NBA Rumors - HoopsRumors.com

Pacers Sign Garrison Mathews To 10-Day Contract

November 20th, 2025 at 5:30pm CST by Luke Adams

5:30 pm: Mathews’ 10-day hardship deal is now official, the Pacers announced in a press release.

11:21 am: The Pacers are planning to sign free agent wing Garrison Mathews to a 10-day contract using a hardship exception, according to Michael Scotto of HoopsHype (Twitter link).

Known primarily as an outside shooter, Mathews has appeared in 314 total NBA regular season games since debuting in 2019, averaging 6.5 points in 17.5 minutes per game and making 38.2% of his career attempts from beyond the arc for Washington, Houston, and Atlanta.

After spending the past two-and-a-half seasons with the Hawks, Mathews signed a non-guaranteed training camp contract this offseason with the Knicks in the hopes of earning a spot on their regular season roster. However, the 29-year-old was beaten out by fellow swingman Landry Shamet, resulting in New York waiving him at the end of the preseason last month. Mathews has been a free agent since then.

As we outlined in a separate story earlier today, the Pacers are currently carrying Jeremiah Robinson-Earl using a hardship exception, but his second 10-day contract is about to expire, so the team is signing him to a new two-year deal in order to retain him. Monte Morris will be waived to create room on the 15-man roster for Robinson-Earl.

A player isn’t permitted to sign a third 10-day contract with the same team, which is why Robinson-Earl is being moved to the standard roster, but the Pacers remain eligible for a hardship exception, which is granted when at least four players have missed three or more consecutive games and are projected to be out for at least two more weeks. Tyrese Haliburton (Achilles), Obi Toppin (foot), Aaron Nesmith (knee), and Kam Jones (back) all appear to fit that bill for Indiana.

Mathews will earn $165,197 over the course of his 10 days with the Pacers, while the team takes on a cap hit of $131,970.

Domantas Sabonis Out At Least 3-4 Weeks With Torn Meniscus

November 20th, 2025 at 5:12pm CST by Rory Maher

Kings center Domantas Sabonis has been diagnosed with a partially torn meniscus in his left knee and will be sidelined for at least three-to-four weeks, which is when he’ll be reexamined, ESPN’s Shams Charania reports (story via ESPN’s Anthony Slater).

The Kings formally confirmed the news in a press release. According to the team, Sabonis experienced knee soreness after Sunday’s game in San Antonio and subsequently underwent an MRI, which revealed the meniscus tear.

It’s brutal timing for the Kings, who will get starting forward Keegan Murray back on Thursday after he missed the first 15 games of the season following thumb surgery.

As Slater observes, Sabonis has dealt with multiple injuries this fall, having previously missed three games due to hamstring and rib issues. The three-time All-Star was sidelined for Wednesday’s loss in Oklahoma City as well.

The 3-12 Kings are in a tailspin, having lost seven straight games for the first time since 2021/22, writes Jason Anderson of The Sacramento Bee. All seven losses have come by double digits, Slater notes.

Despite another loss on Wednesday, head coach Doug Christie came away encouraged by the Kings’ effort level, according to Anderson.

“The level of compete the guys brought I thought was really, really high level,” Christie said. “That’s what we need to get ourselves out of where we’re at, and if we do that on a night-to-night basis, most nights in the NBA you give yourselves a chance to win. This was the world champs and there were eight, nine minutes left, and they found themselves right there.”

With Sabonis out for at least 10 games, Precious Achiuwa, Drew Eubanks and Maxime Raynaud are among the frontcourt members who could have expanded roles for Sacramento.

Hornets’ LaMelo Ball Reportedly Open To Trade

November 20th, 2025 at 5:10pm CST by Rory Maher

5:10 pm: For what it’s worth, Ball responded to Iko’s report (via Twitter) with a clown face emoji.

4:39 pm: After losing to Indiana on Wednesday, a defeat in which he was benched for the final 4:32 of the fourth quarter, LaMelo Ball has become “increasingly frustrated” with the Hornets and is open to being traded to a new team, multiple league sources tell Kelly Iko of Yahoo Sports.

