And-Ones: Brazil, Shorter Games, Hawks, Nets
The NBA has struck a deal to partner with Brazil’s Liga Nacional de Basquete, the top domestic league in that country, Grantland’s Zach Lowe reports. The arrangement will likely give the NBA an ownership stake in the league and will allow for the exchange of ideas on marketing, player development and other best practices, according to Lowe. Many NBA league office types would like to see the pro game played with one universal set of rules around the globe, a sentiment that some others around international basketball share, Lowe notes, so the Brazilian deal could be a step in that direction. There’s more from Lowe amid our look at the latest around the league:
- There’s “nearly unanimous” opposition to the idea of reducing the length of games to 44 minutes, as Lowe writes in the same piece, laying out a handful of reasons why many around the league are against the idea that the NBA experimented with earlier this month. Still, Lowe believes there’s a decent chance the idea resurfaces at some point.
- Sources tell Daniel Kaplan of SportsBusiness Journal that they expect the Hawks to sell for at least $750MM and perhaps close to $1 billion. Presumably, those figures pertain to 100% of the franchise, and it’s still uncertain just how much of the Hawks will end up on the block.
- Evercore Partners, with Bruce Ratner at the controls, is once more shopping its 20% share of the Nets after tabling that pursuit earlier, Kaplan adds.
- Warriors camp invitee Aaron Craft will play for the team’s D-League affiliate, his agent tells Bob Baptist of The Columbus Dispatch (Twitter link). That signals that Golden State made him one of the four preseason cuts it can reserve for its affiliate, since Craft would otherwise have to go through the D-League draft.
- Kim English, whom the Bulls waived earlier this month, has a deal with SLUC Nancy, a French team, sources tell Sportando’s Emiliano Carchia.
Nuggets Waive Miller, Benimon, Williams
12:53pm: The Nuggets have officially waived Miller, the team announced.
MONDAY, 12:40pm: Miller’s release no longer appears on the RealGM transactions log, and the team has been looking to find a taker for him via trade, tweets Chris Dempsey of The Denver Post. However, the Nuggets haven’t found any trade partners and are set to release Miller in advance of today’s 4:00pm Central deadline for teams to submit their opening-night rosters.
WEDNESDAY, 1:52pm: The Nuggets have waived Miller, according to the RealGM transactions log, though the team has yet to make an official announcement about him.
1:10pm: Denver has officially released Benimon and Williams, the team announced, though Miller remains with the team for now, according to Dempsey, who indicates that the Nuggets are thinking of keeping him right up until they have to let him go to make Monday’s opening-night roster deadline (Twitter links).
8:28am: The Nuggets are waiving Quincy Miller, reports Shams Charania of RealGM (Twitter link), and the team will also release Marcus Williams and Jerrelle Benimon, according to Chris Dempsey of The Denver Post. The moves will drop the Nuggets to the 15-player regular season maximum and allow the team to keep Alonzo Gee and his non-guaranteed contract for opening night, Dempsey points out. They also signal that Erick Green will remain with the team into the regular season in spite of only $50K in guaranteed salary. Dempsey indicates that the Nuggets have already placed Miller on waivers, though the team has made no official announcement.
The Nuggets part ways with Miller in spite of his $150K partial guarantee, one that would have escalated to cover his entire minimum salary had he made it to opening night. The team drafted him 38th overall in 2012, but he struggled to recover from tearing his left ACL as a high school senior, when he was the fifth-best prospect in the country, according to the Recruiting Services Consensus Index. He averaged 4.9 points and 2.8 rebounds in 15.2 minutes per game last season, the first in which he felt fully healthy since the injury, Dempsey notes, but that wasn’t enough to save his spot on the roster for this year.
The Nuggets also owe a $35K partial guarantee to Benimon, who joined the team after going undrafted in June and appearing in summer league with Denver as well as the Heat. Williams, a forward from the University of Arizona not to be confused with the point guard by the same name, signed a non-guaranteed contract with Denver in an effort to make it back to the NBA for his first regular season action since the 2008/09 season.
Gee’s defense helped fuel the Nuggets decision-making, and he had four steals in Tuesday’s preseason game, as Dempsey points out. He earned a measure of stability after a summer that saw him go from the Cavs to the Pelicans to the Rockets to the Kings in a series of trades before Sacramento waived him, freeing the Nuggets to ink the 27-year-old small forward. Green, the 46th overall pick in 2013, signed with the Nuggets this year after playing last season with Montepaschi Siena of Italy.
