With the 2026 MLB season underway, the Los Angeles Dodgers are easily the team to beat. The dominant Dodgers appear almost infallible as they begin their journey toward a World Series three-peat.

But the team’s dominance and its massive payroll have also made it an easy squad to hate. Amid debates about whether the Dodgers are “bad for baseball,” players have defended the team’s spending, which is near $400 million in total.

In an interview with Jomboy’s Chris Rose released on Thursday, Dodgers infielder Miguel Rojas candidly dispelled the narrative about the team undercutting baseball.

“I think that the Dodgers are great for baseball,” Rojas said. “They’re trying to blame someone for their losses because we won the last two years, and they’re gonna blame it on the money.”

Rojas pointed out how close the Dodgers came to not winning a second straight World Series, which came over the Toronto Blue Jays in Game 7.

“We were two outs away from losing the World Series. The Blue Jays got the same opportunity [as] us to win the World Series, and they didn’t spend that much money, right? Or the [Philadelphia] Phillies and the [Milwaukee] Brewers facing us in the playoffs got the same opportunity as us to win the World Series,” Rojas said.

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Rojas continued by saying the Dodgers don’t care what people think of them.

“The good thing for us in the clubhouse is we won the last two, and we don’t have to justify anything. We’re not looking for approval around the league. Like, I know everybody wants [to] take us down, and that’s the beauty of baseball,” he said. “Right now, everybody wants what we had the last couple years. It’s great to have a great team. At the same time, everybody’s gonna come after you.”

With another offseason of impressive acquisitions, the Dodgers managed to make the best, most expensive roster in baseball even better and more expensive ahead of the 2026 season. One of the biggest signings for Los Angeles was top free-agent outfielder Kyle Tucker, which reportedly left MLB executives “raging” to the point of trying to push for a salary cap in the coming years.

Rojas, notably, is well below most of the his teammates in terms of payroll. Compared to Shohei Ohtani’s $70 million average annual salary or Tucker’s $60 million, Rojas is getting paid $5.5 million this year on a one-year deal signed in December. His salary this season will be the 16th-highest on the team, per Spotrac.

While execs might try to push for a salary cap, the Dodgers will continue their pursuit of a third straight title — and they have a very good shot at getting it. L.A. holds the shortest World Series odds to start the season in 60 years, and the team sits at the top of Yahoo Sports’ power preseason rankings.

For the first time in more than two decades, the NBA appears to be on the verge of expansion, with the league’s Board of Governors voting to explore the potential addition of new franchises in Seattle and Las Vegas, reportedly in time for the 2028-29 NBA season.

On one hand, there’s still an awful lot that needs to happen between now and then to arrive at a point where Teams No. 31 and 32 tip off an actual, honest-to-goodness NBA game. On the other … thinking about what those teams might look like seemed like it could be fun. And, as luck would have it, the fine folks at Spotrac recently launched an Expansion Draft tool to help facilitate said fun.

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So Ben Rohrbach and I decided to kill a little time this week — Lord knows there isn’t much else going on in the NBA at the moment! — by engaging in a mock draft to see what the rosters of the as-yet-still-theoretical teams in Seattle and Las Vegas might look like. Ben drafted for the Seattle team, which he creatively named “the SuperSonics.” I drafted for Las Vegas, and while there were just so many wonderful names to choose from …

… I decided to call my team the Las Vegas Neon, in honor of the spellbindingly gaudy lights that dominate the Strip, and also in recognition of the fact that — as you all surely already knew — neon is the official element of the state of Nevada. Hit the bricks, Strontium! This is Neon Country!

How exactly an expansion draft will work in real life remains, for the moment, unclear. The 2023 collective bargaining agreement between the NBA’s teams and its players doesn’t deal with the nuts and bolts of expansion in any great detail, beyond laying out that expansion teams will operate under lower salary cap, minimum salary, tax, first apron and second apron levels than other teams for their first two seasons in the league. (In Year 1, expansion teams can spend up to 66.6% of the full salary cap; in Year 2, that increases to 80%.)

Past that, though, specifics are scarce — and, potentially, outdated. The last expansion draft the NBA presided over happened in 2004, when the salary cap was just under $43.9 million; there are 24 individual players making more than that this season. Nearly a quarter-century later, in a league that has seen four new CBAs since then, it’s reasonable to presume that the stakeholders might want to take a fresh look at the rules, and perhaps tweak them a bit. In the absence of clarity on what those tweaks might be, though, we’ll conduct our exercise based on priorprecedent.

How an expansion draft could work

Each of the NBA’s 30 teams gets to protect up to eight players; they can choose to protect less. They all have to leave at least one player unprotected; they can choose to leave more than one.

Players left unprotected, who are under contract for the 2026-27 NBA season or entering restricted free agency in the summer of 2026, will comprise the pool of players from which the expansion clubs will select. Players about to enter unrestricted free agency, and thus not under contract, are excluded from consideration.

The expansion clubs will select at least 14 players. Once they take a player from one team’s roster, the rest of that team’s unprotected players are off limits — meaning, for example, no raiding half the Thunder’s bench.

(Now, you may find yourself asking: If the expansion draft won’t happen until the summer of 2028 at the earliest, why do it based on today’s rosters? Well, trying to figure out which players teams might protect two years from now seemed like a fool’s errand, and since this is intended to be less a projection of how things will unfold and more a case study in how something like this could go, it seemed more reasonable to just base our decisions on the players, salaries, prospective development paths and overall ecosystem as it exists right now. Let’s take it as read that such decisions are very fluid, and that an incredible amount can change between now and the summer of 2028.)

The Spotrac tool allows you to go through and pick which eight players every NBA team would choose to protect; it also offers its own recommendations, which Ben and I — not super eager to make 240 discrete selections — decided to use. It also projects the Year 1 salary cap figure for our expansion SuperSonics and Neon at $132 million.

Some other notes:

• An expansion team that drafts a restricted free agent receives control of his Bird rights. However, that player immediately becomes an unrestricted free agent, and is thus eligible to test the market and potentially walk for nothing. (Said player cannot just walk right back to his previous employer, though.)

