Clippers Sign Nate Robinson To Second 10-Day
TUESDAY, 2:33pm: The deal is official, the Clippers announced via press release (hat tip to Dan Woike of the Orange County Register).
MONDAY, 3:35pm: The Clippers will sign Nate Robinson to a second 10-day contract, reports Arash Markazi of ESPNLosAngeles.com (Twitter link). Coach/executive Doc Rivers said earlier to reporters, including Markazi, that the move was likely (Twitter link), but Markazi hears that the signing will indeed take place because of an injury to Jamal Crawford that will keep him out at least 10 more days. Robinson’s first 10-day deal expires after tonight. Rivers also reiterated that he plans to sign Jordan Hamilton to a deal that covers the rest of the season, Markazi notes, so put together, the moves would give the team a full 15-man roster.
Robinson has averaged 4.0 points in 14.6 minutes per game in five appearances for the Clippers on his initial 10-day deal. It seemed the guard’s arrival on the roster would come much sooner, as the team was reportedly the front-runner for him in mid-January, shortly after he bought his way off the Celtics, but Rivers and company decided to pursue other options before circling back to the 30-year-old. The Bulls and Robinson engaged in exploratory talks following Derrick Rose‘s injury, but the discussion didn’t appear to progress any further.
The 10th-year veteran is set to become the only Clipper without a deal that carries at least through season’s end if he and Hamilton sign this week. Rivers had earlier spoken of a desire to pursue the post-deadline buyout market, but Robinson is the lone player to have engineered a buyout this season before joining the Clippers.
Potential 2018 Free Agents Facing Cap Drop
The salary cap is likely to surge for the 2016/17 season, and teams and players anticipate another leap for 2017/18 that would take it above $100MM, as TNT’s David Aldridge wrote this week. However, the NBA and the players union reportedly acknowledge that it’s possible that the second jump is only temporary, and that the cap will return to its 2016/17 level for 2018/19. That would still represent quite a surge from this year’s $63.065MM cap, but with estimates ranging from about $85-90MM for 2015/16, that would be quite a comedown from $100MM-plus.
That’s a potential “recipe for disaster” for players set to hit free agency in 2018, as Aldridge put it. Already, there are 47 such players who can elect free agency no sooner than that summer, as long as their teams don’t cut them loose beforehand. The majority of them are first-round picks from last year signed to rookie scale contracts that would have the players in restricted free agency come July 2018. So, Andrew Wiggins and company could find a free agent market not only mined out from two years of dramatic leaps in the salary cap but further compressed by a suddenly more conservative cap. That’s also true for the 20 who are set for unrestricted free agency that summer, a group that includes James Harden, DeMarcus Cousins and Derrick Favors. Also among those 20 is Carmelo Anthony, who has an early termination option for 2018/19 that he might be more inclined to take in the hopes that the cap recovers for 2019/20. Paul George, who has a player option for 2018/19, is in the same position.
Here’s the complete list of players set for free agency in 2018, when the cap could shrink. Those with an (R) by their names are in line to become restricted free agents.
