Derrick Favors Signs 10-Day Deal With Hawks
JANUARY 11: Favors has officially signed with the Hawks, the team announced today in a press release. His 10-day contract will run through January 20, making him eligible for Atlanta’s next six games.
As our tracker shows, Favors’ deal is the fifth 10-day contract signed so far this season.
JANUARY 10: Veteran power forward Derrick Favors is signing a 10-day contract with the Hawks, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski tweets.
Favors, 31, has been out of the league since the Rockets waived him during training camp. Houston made that move even though Favors’ $10,183,800 salary was guaranteed, due to a roster crunch. He was acquired by the Rockets in an eight-player trade with the Thunder in September.
The third overall pick of the 2010 draft, Favors has appeared in 790 regular season games (503 starts, 24.3 MPG) with averages of 10.6 PPG, 7.1 RPG and 1.2 BPG while shooting 53.4% from the floor and 66.3% from the foul line. His mobility and production have declined in recent seasons — he averaged career-lows of 5.3 PPG and 4.7 RPG in 38 games (18 starts, 16.7 MPG) with the Thunder in 2021/22.
Atlanta has an open roster spot, so no corresponding move will be necessary. Favors will provide more depth up front, which could come in handy since Clint Capela is dealing with a calf injury. Capela won’t play against Milwaukee on Wednesday.
Favors could also be a longer-term option as a backup in case the Hawks deal power forward John Collins, whose name has frequently come up in trade rumors.
It’s a homecoming for Favors, who played for Georgia Tech after attending South Atlanta High School.
Krejci Grateful Contract Was Guaranteed
- Vit Krejci had his contract for this season guaranteed by the Hawks over the weekend when he remained on the roster. Krejci is grateful the front office decided to keep him around, as he told Lauren Williams of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “Yeah, it’s a good feeling,” Krejci said. “You know, I worked really hard to be in this position. And I’m glad that the team trusts me and the coaches and the staff, everybody trusts me. So, I’m really happy for that.” Krejci has appeared in 17 games this season.
Collins Comfortable With Whatever Happens At Deadline
Hawks forward John Collins, one of the league’s prime trade candidates, is “comfortable” with whatever happens over the next month, he told Sam Amick of The Athletic in an extensive interview.
“I come in and I play basketball, and whatever happens, happens because I don’t control that side. I don’t have any control over any decisions that get made, where I am and where I play. I don’t have any control over that,” he said. “I can say, ‘Hey, I want to do this and I wanna do that,’ and they (the Hawks) can just do whatever they feel is fair. You saw it with Kevin Durant, right? He’s begging for trade, and Brooklyn is like, ‘Nah.’ Not saying that I’m Kevin Durant, but it’s just the mentality of ‘Yeah, you can say whatever, you can make a public scene, you can do whatever (and it won’t matter).’”
Collins, who is averaging 13.3 points and 8.1 rebounds per night, is in the second year of a five-year, $125MM contract with the Hawks.
Hawks To Guarantee Salaries For Krejci, Martin
The Hawks will retain Vit Krejci and Tyrese Martin through the NBA’s salary guarantee deadline, tweets Lauren Williams of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
All salaries throughout the league will become fully guaranteed on January 10. Players with non-guaranteed deals must be released by today so they can clear waivers ahead of that deadline.
Krejci, 22, signed with the Thunder during the offseason and was traded to Atlanta in late September. His contract carried a partial guarantee for this season at $781,759, with team options for the following two years. He will make $1,563,518 this year by remaining on the Hawks’ roster through the guarantee date. Krejci has appeared in 17 games this season, averaging 1.5 PPG in 6.3 minutes per night.
Martin, 23, was acquired from the Warriors on draft night and signed a two-year deal that carried a $450K guarantee for this season. He will make a little over $1MM with the full guarantee. Martin has gotten into 11 games with Atlanta, averaging 1.4 PPG in 3.8 minutes per night.