The Pacers entered Wednesday’s game with a 1-13 record and picked up their second victory of the season over the Hornets, who have dropped four straight and are now 4-11. Ball finished the game with 18 points, nine assists, seven rebounds and two steals in 27 minutes, but shot just 5-of-21 from the floor and committed six turnovers.

The third overall pick in the 2020 draft, Ball won the Rookie of the Year award in 2021 and was named to his first and only All-Star team in 2022. The 6’7″ point guard’s career has been derailed by a series of ankle injuries over the past few years. He played just 105 out of a possible 246 regular season games in the three seasons leading up to 2025/26.

Ball has gotten off to a rocky start this season, having missed six games due to a right ankle impingement and struggling with offensive efficiency. Still, Iko points out that Charlotte has been much better when Ball is playing and has struggled mightily when he’s not on the court.

According to Iko, one point of contention for Ball is his desire to play in a more uptempo offense — the Hornets currently rank 20th in the NBA in pace.

It sounds like the frustration goes both ways. Charlotte’s front office has grown “disillusioned” with Ball, no longer views him as a long-term cornerstone and is open to a trade as well, Iko reports.

[UPDATE: Fischer: Hornets ‘Not Actively Looking To Move’ LaMelo Ball]

As Iko writes, while Ball is still young and undeniably talented, it’s unclear how much interest he would generate if he’s made available, given his lengthy injury history, lucrative long-term contract, and “whispers” about the way he behaves on the court. Ball is on a maximum-salary deal which will pay him approximately $168.7MM over the next four years.

Nuggets Notes: Watson, Nnaji, Johnson, Barea, Depth

November 20th, 2025 at 3:41pm CST by Luke Adams

After not reaching an agreement this offseason on a rookie scale extension with the Nuggets, Peyton Watson got off to a quiet start, averaging 6.4 points per game on .441/.263/.720 shooting through 13 games. But with Christian Braun (left ankle sprain) and Aaron Gordon (hamstring injury management) both inactive on Wednesday, Watson took advantage of his increased offensive responsibilities and had a career night, with 32 points on 13-of-19 shooting, as Bennett Durando of The Denver Post writes (subscription required).

“I knew there was gonna be a need for me to kind of increase my offensive load a little bit. I didn’t have any idea that I was gonna have 30,” said Watson, who had never scored more than 24 points in a game in his first three-plus NBA seasons.

Even when he’s not scoring, Watson plays a regular rotation role for Denver because of his defense. He leads the team in blocks per game (1.1) and ranks third behind Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray in steals per game (1.1). On Wednesday though, the Pelicans dared him to shoot and he responded by making a career-high five three-pointers on nine attempts.

“I went to him,” teammate Bruce Brown said. “I was like, ‘Look, they’re gonna give you 10 (attempts). I know you’re gonna hit four or five of them. So keep shooting.’ That’s what he did.”

Brown added that “this should be a big year” for Watson, pointing out that he’s playing smarter and more aggressively than in the past.

“You can tell he’s been in the league for multiple years,” Brown said.

We have more on the Nuggets:

Little-used forward Zeke Nnaji, who had played just 20 total minutes in six appearances entering Wednesday’s game, started in Gordon’s place and then was part of the closing lineup after Jokic fouled out. Nnaji scored just two points and was a -18 in nearly 27 minutes of action, but the Nuggets viewed him as their best bet for slowing down Pelicans forward Zion Williamson, who shot 2-of-7 from the floor when defended by Nanji, per NBA.com. “Coach (David Adelman) said Zion was probable, and if he plays, I’m gonna start, and if he doesn’t, he’ll go with someone else — but stay ready,” Nnaji told Durando. “So he gave me the heads-up, and I was able to prepare. … It’s just a mentality of matching his physicality. He’s a physical driver. He wants to get downhill to that left hand. It’s knowing what he likes to do, what he’s trying to get to and being ready for the challenge. Try to show your hands. Stay clean. Alter his shots.”
After making just 8-of-38 three-pointers to open the season, Nuggets offseason addition Cameron Johnson has knocked down 6-of-10 in his past two games. According to Marc J. Spears of Andscape, Johnson’s new coaches and teammates were never worried about his ability to break out of that early slump. “Everyone has been saying, ‘What is going on with Cam?'” Adelman said after Johnson hit five three-pointers against Chicago on Monday. “Well, it’s going to happen. Cam is going to make shots. That is the bottom line. That is why we’ve been patient with this. That was really good to see.”
In an interesting story for The Denver Post, Durando details how former NBA guard J.J. Barea got his start as a coach and how the Nuggets assistant reunited with Adelman in Denver after first working together in Minnesota over a decade ago. “He was really good just talking with players, having that relationship with me,” Barea said. “He’s no bull-(crap). He’ll tell you how it is. He’ll tell you straight up to your face. And his dad (Rick Adelman) is similar. I was always a fan of his dad, the way they did things. … I was like, these are two good people to know and learn from more about the NBA.”
One reason the Nuggets are off to an impressive 11-3 start is their improved depth, writes Jon Krawczynski of The Athletic. “We have different type of players, and they’re gluing into our system really good,” Jokic said. “Different positions, different personnel, different types of players, and everything is working out for us, defensively first and then offensively. Everybody’s buying in.”

Rory Maher contributed to this post.

Mavs’ Dante Exum To Undergo Season-Ending Knee Surgery

November 20th, 2025 at 2:06pm CST by Luke Adams

Dante Exum‘s 2025/26 season has come to an end before it even began, according to the Mavericks, who announced today (via Twitter) that the veteran guard will undergo season-ending surgery.

According to the Mavs, Exum – who had yet to play at all this fall – has continued to deal with complications related to an offseason procedure on his right knee. It has been determined that a follow-up surgery is necessary to address the issue.

It’s the latest in a long line of injuries that have limited Exum’s availability over the course of his professional career. After playing all 82 games as a rookie, the former fifth overall pick missed his entire second NBA season in 2015/16 due to a torn ACL, then was plagued by shoulder, ankle, and knee issues in subsequent years.

Exum rebuilt his value by playing in Europe from 2021-23, then returned stateside during the 2023 offseason and has been in Dallas since then. The 30-year-old has been a very effective role player for the Mavs when healthy, averaging 8.0 points, 2.8 assists, and 2.4 rebounds in 19.5 minutes per game, with a shooting line of .516/.472/.768.

However, he has been made just 75 appearances since the start of the 2023/24 season, including just 20 in ’24/25 due to right wrist surgery and a broken left hand.

With the Mavericks’ front office very much in the news as of late, the team’s handling of Exum in recent months deserves some scrutiny, notes Grant Afseth of Dallas Hoops Journal (Twitter links).

As Afseth points out, the Mavs never publicly disclosed Exum’s offseason knee surgery before today and had to use the stretch provision to waive Olivier-Maxence Prosper‘s guaranteed $3MM salary in order to create enough room under their hard cap to bring back Exum on a guaranteed minimum-salary deal. Given Exum’s injury history, that was a risky move, especially considering that Dallas badly needed backcourt depth while Kyrie Irving continued to recover from his ACL tear.

While the Mavs could waive Exum to open up a spot on their 15-man roster, they won’t have enough room under that hard cap to sign a replacement until January, barring a separate cost-cutting move. If Exum remains on the roster, Dallas could apply for a disabled player exception, but it would be worth just half of the guard’s salary, making it too small to be of much real use.

Lakers Removing Joey, Jesse Buss From Front Office Roles

November 20th, 2025 at 2:01pm CST by Luke Adams

Two members of the Buss family are having their front office roles with the Lakers terminated as the organization restructures its basketball operations department, according to Shams Charania of ESPN, who reports that the team is removing Joey Buss and Jesse Buss from their respective positions.

Joey Buss had held the titles of alternate governor and VP of research and development, while Jesse Buss was an assistant general manager.

