What we’re hearing at the NBA Finals: KD and Giannis’ next move, Knicks’ next coach

The NBA world will be focused on Indianapolis’ Gainbridge Fieldhouse Friday night, when the Oklahoma City Thunder will attempt to bounce back against Tyrese Haliburton and the Indiana Pacers and tie the suddenly fun Finals at two games apiece.

But for the 28 teams not taking part, business hasn’t stopped. So, with less than two weeks until what could be a very eventful NBA draft, and less than three weeks until the start of this year’s free agency period, here’s our latest look at the happenings around the league.

And, between trade chatter involving Kevin Durant, Giannis Antetokounmpo and other stars, the spiraling New York Knicks coaching search and some early free agency buzz, there is no shortage of storylines outside of the Pacers-Thunder Finals duel.

Where is the Giannis saga headed?

Until either a trade materializes involving Antetokounmpo or there is definitive word out of Milwaukee that the two-time MVP will be staying, the offseason’s biggest headline is the Greek Freak’s future.

There are few players in league history of Giannis’ caliber. The chance to potentially acquire him — in his prime at 30 years old no less — is a tantalizing possibility for opposing teams and fans alike.

A possibility is far from a certainty. And, as things stand today, the expectation is that Antetokounmpo will start next season as a Buck, sources told ESPN. To be clear, the emphasis is on today. There’s still a lot of road to be walked this offseason, and it’s hard to know exactly how everything will shake out.

In meetings with ownership since the end of the season, Bucks coach Doc Rivers and recently-extended general manager Jon Horst have presented plans to keep the core of the team intact around Antetokounmpo, with a goal of competing for a top-six playoff spot and with a hope Damian Lillard could return from his Achilles recovery before the end of next season. The Bucks went 10-4 without Lillard to close the regular season as he dealt with a blood clot. That, plus Antetokoumpo’s larger role of keeping Milwaukee afloat, were the cornerstones of the team’s projection.

With Jayson Tatum facing his own Achilles rehab, the Boston Celtics perhaps cutting payroll around him, the uncertainty facing Joel Embiid‘s health and several East teams still rebuilding, there is a pathway for the Bucks to ride their MVP back into contention.

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Will the Bucks be willing to go into the luxury tax next season to do so? That’s been an open question around the league for months, with starting center Brook Lopez set to be a free agent and with Bobby Portis facing a decision on his $13.4 million player option.

If Lopez is re-signed, Milwaukee doesn’t have many realistic options to get under the tax. If he enters free agency, the Bucks can easily avoid it. Sources said the franchise is prepared to once again enter the tax after spending more than $200 million in luxury tax alone over the past few seasons — more than every team but the Golden State Warriors, LA Clippers, Brooklyn Nets, Los Angeles Lakers and Phoenix Suns since 2012, per Spotrac.

Rival teams suspect the Bucks to end up in the tax but keep their payroll below the $196 million first apron, which would open their ability to access more of the $14 million midlevel exception. They might need a large chunk of it for a starting point guard in place of Lillard, with the candidates including free agents such as Dennis Schroder, Tyus Jones and Malcolm Brogdon.

Much more will be known once Milwaukee’s roster comes into focus after the draft and free agency, and then we’ll have a better sense of where the Bucks stand — and how real the hopes of competing next year with Antetokounmpo really are.

Where will Durant land?

Unlike Antetokounmpo’s, there isn’t much ambiguity around Durant’s situation, with ESPN’s Shams Charania reporting Wednesday that the Suns and Durant are sifting through trade offers.

Charania listed five teams that have registered interest in Durant — the Houston Rockets, San Antonio Spurs, Minnesota Timberwolves, Miami Heat and New York Knicks — and added that several other clubs have checked in on the 36-year-old Durant.

For Phoenix, a trade will be very complex for a trio of reasons.

• Given the two sides are working together on a potential deal, Durant has to land somewhere he’s invested in going.

• That team will likely need to be willing to consider giving Durant an extension of more than $60 million per season for his age-38 and age-39 seasons.

• Perhaps most importantly, the Suns will need to get enough in return in a deal to satisfy owner Mat Ishbia and his front office.

For all of Durant’s brilliance across his career, that’s not going to be an easy task to marry those three things into a deal that works for everyone.

At the February trade deadline, the Suns talked to a handful of teams about Durant without his knowledge. When he found out, just as the Suns and Warriors were nearing coming to terms, Durant blew up the talks. There was some disagreement within the team, sources said, about how that process was handled. It was one of the reasons new general manager Brian Gregory and Ishbia have repeatedly, ad nauseum, emphasized the promise of “alignment” in various news conferences since the end of the season.

What’s most important now is keeping Durant in the loop. Though whether there needs to be true alignment with Durant on the eventual deal is yet to be seen. The Suns need a favorable trade more than they need to keep Durant happy. If both can be achieved, terrific.

