Central Notes: Novak, Hoiberg, Kaun, McRae
Steve Novak made it into only three games with the Bucks before a sprained left MCL prematurely ended his season, but the sharpshooter who played his high school and college ball in the state of Wisconsin has a strong desire that those games not be the only ones he ever plays in a Bucks uniform, as he makes clear to Charles F. Gardner of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The 32-year-old is on an expiring contract but wants to re-sign with the Bucks, even though they won’t have more than non-Bird rights to him, and it appears he doesn’t plan on retiring anytime soon. “Being home has been unbelievable,” Novak said. “I see the team that we have and hopefully I can be a big part of that. I am a free agent this summer, but that’s my goal [to stay with the Bucks].”
See more from the Central Division:
- Coach Fred Hoiberg accepts blame for the struggles of the Bulls, pointing to the team’s underwhelming offense and lack of killer instinct, as K.C. Johnson of the Chicago Tribune relays (Twitter link). His willingness to acknowledge and work to remedy those problems endears him to management, Johnson observes.
- The Cavaliers won’t rule out signing a player to fill their open roster spot, but it’s likely they won’t, reports Chris Haynes of the Northeast Ohio Media Group and the Cleveland Plain Dealer (Twitter link). That’s even though Mo Williams is suffering from continued soreness in his left knee that’s prompted a visit to noted orthopedic surgeon Dr. James Andrews, the team announced. No surgery is set for Williams at this point, however. Iman Shumpert will miss the rest of the regular season with left knee trouble, but he’s expected to be ready for the start of the playoffs, according to the team.
- The Cavs have assigned Sasha Kaun and Jordan McRae to the D-League, the team revealed in separate announcements. They’ll provide playoff help to the Canton Charge, who are reportedly poised to lose John Holland to an NBA contract with Boston.
Indiana SF Troy Williams To Test Draft Waters
Indiana University junior small forward Troy Williams will enter this year’s NBA draft but has no immediate plans to hire an agent, league sources tell Adrian Wojnarowski of The Vertical (Twitter links). The school has confirmed the news. The 6’6″ 21-year-old is a fringe second-round prospect, checking in at 83rd in Jonathan Givony’s DraftExpress rankings and 86th with Chad Ford of ESPN.com. Williams plans to get a clearer picture of his draft stock before deciding whether to withdraw or remain in the draft, Wojnarowski adds. He can retain his college eligibility as he takes part in workouts for teams and, if invited, the NBA combine, so long as he pulls out by May 25th and doesn’t hire an agent.
Williams upped his scoring average slightly this season compared to his sophomore year, from 13.0 points per game to 13.3, but his per-game rebounding average dipped from 7.4 to 5.8. Perhaps most importantly, he developed a 3-point game, hiking his number of attempts from 13 to 75 and nailing 34.7% of his looks from behind the arc this year. He connected on five of eight 3-point attempts during a 21-point performance in Indiana’s season-ending Sweet 16 loss to eventual finalist North Carolina in the NCAA Tournament.
The native of Hampton, Virginia, earns high marks from Ford for his defense. He was 51st in the 2013 Recruiting Services Consensus Index coming out of prep powerhouse Oak Hill Academy.
Western Notes: Grizzlies, Arthur, KG, Aldrich
GM Chris Wallace says the Grizzlies have skewed toward youth with the players they’ve signed to compensate for injury this season, given the cushion they’d already built for a playoff spot and the opportunity to “catch lightning in a bottle” with a prospect who pans out, as he tells Ronald Tillery of The Commercial Appeal. Memphis has had success in this regard in the past with JaMychal Green, and Wallace is optimistic that Xavier Munford, who recently signed a two-year deal, will follow in his footsteps. “I’m very proud of both of those guys,” Wallace said. “They were given a golden opportunity to make the case that they’re NBA players. [Green]’s played more games than anybody has for us this year. JaMychal has proven he’s an NBA rotation player. Xavier came from further off the beaten path than JaMychal. Xavier had never been in an NBA training camp. Xavier had never had a call-up. But he’s got good size and is very long and rangy. He’s got good potential defensively. When he’s out there, it looks like he belongs and he does well. The coaching staff and his teammates are getting more and more confidence in him. You always have to be projective with younger players. He’s a major upward curve that’s very intriguing for us in the future.”
