Western Notes: Bridges, KP, Beal, Warriors, Gobert
Suns small forward Mikal Bridges is making the case for an offseason extension with his play this season, Michael Pina of Sports Illustrated contends. A versatile two-way wing, Bridges has improved his scoring output while frequently guarding the best perimeter player on the opposing club.
Bridges described his own prep process for the All-Stars he has had to defend, ranging from Kawhi Leonard to Damian Lillard. “You just gotta know your opponent, lock into the film, their tendencies, and get ready, man,” Bridges said.
There’s more out of the West:
- During this young season, Mavericks big man Kristaps Porzingis has yet to recapture the tantalizing play he flashed during the 2019/20 season, his first full year in Dallas, per Drew Maresca of Basketball Insiders. Maresca notes that Porzingis, who rejoined the Mavs last month after an offseason knee surgery, has not been able to replicate the long-range shooting touch he exhibited last season.
- The Warriors could provide an appealing trade package in a hypothetical deal with the Wizards for Bradley Beal. In a deal that would probably have to include both 2020 lottery pick James Wiseman and the Timberwolves’ top-3 protected 2021 draft selection, the Warriors would be perhaps sacrificing their future for their present. The big question, were a trade to happen, is how long Golden State star guard Stephen Curry can remain a core part of a title club, according to Anthony Slater of The Athletic.
- Jazz All-Star center Rudy Gobert recently sat down for an extensive interview with Sam Amick of The Athletic, addressing the Jazz’s hot start to the 2020/21 season, his relationship with All-Star guard Donovan Mitchell, his relationship with former Jazz star center Mark Eaton, and a host of other topics. Utah, currently the No. 1 seed in the West, is 9-1 in its last 10 contests and 16-5 overall. “We all realize that winning a championship would be something that’s never been done before in this franchise, so we all realize that if we all give a little more of ourselves to the team and we all sacrifice a little more, we have a chance to hopefully be in a position to accomplish that,” Gobert said.
Former Raptor Lucas Nogueira Announces Retirement
Former Raptors center Lucas Nogueira is retiring from basketball, according to a post on his Instagram.
The Celtics initially drafted the rights to the 7-footer with the No. 16 pick in 2013 (one pick after reigning two-time MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo), packaging him in a draft-night deal with the Hawks. During the summer of 2014, with Nogueira still overseas, the Hawks sent his draft rights to the Raptors in a package that also included sharpshooting off-guard Lou Williams.
Nogueira played 141 games for the Raptors between 2014-18. Toronto decline to tender the big man an extension offer for the 2018/19 season, making him an unrestricted free agent in the summer of 2018. He opted to return overseas, playing for clubs in Spain and Bahrain. Nogueira posted career NBA averages of 3.2 PPG, 2.8 RPG, and 1.0 BPG in 12.4 MPG.
The 28-year-old alluded to incurring a new injury after a prior injury kept him off the court for the better part of two years.
“Certainly the sad moments [on the court] were those that took me away from the courts due to injuries,” Nogueira said in his Instagram post. “I always knew that returning to the [court] after almost two years away from her would be very difficult and challenging, but I was willing to take on more of this challenge in my career. However, last Tuesday, it happened again, so I made this difficult decision and asked to leave Fortaleza Basquete Cearense.”
Southwest Notes: Lewis, Bey/Hinton, Stone, Porter
Rookie Pelicans point guard Kira Lewis Jr. has carved out further playing time with New Orleans, per Scott Kushner of the Times-Picayune. “He’s just so young,” head coach Stan Van Gundy said of the 19-year-old rookie, the No. 13 draft pick out of Alabama in 2020. “But he does so many good things. Trying to figure out how we throw him into that rotation is something we are definitely thinking about.”
Van Gundy expounded on his interest in exploring more time on the court for Lewis as the Pelicans’ 2020/21 season progresses: “Does that mean every single night? Does it mean 20 minutes a game? Does it mean 12 minutes a game? I can’t give you a definitive on that yet. But I do think I want him to play.”
