The Golden State Warriors went all in this offseason to lure LeBron James to the Bay Area, pairing the pitch with a run at Washington Wizards big man Anthony Davis in hopes of assembling a superstar core around Stephen Curry. Instead, James chose the Philadelphia 76ers, leaving Golden State largely running back the same roster from a season that ended without a playoff appearance — and leaving Curry, now approaching 39, with a far murkier path to one more championship.

A calculated but unsuccessful pitch

The Warriors’ pursuit of James wasn’t subtle. Curry himself made a personal appeal to James on “Good Morning America” during the free agency period, part of a broader campaign to convince the 41-year-old superstar that Golden State offered his best shot at a fifth championship ring. Draymond Green added to the effort by declining his $27.7 million player option for the 2026-27 season, a move that created additional salary-cap flexibility specifically aimed at helping the Warriors put together a competitive offer for James.

According to multiple reports, Golden State’s full plan involved more than just signing James outright. The front office was simultaneously working to trade for Davis, hoping that adding the 10-time All-Star big man would sweeten the pitch and give James a more complete supporting cast alongside Curry and Green. That trade would have required Golden State to send Jimmy Butler, along with multiple first-round picks and pick swaps, to Washington. Ultimately, the Warriors chose not to pull the trigger on that deal, and James signed with Philadelphia instead, joining Joel Embiid, Tyrese Maxey and Jaylen Brown on a roster he reportedly believes gives him the best chance to contend for a title in what he has described as the final chapter of his playing career.

A disappointing offseason by most accounts

With James off the board, the Warriors have been left with a roster that looks largely unchanged from the group that missed the playoffs last season. Golden State re-signed Al Horford, Kristaps Porzingis and De’Anthony Melton, and added rookie Yaxel Lendeborg with the No. 11 overall pick in the draft, but made no major trades or free-agent additions beyond those moves. NBC Sports Bay Area’s Dalton Johnson has described the offseason as a disappointment for a franchise that came off a 37-win season and missed the playoffs for the fourth time in seven years, arguing Golden State needed a marquee addition to claw its way back into contention.

Lendeborg does offer some reason for optimism. The 23-year-old was named MVP of the Las Vegas Summer League after averaging 14.8 points, 6.8 rebounds and four assists, showing early signs of the kind of versatile, do-it-all game that could eventually earn him a role on a veteran roster. Whether he’s ready to make a meaningful impact in his rookie season, though, remains an open question.

Injuries complicate an already difficult picture

Golden State’s outlook is further clouded by injuries to two key rotation pieces. Butler, who suffered a torn ACL, and Moses Moody, who tore his left patellar tendon, are both expected to miss the start of the season, thinning out a roster that already lacked star power beyond Curry and Green. ESPN’s Anthony Slater offered a cautiously optimistic update on Butler’s recovery timeline during a recent appearance on “NBA Today,” saying doctors and people close to Butler have indicated progress. “He’s a little over five months from the ACL surgery,” Slater said, adding that Butler has “turned the corner a little bit in the last few weeks.”

Much of Golden State’s hope for a competitive season rests on how quickly Butler can return to form. When Butler joined the Warriors in a midseason trade in February 2025, the team went 23-7 the rest of that season, a stretch that offered a glimpse of what a healthy, fully integrated roster built around Curry, Green and Butler could look like. But that stretch also came with caveats — before Butler’s injury this past January, the Warriors had been inconsistent for much of the season, raising questions about how sustainable that earlier surge really was.

Porzingis remains a wild card

Kristaps Porzingis, acquired last February, represents another variable the Warriors are counting on. He appeared in just 15 games last season due to a series of health issues, and Golden State’s ability to build a consistent rotation may hinge heavily on whether he can stay on the court for a full season this time around.

A crowded, difficult conference

Even under the best-case scenario, in which Butler returns healthy and effective, Porzingis stays on the floor, and Lendeborg contributes immediately, the Warriors will be competing in a Western Conference that includes the Oklahoma City Thunder and San Antonio Spurs among the teams jockeying for the top of the standings. Golden State’s roster, as currently constructed, offers no obvious individual addition capable of closing that gap on its own.

What might have been

For Curry, the offseason represents another missed opportunity to add star power around him as he enters the later stages of his career. The idea of James and Curry sharing a Warriors backcourt carried particular resonance given their partnership on last summer’s gold-medal-winning U.S. Olympic team, where James earned MVP honors and Curry delivered several of the tournament’s most memorable performances. That chemistry never translated to an NBA roster, and with James now in Philadelphia, any such pairing appears unlikely to happen at this stage of either player’s career.

Barring further roster additions before the season begins, the Warriors appear positioned to lean heavily on internal development and health rather than star power this year. For a franchise that won four championships between 2015 and 2022, and for a player in Curry still widely regarded as the greatest shooter in NBA history, the coming season now looks far more uncertain than the front office had hoped when its pursuit of James began.