See more from the Western Conference:
- Darrell Arthur wants to remain with the Nuggets, and he would like to do so with a new three or four-year deal, as he tells Christopher Dempsey of The Denver Post. Still, the 28-year-old power forward is undecided about whether to turn down a player option worth more than $2.94MM for next season, as he also said to Dempsey. He’d have to opt out to get that long-term deal he wants, since he’s ineligible to sign an extension on the two-year deal he signed with the team last summer. In any case, he fielded strong interest from other teams at the trade deadline, according to Dempsey.
- Timberwolves owner Glen Taylor is optimistic that Kevin Garnett will return for next season, the last on his contract, but coach Sam Mitchell, a teammate of Garnett’s from 1995-2002, isn’t so sure the 39-year-old won’t retire this summer, as Jerry Zgoda of the Star Tribune relays. “There’s one person who knows his future, and that’s him,” Mitchell said of Garnett. “You know how he is. He’s just not going to tip his hand one way or the other. He has earned the right to do that.”
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Doc Rivers believes the insertion of Cole Aldrich into the rotation in December sparked the Clippers‘ second unit, and he’s thrived in even more playing time of late, as Ben Bolch of the Los Angeles Times examines. Aldrich has a minimum-salary player option for next season.
Top Bloggers: Lucas Hann On The Clippers
Anyone can have a blog about an NBA team, but some set themselves apart from the rest with the dedication and valuable insight they bring to their craft. We’ll be sharing some knowledge from these dialed-in writers on Hoops Rumors with a feature called Top Bloggers. As with The Beat, our ongoing series of interviews with NBA beat writers, it’s part of an effort to bring Hoops Rumors readers ever closer to the pulse of the teams they follow. Last time, we spoke about the Rockets with Ethan Rothstein, who is the managing editor of SB Nation’s The Dream Shake. Click here to see the entire Top Bloggers series.
Next up is Lucas Hann, the editor-in-chief of SB Nation’s Clips Nation, a Clippers blog. You can follow Lucas on Twitter at @LucasJHann. Click here to check out his stories.
Hoops Rumors: Paul Pierce retirement talk came up again lately. Do you think Pierce will walk away after the season, and if he does, would the Clippers be better off?
Lucas Hann: I think it’s time for Pierce to walk away from the game. Last season, he was able to contribute as a shooter and he had enough of a resurgence to justify running it back — this year there’s been no such contribution. He’s shot just 30% from deep on a high volume of good looks, and the rest of his game continues to suffer as he ages. It would certainly be best for both the player and the team.
Hoops Rumors: While there is no denying his talent, Blake Griffin has seemingly been more of a distraction than a leader this season. Should the Clippers look to trade Griffin this summer? If so, which team would be the best fit?
Lucas Hann: There is no way on Earth that the Clippers should trade Blake Griffin.
Hoops Rumors: LeBron James has said that he hopes to play alongside Chris Paul, Dwyane Wade and Carmelo Anthony at some point in his career. Say Cleveland were to offer Kyrie Irving straight up for Paul this summer. Should the Clippers pull the trigger on this hypothetical swap?
Lucas Hann: I don’t think that an Irving-Paul swap would be advantageous for the Clippers. While Irving is much younger, Paul is still the better player, defender, and leader, and his game certainly seems well-equipped to age gracefully.
Hoops Rumors: Small forward has been the Clippers’ weak spot the past couple of seasons. Whom can they realistically target to shore up the three spot this summer?
Lucas Hann: The reality of the situation is that with three max contract players, the Clippers’ options to fill roster holes have been incredibly limited over the last few years — not just at small forward, but in the search for a third big as well. They’ve had minimum-level players perform relatively well (Wes Johnson, Matt Barnes), but nobody available for the league minimum can really help in the way that the Clippers have needed. In essence, even though he’s less than perfect, Jeff Green has to be the guy at long-term small forward. If the fit is good — and it’s safe to say the jury is still out — his Bird rights will be the best tool they have to acquire any player this offseason. It’s either Jeff Green, or running it back with Wes Johnson and Luc Mbah a Moute (if you can even afford to re-sign those guys).
Hoops Rumors: How would you grade the performance of Doc Rivers as a coach and as an executive?
