Pacific Notes: Knight, Blue, Hudson
The Suns could face a situation with Brandon Knight that is similar to the one the team endured with Eric Bledsoe last summer in regards to re-signing the player, Sean Deveney of The Sporting News writes. The Suns and Bledsoe remained at an impasse for the bulk of last summer while the two sides haggled over the amount of the contract, and Bledsoe didn’t put pen to paper on his deal until the end of September. When Knight was in discussions with the Bucks regarding an extension last offseason, the player was requesting a deal in the range of $12MM per season, while Milwaukee held fast at $9MM per year, Deveney notes.
Knight only made 11 appearances for the Suns after being acquired at the trade deadline from Milwaukee thanks to a foot injury he suffered. The guard is set to become a restricted free agent this summer, provided Phoenix tenders him a qualifying offer of $4,790,680. If the two sides are unable to reach an agreement on a new deal this summer, Knight could simply ink the qualifying offer and play out the 2015/16 season. He would then hit free agency in the summer of 2016 when the salary cap is expected to increase significantly, Deveney adds.
Here’s more out of the Pacific Division:
- Lester Hudson‘s $1,015,421 salary for 2015/16 with the Clippers is non-guaranteed, but if the guard is still on the roster on July 15th his salary becomes fully guaranteed, Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders relays (Twitter link).
- The Lakers paid Vander Blue a total of $14,408 for the three days he spent with the team after being inked to a pact that covered the remainder of the 2014/15 campaign, Pincus tweets. Blue can become a restricted free agent this summer if Los Angeles tenders him a qualifying offer worth $1,147,276.
- Jerel McNeal‘s minimum salary arrangement with the Suns for 2015/16 will become fully guaranteed if he is still on Phoenix’s roster past July 21st, Pincus adds (Twitter link).
Mario Hezonja To Enter NBA Draft
Croatian shooting guard Mario Hezonja intends to enter the 2015 NBA draft, Jonathan Givony of DraftExpress reports (Twitter link). The Wasserman Media Group client spent the past season playing for Barcelona of the Euroleague, and he is projected to be a lottery pick come June. Givony ranks the 20-year-old as the No. 7 overall prospect in this year’s draft, while Chad Ford of ESPN.com (Insider subscription required) places Hezonja at No.8.
In a draft class that is relatively weak at the shooting guard spot, the 6’8″ swingman is likely to be the third backcourt player selected after D’Angelo Russell and Emmanuel Mudiay. There is no doubt that Hezonja possesses the necessary athleticism to play in the NBA, but his maturity has come under question by some international scouts. Hezonja has had minor chemistry issues in the past with teammates, and has been labelled a selfish player by some of those same scouts, which could negatively impact his draft slot.
In 22 Euroleague contests this season, the 6’8″ guard averaged 7.7 points, 2.0 rebounds, and 1.0 assists in 16.5 minutes per contest. His overall shooting numbers this season were .462/.382/.750.
Tyrone Wallace Decides Against Draft
3:09pm: Wallace has formally announced his decision to pass up the draft, as the school tweets (hat tip to Rothstein).
2:53pm: Second-round prospect Tyrone Wallace will return to Cal rather than enter this year’s draft, sources told Jon Rothstein of CBSSports.com (Twitter link). There’s a wide disparity on just what sort of NBA player Wallace projects to become, as the junior combo guard is 34th in Jonathan Givony’s DraftExpress prospect rankings and No. 63 with Chad Ford of ESPN.com.
The 6’5″ Wallace was fourth in the Pac-12 in points per game this season at 17.1, but he led the conference in total turnovers with 94, a figure that worked out to 3.3 a game. Wallace endured a heavy workload that saw him take 14.8 shots and dish out 4.0 assists in 34.9 minutes per contest. He excels on defense, as Ford writes in his scouting report, pointing to inconsistency as his primary flaw. Wallace isn’t a strong outside shooter, making only 31.8% of his three-point attempts this season and 29.1% for his college career.
