free-agency Page 5 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

The Maple Leafs And Avalanche Pulled Off A Wonderful Trade

Sometimes trades are far simpler than GMs make them out to be. It’s understandable why many are hesitant: the fear of losing a trade is real, and GMs tend toward maintaining the status quo, since the status quo involves them having a job. But: a trade doesn’t have to have a loser. The Colorado Avala...

Bobby Portis Is A Lesson In The Cost Of Doing Business With Bad NBA Teams

A crappy side effect of the NBA’s salary cap is it’s usually better business for your favorite team to have a cheap good player than an expensive one, so you are conditioned to think of cheap contracts for good players as “good” and pricier contracts for comparable players as “bad.” Sticking with th...

Montreal Offer-Sheeted Sebastian Aho, But Don Waddell Is Getting Off Those Jokes

An unexpected delight on the opening of NHL free agency: The Montreal Canadiens have signed Carolina Hurricanes restricted free agent forward Sebastian Aho to an offer sheet. It will be very interesting to see how this one goes down—while it feels unlikely that the Hurricanes won’t match, at the ver...

The Florida Panthers Found Their Goalie

The reinvention of the Florida Panthers continued today with a massive new contract for free agent goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky, worth a reported $70 million over the next seven years. By signing the two-time Vezina winner and former Blue Jacket, the Panthers hope that they’ve captured a key ingredie...

Phil Kessel's Going To Arizona After A Messy Breakup With The Penguins

The Pittsburgh Penguins accomplished the inevitable. After Phil Kessel rejected a trade to the Minnesota Wild, the Pens found an agreeable new team for him, all the way out in Arizona. On Saturday, Pittsburgh traded Kessel, a 2021 fourth-round pick, and prospect Dane Birks to the Coyotes for Alex Ga...

And Now, A Washington Wizards Update: Hell

If you lost track of the Washington Wizards amid all Sunday’s wild NBA free-agency news, that’s fine, and reasonable. It speaks well of you, all things considered. A solid double-fistful of the league’s big stars switched teams over the weekend, and none of them came to or left the Wizards—but the W...

Treat The Knicks Like What They Are

Kevin Durant could have chosen better than to make Brooklyn the new center of the universe. For example, he could have joined Kawhi Leonard in Toronto and taken on the entire National Hockey League at its very core by making basketball Canada’s new national pastime. I mean, it’s one thing to kick th...

KawhiWatch: Kawhi Leonard Toying With Entire City Of Los Angeles

The first “day” of NBA free agency 2019 was a depraved feeding frenzy. Within eight hours nearly everything edible had flown off the table, and even some borderline fare, too. Michael Jordan dug into a lukewarm plate of Terry Rozier at a market price of $58 million—sickening. And yet the most prized...

The Heat Are Scrambling To Actually Complete The Jimmy Butler Trade [Update]

For an organization whose supposed signifier around the league is “competently professional,” the Miami Heat sure seem to have botched their big trade for Jimmy Butler. After The Athletic’s Shams Charania reported that a sign-and-trade deal featuring Butler heading to the 305 and Josh Richardson goi...

The Knicks Didn't Even Get The Chance To Be Turned Down By Kevin Durant

This is NBA free agency as written by Aesop. It was reported, soon after Kevin Durant took his talents to Brooklyn, that the Knicks weren’t going to offer Kevin Durant a max contract because of injury concerns. The Knicks would certainly like you to believe that, anyway. Is it true? Maybe. But those...

Heat Acquire Jimmy Butler In Trade With Sixers, Who Acquired Al Horford In Free Agency

The writing was on the wall for the end of Jimmy Butler’s tenure with the Philadelphia 76ers when Tobias Harris agreed to a five-year, $180 million max contract with the team just one hour into the start of free agency. Now, that end is official with Philadelphia sending Butler to the Miami Heat, an...

The Knicks Didn't Think Kevin Durant Was Worth The Max

As if the universe required more proof of the sorry state of the organization’s existence, the New York Knicks have struck out on major free agency targets in a spectacular way. After claiming he knew of big-name free agents that wanted to play for the Knicks, and that the team would have a “very su...

Celtics Bring In More Normal All-Star Guard

Minutes after Kyrie Irving shipped himself off to Brooklyn to try and get the Nets to interested in channeling the cosmos, the Celtics have gone ahead and signed a more-than-suitable replacement for this upcoming season: Kemba Walker....

A Living, Breathing Roundup Of All The NBA's Less-Exciting Free Agency Signings [Update]

Not every name that NBA insiders tweet about this evening and beyond will be worth an entire blog post to overanalyze the value of their decision and the competitive ramifications of that move. For that very reason, we’ll put all the non-superstar signings down below and update this post as more and...

Kevin Durant Is Joining The Nets And DeAndre Jordan Will Be There Too

The Brooklyn Nets might have just launched themselves to the top of the Eastern Conference thanks to two very powerful Woj bombs....

Report: The Nets Will At Least Sign Kyrie Irving [Update]

After a lot of speculation and strongly worded hinting from insiders, Marc Stein of the New York Times tweeted out on Sunday, two hours before the official start of NBA free agency, that Kyrie Irving will formally commit to being a member of the Brooklyn Nets. Additionally, the franchise is preparin...

The Rangers Are Apparently Keen To Sign Artemi Panarin's Twin Brother, "Lefty" Panarin

Artemi Panarin is the hottest forward on the free agent market. The 27-year-old is such a vibrant scorer that the Blue Jackets forewent the sizable trade bounty he would have pulled in at the deadline, even knowing he was on his way out this summer, because he was so key to their playoff hopes. Mult...

July 1 Can't Get Here Soon Enough

The Lakers Are Really Going For it

The Lakers have cleared the decks. They’ve stripped away every player from the roster who they do not view as central to their next championship push. It turns out the list of remaining players is hilariously small and remarkably expensive, and before filling out the margins the Lakers very much ho...

Kevin Durant Will Be A Free Agent

Kevin Durant has declined the one-year player option on his contract with the Golden State Warriors, which would have paid him $31.5 million next season. He’ll be an unrestricted free agent next week. ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski first reported the news on Twitter....