Atlantic Notes: Celtics, Raptors, VanVleet, Nets
The Celtics haven’t made a change to their 15-man roster since the start of the regular season, standing pat at the trade deadline and not signing any players off the buyout market. Steve Bulpett of The Boston Herald is among those who believes the team would benefit from another shooter off the bench, identifying Jamal Crawford as one viable option. However, president of basketball operations Danny Ainge doesn’t sound especially intrigued by any players available in free agency.
“It’s my impression that they’re rarely as good as people think they are,” Ainge told Bulpett. “A lot of people, including myself and coaches and players, think that a player is still what he was two or three years prior or that he can return to a time of (when he was a) better player. But there’s always a reason why players are available.”
The Celtics have one of the NBA’s best records at 42-21, but that doesn’t mean Ainge has been content since opening night to sit back and roll with this 15-man roster. As he explains to Bulpett, trade possibilities that he pursued prior to last month’s deadline didn’t end up coming to fruition.
“There were some trades that I would have liked to have done,” Ainge said. “But they were good players and the teams that would be giving them up didn’t want to give them up, so they needed to get a home run of a trade in order to do it. And that’s typically what happens when you’re trying to get players that the other team still wants.”
Here’s more from around the Atlantic:
- After dealing with injuries all long, often to multiple starters or rotation players at a time, the Raptors‘ next challenge may be a welcome one, according to Doug Smith of The Toronto Star, who writes that head coach Nick Nurse will have to figure out how to balance playing time for a fully healthy roster.
- Although most of the injured Raptors players – including Marc Gasol and Serge Ibaka – have now returned to the court, Fred VanVleet has yet to do so. Michael Grange of Sportsnet.ca examines how experience has taught VanVleet, who has a sprained left shoulder, to be patient and avoid rushing back from a health issue.
- John Hollinger of The Athletic takes a deep dive into the Nets‘ situation and their surprising split with head coach Kenny Atkinson. Hollinger observes that Brooklyn’s coaching vacancy should be one of the most appealing around the NBA this spring, considering the team is in position to jump into the top four of the East in 2020/21.
- In case you missed it, we passed along several other Nets notes earlier today.
NBA To Discuss Coronavirus With Team Owners On Wednesday Call
The NBA has scheduled a conference call with its team owners and governors for Wednesday afternoon, sources tell ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski and Zach Lowe (Twitter link). According to ESPN’s duo, the call will focus on the coronavirus outbreak and the next steps for teams and the league as a whole.
A previous report suggested that the NBA wanted its teams to have precautionary measures in place by Tuesday, so it makes sense that the league would follow up on Wednesday. Still, it doesn’t sound as if Wednesday’s call will just be a routine check-in.
As Wojnarowski explains in a follow-up tweet, concerns are increasing among owners and team executives that more drastic measures could be around the corner for the NBA. That includes the possibility of teams playing games with only essential personnel in arenas. A report last week indicated that the league had asked clubs to prepare for that scenario in case the coronavirus outbreak continued to worsen.
A handful of players have expressed reservations about the idea of playing behind closed doors. Goran Dragic suggested it would feel like “a pick-up game or practice,” while Kemba Walker said it would be “terrible,” adding that “they might as well cancel the whole game before that.” LeBron James issued the strongest statement on the subject, telling reporters he wouldn’t play in that scenario.
There’s no indication yet that the NBA is leaning toward going that route — we should find out more about the league’s plans following Wednesday’s conference call.
Wizards Notes: Centers, Wall, Draft, I. Smith
Wizards general manager Tommy Sheppard participated in a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) session on Sunday afternoon, and while not all of his answers were especially juicy, he shared a handful of interesting tidbits with fans over the course of that Q&A.
As Chase Hughes of NBC Sports Washington passes along, one of Sheppard’s most noteworthy responses came when he was asked about the Wizards’ center position and how much of the team’s cap flexibility this summer might be put toward addressing it. Sheppard’s answer suggested it won’t be a top priority, according to Hughes.
