Western Notes: Young, Llull, Sampson, Kings
Following last night’s game against Sacramento, Lakers guard Nick Young hinted that he plans to opt out this summer and enter free agency (Scott Howard-Cooper of NBA.com reports). The 6’7 swingman referred to his popular epithet when responding to a question about whether or not he’s already made up his mind: “A little bit. It’s a mystery, though. I’ve got to keep y’all on your toes. That’s what Swaggy P does.”
Last week, we noted that Young would likely test the waters in July and remains interested in re-signing with the Lakers. Though he does hold a 2014/15 player option worth roughly $1.2MM, the L.A. native believes it’s time for a raise: “Most definitely. I deserve much more than that.”
Here’s what else we’ve gathered out West this evening:
- The Rockets have the draft rights to Spanish league guard Sergio Llull, but he’s not among the players the team appears to be considering, according to Marc Stein of ESPN.com. Llull, 26, is considered an NBA-level talent, but his contract with Real Madrid would require a hefty in-season buyout, Stein notes (Twitter links).
- The abruptness of Kelvin Sampson’s departure from the Rockets wasn’t entirely by choice, as league rules mandate that he couldn’t remain with the team after having accepted the head coaching job at the University of Houston, tweets Mark Berman of Fox 26 Houston.
- Plans for a new Kings arena in Sacramento took another step forward today as the city won an appeals court ruling allowing it to retain possession of a building that sits on the site where the arena is to be built, as Dale Kasler of The Sacramento Bee details.
- Nearly one year removed from a failed attempt to purchase and relocate the Kings franchise, Chris Hansen tells Percy Allen of the Seattle Times: “It’s inevitable Seattle will have a basketball team. It’s just a matter of when…The next time an opportunity comes our way, we’re going to be in a lot better position. We’re not going to have to prove to the NBA that we’re likely to get an arena built. We’ll have a fully-baked, signed off on deal.”
- As far as an arena proposal goes, Hansen mentions the EIS (Environmental State Impact) process as one hurdle that needs to be cleared; However, he says that the process is going well and expects it to be settled by this summer at the earliest.
Chuck Myron contributed to this post.
Nuggets Links: Faried, Lawson, Karl
The Nuggets won 57 games last season, but Monday’s loss to the Grizzlies ensures they’ll have a losing record in 2013/14. The focus in Denver is on boomeranging back up the standings next year, and we’ll run down the latest:
- Kenneth Faried‘s name was in plenty of trade rumors earlier this season, and he’s up for a rookie scale extension this summer, but Nuggets GM Tim Connelly tells Terry Frei of The Denver Post that he values the energetic power forward highly. “In the last six weeks of the season, there are only a handful of players in the league who have been better than Kenneth Faried,” Connelly said. “He rebounds like he’s 7-feet tall. His intensity and toughness overcomes his lack of size. His shooting percentage is high. And, of course, his energy level in contagious. In a lot of ways, Faried determines how we play.”
- Coach Brian Shaw considers Faried and Ty Lawson the team’s “cornerstones,” as fellow Post scribe Chris Dempsey observes.
- Sean Deveney of The Sporting News profiles several potential head coaching candidates with a slideshow and suggests former Nuggets coach George Karl‘s willingness to take a discount will determine whether he returns to an NBA bench next season.
Bulls Waive Erik Murphy, Target James, Brewer
The Bulls have waived rookie Erik Murphy, the team announced via press release. The move drops Chicago’s roster to 12 players, which means the team has to add someone before the playoffs. That’s the plan, according to K.C. Johnson of the Chicago Tribune, who says the team has had conversations with Mike James and Ronnie Brewer recently (Twitter links). Brewer worked out for the team at its practice facility today, tweets Aggrey Sam of CSNChicago.com.
Murphy, 23, joined the Bulls after they drafted him 49th overall this past summer and signed him to a partially guaranteed deal for the minimum salary. The contract became fully guaranteed when the team elected not to waive him by January 7th, so he’ll receive his full salary of $490,180. He, like A.J. Price, whom the Wolves waived today, is ineligible to play for another team in the postseason.