“We are extremely honored to have been part of this organization for the last 20 seasons,” the brothers said in a statement to Charania. “Thank you to Laker Nation for embracing our family every step of the way. We wish things could be different with the way our time ended with the team. At times like this we wish we could ask our Dad what he would think about it all.”

The late Jerry Buss, father to Joey and Jesse, owned the Lakers until his passing in 2013. At that time, his stake in the team passed to his six children, with Jeanie Buss taking his place as Lakers governor. Since then, the children haven’t always seen eye to eye on how the organization should be run.

Two other siblings, Jim Buss and Johnny Buss, reportedly attempted to oust Jeanie from the Lakers’ board of directors in 2017 after she removed Jim from his position in the Lakers’ front office. A legal battle at the time resulted in an agreement that Jeanie would be the controlling owner and head of the team’s board of directors for as long as the family owned the Lakers.

The Buss family agreed to sell its controlling interest in the franchise to minority owner Mark Walter earlier this year for a record-setting valuation of $10 billion, with reporting at the time indicating that the vote among the Buss siblings on that decision wasn’t unanimous. Joey and Jesse voted against the sale, Charania said during a Thursday appearance on NBA Today (Twitter video link).

The sale to Walter was formally approved by the NBA’s Board of Governors last month.

The Buss family continues to hold a reported 15% stake in the Lakers, with Jeanie retaining the title of team governor for the time being. According to Charania, Joey and Jesse will still have their minority shares in the franchise despite no longer having roles in the basketball operations department.

As Charania notes, Joey and Jesse have been involved in the scouting department for the past decade while also contributing to personnel decisions. Charania reported in September that the two brothers – perhaps recognizing that they wouldn’t remain in their roles in the Lakers’ front office under new ownership – were launching an investment firm called Buss Sports Capital.

Much of the rest of the Lakers’ scouting staff has also been let go as part of the organizational changes, tweets Dave McMenamin of ESPN.

Raptors Notes: Ingram, Barnes, Mahlalela, Mamukelashvili

November 20th, 2025 at 12:47pm CST by Luke Adams

The Raptors faced some criticism last season for trading a first-round pick for injured forward Brandon Ingram and then signing him to a three-year, $120MM extension despite the fact that he wouldn’t go on to suit up for his new team at all in 2024/25. However, the organization’s investment in Ingram is paying dividends this fall, as Josh Lewenberg of TSN.ca writes.

While Ingram’s stats so far this season – 20.9 points and 3.9 assists per game on .496/.302/.878 shooting – don’t necessarily jump off the page, Lewenberg contends that the veteran forward has reshaped Toronto’s offense more significantly than any player since Kawhi Leonard. Ingram has breathed new life into the Raptors’ half-court offense and attracted the sort of attention from opposing defenses that has made it easier for his teammates to operate, Lewenberg adds.

“(Other teams) know how dangerous he is,” teammate Scottie Barnes said. “He draws so much attention. He’s so talented. Once he gets to his spots, it’s unstoppable.”

With nine wins in their last 10 games, the Raptors sit in second place in the Eastern Conference at 10-5 and have the league’s seventh-best offensive rating (117.8) after placing 26th in that category last season (109.6). Toronto also has a great opportunity to continue its hot streak, with games against the East’s bottom four teams – Washington, Brooklyn, Indiana, and Charlotte – on tap before the end of the month.

Here’s more on the resurgent Raptors:

Barnes has been up and down since entering the NBA as a fourth overall pick, earning Rookie of the Year honors in 2022 and an All-Star nod in 2024 while taking small steps back in his second and fourth years. He’s playing at an All-Star level once again in year five, prompting Michael Grange of Sportsnet.ca to consider whether the 24-year-old can become a legitimate superstar. As Grange points out, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Kevin Garnett, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar are the only players in NBA history who have maintained Barnes’ current per-game averages in points (19.2 PPG), rebounds (7.8), assists (5.3), blocks (1.7), and steals (1.4) over the course of a full season. Barnes is also shooting 50.0% from the floor and 38.9% on three-pointers in the early going.
Confirming a recent report from Jake Fischer of The Stein Line (Substack link), Grange writes that Raptors assistant Jama Mahlalela is a finalist for the New York Liberty’s head coaching job. Sources tell Grange that the process has been going for “a while” and that interviews are complete, as of this past weekend. If Mahlalela is hired by New York’s WNBA team, it would create a hole on Toronto’s staff and could create a conflict for Team Canada, Grange notes, since Mahlalela has been announced as an assistant on the national team’s staff through the 2028 Olympics.
An under-the-radar offseason signing on a minimum-salary contract, center Sandro Mamukelashvili has been giving the Raptors terrific minutes off the bench, providing the team with much-needed depth behind starter Jakob Poeltl, says Eric Koreen of The Athletic. Mamukelashvili intends to make the most of his first consistent NBA rotation role. “I tell myself that you waited for this opportunity for four years, and no matter what, you go out swinging,” he said. “In Georgia, we have a saying: ‘You don’t risk it, you don’t drink champagne.’ So you’ve got to make sure you come out swinging. I tell that to myself every game.”

Hoops Rumors Front Office Subscriber Chat: 11/20/2025

November 20th, 2025 at 11:00am CST by Arthur Hill

Hoops Rumors’ Arthur Hill held a live chat today exclusively for Trade Rumors Front Office subscribers. Topics included the Celtics' tanking options, the Bulls' future plans at center, Victor Wembanyama's injury woes, whether the Clippers should trade for immediate help or future picks and more!

Unlock Subscriber-Exclusive Articles Like This One With a Trade Rumors Front Office Subscription

BENEFITS

Access weekly subscriber-only articles by Luke Adams
Join exclusive weekly live chats with Arthur Hill
Remove ads and support our writers.

Wolves Notes: Randle, Reid, McDaniels, Beringer

November 20th, 2025 at 10:58am CST by Luke Adams

The Timberwolves were missing starting forward Jaden McDaniels on Wednesday, and Anthony Edwards‘ shooting slump continued — he made just 6-of-20 shots from the floor, including 1-of-8 three-pointers, and has now shot just 10% (3-of-30) from beyond the arc over his past four games.

Still, as Chris Hine of The Star Tribune writes, the Wolves built a 27-point lead against the lowly Wizards behind big-time production from forwards Julius Randle and Naz Reid, who signed lucrative new multiyear contracts with the team in free agency over the offseason. The duo combined for 60 points and 15 rebounds, though Minnesota’s lead dropped all the way to five points in the fourth quarter before the club put the game away.

“We got lucky, to be honest,” Randle said after the victory. “Really our edge and our activity and our aggressiveness — all that stuff, we kind of just left it in here at halftime. We’ve got to be better and more mature than that.”

Reid agreed with that assessment, responding, “Yes and no” when he was asked if he was happy with the win.

“Not like that,” Reid said. “It’s still an NBA team. Obviously, I don’t want to just roll over them. But we still got to hold ourselves to a higher standard. We know better than to put ourselves in that situation.”

Here’s more on the Wolves:

Reid, whose five-year, $125MM deal was the most lucrative contract signed by any free agent this year, got off to a slow start, with averages of 10.8 PPG and 5.0 RPG on .421/.321/.647 shooting through his first 11 games. But he’s rounding into form (20.3 PPG, 8.8 RPG, .552/.483/.750 shooting in his past four games) and is showing why the Timberwolves value him so highly, according to Jon Krawczynski of The Athletic. “He’s a starter coming off the bench for us. He’s one of the best bigs in the league,” teammate Donte DiVincenzo said. “The way he can space the floor, the way he can handle the ball, it gives us such a unique wrinkle to what we can do. We can play him with so many different guys.”
McDaniels, who has a sprained left wrist, missed his first game in nearly two years on Wednesday, snapping a streak of 157 consecutive regular season appearances. There’s no “firm read” yet on the severity of that injury, tweets Krawczynski. Head coach Chris Finch told reporters that imaging on the injury came back relatively clean and that the team will be monitoring McDaniels to see how his wrist responds to treatment in the next few days.
Timberwolves rookie big man Joan Beringer, who just turned 19 last Tuesday, has only seen garbage-time action in the NBA so far, logging 37 total minutes across nine appearances. According to Finch, the plan is to assign Beringer to the G League at some point in the near future so that he can get some run with the Iowa Wolves (Twitter link via Hine).

