Knicks Notes: Van Gundy, Woodson, Tyler
We’ve already taken a look at one struggling New York team this morning, having rounded up a few Nets updates. Let’s head over to Manhattan and check in on the city’s other sub-.500 NBA franchise….
- Appearing on ESPN Radio in New York today, Jeff Van Gundy dismissed speculation that he might replace Mike Woodson as the Knicks’ head coach, suggesting that the team’s problems are roster-related rather than coaching-related (all Twitter links via Frank Isola of the New York Daily News).
- Jeremy Tyler has returned to action for the D-League’s Erie BayHawks and the Knicks are “closely monitoring” his progress, according to Marc Berman of the New York Post. A source tells Berman (Twitter link) that New York will likely wait at least three to five games before considering re-adding Tyler, who was in camp with the team before undergoing stress fracture surgery.
- Daniel Leroux of RealGM.com examines what the Knicks’ future core might look like, particularly if the team decides Carmelo Anthony isn’t the answer as the long-term cornerstone of the roster.
Early Updates On Protected 2014 First-Rounders
As if the Knicks’ and Nets’ awful starts weren’t bad enough on their own, both teams’ early-season struggles have been amplified by the fact that neither team will have its 2014 first-round pick. New York’s first-rounder is likely headed to Denver as part of 2011’s Carmelo Anthony trade, while the Hawks will have the opportunity to grab Brooklyn’s pick due to 2012’s Joe Johnson deal.
There’s no protection on those picks or the Warriors’ first-rounder, which will be sent to the Jazz no matter where it lands, but most of the traded 2014 first-rounders have some conditions attached. It’s still too early in the season to know for sure whether or not many of those picks will change hands, but based on the results so far, we can at least make some educated guesses.
With the help of our 2013/14 reverse standings feature, let’s take a look at the status of 2014’s protected first-round picks….
Likely to change hands:
- New Orleans Pelicans (to 76ers if not in top 5). Current projection: 13th.
- Detroit Pistons (to Bobcats if not in top 8). Current projection: 18th.
- Washington Wizards (to Suns if not in top 12). Current projection: 20th.
- Portland Trail Blazers (to Bobcats if not in top 12). Current projection: 28th.
- Indiana Pacers (to Suns if not in top 14). Current projection: 30th.
The Pacers’ pick is a lock to be on the move, since there’s no way Indiana misses the playoffs in the East. The same can’t be said about the Wizards and Pistons, but given how weak the conference looks so far, both teams are pretty good bets to earn postseason berths and give up their first-rounders.
Out west, the Trail Blazers would have to fall off significantly for their pick not to change hands. That’s also true of the Pelicans, though perhaps New Orleans is a likelier candidate to slide in the standings now that the club is without Anthony Davis for a few weeks. Still, the Pelicans don’t look anything like a bottom-five team.
Unlikely to change hands:
- Sacramento Kings (to Cavs if not in top 12). Current projection: 4th.
- Philadelphia 76ers (to Heat if not in top 14). Current projection: 9th.
There’s a very outside chance the Sixers lose their pick if the Atlantic remains as bad as it’s been so far and Philadelphia somehow sneaks into the postseason as the division winner. But that’s unlikely. Both of these teams should feel comfortable about keeping their first-round picks for 2014.
Up in the air:
- Minnesota Timberwolves (to Suns if not in top 13). Current projection: 10th.
- Charlotte Bobcats (to Bulls if not in top 10). Current projection: 16th.
- Dallas Mavericks (to Thunder if not in top 20). Current projection: 22nd.
The nightmare scenario for the Timberwolves and Bobcats involves just barely missing the playoffs and also losing their respective first-rounders — neither pick is entirely lottery-protected, so that possibility is in play. As for the Mavericks, they’ve looked a little better than expected so far. If the Eastern playoff teams continue to hover at or below .500, the Mavs’ pick could end up in the 20s even if they finish the season as a No. 6 or 7 seed in the West.
Commenting Policy
Comments of this nature are not allowed at Hoops Rumors:
- Attacks or insults towards other commenters, the post author, journalists, teams, players, or agents.
- Inappropriate language, including swearing and related censor bypass attempts, lewdness, insults, and crude terms for body parts, bodily functions, and physical acts. Overall, we don’t want any language that a parent would not want their kid to see.
- Juvenile comments or extensive use of text message-type spelling.
- Writing comments in all or mostly caps.