• An expansion team can choose to waive a player it selects in the draft; in that case, the player’s contract wouldn’t count toward the team’s salary cap figure, but it would count as part of the team’s effort to reach the salary floor, which requires the team to spend up to 90% of the cap line.

• The other 30 teams are allowed to negotiate trades with the expansion teams, involving other players or picks, in order to entice the expansion teams to stay away from (or perhaps take on) a particular unprotected player. We decided not to do that, because it gave us a headache, but don’t be surprised if, y’know, Sam Presti or whoever decides to do a little pre-draft dealing to attempt to achieve a preferred roster outcome.

• I gave Ben’s Seattle SuperSonics the first pick, because the Neon are an organization of gentlemen and scholars. (Also, because I’m pretty sure that gets me the higher of our two picks in the actual NBA Draft. I didn’t tell Ben that. In the Vegas biz, we call that a Mindfreak.)

Without further ado:

1. Seattle SuperSonics: Luguentz Dort, Oklahoma City Thunder

Contract:$18.2 million (2026-27) • 2027 UFA

Rohrbach: Welcome to the SuperSonics, Lu. As we bring basketball back to Seattle, why not take a page out of the Seattle Seahawks’ book and build with defense at top of mind?

My rationale: I figured the Oklahoma City Thunder for the deepest team in the league, practically without a hole on the roster, so they would have the largest crop of talented players to choose from, and I wanted to take one off the board before it was too late. Which is to say: Immediately. While Jaylin Williams was an enticing option, I went with an All-Defensive stalwart as a culture-setter for my locker room.

Spiritually, too, starting Seattle’s franchise by taking from Oklahoma City feels right.

2. Las Vegas Neon: Zion Williamson, New Orleans Pelicans

Contract: $42.2 million (2026-27) • $44.9 million (2027-28) • 2028 UFA

Devine: Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Immediately upon arriving in Vegas, I make a preposterously dicey wager.

Is Zion under contract for more than $87 million over the next two seasons? Yes. Has he played 30 or fewer games in more than half of his professional seasons? Yes. Has his production dipped down to a comparatively quiet 21 points, 6 rebounds and 3 assists per game? Yes. Do I have at least some questions about Zion maintaining a rigorous commitment to physical excellence in Las Vegas? No comment.

But even after the years of injuries and up-and-down performance, Zion is, to my eyes, the highest-ceiling talent on the board here — a 25-year-old All-NBA-caliber performer and potential marquee attraction who’s quietly been healthier this season, and who is, even in a down year, second in the league in points in the paint per game, shooting 60% on 2s with a top-five free-throw attempt rate. Let’s roll the dice (topical) and see if our head coach can, once again, construct something devastating around a perpetual downhill threat.

Who is that head coach, you ask? Only the subject of one of my favorite basketball/wagering-related social media posts of all time:

What could possibli go wrong?

3. Seattle SuperSonics: Bennedict Mathurin, Los Angeles Clippers

Contract:RFA

Rohrbach: As with Dort, I wanted to identify guys who could fill roles on a competitive roster for years to come, and Mathurin fits that bill, even if he is a restricted free agent.

I think I can re-sign him, and I think he will be worth it.

For the Indiana Pacers, against Dort and the Thunder’s vaunted backcourt defense, Mathurin scored 27 points in a Game 3 victory on the NBA Finals stage. He added 24 points and 13 rebounds in Indiana’s Game 7 loss. Give me the 24-year-old, who nets 20 a night for the Clippers, and bank on his efficiency to become more consistent.

4. Las Vegas Neon: D’Angelo Russell, Washington Wizards

Contract: $6 million (2026-27, player option) • 2027 UFA

Devine: I’m going to be honest: After the Zion pick, I was kind of on tilt.

Yes, I know Russell hasn’t played since getting traded to D.C., and I’m aware that he wasn’t particularly good in Dallas before getting moved. But I knew I’d need a point guard to run some pick-and-roll and take some spot-up 3s, and I knew I’d need him to be relatively inexpensive, and when I thought, “Which point guard seems to make the most spiritual sense on an expansion team in Las Vegas?” … the first name that popped into my head was D’Lo. Let’s hope for the best!

5. Seattle SuperSonics: Julian Champagnie, San Antonio Spurs

Contract:$3 million (2026-27) • 2027 UFA

Rohrbach: I’m building from the middle out, and once again plucking from a roster rich with young talent. Champagnie is another rangy wing, switchable across positions, who has started 58 games for the 54-win San Antonio Spurs. Why project guys who could be role players on elite teams when there are proven ones from which to choose? Plus, at $3 million, he is among the best players available for near-minimum salary.

6. Las Vegas Neon: Mohamed Diawara, New York Knicks

Contract: 2026 RFA

Devine: Having spent my first couple of picks on a pair of established veterans, I decided to go with a scratch-off ticket here.

New York’s second-round pick in the 2025 NBA Draft, Diawara is a 6-foot-9, 225-pound swingman with a near-7-foot-4 wingspan who’s shooting 40.5% from 3-point range on more than 10 attempts per 100 possessions, and who’s shown some juice attacking off the dribble in limited doses, all as a 20-year-old rookie. He’s a restricted free agent, so I’ll have to re-sign him, but the combination of size, youth and toolkit make that an investment with some upside, whether as a 3-and-D wing or, if things break right, maybe even more.

7. Seattle SuperSonics: Day’Ron Sharpe, Brooklyn Nets

Contract:$6.25 million (2026-27) • 2027 UFA

Rohrbach: I want size, without sacrificing athleticism, and I could find no better value at center than Sharpe, who had his share of suitors at the deadline, though he never moved. He is averaging a 17-13-5, along with 2.9 combined steals and blocks, per 36 minutes, and I might just give them to him in Seattle, where we are now switching everything.

8. Las Vegas Neon: Ty Jerome, Memphis Grizzlies

Contract: $9.2 million (2026-27) • $9.7 million (2027-28, player option) • 2028 UFA

Devine: Another thematically appropriate dice-roll upside swing! Jerome has logged more than 1,000 minutes just once in seven NBA seasons. In that season, though, he was an integral part of a 64-win Cavs team that fielded one of the most fearsome offenses in NBA history and finished third in Sixth Man of the Year voting; since he got healthy in Memphis this season, all he’s done is average nearly a point per minute, shoot 42% from long distance and post a 3-to-1 assist-to-turnover ratio.