“If you look at the way the game is played, it’s harder and harder to have significant money tied in to one player at the center position,” Sheppard wrote. “We found it as a necessity to do center-by-committee. We’re pleased with the progress of Thomas Bryant, Moe Wagner, and Anzejs Pasecniks.”
Here’s more on the Wizards:
- Within that Reddit AMA, Sheppard also addressed the progress John Wall is making as he rehabs his Achilles injury, noting that the point guard has scrimmaged with Washington’s G League affiliate. “We’re extremely pleased with John’s condition right now, his participation throughout the rehab process has been fantastic,” Sheppard wrote, according to Mike DePrisco of NBC Sports Washington. “I’ve never seen him this motivated to make a full recovery. We see John scrimmage with the Go-Go, we see him at practice with the Wizards. And while the rust is still there, there’s plenty of signs that point to a full recovery.”
- Jackson Filyo of WashingtonWizards.com passes along a few more of the highlights from Sheppard’s AMA, including the GM’s comments on drafting Rui Hachimura, Troy Brown‘s position, and the Wizards’ plans for the 2020 draft. Sheppard described this year’s draft class as “deeper this year than people realize.”
- Wizards point guard Ish Smith will be re-evaluated later this week, as his left hamstring injury has gone from a day-to-day issue to a week-to-week ailment. Chase Hughes of NBC Sports Washington has the details.
Clippers Sign Joakim Noah To 10-Day Contract
MARCH 9: The Clippers have officially signed Noah to his 10-day contract, sources tell Jovan Buha of The Athletic (Twitter link). The deal will run through March 18, covering the club’s next five games.
MARCH 6: The Clippers have reached an agreement to sign free agent center Joakim Noah, reports Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN (via Twitter).
According to Wojnarowski, Noah is expected to officially join the team next week. No corresponding roster move will be required, since L.A. has an opening on its 15-man roster.
Noah’s deal with the Clippers will start as a 10-day contract, a source tells Shams Charania of The Athletic (Twitter link). That will give the club a chance to audition Noah and potentially change course if things don’t go well. Presumably, if it’s a good fit, a rest-of-season agreement will follow.
Noah, 35, last played in the NBA for the Grizzlies, appearing in 42 games during the 2018/19 season and averaging 7.1 PPG, 5.7 RPG, and 2.1 APG in 16.5 minutes per contest. The big man reportedly had a workout lined up with the Clippers last September, but was forced to cancel it after suffering an injury.
Noah published an Instagram video in late January showing him training and confirming that he had been recovering from an Achilles injury. He stated at the time that he was looking to make a return to the NBA, with a post-deadline report suggesting that he was “fully healthy” and remained an option for the Clippers. The Nuggets were also said to be considering the veteran free agent.
In Los Angeles, Noah will provide frontcourt depth for a Clippers team that had been on the lookout for a true center with size. Montrezl Harrell and Ivica Zubac have done an admirable job handling the five for L.A. this season, but neither player is necessarily an ideal matchup for the NBA’s standout traditional centers.
The Clippers’ potential path to the Finals may require them to get past big men like Anthony Davis, Nikola Jokic, Rudy Gobert, and/or Steven Adams, so it makes sense that the team wants one more defensive-minded option up front, just in case.
Noah will earn $144,901 on a 10-day contract, with the Clippers carrying a cap charge of $91,557.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
And-Ones: NBA Calendar, China, McCollum, Len
Appearing on a panel at the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, Hawks CEO Steve Koonin suggested that the NBA should be starting and ending its season two months later, as Tim Bontemps of ESPN writes.
Rather than starting in mid-October, the regular season would begin in mid-December under Koonin’s proposal, resulting in less overlap between the NBA and NFL seasons. The NBA Finals would then take place in August instead of June, increasing the amount of time that MLB regular season games represent the NBA’s only competition among the four major sports.