- Spam-type links or self-promotion.
- Comments about how you’re sick of this topic or it’s not newsworthy.
- No inappropriate avatars or images are allowed.
- Anything else we deem bad for business.
If you see comments that fit the above criteria, please flag them and/or contact us. Bans may be handed out liberally by our moderators, without second chances. Remaining civil is not that difficult, though, and most commenters have no problems doing so as well as helping rein each other in. We are grateful for long-time commenters and readers, though this policy applies equally regardless of tenure. This policy is always available at the bottom of the site, and will be re-posted monthly.
Nets Notes: Frank, Kidd, Garnett
A strange season in Brooklyn continued yesterday, as the team lost at home to the Nuggets by 24 points to fall to 5-13. Prior to the game, head coach Jason Kidd told reporters that top assistant Lawrence Frank had been “re-assigned” due to philosophical differences. While there had reportedly been some friction between the duo, the move still came as a shock, considering Frank signed a lucrative six-year deal this summer, and was viewed as an experienced right-hand man for Kidd, a first-time coach.
Here’s more on Frank’s demotion and a reeling Nets team:
- Sources told Marc Stein and Ohm Youngmisuk of ESPN.com that the friction between Kidd and Frank began when Joe Prunty, rather than Frank, was chosen as the Nets’ interim coach for the first two games of the season. Frank appeared to be hurt by the decision, according to the ESPN report.
- Nets players tended to side with Kidd, and felt that Frank was overcoaching early in the season, team sources told Stein and Youngmisuk.
- According to the ESPN.com duo, Frank’s six-year contract is worth $1MM in years one and two, then increases to $1.65MM in the third and fourth seasons. The deal includes a position within the organization for the final two years.
- Speaking to Newsday’s Rod Boone, Kevin Garnett acknowledged that Frank’s re-assignment may not be the last of the team’s shake-ups, especially if the team keeps losing.
- Here’s Garnett on the Nets’ situation: “I’m sure management will do what they feel is best for this team and organization, and every guy here has to understand that, and that’s the business part of this. You have to expect that and you can’t think that that’s not going to happen or that it does not exist. That’s just the reality and part of the NBA and sports.”
- Despite all the drama in Brooklyn, the Nets remain the top pick to win the Atlantic Division, according to last night’s Hoops Rumors poll.
Knicks Considering Allan Houston As Next Coach
Knicks assistant GM Allan Houston has seemed like a GM-in-waiting the last few years, but Frank Isola of the New York Daily News hears the team’s former shooting guard could soon fill a different role. Owner James Dolan is prepared to make Houston the team’s next head coach if Mike Woodson doesn’t turn the team around soon, Isola writes.
Dolan expressed confidence in Woodson’s ability less than two weeks ago, but the Knicks haven’t won since, and other reports suggest the team’s management is souring on its coach. The front office has apparently scolded Woodson for his public criticism of Iman Shumpert and is telling other teams that Woodson’s mishandling of Shumpert is obscuring the third-year swingman’s value.
Having Houston take over the coaching reins would be an odd move, but as Isola points out, the team’s preseason replacement of former GM Glen Grunwald with Steve Mills seemed to come out of nowhere. Houston made two All-Star games around the turn of the century as a player for the Knicks, becoming a favorite of Dolan’s. Houston failed to live up to an inflated contract he signed in 2001, but he’s remained in the good graces of the Knicks following his retirement as a player in 2005.
Odds & Ends: Nets, Shaw, Odom, Hansbrough
Divergent coaching styles and philosophies ultimately prompted Jason Kidd to demote Nets assistant coach Lawrence Frank, tweets Chris Mannix of SI.com, but that doesn’t appear to be the only reason for the move. Frank has been badmouthing Kidd around the league, according to Stefan Bondy of the New York Daily News, and Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports has additional details on the troubled relationship between the two coaches. Here’s more on the Nets soap opera and the rest of the NBA:
- The Nets maintain their strong support of Kidd, and they still believe he’ll develop into an effective head coach, Mannix writes. Brian Shaw, whom the Nets passed on when they hired Kidd, has “thrilled” Nuggets brass so far, Mannix notes via Twitter.
- Lamar Odom isn’t yet performing basketball drills in workouts, a source tells Ken Berger of CBSSports.com. The earliest he could be ready to play is mid-January, Berger hears. The Clippers appear in no rush to sign him, even with other teams in the mix.