The 2027 NBA offseason is still more than a year away, but early projections already point to it becoming the richest free agent class the league has ever seen, headlined by two of basketball’s biggest current stars: Nikola Jokic and Giannis Antetokounmpo.

Both players carry player options for the 2027-28 season worth roughly $62.8 million, and both are widely expected to command contracts that would make them the first players in any of North America’s four major professional sports to earn more than $75 million in a single season. Combined, Jokic and Antetokounmpo have won five NBA Most Valuable Player awards, and both figure to still be playing at an All-NBA level when free agency opens, barring injury.

A market shaped by star power and scarcity

NBA free agency has long operated on a simple principle: teams are willing to back up the proverbial Brinks truck for a single transformative star, even when the odds of actually landing that star and building a championship contender around him are slim. The 2027 class appears built to test that principle at an unprecedented scale, given how many established, championship-caliber players carry either unrestricted free agency or player options that year.

Jokic, who will be 32 in 2027, remains under contract with the Denver Nuggets through his option year, while Antetokounmpo, set to turn 33, holds his option with the Miami Heat, the franchise that acquired him in a blockbuster trade this past offseason. Whether either player ultimately exercises those options, re-signs long-term with his current team, or tests the open market remains to be seen, but their mere presence atop the list ensures 2027 will draw outsized attention across the league regardless of how things unfold.

A deep supporting cast of stars

Jokic and Antetokounmpo are far from alone at the top of the list. Anthony Davis, who will turn 34 in 2027, also carries a $62.8 million player option, this time with the Washington Wizards. Stephen Curry, who will be 39, is set for unrestricted free agency, as is Kawhi Leonard, who turns 36 that year.

Kevin Durant, who will be 39 in 2027, holds a $46 million player option with the Houston Rockets, while Kyrie Irving carries a $42.4 million option with the Dallas Mavericks at age 35. Karl-Anthony Towns, set to turn 32, has a $61 million option with the New York Knicks, and Jimmy Butler, who will be 38, is projected for unrestricted free agency as well.

Rounding out the list of established veterans are Brandon Ingram, holding a $41.9 million option with the Los Angeles Clippers; Jalen Green, with a $36 million option with the Phoenix Suns; Julius Randle, holding a $35.8 million option with the Brooklyn Nets; Rudy Gobert, with a $38 million option with the Minnesota Timberwolves; and Paul George, who carries a $56.6 million option with the Boston Celtics at age 37.

A mix of veterans and rising talent

The 2027 class isn’t limited to established superstars deep into their careers. Two of the league’s younger standouts also appear on the list under team-option rookie-scale contracts: Cooper Flagg, who will be just 20 years old and carries a $15.2 million team option with the Mavericks, and Dylan Harper, turning 21, with a $14 million team option held by the San Antonio Spurs. Both players remain under their teams’ control at that stage, but their inclusion underscores how quickly the league’s next generation of stars is beginning to factor into long-term roster planning across the association.

Other notable names include Zach LaVine, unrestricted at 32; Michael Porter Jr., a restricted free agent at 29; Jrue Holiday, holding a $37.2 million option with the Portland Trail Blazers at 37; Tyler Herro, unrestricted at 27; and Jerami Grant, with a $36.4 million option tied to the Memphis Grizzlies at 33. Additional depth pieces on the list include Josh Hart, Isaiah Stewart and Kristaps Porzingis, each carrying team or player options with their respective franchises at more modest salary figures relative to the class’s top tier.

Why the class matters now

Even though the 2027 offseason remains well over a year away, the sheer volume of star-level talent set to hit the market is already shaping how front offices around the league are approaching roster construction, salary-cap planning and trade strategy in the interim. Teams hoping to create max-level cap space by the summer of 2027, or positioning themselves as attractive destinations for a star seeking a new home, are likely to factor this looming class into decisions made well before free agency actually opens.

The presence of both Jokic and Antetokounmpo near the top of the list carries particular significance given their sustained dominance in recent seasons. Both players have anchored deep playoff runs and remain central figures in their respective franchises’ championship aspirations, meaning any decision either makes about his future would send ripple effects across the league regardless of whether it results in an actual change of team.

For now, the 2027 free agent class remains largely theoretical, built on player options and contract structures that could shift considerably between now and when free agency actually opens. Injuries, trades, and the results of the intervening seasons could all reshape which players ultimately test the market and which choose to remain with their current teams.

Still, with two former MVPs projected to potentially reset the league’s salary ceiling, and a deep supporting class of veteran stars and emerging young talent behind them, early indications suggest the 2027 offseason has the potential to be one of the most consequential in recent NBA history — a summer teams around the league are already beginning to plan for, more than a year in advance.

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Nvidia Corp. will invest $1 billion in South Korean internet giant Naver Corp. to help finance a major expansion of an artificial intelligence data center under construction in the country, the company announced late Friday, adding to a sweeping wave of investment deals from the world’s most valuable company.