We’re trying to put on a show in Vegas. A healthy Zion and Jerome could make for one hell of a pick-and-roll partnership, and some highly entertaining high-scoring nights.

9. Seattle SuperSonics: Jrue Holiday, Portland Trail Blazers

Contract:$34.8 million (2026-27) • $37.2 million (2027-28 player option) • 2028 UFA

Rohrbach: Hey, I had to pay somebody, and I needed a floor general, so why not bring in the two-time Teammate of the Year, pair him with Dort in a ferocious backcourt, and see what happens. Even at age 35, Holiday can still man both guard positions, organizing an offense or playing most anywhere within it, and he can defend with the best of them.

It is a short trip up to Seattle from Portland. Maybe he won’t mind stamping himself as one of the league’s great culture-setters by developing ours on the SuperSonics.

10. Las Vegas Neon: Al Horford, Golden State Warriors

Contract: $6 million (2026-27, player option) • 2027 UFA

Devine: Two can play this “former Celtic veteran leader” game, Benjamin.

While it feels almost unseemly to send the sainted Horford to Sin City, he’s still an exemplary worker who can hold his own defensively in limited minutes, and he still shoots it well enough (36% on nearly five attempts per game) to space the floor and give Zion room to maneuver on those pell-mell drives to the rim. Combine that with the salutary impact he can have on the younger dudes with which we’ll be stocking the Neon roster, and it feels like $6 million well spent.

11. Seattle SuperSonics: Jordan Walsh, Boston Celtics

Contract:$2.4 million (2026-27) • 2027 UFA

Rohrbach: Another young guy who has proven his value by cracking the rotation of a deep team, even starting 20 games for the Celtics this season. He has shown the ability to defend an opposing team’s best player. Even if he lost his starting spot for a lack of offensive consistency, he is shooting 40.8% on a couple 3-point attempts per game.

It appears my go-to strategy is identifying the best front offices — the Thunder, Spurs and Celtics among them — and plucking depth off the end of their rosters.

12. Las Vegas Neon: Johnny Furphy, Indiana Pacers

Contract: $2.3 million (2026-27) • $2.5 million (2027-28, team option) • $3.1 million (2028-29) • 2029 UFA

Devine: Furphy joins Diawara in the Neon’s Long-Term Wing Investment Fund. The 21-year-old Aussie is rehabbing after surgery to repair a torn right ACL, but he’s an athletic 6-8 wing who made two-thirds of his shots at the rim this season before going down. Rick Carlisle has praised the Kansas product’s toughness, physicality and competitiveness; there’s room for dudes like that in Vegas. Especially when they’ve also got some bounce:

13. Seattle SuperSonics: Tidjane Salaün, Charlotte Hornets

Contract:$8.2 million (2026-27) • $10.4 million (2027-28 club option) • 2028 RFA

Rohrbach: I’m not even sure I still believe in Tidjane Salaün, and I just picked him. But he is only 20 years old. He was the No. 6 overall pick in 2024. He is 6-10 and shooting 43.4% on multiple 3-point attempts per game. Small sample size? Sure. But give me that potential. Somewhere around the seventh pick felt like a place to take that risk.

14. Las Vegas Neon: Fred VanVleet, Houston Rockets

Contract: $25 million (2026-27, player option) • 2027 UFA

Devine: Remember earlier, when I said the point guard in the player pool who felt most spiritually appropriate in Las Vegas was D’Lo? Like five minutes after that I remembered that there was another one whose whole bit is betting on himself.

VanVleet, like Furphy, is working his way back from a torn ACL; it remains to be seen how much the injury and extended absence will impact the 32-year-old’s game. When healthy, though, he’s an ace pick-and-roll operator who doesn’t turn the ball over, a stalwart defender at the point of attack who disrupts possessions off the ball, a high-volume 3-point threat, and a proven veteran leader who helped turn the Rockets from an also-ran into a serious outfit. We’ll trust him to do the same in Vegas.

Also, we’re building a starting lineup that can really spread the floor around Zion. Getting pretty excited, Ben!

15. Seattle SuperSonics: Sandro Mamukelashvili, Toronto Raptors

Contract:$2.8 million (2026-27) • 2027 UFA

Rohrbach: Mamu! I told you I wanted competitors, and Mamukelashvili is that, scrapping as my small-ball center. When he mans that position for the Raptors, they are outscoring opponents by 7.3 points per 100 non-garbage possessions, according to Cleaning the Glass, stout on both sides of the ball. That’s what I want this team to be, and that is Mamu.

16. Las Vegas Neon: Paul Reed, Detroit Pistons

Contract: $5.6 million (2026-27) • 2027 UFA

Devine: Dangit. I kind of wanted Mamu. Oh, well.

I’ll pivot to another backup center I like. BBall Paul’s overqualified to be a third center in Detroit, capable of making an impact on both ends of the court in reserve minutes. He’s also available for the low, low price of less than 4% of the salary cap, and his game and personality are both delightfully off-beat in a way that feels perfectly in keeping with the entertainment-oriented vibe we’re trying to foster in Vegas.

17. Seattle SuperSonics: Marcus Smart, Los Angeles Lakers

Contract:$5.4 million (2026-27 player option)

Rohrbach: Please pick up your player option, Marcus. Because I don’t want anyone scoring on my backcourt, and at the law offices of Dort, Holiday and Smart, I don’t think they will.

I also don’t think anyone is stepping out of line in my locker room, for fear of being wrestled by Dort or Smart. My only concern: They end up wrestling each other. But the collective spirit of this group, it’s going to be hard to beat. Just pray for the coach …

18. Las Vegas Neon: Cody Williams, Utah Jazz

Contract: $6 million (2026-27) • $7.7 million (2027-28, club option) • 2028 RFA

Devine: Let’s keep racking up those lottery tickets! Williams marks our third 21-and-under, 6-8-and-over wing prospect — one who underwhelmed in a major way during his rookie season, but who’s perked up a bit in the second half of his second season, averaging just under 10 points per game on 50% shooting with more steals-and-blocks than turnovers since the calendar flipped to 2026. We’ll give him a chance to compete for rotation minutes in the backcourt, and see if the arrow keeps pointing north toward what the Jazz hoped he’d be when they took him 10th overall.