- Tyler Hansbrough wasn’t pleased with his limited role on the Pacers last season, and while he signed with the Raptors hoping to be a more integral part of his team, he never expected to become the starter he is now, as Mike Ganter of the Toronto Sun details.
- A short-term injury to Mike James will force the Bulls to cut Marquis Teague‘s D-League assignment short, reports K.C. Johnson of the Chicago Tribune. The Bulls are down to 10 healthy players, but they don’t plan on signing anyone, Johnson says.
- Amid a rough week for the top four college prospects, Kansas center Joel Embiid‘s performance made him a legitimate candidate to become the No. 1 overall pick in June, as Chad Ford of ESPN.com writes in his latest Insider piece on the draft landscape.
Knicks Rumors: Woodson, Karl, Tyler, Smith
Mike Woodson‘s name came up in Coach of the Year talk around this time a year ago, but that’s certainly not the case now, with the Knicks tied for the league’s worst record entering tonight. Ian O’Connor of ESPNNewYork.com believes that it’s time for Woodson to show whatever mettle he has if he’s to save his job, but I’m not so sure more effort from the coach will solve the team’s myriad problems. The man who won last year’s Coach of the Year award doesn’t envy Woodson, as we note in our roundup from Madison Square Garden:
- George Karl wants another NBA head coaching gig, but he wouldn’t want the Knicks job if it came open, as he recently told Dave Krieger of Denver’s KOA Radio (hat tip to Brian Lewis of the New York Post). “I mean, I watch the Knicks play and I wouldn’t want to be in that hell for a million dollars,” Karl said. “It’s just New York City and the Garden and the immensity of the pressure. I think Mike Woodson is standing up to it with tremendous integrity.
- Jeremy Tyler, who was with the Knicks in training camp, has recovered from the injury that prompted New York to cut him, but there’s no pressing need for the Knicks to re-sign him, argues Keith Schlosser of Ridiculous Upside.
- Statistics suggest J.R. Smith has been one of the league’s worst players so far this season on his new three-year, $17.9MM deal, so it’s no surprise the Knicks have struggled accordingly, writes HoopsWorld’s Tommy Beer.
Spurs Sign Malcolm Thomas
8:07pm: The signing is official, according to a press release from the Spurs. The team didn’t announce the terms of the deal, but it’s likely a minimum-salary contract without a guarantee. The addition of the Aaron Mintz client brings San Antonio’s roster to the 15-player limit, as our updated roster counts show.
TUESDAY, 7:43pm: The Spurs have finalized their deal with Thomas, tweets Jeff McDonald of the San Antonio Express-News, though there remains no official announcement from the team. Thomas is set to join the team after it returns from Wednesday’s game against the Timberwolves in Mexico City.
SUNDAY, 7:29pm: The Spurs are set to sign power forward Malcolm Thomas, according to Marc Stein of ESPN.com (Twitter links). Thomas, who has been with the D-League’s L.A. D-Fenders, was pulled from tonight’s game against the Bakersfield Jam.
The Spurs and Thomas are quite familiar at this point as Thomas has suited up for both the Spurs and their D-League affiliate in Austin. The 25-year-old has 15 career NBA games to his credit, including three with San Antonio in 2011/12. In 27 D-League contests, Thomas has averaged 13.2 PPG and 9.6 RPG in 32.7 minutes per contest. Thomas was in summer league and training camp with the Bulls this summer, but Chicago didn’t have the room to keep him despite some impressive play.
Players With Trade Kickers
Trade kickers are contractual clauses that pay players a bonus when they’re traded, and they represent one of the tools teams have to differentiate their free agent offers from the deals competing clubs put on the table, as I explained this weekend. They’re often used to woo stars, like Chris Paul and Dwight Howard, both of whom have trade kickers worth the maximum 15% of their new deals. It seems unlikely that either of them will be traded anytime soon, but their kickers offer further deterrence against a trade as well as the possibility that their maximum-salary contracts will become even more lucrative than they already are.
Trade kickers aren’t the exclusive purview of the NBA’s most well-paid players. The agents for Nazr Mohammed, Beno Udrih and Nick Young and all negotiated trade kickers into the minimum-salary deals those players signed this past offseason. The Lakers may well have felt compelled to agree to the kicker to entice Young to sign for below market value, while Mohammed wields the double hammer of a trade kicker and the ability to veto trades, making it highly improbable he gets moved this season.
