Poll: 2015/16 Team Power Rankings (No. 3)
The NBA regular season is now underway and teams have now completed the process of setting down their regular season rosters. Every new season brings with it the hope for each franchise that it will conclude with the hoisting of the Larry O’Brien Championship Trophy. But for the more jaded fans — or practical, depending on your outlook — not every team has a realistic shot at making the playoffs, much less at being the last team standing when all is said and done and the playoffs have concluded.
We at Hoops Rumors want to know what you, the reader, think about each team’s chances this season. To help facilitate that, we’ve been posting a series of polls asking you to vote on where in the standings each franchise is likely to end the season. So please cast your vote below for the franchise you expect to end the season with the 3rd best overall record. But don’t end your involvement with the simple click of a button. Take to the comments section below to share your thoughts and opinions on why you voted the way that you did. We look forward to what you have to say.
Previous Selections:
- No. 30: 76ers
- No. 29: Knicks
- No. 28: Nuggets
- No. 27: Lakers
- No. 26: Nets
- No. 25: Timberwolves
- No. 24: Trail Blazers
- No. 23: Magic
- No. 22: Pistons
- No. 21: Kings
- No. 20: Hornets
- No. 19: Jazz
- No. 18: Suns
- No. 17: Celtics
- No. 16: Pacers
- No. 15: Mavericks
- No. 14 Bucks
- No. 13: Pelicans
- No. 12: Raptors
- No. 11: Heat
- No. 10: Wizards
- No. 9: Hawks
- No. 8: Bulls
- No. 7: Grizzlies
- No. 6: Rockets
- No. 5: Clippers
- No. 4: Thunder
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Eastern Notes: Monroe, Mahinmi, Spoelstra
Despite meeting with the Knicks first during the free agent signing period this offseason, Greg Monroe dispelled the notion that New York was ever the frontrunner for his services, Stefan Bondy of The New York Daily News writes. “That was just the way it was scheduled,” Monroe said. “There was nothing extra. I wasn’t the only player teams were meeting with and that’s just how it fell in place.” David Falk, Monroe’s agent, regarding why his client chose the Bucks over the Knicks, told Bondy, “It wasn’t about presentation or marketing, It was about what Milwaukee already brought to the table.”
“The interest was definitely there [with the Knicks],” Monroe told the Daily News scribe. “I took an interest in everybody that was willing to meet with me. I don’t like to take anybody’s time for granted. I definitely didn’t take their time for granted. I made a decision based on the things that I was looking for and I wanted. At this point, I’d rather not [talk about it]. It doesn’t matter anymore. Any questions anybody has, I could honestly not care less. I’m happy with where I’m at. I definitely feel like I made the right decision.”
Here’s more from out of the Eastern Conference:
- Ian Mahinmi, entering the final season of his contract and with the Pacers starting center job now his, worked tirelessly over the summer on his offensive game, particularly his shooting touch, as Gregg Doyel of the Indianapolis Star examines.
- Celtics coach Brad Stevens has been the exception to the rule for college coaches coming to the NBA, as most of them have struggled, so Billy Donovan of the Thunder and Fred Hoiberg of the Bulls face a challenge to defy history, as Chris Kuc of the Chicago Tribune examines.
- Heat coach Erik Spoelstra is the second longest tenured coach in the NBA behind Gregg Popovich, yet he enters this season needing to prove himself all over again now that the team has overhauled its roster and is in need of a new identity, Ethan J. Skolnick of The Miami Herald writes.
Chuck Myron contributed to this post.
2015/16 Salary Cap: Boston Celtics
The NBA’s salary cap for 2015/16 has been set at $70MM, which is an 11% increase from this past season, and the luxury tax line will be $84.74MM. The last cap projection from the league had been $67.1MM, and the projection for the tax line had been $81.6MM.
With the October 26th cutoff date to set regular season rosters now past, we at Hoops Rumors are in the process of running down the current salary cap commitments for each NBA franchise for the 2015/16 campaign. Here’s the cap breakdown for the Boston Celtics, whose regular season roster can be viewed here:
- 2015/16 Salary Cap= $70,000,000
- 2015/16 Luxury Tax Line= $84,740,000
- Fully Guaranteed Salary Commitments= $77,479,204*
- Partially Guaranteed Salary Commitments= $75,000**
- Non-Guaranteed Salary Commitments= $0
- Total Salary Cap Commitments= $77,554,204
- Remaining Cap Room= -$7,554,204
- Amount Below Luxury Tax Line= $7,185,796
*Note: This amount includes the $1,706,250 owed to Zoran Dragic, who was waived by the team, and the $2,038,206 owned to Perry Jones III, who was also waived.