The 20-year-old, who turns 21 in June, showed steady improvement during his time at Cal, and he improved his stock after he was only 94th in the Recruiting Services Consensus Index coming out of high school. Givony’s ranking suggests the first round isn’t out of reach in 2016, and he’ll be relatively young for a senior, turning 22 only weeks before next year’s draft.
Hoops Rumors Glossary: Cap Holds
The Spurs have committed only about $34.2MM in guaranteed money to player salaries for 2014/15, but that doesn’t mean the team will have more than $30MM to spend on free agents against the projected $67.1MM salary cap. Each of San Antonio’s own free agents will be assigned a free agent amount or “cap hold” until the player signs a new contract or the Spurs renounce his rights.
The following criteria are used for determining the amount of a free agent’s cap hold:
- First-round pick coming off rookie contract: 250% of previous salary if prior salary was below league average; 200% of previous salary if prior salary was above league average
- Bird player: 190% of previous salary (if below average) or 150% (if above average)
- Early Bird player: 130% of previous salary
- Non-Bird player: 120% of previous salary
- Minimum-salary player: Two-year veteran’s minimum salary, unless the free agent only has one year of experience, in which case it’s the one-year veteran’s minimum.
A cap hold for a restricted free agent can vary based on his contract status. A restricted free agent’s cap hold is either his free agent amount as determined by the criteria mentioned above, or the amount of his qualifying offer, whichever is greater. Kawhi Leonard, Aron Baynes and Cory Joseph are the Spurs who are set for restricted free agency this summer. Leonard and Joseph are former first-round picks coming to the end of their rookie scale contracts, and their salaries this year are below the league average. (The average salary isn’t known until the season is complete, but the average has come between $5MM and $6MM the past several years, and neither Leonard nor Joseph makes as much as $3MM this year.) Their qualifying offers aren’t greater than 250% of their salaries, so their cap holds are about $7.235MM for Leonard and about $5.085MM for Joseph. Baynes, who makes $2.077MM, is a Bird free agent, and his qualifying offer isn’t more than 190% of his salary, so his cap hold will be a little more than $3.946MM.
Still, for a player like Leonard in line for a significant raise, the cap hold actually gives his team a greater measure of flexibility than a lucrative new contract would, since the hold is based on his previous salary and not what he’ll be making next. That’s reportedly why the Spurs turned away Leonard’s extension push, as San Antonio sought to preserve its ability to offer the max to other top-level free agents, like Marc Gasol and LaMarcus Aldridge.
No cap hold can exceed the maximum salary for which a player can sign. That’s why Aldridge’s cap hold will be less than 150% of his salary for the Blazers this season even though the Blazers hold his Bird rights. The maximum salary for a player with Aldridge’s experience is projected to come in at about $18.96MM, not much more than his current salary of $16.256MM.
The Clippers have an even more unusual case in Austin Rivers, who was traded twice this season. The Clips have his Bird rights, but the Pelicans declined the fourth year team option on his rookie scale contract before the season, so the Clippers can’t pay him more than what he would have made in the option year. That rule is in place so a team can’t circumvent the rookie scale and decline its option so it can give the player a higher salary, and it applies even if the player is traded after the option is declined, as in the case of Rivers.
If a team holds the rights to fewer than 12 players, cap holds worth the minimum rookie salary ($525,093) are assigned to fill out the roster. So, if a team chose to renounce its rights to all of its free agents and didn’t have anyone under contract, the team would have 12 holds worth $525,093 on the cap, reducing its total cap space by about $6.3MM.
Cap holds aren’t removed from a team’s books until the player signs a new contract or has his rights renounced by the club. For instance, since Roshown McLeod never signed elsewhere after reaching free agency after the 2001/02 season, and the Celtics have never renounced him, Boston still has a minimum salary hold for McLeod on its cap. It’s been so many years since the Celtics have gone under the cap that there’s been no reason for them to renounce their rights to players who retired long ago. Keeping those cap holds allows the Celtics some degree of cushion to help them remain above the cap and take advantage of the mid-level exception and trade exceptions, among other advantages afforded cap teams.