And-Ones: NBA Schedule, Breakout Players, Cap Room, More

November 20th, 2025 at 9:05am CST by Luke Adams

Warriors head coach Steve Kerr, who has advocated in the past for shorter regular seasons, is beating that drum again this fall with soft tissue injuries on the rise around the NBA, writes Nick Friedell of ESPN. Kerr said he’s “very concerned” about the increase in injuries, pointing to an increased pace of play and a relentless schedule as two factors he believes are contributing to the trend.

“The pace difference is dramatic,” Kerr said after Tuesday’s game vs. Orlando. “This team tonight has really upped their pace compared to last year. I think across the league everybody understands now it’s just easier to score now if you can beat (the other team) down the floor, get out in transition. But when everybody’s doing that, the game’s are much faster paced, and everyone has to cover out to 25 feet because everyone can shoot threes.

“… We have all the data,” Kerr continued. “Players are running faster and further than ever before, so we’re trying to do the best we can to protect them, but basically have a game every other night and it’s not an easy thing to do … (The medical staff) believe that the wear and tear, the speed, the pace, the mileage, it’s all factoring into these injuries.”

Kerr said the NBA has done a commendable job of trying to reduce back-to-backs and instances of four games in five days, but points out that it has resulted in teams rarely getting more than one day off between games, which results in little recovery time and almost no opportunities for practices.

“We literally have not had a single practice on this road trip. Not one,” Kerr said after the fifth game of a six-game trip. “We’ve gone a week, or longer, eight days, not one practice. It’s just game, game, game. So not only is there no recovery time, there’s no practice time. What was different back in the day — you did have four in five nights, which was not great, but then you’d have four days before your next game. So you’d take a day off, and you’d actually have a couple good practices and scrimmage. So there’s no easy answer here.”

Kerr isn’t alone in believing that playing fewer regular season games would benefit the players — Knicks forward Josh Hart agreed with that sentiment on Thursday, as Stefan Bondy of The New York Post relays. However, both Kerr and Hart acknowledged that it would be very difficult to actually implement that change due to the loss of revenue that would occur..

“Do I think there’s too many games? Yeah,” Hart said. “Conversely, will (team owners) and the league and players take a pay cut to not do that? I don’t know. It’s easy to sit there and say that we play too many games — which we do — but conversely, we’re also blessed to be able to benefit greatly from it.”

Here are a few more odds and ends from around the NBA:

In a pair of stories for The Athletic, Fred Katz takes a look at some of the NBA’s most improved players so far this season, while John Hollinger zeros in on several of the league’s breakout players. Heat forward Jaime Jaquez Jr. and Pistons center Jalen Duren show up on both lists, with Hollinger suggesting Duren appears to be on track for max or near-max money when he reaches restricted free agency next summer.
Previewing the salary cap landscape for the 2026 offseason, Keith Smith of Spotrac projects that six teams will operate with cap room, led by the Wizards with over $80MM in space. We conducted a similar exercise earlier this month, noting that the Wizards, Jazz, Nets, and Bulls are best positioned to go under the cap, while several other teams – like the Lakers and Clippers – are in the “maybe” category depending on what happens with certain free agents and player options.
A panel of ESPN’s NBA insiders takes an early look at potential trade-deadline needs for eight NBA teams hoping to contend this season, including the Pistons, Lakers, Warriors, Timberwolves, and Knicks. In the view of Bobby Marks, the Pistons are better positioned than any other Eastern Conference playoff team to make an in-season move, given their cap flexibility, movable contracts, and extra draft picks.

Load More Posts