Injury Notes: Butler, Hayward, McDermott, Collins
Heat forward Jimmy Butler sprained his right ankle and did not play in the second half of Miami’s win against Detroit on Tuesday, according to Anthony Chiang of the Miami Herald. Butler has already missed six games – three in November and three more in January – due to a right ankle sprain.
“He tweaked his ankle. We’ll see how he feels (Wednesday),” Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra said.
We have more injury-related news:
- Hornets forward Gordon Hayward said he’s “starting to ramp things up this week,” Rod Boone of the Charlotte Observer tweets. The plan is to test his ankle during more basketball activities the rest of the week and begin contact next week. Hayward hasn’t played since February 7 after spraining ligaments in his left ankle.
- Doug McDermott is expected to miss several games after suffering an ankle sprain, Tom Orsborn of the San Antonio Express-News tweets. “He did it pretty good,” coach Gregg Popovich said of the Spurs forward. “I don’t know…But he will be out for a while.”
- Hawks head coach Nate McMillan didn’t have much of an update on Wednesday when asked about John Collins‘ status, tweets Chris Kirschner of The Athletic. According to McMillan, Collins – who has missed the last two games with a finger injury – is “getting better,” but there’s still no timeline for his return.
Pistons Notes: Bagley, Livers, Cunningham, Blaha
Marvin Bagley III is headed to free agency but he seems intent on remaining with the Pistons, as he told James Edwards III of The Athletic.
Bagley has enjoyed his experience with Detroit since he was dealt by the Kings last month. He’s also been productive, averaging 14.1 PPG and 7.1 RPG in 27 MPG during his first 10 games with the Pistons.
“We’ve got some amazing talent here. Now, it’s about figuring out how to work together, gel together to do something bigger,” he said. “I’m definitely excited about it. I can’t wait to be around the guys even more, figure them out even more and make runs in the playoffs … even get some championships here. I’m excited about it.”
Bagley didn’t receive a rookie scale extension with Sacramento. His qualifying offer, which would make him a restricted free agent, will be $7.3MM since he won’t meet the starter criteria.
We have more on the Pistons:
- Due to injuries and illness, rookie wing Isaiah Livers received extensive playing time against Miami on Tuesday. He responded with 16 points in 31 minutes but his bigger focus was defense, according to Keith Langlois of Pistons.com. Livers, a second-round pick, spent the bulk of the season rehabbing from a foot injury. “Being out, definitely I was locked in, especially to my team,” Livers said. “I was seeing where we need that push and that shove. What I saw was defensive energy right away off the bench. That was my key right away to minutes off the bench.” Livers’ contract is guaranteed through next season with a team option in 2023/24.
- Rookie of the Year candidate Cade Cunningham missed Tuesday’s game due to a non-COVID illness, according to Rod Beard of the Detroit News. “He started feeling bad (Monday) night and came to shootaround looking like death, eating crackers. So, he’s in pretty bad shape,” coach Dwane Casey said prior to the game. Hamidou Diallo (finger) and Frank Jackson (back) also missed the game and Rodney McGruder aggravated a hamstring injury during it.
- Longtime broadcaster George Blaha underwent a heart bypass procedure on Tuesday, the team’s PR department tweets. Blaha is expected to return as the play-by-play announcer next season.
Pacific Notes: Wiseman, Mann, Coffey, Sabonis, Davis
James Wiseman‘s third and perhaps final G League game with the Santa Cruz Warriors should temper expectations regarding his impact, according to Taylor Wirth of NBC Sports Bay Area. Wiseman ran the floor well but even though he contributed 15 points, nine rebounds and three blocks in 21 minutes, he also committed six turnovers on Tuesday. The Warriors’ big man has a long way to go to regain his offensive rhythm but he’s only expected to play 12-18 minutes per game during the team’s stretch run.