The general purpose of a cap hold is to prevent teams from using room under the cap to sign free agents before using Bird rights to re-sign their own free agents. If a team wants to take advantage of its cap space, it can renounce its rights to its free agents, eliminating those cap holds. However, doing so means the team will no longer hold any form of Bird rights for those players — if the team wants to re-sign those free agents, it would have to use its cap room or another kind of cap exception.
Note: This is a Hoops Rumors Glossary entry. Our glossary posts will explain specific rules relating to trades, free agency, or other aspects of the NBA’s Collective Bargaining Agreement. Larry Coon’s Salary Cap FAQ and the Basketball Insiders salary pages were used in the creation of this post.
Versions of this post were initially published on May 1st, 2012 and May 1st, 2014.
Texas Notes: Morey, McHale, Rondo
Reports have indicated the Rockets would like to re-sign Patrick Beverley and Josh Smith, and GM Daryl Morey tells Calvin Watkins of ESPN.com that the same feeling applies to other Rockets.
“We’re pretty focused on now, but obviously pretty much everyone on this team, we’re going to be focused on trying to bring them back,” Morey said. “We got quite a few free agents, Josh Smith is one, we’re going to address in the offseason. We feel if our team can keep executing, we feel like we can keep getting better with the group that we have here.”
Corey Brewer, Jason Terry and K.J. McDaniels are the team’s other soon-to-be free agents. Here’s more from Houston and elsewhere around the Lone Star State:
- Morey also lauded Kevin McHale in his interview with Watkins, saying that a team’s coach “has a huge impact” on the decisions free agents make when they sign. The Rockets inked McHale to a three-year extension in December.
- Several members of the Mavs organization rolled their eyes after the team announced Wednesday that Rajon Rondo was out indefinitely with a back injury, seemingly dubious that his health has anything to do with his absence from the team, as Tim MacMahon of ESPNDallas.com examines. Coach Rick Carlisle acknowledged that he doesn’t expect Rondo, set for free agency this summer, to return to Dallas.
- Sources close to Rondo tell Steve Kyler of Basketball Insiders that the Mavs have never been an ideal fit for the point guard and that everyone involved has just been trying to make the best of it, as Kyler writes within in NBA AM piece.
- The Spurs and Mavs reportedly believe they’ll have a chance to sign LaMarcus Aldridge this summer, as we passed along earlier.
Celtics Want New Deal With Jae Crowder
Celtics president of basketball operations Danny Ainge made it clear that he’d like to have soon-to-be restricted free agent Jae Crowder back with the team next year in comments the executive made in his weekly appearance on the Toucher & Rich show on 98.5 The Sports Hub in Boston (audio link). Ainge has spoken highly of Crowder in the past, but his latest remark seemingly demonstrates a desire to continue the partnership that began when Boston acquired the former 34th overall pick this past December in the Rajon Rondo trade.
“We really did like Jae Crowder, and we feel like he’s a big part of our team going forward,” Ainge said to the 98.5 hosts, according to Ben Rohrbach of WEEI.com (Twitter link).
The C’s can match any competing offers for the swingman who turns 25 in July as long as they tender a qualifying offer worth just $1,181,348. Crowder has expressed a contentment in Boston, where he’s seen a more significant role than he had during his two and a half seasons with the Mavericks. He’s averaged 9.5 points and 4.6 rebounds in 24.2 minutes for the Celtics, making 17 starts in 57 regular season appearances, and those averages are all slightly higher in two postseason games for Boston so far. Crowder has come off the bench in both playoff contests, but he’s fourth on the team in postseason minutes per game.
Little is certain for the Celtics, who have a vast supply of trade exceptions and only about $40MM in guaranteed salary for next season after having made a surprise playoff run this year. The C’s can’t sign Crowder to an extension or trade him before the end of June, so if they want to use one of the exceptions around draft time and open cap space in July, they couldn’t swap Crowder to accommodate such a move. Boston can sign-and-trade Crowder once the July Moratorium is over or let him simply sign with another team, but it appears as though the Celtics and the Glenn Schwartzman client both have motivation to stick together into 2015/16. The C’s have his Bird Rights, and a deal for at least the value of the $3.376MM taxpayer’s midlevel exception sounds as if it’s in order, though that’s just my speculation.