Besides the Warriors, the team that appeared to be the most serious about trading for Durant four months ago was the Minnesota Timberwolves. At the time, the Wolves and Suns were second apron teams, and it made a deal too complex to happen. But with several Wolves potentially opting out of their contracts (namely Julius Randle and Naz Reid) and Rudy Gobert taking a small pay cut as part of his new deal, Minnesota potentially has more flexibility to execute such a transaction.

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One additional team to monitor, sources said, is the Clippers, who have the contracts to make another move to augment the roster around Kawhi Leonard and James Harden, presuming the latter either opts into his contract or signs a new deal this offseason.

Multiple league sources said they were skeptical the price for Durant in a trade would get to a place where Phoenix would be satisfied with it.

What does seem clear is that this saga could easily be wrapped up on, or by, draft night on June 25. And with the weak free agent class and the lack of teams with cap space, one source said this year’s draft could easily wind up being an even busier night than normal — and it could be the high point of activity this summer.

Who, exactly, will coach the Knicks?

Wednesday morning, former Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau did an incredibly classy thing. He put out a full-page ad in the New York Times celebrating his time in New York and thanking the organization, players and fans for his five years in a job he grew up dreaming of having as a kid in Connecticut.

By the end of the day, any dreams the Knicks had of this being a smooth search to replace Thibodeau — already a difficult task, considering he finished his tenure as the fourth-winningest coach in franchise history — had been replaced by what’s quickly becoming a nightmare.

In the span of 24 hours, New York remarkably found itself being rejected by five teams in attempts to speak to their head coaches: the Atlanta Hawks (Quin Snyder); Chicago Bulls (Billy Donovan); Dallas Mavericks (Jason Kidd); Rockets (Ime Udoka); and Timberwolves (Chris Finch). This sort of thing simply doesn’t happen, and it has left plenty of people around the league shaking their heads in amusement. Or, in the case of some of the teams involved in denying permission, anger over the way it’s been handled.

Typically, a team in the Knicks’ situation — moving on from a coach who had won a series in three straight playoffs and coming off its first conference finals in 25 years — knows exactly who it is targeting in a new coach.

What’s become abundantly clear: New York did not have a plan in place when the decision was made to move on from Thibodeau.

So what happens now? For starters, sources said, there’s some belief that things could change in the cases of Kidd in Dallas and Donovan in Chicago. Kidd has a long history of fiery departures from prior stops — including in 2014, when he wound up getting permission to leave the Brooklyn Nets to join the Bucks. Kidd also has a lot of relationships in New York from his year playing there in 2012-13 and has a relationship with Jalen Brunson from coaching him in Dallas before the guard came to New York three years ago as a free agent.

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Donovan, meanwhile, is a Long Island native who played 44 games with the 1987-88 Knicks after starring at Providence College. He would undoubtedly be the kind of hit the Knicks are looking for locally after moving on from Thibodeau.

But if neither of those scenarios change, where do the Knicks go from there? Perhaps it’s someone like Taylor Jenkins, Mike Brown or Michael Malone, all proven coaches currently without a job. Maybe it’s Cleveland Cavaliers assistant coach Johnnie Bryant, who was a finalist for the Suns job that went to fellow Cavs assistant Jordan Ott last week, and who spent the few seasons before this one working for Thibodeau in New York. Maybe it’s someone completely off the radar.

Right now, the only thing that’s clear about this coaching search is that it’s not going the way the Knicks had hoped.

What will happen with Ty Jerome?

While this summer features a very light free agency class, at least one player will have an intriguing market around him: Cavaliers guard Ty Jerome.

Coming off a top-three finish for Sixth Man of the Year for the 64-win Cavaliers, Jerome averaged 12.5 points in fewer than 20 minutes per game, shooting over 51% from the field and over 43% from 3-point range. His return from an ankle injury that forced him to miss virtually all of the 2023-24 season was a catalyst for Cleveland’s explosion to the East’s No. 1 seed.

The Cavs are wary of losing him and fellow key reserve free agent Sam Merrill, a shooting specialist who could have suitors as a fellow unrestricted free agent.

Jerome, who was on a $2.5 million deal this past season with the Cavaliers, is in line for a very hefty raise from that number, sources said. The expectation around the league is that it will take the full midlevel exception — roughly $14.1 million — to get Jerome signed. Cleveland, however, is hoping to get him to return for a bit less, sources said, as it attempts to navigate the second luxury tax apron and the team-building challenges that go along with it.

Team president Koby Altman has said he has clearance from owner Dan Gilbert to go deep into the luxury tax. But as this new CBA era is showing, the deeper a team goes into the aprons, the harder it is to escape. And all second apron teams have the same desire: Get out as soon as possible.

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