19. Seattle SuperSonics: Jonathan Kuminga, Atlanta Hawks

Contract:$24.3 million (2026-27) • 2027 UFA

Rohrbach: You know what this team needs? Someone who is willing to get up a ton of shots. And you know who Kuminga is? Someone who is willing to get up a ton of shots.

Steve Kerr didn’t believe in you, but I do. I’ve seen you put up 24.3 points on 55/39/72 shooting splits over the final four games of a second-round playoff series with the Minnesota Timberwolves, even if all in losses. I’ve seen you find ways to contribute to winning in Atlanta, where the Hawks have taken 13 of their last 14 games. I’ve seen you, and I’m not sure you fit this competitive culture, but I’m hoping it rubs off on you.

He is, after all, still a 23-year-old former No. 7 overall pick. Between him and Salaün, someone has to live up to their potential, right? That is how I figured it in my head.

20. Las Vegas Neon: Max Strus, Cleveland Cavaliers

Contract: $16.7 million (2026-27) • 2027 UFA

Devine: I don’t love that Strus has missed significant time in each of the last two seasons, first with a severe right ankle sprain and then with a Jones fracture in his left foot. But I do love that, when he’s on the floor, he’s been a high-volume, high-efficiency movement shooter for the last half-decade — and one who defends and rebounds bigger than his 6-foot-5 frame, which helps him hold up as a smaller small forward.

Strus gives me another established serious vet (shouts to Heat Culture) to help set a professional tone in Vegas — and, just as importantly, he gives me another shooter to spread the floor for Zion. Right now, we’re looking at a Horford-Zion-Strus-Jerome-FVV starting five. We might give up 120 points a night, but we might score 125. (Health-permitting, of course. But that is the ethos of our organization: big bets, scared money don’t make money, etc.)

21. Seattle SuperSonics: Spencer Jones, Denver Nuggets

Contract:RFA

I like Jones as a connective player who understands his role. Maybe Nikola Jokić makes him look better than he is in Denver. That is always a concern. But give me a guy who doesn’t seem to mind taking only four shots per game, and is efficient on those few opportunities. Jones is shooting 63.2% inside the arc and 40.1% beyond it. He doesn’t hurt the team. He’s only additive, and that’s a quality our Sonics demand.

22. Las Vegas Neon: Royce O’Neale, Phoenix Suns

Contract: $10.9 million (2026-27) • $11.6 million (2027-28) • 2028 UFA

Devine: Along the same lines as Strus — a steady vet and proven pro who’s able to defend and rebound at the 3, and who’s shot 39% from 3 on more than nine attempts per 100 possessions over the last half-dozen years. A credible complementary player in the short term, and a mentor for our core of young wings moving forward.

23. Seattle SuperSonics: Jaden Ivey, Chicago Bulls

Contract:RFA

Rohrbach: The guard group on this team is a bunch of bulls. And thankfully not a bunch of Bulls.

With Dort, Holiday and Smart on the roster, I could use a jolt of ball dominance at the guard position, and Ivey could be that. He has some creativity to him, too. Let him run the second unit with some offensive punch. He was averaging an 18-4-4 on rock-solid efficiency for a good Detroit Pistons team when last we saw him at full strength.

Is he an injury risk? Sure, a series of leg injuries is a concern, but pickings are starting to get slim around here, and you know who sounds good at this point: A No. 5 overall pick who is the 24-year-old son of Notre Dame women’s basketball coach Niele Ivey.

24. Las Vegas Neon: Ryan Nembhard, Dallas Mavericks

Contract: $2.2 million (2026-27, club option) • 2027 UFA

Devine: I’m not going to sugarcoat it: The Neon are getting pretty pricey. (Almost like using our first pick on a guy making $42 million wasn’t the most fiscally sound strategy!) We’ll round out our ball-handling crew by bringing in Nembhard, a reserve who’s both cost-effective on the deal he signed with the Mavs to move off a two-way, and a potential contributor who’s shot 38% from deep with a 3.5-to-1 assist-to-turnover ratio in his rookie season. Him and D’Lo can reminisce about Dallas! Good times.

25. Seattle SuperSonics: Goga Bitadze, Orlando Magic

Contract: $7.6 million (2026-27)

Rohrbach: We’re going to need somebody to bang bodies with Jokić in the playoffs, am I right? Here are six more fouls at the center position. But Bitadze is more than that, certainly worth this one-year deal. (Notice how financially flexible our SuperSonics are going forward. Only Holiday is on the hook for big money beyond 2026-27, and he comes off the books in 2028, when we are going to be big players in free agency. I swear.)

Bitadze fits into our outfit as a rough-and-tumble big who just cares about setting screens, grabbing rebounds, blocking shots, occasionally dunking and generally getting under everyone’s skin. It’s a vibe around here. Ask Dort and Smart. My center rotation of Sharpe, Mamukelashvili and Bitadze is starting to match their strength.

(Plus, Mamu and Goga, two Star Wars-ian names, how could I resist.)

26. Las Vegas Neon: Ousmane Dieng, Milwaukee Bucks

Contract: 2026 RFA

Devine: Dieng fits with the lottery-ticket build of our second unit: a 6-9 22-year-old with a 7-foot wingspan who has flashed a 3-point stroke since getting some consistent minutes in Milwaukee after being stuck on the outside of a title-winning rotation in OKC. And we’re right up against the cap, so we take a flyer on an RFA-to-be who we can either A) use Bird rights to go over the cap to re-sign or B) let walk and not keep on our books.