Sixers Sign Malcolm Thomas
MONDAY: 12:10pm: The deal is official, the team announced via press release.
SATURDAY, 9:25pm: The Sixers have agreed to a deal with free agent Malcolm Thomas, reports Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports. While many signees this late in the preseason have been quickly waived as means of teams securing D-League rights to players that won’t make the regular season NBA roster, Wojnarowski writes that Thomas is assured of a spot on Philadelphia’s opening-night roster.
The terms of the deal are unclear at this time, but I would speculate that it is likely for the minimum and possibly non-guaranteed. Thomas spent time last year with both the Spurs and Jazz, appearing in a total of eight games and slightly upping his 5.9 MPG average for his three-year career. His non-guaranteed deal was shipped to the Cavs, then the Celtics, this summer before Boston waived it.
The move will bump the Sixers’ roster count up to 18, three more than the maximum they can keep for the regular season. The team waived three partially guaranteed contracts earlier today, and have at least seven deals without guaranteed money, not including Thomas’ contract.
New York Rumors: Shumpert, Nets, Carmelo
A report from Marc Stein of ESPN.com 10 days ago indicated that the Knicks and Iman Shumpert were in active extension negotiations, but Ian Begley of ESPNNewYork.com continues to hear that the sides haven’t engaged in any talks, echoing his dispatch from a month ago. The Knicks upset Shumpert when they made him a frequent subject of trade talk last season, Begley writes, and a source close to the swingman tells Begley that Shumpert is in no mood to give New York a hometown discount should he hit restricted free agency next summer. Here’s more from around the Big Apple:
- Nets GM Billy King confirmed the team will keep Jorge Gutierrez and Jerome Jordan along with the team’s 12 fully guaranteed contracts for opening night, tweets Andy Vasquez of The Record. Presumably, that means Cory Jefferson will stick around on his partially guaranteed deal, too.
- Carmelo Anthony did his part to refute a report that indicated that marquee free agents don’t want to play with Kobe Bryant, telling reporters that he’d “love” to play with the Lakers legend, as Ramona Shelburne and Ohm Youngmisuk of ESPN.com note. Anthony also said that Bryant tried to recruit him to the Lakers this summer, but the Knicks forward can’t hit free agency again until 2018, and Bryant’s under contract through the summer of 2016.
- Lionel Hollins said he never got to know Grizzlies owner Robert Pera before the team let Hollins go in 2013, as he tells Stefan Bondy of the New York Daily News. The new Nets coach added that timing played a key role in his decision to take the Brooklyn job this summer while the Lakers still had a vacancy. “I felt either one of those jobs would be fine,” Hollins says. “The Lakers still had Kobe and they could change the team at a moment’s notice because they only had three players under contract. So I thought that wasn’t a bad situation and I thought this was a good situation so when it came about, it was one that I was happy and I wasn’t going to wait on the Lakers when I had a job in hand.”
Rockets Waive Jeff Adrien, Ish Smith
The Rockets have waived Jeff Adrien and Ish Smith, the team announced via press release. Shams Charania of RealGM reported overnight that the team would do so with Adrien (Twitter link), adding that Houston was considering Smith or Francisco Garcia for the final cut necessary to take the team’s roster down to the regular season limit of 15. That appears to put rookie Tarik Black on the opening-night roster, as Charania noted, in spite of the lack of a full guarantee on his contract. Adrien and Smith both signed fully guaranteed one-year contracts for the minimum salary with Houston this summer, and the team will be on the hook for them providing they clear waivers.
Smith had held the lead earlier this preseason on fellow point guard Isaiah Canaan, who remains on the roster, but Canaan made a strong push in the past two weeks and the Rockets always felt he had higher long-term potential, tweets Jonathan Feigen of the Houston Chronicle. Smith has bounced around to six teams in his four NBA seasons, spending last year with the Suns, where he averaged a career-high 14.4 minutes per game.
Adrien is another journeyman coming off perhaps his finest season, one in which he averaged 10.9 points and 7.8 rebounds in 25.2 mintues per game over 28 appearances with the Bucks after they brought him to Milwaukee in a deadline-day trade with Charlotte. It wouldn’t be surprising to see a team claim the power forward off waivers, though that’s just my speculation.