There’s more out of the Southwest Division:
- Two-way Mavericks rookies Tyler Bey and Nate Hinton have been sent to the NBA G League’s Long Island Nets to participate in the NBAGL 2021 season in Orlando, per an official team tweet.
- Rockets GM Rafael Stone has exhibited an aptitude for being able to tinker with his roster quickly, Jerome Solomon of the Houston Chronicle writes. Stone’s haul after trading away All-Star James Harden – led by wing Victor Oladipo – has impressed on the court. Houston is currently riding a six-game win streak to climb into the top eight teams within the competitive Western Conference.
- The Grizzlies are sending forward Jontay Porter to the the club’s G League affiliate, the Memphis Hustle, for the 2021 NBAGL season in Orlando, according to a team press release.
Warriors’ Looney Out At Least Two Weeks With Ankle Sprain
5:33pm: Looney will be sidelined for the next two weeks before being reassessed, per a tweet from the club’s PR department.
8:08am: The Warriors lost another center during Tuesday’s loss to Boston, as Kevon Looney exited after spraining his left ankle during the first half. As Nick Friedell of ESPN writes, Looney underwent an MRI after the game that confirmed the sprain, and head coach Steve Kerr said he expects the starting center to miss multiple games.
“I don’t expect him to play the next couple of games,” Kerr said. “It was a significant enough sprain where it looks like he’ll be out for a little bit.”
Typically, having to get by without Looney for a few games wouldn’t be a major problem for the Warriors, but the injury comes at a time when the team is already significantly shorthanded at the five. Marquese Chriss will miss most or all of the season with a broken leg, Alen Smailagic is recovering from knee surgery, and rookie James Wiseman is expected to be sidelined for at least a week due to a sprained wrist.
According to Friedell, Kerr said after the game that Eric Paschall and Juan Toscano-Anderson will take on bigger roles up front, with Draymond Green spending more time at center as well. That will be a small frontcourt — Golden State has no healthy players taller than 6’7″, so rebounding could be an issue in the short term, as it was on Tuesday when the Celtics out-rebounded the Warriors 51-36.
Signing a free agent to help plug the hole at center is one option the Warriors may consider, but as Anthony Slater of The Athletic notes, any new addition would have to return negative coronavirus tests for six consecutive days before being cleared. By that time, Looney and/or Wiseman could be getting close to a return.
Golden State also doesn’t currently have an open roster spot, so signing someone new would require waiving someone — possibly Mychal Mulder, who has a non-guaranteed contract.
NBA Dates, Deadlines To Watch In February
In a normal NBA season, the 2021 trade deadline would be right around the corner, but due to the league’s new-look calendar for the 2020/21 campaign, it won’t arrive until March 25 this year. However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t still a number of dates and deadlines in February worth keeping an eye out for. Here’s a roundup of some of the most notable ones:
Ninety players will become eligible to be traded
Typically, December 15 marks the date that most offseason free agent signees become eligible to be traded. This season, that date is February 6. A total of 89 players will have their trade restrictions lifted on Saturday, with Raptors wing Paul Watson joining that group later in the month, on February 25.
All 90 of those players just signed new contracts with their respective clubs in November or December, so not many will become immediate candidates to be dealt. Still, not having to deal with those trade restrictions should make it easier for teams to negotiate and complete deals in the coming weeks.
The NBA G League season tips off
It took a while to come together and it certainly won’t look like a normal G League season, with only 18 of 29 teams in action at a bubble location in Walt Disney World. But there’s an extra incentive to keep an eye on the NBAGL in this abridged 2020/21 season, with the G League Ignite entering the fold.
The new select team is made up of several G League veterans and a handful of NBA prospects who chose to play in the NBAGL for a year instead of attending college. Jalen Green and Jonathan Kuminga are the biggest names on the squad — both are projected top-five picks in the 2021 draft. They’re on track to make their professional debuts on February 10 against the Santa Cruz Warriors on the G League’s opening night.