**Note: This amount includes the $25K owed to Levi Randolph, Corey Walden and Malcolm Miller, who were waived.
Cap Exceptions Available:
- Room Exception= $2,814,000
Cash Available to Send Out In Trades= $3,430,000
Cash Available to Receive Via Trade= $300,000
Last Update: 10/28/15 @ 4:10pm
The Basketball Insiders salary pages were used in the creation of this post.
Hoops Rumors Chat Transcript
4:03pm: We hosted the weekly live chat.
3:00pm: The regular season is underway, but a few offseason matters remain. Monday is the deadline for rookie scale extensions, and while major names like Harrison Barnes and Andre Drummond have stopped extension talks, several players are still eligible. No deadline looms over the Mavericks and Rick Carlisle as they reportedly move close to an extension of their own. We can talk about extensions, signings, rosters and more in this week’s chat.
Camp Invitees Who Made Opening Night Rosters
Roughly 100 players signed NBA contracts in the offseason and went to training camps without fully guaranteed salaries, hoping they could win a spot on the regular season roster. Only 23 accomplished that goal.
The math makes it simple as rosters swell to 20 players during the offseason, since at most, only 15 per team can make it to opening night. As the regular season begins, no team has more than two players who signed deals in the 2015 offseason that included non-guaranteed or partially guaranteed salary for this season. Most of those players continue to sweat it out, knowing their salaries won’t be fully guaranteed for the season until January, with some exceptions.
The list below shows the preseason survivors for all 30 teams. It doesn’t include players still on contracts they signed before this summer, though we have counted Eric Moreland and Matt Bonner, holdovers for their respective teams who signed new contracts during the offseason. J.R. Smith technically qualifies, since his deal with the Cavaliers was only partially guaranteed for a few days after he signed it, but for clarity’s sake, we’ve omitted him.
76ers
Bucks
- None
Bulls
Cavaliers
Celtics
- None
Clippers
Grizzlies
- None
Hawks
Heat
- None
Hornets
Jazz
Kings
Knicks
- None
Lakers
Magic
- None
Mavericks
Nets
Nuggets
- None
Pacers
- None
Pelicans
Pistons
- None
Raptors
- None
Rockets
- None
Spurs
Suns
Thunder
- None
Timberwolves
- None
Trail Blazers
Warriors
Wizards
- None
The Basketball Insiders salary pages were used in the creation of this post.
Major Surgery In Play For Martell Webster
1:19pm: The injury is a “bone spur that’s rubbing up against my labrum,” Webster said, according to Michael, and Webster said that it’s a caused a tear in the labrum, as Castillo relays within his full story.
12:38pm: The Wizards aren’t planning to apply for a disabled player exception if Webster ultimately opts for surgery, Michael hears (Twitter link).
10:42am: Martell Webster told reporters today that he has a hip injury that would knock him out for four to six months if he undergoes surgery to repair it, note Jorge Castillo of The Washington Post and J. Michael of CSNMidAtlantic.com (Plus Twitter links). The 28-year-old small forward said he’ll try to play through it with the use of balance-correcting glasses, as Michael details. Michael nonetheless added that the injury flared up during practice Tuesday, according to Castillo, who termed it a partially torn labrum in Webster’s right hip, while Michael called it a bone spur on the hip. The $2.5MM partial guarantee on Webster’s salary for 2016/17 would jump to a full guarantee of more than $5.845MM if he plays in 70 games this season, a prospect that appears decreasingly likely.
The failure of Webster to lock in his extra guaranteed money would grant the Wizards added flexibility for their pursuit of Kevin Durant and others next summer, though surely they’d like to have Webster available for much of the season. Webster dealt with the injury throughout the preseason as he failed to appear in any of Washington’s exhibitions. Back surgery helped limit him to only 32 games last season, and while he pondered retirement a year ago, he backed off that idea this past summer, saying that he wants to play beyond the expiration of his contract at the end of the 2016/17 season.
A six-month timetable would mean he’d miss all of the regular season, so if he elects surgery, it’s possible that the Wizards would apply for and receive a disabled player exception worth nearly $2.807MM, a figure equivalent to half of Webster’s salary for this season. Alan Anderson is also out for the Wizards with an ankle injury, challenging the team’s depth at the wing, but Washington hasn’t suffered enough major injuries to make a hardship provision for an extra roster spot a possibility at this point.