“A big piece is you don’t have to reinvent the wheel to enhance ratings,” Koonin said in explaining his idea. “Sometimes, moving away from competition is a great way to grow ratings. If King Kong is at your door, you might go out the back door, rather than go out the front and engage in a hand-to-hand fight with King Kong.
“Many times, at the start of the NBA season, we are competing with arguably the best Thursday Night Football game with the NBA on TNT, our marquee broadcast, and we get crushed and we wonder why. It’s because at the beginning of the season, there’s very little relevance for the NBA. The relevance is now. That’s when people are talking about it.”
Although that would be a major change to the NBA calendar, the league isn’t opposed to considering the idea, as NBA senior VP of strategy and analytics Evan Wasch confirmed, per Bontemps: “We certainly have no issue with reconsidering the calendar. … We’re open to that … there’s no magic to [the season going from] October to June.”
Here are more odds and ends from around the basketball world:
- The Chinese Basketball Association, which has been on hiatus to the coronavirus, is expected to resume play on April 6, with games initially taking place behind closed doors, according to Emiliano Carchia of Sportando.
- The NBA announced in a press release on Sunday that Trail Blazers guard CJ McCollum and Kings center Alex Len have been fined $20K and $15K respectively for their roles in an on-court shoving match on Saturday (video link).
- In an interesting piece for The Athletic, Bill Shea takes an in-depth look at how Forbes’ annual NBA franchise valuations are determined and how accurate they are.
- Although Zion Williamson and Ja Morant already look like stars and Brandon Clarke might be the steal of the first round, most of the rest of the 2019 draft class has been underwhelming so far. John Hollinger of The Athletic identifies a few players who may be good bets to help salvage it, including Coby White, Cody Martin, and Cam Reddish.
2019/20 Disabled Player Exceptions To Expire On Tuesday
March 10 is the last day that teams are allowed to disabled player exceptions for the 2019/20 season, which means the six clubs that still have DPEs available will see them expire if they’re not used on Monday or Tuesday.
We go into more detail on how exactly disabled player exceptions work in our glossary entry on the subject. Essentially though, a DPE gives a team the opportunity to add an injury replacement by either signing a player to a one-year contract, trading for a player in the final year of his contract, or placing a waiver claim on a player in the final year of his contract.
Trades are often the simplest way to make use of disabled player exceptions, but we’re well past the 2019/20 deadline, so that’s no longer an option.
There also don’t appear to be any players on the free agent market or on waivers at the moment who are worthy of an investment larger than the veteran’s minimum — especially since there are no true contenders among the five teams with disabled player exceptions still on hand. As such, I expect the remaining six available DPEs to ultimately go unused.
Here’s a breakdown of the eight DPEs granted by the NBA this season, including the two that were used in recent weeks:
Disabled player exceptions still available:
- Detroit Pistons: $9,258,000 (Blake Griffin) (story)
- Orlando Magic: $4,629,000 (Al-Farouq Aminu) (story)
- New Orleans Pelicans: $3,625,000 (Darius Miller) (story)
- Portland Trail Blazers: $2,859,000 (Rodney Hood) (story)
- Cleveland Cavaliers: $1,017,900 (Dylan Windler) (story)
- Brooklyn Nets: $839,427 (David Nwaba) (story)
Disabled player exceptions that have been used:
- Washington Wizards: $4,365,079 (C.J. Miles) (story)
- Used to acquire Shabazz Napier.
- Los Angeles Lakers: $1,750,000 (DeMarcus Cousins) (story)
- Used to sign Markieff Morris.
Western Notes: Giles, Looney, J. Green, Spurs
Harry Giles has played some of the best ball of his career as of late for the Kings, but his contract situation raises uncertainty about whether the team will be able to keep him this offseason, Greg Wissinger writes for The Sacramento Bee.
Giles, who missed his entire rookie season due to knee issues, had a part-time role for the Kings a year ago, averaging 7.0 PPG and 3.8 RPG in 58 games (14.1 MPG). However, despite flashing some potential, Giles had his fourth-year option for 2020/21 turned down by Sacramento last fall, ensuring that he’ll become an unrestricted free agent this summer. When he does, the Kings won’t be able to offer him a starting salary worth more than $3,976,510, the value of the declined ’20/21 option.