- Jordan Adams, Grizzlies (R)
- Furkan Aldemir, Sixers
- Kyle Anderson, Spurs (R)
- Carmelo Anthony, Knicks – $27.928MM early termination option
- Trevor Ariza, Rockets
- Avery Bradley, Celtics
- Bruno Caboclo, Raptors (R)
- Clint Capela, Rockets (R)
- DeMarcus Cousins, Kings
- Robert Covington, Sixers
- Boris Diaw, Spurs
- Joel Embiid, Sixers (R)
- Tyler Ennis, Bucks (R)
- Dante Exum, Jazz (R)
- Derrick Favors, Jazz
- Channing Frye, Magic
- Paul George, Pacers – $20.703MM player option
- Aaron Gordon, Magic (R)
- Jerami Grant, Sixers
- P.J. Hairston, Hornets (R)
- James Harden, Rockets
- Devin Harris, Mavericks
- Gary Harris, Nuggets (R)
- Rodney Hood, Jazz (R)
- Grant Jerrett, Jazz
- Zach LaVine, Timberwolves (R)
- Doug McDermott, Bulls (R)
- Mitch McGary, Thunder (R)
- Shabazz Napier, Heat (R)
- Lucas Nogueira, Raptors (R)
- Jusuf Nurkic, Nuggets (R)
- Jabari Parker, Bucks (R)
- Tony Parker, Spurs
- Adreian Payne, Timberwolves (R)
- Elfrid Payton, Magic (R)
- Quincy Pondexter, Pelicans
- Julius Randle, Lakers (R)
- JaKarr Sampson, Sixers
- Marcus Smart, Celtics (R)
- Nik Stauskas, Kings
- Isaiah Thomas, Celtics
- James Young, Celtics (R)
- Anderson Varejao, Cavaliers
- Noah Vonleh, Hornets (R)
- T.J. Warren, Suns (R)
- Andrew Wiggins, Timberwolves (R)
- C.J. Wilcox, Clippers (R)
Nine others have player or early termination options for 2017/18 that they would seemingly be more likely to opt into if it appears by mid-2017 that there will indeed be a receding cap for 2018/19. The respective values of their options are listed by their names below, rounded to the nearest $1K:
- Rudy Gay, Kings – $14.264MM
- Blake Griffin, Clippers – $21.374MM
- Spencer Hawes, Clippers – $6.021MM
- Gordon Hayward, Jazz – $16.737MM
- Kyle Lowry, Raptors – $12MM
- Josh McRoberts, Heat – $6.021MM
- C.J. Miles, Pacers – $4.773MM
- Chris Paul, Clippers – $24.269MM
- Nick Young, Lakers – $5.669MM
Of course, all of this hinges on negotiations for the next collective bargaining agreement that are expected to take place after the 2016/17 season, when the league and the union have a mutual option on the existing agreement. The union, faced with the possibility of a cap that could plummet and surge from year to year, might be more willing at that point to consent to cap smoothing. The league might agree to keep the salary cap from dipping too low if the players are willing to make other concessions. In any case, there’s uncertainty for the players listed above, even if the potential consequences are a few years off.
The Basketball Insiders salary pages were used in the creation of this post.
Latest On Clippers, Jordan Hamilton
TUESDAY, 12:44pm: Hamilton’s ankle is better than expected, a source told Broderick Turner of the Los Angeles Times (Twitter link).
7:49pm: Bolch further clarifies his previous update, explaining that the Clippers may in fact re-sign Hamilton if his ankle injury doesn’t prove to be too severe. Los Angeles will be keeping a close eye on him and will explore other options if his recovery is expected to take too long (Twitter links).
MONDAY, 7:34pm: The Clippers are reversing course on their plan to re-sign Hamilton for the remainder of the season, reports Ben Bolch of the Los Angeles Times (via Twitter). It’s possible that the decision is result of the team’s apparent interest in Eric Griffin.
SUNDAY, 6:14pm: Clippers coach Doc Rivers told reporters that he plans on keeping guard Jordan Hamilton for the remainder of the season, according to Arash Markazi of ESPNLosAngeles.com (on Twitter) . Hamilton’s second (and final allowable) 10-day contract is set to expire at night’s end.
Hamilton was forced to leave Sunday’s game against the Rockets with a sprained right ankle, but Rivers said that injury won’t affect the team’s decision to retain him the rest of the way. Hamilton, 24, has averaged 3.4 PPG and 1.3 RPG in 9.3 minutes per contest for the Clippers during his late season run.
The former No. 26 overall pick, who’s spent most of his NBA career with the Nuggets, has bounced around quite a bit this season. After some quick stints with the Jazz and Raptors, he initially landed with the affiliate of the Grizzlies after signing with the D-League, but that club traded him to the Kings affiliate in December. His numbers were more impressive since the swap that sent him to the up-tempo Reno Bighorns, as he averaged 18.1 points and 7.6 rebounds in 28.6 minutes per game.
