Northwest Notes: Aldridge, Durant, Contracts
LaMarcus Aldridge feels as though the Blazers didn’t always support him the way they do now, as he explains to Michael Lee of The Washington Post. The soon-to-be free agent, who pledged this past summer to re-sign with the Blazers in the offseason ahead, wonders what it would have been like if he felt they were behind him for his entire career, and if the team still finds him expendable on some level.
“It’s bittersweet,” Aldridge said of his ascendance to a superstar level with the Blazers. “I think God has a plan for everybody. Maybe my plan wasn’t to be loved right away. My role was a little tougher than other franchise players, but it happens. I think it helped me build character and not take anything for granted. I know that I had to really earn it, so it makes me appreciative. It also makes me wonder how easily they can move on, too.”
Here’s more from around the Northwest Division:
- Kevin Durant recently said perhaps his most encouraging words to date for the Thunder regarding his free agency in 2016, but the matter of which team he’ll sign with remains far from decided, observes Ken Berger of CBSSports.com.
- The three year, minimum salary deals that Chris Johnson and Jack Cooley inked with the Jazz contain no guaranteed salaries beyond this season, Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders reports (Twitter link).
- Tim Frazier‘s two year deal with the Blazers calls for him to make $845,069 for the 2015/16 campaign, and includes no guaranteed salary beyond this season, Pincus tweets.
Eddie Scarito contributed to this post.
Aaron Thomas To Enter NBA Draft
Florida State junior Aaron Thomas will enter the 2015 NBA draft, his agent Seth Cohen informed Jonathan Givony of DraftExpress.com (Twitter link). Thomas is no lock to be selected in June, and the guard didn’t make either Chad Ford of ESPN.com‘s (Insider subscription required) or Givony’s top 100 player rankings.
The 6’5″ shooting guard’s junior season was interrupted when he was declared academically ineligible back in December. He only appeared in six contests this season for the Seminoles, averaging 14.8 points, 3.5 rebounds, and 2.2 assists in 28.3 minutes per game. Thomas’ career numbers are 10.7 PPG, 3.3 RPG, and 1.5 APG. His career shooting line is .441/.319/.771.
Thomas’ best hope to make it into the NBA is to snag a summer league invite from a team and turn that opportunity into a training camp deal. His odds are quite long, so heading to the D-League or overseas to play is the more likely scenario for the 23-year-old next season.
Suns Sign Jerel McNeal To 10-Day Contract
WEDNESDAY, 2:38pm: The deal is official, the team announced.
TUESDAY, 7:07pm: The Suns intend to sign Jerel McNeal to a 10-day contract, and they will not re-sign A.J. Price, Paul Coro of The Arizona Republic reports (Twitter link). Price’s first 10-day deal with Phoenix expired last night. The Suns’ roster count will move back to 15 players once McNeal is officially signed.
McNeal is a 6’3″ shooting guard who went unselected back in the 2009 NBA draft. The 27-year-old had been playing for the Bakersfield Jam, the Suns’ D-League affiliate. In 27 games for the Jam, McNeal averaged 18.5 points, 4.0 rebounds, and 4.6 assists in 32.6 minutes per contest. He has previously had NBA training camp stints with the Clippers, Raptors and Rockets. The Pelicans and Jazz have briefly carried him on regular season rosters in the past, but he didn’t see action during either stint, so he’s technically a two-year veteran even though he has yet to make his official NBA debut.
Price had also played for the Pacers and Cavaliers this season. He appeared in 10 games with Indiana, averaging 10.5 points, 2.7 assists and 19.3 minutes, before the club waived him in late November. Cleveland then claimed him off waivers and he appeared in 11 games with the Cavs, averaging just 2.0 points, 1.2 assists and 7.9 minutes, until they waived him in early January. In five appearances for the Suns, Price notched 1.2 PPG and 1.2 APG in 8.8 minutes per contest.
Lakers Waive Steve Nash, Re-Sign Jabari Brown
The Lakers have waived Steve Nash and re-signed Jabari Brown, the team announced via press release. The team refers to its contract with Brown as a multiyear deal. Brown had been with the Lakers on two 10-day contracts thanks to the hardship provision, which allowed the Lakers to carry him even though they already had 15 players. The league hands out an extra roster spot for only 10 days at a time, and with the team unable to sign Brown to anymore 10-day deals, the Lakers are clearing Nash, who’s already announced his retirement, from the roster.
The team will still pay out Nash’s $9.701MM salary for this season, barring the thoroughly unlikely outcome that another team claims him off waivers. However, there’s little added cost with Brown’s deal, since it has to be merely a prorated minimum-salary arrangement. The lack of any other way aside from the minimum-salary exception to sign Brown means it’s a two-year deal for him, as Eric Pincus of the Los Angeles Times points out (Twitter link). Next season’s salary is non-guaranteed, according to fellow Times scribe Mike Bresnahan (on Twitter).