Atlantic Notes: Jackson, Joseph, Nets
Talk about a scenario in which Knicks team president Phil Jackson would return to work for the Lakers and fiancee Jeanie Buss has resurfaced in NBA circles over recent weeks, according to Frank Isola of the New York Daily News. Jackson can reportedly opt out of his five-year deal with the Knicks after this season, Isola notes. Speculation emerged earlier this year that Jackson won’t finish out his contract, though he said in June that he wanted to stay around long enough to help the Knicks turn around their fortunes. While we wait to see what the Zen Master does, see more from around the Atlantic Division:
- Raptors offseason signee Cory Joseph is planning to play a role for Toronto that’s similar in some ways to the one his former Spurs teammate Manu Ginobili has long embodied for San Antonio, as Sportsnet’s Donnovan Bennett details. “There was no big exchange when that first and second group switched off the court because of him,” Joseph said of Ginobili. “That’s what I want to do here. I want to bring energy with that second unit and uplift because that’s what we are going to need. Manu brought energy, but also a sense of calmness to the second group and managed time and score.”
- Nets GM Billy King didn’t factor Andrea Bargnani‘s long history of injuries into his decision about whom to keep for the opening night roster, observes Tim Bontemps of the New York Post (Twitter links). Bargnani is healthy for now, as is shooting guard Markel Brown, so King didn’t feel the need to keep power forward Justin Harper and swingman Dahntay Jones, whom the Nets waived, as Bontemps explains.
- Fellow Nets power forward Willie Reed‘s partial guarantee of $500K increased to a fully guaranteed $947,276 when he stuck on the Nets roster for opening night, as Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders notes (Twitter link) and as our leaguewide schedule of salary guarantee dates shows. Reed is about two weeks into a six-to-eight-week timetable for recovery from thumb surgery.
And-Ones: Paul, Agent Changes, Leonard
Chris Paul rejects the notion that he’s a poor teammate, an idea that rumors of a rift between Paul and DeAndre Jordan helped fuel this summer, writes Dan Woike of the Orange County Register. Jordan has downplayed any tension, citing a mutual desire to win, and that’s just what Paul is thinking about as he envisions playing the rest of his career with the Clippers, as Woike details.
“Hell, I never imagined I’d leave New Orleans, but there’s no question this is where I want to be,” Paul said to Woike. “I want to win. Here.”
The earliest Paul can elect free agency is the summer of 2017. See more from around the NBA:
- Agent Michael Tellem, the son of former agent turned Pistons organization executive Arn Tellem, is leaving the Wasserman Media Group for the Creative Artists Agency and taking high-profile client Danilo Gallinari with him, reports international journalist David Pick (Twitter link). Mario Hezonja, Bojan Bogdanovic and Nemanja Bjelica have dropped Tellem and will continue with Wasserman, Pick adds (on Twitter). The loss of Arn Tellem has proven tough for Wasserman, which also lost Al Horford, LaMarcus Aldridge and Joe Johnson over the offseason. Gallinari, Hezonja and Bjelica all signed new deals earlier this summer, while Bogdanovic remains on a deal with the Nets that runs through 2016/17.
- Extension talks between the Trail Blazers and Meyers Leonard are off to a late start, but Leonard’s preference is to stay in Portland, observes Joe Freeman of The Oregonian. The deadline for the sides to reach a deal is Monday. “I really, really like and love this city,” Leonard said. “I love the organization and now that a greater opportunity has presented itself, I think a lot more people are embracing me. I’d love to be here. That’s my hope. But I don’t know if I’ll get an extension. I don’t know what will happen after this year. We’ll have to wait and see.”
- Al Harrington said in March that he was retiring, but instead the 16-year NBA veteran is joining the Sydney Kings of Australia on a four-week deal, league sources told Olgun Uluc of Fox Sports Australia.
Kings, Blazers Lead West, NBA In Newcomers
Lost amid the turmoil and apparent reconciliation for DeMarcus Cousins, George Karl and the Kings front office was the overhaul of the team’s roster. Nine of the team’s 15 players to start the season weren’t on the roster at the end of 2014/15, a level of turnover that only the Trail Blazers can match in the Western Conference and no team can match in the East. New front office chief Vlade Divac used the draft, trades and free agency this summer to change 60% of his roster this summer, clearly putting his stamp on the team.