27. Seattle SuperSonics: Cam Payne, Philadelphia 76ers

Contract:RFA

Rohrbach: I’m really running out of options now. You know what I could use? Someone who doesn’t give a care in the world about being on the end of the bench. Someone who is just happy to be here, contributing. Enter The Cam Payne, who will join his ninth team in almost as many seasons. The man has 72 playoff games under his belt.

Did you know that Cam Payne — and, yes, we use his first and last name every time — is only 31 years old? Didn’t you think he was, like, 41? He’s been around. He loves his wacky-footed 3-pointers and generally doing a lot in a little amount of time, for better or worse. Sometimes better. And that’s what we’re banking on in Seattle.

28. Las Vegas Neon: Keshad Johnson, Miami Heat

Contract: 2026 RFA

Devine: Another “either we keep him for cheap or we let him go” RFA swing here as we get near the end of the line. Johnson’s an athletic wing defender who’s earned minutes for Erik Spoelstra, which ain’t nothing. He also won the Dunk Contest, which, y’know: showmanship!

29. Seattle SuperSonics: DeMar DeRozan, Sacramento Kings

Contract: $25.7 million (2026-27)

Rohrbach: I’m staring at Julian Phillips, who can’t get on the floor for the Minnesota Timberwolves, and Devin Carter, who is shooting a cool 25% from 3 for his career on the Sacramento Kings, and I’m not liking my plan to stay under the salary cap.

So, I’m pivoting. Screw it. I can go over the salary cap! The Spotrac tool — and, more importantly, the NBA — allows me to do it. We’ve got deep pockets in Seattle. And you know who I’ve always liked? DeMar DeRozan. He’s cool as hell, and still smooth with the ball. He knows what he is, and that is a midrange maestro. He used to do some pretty sweet dunks, too, but now he’s mostly a midrange maestro, and he’s cool with that. I’m cool with that. Do you, DeMar. He’ll get to his 20 points somehow.

Besides, you know what this organization needs right off the bat? A 20,000-point scorer. He is the yin on offense to Holiday’s yang on defense. They are my co-leaders, a pair of 30-somethings who command nothing but respect from every one of their teammates. They set the culture, where competition is fierce, the rotation is deep, and we’re just waiting on a superstar. For now, DeRozan isn’t such a bad substitute.

30. Las Vegas Neon: Rudy Gobert, Minnesota Timberwolves

Contract: $36.5 million (2026-27) • $38 million (2027-28 player option)

Devine: I’m not going to lie: When we got down to the final two picks, and we learned that Spotrac’s draft tool would allow us to go over the cap, I was kind of perplexed. I didn’t think we could do that!

I later checked in with Keith Smith, Spotrac’s resident NBA cap guru, to make sure we hadn’t inadvertently broken the system. As he patiently explained to me, expansion teams are allowed to exceed the cap, just like any other team; it’s just that, since the expansion teams’ salary cap line would be lower than the rest of the league, so too would their luxury tax, first apron and second apron thresholds.

I did some back-of-the-envelope math based on the $132 million figure in the expansion draft tool used, and came up with a luxury tax line of about $160.4 million, with the first apron set at about $167.3 million and the second at $177.4 million — all of which “sounds about right” based on the projections, according to Smith.

With that in mind: If I don’t have to take Julian Phillips, the other unprotected player on the Wolves roster, I can instead take Gobert, who’s still patrolling the paint at a First Team All-Defense level — and who would go a long way toward establishing a serious infrastructure around and behind Zion. And if the only problem’s going to be that our scrappy little start-up expansion team actually enters its first season of existence not only over the cap, but over the first apron … well, why not? Maybe our ownership is committed to trying to compete right away! Maybe I’m a visionary!

	Seattle SuperSonics	Las Vegas Neon
Round 1	Lu Dort	Zion Williamson
Round 2	Bennedict Mathurin	D’Angelo Russell
Round 3	Julian Champagnie	Mo Diawara
Round 4	Day’Ron Sharpe	Ty Jerome
Round 5	Jrue Holiday	Al Horford
Round 6	Jordan Walsh	Johnny Furphy
Round 7	Tidjane Salaun	Fred VanVleet
Round 8	Sandro Mamukelashvili	Paul Reed
Round 9	Marcus Smart	Cody Williams
Round 10	Jonathan Kuminga	Max Strus
Round 11	Spencer Jones	Royce O’Neale
Round 12	Jaden Ivey	Ryan Nembhard
Round 13	Goga Bitadze	Ousmane Dieng
Round 14	Cam Payne	Keshad Johnson
Round 15	DeMar DeRozan	Rudy Gobert

Or, y’know, maybe not. Maybe building a team around a bunch of injury risks, salty 30-somethings and unproven 21-year-olds wasn’t the best plan. If nothing else, though, my first (and perhaps final) draft in charge of the Neon was thematically appropriate: I arrived in Sin City with a budget in place … and promptly spent way more money than I was supposed to. Sounds like a pretty standard trip to Vegas to me.

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said Wednesday that the league plans to implement major changes to its draft lottery system with an eye toward curbing the practice of tanking.

“We are going to fix it,” Silver said. “Full stop.”

During a press conference following the league’s Board of Governors meetings in New York, Silver offered updates on a number of issues facing the league, including the decision to explore expansion to Seattle and Las Vegas, the possibility of establishing a new league in Europe, and the efficacy of the league’s Player Participation Policy and the 65-game threshold for year-end awards eligibility, among other matters.

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“I would say virtually everything we covered at the board meeting was very positive,” Silver said. “One topic, not so positive. And that’s ongoing tanking issues in the league.”

The league’s owners had “a lengthy conversation about the issue,” according to Silver, who acknowledged that franchises doing less than their level best to win — intentionally plunging to the bottom of the standings in hopes of improving their chances of landing higher draft picks — is nothing new. Concerns about teams purposely putting non-competitive teams on the floor in pursuit of potentially transformative talents have persisted for decades, helping lead to the introduction of the NBA Draft Lottery in 1985.

“That lottery has been modified four times since then,” Silver noted. “Obviously, it does not seem to be operating optimally, where we are now.”