Eastern Notes: Hornets, Magic, Middleton, Fields, Raptors
The Hornets and Magic are among the seemingly lottery-bound teams who have yet to show much aggressiveness in trade discussions involving veterans, multiple sources tell Eric Pincus of Bleacher Report.
“One of the unintended consequences of the play-in tournament is a chilling of the trade market,” one Eastern Conference executive told Pincus. “When almost the whole league can make the (play-in), you just don’t have as many sellers in December or January. End of the month, we’ll see more action leading into February.”
According to Pincus, the fact that virtually no teams are attempting to create cap room for the summer of 2023 could also be a factor in slowing down the in-season trade market.
“Nobody wants cap space this summer,” a Western Conference executive said. “The really bad teams are so bad, they can keep their (quality veterans) too. There aren’t any fire sales like we saw last year with Portland, but (even) that was for the purpose of retooling.”
While it’s true that we haven’t seen much action yet, we still have more than a month until the February 9 trade deadline arrives, so it’s too early to draw too many conclusions about this season’s market — I expect more sellers to emerge in the coming weeks and plenty of trades to be made as the deadline gets closer.
Here’s more from around the East:
- Khris Middleton will accompany the Bucks on their four-game road trip that begins on Monday in New York, but head coach Mike Budenholzer was noncommittal when asked if the star forward would play at all during the trip, which runs through next Saturday. Asked if there was any concern that Middleton’s right knee soreness might be an issue that requires surgery, Budenholzer simply replied, “No” (Twitter links via Eric Nehm of The Athletic).
- At age 34, Hawks general manager Landry Fields is one of the youngest heads of basketball operations in the NBA, but his rise through the front office ranks at such a young age became possible only because his playing career ended prematurely, as Howie Kussoy of The New York Post (subscription required) writes in a feature on the former Knicks wing. “I look back and I’m super proud of the fact that I was able to get to the NBA and experience some of that NBA success, Fields said. “… But there’s also this sadness to it. I was really thinking there’d be so much more. I thought there’d be 10-plus years in the NBA.”
- The player development magic that has helped make the Raptors successful in the past has vanished this season, writes Eric Koreen of The Athletic. The team doesn’t have enough reliable rotation players to complement its top guys and has had to rely too heavily on its starters, as Koreen and Michael Grange of Sportsnet.ca observe.
- While some of those top Raptors players, such as Fred VanVleet, are seemingly having down years, Josh Lewenberg of TSN.ca argues that the Raptors have failed VanVleet more than he has failed the team — the former All-Star point guard has had to carry too substantial a workload due to Toronto’s lack of solid backcourt depth.
And-Ones: Campazzo, Vildoza, Two-Ways, Rookies
Serbian team Crvena Zvezda has been sanctioned by the EuroLeague for overdue payments to players and will be prohibited from registering new players until February 28, per BasketNews.com.
That means that former Nuggets and Mavericks point guard Facundo Campazzo, who reached a contract agreement with the team after being waived by Dallas, may not be able to suit up in EuroLeague games until March.
Crvena Zvezda issued a statement calling the sanctions “extremely severe” and announcing that they intend to fight them (link via BasketNews).
Here are a few more odds and ends from around the basketball world:
- Argentinian guard Luca Vildoza, currently a member of Crvena Zvezda, spent time with the Knicks and Bucks from 2021-22, but injuries and timing prevented him from ever getting a real chance to earn a rotation spot. While Vildoza has some good memories from his time in the NBA, including practicing with Giannis Antetokounmpo, he’s disappointed that things didn’t work out for him stateside. “It’s painful that I didn’t have the right chance,” Vildoza said (link via Eurohoops). “But I’m here now, and I try not to think about it.”
