Bulls Gauging Trade Value Of Mirotic, Lopez
The NBA trade deadline is still almost two months away, but the Bulls have started doing their homework on the market. According to K.C. Johnson of The Chicago Tribune, who cites one team executive from each conference, the Bulls have made “preliminary inquiries” to assess the trade value of veteran bigs Nikola Mirotic and Robin Lopez.
Despite their three-game winning streak, which includes a win over the conference-leading Celtics, the Bulls are still just 6-20, tied for the NBA’s worst record. As such, the club is expected to be a seller at the February 8 trade deadline, making Mirotic and Lopez logical trade candidates.
Lopez and Mirotic are the Bulls’ highest-paid players, though neither contract is onerous. Lopez is earning $13.79MM this season and has one more guaranteed year worth $14.36MM. Mirotic has a $12.5MM cap hit for this season and a $12.5MM team option for 2018/19, meaning Chicago could lose him for nothing in unrestricted free agency in July.
Of course, while Lopez’s contract situation and age (29) are enough to make him a trade candidate, there are a few other factors at play in Mirotic’s case. The 26-year-old missed the start of the 2017/18 season after suffering a concussion and facial fractures as a result of a Bobby Portis punch, and while the two power forwards appear to be coexisting now, Mirotic reportedly wouldn’t mind being moved.
With nearly 100 players set to become trade-eligible later this week, trade discussions around the NBA may start to heat up soon. However, most teams won’t finalize any deals until closer to the deadline. If the Bulls decide to move Mirotic, they’ll have no choice but to wait — his trade restrictions don’t lift until January 15.
Tony Allen Expected To Miss 3-4 Weeks
Pelicans swingman Tony Allen likely won’t be back on the court until the new year, according to a press release issued today by the team. Allen has been diagnosed with a non-displaced left proximal fibula fracture and is expected to be sidelined for the next three or four weeks.
While Allen has been a fairly regular part of the Pelicans’ rotation this season, appearing in 22 games so far, he isn’t seeing a ton of action. His 12.4 minutes per game represent a career low, as do his 4.7 PPG and 2.1 RPG. Still, while the sample size is small, New Orleans has better numbers with Allen on the court than off it, particularly on the defensive end.
With Allen on the shelf, Ian Clark and Darius Miller are among the Pelicans who could see slightly increased roles.
Isaiah Canaan Joins Suns’ G League Affiliate
Veteran guard Isaiah Canaan has landed with the Suns’ G League affiliate, the team announced today in a press release. After Canaan signed a G League contract, he was claimed off waivers by the Agua Caliente Clippers of Ontario, who flipped him to the Northern Arizona Suns for a first-round pick in the 2018 G League draft.
Canaan, 26, began his NBA career with the Rockets in 2013/14, and has since bounced around the league, spending time with the Sixers and Bulls before briefly returning to Houston this season. Canaan signed with the Rockets in October after Chris Paul was sidelined with a knee issue, but he was waived just four days later.
A Murray State alum, Canaan has appeared in 186 regular season NBA games, averaging 8.4 PPG in 20.2 minutes per contest.
While Canaan doesn’t currently have an NBA contract or even a two-way deal, he finds himself in an interesting spot. With Eric Bledsoe having been traded last month and Brandon Knight out for the season, the Suns have been leaning on Tyler Ulis and Mike James at the point this year. Neither player is viewed as the cornerstone point guard in Phoenix, so if the team likes what it sees from Canaan in the G League, he could become a candidate for a call-up later in the season.
Free agent forward Derrick Jones has also joined the Northern Arizona Suns after being waived last week by Phoenix, tweets Brian M. Bergner Jr. of The Daily Courier. Jones spent time on assignment in Northern Arizona when he was under contract with Phoenix, but now will be on a straight G League deal as he seeks another NBA opportunity.
Hawks Hope To Use Draft To Land Franchise Player
Acknowledging that the Hawks don’t currently have a “franchise guy” on their roster, general manager Travis Schlenk said today during an appearance on SiriusXM NBA Radio that the Hawks hope to find a player of that caliber in the draft (hat tip to Amico Hoops). As Schlenk explained, the draft looks like a more reliable source of impact talent for the Hawks than free agency or the trade market.
“It’s hard to get those [franchise players] in trades, obviously,” Schlenk said. “We’re in a climate today in the NBA where superstar players, when they decide they want to be traded, they can really control quite a bit where they’re going to go.