Kawhi Leonard Wins Defensive Player Of Year
Kawhi Leonard has won the Defensive Player of the Year award, the league announced via press release. He nipped fellow soon-to-be restricted free agent Draymond Green by just 16 points in the tally that gives five points for first-place votes, three points for second-place votes and one point for third-place votes. Green earned eight more first-place votes from the media members who cast the ballots, but he fell just shy of the honor. DeAndre Jordan wasn’t far behind, finishing third, and he’s about to go into free agency, too.
Leonard only played in 64 games thanks in large measure to an injury to his right hand, but he made up for lost time in the second half of the season, furthering his case as a future star worthy of a max deal this summer. He led the league with 2.3 steals per game, even with the ailing hand, and the Spurs were 5.1 points per 100 possessions better when Leonard was on the floor compared when he wasn’t this season, according to NBA.com. The 23-year-old trailed only Andrew Bogut, who finished sixth in the voting, in ESPN’s Defensive Real Plus/Minus metric, though he was just ninth in Basketball-Reference’s Defensive Box Plus/Minus.
Spurs coach/president Gregg Popovich has referred to Leonard as a “coach’s dream,” and the team would be expected to match any offer sheet he might sign this summer. The failure of the sides to come to terms on an extension this past fall seemingly had more to do with San Antonio’s desire to preserve cap flexibility to go after marquee names like LaMarcus Aldridge or Marc Gasol as I explained earlier.
Fourth-place finisher Anthony Davis, Rudy Gobert, Tony Allen and Tim Duncan were the others to receive first-place votes. The full listing of each media ballot is available right here.
Sam Presti On Brooks, Coaching Search
The Thunder fired coach Scott Brooks earlier today after the team failed to make the playoffs this season. GM Sam Presti held a press conference this evening to address the team letting Brooks go, as well as what the future holds for the franchise. Here are some of the highlights from Presti’s media session as relayed by Royce Young of Daily Thunder, who has more where this came from in his transcription.
On letting Brooks go:
“I want to stress this decision is not connected or related the results of last season. In fact, I’m not sure that anybody could’ve done a better job than what Scott was able to do and what the team was able to do given the circumstances we encountered. Change in organizations are necessary at times. As much as continuity is required for lasting success, change and transition are the engine for progress and evolution. And so we’re embracing that change and looking toward the next stage of our development of our organization in Oklahoma City.”
On the timing of Brooks’ firing:
“I looked at the option and studied the option of Scott returning very closely. But it would’ve been entering the final year of a four-year contract and after a lot of thought and deliberation, and although I think Scott would’ve been very comfortable coaching on that, I did not feel we were in a position to make another long-term commitment based on what I felt was simply a natural need for transition.”
On whether or not the team would consider hiring a college coach to replace Brooks:
“We’re not going to limit ourselves, or limit the scope of people we would look at for this position. It’s going to, at the end of the day, be directed by the vision of our team, the values of our organization, and the best person we feel like can assume a leadership role for this organization going forward. Not based on one season, but someone we feel like can re-establish our continuity and who is a fit for so many aspects of what it is here.”
On what the franchise is looking for in its next coach:
“We’ve got a pretty clear identity of the type of person and specific vision for that role going forward, but I’m hesitant to speak directly about it because I don’t want to get into comparing and contrasting what we’re looking for and what we had in that position prior in Scott. The team is a local team that competes nationally. It has a civic purpose to it, I believe, because it exists for the people. Because of the people that come every night. So to work here in a position like a head coach, I think it’s important that person really embraces the overall purpose of the work that gets done with the Thunder and I think it’s a privilege to work here for that reason.”