Teams can begin signing players to 10-day contracts
Tim Frazier, Yogi Ferrell, and Jordan Bell have technically signed 10-day contracts already this season, but those transactions were only permitted because their teams – the Grizzlies, Cavaliers, and Wizards, respectively – were approved for a hardship exception, allowing them to temporarily add a 16th man. If a team doesn’t qualify for the hardship provision, it can’t sign a player to a 10-day contract until February 23.
Once that date arrives, we should expect to see a handful of teams begin completing 10-day deals, whether to meet minimum roster requirements, to add a short-term injury replacement, or to take a flier on a young player with upside.
We extensively outlined the details of 10-day contracts and explained how they work in our glossary entry on the subject.
Non-guaranteed salaries become guaranteed
Instead of the usual January 10 date, February 27 is the day that all non-guaranteed NBA contracts for 2020/21 will officially become guaranteed. However, February 24 will really be the day to watch.
If a team wants to avoid having a salary become guaranteed, the player must clear waivers before February 27, which means he needs to be cut on February 24 at the latest.
Many players without fully guaranteed salaries are in no danger of being waived by that deadline, but some teams will take the opportunity to save a little money and open up a roster spot. Currently, there are 29 players with non-guaranteed salaries, for an average of about one per team.
Zero Positive COVID-19 Tests Among Players Since Jan. 27
The NBA has continued to avoid another outbreak of COVID-19 cases for the time being, having recorded no new positive confirmed tests among 482 players since January 27, as Shams Charania of The Athletic reports (via Twitter).
The league has been announcing its testing results on a weekly basis, and has been trending in the right direction since confirming 16 positive tests on January 13. There were 11 positive tests the following week, one positive test from Jan. 20-27, and now zero over the last week.
That encouraging trend has been reflected in the NBA’s schedule as well. After a flurry of postponed games in mid-January, the league has only had to postpone one game since January 27 — that contest, Monday’s game between the Pistons and Nuggets, was pushed back due to a false positive test result.
Central Notes: Nwora, Merrill, Turner, Pistons, Bucks
The Bucks have assigned 2020 draftees Jordan Nwora and Sam Merrill to the G League bubble and transferred two-way player Mamadi Diakite there as well, the team announced today in a press release.
Because the Wisconsin Herd are inactive this season, the three Bucks rookies will be split up, with Nwora joining the Salt Lake City Stars, Merrill reporting to the Memphis Hustle, and Diakite heading to the Lakeland Magic. While any of the three could be recalled to the NBA roster in the coming weeks, we don’t expect to see a ton of the usual back-and-forth this season, given the coronavirus-related complications.
Here’s more from around the Central:
- In a conversation with Eric Woodyard of ESPN, Pacers center Myles Turner discusses playing through a hand fracture, as well as his desire to win the NBA’s Defensive Player of the Year award. Indiana’s defensive anchor currently leads the league with an eye-popping 3.9 blocks per game.
- Despite being in the midst of a tough road trip and having had Monday’s game vs. Denver postponed, the Pistons have no interest in the idea of finishing the season in a bubble or regional bubbles, writes Rod Beard of The Detroit News. “Honestly, any type of bubble is not very appealing,” Wayne Ellington said. “Prayerfully, we can we can get through the season as regularly as possible and keep things as normal as possible without having to enter a bubble or do anything too drastic.”
- The Bucks have submitted a plan to the City of Milwaukee in the hopes of receiving approval to fill Fiserv Forum to 25% capacity for games starting later this month (Twitter link via Eric Nehm of The Athletic). So far this season, there have been no fans permitted at Bucks home games.
Knicks Still Interested In Victor Oladipo?
The Knicks are among the teams with interest in Rockets guard Victor Oladipo and will be keeping an eye on him leading up to next month’s trade deadline and potentially beyond, league sources tell A. Sherrod Blakely of Bleacher Report.