It remains to be seen whether Giles will actually generate enough interest to receive an offer larger than that from a rival suitor, but he has been boosting his stock in recent weeks. The third-year big man has started 14 of 16 games for the Kings since the start of February, averaging 10.4 PPG and 6.3 RPG with a .624 FG% in 21.0 MPG during that stretch.
Here’s more from around the Western Conference:
- Although Kevon Looney just recently turned 24 years old, his health is becoming an ongoing concern for the Warriors, according to Monte Poole of NBC Sports Bay Area, who notes that Looney’s diagnosis of neuropathy is a chronic condition that can only be managed, not fixed.
- Jeff Green, the newest addition to Houston’s roster, has seen an increased role over the Rockets‘ last two games, as Jonathan Feigen of The Houston Chronicle writes. Green was a +28 in the team’s nine-point loss to Charlotte on Saturday and went 8-for-8 from the floor on Sunday, making a strong case to continue playing extra minutes going forward.
- Earlier this season, amidst chatter that he may be a candidate to become the Spurs‘ next head coach, Kansas coach Bill Self said there was “zero truth” to those rumors. Recently, Self reiterated that he has no plans to leave the Jayhawks to become Gregg Popovich‘s successor, as Tom Orsborn of The San Antonio Express-News relays. “People may say whatever because (Spurs CEO R.C. Buford and I) are buddies, which we are, and proud of that,” Self said. “But I am not going to be the next coach of the San Antonio Spurs, nor would he want me to be. I mean, they got arguably the greatest coach of all time that still has got a lot of gas in the tank. So, that is a rumor I know some people have said, but that is a pretty ridiculous one right there.”
Nets Notes: Atkinson, Durant, Irving, Jordan
In an in-depth story for The Athletic, Shams Charania and Alex Schiffer take a closer look at Kenny Atkinson‘s final days in Brooklyn, detailing how the Nets ultimately came to the decision to part ways with their head coach.
As Charania and Schiffer explain, a team meeting following last Wednesday’s blowout home loss to Memphis was an inciting event. During that “spirited” session, people in the room aired their grievances, with Spencer Dinwiddie and DeAndre Jordan among the players who were called out. Perhaps most importantly, Kevin Durant suggested that the Nets must improve certain habits and that they weren’t building the sort of culture traits that a legit title contender has.
According to The Athletic’s report, no directive from Kyrie Irving or Durant was ever given to replace Atkinson, but the Nets’ two new stars “never connected” with the incumbent head coach and there was a growing belief they weren’t interested in playing for him next season. A handful of other players were also believed to have started “disconnecting” with Atkinson, per Charania and Schiffer.
In Wednesday’s meeting, players didn’t hold back on critiquing Atkinson’s coaching style, expressing their “growing displeasure” with his communication tactics. Charania and Schiffer write that the aftermath of that meeting could have gone one of two ways. Atkinson could have become more motivated to fix those issues players had — however, sources tell The Athletic that the head coach instead came out of that session “dejected” and not wanting to let anyone “dictate his job.” He began to talk about leaving the job on his own terms, if necessary.
Atkinson and GM Sean Marks ultimately made the final decision to part ways late on Friday night and into Saturday morning, according to The Athletic.
Here’s more on the Nets and their coaching change:
- Nets center DeAndre Jordan took exception to the idea of blaming Durant and Irving for Atkinson’s departure, calling those reports “bullsh–,” as Peter Botte of The New York Post writes. “I’m close with Kyrie, but Wilson (Chandler) is a new player, Garrett Temple’s a new player. We’re all new players,” Jordan said. “So if you’re going to say new players, put it on all eight of the new players.” Jordan added that he was “shocked” by the news, adding that Atkinson “did a great job with us.”