The Bulls called on the former University of Florida big man sparingly this season, as he totaled just 62 minutes in 24 games. It seems Chicago wants a veteran who can make a larger impact for the playoffs, and James and Brewer have track records of postseason success. The 38-year-old James was with the Bulls to begin the season, and they brought him back on a 10-day contract in January after waiving him in December. He nonetheless averaged just 7.0 MPG in 11 appearances. Brewer played a much larger role for the Bulls in 2010/11 and 2011/12, and he became a free agent after the Rockets waived him in February.
Team Options And Restricted Free Agency
Every rookie scale contract in the league, by rule, includes a pair of team options. Otherwise, team options are rare. NBA clubs prefer the flexibility of non-guaranteed seasons instead, since they allow the team to cut ties with the player at any point before the leaguewide guarantee date of January 7th. Team options must either be exercised or declined before the NBA’s calendar flips over on July 1st. (Rookie scale options must be exercised or declined on October 31st the year before the option season would begin.) Players, too, can benefit from the greater flexibility of a non-guaranteed contract, since they can earn a portion of their salary if they remain on the roster for a partial season.
Still, a growing number of free agents are signing contracts with team options. Of the 13 existing NBA contracts that include team options for future seasons and aren’t rookie scale deals, 11 have been signed since this past July. A handful of those contracts last four seasons, and there’s a compelling reason for teams to structure deals that way for second-round picks and undrafted players.
Chandler Parsons is Exhibit A. The Rockets haven’t informed Parsons about whether they intend to decline his option, worth about $965K, for next season, as Parsons tells Grantland’s Zach Lowe. Under most circumstances, Houston’s decision would be a no-brainer. Parsons has far outperformed his deal, signed after the Rockets took him in the second round of the 2011 draft, and having him for an additional season at a cost of less than $1MM would give the team one of the league’s best bargains. What makes his case so intriguing is that undrafted players and second-round picks, like Parsons, can be restricted free agents if their contracts end before their fourth seasons. So, the Rockets could decline their option and have the right to match other teams’ offers for their small forward. Houston wouldn’t have that right in 2015 if the team exercised its option on Parsons, who’d become an unrestricted free agent when his contract ends after 2014/15.
The team option gives Houston a choice that a non-guaranteed season wouldn’t. If 2014/15 were a non-guaranteed year for Parsons, rather than an option year, the Rockets could only make him a free agent this summer if they waived him, and he’d be an unrestricted free agent, and not a restricted one, if he cleared waivers.
Three other teams did deals this year that mimic the Parsons contract, and it’s not surprising that the Sixers are one of them. GM Sam Hinkie was the executive vice president of basketball operations for the Rockets when they signed Parsons. Philadelphia signed two undrafted rookies this season to four-year contracts with a team option in the fourth year. The contracts for Brandon Davies and Hollis Thompson, just like the one for Parsons, aren’t fully guaranteed in the seasons leading up to the option. Davies signed his deal without any guarantee at all, while Thompson received a tiny partial guarantee of $35K for this season.
Neither Davies nor Thompson has guaranteed salary on his respective option year. That means that the Sixers could pick up their options and still cut ties with them before opening night without owing them any money that year, just as with a regular non-guaranteed season. Parsons has a partial guarantee on his salary next season. If the Rockets and Sixers exercise their options, those contracts will become just like any other deal that isn’t fully guaranteed. The only difference will be that their teams will have had a chance to make them restricted free agents, a valuable resource in case the player, as Parsons did, blossoms into a sought-after commodity.
Rockets GM Daryl Morey and his disciple aren’t the only ones who’ve caught on. Former Cavs GM Chris Grant signed Carrick Felix, the 33rd overall pick in the 2013 draft, to a four-year deal with a team option in the final season. In Felix’s case, the only non-guaranteed money is in the third year, and the fourth year is fully guaranteed providing the Cavs exercise their option. Hawks GM Danny Ferry, Grant’s former boss in Cleveland, produced the latest iteration of this trend when he pried 2013 second-rounder Mike Muscala from his Spanish league contract in February to bring him stateside. Muscala’s four-year deal is 50% guaranteed next season but henceforth completely non-guaranteed, and that includes the fourth-year option season.
Not every team has the flexibility to make four-year offers. Teams need either cap space or a portion of the non-taxpayer’s mid-level exception to sign rookies for four years. Still, I wouldn’t be surprised to see more contracts like these in the future, especially if the Rockets use their team option on Parsons this summer and other teams hesitate to give him an offer. Teams may become more hesistant to use their full mid-level on veteran free agents so they can leave room to sign one or two intriguing young players to four-year deals.
