Sean Deveney of The Sporting News mentions the Lakers, Bulls and Knicks as major-market suitors for Kevin Durant, and the Warriors as a team that could catch his eye, but people around the league have long felt as though Durant will either sign with the Thunder or the Wizards, Deveney writes. It’s a sentiment one Eastern Conference GM who spoke with Deveney confirms. Still, Washington doesn’t plan an extravagant pitch, a source tells Deveney, in keeping with the former MVP’s low-key personality. That said, neither the Warriors nor the Heat should be ruled out as potential Durant destinations, according to Frank Isola of the New York Daily News. See more from around the NBA:
- Gerald Green punched a man who was trying to restrain him from going from the lobby of his condo building to his unit, according to a police report that Manny Navarro and Charles Rabin of the Miami Herald obtained. The man, who elected not to press charges, was attempting to keep Green in the lobby so that he would be there when rescue officials arrived, the report states, according to Navarro and Rabin. Green had earlier approached the front desk of the lobby with bloody hands and asked for a call to paramedics, then proceeded to the valet area in front of the building and collapsed, the report continues, as Navarro and Rabin detail. Green, who was handcuffed but not arrested, was hospitalized and later released and is serving a two-game suspension from the Heat. Team president Pat Riley said the team still believes it can count on Green, who issued an apology as part of a team statement, Navarro and Rabin add.
- The Mavericks weren’t the favorites for LaMarcus Aldridge, but they still had a chance to sign him when they abandoned their pursuit to instead nail down the more certain acquisition of Wesley Matthews, as Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo Sports details in an inside look at Aldridge’s free agency. Aldridge liked Kobe Bryant‘s basketball chat but little else about the Lakers presentation, while Aldridge was reluctant to share the marquee with James Harden despite an intriguing Rockets pitch and found Raptors GM Masai Ujiri appealing but not convincing enough to sway him to Toronto, according to Wojnarowski.
- The Spurs wooed Aldridge with a casual, face-to-face approach from Gregg Popovich and other San Antonio principals, Wojnarowski explains in the same piece. Popovich’s decision to fly in for a second visit, prompted by Aldridge’s second Lakers meeting, helped sealed the deal for the Spurs, thanks in part to a last-minute appeal from Riley that the Heat president intended to use to sell Aldridge on a secondary role in Miami, Wojnarowski writes. Instead, Aldridge took Riley’s message to heart as he embraced the idea of sacrificing some of his impressive offensive numbers in San Antonio’s egalitarian offense, as the Yahoo scribe details.