The league has been canvassing team executives about the idea of eliminating as much as half of the preseason to make the regular season about 10 days longer, thus building more off days into the schedule, Grantland’s Zach Lowe reports. Any reduction in the preseason wouldn’t take place until the 2016/17 season at the earliest, according to Lowe, and the league has also brought up the idea of allowing organized team activities during the offseason like
the National Football League does, Lowe writes.
Here’s more from around the NBA and abroad:
- A recent report from Bleacher Report’s Les Carpenter left some ambiguity about whether Tracy McGrady wanted to return to the NBA, but McGrady confirmed via his verified Facebook account that he no longer wants to play.
- There will be more than a dozen NBA scouts in Spain tonight to observe Barcelona taking on Fenerbahce, with their primary focus being on Mario Hezonja, a projected lottery pick in the 2015 NBA draft, Chris Mannix of SI.com reports (Twitter link).
- Chad Ford of ESPN.com (Insider subscription required) has released his second mock draft of the year. Ford projects the top three picks in the 2015 draft to be Jahlil Okafor (Duke), Karl-Anthony Towns (Kentucky), and Emmanuel Mudiay (Guangdong).
- The Reno Bighorns of the NBA D-League traded for the rights to former NBA player Jordan Hamilton today, the team announced in a press release. In the deal, the Bighorns, the affiliate of the Kings, also acquired the Rio Grande Valley Vipers’ second round pick in the 2015 D-League draft. In return, Reno sent their 2015 first round pick in the D-League draft to the Iowa Energy, the Grizzlies’ D-League affiliate. Hamilton spent the 2014 preseason with the Raptors, before being acquired off of waivers by the Jazz, who later waived him themselves. The Lakers had expressed some interest in Hamilton, but declined to sign him after he worked out for the team last month.
Chuck Myron contributed to this post.