We have more from the Pacific Division:
- The Clippers decided not to add a point guard at the trade deadline or through the buyout market. That looks like a wise move in the aftermath of their overtime loss to Cleveland on Monday, Andrew Greif of the Los Angeles Times writes. With Reggie Jackson getting a rest, the Clippers had 29 assists and just 11 turnovers with Terance Mann and Amir Coffey among the ball-handlers initiating the attack.
- Kings forward Domantas Sabonis said this week that he intends to play for Lithuania in the EuroBasket tournament this summer, James Ham of ESPN 1320 tweets. He was a member of the Lithuanian National Team during the 2016 Summer Olympics.
- Even if Anthony Davis returns soon from his foot ailment, it won’t fix the Lakers, Bill Oram of The Athletic opines. LeBron James has acknowledged that it may be too late to develop chemistry and maximize the team’s potential. “It puts a Band-Aid on some things,” he said of Davis’ potential return. “But I mean, we just haven’t had enough chemistry, enough time with our group to be able to know exactly who we are and who we can become.”
Knicks Expected To Retain Tom Thibodeau
Tom Thibodeau is expected to remain the Knicks’ head coach beyond this season, Bleacher Report’s Jake Fischer reports.
There has been rampant speculation regarding Thibodeau’s status during the team’s disappointing season.
There’s been some internal support to move on from Thibodeau and owner James Dolan had granted the front office permission to decide whether he remains the head coach, according to Fischer’s sources.
However, president of basketball operations Leon Rose has no plans to make a change — Fischer notes that Rose and Thibodeau been trusted allies since the hiring process in 2020. The Knicks interviewed 11 candidates before picking the former Bulls and Timberwolves head coach.
Thibodeau has three years left on his five-year contract.
Reports surfaced last month that Knicks exec William Wesley blamed the team’s ills on the head coach. However, Thibodeau has maintained a good relationship with Dolan, speaking with the owner following each game and often visiting the owner’s box.
While Rose is reclusive, rarely speaking to the media, Thibodeau has emerged as the team’s official spokesperson. That has helped his cause, Fischer adds.
There’s also no obvious veteran choice in the market to replace Thibodeau and the front office isn’t convinced associate head coach Johnnie Bryant would be a better option. Another current assistant, Kenny Payne, is a candidate to leave New York for Louisville’s head coaching job.
California Notes: Lakers, Holmes, Draymond, Clippers
The struggling 29-39 Lakers, winners of just two of their last ten games, are looking to the future, encouraged by the development of some of their youngsters, writes Kyle Goon of the Orange County Register.
Though the Los Angeles front office mostly opted to build its new-look roster around older veterans this summer, a handful of younger role players have emerged around 37-year-old All-Star forward LeBron James this season.
24-year-old guard Malik Monk and 23-year-old rookie wing Austin Reaves, alongside 25-year-old forward Stanley Johnson, have emerged as three of the Lakers’ more reliable players who may have yet to hit their ceilings. 21-year-old swingman Talen Horton-Tucker remains an intriguing option as well, though he has underperformed relative to his new three-year, $32MM contract this season.
“They’ve continued to improve and get better and more comfortable in our system, in our environment,” head coach Frank Vogel said of the Lakers’ youth movement. “Malik, Austin and Talen. That trio is another reason amongst others why I believe we have a chance.”
There’s more out of California:
- The NBA has fined Kings big man Richaun Holmes to the tune of $25K after he threw a basketball into the crowd during a 134-125 loss to the Jazz on March 12, per a league press release (Twitter link). Holmes was ejected from the game at the time of the incident. It shouldn’t make too big of a dent in his wallet — the 28-year-old is in the first season of a lucrative new four-year, $46.5MM contract he signed with Sacramento during the 2021 offseason.
- Despite being inactive for the last 30 Warriors contests this season due to a nagging back injury, All-Star power forward Draymond Green remains convinced he can still win his second Defensive Player of the Year Award this season, per Dalton Johnson of NBC Sports Bay Area. “Yeah, I’ve seen guys win with not many more games than I’m gonna play,” Green said. “I don’t know what league everybody else has been watching, but I have not seen anyone solidify themselves as Defensive Player of the Year.” Johnson notes that, should Green be available for all 13 remaining Warriors games during the 2021/22 regular season, he will only have suited up for 48 total this year.
