Lowe’s Latest: Salary Cap, TV Deal, Burks, Morris
Teams around the league are projecting that the salary cap will leap to as high as $80MM for 2016/17, as Grantland’s Zach Lowe writes, but next season’s salary cap is shrouded in uncertainty. Executives from around the league believed earlier this summer that the NBA would gradually phase in the increase in the salary cap with a larger than usual uptick next summer, but the league has told teams within the last two weeks to hold steady on their projections for 2015/16, according to Lowe. The uncertainty makes it more difficult for teams to make long-term commitments at this point as the October 31st deadline for rookie scale extensions looms. The focus of the Grantland scribe’s piece is on that rookie scale extension market, and his entire piece is worth a read to juxtapose his insight with our in-depth pieces on some of the same up-and-comers featured in our Extension Candidate Series. Lowe also has a few more newsy tidbits, as we’ll pass along here:
- There’s chatter around the league suggesting that the NBA will backload its new television deal, which is expected to be more than twice as lucrative as the current arrangement that runs out after the 2015/16 season, Lowe reports. The aim would be for the league to negotiate the ability to keep a larger percentage of that media rights revenue for itself in the next collective bargaining agreement with the players union.
- Executive around the league see Alec Burks as a sixth man rather than a starter, according to Lowe, who argues that there’s a case to be made to the contrary. Still, it bodes well for the Jazz‘s leverage in extension talks.
- Markieff Morris and Marcus Morris told teams before the 2011 draft that they would take less money to play together, sources tell Lowe. That didn’t end up happening right away, since Houston drafted Marcus and Phoenix took Markieff, but the Suns reunited the twins at the 2013 trade deadline, and if their desire to stick together still holds true, that gives the Suns the ability to exert some pressure, Lowe surmises. Both are extension-eligible.
Slava Kravtsov To Play In China
Two-year NBA veteran Slava Kravtsov has signed a deal to play with China’s Foshan Long Lions, agent Misko Raznatovic tweets (hat tip to Sportando’s Orazio Cauchi). The terms aren’t unknown, and it’s not clear whether the contract includes an NBA escape clause, but the early end to the Chinese schedule usually allows signees to return stateside toward the end of the NBA season and hunt for a deal at that point.
The 27-year-old center became a free agent shortly after the Suns let him go at the beginning of March to make room for Shavlik Randolph. The 6’11” Kravtsov saw precious little playing time in the NBA, averaging 2.2 points and 1.4 rebounds in 6.3 minutes per game over 45 appearances over two seasons with the Suns and Pistons, who signed him to a two-year, $3MM deal in 2012.
Kravtsov made a strong impression against Team USA in the World Cup, scoring 15 points and grabbing four rebounds in 26 minutes of work for Ukraine in its matchup against America. He averaged 7.4 PPG and 5.6 RPG in 21.4 MPG over five games in the event, but it didn’t appear as though it helped him generate enough NBA interest to bring him back to the league.
And-Ones: Rush, Jeter, Terry, Wizards
After a difficult 2013/14 season in which he was granted sporadic playing time while returning from knee surgery in Utah, Brandon Rush tells Rusty Simmons of the San Francisco Chronicle that he’s feeling positive about his upcoming season with the Warriors. “This is a great situation for me to be able to come back and to be with a winning team,” said Rush. “I’m just going to try to help the team out with little things: rebounding, shooting and playing defense. I’m in a good mood. My head is in on straight. I’m happy with where I’m at…Coming back [to Golden State] was a no-brainer.” Here’s more from around the league:
- Pooh Jeter has no intentions of leaving his Chinese team, despite having a workout lined up with the Lakers, as he tells Hupu (translation via Enea Trapani of Sportando).
- Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders expects the deal in place between the Rockets and Kings, which will send Jason Terry to Houston and Alonzo Gee and Scotty Hopson to Sacramento, will finally transpire within the next 24 hours (Twitter link). Pincus does not expect the Kings to retain either Gee or Hopson, whose contracts are non-guaranteed. The teams initially struck an unofficial agreement on August 31.
- The Wizards are still working out additional players to bring to camp, tweets J. Michael of CSNWashington.com. Washington will have 16 of the maximum 20 contracts on the books for training camp after the new additions of Xavier Silas and Damion James.
- Brett Koremenos of RealGM looks at the careers of Milos Teodosic, Ante Tomic, and Emir Preldzic, three players caught in the “limbo” between European starring roles and NBA backup spots. While these players shine in international play, their advanced age, on-court shortcomings, and comfort level overseas are barriers to their likehood of signing in the NBA.
Contract Details: Barbosa, Turkoglu, Roberts Jr.
Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders is always diligent in keeping us informed of the nitty gritty details for all of the contracts around the league, and after his latest round of updates, he figures there are 493 contracts in place, 400 of which are guaranteed, and at least 43 of which will have to be cut before the regular season begins (Twitter links). We’ll link to his team salary sheets, noting specific player revelations where they apply:
- Leandro Barbosa‘s one-year pact for the minimum with the Warriors is partially guaranteed at $150K.
- Hedo Turkoglu‘s one-year minimum deal with the Clippers is fully guaranteed.
- Ronald Roberts Jr.‘s deal with the Sixers is for four years at the minimum salary, including a team option for the final year. This season is partially guaranteed at $35K.
- Chris Crawford‘s two-year contract with the Cavs is indeed for the minimum, with a partial guarantee of $20K this year, and a fully non-guaranteed 2015/16.
- Jerome Jordan‘s camp deal with the Nets is for the minimum, as expected. The one-year agreement will become partially guaranteed at $150K if he remains with Brooklyn through October 25.
- Dionte Christmas, Vernon Macklin, and Kevin Jones have identical one-year deals with the Pelicans, each of which are non-guaranteed.
76ers Sign JaKarr Sampson
SEPTEMBER 29TH: The team acknowledged the signing, including Sampson on the preseason roster it sent via press release.
SEPTEMBER 15TH: While no announcement has been made by the Sixers, a league source tells Keith Pompey of The Philadelphia Inquirer that Sampson has signed the contract.
SEPTEMBER 14TH, 9:47pm: The deal also includes a fourth-year option, according to Adam Zagoria of SNY (on Twitter).
9:30pm: It’s a three-year deal, according to David Aldridge of NBA.com (on Twitter).
8:35pm: The 76ers are set to sign JaKarr Sampson, his agent tells Stefan Bondy of the New York Post (on Twitter). It’s a partially guaranteed deal for the former St. John’s notable.
Sampson opted to enter the 2014 draft after his sophomore year and it took some by surprise since he didn’t have a great deal of draft buzz at that point. Former Red Storm star Maurice Harkless went into the draft as an underclassman and was taken with the No. 15 overall pick, but he had much more attention than Sampson did. In any case, Sampson now has his chance with the Sixers.
Sampson worked out for the Celtics, Mavs, Clippers, Kings, Grizzlies, Bucks, and Suns in the weeks leading up to the draft.
Eastern Rumors: James, Chalmers, Nets, Bosh
The Wizards struck a deal with one wing player for training camp, as Xavier Silas has agreed to spend the preseason with Washington for the second year in a row, and the team is nearing a deal with Damion James, another wingman, as Jorge Castillo of The Washington Post confirms, echoing the report we passed along earlier today from J. Michael of CSNWashington.com. Here’s more from the East:
- Heat GM Andy Elisburg called Mario Chalmers before he re-signed with the team this summer to assure him that he was still in their plans and that they just needed to see what LeBron James would decide before circling back to them, as Bleacher Report’s Ethan Skolnick writes. Before that, Chalmers had been full of doubt about his free agency, as he tells Skolnick. “I didn’t think I’d be back,” Chalmers said. “I didn’t think that at all. I didn’t even think the Heat would want me back, to be honest. That’s how I felt like my playoff performance was, that they didn’t want me back, they wanted to go another direction. So that was in my mind, too, but I was, like, if it happens, it happens.”
- Deron Williams told reporters including Stefan Bondy of the New York Daily News that he hasn’t spoken with Jason Kidd since the former Nets coach left Brooklyn for Milwaukee. “I think it surprised everybody,” Williams said. “I don’t think anybody saw that coming. It was out of nowhere. I don’t even know enough about the situation. I’ve heard a lot of things, as you guys probably have, so I don’t know exactly what happened, but we’re excited about Lionel Hollins being our next coach and we wish J-Kidd the best of luck in Milwaukee, but we’re excited about Lionel.”
- Hollins told reporters including Tim Bontemps of the New York Post that Kevin Garnett will be the Nets‘ starting power forward this season (Twitter link). All indications have been that the veteran big will play this season, and this should put to bed rumblings of an early retirement for good. The coach said that retirement hasn’t even been a point of discussion with Garnett, tweets Bondy.
- In a mailbag answer, Ira Winderman of the Sun Sentinel suggests that the Heat will have overpaid for Chris Bosh if he doesn’t return to the player he was in Toronto. Miami inked Bosh to the second-biggest contract of the summer once LeBron decided to head back to Cleveland.
Chuck Myron contributed to this post.
Latest On Klay Thompson
Sam Amick of USA Today interviewed many of the key decision makers in Golden State regarding Klay Thompson‘s extension negotiations, including the shooting guard himself. Thompson’s agent Bill Duffy, who is reportedly seeking the max for the fourth-year sharpshooter, tells Amick that the reason he’s demanding so much for his client in extension talks with the Warriors is that he views Thompson as the best shooting guard in the league.
