Projected Lottery Pick Avdija Prepares To Enter Draft
Israeli forward Deni Avdija has submitted paperwork to the NBA to make himself eligible for the draft, ESPN’s Jonathan Givony relays.
Ranked No. 5 overall by Givony, Avdija announced his intention to leave the EuroLeague and play in the NBA on ESPN’s morning show Get Up.
“First of all, the NBA is the best league in the world. There is a lot to learn over there and a lot of experience there,” Avdija said. “It’s going to be great to take my game to the next level.”
According to Givony’s analysis, the 6’9” Avdija is tall enough to play power forward but has the play-making skills of a point guard who excels as a passer in pick-and-rolls.
Viewed by many experts as the top foreign prospect in the draft, Avdija played this season for Maccabi Tel Aviv, averaging 7.0 PPG, 4.0 RPG and 1.6 APG in 19 MPG. He was named Most Valuable Player of the FIBA U20 European Championship last summer while dominating at both ends of the floor. He posted averages of 18.4 PPG, 8.3 RPG, 5.3 APG, 2.4 BPG and 2.1 SPG.
Although he posted modest stats for Maccabi, he was a young rotation player on a team that lost just once in Israeli League play and went 19-9 in the EuroLeague.
Atlantic Notes: Durant, Irving, Powell, Ntilikina
Nets general manager Sean Marks offered an update on the status of injured stars Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving during remote interviews this week, relays NetsDaily. Durant continues to rehab an Achilles injury that has sidelined him since last year’s NBA Finals, while Irving is recovering from shoulder surgery on March 3.
“Specifically with Kevin, this rehab and return to practice was really looking great,” Marks said. “He was on the floor again. A lot people have seen that short little video that was posted and so forth. It was remarkable to see the way he was progressing. … I’ve talked to Ky multiple times. He seems to be doing very very well, rehabbing in his apartment in Brooklyn and between here and Jersey. So he’s doing well. I know both those guys are itching to get back, but get back at 100 percent.”
Marks also addressed the team’s unsettled coaching situation, as interim Jacque Vaughn only got to coach the team for two games after taking over for Kenny Atkinson. Marks said Vaughn and his staff are staying in touch with players and expressed hope that he will get more opportunity to show what he can do before a final decision has to be made.
There’s more from the Atlantic Division:
- Raptors guard Norman Powell is fully recovered from a twisted ankle he suffered during the team’s final game before the hiatus, tweets Josh Lewenberg of TSN Sports. Powell has been watching a couple hours of film each day during the break and is concentrating on his defense off the ball (Twitter link).
- The Knicks are less likely to try to move point guard Frank Ntilikina this offseason than they were last summer, according to Ian Begley of SNY.tv. Several teams said New York reached out to them with trade proposals involving Ntilikina before last year’s draft and may have accepted an early second-round pick in return.
- There is a “growing belief” that interim Knicks coach Mike Miller will have a role with the organization next season, although he remains a long shot to become the permanent head coach, writes Marc Berman of The New York Post. Miller has been studying tape and trying to keep the team running as normally as possible under the circumstances. “We’ve done a good job of making sure throughout the week our players hear from us almost on a daily basis — from the training staff, performance staff and medical staff,” he said. “They have been very well connected with us making sure everyone is safe.”
Bulls Notes: Karnisovas, GM Search, Boylen, Battier
Arturas Karnisovas, the Bulls‘ new executive VP of basketball operations, promised “an extensive and diverse” search for a general manager during an interview with K.C. Johnson of NBC Sports Chicago. Karnisovas was officially hired Monday, but is working out of Denver because of restrictions related to the coronavirus pandemic. He has already added J.J. Polk and Pat Connelly in the first steps toward assembling a new front office.
“I’ve been in this profession a long time,” Karnisovas said. “Most of the guys on the list I know personally and I’ve known them for a long time, from scouting games and going to dinners and interaction. It’s going to be easier for me. I know exactly the criteria I’m looking for. It’s going to be complementary to me and my skill set. I don’t want clones. I want somebody who is going to bring something different to our organization. Those are things I pay attention to.”
Also in the interview, Karnisovas talked about his preference for an up-tempo offense with plenty of ball movement and the need for player development, citing the progress the Nuggets were able to make with a young team.
“Players want to play and players want to win,” he said. “I’m going to try to facilitate that. I’m going to try to improve every year. Constant improvement is what we’ve done in Denver. I’d like to incorporate that here.”
There’s more from Chicago:
- Karnisovas should be willing to trade any player on the roster, even leading scorer Zach LaVine or Lauri Markkanen, contends Mark Schanowski of NBC Sports Chicago. He cites the Sixers, Nets and Spurs as teams that might look to shake up their rosters in the offseason.