- With a 36-35 record, the eighth-seeded Clippers are six games behind the sixth-seeded Nuggets in the Western Conference. L.A. has just 11 games left on its regular season slate. The team has little to no chance of avoiding the play-in tournament at this point of the year, barring a collapse from both the Nuggets and the 40-30 seventh seed, the Timberwolves. The team is also a whopping 5.5 games ahead of the ninth-seeded Lakers. Mirjam Swanson of the Orange County Register examines how the Clippers intend to operate down the home stretch of the season given the reality of their seeding. “We’ll get a chance to experiment with our small lineup, which we gotta get better at once we get everyone healthy and get everyone back and then kinda see how that plays out,“ head coach Tyronn Lue said. Lue also intends to work through after-timeout plays, with an emphasis on helping shooting guard Luke Kennard improve his timing off screens.
And-Ones: Beasley, Parsons, Turell, Bowen
Power forward Michael Beasley, an 11-year veteran who is still just 33, remains hopeful that he can continue his professional basketball journey, as he revealed during an intense interview with ex-NFL players Ryan Clark, Channing Crowder, and Fred Taylor on The Pivot Podcast (video link).
Beasley last inked a deal with the Brooklyn Nets for the 2019/20 NBA season’s Orlando “bubble” season, only to see his contract voided after he tested positive for COVID-19. “I’m gonna retire how I want to retire,” said Beasley. “I can’t live my life on your terms. I can’t just let my dream die.”
Here are more odds and ends from around the basketball world:
- In a conversation with fellow former NBA players Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson on their podcast All The Smoke, former NBA forward Chandler Parsons discussed the 2020 car accident that was a factor in his eventual retirement. “It was nuts,” said Parsons, who was a deep-bench reserve with the Hawks at the time. “I was leaving practice one day in Atlanta, two o’clock on a Wednesday. And I’m driving and I just see this car coming at me and just completely T-Bones me. And I had never been to a crash before… The windows were bashed in, airbag’s out, I had a cut on my wrist, I was bleeding… and I couldn’t move my neck!”
- Division III wing Ryan Turell, the leading NCAA scorer in the nation out of Yeshiva University with an average of 27.1 PPG, will leave school ahead of his senior year to test the waters for the 2022 draft, writes Jonathan Givony of ESPN. “I know NBA teams came to see me [during his season],” the 6’7″ prospect said. “My coach would tell me after each game, especially toward the end of the season. Quite a few NBA teams came to watch.”
- Ex-Pacers small forward Brian Bowen II recently had a surgical procedure for his ruptured Achilles tendon, per Scott Agness of Fieldhouse Files (Twitter link). He has appeared in 12 games across two seasons with Indiana. This year, the 6’6″ Bowen did not make an NBA roster, but he did suit up for the Iowa Wolves, the G League club for the Timberwolves, and the USA Basketball World Cup Qualifying Team. In 21 contests with Iowa this year, he holds averages of 14.6 PPG, 8.0 RPG, and 1.1 APG.
Malik Fitts Signs Two-Year Deal With Celtics
8:37pm: The Celtics have officially re-signed Fitts, the team announced in a press release.
4:19pm: Power forward Malik Fitts will sign with the Celtics through the 2022/23 NBA season, his agents at UNLTD Sports Group, Nick Blatchford and Derek Johnson, inform Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN (Twitter link). Woj adds that Fitts’ contract for the 2022/23 season will be partially guaranteed.
Fitts and Kelan Martin, having both signed a pair of 10-day deals with Boston, saw those deals expire on Monday night.
After initially going undrafted out of Saint Mary’s in 2020, the 6’8″ Fitts latched on with the Clippers for three games in 2020/21 and appeared in 14 games for L.A.’s G League team. Ahead of the 2021/22 season, he joined Utah on a training camp deal. The Jazz liked what they saw enough to add Fitts on a two-way contract heading into the 2021/22 season.