Nash hasn’t played the entire season because of nerve issues that resurfaced during the preseason, and 41-year-old has said that the only reason he delayed his announcement, which didn’t take place until last month, was so the Lakers could use his contract as a trade chip. The team didn’t end up trading him, even though the Lakers reportedly offered him to the Celtics as part of a Rajon Rondo package, and the two-time MVP drew scorn from Lakers fans as he was an infrequent presence around the team during the first half of the season. He also lost fans when he said he was sticking around this season in large measure just so he could collect his salary. Nash was a landmark acquisition for the Lakers in 2012, but his body failed to allow him to live up to his three-year deal worth more than $27.9MM.
Brown, a college teammate of fellow Laker Jordan Clarkson, was with the Lakers during the preseason and spent most of 2014/15 with L.A.’s D-League affiliate. The 22-year-old Brown performed well on his 10-day deals, averaging 9.4 points in 24.5 minutes per game across 10 appearances, and he made 11 out of 24 total three-point attempts.
Mavs Don’t Plan Bidding War For Rajon Rondo
The Mavericks would like to re-sign Rajon Rondo, but there’s a limit to just how much they’re willing to pay him, according to Tim MacMahon of ESPNDallas.com. The soon-to-be free agent point guard is expected to ask for more than Dallas wants to give up, and the Mavs wouldn’t compete with other teams that float more lucrative offers, MacMahon writes. That stance could change if Rondo excels in the playoffs, as he’s done in the past, though Rondo acknowledged to MacMahon that he isn’t sure how he’ll perform in the postseason, since he hasn’t played a playoff game since 2012.
Rondo shied away from talk about his free agency this summer in his chat with MacMahon, but he did speak of a need for more time to adjust to his teammates following the December trade that brought him to the Mavs after he’d spent his entire career with the Celtics. The 29-year-old’s production has been off this season for both Boston and Dallas, as he’s averaged 8.9 points per game, his lowest output since he was a rookie. That scoring has increased somewhat since the trade, but his assists, a healthy 10.8 per contest in 22 games prior to the deal, have dropped to 6.4 APG since, and overall he’s dishing fewer dimes on a nightly basis than in any season since 2007/08. His PER with the Mavs is 11.7, which would be a career-worst if extrapolated over an entire season.
Rondo has expressed a willingness to re-sign with the Mavs, even after a public tiff with coach Rick Carlisle. League sources told Steve Kyler of Basketball Insiders around midseason that it was unlikely that teams would give Rondo a full maximum-salary contract this summer, though Kyler cautioned that it might just mean they would be willing to give Rondo a short-term max deal. The Lakers have long been likely to pursue the former All-Star, with executive VP of basketball operations Jim Buss apparently a fan, just like Kobe Bryant, who’s made no secret of his attempts to recruit Rondo to L.A. The Lakers were reportedly among the teams that made runs at trading for Rondo before the Mavs landed him, a group that also included the Rockets, Nets, Kings, Knicks and Pacers to varying degrees.
Atlantic Notes: Sixers, Knicks, Amundson
Nerlens Noel raised some eyebrows Monday when he complimented Ish Smith seemingly at the expense of former teammate Michael Carter-Williams. The Sixers big man appeared to double down on that Tuesday when Tom Moore of Calkins Media asked him whether he thought the departure of Carter-Williams helped him develop.
“I think there’s a lot more fluidity in the game,” Noel said. “I think there’s more balance. Guys are getting more shots. The ball’s not sticking and guys are having fun playing. When you’re out there having fun, you feel like you can do anything on both ends of the court. … Even when we need a basket, guys know they can get a shot because the ball’s not going to stick, he said. If they’re wide open, it’s going to be given [to them]. When you know you have an opportunity to be a part of the offense and just all-around, it’s just a lot more fun.
Noel has called for the Sixers to re-sign Smith, but while he may have cemented a role as a backup, Smith is an unrealistic option as the team’s point guard of the future, writes Bob Cooney of the Philadelphia Daily News. Here’s more from the Atlantic Division:
- Members of the Knicks front office expect team president Phil Jackson to make changes among their ranks as soon as the coming offseason, and that feeling predates the team’s D-League coaching move, as Ian Begley of ESPNNewYork.com hears.
- Journeyman Louis Amundson had started seven games in his career before he joined the Knicks, who’ve given him 31 starts in 33 appearances. Unsurprisingly, Amundson tells Jonah Ballow of Knicks.com (video link) that he wants to re-sign with the team when his contract expires this summer. “I think Phil knows, we’ve talked a bit about it, I really appreciate the opportunity they gave me here, and I would love to be here,” Amundson said. “I would love to be a Knick next season. I know they have a lot of decision-making to do, so I’m going to leave that to them, but I think they know that I would love to be here.”