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Over the years, the NBA has seen plenty of instances of teams choosing not to play certain players, often late in the season, with their sights set on improving their draft positioning and/or ensuring that they keep a protected pick that they’d previously traded away and that would be conveyed to another team if it landed after a certain spot in the draft order. Such machinations have become more pronounced and begun coming earlier in the season of late, though.

Last March — ahead of a 2025 NBA Draft headlined by Cooper Flagg — the Utah Jazz were fined $100,000 for sitting star scorer Lauri Markkanen. Last month, the league fined the Jazz $500,000, and the Indiana Pacers $100,000, claiming that the teams’ approach to roster management in certain games represented “overt behavior […] that prioritizes draft positioning over winning [and] undermines the foundation of NBA competition.” (Pacers head coach Rick Carlisle later called the fine, and the process by which the league arrived at it, “ridiculous.”)

Ahead of February’s trade deadline, some teams dealt away star players with an eye toward entering full rebuilds. Others traded for star players, only to then keep them in street clothes with various reported injuries.

“There is an aspect of team building that is called a genuine rebuild — a rebuild with integrity,” Silver said. “The problem we’re having these days is, it’s become almost impossible to distinguish between the tank and rebuild.”

A month after Silver said that the league was considering “every possible remedy” to limit tanking and informed the NBA’s 30 general managers that changes would be forthcoming, the race to the bottom shows no signs of abating ahead of the 2026 NBA Draft, which will likely feature a number of highly touted prospects, including Darryn Peterson, AJ Dybantsa, Cameron Boozer and Caleb Wilson, among others.

“This may be an unusual year, because of a perception of such a deep draft,” Silver said. “I’d say that’s combined with the advent of advanced analytics in all sports, that teams are now making calculations in terms of opportunities and risks and rewards. And I understand where that incentive takes our teams.”

A decade removed from “Process” architect Sam Hinkie’s ouster in Philadelphia, it became clear by the All-Star break that nearly one-third of the NBA’s teams were operating as if it would be better for them to lose than to win. That’s because under the current structure — with cost-controlled talent at a premium in the apron era, with free agency decreasing as a viable option for many franchises (especially smaller-market ones) to add elite players, and with the draft still likely the most direct path many teams have at being able to have a shot at a generational difference-maker — it arguably is.

Which is why, according to Silver, the league will look to take aim at that incentive structure — an approach that the commissioner said “seemed unanimous in the room” of team owners, who agreed on the need to make a change to the system before the 2026 NBA Draft and free agency period.

What specific changes the league office might look to implement, however, remains unclear. Previous reports have suggested that the NBA’s powers that be have discussed a range of ideas, including limiting protections on first-round draft picks, freezing lottery odds at some point during the season rather than at its end, preventing teams from picking in the top four in consecutive years, giving every lottery team the same odds of landing the No. 1 overall pick, and more. Silver said the governors are continuing to work through proposals, with a “special board meeting” likely coming in May and featuring a vote on “whatever modification we come up with.”

“I do think ultimately this is a decision that needs to be made at the ownership level,” Silver said. “It has business implications, has basketball implications, has integrity implications for the league. So, it’s one that we take very seriously, and we are going to fix it. Full stop. And I want to say that directly to our fans.”

While Silver’s intention is clear, the path is not. The league instituted lottery reform in 2017, flattening out the odds of landing the top overall pick; nearly a decade later, the league’s stakeholders are back to the drawing board.

“There’s such a subtlety to this when incentives don’t match — when we’re now into it with coaches’ decisions on lineups, and when players come in and out of the game, injuries, doctors going back and forth with each other, pain levels of players — that my sense is when I say ‘fix now,’ yes, we need to do something more extreme than we did with those incremental changes the last four times along,” Silver said. “[…] Certainly, going into next season, the incentives will be completely different than they are now.”

The hope, from Silver and his office, is that adjusting those incentives to put a greater premium on winning will lead to a shift in focus back toward the more positive elements of the on-court product.

“I’m sorry to have to talk about tanking, because it takes away from the incredible competition we’re seeing from roughly 20 teams in the league right now going into a wide-open playoffs,” Silver said. “[…] What’s so incredible about live sports at this level — and I think it’s not just the NBA, but we’re seeing a rising tide among all premium sports — is that people have this hunger for this live, unscripted drama.

“Of course, the opposite of that is when there’s a sense that both teams aren’t out there trying to kill themselves to win a game. And so, as I said, we have to fix that problem.”

Pittsburgh Pirates ace Paul Skenes came into the 2026 MLB season looking to take home his second straight Cy Young award. The early returns Thursday were not encouraging.

Skenes lasted just two-thirds of an inning against the New York Mets on Opening Day. He threw 37 pitches and allowed five earned runs in the outing. The Mets led 5-2 when he left the game.

Skenes got himself in trouble early in the first frame with a leadoff walk to Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor. The Pirates’ ace then allowed a bloop single to Juan Soto, making it first and third with no outs.

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New Mets third baseman Bo Bichette then drove in Lindor with a sac fly, giving Skenes an out and the Mets a run. The next batter, new Mets infielder Jorge Polanco, hit a weak single up the third-base line. The ball had a 44.2 mph exit velocity.

With men on first and second, outfielder Luis Robert Jr. drew a 10-pitch walk to load the bases. That brought up Brett Baty, who drove a ball to deep center field.

Pirates outfielder Oneil Cruz misjudged the ball off the bat, taking a few steps in before realizing the ball was sailing over his head. He couldn’t course-correct in time to make the catch, allowing all three baserunners to score and Baty to reach third.

The next Mets hitter, Marcus Semien, hit a lazy fly ball to Cruz in center. This time, Cruz had trouble seeing the ball in the sun. If dropped harmlessly, allowing Baty to score and Semien to wind up on second with a double.

One Philadelphia-based athlete who wasn’t happy about that sequence was Philadelphia 76ers star Joel Embiid, who told Cruz he should prepare to be a DH from now on.

After a quick strikeout to rookie Carson Benge for the second out, Skenes hit catcher Francisco Alvarez with a pitch to put two men on base. At that point, the Pirates’ ace was pulled from the contest.

Yohan Ramírez came on in relief of Skenes and was able to induce a flyout from Lindor to get out of the inning.