“Also, obviously in free agency, it’s tough to get those guys,” Schlenk continued. “Free agents want to go to a place where they can team up with someone else to try to win a championship. Unfortunately right now, that’s not where we are as an organization, so for us, the best way to get that cornerstone franchise guy is in the draft.”
Schlenk’s comments are hardly groundbreaking, given the moves he made in his first offseason as the team’s GM, not to mention the Hawks’ place in the standings. Atlanta currently has a 6-20 record, tied for the worst mark in the NBA, putting the franchise in an excellent position to nab a top-five pick in the 2018 draft.
[RELATED: 2017/18 NBA Reverse Standings]
Still, Schlenk’s focus on the draft is worth noting, since it was just earlier this year that the Hawks reportedly made a strong push to trade for Paul George. The team struck out on George at last season’s deadline and Schlenk – who was part of a Warriors front office that drafted Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, and Draymond Green – took over as Atlanta’s head of basketball operations a few months later.
Atlanta’s offer for PG13 was said to feature several first-round picks, but Schlenk’s approach to the rebuilding process suggests that he has no plans to dip into the team’s stockpile of 2018 and 2019 picks in a trade for a star. Instead, he and the Hawks’ front office is likely doing its homework on a group of top 2018 prospects that includes Luka Doncic, Marvin Bagley III, and DeAndre Ayton, among others.
Hoops Rumors Glossary: Renegotiations
Fans often wonder if NBA Team X can renegotiate its contract with Player Y, as is common practice in the National Football League. The answer is almost always no, and it’s a firm no if the follow-up question is whether the sides can renegotiate the value of the contract downward. Unlike NFL teams, an NBA club can’t create extra cap flexibility by renegotiating a contract to push present-day cap hits into future years.
However, renegotiations are allowed to make an NBA contract more lucrative, and they can happen as long as a specific set of circumstances are in place, as the Sixers showed last month. Philadelphia renegotiated its contract with Robert Covington as part of a long-term extension agreement. The move gave Covington a huge raise for 2017/18, increasing his current-year salary from just $1,577,230 to $16,698,103.
Only contracts that cover four or more seasons can be renegotiated, but that rule doesn’t apply to rookie scale deals — even though they run for four years, they can’t be renegotiated. Renegotiations can only occur after the third anniversary of a contract signing, an extension, or a previous renegotiation (assuming the previous renegotiation lifted the salary in any season by 5% or more). That’s why Covington’s new deal was agreed to on November 15, as he initially signed with the Sixers on November 15, 2014.
Perhaps most importantly, teams can’t renegotiate any contracts if they’re over the cap, and they can only increase the salary in the current season by the amount of cap room that they have. In Covington’s case, the Sixers were under the cap by $15,120,873, and put that entire amount toward the forward’s renegotiation.
Another set of rules restricts just how much can change in a renegotiation. The raises for any seasons that follow the first renegotiated season in a contract are limited to 8%. That’s also true of salary decreases, though if a renegotiation happens at the same time as an extension, as was the case with Covington, the player’s salary can drop by as much as 40% from the last season of the existing contract to the first season of the extension.
The 76ers took advantage of that rule with Covington, who will see his salary decrease by over 37% in 2018/19 – from $16,698,103 to $10,464,092 – before he begins to receive 8% annual raises in 2019/20. Structuring the deal in that manner will allow Philadelphia to preserve as much cap room as possible during the summer of 2018.
Here are a few other rules related to contract renegotiations:
- Teams can’t renegotiate contracts between March 1 and June 30, so the last day of February is always the deadline to complete renegotiations in a given league year.
- Renegotiations can’t occur as part of a trade, and if a player waives a portion of his trade kicker to facilitate a trade, he’s ineligible to renegotiate his contract for the next six months.
- In order for a signing bonus to be included in a renegotiation, the contract must be extended as well.
- Two-way contracts can’t be renegotiated.
Renegotiating a contract to include a significant raise for the current season, like the one Covington received, can be a clever way of incentivizing a long-term extension for a player who would otherwise reach free agency. However, an extensive set of rules limits the appeal of that sort of deal, and teams generally require substantial cap room to pull it off, so contract renegotiations are rare.
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 was used in the creation of this post.