Marc Berman of The New York Post reported back in October that the Knicks would likely have trade interest in Oladipo during the 2020 offseason, but later wrote during the first week of free agency that their interest had cooled. At the time, Berman suggested GM Scott Perry was more enthusiastic than president of basketball operations Leon Rose about the idea of acquiring Oladipo.
Much has changed in the two-plus months since that report. For one, Oladipo has already been traded once from the Pacers to the Rockets, though there has been no indication that a long-term deal with Houston is a certainty — the 28-year-old remains on track for free agency this summer.
Oladipo has also looked more like his old self this season after an underwhelming return from a quad tendon injury in 2019/20, boosting his numbers to 20.4 points, 5.3 rebounds, and 4.8 assists per game this year after posting just 14.5 PPG, 3.9 RPG, and 2.9 APG last season. If Rose’s reservations were related to Oladipo’s health and his subpar ’19/20 showing, it’s possible some of those concerns have been alleviated.
Within his report, Blakely notes that two league officials he spoke to believe the 9-13 Knicks are more inclined to be a buyer than a seller at this season’s trade deadline, and may try to land a high-scoring guard. Besides Oladipo, Hornets guards Terry Rozier and Devonte’ Graham are worth watching, Blakely says. New York has had interest in Rozier in the past, Graham is in a contract year, and LaMelo Ball looms as Charlotte’s point guard of the future.
Generally speaking, the Knicks would like to acquire young veterans who can help lead the team’s young core while growing along with that core, according to Blakely.
Magic Sign Frank Mason To Two-Way Deal, Cut Jordan Bone
FEBRUARY 3: The Magic have officially signed Mason, announcing in their press release that they’ve waived Bone to open up the required two-way slot. Roy Parry of The Orlando Sentinel notes (via Twitter) that Mason should be able to forgo the usual quarantine period for a newly-added free agent, since he has been at the G League bubble in Disney.
FEBRUARY 2: Free agent guard Frank Mason has agreed to sign a two-way contract with the Magic, according to Shams Charania of The Athletic (Twitter link).
The 34th overall pick in the 2017 draft, Mason has appeared in a total of 99 NBA regular season games for the Kings and Bucks over the last three seasons. While his NBA output (6.8 PPG on .397/.298/.757 shooting) has been modest, the 26-year-old had a huge year in the G League in 2019/20, averaging 25.3 PPG with a .502/.428/.815 shooting line in 24 games (30.2 MPG) and earning NBAGL MVP honors.
Mason was signed and waived by the Sixers in December for G League purposes, as the team intended to make him an affiliate player for the Delaware Blue Coats. For now though, it sounds like Mason will report to the Magic once he officially signs a contract and clears the NBA’s health and safety protocols. There could be a pathway to immediate playing time with Markelle Fultz (ACL) out for the season and Michael Carter-Williams (foot) also ailing.
While the NBA and NBPA have talked about creating a third two-way slot for teams this season, there’s no indication any agreement on that front is imminent, so the Magic will presumably have to waive one of their current two-way players to make room for Mason. Of the two, Jordan Bone has been a more regular part of Orlando’s rotation than 20-year-old rookie Karim Mane.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
2021 Portsmouth Invitational Tournament Canceled
The Portsmouth Invitational Tournament has been canceled for a second consecutive year due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, according to an official announcement.
The tournament’s organizers indicated in their statement that the decision to cancel 2021’s event was a “very difficult” one. However, it was viewed as a necessary move given the continued declarations of emergency in Portsmouth and the State of Virginia.
The Portsmouth Invitational Tournament, which has been operating since 1953, typically takes place each April shortly after the college basketball season ends. It’s a four-day, 12-game event that showcases the year’s top college senior prospects.
While the P.I.T. has had to be canceled for two consecutive years, the organizers say they’re optimistic for next year’s tournament and will begin planning for April 2022.
Jimmy Butler, Derrick White, Richaun Holmes, Kendrick Nunn, and Sterling Brown are among the many current NBA players who have taken part in the P.I.T. in previous years.