The Offseason Officially Begins

Racers, start your engines. Plus, a deep dive on Jaden Ivey as a possible trade target.

Good morning! The 2023-24 NBA season is officially in the books, which means the real madness is about to begin…

News & Notes

🏀 Congrats to the Boston Celtics, who completed a dominant season from start to finish and won their 18th NBA Championship last night. In making the KP and Jrue Holiday trades, they built what was essentially a fool proof roster. When they didn’t beat themselves, they were basically unstoppable.

After a 16-3 romp through the playoffs, Boston will be heavy favorites to extend their league-record and capture a 19th title next season, which means 29 other teams have some work to do. That work begins today, when teams can begin negotiating with their own free agents. For New York, that means touching base with two prominent members of their core: OG Anunoby and Isaiah Hartenstein.

On that note, we got some good intel yesterday on how those negotiations might go…

🏀 HoopsHype’s Michael Scotto corralled Knick beat reporters Ian Begley and Stefan Bondy for his podcast, and it did not disappoint.

(Also, spoiler alert: one of his guests will be coming on the KFS pod later this week.)

I strongly recommend checking out the pod in full, but for those with tight schedules, I’ve taken the liberty of summing up each reporter’s position on several notable subjects:

On OG Anunoby re-signing

Begley: Knicks do what they have to do to bring him back, maybe on a deal with injury protections.

Bondy: Would be “very surprised” if OG isn’t back

My Take: All three pod guests mentioned Philly as a possible team to watch here because they have to bring in a high profile player come hell or high water. Maybe they set their sights on Anunoby if they strike out on other guys, but that just means New York will have to pay extra to keep him, because there’s zero chance they allow OG to walk away to a division rival without the means to replace him.