2014 NBA Draft Rumors | Hoops Rumors

Knicks Sign Cleanthony Early

August 1st, 2014 at 1:53pm CST by Chuck Myron

The Knicks have signed Cleanthony Early, this year’s 34th overall pick, the team announced (on Twitter). It’ll have to be a minimum-salary arrangement, since the Knicks are well over the cap and have no exceptions other than the minimum-salary exception to use. That exception limits the contract to no more than two years, though it’s not immediately clear whether Early is getting two years or just one.

The small forward from Wichita State is one of three second-round picks from last month whose rights belong to the Knicks, though it’s unclear whether the team intends to sign 51st overall selection Thanasis Antetokounmpo or No. 57 pick Louis Labeyrie this year. Early is the 15th player on the Knicks roster, one that had included only a dozen guaranteed contracts.

Early went just about where he had been expected to go on draft night, as Chad Ford of ESPN.com ranked him as the 32nd best prospect while Jonathan Givony of DraftExpress rated him 38th. The final version of Alex Lee’s Hoops Rumors Mock Draft had Early slipping into the first round at No. 27. Concerns about the 23-year-old’s age and worries about whether he fits into the position of small forward in the NBA surrounded him, as Lee wrote when he examined Early’s prospect profile, but he’s also a polished player capable who shouldn’t require much development.

Western Rumors: Jokic, Grizzlies, Jazz, Kings

July 31st, 2014 at 9:44pm CST by Cray Allred

It doesn’t sound like the Nuggets intend to sign 41st overall pick Nikola Jokic this year, as Chris Dempsey of The Denver Post writes amid his mailbag column that the center from Serbia won’t be on the roster come fall. Here’s a rundown of the Western Conference, including some more notes out of Denver:

In another response, Dempsey predicts that the Nuggets will make the playoffs this season, but speculates that a failure to do so will result in a “gut-job” on the roster from the front office.
The Denver Post scribe would expect JaVale McGee to be on the trading block for 2015/16, when he will be on an expiring contract, if the Nuggets center doesn’t stay healthy and play well this year.
The Grizzlies have retooled their coaching and development staff with a group of promotions and hires, installing Jeff Bzdelik, Jason March, Drew Graham and John Townsend as assistant coach, assistant coach/advanced scout, head trainer, and director of player development, respectively, according to a team release.
Aaron Falk of The Salt Lake Tribune looks at the plethora of rookie extension decisions facing the Jazz, who have six lottery picks on their roster, in the coming years.
The Kings final court victory regarding their new arena will be appealed, but a team spokeswoman tells Dale Kasler of The Sacramento Bee that Sacramento will move forward with construction.

Chuck Myron contributed to this post.

Bucks Sign Johnny O’Bryant

July 31st, 2014 at 5:35pm CST by Chuck Myron

THURSDAY, 5:35pm: The final year of O’Bryant’s contract is actually non-guaranteed salary, rather than a team option, tweets Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders.

6:40pm: O’Bryant’s deal is for three years, with the third year being a team option, reports Charles F. Gardner of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

WEDNESDAY, 5:02pm: The Bucks have signed Johnny O’Bryant, the 36th pick in this year’s draft, the team announced. Exact terms of the contract were not announced. He’ll compete for playing time with Ersan Ilyasova and John Henson, though O’Bryant seems destined to spend significant time in the NBA D-League this season to help him develop.

The 6’9″ power forward had appeared in five games for the Bucks during Summer League play in Las Vegas, where he averaged 8.2 points and 5.4 rebounds in 18.2 minutes per contest. He saved his best game for last, when he posted 10 points and 10 rebounds against the Warriors Summer League entry.

O’Bryant played for three seasons at LSU, where he averaged 12.7 PPG, 7.7 RPG, and 1.3 APG for his career. He earned First Team All-SEC honors in 2013 and 2014.

Eastern Notes: Irving, Lottery, Moore, Bayless

July 31st, 2014 at 2:16pm CST by Chuck Myron

Kyrie Irving is still upset with rumors that he wanted out of Cleveland that persisted until he signed a five-year extension nearly a month ago, and he has no issue with ceding his position as the preeminent star of the Cavs to LeBron James, as Bleacher Report’s Kevin Ding details. Of course, Irving might wind up as the third most important player on the team should Cleveland swing a deal for Kevin Love. There was news on that front earlier, and we’ll pass along a few more items from around the Eastern Conference here:

The league’s proposal for evening out the odds in the draft lottery isn’t generating a ton of enthusiasm from the Sixers or anyone else, Grantland’s Zach Lowe writes. Critics most commonly suggest that it wouldn’t effectively deter tanking for the top pick and that it would encourage tanking among teams with a chance to make the playoffs, according to Lowe. Many agree with the Sixers that immediate implementation of the proposal for next year’s draft would be an issue.
The league projects the Sixers to have turned a net profit of about $10.4MM from last season, Lowe also reveals in his piece. Still, the Sixers didn’t make any contributions to revenue sharing last season, Lowe writes, a matter that had reportedly been a bone of contention for other clubs.
Former Magic guard E’Twaun Moore is drawing interest from Olimpia Milano of Italy, Sportando’s Enea Trapani reports. Orlando withdrew its qualifying offer to Moore last month, making him an unrestricted free agent.
The contract that Jerryd Bayless signed today with the Bucks is for two years and a total of $6MM, a source tells Charles F. Gardner of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Hawks swingman Kyle Korver has been re-elected to a three-year term as vice president of players union, Lowe reports (Twitter link).

Eddie Scarito contributed to this post.

Nemanja Dangubic Likely To Remain In Serbia

July 28th, 2014 at 9:48am CST by Chuck Myron

Spurs second-round draftee Nemanja Dangubic is close to signing with Serbian club KK Crvena Zvezda, the website Novosti.rs reports (translation via Sportando’s Emiliano Carchia). KK Partizan, another Serbian team, is also pursuing him, but the 54th overall pick from this year’s draft is leaning toward Crvena Zvezda, according to the Novosti.rs report.

The Spurs acquired the rights to Dangubic, a 6’8″ shooting guard, in a draft-night trade with the Sixers. Dangubic, 21, would be the latest in a long line of Spurs “draft-and-stash” players from overseas. It’s no surprise the team isn’t bringing him aboard for this season, given the difficulty that Dangubic would face in finding playing time on a team that’s poised to return nearly everyone from last year’s championship roster.

Dangubic spent the last two years with KK Mega Vizura, another Serbian franchise. He averaged 10.3 points and 3.6 rebounds in 26.2 minutes per game this past season.

Cavs Sign Andrew Wiggins

July 24th, 2014 at 3:01pm CST by Chuck Myron

The Cavaliers have signed No. 1 overall pick Andrew Wiggins, the team announced. The move triggers a 30-day period in which Cleveland can’t officially complete a trade involving him. The Timberwolves have demanded Wiggins be a part of any package involving Kevin Love, and while there are conflicting reports, many of them indicate Cleveland is willing to include him.

It’s a virtual certainty that Wiggins will receive a salary of slightly more than $5.5MM this season, as our table of salaries for 2014 first-round picks shows. That amount would help salaries match in a trade should the Cavs decide to pull one off after the 30 days are up. Still, the Cavs could have traded his rights immediately had they held off on signing him, using other players to help balance the salaries.

The 6’8″ swingman entered his freshman season at Kansas last year as far and away the top prospect for the 2014 NBA draft, but an underwhelming performance allowed others, including teammate Joel Embiid, to contend for the top spot. Embiid seemed the odds-on favorite until he broke his foot, and Wiggins prevailed over Jabari Parker of Duke, to whom the Cavs also reportedly gave strong consideration.

Wiggins averaged 17.1 points and 5.9 rebounds along with 34.1% three-point shooting in 32.8 minutes per game for Kansas this past season, earning consensus All-American honors. The 19-year-old chose agent Bill Duffy of BDA Sports as his representative.

Rockets To Sign Clint Capela

July 23rd, 2014 at 3:35pm CST by Chuck Myron

JULY 23RD: Capela has signed his contract, a source tells Marc J. Spears of Yahoo! Sports (Twitter link). Houston will have to receive the signed contract before it becomes official.

JULY 14TH: The Rockets have been working with No. 25 pick Clint Capela to secure his buyout from Chalon-Sur-Saone of France and a FIBA letter of clearance, and they intend to sign him to a rookie scale contract this summer, reports Jonathan Feigen of the Houston Chronicle. The outcome is the result that Capela’s camp had been pushing for after the Rockets apparently asked him to remain overseas for next season. Feigen’s piece doesn’t refer to the request, which Chris Haynes of CSNNW.com had reported over the weekend, but he does cast the Rockets as having been ambivalent about the notion of Capela playing for the team this season. Now, it appears the team and Capela are in lockstep toward a contract.

“We are planning out roster for next season. We expect him to be a part of it,” Rockets executive vice president of basketball operations Gersson Rosas said. “We’re in the process of working toward that.”