Lucas Hann: Grading Doc is very hard because it’s a complex situation, and when you’re as close to it as I am, it’s a lot harder to look at the track record and give him an F. The Spencer Hawes signing, Jared Dudley trade, Lance Stephenson acquisition, etc. — they’ve all been flops. Hawes was a waste of the mid-level and became salary dump fodder, and the Clippers had to give up future firsts in trades where they got rid of Dudley and Lance. There have been other, minor mishaps, like the Jordan Farmar signing and the ineffective minimum guys (Antawn Jamison, Byron Mullens, Chris Douglas-Roberts, and a million others). I’m firmly pro-Doc, so let me explain myself: the Hawes/Dudley/Lance moves, while bad in retrospect, seemed anywhere from good to acceptable at the time, not just to me but across the board. We don’t know how the Jeff Green move will pan out yet but hopefully it will be a step in the right direction. The small failures shouldn’t really be considered failures at all, seeing as minimum-salary players can’t have huge expectations. He should also get credit for a few things: creating the J.J. Redick we know today, and finding solid cheap guys like Matt Barnes, Darren Collison, Wes Johnson, and Cole Aldrich. The Reggie Bullock-for-Austin Rivers trade was clearly a good move for the Clippers as well, cries of nepotism be damned.
As far as his draft record, it’s bad but limited. Picks in the 20s have about a 30% chance of turning into NBA players — he’s chosen 2 guys in that range: Reggie Bullock, who is looking like he’s not in that mold, and C.J. Wilcox, who is still a second-year player developing on the Clippers. He also made a move to buy a second round pick and select Branden Dawson, and it makes him look brilliant if Dawson ever becomes something and can’t be held against him if Dawson flares out. I’m of the opinion that it’s too early to label him a “bad drafter,” but he’s running out of leash.
Overall, on the executive side, Rivers has to be given a C. He hasn’t made many indefensible bad moves, and he’s made some minor moves that turned out far better than expected (Rivers/Aldrich). The draft record is bad, but it’s still early. I think that Doc’s concerns lie primarily year-to-year as the coach of this team, and the organization would benefit from a GM with a more long-term, asset management perspective.
On the coaching side, it’s simpler. Rivers remains a very good basketball coach, while probably not top-tier in the NBA. Certain substitution patterns can be frustrating at times (he often refuses to stagger starters with the bench, letting up huge runs) but overall he uses the regular season as an 82-game development course, readying certain players and lineups for postseason minutes. The game-to-game impatience of fans is often a source of valid criticism, but Doc’s playing a different game. I’d give him a B-plus on the coaching front.
Hoops Rumors: Say you were given the ability to alter one decision the Clippers have made the past three seasons, be it a signing, draft pick, trade, hiring or any other move. Which would you change?
Lucas Hann: The easiest redo would be a draft pick — in 2013, Rudy Gobert, Allen Crabbe and a few more serviceable guys went after Reggie Bullock, and in 2014, the story remains true for C.J. Wilcox. That said, I think it would be a cop-out, because every year every team misses on guys. It’s just the nature of the draft. So I’ll be a little more creative and go with the offseason signings of Spencer Hawes and Jordan Farmar in the summer of 2014. The Clippers had two opportunities to add above-minimum level guys to the roster — the mid-level exception and the much smaller biannual exception. They convinced Hawes, a hot commodity who was offered far more and starting roles, to take a pay cut to be a backup on a good team, and brought in Jordan Farmar with the biannual to be a capable backup point guard and provide depth shooting. We know how the story goes — Hawes flares out, shooting poorly and finding himself out of the rotation come playoff time. Jordan Farmar’s fate was worse, exiting the rotation less than halfway through the season before being cut. The Clippers then moved on to win an amazing first-round series against the Spurs before collapsing, fatigued against Houston in the second round. Doc Rivers relied solely upon his starters and three reserves (Rivers, Jamal Crawford, and Glen Davis) in those two series, and the lack of depth was ultimately what did the Clippers in. If they had an opportunity to redo those two signings (or at least the Hawes one, which was more significant salary-wise), they could potentially have had another big-time contributor in those playoff series.
Eddie Scarito contributed to this interview.