“I don’t want Kobe Bryant to go crazy, but there’s some uncertainty as to who he is right now [due to injury]” Duffy said. “But I think Klay Thompson right now is the top two-way, two-guard in basketball. I think when you look at his body of work, when you look at what he accomplished guarding point guards on a regular basis [last season], I think it’s pretty clear.”
Warriors owner Joe Lacob declined to get into specifics about Thompson’s potential rookie scale extension, but reiterated the team’s commitment to locking him up long-term. Golden State reportedly budgeted with Thompson’s future in mind, convincing Andrew Bogut to take less in his extension, and Lacob says that the move that first brought Bogut aboard and sent away guard Monta Ellis was made to accommodate Thompson as well.
“We traded an excellent guard freeing up a starting spot for him,” said Lacob. “As is known, despite many requests from other teams over the last few years, we have continued to bet on his continued development. We are very proud that he is a Warrior and also of his major contribution on this year’s USA Basketball team. We are looking forward to a great year for Klay, the Splash Brothers and the Warriors.”
For his part, Thompson tells the USA Today scribe that the trade speculation involving him and Kevin Love earlier in the summer didn’t upset him, and that he has no interest in exploring opportunities elsewhere as a restricted free agent next summer. Thompson believes that the Warriors are capable of competing for a championship.
“I wasn’t really [angry],” Thompson said, countering rumors of his displeasure. “I was more just worried about being traded, just because I’m so comfortable in the Bay. I think that’s natural for anybody [to not want to] just get up and move. I mean it wouldn’t have been the end of the world, but it’s a business, and I’m still playing ball for a living. I was more happy when they showed faith in me that they didn’t want to budge and trade me for a guy [in Love] who’s a multiple all-NBA guy and a proven All-Star. I thought that was really cool that the Warriors believed in my potential…Me and Steph [Curry] have another year together, and we’ve got a proven big man, all-NBA defender [in Bogut]. I really believe we can be a championship team.”
Amick surmises that Golden State’s unwillingness to deal Thompson for Love, along with his strong play in the regular season and for Team USA, has shifted all the leverage to his side of the negotiating table.
Multiple Teams Interested In Ryan Hollins
Free agent Ryan Hollins has had contract talks with the Lakers, Kings, Bulls, and Spurs as a potential signing, the center told SiriusXM NBA Radio (transcription via Eric Pincus of the Los Angeles Times). The seven-footer has also been in talks with the Heat, the only team previously linked to his services this summer.
Aside from the Kings and Spurs, each of the teams considering Hollins as an addition are limited to offering the minimum salary. It would be shocking for Sacramento to exercise their biannual exception to spend more than the minimum, however, since the team has been working to stay beneath the luxury tax line for 2014/15. Hollins’ name is among a handful of big men drawing interest from many of the same teams looking to fill out their frontcourt depth. Gustavo Ayon and Emeka Okafor are other frontcourt pieces generating interest from overlapping teams, but an overseas commitment and injury concerns make the paths for both to land on an NBA team more complicated than that of Hollins, respectively.
It’s unclear if Hollins is close to reaching an agreement for guaranteed money, or if he’s facing the prospect of competing through training camp on a non-guaranteed or partially guaranteed contract. While unspectacular, Hollins is a proven commodity, playing a very specific and useful role, as Chuck Myron detailed in our Free Agent Stock Watch article on the veteran center. The Stealth Sports client has career averages of 3.8 PPG and 2.2 RPG.
Extension Candidate: Kemba Walker
Kemba Walker rode quite a wave into the NBA three years ago, having been a consensus first-team All-American at Connecticut, which he led to the national championship as a senior. Charlotte spent its lottery pick on him, trusting that he could meet or exceed the expectations incumbent upon a ninth overall selection. The circumstances surrounding Walker quickly darkened, as he spent his rookie season in and out of the starting lineup for a Bobcats team that compiled the worst winning percentage in NBA history. Al Jefferson and coach Steve Clifford, deservedly, receive much of the credit for having turned the franchise around upon their arrival last year, leaving Walker a secondary figure of sorts as the October 31st deadline for an extension to his rookie scale contract looms. Still, Walker’s game has grown over his time in the league, and while he hasn’t become a star, GM Rich Cho must decide soon if the 24-year-old has shown enough to prove that he has what it takes to be the starting point guard on a championship-level team.
Charlotte’s addition of Lance Stephenson and an Eastern Conference that’s wide open beyond the Cavs and Bulls puts Walker in line to play in the sort of high-leverage games this year that would help the newly rechristened Hornets test his meddle. That won’t help Cho and his staff as they ponder an extension, given the early deadline, and while it ostensibly would give them reason to hesitate, since a golden opportunity for evaluation awaits in the months ahead, the Hornets won’t be the only team watching the Jeff Schwartz client. Allowing Walker to hit restricted free agency next summer would invite bidders to drive up the price to retain him if he puts up strong numbers and helps lead the Hornets deep into the playoffs. The Hornets are well aware of how the process works, having signed Gordon Hayward to a maximum-salary offer sheet this summer that forced the Jazz, who exercised their right to match, to pay him more than they’d offered during extension talks last year.