When Fitts fractured his finger in January, the Jazz waived him. Boston then added him on his initial 10-day deal last month. He holds averages of 4.4 MPG through nine games between the two clubs this year.
Jaden McDaniels Out At Least Two Weeks With Sprained Ankle
An MRI has revealed that Timberwolves power forward Jaden McDaniels sprained his left ankle late in last night’s 149-139 victory over the Spurs, the team announced in a press statement.
Minnesota indicated that McDaniels will be shelved indefinitely as he recovers from the injury. The Timberwolves will reevaluate him in two weeks.
Across 67 contests, the 6’8″ forward has been a key role player on both sides of the floor for the upstart Timberwolves, averaging 9.4 PPG, 4.3 RPG and 1.1 APG in 26.1 MPG. McDaniels is connecting on 45.9% of his field goal looks and 80% of his charity stripe attempts.
With a 40-30 record, Minnesota currently occupies the seventh seed of the Western Conference. As the Wolves look to make their first postseason appearance since 2018 (and only their second since 2004), they could look to supplement the loss of McDaniels in the short term.
Jon Krawczynski of The Athletic reports (Twitter link) that Minnesota will explore adding a free agent big man via a 10-day contract, something that had already been considered a possibility.
Jamal Murray To Practice With Grand Rapids Gold
The Nuggets have assigned injured guard Jamal Murray to their NBAGL affiliate club, the Grand Rapids Gold, to practice with the team, per Harrison Wind of DNVR Sports (Twitter link).
The odds of Murray playing at all this season had been considered tenuous recently, so any movement on this front has to be encouraging news for Nuggets fans. He is expected to return to Denver following Grand Rapids’ practice on Saturday.
Wind adds (via Twitter) that the Nuggets will assess Murray following his workouts with the team’s G League affiliate and decide how to move forward with the 6’3″ vet’s recovery timeline after that. According to Wind, Denver’s other injured star, small forward Michael Porter Jr., has yet to join the Gold for a workout.
Murray was enjoying a breakout season during 2020/21 prior to his ACL tear, notching a career-best 21.2 PPG on .477/.408/.869 shooting, plus 4.8 APG, 4.0 RPG and 1.3 SPG through 48 games.
With Murray and Porter shelved, reigning 2021 MVP Nikola Jokic has shouldered a massive burden this season for Denver. The Nuggets have remained very competitive with their All-NBA center at the helm, sporting a 41-28 record as the West’s sixth seed as of this writing. The team is just 1.5 games behind the Jazz for the fourth seed and home court advantage in the first round of the forthcoming playoffs. The additions of Murray and Porter this season, should they at least somewhat resemble their pre-injury selves, could help Denver become a legitimate contender this year.
Jarrett Allen Will Not Undergo Finger Surgery
Cavaliers All-Star center Jarrett Allen has decided against surgically treating his fractured left middle finger, writes Chris Haynes of Yahoo Sports.
An exact timeline for Allen remains undetermined, as he continues to deal with swelling on the finger. However, according to Haynes, there’s optimism that he’ll make it back prior to the start of the 2022 playoffs.
The 23-year-old big man first injured the digit on March 6, in a 104-96 victory against the Raptors. Through 56 games this year, the 6’11” Allen is averaging 16.1 PPG on 67.7% shooting from the field, 10.8 boards and 1.3 blocks.
With Allen sidelined, the Cavaliers opted to shift rookie big man Evan Mobley from power forward to center in their starting lineup. The Cavaliers have gone 2-2 without Allen.
Along with Mobley, Allen and fellow Cleveland All-Star Darius Garland are on track to lead the club to its first playoff-bound season since LeBron James departed for Los Angeles in 2018. The Cavs currently boast a 39-29 record, good for the sixth seed in the stacked Eastern Conference.