stuff for a 6-foot backup point guard.
Alvarado has been his customarily disruptive defensive self, notching 16 steals and 33 deflections since his arrival — both teamhighs — while holding opponents to 42.5% shooting in his minutes, during which New York’s defense has clamped down at an elite level. He has also ably stepped into the ball-handling void behind top table-setter Jalen Brunson, posting a 4.2-to-1 assist-to-turnover ratio and quickly developing some chemistry with star big man Karl-Anthony Towns — a critical component of second-unit, non-Brunson lineups. (Head coach Mike Brown has been willing to experiment with smaller looks in which Brunson and Alvarado share the floor, too; New York is plus-29 in 85 such minutes, scoring and defending like gangbusters.)
Everything about Alvarado’s game, presence and swagger screams MSG folk hero; actually cementing that status will require him coming up with some big moments in the postseason, where his shaky jumper — just 29.4% from 3-point range since coming over from New Orleans — could make him a tricky fit. But Leon Rose and Co. bet that Alvarado’s ability to defend larger than his stature, distribute with a steady pair of hands, and change games through sheer force of will would make him the kind of playoff riser who could help the Knicks make their first trip to the Finals since 1999. This much seems clear: If Alvarado falls short of that mark, it won’t be for lack of effort.