The moves leave the Rockets with 13 fully guaranteed deals plus Black and the non-guaranteed contract of Patrick Beverley. Charania indicated that Black’s contract would be partially guaranteed when he agreed to his deal, though Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders lists the pact as non-guaranteed.
Rockets Waive Robert Covington
MONDAY, 9:44am: Houston has officially released Covington, the team announced via press release.
SUNDAY, 5:31pm: The Rockets have waived Robert Covington, as is reflected by the RealGM transactions log. There has been no formal announcement by the team yet, but this news doesn’t come as a surprise. Covington has reportedly been away from the team for the last two weeks weighing some guaranteed offers to play in Europe.
Waiving Covington will cost Houston $150K, which was the amount of his partial guarantee. The Rockets still have some trimming to do on their preseason roster which stands at 17 after Covington’s departure. The team will have until tomorrow afternoon to whittle down their numbers to the regular season maximum of 15.
Covington spent much of last season with Houston’s D-League affiliate despite being on the team’s NBA roster the entire year. He earned himself a trip to the D-League’s All-Star game by averaging 23.2 PPG and 9.2 RPG in 34.1 minutes per game in 42 D-League appearances.
Rockets Waive Earl Clark, Akeem Richmond
MONDAY, 9:43am: The moves are official, the team announced via press release.
SATURDAY, 7:24pm: Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders tweets that the Rockets have waived Earl Clark and Akeem Richmond, shortly after claiming and signing each, respectively, to their preseason roster.
The moves aren’t surprising, as the team is looking to reduce the size of its roster, which includes 15 guaranteed contracts and starting point guard Patrick Beverley on a non-guaranteed pact. Clark’s contract was non-guaranteed and won’t hit the Rockets cap sheet. It is unknown if Richmond’s deal contained any guarantees, although I would speculate that it would have been a partially guaranteed contract at best.
Clark has slipped considerably as an NBA commodity, in danger of falling out of the league after signing an $8.5MM deal just last year. Richmond wasn’t selected in the 2014 NBA Draft after declaring following his sophomore season at East Carolina. Houston will retain the D-League rights to both, provided they clear waivers. The maneuvers were most likely made with that end in mind, although that is also just speculation on my part.
Kawhi Leonard Pushing For Max Extension
There’s been no progress as agent Brian Elfus and the Spurs have spoken several times over the past few weeks about a rookie scale extension for Kawhi Leonard, who’s seeking the maximum salary, reports Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports. Several league executives tell Wojnarowski that the reigning Finals MVP is in line to receive offer sheets for the max should he hit restricted free agency next summer. The Spurs would almost certainly match in that case, according to Wojnarowski, but it appears the team is reluctant to commit itself to the max before Friday’s deadline for an extension.
It’s not quite clear exactly how much a maximum-salary extension would entail, since the max won’t be known until the NBA sets its salary cap for 2015/16 next July. A five-year max extension would be worth about $85MM based on this year’s figures, which would yield a $66MM max over four years if the Spurs elected not to make Leonard their Designated Player. The league nonetheless projects the cap will rise from $63.065MM this year to $66.5MM for next year, though at least one report has suggested that $66.5MM is a low-end estimate.
The cap will assuredly rise even farther beginning in 2016, when the league’s new TV deal kicks in, and should Leonard hit free agency, that dynamic might drive him to sign an offer sheet similar to the one Chandler Parsons took from the Mavericks. Parsons’ player-friendly deal allows him to become a free agent after two years, and if Leonard signed an offer sheet with the same structure, he could become an unrestricted free agent in 2017, as Wojnarowski points out. That would be after the TV money pushes the cap and the maximum salaries much higher. However, an offer sheet could only contain raises of 4.5%, lower than the 7.5% raises the Spurs are allowed to give.
Leonard expressed confidence in reaching an extension with the Spurs soon after they won the championship this year, and Gregg Popovich has spoken of the 23-year-old Leonard as the next preeminent star of the team. I predicted over the summer that Leonard would be cognizant of the fact that he’s only once scored at least 20 points three games in a row and willing to make financial concessions as so many of his Spurs teammates have. However, it appears he’s not on board with accepting the discounted rate of $50MM over four years that I pegged when I examined his extension candidacy. It’s unclear if the Spurs are pushing for an extension in that range, and they would have plenty of room for the max if they want to go there, since they have only $34.2MM in commitments for 2015/16.