Four Overseas First-Round Prospects Enter Draft
11:51am: Raznatovic client and first-round prospect Ante Zizic has also entered the draft, as the agent says and Eurohoops.net confirms (Twitter link). Zizic, a 6’11” center who plays for Croatia’s KK Cibona, is No. 22 on Ford‘s list and No. 26 on Givony‘s. The 19-year-old’s athleticism and frame offer promise, but his offensive skills need work, as Givony examined in February.
8:58am: Swingman Timothe Luwawu, shooting guard Furkan Korkmaz and center Ivica Zubac are the first-round prospects among a group of nine overseas players who’ve entered the draft, as their agent, Misko Raznatovic, revealed (Twitter links). Small forwards Marko Guduric and Rade Zagorac, point guard Ognjen Jaramaz, forward/center Alpha Kaba and centers Emircan Kosut and Jordan Shako are the others who’ve declared. All of them have until June 13th, 10 days before the draft, to withdraw.
Luwawu, a 6’7″ 20-year-old from France, has a decent shot to become a lottery pick as the No. 12 prospect in Jonathan Givony’s DraftExpress rankings. Chad Ford of ESPN.com lists him 19th. His strengths include an emerging 3-point game, passing and intriguing defensive skill, while ball-handling and a lack of willingness to finish inside are his weaknesses, as Givony observed in February. Luwawu plays for Serbia’s KK Mega Vizura.
Korkmaz appears poised to be drafted in the same range. Ford ranks him 13th while Givony has him at No. 18. The 6’7″ 18-year-old combines a well-honed 3-point stroke with impressive athleticism, but his defense lags behind, as Givony also examined in February. Korkmaz is with Anadolu Efes of Turkey.
The analysts are split on Zubac, with Givony pegging him 25th while Ford has him all the way down at 71st. The physical tools of the 7’1″ 19-year-old, along with his offensive upside and productivity, are his strengths while his defensive fundamentals, lack of polish and history of injuries are the trouble spots, as Mike Schmitz of DraftExpress examines in a pair of videos. Zubac is a teammate of Luwawu’s on KK Mega Vizura.
The 6’8″, 20-year-old Zagorac, another KK Mega Vizura player, has the highest ranking among the other prospects, coming in 72nd in Givony‘s rankings, though Ford doesn’t list him. The 6’10”, 20-year-old Kaba is Ford‘s 83rd-ranked prospect and 49th in Givony‘s 2017 mock draft, though Givony doesn’t list him among the top 2016 hopefuls. He along with Jaramaz, who’s 6’4″ and 20 years old, also play for KK Mega Vizura. Guduric, a 6’6″ 21-year-old, plays for a rival Serbian team, KK Crvena Zvezda. Shako, a 6’10” 19-year-old, is with Torrelodones of Spain.
Grizzlies Sign Bryce Cotton For Rest Of Season
11:21am: Cotton won’t be on the playoff roster, as Ronald Tillery of The Commercial Appeal clarifies (Twitter link).
11:07am: The Grizzlies have signed Bryce Cotton for the rest of the season, the team announced via press release. The move, which comes after Cotton’s 10-day contract expired Saturday, gives Memphis 16 players, one over the normal limit. The NBA allowed the extra roster spot via hardship, the Grizzlies say, though it’s unclear if the league will allow Cotton to take part in the playoffs.
Rest-of-season deals normally carry into the postseason, but the press release from the Grizzlies states that he’s signed for the remainder of the regular season and doesn’t mention the playoffs. The team was exploring the possibility of having extra roster spots in the playoffs, but it didn’t seem as though the league would allow it, as Chris Herrington of The Commercial Appeal wrote last week, shortly before the team waived Ryan Hollins in a move that appeared to signal the NBA wouldn’t provide hardship exceptions for the postseason.
Injuries have beset Memphis this season, leading to the extra roster spots and a flurry of moves. Marc Gasol is out for the season, and the same appears to be true for Mike Conley, Brandan Wright and Jordan Adams. Tony Allen missed Saturday’s game with a sore left hamstring. Memphis has had an NBA-record 28 players at one point or another this season.
Cotton has appeared in three games, but for less than a minute each time. The 23-year-old point guard also made it into three games with the Suns earlier this season before they released him in January. He began this past fall with the Jazz, who waived him in October, about a week shy of opening night.