But the damage was done. For Skenes, the outing marked the shortest of his young career. His previous low came in a September 2024 game vs. the New York Yankees. Skenes pitched just two innings in that contest, though that was due to limiting his innings, not an issue of Skenes’ performance.

Thursday’s performance also ties Skenes’ career high in runs allowed. The only other time he gave up five earned runs came last year, when the St. Louis Cardinals scored five runs against him over six innings during a game in April.

Even worse, Opening Day was a historically poor performance for Skenes. He became the first starting pitcher to register fewer than three outs on Opening Day since Jose Berrios in 2022.

The rough start comes at an extremely inconvenient time for the Pirates, who enter the 2026 season with playoff hopes for the first time in about a decade. After some key offseason acquisitions, the Pirates are considered dark-horse wild-card contenders in the National League.

One of those new additions, infielder Brandon Lowe, got his season started on a much better foot, hitting a two-run homer in the top of the first inning that briefly put the Pirates ahead. Lowe hit a second home run in the third, making it 5-3 at the time.

If there’s any positive to take from all this, it can be argued that Skenes deserved much better from the defense behind him. Cruz’s misplays in the outfield cost the pitcher two outs. Had Cruz made those plays, Skenes might’ve made it out of the inning with the score tied at 2-2.

In addition, three of the four hits against Skenes were pretty fluky. Soto’s single blooped into shallow center, Polanco’s didn’t make it halfway to third base, and Semien’s was lost in the sun. Baty’s triple likely should’ve been an out, though he did hit the ball hard.

Despite that, all of those runs were charged to Skenes, who will turn his attention to getting back on track in his next start, slated to come Wednesday against the Cincinnati Reds.

Chicago Bears quarterback Caleb Williams developed a knack for pulling out dramatic, game-winning plays late in games during the 2025 NFL season. Due to his fourth-quarter excellence, Williams embraced the nickname “Iceman,” a moniker that seemed to accurately describe the ice in his veins during the game’s biggest moment.

Turns out, there already was an “Iceman” in sports, and he’s not too happy about Williams trying to trademark that nickname.

NBA Hall of Famer George Gervin decided to fight against Williams’ trademark of the “Iceman” moniker. Gervin, 73, told the Chicago Sun-Times that he respects Williams, but the “Iceman” moniker “is taken.”

Gervin added, “All I’m saying is: Young fella, we’ve already got one ‘Iceman.’”

Following Williams’ excellent 2025 season, a company titled “Caleb Williams Holding, Inc.” submitted four trademarks related to “Iceman” on March 16. Williams filed the trademark so he could sell goods and services using the phrase, per the Sun-Times.

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Four days later, Gervin Interests LLC filed trademarks for “Iceman” and “Iceman 44,” a reference to Gervin’s jersey number.

While Gervin was known as “Iceman” much earlier than Williams, his late registration for the trademark was due to confusion over “the death of a business associate,” Gervin Global Management president and CEO Jerald Barisano told the Sun-Times.

It will likely takes months before the issue is sorted out and the “Iceman” trademark is awarded. Gervin, however, said he plans to contest the decision if Williams is given the trademark.

“I’m really the ‘Iceman’ in sports,” Gervin told the Sun-Times.

Gervin spent 12 of his 14 NBA seasons as a member of the San Antonio Spurs. Over his career — which stretched from 1972 to 1987 — Gervin became known as “Iceman” due to his ability to “drop 25 and not break a sweat,” Gervin revealed in a 2016 chat on ESPN.

Gervin was a 12-time All-Star, seven-time All-NBA selection, four-time scoring champ and was named to the league’s 75th anniversary team. He was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 1996.

One day after the union representing NBA players accused the Milwaukee Bucks of wanting to shut Giannis Antetokounmpo down for the season because they are trying to lose games, Bucks head coach Doc Rivers offered an alternative rationale for keeping the two-time Most Valuable Player on the injured list: that he’s injured.

“He’s not [healthy],” Rivers said Wednesday, before the Bucks’ Wednesday matchup with the Portland Trail Blazers, according to Eric Nehm of The Athletic. “He’s progressing. He’s just not healthy.”

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Rivers was responding to a claim levied by the National Basketball Players Association on Tuesday, intimating in a strongly worded statement that the Bucks were engaging in anti-competitive behavior by attempting to prevent Antetokounmpo — currently sidelined by a hyperextended left knee and bone bruise that he sustained in a March 15 win over the Indiana Pacers — from returning to the court for the final weeks of Milwaukee’s season.

After suffering the injury against the Pacers, Antetokounmpo tried to return to the game, only to be held out by Milwaukee’s medical and training staff. Following the game, he told reporters that he wasn’t “really bothered by [the knee] at all,” that he didn’t think he’d need to have any imaging done on the knee, and that he planned to proceed as if he’d be back on the floor for the Bucks’ next game.

“For me, every game is worth it,” Antetokounmpo told reporters. “Every time I step on the floor, I try not to take it for granted. I appreciate just being out there, especially when I’m getting my rhythm back and I’m feeling good.”

Antetokounmpo did not return for Milwaukee’s next game against the Cleveland Cavaliers, though. The Bucks did have him undergo an MRI, which reportedly revealed no ligament damage, but did lead to the diagnosis of a hyperextension and bone bruise that put him on the shelf for at least a week — and perhaps setting the table for the superstar forward to miss the remainder of the season, in what could be a boon for the Bucks’ odds of landing a top pick in June’s NBA Draft.

In the 36 games that Antetokounmpo, Milwaukee’s leading scorer and rebounder, has played this season, the Bucks have gone 17-19. In the 36 that he has missed due to a variety of injuries, they’ve gone 12-24 — including a 130-99 loss to the Blazers on Wednesday. The Bucks have outscored opponents by 4.4 points per 100 possessions with the 10-time All-Star on the floor, and have been outscored by 10.1 points-per-100 with him off it, according to NBA Advanced Stats — one of the biggest differentials of any player in the league.

