The plan for the rest of the offseason
Incredibly, there are now just 60 days until the start of the 2025-26 season, when the defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder will hilariously host Kevin Durant and the Houston Rockets on Ring Night before we once again watch LeBron James and Stephen Curry do battle in the late game. (I would say that it might be the last time we see that on opening night, but unless we get an announcement before the season there is zero chance that this is LeBron's last year. So we could easily see that opening-night matchup a few more times before we leave this mortal coil.)
I have no idea how the time passed by this quickly, but that’s the real number. I swear. So, I want to give you an update about how I’m going to handle the rest of the offseason’s worth of posts around these parts.
In short, it's going to look a lot like last year. Next week, I'll have a couple more offseason-y type of posts, probably one more Where Are We Going and then hopefully something I've been trying to find appropriate data for and don't know if I will be able to just yet.
And then I am once again going to re-appropriate the Three Things I Noticed on League Pass feature that I use during the season and spin it forward, detailing Three Things I’m looking forward to/watching out for/want to know/etc. about each team in the league.
Some of the Three Things will just be curiosities, some will be hyper-specific, some will be detailed, some will be stray thoughts, some will be focused on on-court stuff, some will be big-picture questions, some will probably be nonsense that only matters to me, some will have video, some will have numbers, and some will literally just be “what exactly are the Pelicans (or some other team — but probably the Pelicans) doing?”
Some will be unlocked and some will be paywalled.1 But I think this will again be a fun way to preview the season, and especially to take an opportunity to write about some of the teams that I haven’t really focused on during the offseason.
The schedule for those posts will be the same as last year. We'll start in the East and move to the West, then go in alphabetical order through each division:
- Sept. 1-5: Atlantic Division (BOS, BKN, NYK, PHI, TOR)
- Sept. 8-12: Central Division (CHI, CLE, DET, IND, MIL)
- Sept. 15-19: Southeast Division (ATL, CHA, MIA, ORL, WAS)
- Sept. 22-26: Pacific Division (GSW, LAC, LAL, PHX, SAC)
- Sept. 29-Oct. 3: Northwest Division (DEN, MIN, OKC, POR, UTA)
- Oct. 4-10: Southwest Division (DAL, HOU, MEM, NOP, SAS)
I'll then get into the usual season preview stuff in the week before the season starts. If there are specific developments along the way that deserve more focused attention and/or merit separate posts on their own, I’ll try to dig into those as well, though a five-posts-a-week schedule is going to keep me pretty busy. (If and when any of the restricted free agents sign contracts, I'll either touch on them separately or include them in my Three Things post on that team.)
If there is anything in particular that you are watching out for or want to know about specific teams, feel free to give me a shout and I’ll try to touch on it in that team’s preview as well.
Beyond that, I hope you all enjoy the rest of your summer and start of your fall/autumn/whatever. The season will be here before we know it.
- I haven’t decided on the exact ratio yet, but there will definitely be at least one unlocked team per division, and I may make an entire division unlocked one week as a sort of free preview for interested new subscribers.↩