Walker’s most significant leap to date came in between his first and second seasons, when he grabbed the full-time starting role and set career highs virtually across the board. A few of those numbers stagnated or declined this past season even as Walker saw more minutes per game, as his scoring average held steady at 17.7 points per contest while his shooting percentage dropped from 42.3% to 39.3%. The 6’1″ Bronx native took three-pointers a bit more often and slightly improved his accuracy, from 32.2% to 33.3%, but what seemed to drive down his field goal percentage the most was an increase in his frequency of long two-point attempts and a decrease of his shots at the rim. He more frequently shot from 16 feet and out than he did from three feet and in, according to his Basketball-Reference page, after the inverse was true during his second season in the league.
Ball-distribution is the No. 1 assignment for many, if not most, point guards, and the data suggests Walker has shown consistent improvement in that part of the game. He dished out 6.1 assists against 2.3 turnovers per game last season, the best ratio of his career. His per-36-minute numbers in assists and turnovers were also the best he’s recorded to date. Still, those gains weren’t enough to offset his poor shot selection, as his PER declined from 18.8 in 2012/13 to 16.8 this past year.
Walker was fifth in the league with 2.0 steals per game in 2012/13, but last season saw that number cut nearly in half, to 1.2. The team seemed to benefit from his more conservative approach. The then-Bobcats gave up just 99.1 points per 100 possessions with Walker on the floor compared to 105.1 when he sat last season, according to NBA.com. The gap wasn’t nearly as profound the year before, when Walker’s lineups gave up 108.2 points per 100 possessions compared to the 110.7 points per 100 possessions the Cats surrendered without him. Charlotte was statistically better defensively with Walker on the floor even when he was a rookie, though his teammates weren’t exactly world-beaters.
John Wall was the only point guard to receive a rookie-scale extension last year, and Walker isn’t in his max-salary neighborhood. Three point guards received rookie-scale extensions the year before, with Ty Lawson and Jrue Holiday the closest comparisons. Walker’s ball-handling numbers closely mirror what Lawson put up the season before he signed his four-year, $48MM extension, and they exceed what Holiday put up right before his four-year, $41MM extension, even though Walker lags behind both Lawson and Holiday as a shooter. Neither deal comes off as a bargain for their respective teams two years later, but they aren’t especially player-friendly contracts, either.
The Hornets would probably be pleased to come away with an extension that committed them to Walker for four years and $40MM, as I predicted earlier in the offseason that they would. Schwartz would rightly hesitate to let his client go for such a number and instead target one in the $41-48MM range that Holiday and Lawson established. We’ll soon see just how high the Hornets are willing to go to keep their positive momentum of the past two offseasons rolling.
And-Ones: World Cup, Ayon, Budenholzer, Hill
Support is growing stronger to make both the Olympics and the World Cup of Basketball solely for players age 22 and under, one NBA GM tells Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports, who bemoans an existing system that he believes to primarily benefit Mike Krzyzewski. The change would take effect for 2018 World Cup, Wojnarowski writes. SB Nation’s Tom Ziller argues that while the NBA could work with FIBA to implement an age limit, FIBA has shown hesitancy to cooperate, and that the players union would have a case that any league-imposed restriction should be collectively bargained. Nonetheless, it seems there’s a decent chance that even without so many A-level stars, this year’s World Cup champion Team USA squad will be significantly more talented than the next American entry into the competition. Here’s more from around the NBA:
- Shandong of China has jumped into the race for Gustavo Ayon as his European rights remain up in the air, tweets Shams Charania of RealGM. The Spurs are reportedly still in the mix, with Ayon needing to come up with $376K to pay FC Barcelona, which holds his European rights, if he’s to put pen to paper on a deal with Spanish rival Real Madrid.
- Mike Budenholzer has never held an NBA front-office job, but he played as much of a role in talent acquisition for the Spurs as anyone outside of Gregg Popovich and R.C. Buford during his time in San Antonio, writes TNT’s David Aldridge amid his Morning Tip column for NBA.com. Budenholzer is in charge of player personnel for the Hawks while GM Danny Ferry is on indefinite leave.
- A group that included Grant Hill as well as billionaires Tony Ressler and Bruce Karsh made a strong impression on the league when they put up a $1.2 billion bid to purchase the Clippers this spring, Aldridge writes in the same piece. The TNT scribe speculates that they could resurface as contenders for the Hawks.