Doc Rivers had finished talking about his vision of running the LA Clippers, about the partnership possibilities of Chris Paul and Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan, about the Spurs' management model, about a bright new NBA vista, and now he was walking outside a lunch spot in Century City, California, on a sun-splashed September afternoon.

Jordan believes Leonard may be the best player in the NBA right now.

San Antonio Spurs small forward Kawhi Leonard is one of the best players in the entire NBA. He can defend a team's best offensive player with his huge 6'7 frame while shouldering a lot of the Spurs' scoring load by himself. It’s up for debate where Leonard falls in the pecking order of the NBA’s best players, but Michael Jordan has him at the top.

The Detroit Pistons are coming off a disappointing season - one that raised significant questions about whether Andre Drummond is the type of player they envisioned when they gave him a massive contract.

Drummond admits 2016-17 wasn't good enough.

"It was like a roller coaster ride for me," Drummond said. "Just an inconsistent year for us as an organization."

The Cavs might not win 50 next year, according to Kevin Pelton’s model.

The Cleveland Cavaliers certainly underperformed in last year’s regular season, going 51-31 while struggling with injuries, continuity problems, and of course, incredibly inconsistent effort.

The young core is working hard over the summer.

If the Los Angeles Lakers are going to outperform (or even reach) the 30ish win projections many have them pegged for, they’re going to need substantial production from their young talent. Brandon Ingram will have to make a sophomore leap, Ivica Zubac will need to be ready to play back-up center full time, Julius Randle will need to show he’s a helpful NBA player rather than just an intriguing collection of tools, Larry Nance, Jr. will have to make figurative leaps in his game instead of literal leaps off of the ground and so on and so forth.

The Bulls had an offseason that was awful in execution and will set the franchise back for years, compounded in awfulness in that the same guys who made these calls will keep getting chances to make things worse. You could be charitable in giving credit for at least the design of the offseason being not-awful, that is if you’re a ‘PATH’ sympathizer and not really thinking about said path’s, well, path.

Rivers will remain as the Clippers head coach.

The Los Angeles Clippers and head coach Doc Rivers mutually agreed to let Rivers step down from his front office duties with the organization, according to ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski. Rivers is still the head coach, and Lawrence Frank is now in charge of basketball operations.

Anthony isn’t interested in the Cavaliers’ dysfunction

It’s August and the NBA’s offseason hasn’t been able to slow down, largely because of the Knicks struggles to move on from Carmelo Anthony. (Of course, Kyrie Irving’s trade request has energized the news cycle, as well.) It doesn’t look like that will be changing anytime soon.