It’s unlikely that Thompson, Davies, Felix or Muscala will ever become as valuable as Parsons is, and there’s a decent chance that their teams will waive them long before the option year comes around. Still, the Rockets, Sixers, Cavs and Hawks had nothing to lose, and neither would any team that does a similar deal. It’s a smart play that can look even smarter over time.
ShamSports and Larry Coon’s Salary Cap FAQ were used in the creation of this post.
Rockets Eyeing Malcolm Delaney
The Rockets are eyeing German league point guard Malcolm Delaney, though they’re leaning against signing him this season, according to Marc Stein of ESPN.com (Twitter links). Former Euroleague coach Pini Gershon first noted Houston’s interest while broadcasting Delaney’s game today, saying that the Rockets wanted the point guard as soon as possible, as David Pick of Eurobasket.com tweets.
The 25-year-old Delaney is on Houston’s list of possible late-season signees, Stein writes, suggesting there are others the team is considering. Still, the revelation that Patrick Beverley will return this season from a torn meniscus that originally threatened to end his 2013/14 campaign has slowed the team’s push to change its roster. The Rockets are carrying the maximum 15 players, so they’d have to waive someone to bring Delaney or anyone else aboard.
Delaney went undrafted out of Virginia Tech in 2011, and the closest he ever came to the NBA was a summer league stint with the Pistons in 2012. The Baltimore native played professionally for teams in France and Ukraine prior to joining Bayern Munich of Germany for this season. He’s averaging 12.3 points, 4.7 assists and 2.3 turnovers in 48 games this season, and he’s made 39.1% of his three-point attempts.
James Michael McAdoo Enters NBA Draft
North Carolina junior James Michael McAdoo has announced his decision to enter the NBA draft, according to the school’s website. The 6’9″ power forward is No. 60 in Chad Ford’s ESPN.com rankings and No. 80 with Jonathan Givony of DraftExpress. ESPN.com scribe Jeff Goodman nonetheless hears from multiple NBA executives who consider him a late first-round pick who could fall into the early part of the second round.
The 21-year-old’s stock took a tumble this season, one in which he showed little, if any, improvement. He was a potential top-five pick to open his sophomore season, and was No. 18 in Givony’s rankings in the preseason this year. He averaged 14.2 points and 6.8 rebounds in 30.1 minutes per game this season, numbers almost identical to the ones he posted in 2012/13.
The father of the 6’9″ McAdoo is a second cousin of Bob McAdoo, a Heat assistant coach and Hall-of-Fame player. Both played at North Carolina, and James Michael’s college career presumably ended with a loss to Iowa State last month in the NCAA Tournament round of 32. The deadline for him to withdraw from the draft while still retaining his college eligibility is April 15th.
Eastern Rumors: Heat, LeBron, Jackson, Hinrich
Heat team president Pat Riley thinks it would be difficult for Miami’s stars to abandon a run of success that “can go for 10 or 12 years,” as he says to Michael Wallace of ESPN.com, but Riley is nonetheless cognizant that nothing’s for certain.
“You always fear,” Riley said. “It’s not a real fear. I always have concern when players are in the situation they’re in. But we feel we have the best organization in the league for those players to stay, and to also attract others to want to come here. With our three guys, we hope that this turns into a generational team. And that it’s not just we’re at the end of this four-year run right now because players have some options this summer.”
With LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh less than three months away from the June 30th deadline for them to decide what to do with their early termination options, here’s more on the Heat and their Eastern Conference rivals:
- James is well aware of what Riley can do to keep the Heat in championship contention, as he tells Wallace for the same piece. “He doesn’t have to prove anything to anyone. Not me, not Dwyane, not Chris. No one,” James said. “His résumé speaks for itself. His stature speaks for itself. So we’ll see what happens.”
- Knicks president Phil Jackson told reporters today that he and owner James Dolan agreed that Jackson could do away with the team’s ties to any agency if necessary, notes Chris Herring of The Wall Street Journal. The team’s seeming allegiance to the Creative Artists Agency “won’t hold weight with me,” Jackson said (Twitter links).
- Jackson said again that he has no intention of coaching and that he has yet to have a conversation with Carmelo Anthony about the future, as Fred Kerber of the New York Post and Ian Begley of ESPNNewYork.com pass along via Twitter.
