![[Cousins] Matas Buzelis on trash-talking Luka Doncic: “He started baking me, bro. Like bad, like 12 in a row. He ends with 50. He hit one shot, bro, and I’m not even trying to glaze. He was iso’ing and he does that step-back. In mid-air, he points directly at me in the corner, turns around mid-shot”](https://external-preview.redd.it/6q1DLZOa8GzLRSJ34g9YRN2m4eoOKi-gEKhAzdi8zEc.jpeg?width=140&height=78&auto=webp&s=52af36106abed7ad5355cb67595acab9fd492d28)
League sources say Watson, like Detroit's Jalen Duren, has been weighing the unappealing prospect of playing out the 2026-27 season on a qualifying offer with the intent to become an unrestricted free agent next summer. Actually doing so, mind you, means leaving millions on the table.
In Watson's case, specifically, that would mean playing next season for just $6.5 million. The Nuggets' initial pitches were believed to be in the $70 million range over four years, which would be well shy of the $25 million in annual average value that Christian Braun received from Denver in a five-year, $125 million rookie scale extension last October. As The Stein Line has reported previously, Watson is hoping to exceed those figures this summer.
https://open.substack.com/pub/marcstein/p/the-latest-late-night-nba-intel?r=1m9zg&utm\_medium=ios