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Come Fan with UsSaturday, June 20, 2026

NBA season is over. Here’s where you can find basketball all summer.

We have that and more in Monday’s NBA newsletter.

Seattle Storm v Las Vegas Aces
Seattle Storm v Las Vegas Aces
Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images

The NBA season is over. But basketball never sleeps.

If you need to feed your basketball addiction before the next NBA season tips in mid-October, here’s where to find it.

WNBA. The women’s league cooks all summer. Right now the Connecticut Sun look like the team to beat, along with the hot Atlanta Dream, Phoenix Mercury, and Seattle Storm. Swish Appeal has excellent coverage of the W. Coverage is on the ESPN family with some games streaming on Twitter. League Pass is $17 for the whole season.

BIG3 League. The second season of the BIG3 tips off June 22. The 3-on-3 league added some more famous retired players, lost its commissioner amid a scandal involving Qatari investors and maybe the Trump administration (?!), and has games once a week. Coverage is on Fox Sports 1.

The Basketball Tournament. Growing and fittingly named The Basketball Tournament tips off in late June and goes through early August. It’s a 72-team tournament with a $2 million prize. It’s surprisingly compelling. All coverage is available through WatchESPN with final couple rounds on ESPN’s network.

FIBA World Cup Qualifiers. Starting June 28, the final pot of first-round qualifiers for the 2019 FIBA World Cup begins. USA Basketball isn’t scheduled to play.

FIBA Women’s World Cup. The FIBA Women’s World Cup is scheduled from Sept. 22-30 on the Canary Islands. Puerto Rico is one of the teams making its World Cup debut, and now I desperately need a Puerto Rican women’s national team jersey.

Summer League, of course. That annual tradition of weirdly bad basketball and the biggest rumor swap meet in the world is scheduled for mid-July. There’s a mini-Summer League in Sacramento the week prior.

I probably missed something, but clearly there’s plenty of basketball still to be enjoyed if you know where to find it.

The Warriors stand alone

Be sure to check out Paul Flannery’s Finals and season capper from Cleveland on the dominance of the Warriors, something we all expected but that was truly threatened for a minute there ... but not by the rival Cavaliers.

Predictability, inevitability, and whether the Warriors are bad for basketball will continue to be a topic. I think we always need to remember and to remind people that the Warriors were a record-breaking Houston cold streak from losing in the conference finals. That really happened. That matters.

Links galore

The Warriors’ parade is on Tuesday.

This was a very good, very petty social video from the Kings in honor of the Warriors’ championship.

Speaking of the Kings, Iman Shumpert has opted into his $11 million contract. We know it’s going to be a tight market, so expect to continue to see rotation players making above the average salary to opt in.

From Marc Stein: the Warriors know dynasties aren’t easy.

Here’s Draymond Green eating Flamin’ Hot Cheetos in his car and telling everyone to refer to him as champ.

Can anyone other than the Warriors end the dynasty?

The case that Mo Bamba is the best prospect in the draft.

I wrote about the future of the super-team in the wake of Warriors’ excellence.

Nathaniel Friedman on Kevin Durant’s apparent heel turn.

Ricky O’Donnell on the search for modern big men in the NBA Draft.

It’s been 20 years since the end of the Bulls’ dynasty. Great piece by K.C. Johnson looking back.

The Warriors are so good they made the Finals MVP debate useless.

Tyler Parker on Durant and the issue of success vs. love.

And finally: this Florida meteorlogist solves a Rubik’s Cube while giving a detailed forecast. This is G.O.A.T. level multitasking.

Be excellent to each other.