Rival Execs Unsure Cavs Want Love On Max Deal
Kevin Love silenced many rumors when he said in January that he plans to opt in for next season with the Cavs, but rival executives have begun to question whether Cleveland would want to re-sign Love for the maximum salary if he were to opt out, according to Chris Broussard of ESPN (video link). Many executives think Love will leave the Cavs, perhaps to sign with the Lakers, Broussard also says, reiterating earlier reports that the power forward has denied amid continued insistence that he’d like to stay in Cleveland. The Cavs haven’t given any indication that their desire for Love has waned, Broussard cautioned.
Love has missed the last two games because of a minor back ailment, and when he has played, he’s often sat out during fourth quarters. He hinted of frustration earlier this month with a role that has him acting as more of a spot-up shooter than in the past, though he’s mostly remained upbeat even amid a downturn in his scoring and rebounding averages and shot attempts per game. The Cavs have taken off despite the failure of Love to once again become the dynamic force he had been in years past with the Timberwolves, with Cleveland having gone 24-6 over its last 30 games to climb comfortably into second place in the Eastern Conference.
The 26-year-old has a player option worth $16.744MM for next season, but he’d likely be in line for a higher salary on a maximum-salary contract if he were to opt out and if a team were to make such an offer. The Cavs have plenty of other concerns this offseason, when all but five of their players can hit free agency, making it a distinct possibility that the team will have to pay the luxury tax next season if it returns largely intact.
The Celtics are reportedly among the teams planning a run at Love if he opts out, and he’d reportedly be willing to at least take a meeting with the Lakers if he becomes a free agent. In spite of his insistence that he wants a long-term future in Cleveland, the majority of Hoops Rumors readers believe he won’t remain on the Cavs next season.
Northwest Notes: Hunt, Garnett, Young
Nuggets players would endorse the removal of the interim tag from coach Melvin Hunt‘s job title, and it’s a move the organization will at least consider, GM Tim Connelly told Benjamin Hochman of The Denver Post.
“As an organization, we have all been impressed with the job Melvin has done thus far,” Connelly said. “When the season concludes, he will be one of the candidates as we begin an exhaustive search to find a head coach.”
Hunt is an impressive 6-3 in his brief tenure, and Hochman argues that while he deserves a shot, there are other candidates who merit consideration, too. Here’s more from the Northwest Division:
- The injection of 20th-year veteran Kevin Garnett into the inexperienced Timberwolves roster struck an immediate chord, Wolves coach/executive Flip Saunders told reporters, including Newsday’s Roderick Boone. “It was like three little kids looking at Santa Claus coming down the chimney,” Saunders said of the reaction some of his younger players had to meeting Garnett.
- Thaddeus Young indicated to the Wolves that he didn’t intend to pick up his player option worth about $10MM for next season, writes Jerry Zgoda of the Star Tribune. Young had reportedly requested a trade through his agent. Young, who hasn’t decided on opting in with Brooklyn, credits the Timberwolves organization for accommodating his wishes, working with his agent and keeping him in the loop, as Zgoda relays. Saunders this week expressed his affection for Young as a player, as Boone notes in his story.
- The Nuggets have begun to sit key players for rest, but Wilson Chandler, a free agent after next season, is not pleased, as Christopher Dempsey of The Denver Post relays. “It’s tough when you’re fighting together but you’re getting set up for failure,” Chandler said. The decision isn’t coming from the players or Hunt, Dempsey writes, which suggests it’s the front office’s call.
- Mike Sorensen of the Deseret News has more details on Greg Miller’s decision Monday to relinquish his role as CEO of the company that controls the Jazz, a move that team and company officials insist won’t have much effect on Jazz basketball operations.