His new deal with the Grizzlies will have to be a prorated minimum-salary arrangement, since that’s all Memphis has left to give. So, it’ll be worth $14,913, presuming he formally signed the contract today.
Atlantic Notes: Colangelo, Brand, Ujiri, DeRozan
The hiring of Bryan Colangelo and resignation of Sam Hinkie doesn’t signal “a departure from a process,” Colangelo insisted Sunday as the Sixers introduced him as their new president of basketball operations, as Christopher A. Vito for The Delaware County Daily Times observes. Colangelo nonetheless expects a “summer of change” for the roster, suggesting that with as many as four draft picks this year, all in the first round, the Sixers will consider parlaying some of that youth into more experienced talent. “You can only have so many developing players on your roster at a time, so there may be some decision to defer some of those to a future date, or may be a decision to package some of those things to acquire players that make sense and fit our strategy,” Colangelo said. “… It’s about putting a basketball team together. We’re really changing our focus toward winning. It’s part of a shift in culture, a mindset. I think [coach] Brett [Brown] is excited about shifting that. … There’s going to be a much-greater likelihood that we win basketball games.”
See more from Philadelphia amid news from the Atlantic Division:
- Elton Brand, whose signing earlier this season was one of the team’s first moves away from developing players, thinks he’ll retire at season’s end, Vito notes (Twitter link). Brand, 37, also thought he’d retire this past summer before the Sixers came calling.
- GM Masai Ujiri‘s contract with the Raptors is believed to be worth $15MM, according to Sportsnet’s Michael Grange, so it appears the executive is seeing an average of $3MM annually on the five-year deal. Grange wonders whether the Raptors will explore restructuring the pact, which has two years left on it, now that the Knicks are reportedly eyeing him.
- DeMar DeRozan admitted Sunday to a fondness for playing in Madison Square Garden, but he said he didn’t know whether he would consider the Knicks in free agency this summer, notes Marc Berman of the New York Post. Of course, it’s par for the course that a soon-to-be free agent would praise the Garden, and all indications are DeRozan will re-sign with the Raptors, as Grange points out, given the shooting guard’s consistent praise for Toronto and the organization.
Hoops Rumors Community Shootaround 4/10/16
Multiple reports suggest that Knicks president Phil Jackson is pushing hard for interim coach Kurt Rambis to get the job on a long-term basis. They have a close working relationship that gives Jackson the level of day-to-day input into the coaching staff he has long wanted.
The Knicks have an opportunity to bring a big-name coach to New York, but Marc Berman of the New York Post wrote this week that Jackson isn’t impressed by several of the available candidates. The organization doesn’t believe Golden State assistant Luke Walton will leave the Warriors this summer, and Jackson doesn’t like what he hears from the Bulls’ front office about ex-Chicago coach Tom Thibodeau. Jackson also doesn’t plan a spirited run at former Nuggets coach Brian Shaw, who like Rambis was schooled on the triangle offense during his days with the Lakers.
Rambis has brief experience and little success as an NBA head coach. He guided the Lakers to a 24-13 record and the second round of the playoffs after taking over for the fired Del Harris midway through the 1998/99 season. His next opportunity didn’t come until the 2009/10 and 2010/11 seasons with the Timberwolves, where he led the team to 15-67 and 17-65 records.
Rambis is 9-17 since taking over for Derek Fisher in February, and the Knicks quickly dropped out of the playoff race under his tutelage. Berman reported that players don’t have the respect for Rambis that they did for Fisher. Carmelo Anthony stated this week that he likes Rambis, but he didn’t go as far as endorsing the idea of making him the long-term coach.
Rambis defended his performance with the Knicks to Ian Begley of ESPN.com (ESPN Now link), saying the franchise is in a rebuilding stage. “We’re looking at it from a standpoint of new management, new coaching staff so last year was a year that I calculate as Year Zero, just trying to clean things up and move forward,” Rambis told Begley. “This is our first year of really trying to move forward and seeing what we have and the direction that we want to go and adding pieces. This is a natural process of what happens in the NBA.”
That brings us to tonight’s topic: Should the Knicks keep Rambis as their coach or are they better off looking elsewhere? And how much influence should Jackson have over the decision, considering reports in February that the Knicks organization believes he will eventually rejoin fiancee Jeanie Buss with the Lakers?