- Kirk Hinrich says he enjoys playing in Chicago and would like to re-sign with the Bulls this summer, as K.C. Johnson of the Chicago Tribune details.
Wolves Waive A.J. Price
The Wolves have waived A.J. Price, the team announced. The point guard was on a minimum-salary contract, which will remain on the team’s books. The timing is unusual, since there are fewer than two weeks remaining before the end of the season. It’s not tied to Dante Cunningham‘s arrest this morning on suspicion of domestic assault, tweets Jerry Zgoda of the Star Tribune, who notes that the team made its decision to cut ties with Price prior to the arrest. Price’s release brings the team down to 14 players, and presumably the Wolves will add someone before the season is through.
Price had an appendectomy in early March and hasn’t played since. He saw just 3.5 minutes per game this season in 28 appearances, but the Wolves nonetheless decided to keep him through December 8th, when his contract became fully guaranteed. The Excel Sports Management client inked the deal coming off of a career year with the Wizards, for whom he started 22 games, averaging 9.0 points and 4.7 assists in those starts.
The 27-year-old is ineligible to take part in the postseason this year if he ends up with a team that’s playoff-bound, since Minnesota waived him after March 1st. I imagine the Wolves have their eyes on a free agent prospect whom they’d like to sign to a contract that runs through the end of the season with a non-guaranteed year tacked on for 2014/15, though that’s just my speculation. Zgoda suggests that player would likely be a forward like Cunningham, whose absence, however long it might be, creates a more significant hole than Price’s.
Lakers Notes: Henry, Meeks, Young
The defeat the Lakers suffered to the Kings on Wednesday was critical for their draft lottery position, giving them their 50th loss, two more than the Kings and Pistons, the teams directly beneath them in our Reverse Standings. The Lakers are right below the Celtics and Jazz, who have 52 losses apiece, but it seems like L.A. has a strong chance of ending up anywhere from fourth through eighth at season’s end. It’s not the usual late-season intrigue for the purple-and-gold, but the team’s final seven games will have meaning nonetheless. Here’s the latest on what lies ahead:
- Xavier Henry says he would love to re-sign with the Lakers this summer, and he’s playing through a painful wrist injury against doctor’s advice to prove his worth, as Shams Charania of RealGM details.
- Jodie Meeks, another soon-to-be free agent, reiterates his intention to stay with the Lakers, too, but he also acknowledges there will be more to his decision than that, observes Dave McMenamin of ESPNLosAngeles.com. “Definitely, I want to stay, but it’s a business,” Meeks said. “So, both sides of the party, it will be interesting to see what happens. … I’ll just kind of play the waiting game.”
- Lakers owner Jeanie Buss is a fan of Nick Young‘s ebullient personality, and while there appears to be mutual interest in him returning next season, there’s no certainty he’ll be back, writes Mike Bresnahan of the Los Angeles Times. Young seems likely to decline his nearly $1.228MM player option.
Spurs Sign Damion James To 10-Day Deal
THURSDAY, 10:13am: The deal is official, the team announced.
WEDNESDAY, 1:59pm: The Spurs are set to sign former first-round pick Damion James to a 10-day contract, reports Marc Stein of ESPN.com. The Nuggets brought him to preseason camp on a non-guaranteed deal, and while he seemed to play Jordan Hamilton to a draw, Denver opted to cut him and keep Hamilton’s guaranteed contract instead. James has spent most of the season in the D-League, splitting time between the Bakersfield Jam and his current team, the Texas Legends, which is the one-to-one affiliate of the Mavs.
The Mark Bartelstein client reportedly drew interest from other NBA teams soon after the Nuggets let him go, but no team had been identified as a suitor. His last official NBA action came last season on a 10-day contract with the Nets, the only team for which he’s played a regular season game. He started nine games for the team as a rookie in 2010/11, but he broke his right foot, and persistent trouble with that foot derailed his career. He appeared in only 34 games on his rookie scale contract.
The Spurs have been carrying an open roster spot, so they don’t need to make a corresponding move before their deal with James becomes official. The 26-year-old has been averaging 21.1 points and 11.3 rebounds in 14 games since joining the Texas Legends, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him get significant minutes in a couple of games for the Spurs as they rest players in preparation for the postseason.