- The Jazz have recalled Ian Clark from the D-League, the team announced. He averaged just 14.0 points in 32.0 minutes per game but nailed 45.0% of his three-point attempts on an assignment that last nearly a month.
Latest Salary Cap Projections
The expectation of a leap in the salary cap to about $90MM for the 2016/17 is well-known and has been a matter of broad discussion since the league and its TV partners closed on a $24 billion deal this past fall. But the players union and the league also anticipate another surge for 2017/18 that would likely send the cap zooming past $100MM, as TNT’s David Aldridge writes in his Morning Tip column for NBA.com. However, that second bump would be a product of artificial inflation of sorts, a ripple effect from the injection of the new TV revenue the year prior, as Aldridge details. So, there’s a chance the cap would contract from that $100MM-plus figure, setting up a decline for the 2018/19 season, according to Aldridge. The league and the union agree that such a dip is indeed possible, as USA Today’s Jeff Zillgitt and Grantland Zach Lowe report (Twitter links). That could be “a recipe for disaster” for players who become free agents in 2018, as well as for teams that signed high-dollar deals the years prior, Aldridge writes.
There’s more on the changing salary cap, as we pass along:
- The union’s final rejection of cap smoothing was no shock to the league, which had told teams to prepare for both outcomes, Aldridge notes in the same piece. Still, the league sought a gradual increase to the cap because some teams are concerned that they’ll be unable to compete for free agents in 2016 with so many opponents set up to have cap space, as Steve Kyler of Basketball Insiders writes within in NBA AM piece.
- Most executives from teams around the league estimate that the cap for next season will come in at a little more than $67MM, as Kyler reports in the same story. The league is now projecting a $67.4MM cap.
- The low-end estimates for the 2016/17 cap are between $85MM and $86MM, and the high estimates are close to $90MM, Kyler hears. A couple of team executives told Kyler that they assume that the cap will be $87MM.
Celtics Notes: Datome, Larranaga, Zeller
Celtics president of basketball operations Danny Ainge isn’t insisting on a development-focused approach from Brad Stevens, who’s instead doing what he can to help the team win now and grab a playoff berth, as Steve Bulpett of the Boston Herald details. So, soon-to-be free agent Gigi Datome has taken 2014 first-rounder James Young‘s place in the rotation, Bulpett writes. That leads right into other news from Boston, as we detail:
- Datome says he’s having a “fantastic” time as a member of the Celtics, who’ve given him the sort of playing time he never saw with the Pistons, observes Mark Murphy of the Boston Herald. Datome is set for restricted free agency this summer.
- Celtics assistant coach Jay Larranaga wouldn’t leave the Celtics for a college job, but he’ll consider interviewing for George Mason’s open head coaching position out of respect for the program, which used to employ his father in that job, a source tells Murphy for the same piece. The school had yet to reach out to Larranaga by midday Monday, a source told Chris Mannix of SI.com (Twitter link), and both Bulpett and Mannix hear that Larranaga is happy in Boston. Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports reported early Monday that the school was eyeing him for the gig.
- The Celtics pulled off a steal when they landed Tyler Zeller from the Cavs this past summer, opines Jimmy Toscano of CSNNE.com. Boston gave up only a protected second-round pick that the team is unlikely to ever have to actually convey to Cleveland, and the C’s also took back Marcus Thornton and a first-rounder, which they flipped to the Suns at the deadline for Isaiah Thomas, further sweetening the deal. Zeller scored a career-high 26 points Monday.
Kalin Lucas To Sign With Turkish Club
TUESDAY, 7:25am: Lucas is heading to Turkey’s TED Ankara, not Turk Telekom, Pick now says (Twitter link).
MONDAY, 10:59pm: Kalin Lucas has signed with the Turkish team Turk Telekom on a deal that will cover the remainder of the NBA season, reports David Pick of Eurobasket.com (on Twitter), although the team has yet to make an official announcement. Lucas had been playing with the Iowa Energy, the Grizzlies’ D-League affiliate, but will now head overseas as the 2014/15 season begins to wind down.