- The uncertainty of the NBA calendar may help coach Jim Boylen keep his job, Johnson writes in a mailbag column. If the league is able to squeeze in a few regular season games before the playoffs, Johnson believes it makes sense to keep Boylen around for those. Karnisovas said he will get to know Boylen, who has two years left on his contract, before making a final decision. Johnson notes that Karnisovas has a prior relationship with assistant coach Chris Fleming, whom he helped to hire in Denver.
- Chicago hasn’t sought permission to interview Shane Battier, the Heat’s VP of basketball development and analytics, according to Ira Winderman of The Sun-Sentinel. A report earlier this week indicated the Bulls weren’t planning to pursue Battier because they don’t believe Miami would let him go.
Richaun Holmes Wants Long Future In Sacramento
Richaun Holmes has been a bargain since signing a two-year, $10MM deal with the Kings last summer and he hopes to remain with the team long after that contract expires, relays James Ham of NBC Sports Bay Area. Holmes talked about his future during a recent appearance on the Purple Talk podcast.
“I absolutely love Sacramento,” he said. “This community, this city, these fans — have shown me, in my short time here, that I really couldn’t see myself playing anywhere else. I would love to play here the rest of my career. I love to play in front of these fans, be a part of this community — this is a great place to be and I’d love just to be a part of it.”
Holmes seemed headed to a backup role in Sacramento after the team invested $39MM over three years in fellow center Dewayne Dedmon. However, Holmes seized the starting job after four games and played well enough to convince the Kings to trade Dedmon to Atlanta in February.
Holmes, 26, spent three years with the Sixers and one with the Suns before his break-out season. His minutes have increased to 28.8 per game since joining the Kings and he’s posting career highs with 12.8 PPG and 8.3 RPG.
He has also formed a bond with the Sacramento community that included joining a few teammates to pass out meals to more than 1,000 people in need earlier this week. In addition, Holmes’ parents have become social media stars in the area, with celebrations on Instagram after every Kings victory.
“As soon as I got here, it felt like a perfect fit,” Holmes said. “From the team, to the fans, to the community, everybody shows love.”
Draft Notes: Madar, Montgomery, Hayes, Wiseman
Israeli point guard Yam Madar has decided to enter the 2020 NBA draft, agent Alex Saratsis tells Jonathan Givony of ESPN (Twitter link).
Madar, who plays for Hapoel Tel Aviv and ranks 74th on ESPN’s big board, is a candidate to be selected in the second round, as Givony notes. I imagine the 19-year-old’s odds of being drafted would increase if he’s willing to be a draft-and-stash prospect, developing his game for another year or two overseas while an NBA team holds his rights.
Here’s more on the 2020 draft:
- Yet another Kentucky underclassman has entered the draft, with the Wildcats announcing today that sophomore forward EJ Montgomery is the latest to declare. Montgomery, who tested the draft waters a year ago, will go pro this time around after averaging 6.1 PPG, 5.4 RPG, and 1.1 BPG in a part-time role (24.1 MPG) for Kentucky. Five Wildcats are now part of our early entrants list, with Kahlil Whitney – who left the program in January – representing a sixth.
- Kevin O’Connor of The Ringer makes a case for why he believes French guard Killian Hayes should be considered the No. 1 prospect in the 2020 draft class. Within the story, O’Connor suggests that NBA teams have wildly varying opinions on many of this year’s top prospects — for instance, some executives have center James Wiseman atop their boards, while others don’t have him in their top 10.
- Israeli forward Deni Avdija is another wild card among this year’s lottery prospects. Marc Berman of The New York Post takes an in-depth look at Avdija, noting within the piece that the Raptors have scouted the youngster more than most teams. Toronto, of course, won’t be in position to draft Avdija in this year’s lottery.
2020/21 Salary Cap Preview: Cleveland Cavaliers
Hoops Rumors is looking ahead at the 2020/21 salary cap situations for all 30 NBA teams. Due to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the NBA, it’s impossible to know yet where the cap for 2020/21 will land. Given the league’s lost revenue, we’re assuming for now that it will stay the same as the ’19/20 cap, but it’s entirely possible it will end up higher or lower than that.
The Cavaliers‘ win-loss record says their 2019/20 season played out exactly as expected — projected by oddsmakers to be approximately a 24-win team, Cleveland was on a 24-win pace when the NBA went on hiatus.
However, the path the club took to its 19-46 record – including keeping big men Kevin Love and Tristan Thompson, trading for Andre Drummond, and parting ways with first-year head coach John Beilein – wasn’t quite so predictable.
Depending on what happens this offseason with Drummond, the Cavs may enter the 2020/21 league year without any cap room, so major changes aren’t necessarily coming. The franchise will instead focus on continuing to acquire and develop young talent as its rebuild continues.