On the pressure the next coach will be under in 2015/16:
“Certainly, heading into that season, listen, we understand there will be an incredible amount of attention paid to next season. There will be a lot of different distractions that will be our job to try and manage. Not to eliminate, but try to manage so that we can play our best basketball. I think at times, the risk is not in moving forward, but I think the risk can be in being fearful of moving forward. If you identify somebody you feel like can help the organization that is a good fit here, I believe that’s kind of part of the job. But no matter what the circumstances are we have to be able to put it in the proper place and understand we have to play good basketball knowing there will be an interpretation [of] anything that happens outside, or what the weather is, or those types of things. But we’re prepared for that to the best of our ability and we’ll go about our business that way.”
And-Ones: Porzingis, Bjelica, Stevens
Projected 2015 lottery pick Kristaps Porzingis indicated that he withdrew from last year’s draft because he felt he wasn’t yet ready to compete in the NBA, Jorge Sierra of HoopsHype relays. “As soon as I declared for the draft, I knew that I wanted I to stay one more year in Spain to get better,” Porzingis said. “Now looking back I think we made the right decision. I had a bad start of the season – individually and as a team. I could have played much better, but I think I have improved my consistency and I have picked it up since the bad start of the season. This season has been tough, but I want to say thanks to coach [Scott] Roth for the work he did with me in Seville. I have a lot of respect for him as a coach and I wish him the best.” The seven-footer also indicated that he no longer had doubts regarding entering the NBA, Sierra adds.
Here’s more from around the league:
- According to Chris Mannix of SI.com (Twitter links), two assistant coaches who will be in play this offseason for available head coaching vacancies are the Pacers‘ Dan Burke, and the Hawks‘ Kenny Atkinson.
- Celtics coach Brad Stevens has his team ahead of schedule in its rebuilding process, which is a testament to his abilities as a leader, Jeff Zillgitt of USA Today writes. Stevens stressing unselfishness and creating opportunities for teammates appeals to Boston’s players, Zillgitt adds. “All these guys are in the NBA for a reason, and they’re really, really good at something,” Stevens said. “If you can separate yourself at being one of the best at the things you do well, then you always have a spot where people are going to value you. It just makes sense to a be a superstar in your role.”
- Former NBA GM and current coach of the Turkish club Eskişehir Basket Brad Greenberg has high praise for Wolves‘ draft-and-stash pick Nemanja Bjelica, David Pick of Basketball Insiders writes. While Greenberg believes Bjelica is ready to play in the NBA, he’s not sure if the big man will head to the U.S. to play in the near future, Pick adds. “Can Bjelica be on an NBA team? Sure. Will he? I don’t know,” Greenberg said. “Like all high-level Euroleague players who make a lot of money overseas, it has to be a situation that makes sense financially, and where he gets an opportunity to play. Europeans don’t want to give up something that is comfortable, good and financially rewarding for a ‘what if?’ situation. Bjelica is talented enough to be in an NBA gym and not look out of place. That’s for sure.”
Christian Wood To Enter NBA Draft
9:40pm: Wood has evidently changed his mind and will enter this year’s draft after all, as he revealed in a YouTube video and on Twitter (hat tip to Jeff Goodman of ESPN.com via Twitter).
3:12pm: First-round prospect Christian Wood has decided to return to UNLV rather than enter this year’s draft, reports Shams Charania of RealGM (Twitter link). The sophomore power forward was the 23rd-best prospect for this year according to Jonathan Givony of DraftExpress, while Chad Ford of ESPN.com listed him at No. 27.
In what is a crowded field for big men, returning to college for another campaign could serve to boost the 19-year-old’s stock. The 2016 NBA draft is currently projected to be a weaker one than this year’s event. A strong, injury free junior season could bump Wood into being a top-20 selection come next June.
The 6’11” Wood appeared in 33 contests for UNLV last season, averaging 15.7 points, 10.0 rebounds, and 2.7 blocks in 32.7 minutes per game. His career numbers are 10.4 PPG, 6.8 RPG, and 1.9 BPG. Wood’s career shooting numbers are .477/.261/.747.