Capela is likely to receive a salary worth more than $1.189MM for next season, as our table of salaries for 2014 first-rounders shows. The Rockets had been attempting to preserve cap flexibility as they chased LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony and Chris Bosh, and Houston shopped the pick before the draft. There was also reportedly interest from other teams in trading for Capela’s rights once the Rockets made the selection, but Houston never showed mutual interest in such a swap. Now that the team’s marquee free agent targets are headed elsewhere and Chandler Parsons is off to Dallas, there’s room for Capela, a raw talent who averaged 9.8 points and 6.9 rebounds in 21.4 minutes per game for his French team this past season.

Thunder, Huestis Cut D-League Deal Before Draft

July 23rd, 2014 at 3:32pm CST by Chuck Myron

The Thunder and representatives for Josh Huestis made an arrangement prior to the draft in which Huestis agreed to sign with Oklahoma City’s D-League affiliate for this season in exchange for the Thunder taking him 29th overall, agent Mitchell Butler tells Grantland’s Zach Lowe (Twitter link). Darnell Mayberry of The Oklahoman originally reported this weekend that Huestis was likely to sign with the Thunder’s D-League team.

Huestis was projected as a second-round pick at best, coming in 44th in Jonathan Givony’s DraftExpress rankings, and Chad Ford of ESPN.com had him as only the 90th best draft prospect. Butler told Lowe that he wasn’t sure that his client would be drafted at all and saw the deal with Oklahoma City as the best way to make sure that a team would pick him (Twitter link). Huestis didn’t want to play for a European team and was on board with the D-League idea, Butler added, noting that Huestis wouldn’t have gone for the plan if any other NBA team had asked him to do so, with the exception of the Spurs (Twitter link). Butler also contends that the arrangement doesn’t violate the NBA’s rules against discussing potential compensation with a prospect prior to the draft, as Lowe also tweets.

The small forward from Stanford is in line for a fraction of the more than $1.1MM that he would have received this season if he were signing an NBA rookie scale contract for the standard 120% of the rookie scale amount, as our table of likely first-round salaries shows. D-League salaries top out around $25K. It’s not clear whether the Thunder have promised to sign Huestis next summer as part of the deal or if it’ll be up to him to prove his worth in the D-League this year. Huestis expressed confidence in his abilities when he spoke with Zach Links of Hoops Rumors prior to the draft.

The Thunder also moved to cut costs last year with their first-round pick, doling out only 80% of the scale amount to 2013 26th overall pick Andre Roberson. A change in D-League rules for this year allows NBA draft picks to sign directly with the affiliate of the team that holds their NBA rights, helping pave the way for Oklahoma City’s Huestis plan. The Thunder had to work trades last year to acquire the first pick in the 2013 D-League draft to grab the D-League rights to No. 40 overall pick Grant Jerrett, moves they won’t have to undertake this time around.

Bulls Sign Cameron Bairstow

July 21st, 2014 at 11:37am CST by Chuck Myron

The Bulls have signed Cameron Bairstow, whom they selected with the 49th overall pick in last month’s draft, the team announced via press release. The terms of his contract are unclear, but a report last week indicated that the team had made a three-year offer to the former New Mexico big man.

“We like Cameron’s combination as a player with his size, energy and physicality,” Bulls GM Gar Forman said in the team’s statement. “He is a hard worker who will only get better with time.”

The 6’10” Bairstow saw a vastly enhanced role with New Mexico in his senior year this past season, averaging 20.4 points and 7.4 rebounds in 32.9 minutes per game. It was the first time he’d posted a double-digit scoring average in his four years with the Lobos, who fed him nearly twice as many shot attempts during his senior season as they did when he was a junior.

It’ll almost certainly be a minimum-salary contract, since the Bulls have very nearly exhausted their cap room.

Alessandro Gentile Re-Signs Overseas

July 19th, 2014 at 8:18am CST by Cray Allred

Alessandro Gentile has re-signed with his Italian team for three years, Olimpia Milano’s team website announced (transcription via Luca Consolati of Sportando). Gentile’s rights are owned by the Rockets, who acquired the No. 53 pick in this year’s draft to snatch him. The salary, and potential NBA buyout clause, for his deal have not been reported at this time.

There have been no rumblings on Houston’s immediate plans for the small forward, but presumably a draft-and-stash was always their course of action. At the time of the draft, the 21-year-old scoring wing was ranked as the 68th best prospect by Jonathan Givony of Draft Express and the 57th best by Chad Ford of ESPN.com (Insider-only).

At the time of the draft, the Rockets were still preparing to chase premier free agents that they would later fail to sign. First-round pick Clint Capela was at odds with the team for insisting he stay overseas for a year, but since has come close to signing in Houston, and Houston also plans to sign their 42nd pick, Nick Johnson.