- For what it’s worth, the Athletic report from Charania and Schiffer suggested that Jordan was among the players to express frustration to Atkinson last week, with sources indicating there had been a “season-long tension” relating to the coach’s decision not to start Jordan over Jarrett Allen. In Brooklyn’s first game under Jacque Vaughn, Jordan entered the starting lineup, signaling the “beginning of the end of the old Nets,” writes Kristian Winfield of The New York Daily News.
- Marc Berman of The New York Post explores whether Mark Jackson – who is expected to be a candidate for the Knicks‘ head coaching job this spring – may also be on the Nets’ list of targets, given Rich Kleiman‘s fondness for the former Warriors head coach.
- As for Atkinson’s next move, one source with knowledge of the situation who spoke to Charania and Schiffer is confident that the former Brooklyn head coach won’t be out of work for long if he doesn’t want to be. “Kenny will be back coaching soon,” the source said. “He works too hard. Works his ass off. He will probably take the time away and replay the scenarios and relationships that went wrong — and come back stronger for the job he wants.”
Northwest Notes: Conley, Grant, Reid, Daniels
Jazz guard Mike Conley has finally regained his health and is reminding everyone just how talented he is, Aaron Falk of NBA.com writes.
Conley recorded 25 points, five assists and three steals in a road victory over the Celtics on Friday, demonstrating his value at the point guard position.
“It’s just funny how people work,” teammate Donovan Mitchell said of Conley, as relayed by Falk. “Y’all can continue to hate and say what y’all want. I see it. I know he does, too. But that’s Mike Conley. He’s a Hall-of-Famer, one of the best to play at his position.”
Utah acquired Conley from Memphis last July in exchange for Kyle Korver, Jae Crowder, Grayson Allen, the draft rights to Darius Bazley and a protected first-round pick, solidifying its backcourt by pairing him and Mitchell together.
Conley had a slow start to the 2019/20 season, but the 32-year-old has increased his production in recent weeks as the team gears up for a playoff push. In total, he has averaged 13.9 points, 4.3 assists and 0.8 steals in 28.4 minutes per contest.
“There’s way less thinking,” Conley said of his team’s recent surge. “I’m just playing the game. After playing together for a while now, I’m feeling in charge, knowing how you can put guys in position to be successful and make plays, knowing what times in the game that I can be aggressive.”
There’s more out of the Northwest Division today:
- Nuggets forward Jerami Grant is fitting in seamlessly with the team, Mike Singer of the Denver Post writes. “We’ll see how it goes in the offseason,” said Grant, who holds a $9.3MM player option for next season. “It’s definitely all situational, but I’m definitely comfortable here. I love my teammates, love the coaches, everything.”
- The Timberwolves are rallying around rookie big man Naz Reid as he continues his impressive play, Jon Krawczynski of The Athletic writes. “Naz is great,” teammate James Johnson said. “Right now he’s not focused on one aspect of the game, he’s doing so many things that stats won’t ever show or that fans won’t ever see. The locker room feels it. Real basketball fans feel it. I’m sure you guys feel it. He keeps doing that, his job’s going to get more and more and his responsibilities are going to be more and more and he’s going to be ready for it.”
- Eric Spyropoulos of NBA.com examines what Troy Daniels could bring to the Nuggets, with Denver signing the 28-year-old to a contract this past week. Daniels, known as a valuable three-point threat during his NBA career, is expected to provide depth off the bench as the Nuggets gear up for a postseason run.
NBA G League Assignments/Recalls: 3/8/20
Here are Sunday’s assignments and recalls from around the NBA G League:
- The Nuggets have recalled Keita Bates-Diop from the Windy City Bulls, announcing the news on social media. Bates-Diop was the No. 48 pick in the 2018 NBA Draft, with the 24-year-old appearing in two games with Denver on the season.
- The Pistons have assigned forward Donta Hall to their G League affiliate in Grand Rapids, the team announced on social media. Hall is on a second 10-day contract with Detroit and is under strong consideration for a rest-of-season deal.