The funding is part of a broader $10 billion financing package that will allow Naver, one of South Korea’s largest cloud service and internet portal operators, to more than triple the size of the facility it is building at its GAK Sejong hyperscale data center in Sejong, South Korea, expanding the site from 55 megawatts to 200 megawatts of capacity by 2028. Under the terms of the agreement, Canadian asset manager Brookfield will serve as the project’s exclusive capital partner, funding up to $9 billion through a nonbinding term sheet, while Nvidia contributes the $1 billion investment and Naver covers the remaining financing needed to complete the project.

A hub for both Korean and U.S. AI development

The expanded facility will run on Nvidia’s artificial intelligence computing hardware, including its advanced Vera Rubin and Blackwell chip platforms, and is designed to give both Korean and U.S.-based AI developers access to production-scale computing power for building next-generation AI models, agents and services. The project will use Nvidia’s DSX AI factory platform, and Naver has said it intends to eventually expand its deployment of Nvidia infrastructure to a full gigawatt of capacity, a dramatic scale-up from the facility’s original footprint.

Naver founder and chairman Haejin Lee credited the new financing with accelerating the company’s broader AI ambitions, saying Nvidia’s investment and the infrastructure agreement with Brookfield had “propelled NAVER’s vision for the AI factory business into a robust execution phase.” The deal also deepens technical collaboration between the two companies, with Naver continuing development of its HyperCLOVA X AI models using Nvidia’s Nemotron open-source models and joining the broader Nemotron Coalition, a group of companies working on open AI model development.

Nvidia said its planned investment remains subject to standard closing conditions, including Naver finalizing at least $9 billion in committed financing for the project separate from Nvidia’s own contribution.

Part of a much larger Korea push

The Naver investment was announced alongside a separate, far larger commercial partnership between Nvidia and South Korea’s SK Group, which the companies described as worth more than $500 billion in total business over time. That figure includes money Nvidia will spend purchasing memory chips from SK Hynix, currently the world’s largest supplier of high-bandwidth memory used in AI systems, as well as purchases by SK Group of Nvidia’s AI supercomputers.

Nvidia also said it will work directly with SK Hynix to help design future generations of high-bandwidth memory chips, an effort aimed at securing reliable access to a component that has remained in short supply amid the global buildout of AI data centers. Separately, SK Telecom is set to build more than 2 gigawatts of AI data centers across the Korean Peninsula, an amount of power roughly equivalent to what would be needed to supply 1.5 million homes. The first of these so-called AI factories built by SK Telecom is expected to open next year.

Speaking about the broader relationship with SK Group in an interview with Bloomberg Television, Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang emphasized the scale of the partnership. “So between us, we’re going to do half a trillion dollars’ worth of business,” Huang said, describing the depth of the commercial relationship between the two companies.

Timed to a high-profile diplomatic visit

Both the Naver and SK Group announcements coincided with a visit to Silicon Valley by South Korean President Lee Jae Myung, who traveled to San Francisco for an AI summit where the deals were formally unveiled. Huang, addressing the broader significance of Nvidia’s expanding footprint in the country, described the current moment as a turning point for South Korea’s technology sector. “This is the golden ages for Korea,” Huang said, pointing to the country’s semiconductor manufacturing strength and industrial base as key reasons behind Nvidia’s continued investment there.

Additional technology agreements between Korean and American companies are reportedly still being finalized as part of the broader push tied to President Lee’s visit, suggesting Friday’s announcements may not be the last major deals to emerge from the trip.

Part of a year-long investment spree

The Korea-focused deals extend a pattern of aggressive dealmaking Nvidia has pursued over the past year as it works to secure both the chip supply chains and downstream infrastructure needed to support explosive global demand for AI computing power. Nvidia’s relationship with South Korean technology companies has deepened steadily in recent months, following earlier chip supply agreements the company struck with Samsung, Hyundai and SK Group during a prior visit by Huang to the country, part of a broader effort to secure long-term partnerships across the region’s semiconductor and industrial sectors.

South Korea has separately set a goal of deploying roughly 200,000 high-performance GPUs by 2030 as part of its national AI strategy, though the country continues to face infrastructure challenges tied to energy supply and data center cooling capacity as it works to scale up its AI computing footprint.

With Nvidia’s $1 billion Naver investment still pending customary closing conditions, and Naver working to finalize the remaining $9 billion in project financing alongside Brookfield, the full scope of the Sejong data center expansion is not expected to be completed until 2028. In the meantime, the scale of Friday’s announcements — spanning direct equity investment, chip supply agreements and multibillion-dollar infrastructure commitments — underscores how central South Korea has become to Nvidia’s broader strategy for securing both chip manufacturing capacity and the physical infrastructure needed to keep pace with global AI demand.