Sometimes a trade kicker is included in an offer sheet that a team makes to a restricted free agent in hopes that the bonus will dissuade the player’s original team from matching. That appears to have been the case with Jeff Teague, who signed an offer sheet with the Bucks that included a trade kicker. In Teague’s case, the ploy didn’t work, as the Hawks matched anyway.
Teague’s trade kicker is unusual, since it stipulates that in the event of a trade, he’ll receive either a set amount ($600K) or 15% of the value of his contract, whichever is less. Most trade kickers call for the player to get a simple percentage of whatever’s left on the his deal, but Teague is one of a few guys with more complex terms in his contract. Tyreke Evans and Tyson Chandler have similarly structured deals. Trade kickers can also simply call for the player to receive a set amount, though no current players have one like that in their contracts.
Three players with trade kickers were involved in swaps over the summer, so Jason Terry, Andrea Bargnani and Robin Lopez are all on slightly more expensive deals than they were last season. They can be traded again, but they won’t receive any extra money if that happens. Here’s a list of every NBA player with an active trade kicker, listed alphabetically, with the details of the kickers in parentheses. Players who signed deals this past offseason are marked with an asterisk.
- Ray Allen, Heat (15%)
- Nicolas Batum, Trail Blazers (15%)
- Chris Bosh, Heat (15%)
- Vince Carter, Mavericks (10%)
- Tyson Chandler, Knicks (lesser of 8% or $500K — so, the bonus would be $500K until midway through the 2014/15 season)
- *Samuel Dalembert, Mavericks (15%)
- *Tyreke Evans, Pelicans (lesser of 15% or $1MM — so, the bonus would be $1MM until midway through the 2016/17 season)
- Pau Gasol, Lakers (15%)
- Eric Gordon, Pelicans (15%)
- Blake Griffin, Clippers (15%)
- Udonis Haslem, Heat (15%)
- Roy Hibbert, Pacers (15%)
- *Dwight Howard, Rockets (15%)
- *Andre Iguodala, Warriors (15%)
- LeBron James, Heat (15%)
- Amir Johnson, Raptors (5%)
- DeAndre Jordan, Clippers (15%)
- Brook Lopez, Nets (15%)
- Shawn Marion, Mavericks (15%)
- *Nazr Mohammed, Bulls (15%)
- Steve Nash, Lakers (15%)
- *Chris Paul, Clippers (15%)
- *J.J. Redick, Clippers (5%)
- Derrick Rose, Bulls (15%)
- *J.R. Smith, Knicks (15%)
- *Jeff Teague, Hawks (lesser of 15% or $600K — so, the bonus would be $600K until midway through the 2016/17 season)
- Jason Thompson, Kings (5%)
- *Beno Udrih, Knicks (15%)
- Anderson Varejao, Cavaliers (5%)
- Dwyane Wade, Heat (15%)
- Deron Williams, Nets (15%)
- *Mo Williams, Trail Blazers (15%)
- *Nick Young, Lakers (15%)
ShamSports was used in the creation of this post.
L.A. Notes: Nash, Luxury Tax, Frank
The two New York teams are making plenty of headlines lately, thanks in large measure to their poor play. There’s lots of drama going on in Los Angeles, too, where the Clippers are mulling a Lamar Odom signing and the Lakers await the returns of Kobe Bryant and Steve Nash. Here’s the latest on both teams, including an update on Nash:
- The Lakers had reportedly planned to gauge Nash’s progress in practice this week before deciding whether to pursue another point guard, but Nash said he isn’t rushing his recovery in light of Jordan Farmar‘s injury, notes Dave McMenamin of ESPNLosAngeles.com. Nash doubts he’ll return in time for the team’s next game on Friday.
- The Clippers are set to pay the luxury tax for the first time in franchise history, and Mark Deeks of ShamSports explains why now might be the right time, as part of a piece for SB Nation that juxtaposes L.A.’s tax quandary with that of the Thunder. There’s a risk the expenditure could go for naught, as in the case of the Bulls, but it could help the Clippers re-sign Blake Griffin in a few years.
- Doc Rivers tried to recruit Lawrence Frank to join the Clippers coaching staff this summer, but the Nets wooed Rivers’ former Celtics assistant with a six-year deal worth more than $1MM per year, according to Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports (Twitter links). Frank and Nets head coach Jason Kidd appear to be at loggerheads.