Here’s where things stand for the Cavaliers financially in 2020/21, as we continue our Salary Cap Preview series:
Guaranteed Salary
- Kevin Love ($31,258,256)
- Larry Nance Jr. ($11,709,091)
- Dante Exum ($9,600,000)
- Cedi Osman ($8,840,580)
- Darius Garland ($6,720,720)
- Collin Sexton ($4,991,880)
- Dylan Windler ($2,137,440)
- Kevin Porter ($1,717,981)
- J.R. Smith ($1,456,667) — Waived via stretch provision.
- Total: $78,432,615
Player Options
- Andre Drummond ($28,751,774)
- Total: $28,751,774
Team Options
- None
Non-Guaranteed Salary
- Jordan Bell ($1,762,796)
- Alfonzo McKinnie ($1,762,796)
- Dean Wade ($1,517,981)
- Matt Mooney (two-way)
- Total: $5,043,573
Restricted Free Agents
- None
Unrestricted Free Agents / Other Cap Holds
- Tristan Thompson ($27,808,695): Bird rights
- Matthew Dellavedova ($14,411,250): Bird rights
- No. 5 overall pick ($6,400,920)
- Ante Zizic ($3,872,215): Bird rights 1
- Channing Frye ($1,620,564): Non-Bird rights 2
- Nik Stauskas ($1,620,564): Non-Bird rights 2
- Total: $55,734,208
Offseason Cap Outlook
Drummond’s player option is the wild card for the Cavaliers. If he opts out, there’s a path for the team to carve out some salary cap room, but with the cap in flux as a result of COVID-19, exercising that $28.8MM option looks like the safe play for the veteran center. That would eliminate Cleveland’s chances of creating cap space.
How much flexibility the Cavs ultimately have below the luxury tax line will hinge on a few other factors, including whether or not the team re-signs Thompson.
Cap Exceptions Available
- Mid-level exception: $9,258,000 3
- Bi-annual exception: $3,623,000 3
- Trade exception: $3,837,500 (expires 12/24/20)
Footnotes
- The Cavaliers can’t offer Zizic a starting salary worth more than his cap hold, since they declined his rookie scale team option for 2020/21.
- The cap holds for Frye and Stauskas remain on the Cavaliers’ books because they haven’t been renounced after going unsigned in 2019/20. They can’t be used in a sign-and-trade deal.
- This is a projected value.
Note: Minimum-salary and rookie-scale cap holds are based on the salary cap and could increase or decrease depending on where the cap lands.
Salary information from Basketball Insiders and Early Bird Rights was used in the creation of this post. Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
And-Ones: Ujiri, DeRozan, Tomjanovich, Bates
While he’s on good terms now with former Raptors head coach Dwane Casey after firing him in 2018, Toronto’s president of basketball operations Masai Ujiri admitted to TNT’s Ernie Johnson this week that he hasn’t been able to mend fences in the same way with DeMar DeRozan. Ujiri shipped the longtime Raptors shooting guard to San Antonio in a 2018 blockbuster that sent Kawhi Leonard to Toronto.
“With Casey, it has gotten so much better now with his family and him. With DeMar there is still plenty of work to be done,” Ujiri said, according to Tim Bontemps of ESPN. “But, by the grace of God, it will all get better. We have to continue to make these decisions that are tough. But that’s the business of basketball, and the position that we are in.”
While recognizing that the NBA is a business, Ujiri said that making significant changes to a coaching staff or roster isn’t easy, especially when it means parting ways with someone he has gotten close to. “You feel it in your heart,” Ujiri said, per Bontemps.
“I always say that the two hardest things in our world, in our business, is trading a player and then when a player leaves, if a player leaves in free agency,” Ujiri said. “And it’s hard on both sides. When a player is traded, it is hard on the player side, and when a player leaves, like us (with Leonard last summer), it is hard on that side. I’ve experienced all of it, from wonderful people.”
Here are more odds and ends from around the basketball world:
- In a conversation with Michael Lee of The Athletic, former Rockets coach Rudy Tomjanovich revisited some of the highlights – and lowlights – of his career and expressed gratitude at being elected into the Basketball Hall of Fame earlier this month. “I had been through the phone calls several times and got the, ‘Sorry, not this year.’ And it was so good to hear them say, ‘Rudy, you’re in,'” Tomjanovich said. “Still getting use to it. Still bouncing on a cloud. I feel really good about it.”
- After Emoni Bates became the first high-school sophomore to win the Gatorade National Player of the Year, Jared Weiss of The Athletic explores the 16-year-old phenom’s game and explains why NBA scouts are excited for his growth trajectory.
- In the second installment of his breakdown of 2020’s free agent class for wings, Danny Leroux of The Athletic singles out Heat swingman Derrick Jones Jr. as one of the more intriguing options who will be available, since it’s rare for an established rotation player to reach unrestricted free agency at such a young age — Jones turned 23 in February.