An earlier version of this post was published in 2015 by Chuck Myron.
Kawhi Leonard Set To Return For Spurs
DECEMBER 12, 11:56am: Leonard will play on Tuesday night, Spurs coach Gregg Popovich confirmed today (Twitter link via Michael C. Wright of ESPN). The star forward will be on a minutes restriction.
DECEMBER 8, 2:29pm: Leonard is now targeting Tuesday’s game in Dallas for his return, league sources tell Adrian Wojnarowski and Michael Wright of ESPN (Twitter link). The Spurs don’t play on Sunday or Monday, so delaying his debut until next week would give Leonard a few extra recovery days without missing multiple games.
DECEMBER 7, 2:43pm: The Spurs could welcome Kawhi Leonard back to the lineup as soon as this Saturday, Jabari Young of the San Antonio Express-News writes. The forward has been held out of action with a quad injury since late September.
While Leonard seems optimistic about his imminent return, the team will have a better idea of his status after they re-evaluate him on Friday. Leonard, Young writes, participated in a final workout session with the team today.
Leonard has missed all 25 games for the Spurs this season while recovering from right quadriceps tendinopathy but has slowly ramped up his activity in practice over the last few weeks.
Just last season, the 26-year-old took his game to a new level, averaging 25.5 points and 5.8 rebounds per game while guiding the Spurs to the Western Conference Finals. The well-rested 2016-17 MVP finalist will look to pick up exactly where he left off.
“He looked great [in practice],” Tony Parker, who just returned from his own quad injury, told reporters. “I almost forgot he was that good.”
Soon enough we’ll all remember.
John Wall Likely To Return On Wednesday
Despite being upgraded to questionable for Tuesday’s game in Brooklyn, point guard John Wall appears more likely to return to action for the Wizards on Wednesday night, a source tells TNT’s David Aldridge (Twitter link). Aldridge suggests that “all signs point” to the Wizards getting Wall back in their lineup in D.C. on Wednesday against the Grizzlies.
Wall, who last played for the Wizards on November 22, received platelet-rich plasma and viscosupplementation injections in his left knee last month, with the team estimating at the time that he’d take about two weeks to recover. Candace Buckner of The Washington Post indicated last Friday that Wall would need a few more days to get healthy, writing that he was on track to return in the middle of this week.
The Wizards have held their own without the former first overall pick, going 4-4 in his absence. Still, the team has underperformed a little this season, and will be looking to make a run to close out the year with Wall set to return to action. Washington has a 14-12 overall record, which is tied for sixth in the Eastern Conference.
Wall has averaged 20.3 PPG and 9.2 APG in 16 games so far in 2017/18.
Northwest Notes: Thunder, Nurkic, Jazz
The Thunder were one of a handful of teams in the Western Conference whose splashy offseason additions were supposed to vault them to another level in 2017/18. Conference rivals like the Rockets and Timberwolves have seen their summer moves pay dividends so far, but the Thunder continue to struggle, having played sub-.500 ball through nearly a third of the season so far. As Royce Young of ESPN details, Monday’s loss to the Hornets represented the latest frustrating result for Oklahoma City, with Carmelo Anthony leaving the locker room without talking to reporters.
“For the talent that we have, obviously this is not where we want to be,” Thunder forward Paul George said. “But we’re going to remain optimistic, though, about the future and what we can do. Once we can find a way to really do it night in and night out, it’s no panic mode, but we have to start playing better. It’s getting to a point where we can’t allow ourselves to be at this point. We can say we’re going to figure it out, we can say all that. But at some point it’s gotta stop.”
For his part, head coach Billy Donovan believes the Thunder are taking the right approach, and anticipates that will eventually show up on the scoreboard. “Everybody’s giving up something of themselves for the benefit of the team, and I think at some point that will pay dividends for us,” Donovan said.
Here’s more out of the Northwest division:
- The Thunder players are holding one another accountable for the team’s slow start, according to Erik Horne of The Oklahoman. However, fellow Oklahoman scribe Berry Tramel suggests that Donovan has to take responsibility for the club’s underwhelming performance.
- Trail Blazers center Jusuf Nurkic, a restricted free agent at season’s end, has been sidelined since last Tuesday with a sprained right ankle and wants to get back to 100% before he returns, tweets Jason Quick of NBC Sports Northwest. Nurkic suggested that it’d be better to miss one extra game than to rush back, aggravate the injury, and miss 15 games.