- The lack of a one-to-one D-League affiliate for the Raptors has, at least to a degree, slowed the development of Bruno Caboclo and Lucas Nogueira, argues Doug Smith of the Toronto Star. Still, GM Masai Ujiri is working on establishing one that he’d prefer to be close to Toronto, Smith notes, adding that it would cost the Raptors about $6MM to set up the arrangement.
Kelly Oubre To Enter Draft
10:43am: Oubre’s father tells Adam Zagoria of SNY.tv that his son is indeed declaring for the draft (Twitter links).
10:04am: Lottery prospect Kelly Oubre is planning to enter this year’s draft, a source tells Evan Daniels of Scout.com (Twitter link). The Kansas freshman small forward has disappointed this year, but he’s still the 12th-best prospect in the rankings that Chad Ford of ESPN.com compiles and No. 13 on Jonathan Givony’s DraftExpress list.
The 19-year-old’s inconsistency is a sign that he’d benefit from another year with the Jayhawks, Eddie Scarito of Hoops Rumors wrote as he rated him 11th in our Draft Prospect Power Rankings, but it’s long seemed likely that he’d turn pro. He played fewer than 10 minutes in five of the team’s first seven games and finally broke out with a 23-point, 10-rebound performance in 25 minutes against Lafayette, an eventual NCAA Tournament team, in late December. The 6’7″ Oubre saw more playing time in other games as the season wore on, but he never scored as many points or pulled down more rebounds. He wound up averaging just 9.3 points and 5.0 rebounds in 21.0 minutes per game, troubling numbers offset to some degree by respectable 35.8% three-point shooting.
Oubre was a projected top-five pick in both the Ford and Givony rankings prior to the season, though he was a more modest No. 8 in the Recruiting Services Consensus Index coming out of high school last year. He had the burden of replacing Andrew Wiggins at his position for Kansas, but Oubre’s team went just as far in the NCAA Tournament as Wiggins’ Jayhawks did, with both losing in the round of 32. This year’s Kansas squad also featured Cliff Alexander, Givony’s No. 33 prospect and Ford’s No. 39, though it’s unknown whether he’ll join Oubre in the 2015 draft.
Melo Trimble Staying Out Of Draft
Maryland freshman point guard Melo Trimble has decided to remain in school for another year and won’t enter the 2015 draft, the school announced. The 20-year-old was in line to become a mid-second-round pick, as Chad Ford of ESPN.com ranked him as the 44th-best prospect. Jonathan Givony of DraftExpress already projects him as a 2016 draftee, listing him 32nd in his mock for that year.
The 6’3″ Trimble led a strong Maryland team in scoring with 16.2 points on just 9.7 shots in 33.5 minutes per game. He nailed 41.2% of his three-pointers, though ball distribution wasn’t his forte, as he averaged just 3.0 assists against 2.5 turnovers per outing.
The Terrapins entered the NCAA Tournament as a No. 4 seed but fell to No. 5 seed West Virginia in the round of 32. Trimble had a strong tournament, with a triple-double against Valparaiso in Maryland’s opening game and 15 points, seven assists and seven rebounds versus the Mountaineers. He’s set to play next season with Maryland recruit Diamond Stone, currently a high school senior and the projected No. 4 pick in Givony’s 2016 mock.
Tyler Harvey To Enter Draft
Eastern Washington junior shooting guard Tyler Harvey is set to declare for this year’s draft, a source tells Jeff Goodman of ESPN.com (Twitter link). He’ll hold off on signing with an agent, Goodman adds, so it would appear as though Harvey will be able to withdraw by April 12th and retain his NCAA eligibility even if he makes a formal announcement before that date. The 21-year-old is the 41st-best prospect and the third-best among shooting guards, according to Chad Ford of ESPN.com, while Jonathan Givony of DraftExpress rates him much lower, at No. 84. Givony has been projecting him as a 2016 draft entrant and has him at No. 45 on his 2016 mock.
Harvey was the leading scorer in NCAA Division I with 23.1 points per game this season. He achieved that on 15.3 shots in 36.9 minutes per contest with 43.1% three-point shooting. His long-range accuracy is his calling card, and he’s been remarkably consistent, having made between 43.1% and 43.4% of his three-point attempts in each of his three college seasons. The 6’4″ Harvey averaged 4.0 made three-pointers per contest this year.
Eastern Washington won the Big Sky Conference tournament to qualify for the NCAA Tournament in March but fell to Georgetown in its opening game, in spite of 27 points from Harvey. The school has produced one other NBA player, Rodney Stuckey, though he played under a previous head coach.