The Michigan State product went undrafted in 2011 and played with Olympiacos of the Greek Basket League following his four years as a Spartan. He hooked up with the Grizzlies for training camp this past autumn, and although he was cut before opening night, he eventually re-signed with the team twice during the regular season, appearing in a single contest.
There hasn’t been much chatter surrounding Lucas, as his rumors page shows, so it isn’t surprising to see the 25-year-old guard head overseas. Still, he was able to put up an impressive mark of 19.3 points per night and a sharp 43.1% three-point field goal percentage in the D-League this season, so it’s possible he could draw NBA interest again this summer.
Draft Rumors: Porzingis, Winslow, Upshaw
Kristaps Porzingis‘ strong play in Europe is impressing NBA scouts, and the 7-footer is working his way into the top-5 of teams’ draft boards, as Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports passes along (on Twitter). At just 19 years old, it isn’t surprising to see clubs enamored with his potential. We’ll hear the latest on a few other potential first-rounders in tonight’s look at the upcoming draft:
- A scout told Marc J. Spears of Yahoo! Sports that Duke forward Justise Winslow‘s toughness profiles him as a Metta World Peace-type and Shane Battier-like player. “Great size and toughness,” the scout told Spears. “High ceiling, but is a third or fourth option on a team. Poor shooter. He can be Shane Battier or Metta World Peace, which is not a bad thing.” Winslow was ranked eighth in Hoops Rumors’ latest 2015 NBA Draft Prospect Power Rankings.
- Robert Upshaw was dismissed from the University of Washington basketball team late in January for a violation of team rules, but there’s still a chance he gets taken in the first round of the draft, as an executive tells Scott Howard-Cooper of NBA.com. Character issues aside, the unnamed executive called Upshaw “one of the most talented bigs” he saw this year. Upshaw was also dismissed from Fresno State two years ago before he transferred to Washington.
- Syracuse big man Rakeem Christmas might have worked his way into the bottom part of the first round, Howard-Cooper observes in the same piece. At 23 years old, Christmas has less upside than younger bigs, but his intensity and athleticism have helped boost his stock, Howard writes.
Will Joseph contributed to this post.
Southwest Notes: Llull, Rockets, Anderson
Each club playing in the Southwest Division possesses a realistic shot at making the playoffs this season in the fiercely competitive Western Conference. However, the Pelicans might come just short of a postseason berth thanks to a revitalized Thunder team playing hot down the stretch. Sam Amick and Jeff Zillgitt of USA Today look at the potential impact of changing the structure of the playoffs to include the 16 best teams, regardless of conference. Such an idea would stand to benefit a club like this year’s New Orleans bunch but hinder the postseason dreams of some Eastern Conference squads.
Adam Silver admits there are issues with the way the playoffs are constructed now but contests there’s no easy solution. For now, the Pelicans will just need to continue their strong play if they want to keeping competing past April. We’ll round up the latest coming out of the Southwest below:
- Rockets draft-and-stash prospect Sergio Llull acknowledged that Houston has had interest in signing him over the past two or three years, as the point guard told Marca.com (translation via HoopsHype).
- The Spurs have recalled Kyle Anderson from their D-League affiliate, the team announced via press release. The rookie out of UCLA has had four stints with the Austin Spurs so far this season, as our list of D-League assignments and recalls shows.
- Chris Herrington of the Commercial Appeal looks at the struggling Grizzlies and wonders if Jeff Green‘s presence might be negatively impacting the club’s overall performance. Herrington compares Green to Rudy Gay and thinks in order to succeed, Memphis will need to potentially change the way they’re using him in the offense.
- We heard this afternoon that the Mavs are no longer interested in bringing aboard JaVale McGee.
Chuck Myron contributed to this post.