Take to the comments section below to share your thoughts and opinions on the topic. We look forward to what you have to say.
Western Notes: Williams, Kings, Green, Barea
Combo guard Elliot Williams, who played five games for the Grizzlies in January, has an offer to continue playing for Panathinaikos in Greece, as Lefteris Moutis of Eurohoops.net details. The Greek team, which signed him in February to a three-month contract, is offering a two-year contract at $2MM per season, but the deal is being held up over negotiations on an out clause for the NBA, Moutis writes. The Greek team wants a commitment from Williams that he will stay there for both years of the contract, as Moutis explains. Williams averaged 1.6 points and 0.8 assists per game while with Memphis on a 10-day deal.
There’s more from the Western Conference:
- The Kings‘ offseason shakeup turned them into playoff contenders early on, but it let them down as the season progressed, writes James Ham of CSNBayArea. The Kings will still finish with their best record since the 2007/08 season, but at 32-48 they were tied for seventh in Hoops Rumors’ reverse standings entering Sunday. “I think you can go in there and get a bunch of players,” said small forward Rudy Gay. “But I think at the end of the day you have to mesh personalities, you have to mesh talent, you have to do all of that. It’s not just getting a bunch of people on a team — it’s not that easy.”
- Clippers combo forward Jeff Green earned a $100K bonus today when L.A. defeated Dallas for its 52nd win of the season, tweets Bobby Marks of The Vertical. He will receive another bonus of $250K if the team wins its final two games. Both bonuses were stipulated in the contract Green originally signed with the Celtics and will count against the luxury tax for the Clippers.
- Mavericks point guard J.J. Barea credited coach Rick Carlisle with making him a better player in Dallas than he was in Minnesota during an interview with ESPN Radio 103.3 KESN-FM (hat tip to The Dallas Morning News). Barea, the reigning Western Conference Player of the Week, signed a four-year, $16MM deal with the Mavs last summer. “There’s nobody who uses me better than [Carlisle],” Barea said. “He knows when to put me in and when to not put me in. I have a great relationship with Dirk [Nowitzki] out there so that always helps me.”
Eastern Notes: Colangelo, Harris, Johnson, Hawks
Bryan Colangelo, who was introduced today as the Sixers‘ new president of basketball operations, defended the controversial “process” championed by his predecessor, Sam Hinkie, writes Bob Brookover of The Philadelphia Inquirer. “I do think it has been a success, because we’re at a jumping-off point now,” Colangelo said. “The organization is poised to take a major leap forward because of what has transpired over these last few years of what I’m going to call a measured rebuilding process.” Brookover isn’t a fan of Philadelphia’s complimentary players, but says the franchise has three valuable pieces in Nerlens Noel, Jahlil Okafor and Joel Embiid, along with three or possibly four first-rounders in this year’s draft. He believes Hinkie was a poor communicator and claims the Sixers are in better hands now that Colangelo is in charge.
There’s more news from the Eastern Conference:
- The Sixers are eager to move past the avalanche of losing that has marked the past three seasons, according to Brian Seltzer of NBA.com. Philadelphia has sunk to a league-worst 10-70 this season after going 18-64 last year and 19-63 in 2013/14, all while Hinkie tried to stockpile draft picks and young players. “It’s been a tough three years,” co-managing owner Joshua Harris said at a press conference this afternoon. “I think we’ve been very honest with the city and the fans. I think the fans have been very patient with us. It’s not easy to build a winner. It’s not easy to build an elite team. Now it’s time to move to the next phase.”
- Joe Johnson would have been a valuable addition to a Cavaliers team that is weak at the backup wing position, contends Jeff Kasler of AmicoHoops. Cleveland was considered an early favorite to land Johnson as he was negotiating his buyout with the Nets, but Johnson opted for Miami because he prefers the Heat’s up-tempo offense. Kasler says Johnson would have given the Cavs quality minutes that Richard Jefferson and Iman Shumpert aren’t providing and would have allowed more rest time for LeBron James in the postseason.
- New Hawks principal owner Tony Ressler is planning a major upgrade to Phillips Arena, according to Chris Vivlamore of The Journal Constitution. Ressler, who bought the team nine months ago, claims Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed told him the city could finance about half of a planned $200MM to $300MM project. The work is projected to begin in the summer of 2017 and be completed in 2018.