- Determining how best to use Rudy Gobert and Derrick Favors remains an ongoing issue for Jazz head coach Quin Snyder, writes Mike Sorensen of The Deseret News. “When you play with two big guys, like any team in the league we have to try to maximize what those guys can do,” Snyder said. “And what means is the spacing’s different and the other guys have to adjust to that and get better.”
Community Shootaround: Western Playoff Race
As is the case over in the Eastern Conference, the teams at the top of the Western Conference standings as the 2017/18 season nears its two-month mark are unsurprising. While it’s notable that the Rockets (21-4), currently riding a 10-game winning streak, have held off the Warriors (22-6) for the No. 1 spot so far, we expected those two clubs to hold top seeds, along with the Spurs, who have improbably gone 19-8 without Kawhi Leonard.
After the top three though, things get a little messier. The Timberwolves (16-11) and Nuggets (14-12) were popular picks to make the leap into the top eight this season, and so far they’ve delivered on that promise, but neither club has been dominant. They’re followed by a pair of .500 teams led by a star backcourt and frontcourt duo respectively, in the Trail Blazers (13-13) and Pelicans (14-14).
For all the talk coming into this season of the Western Conference being more competitive than ever, the eighth seed is held by a sub-.500 club, with the Jazz (13-14) hanging on for now. It seems like just a matter of time until the Thunder (12-14) figure things out and make their way into the playoff picture, but we’ve been expecting that for weeks and it still hasn’t happened.
Further down the standings, teams like the Mavericks, Kings, and Suns don’t appear to be postseason threats, as expected. But it’s a little surprising to see the Grizzlies (8-19) in the bottom four along with them. The two Los Angeles teams round out the conference, with identical 10-15 records — both clubs remain within striking distance of a playoff spot, but the Clippers will need to get healthy and the Lakers will need more consistent production from their young players.
We’ve still got a lot of basketball to play before playoff seeds are determined, but based on what you’ve seen so far this season, which eight teams do you expect to make the postseason in the West? Can middling teams like the Blazers, Pelicans, and Jazz hold off current lottery teams? Will the Thunder displace one of them? Is there another dark horse contender for a postseason berth in the West?
Jump into the comment section below to share your thoughts on the race for the playoffs in the Western Conference!
Eastern Rumors: Embiid, Stauskas, Tatum, Bulls
Sixers center Joel Embiid feels personal responsibility that former executive Sam Hinkie lost his job, as he expressed to NBA.com’s David Aldridge during a wide-ranging interview. Embiid believes Hinkie would still be running the Sixers if not for the foot injuries that kept Embiid out of action for two seasons after Hinkie drafted him. “He made sure he put everything in place so I could get healthy. And I got healthy and I got back on the court,” Embiid said. “And I feel like he basically kind of lost his job because of me, because I missed two years. So I feel like I owe him a lot.”
In other news around the Eastern Conference:
- Shooting guard Nik Stauskas, who was included in the deal that sent Jahlil Okafor to the Nets, is eager for a fresh start with Brooklyn, Nets website writer Tom Dowd relays. Stauskas appeared in 80 games, including 27 starts, with the Sixers last season but only saw action in six games this season after the off-season signing of J.J. Redick. “I’m just happy with the new change of scenery,” Stauskas said. “I feel like I get a chance to press the reset button.”
- Pistons coach and president of basketball operations Stan Van Gundy revealed that he rated Celtics forward Jayson Tatum as the top player in the draft but Van Gundy is still surprised by the rookie’s 3-point shooting. Tatum, who played one season at Duke, led the league coming into Monday’s action with his 52.3% success rate from long range. “I thought he was the best prospect in the draft,” Van Gundy said Sunday in his pregame press conference. “He’s got all the tools. Anbody who says they’re not surprised by (his) three-point shooting, based on what he did in college, is lying. If there’s somebody who says I knew he’d knock down 50 percent of his threes even though he made 32 percent of them from the college line, they’re lying.”
- Center Robin Lopez, power forward Nikola Mirotic and shooting guard Justin Holiday are three Bulls players that Joe Cowley of the Chicago Sun-Times views as trade bait. All three are rotation players whose contracts expire after next season, though there’s a team option on the final year of Mirotic’s deal, worth $12.5MM.