With the Bucks now nine games out of the final spot in the play-in tournament, multipleprojectionmodels give them virtually zerochance of qualifying for the postseason. At 29-43, tied for the ninth-worst record in the NBA, the Bucks have a 17.3% chance of landing a top-four pick in the 2026 NBA Draft Lottery, and a 3.8% chance of jumping up to first overall, according to Tankathon — odds that could conceivably improve if they finished the season by losing a handful more games than the 25-48 New Orleans Pelicans, who are 4.5 games “above” Milwaukee in the reverse standings, but who have been playing significantly better than the Bucks for quite some time, and who owe their first-round pick to the Atlanta Hawks and thus have no incentive to lose.

Giannis Antetokounmpo, Bucks not on the same page

That inverted incentive, it appears, is at the heart of the ongoing dispute in Milwaukee. The Athletic’s Nehm reported on March 18 that the Bucks had approached Antetokounmpo about sitting out the rest of the season, and that the perennial All-NBA selection had rejected the idea. Six days — and three more Bucks losses — later, the NBPA issued its statement.

“The Player Participation Policy was designed by the league to hold teams accountable and ensure that when an All-Star like Giannis Antetokounmpo is healthy and ready to play, he is on the court,” the statement read. “Unfortunately, anti-tanking policies are only as effective as their enforcement; fans, broadcast partners, and the integrity of the game itself will continue to suffer as long as ownership goes unchecked. We look forward to collaborating with the NBA on meaningful new proposals that will directly address and discourage tanking.”

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver discussed the union’s statement on Antetokounmpo during a press conference following the league’s Board of Governors meeting on Wednesday.

“Prior to that press release from the players association, we were not aware there was an issue,” Silver said Wednesday. “We knew Giannis was injured. He was within the sort of usual period it was taking to come back from that injury. So I was a bit surprised by that press release. Yes, when our players association announces they see an issue, of course we’ll look into it. So that’s where it currently stands.”

Rivers, for his part, downplayed Silver’s response.

“I don’t think it’s a big deal,” he said, according to Jim Owczarski of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. “Maybe you don’t know this, but they look into every injury. This is nothing new. Probably because it’s been talked about, [Silver] felt the need to say something, but I’ve not been on a team where when you have injuries, they don’t look at it. So I don’t think it’s anything new.”

Hanging over all discussion of Antetokounmpo’s availability and prospective return to the floor: a year (really, many years) worth of rumors, reporting, speculation and scuttlebutt over whether or not the 31-year-old has determined, or might determine, that his best chance of competing for another NBA championship might lie elsewhere, and that the time has come for him to leave the franchise that drafted him in 2013.

When the Bucks held on to Antetokounmpo at February’s trade deadline, that delayed any decisions on his future to the offseason, when he’ll become eligible for a four-year, $275 million maximum-salaried contract extension.

“Giannis is going into the last year [of his contract],” Bucks controlling owner Wes Edens recently told ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne. “So one of two things will happen: Either he will be extended or he’ll be traded. The likelihood you’ll let him just kind of play out the last year, we can’t afford that. It’s not consistent with what’s good for the organization.”

The operative questions appear to be whether putting Antetokounmpo back on the floor before the April 12 season finale against the Philadelphia 76ers — thus potentially reducing the Bucks’ odds of losing enough to climb the lottery standings, and potentially increasing the chances that Giannis sustains another leg injury that could diminish his trade value this summer — would represent “what’s good for the organization,” and whether that should matter at all if Antetokounmpo, in fact, is healthy enough to play.

For right now, though, Rivers insists those questions are irrelevant, because Antetokounmpo, in fact, is not.

“Our focus right now is just getting him healthy,” Rivers told reporters. “We’re just trying to get Giannis cleared and healthy; that’s our only focus. All the other stuff, we stay above.”

The Los Angeles Dodgers are adding a field sponsor for the first time in franchise history. The team announced Wednesday that the field at Dodger Stadium will now be called Uniqlo Field.

Uniqlo is based in Japan, the home country of three of the Dodgers’ biggest stars: Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Roki Sasaki. With Ohtani in particular becoming the sport’s biggest international star, several other Japanese companies, such as Nippon Airways, have lined up to sponsor the Dodgers.

Dodger Stadium is the third-oldest ballpark in MLB, having opened in 1962. The team has always eschewed the lucrative possibility of stadium naming rights, but the Uniqlo deal opens that revenue stream without actually changing the Dodger Stadium name. It still represents a change for the organization, though.

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It’s a setup with precedent in other sports, such as the Kansas City Chief’s GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium.

Uniqlo’s signature red-and-white branding will be displayed throughout the field, including the in batter’s eye, in the press box and on the grass along the baselines.

Uniqlo founder Koji Yanai told the Associated Press that he became a Dodgers fan before the deal was made.

“Every one of us has become fans of the Los Angeles Dodgers because of the outstanding performances of Japanese players,” Yanai said through an interpreter.

The new signage will be visible as the Dodgers open their season on Thursday by hosting the Arizona Diamondbacks in the first game of a three-game series.

Milwaukee Brewers outfielder Jackson Chourio will begin the 2026 MLB season on the 10-day injured list due to a broken left hand, the team announced Thursday.

Chourio suffered what was described as a bruised left hand when he was hit by a pitch during a Venezuela exhibition game against the Washington Nationals ahead of the World Baseball Classic earlier this month. He went on to play five games in the tournament, including the final.

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Following the WBC, Chourio reported that he still felt pain in the hand when he returned to Brewers camp. An MRI determined it was a “hairline fracture,” manager Pat Murphy told MLB Network’s “MLB Central” on Thursday

Chourio’s placement on the IL is retroactive to March 25, so the earliest he would be available is in time for the Brewers’ first road trip beginning April 3 in Kansas City. But MLB.com’s Adam McCalvy reports that early estimates have the young Venezuelan star possibly missing 2-4 weeks.

Milwaukee opens the season with a six-game homestand beginning Thursday against the Chicago White Sox.

The 22-year-old Chourio is entering his third season with the Brewers. In 2025, he batted .270 with 21 home runs and 78 RBI in 131 games.

Last season, Chourio dealt with a right hamstring injury that resulted in an IL stint in August and later bugged him during the playoffs.