Cavs, Anderson Varejao Discuss Extension
The Cavs are engaged in “serious” talks about an extension with Anderson Varejao, one of the few veterans eligible for one, reports Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports. There’s mutual interest, and the conversations between the team and the Dan Fegan client have taken place over the past few weeks, though the sides aren’t on the verge of a deal yet, Wojnarowski writes. There’s no deadline looming at the end of the week as there is with rookie scale extension candidates like fellow Cav Tristan Thompson. Varejao and the Cavs have until June 30th to reach a deal on an extension before the Brazilian big man’s contract expires.
The Varejao talks are cast against the backdrop of the deadline regarding Thompson, and there are conflicting reports about whether Thompson and the Cavs are in talks. There is discussion and the Cavs hope to get a deal done, according to Sam Amico of Fox Sports Ohio, but Chris Haynes of Northeast Ohio Media Group wrote this weekend that he heard there had been “zero discussion” about an extension for Thompson. Marc Stein of ESPN.com wrote 10 days ago that the Cavs and Thompson were in active negotiations. Varejao beat out Thompson for the a job in the starting lineup for opening night.
The 32-year-old Varejao said recently that he wants to finish his career with the Cavs, and, as Wojnarowski notes, he remains close with LeBron James, with whom he’d been teammates for six years before James bolted for Miami. Those close to Varejao told him when the Cavs were a losing team that he should push for a trade, and the Lakers had interest in a deal that would have taken him to L.A. in exchange for Pau Gasol last year, but Varejao has said he never wavered on his commitment to the Cavs.
The 11th-year veteran nonetheless has financial incentive to wait until he hits free agency to sign a new deal with Cleveland. He can only make 107.5% of this year’s nearly $9.705MM salary in the first season of an extension with the Cavs, with 7.5% raises in subsequent years, and such a deal could only run through 2017/18. He could sign a five-year contract for up to roughly 35% of the salary cap if he became a free agent, though it’s unlikely that he’d command quite so much in salary, and the Cavs would probably have reservations about a deal that long for a player his age. Conversely, Varejao’s salary is only guaranteed for $4MM this year, but Cleveland is highly unlikely to waive him and pocket those savings, short of another in an already long line of injuries to the 30th overall pick from 2004.
And-Ones: Gasol, Tyler, Crawford, Griffin
Grizzlies big man Marc Gasol still won’t open up about his impending free agency, as Ronald Tillery of The Commercial Appeal writes in a subscription-only piece. “That’s so far down the line that it’s not on my mind. I just want to do my job every day,” Gasol said. “You never know what might happen in seven or eight months. The franchise might go in a different direction. We’re going to see how we all feel in July. All of the talk now won’t change that fact.” Tillery also mentions the Knicks as a possible suitor for Gasol if he hits free agency, pointing to Phil Jackson’s belief that Gasol would be a perfect fit in the triangle offense.
Here’s more from around the league:
- The contract Jeremy Tyler signed with Shanxi of the Chinese Basketball Association is fully guaranteed, tweets Emiliano Carchia of Sportando. Tyler, who was released from the Lakers per his request to sign with Shanxi, will have a chance to catch on with an NBA team in March when the CBA playoffs come to a close.
- Guard Jordan Crawford has yet to take off in the NBA and he’s now looking to make his mark in China, writes David Pick for Basketball Insiders. “During the offseason I didn’t think I’d sign in China. I thought I would get a good deal in the NBA, but I was overlooked,” Crawford said. “I knew some players who came over here from the NBA. I work out with Bobby Brown and Pooh Jeter all the time, so I learned a lot from them. One thing I heard were stories of Stephon Marbury and his success in China.”
- After the Thunder parted ways with James Harden over their refusal to give him the max salary, Moke Hamilton of Basketball Insiders wonders what they’re thinking when it comes to Reggie Jackson. Oklahoma CIty has until October 31st to work out an extension with the talented young guard, and Hamilton opines that a team playing for a title can’t afford to allow its young talent to walk out the door.
- Free agent Eric Griffin, recently waived by the Mavs, has agreed to a deal with the Texas Legends of The NBA D-League, Shams Charania of RealGM reports (Twitter link).
Zach Links and Chris Crouse contributed to this post.