G League Path Growing More Appealing For High School Prospects?
While some top NBA prospects over the years have opted to forgo college basketball in favor of an international league, few have gone the G League route. However, multiple industry sources tell Evan Daniels of 247Sports.com that the idea of spending a year in the NBAGL is becoming more intriguing to high school prospects.
As Daniels notes, when the G League first introduced its new “select contracts” for top high school prospects in the fall of 2018, it announced plans to make those contracts worth $125K. However, sources tell Daniels that the NBAGL is now willing to pay more than that “for the right prospects.”
Additionally, Daniels speculates that the coronavirus pandemic could discourage prospects who want to go pro rather than attending college from choosing an international league, since traveling overseas may not look like as appealing an option at the moment.
According to Daniels, the G League is believed to be an option for some notable members of the recruiting class of 2020, including power forward Isaiah Todd – who recently backed out of his commitment to Michigan – and shooting guard Jalen Green. Even if neither of those two prospects opt to play to play in the NBA’s developmental league next season, the G League has been “aggressively” scouting and meeting with prospects over the last couple years and seems to be making some headway, Daniels writes.
Still, skepticism persists that the G League is a viable route for high school prospects who have a bevy of college and overseas options. Veteran NBA forward Jared Dudley tweets that the NBA has to address the NBAGL’s facilities and travel situation in order to increase the league’s appeal.
Knicks Not Retaining Consultant David Blatt
The Knicks are parting ways with David Blatt, according to Marc Berman of The New York Post (Twitter link), who reports that Blatt’s contract has expired after he was hired by the team as a basketball operations consultant last December.
Blatt, a longtime basketball coach who was on the Cavaliers’ sidelines from 2014-16, was hired by the Knicks in the winter after most recently serving as the head coach of Greek team Olympiacos. His role in New York saw him working with the Knicks’ G League team and the organization’s international scouting.
Former Knicks president Steve Mills was responsible for hiring Blatt, who was his teammate at Princeton from 1978-81. Given the close relationship between the two men, it’s unsurprising that the Knicks are moving on from Blatt now that Mills no longer has a role in the club’s basketball operations department. However, Berman notes that Blatt leaves on “good terms” with new team president Leon Rose.
After officially starting his new position on March 2, Rose figures to make more changes to the Knicks’ front office in the coming months. So far though, the team hasn’t been actively hiring or firing executives during the NBA’s hiatus.
Coronavirus Notes: Fauci, Morey, CP3, Courtside Seats
Dr. Anthony Fauci, America’s top infectious diseases expert, told Snapchat’s Peter Hamby this week that the only way to realistically restart sports leagues in 2020 will be by initially playing games without fans (video link; story via ESPN.com).
“There’s a way of doing that,” Fauci said, in reference to restarting sports. “Nobody comes to the stadium. Put (the players) in big hotels, wherever you want to play, keep them very well surveilled. … Have them tested every single week and make sure they don’t wind up infecting each other or their family, and just let them play the season out.”
In essence, Fauci is suggesting the “bubble” model that the NBA and other sports leagues have been exploring. It would involve teams and players congregating in a single city and playing games in a handful of locations with only essential personnel in attendance. They’d also have to stay at designated hotels.
Although Fauci’s comments were in reference to the MLB and NFL specifically, there’s no reason why they wouldn’t apply to the NBA as well — especially since the NBA wouldn’t need to house as many teams in its “bubble” once its postseason begins. While several roadblocks would still need to be overcome to make such a scenario a reality, it’s encouraging that Fauci considers it viable.
Here’s more on the ongoing coronavirus situation as it relates to the NBA:
- Although NBA commissioner Adam Silver has said that the NBA won’t be making any decisions on its season in April, that doesn’t mean that we should expect any concrete updates on May 1, writes Marc Stein of The New York Times.
- Amidst reports that players and trainers are hoping for a preparation period of approximately four weeks before play resumes, Rockets GM Daryl Morey suggested on Monday that players likely won’t get that much time to get back into game shape, per Ben DuBose of RocketsWire. As Morey notes, if every team has to deal with the same abridged preparation period, no clubs should have a competitive advantage as a result.
- Thunder guard and NBPA president Chris Paul spoke to Mark Medina of USA Today about the ongoing talks between the league and the players’ union, referring to the situation as “a wait-and-see game.” Paul, who said the NBPA is attempting to keep players as informed as possible, also noted that some sort of ramping-up period will be necessary before games can resume. “I guarantee guys won’t step on that court without feeling like they’ve had the right amount of time to get prepared,” he said
- Even when fans are eventually allowed to attend basketball games again, there’s no guarantee that the NBA won’t re-evaluate the existence of its courtside seats, says Adam Aziz of The Undefeated.