Still, the Trail Blazers would have eclipsed them had Tim Frazier not beaten Phil Pressey in their preseason battle for the third point guard job. The departure of LaMarcus Aldridge touched off an exodus of all seven of Portland’s free agents, and by the time Aldridge left, GM Neil Olshey was already active in trades, sending out Nicolas Batum and Steve Blake for four of his team’s nine newcomers.
Meanwhile, as the focus in Oklahoma City turned to Kevin Durant and his 2016 free agency, the Thunder were quiet on the 2015 market, adding only a pair of draft picks, including draft-and-stash signee Josh Huestis. Like the Bulls, the only other team in the NBA this year to have only two new players this season, the Thunder did change coaches, replacing Scott Brooks with Billy Donovan.
See the newcomers in the Western Conference and how the teams stack up in terms of roster turnover:
Kings (9) — Quincy Acy, James Anderson, Marco Belinelli, Caron Butler, Willie Cauley-Stein, Seth Curry, Duje Dukan, Kosta Koufos, Rajon Rondo.
Trail Blazers (9) — Cliff Alexander, Al-Farouq Aminu, Pat Connaughton, Ed Davis, Maurice Harkless, Gerald Henderson, Luis Montero, Mason Plumlee, Noah Vonleh.
Clippers (8) — Cole Aldrich, Branden Dawson, Wesley Johnson, Luc Mbah a Moute, Paul Pierce, Pablo Prigioni, Josh Smith, Lance Stephenson.
Lakers (8) — Brandon Bass, Anthony Brown, Roy Hibbert, Marcelo Huertas, Larry Nance Jr., D’Angelo Russell, Lou Williams, Metta World Peace.
Mavericks (8) — Justin Anderson, Jeremy Evans, John Jenkins, Wesley Matthews, JaVale McGee, Salah Mejri, Zaza Pachulia, Deron Williams.
Suns (7) — Devin Booker, Tyson Chandler, Cory Jefferson, Jon Leuer, Ronnie Price, Mirza Teletovic, Sonny Weems.
Spurs (6) — LaMarcus Aldridge, Rasual Butler, Boban Marjanovic, Ray McCallum, Jonathon Simmons, David West.
Timberwolves (6) — Nemanja Bjelica, Tyus Jones, Andre Miller, Tayshaun Prince, Damjan Rudez, Karl-Anthony Towns.
Jazz (4) — Trey Lyles, Raul Neto, Tibor Pleiss, Jeff Withey.
Pelicans (4) — Alonzo Gee, Kendrick Perkins, Nate Robinson, Ish Smith.
Rockets (4) — Sam Dekker, Montrezl Harrell, Ty Lawson, Marcus Thornton.
Grizzlies (3) — Matt Barnes, Jarell Martin, Brandan Wright.
Nuggets (3) — Nikola Jokic, Mike Miller, Emmanuel Mudiay.
Warriors (3) — Ian Clark, Kevon Looney, Jason Thompson.
Thunder (2) — Josh Huestis, Cameron Payne.
Central Notes: Lopez, Pistons, Bulls, Petteway
Bucks coach Jason Kidd confirmed reports that the team had interest in Robin Lopez and Brook Lopez in free agency this summer, notes Marc Berman of the New York Post. Neither ended up in Milwaukee, with Robin going to the Knicks and Brook re-signing with the Nets, though the Bucks did well enough, landing Greg Monroe.
“We liked both of those guys,’’ Kidd said. “They both do something and they’re very productive. I think both teams got maybe the guy they wanted. Looking at the Lopezes, I’ve coached one of them and recruited another. They’ve always played the game the right way. The Knicks ended up with [Robin] Lopez, which is a good pickup for them.”
See more from the Central Division:
- The Pistons have no shortage of players with contractual motivation to prove their worth this season, making “the disease of more” and the potential for selfishness a concern in Detroit, as Vince Ellis of the Detroit Free Press details.
- Other Eastern Conference teams improved their rosters in the offseason, but short of adding Bobby Portis and Cristiano Felicio, the Bulls stood pat, making it fair to wonder about Chicago’s apparent determination that the most pressing need for change was at head coach, opines David Haugh of the Chicago Tribune.
- The contract that Terran Petteway was briefly on with the Pacers was non-guaranteed for the minimum salary and covered one season, according to Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders (Twitter link). Indiana absorbed a small cap hit for signing him after Saturday’s deadline to remove non-guaranteed salary without it counting against the cap. The Pacers inked Petteway on Sunday and waived him on Monday to secure his D-League rights.