- NBA teams seem more inclined this season to use their two-way contract slots to churn through back-of-the-roster players, according to ESPN’s Bobby Marks (Insider link), who notes that the Heat have signed five different players to seven total two-way deals since July. That trend may continue even when the 10-day contract signing period opens on Thursday, since two-way players don’t count against the cap or tax, Marks writes.
- In the latest update to his rookie rankings for 2022/23, Sam Vecenie of The Athletic has moved Thunder guard Jalen Williams and Hawks forward AJ Griffin into third and fourth place, respectively. Both players are providing relatively steady and efficient production as starting wings, Vecenie says, adding that Griffin’s floor spacing, in particular, has been crucial in Atlanta.
Jalen Johnson Emerging In Second NBA Season
- Hawks forward Jalen Johnson is coming off the best week of his NBA career, averaging 12.3 PPG over his last three games, per Lauren Williams of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Opportunities have arisen for the team’s younger players after injuries to Clint Capela and De’Andre Hunter. “That’s just a part of being an NBA,” Johnson said. “You just got to be prepared for whatever situation like last year, when we had all those COVID cases, like we had a whole new team. So, you just got to be prepared for whatever injuries happen. That’s just a part in this league playing 82 games. So yeah, it’s not really nothing crazy getting adjusted to that.”
Nate McMillan Responds To Resignation Rumors
Shortly after Shams Charania of The Athletic reported on Friday that Hawks head coach Nate McMillan had “strongly considered” the possibility of resigning from his position, McMillan met with reporters for a pregame press conference ahead of the team’s matchup with the Lakers. Predictably, the first question he received focused on Charania’s report.
“I read that article briefly,” McMillan responded (Twitter video link via Brad Rowland). “I’ve never spoken to that reporter before. I think the last two weeks, he’s written a couple articles with some sources in our organization that are making some comments about me and some things that I’m saying and doing.”
Earlier in December, Charania also received a byline (along with Sam Amick) on a story about a verbal confrontation between McMillan and star Trae Young, which is presumably the other report McMillan was referring to.
“Look, at the end of the year, I’ll do as I’ll always done,” McMillan continued. “At the end of the season, I talk with my family and see if I still have that flame, that fire to continue next season. But that’s the end of the season. All of us think about retiring. But that’s at the end of the season.
“We’re going to move on past that, that story. We have a (playoff) race to prepare for. We’re trying to get our guys healthy and make another run at the playoffs. But the things that were reported — look, I’m here to coach this team and I’ve talked to (team owner) Tony (Ressler) many times. Our goal is to make the playoffs and that’s what we’re working towards.
After concluding his statement, McMillan waited a beat and jokingly added, “So we’ve squashed that, right?”
While it sounds like McMillan doesn’t intend to step down from his position anytime soon, his comments probably won’t quell speculation about his long-term future in Atlanta. Charania wrote that McMillan “appears to be near the end of his tenure with the Hawks after the season,” suggesting that either the head coach or the team (or both) may want to move on in the spring. That still sounds like a very real possibility.
Of course, winning solves a lot of problems, so if McMillan can replicate his second-half success from the last two seasons, perhaps his future will look a whole lot different a few months from now. McMillan, who took over for Lloyd Pierce midway through the 2020/21 campaign, led the team to a 27-11 record and two playoff series wins that year. In ’21/22, following a 17-25 start, Atlanta went 26-14 the rest of the way and won a pair of play-in games to secure a postseason berth.
This season, following a splashy summer trade for Dejounte Murray, the Hawks are once again off to a slow start. The club has lost three games in a row and nine of its last 13 to drop its overall record to 17-19. Atlanta holds the No. 9 seed in the East and is only ahead of the No. 11 Raptors by a single game.
Hawks’ Nate McMillan Has Considered Resigning
Hawks head coach Nate McMillan has “strongly considered” the possibility of resigning from his position, league sources with knowledge of the situation tell Shams Charania of The Athletic.
Charania’s report comes just weeks after he and Sam Amick of The Athletic described a verbal confrontation between McMillan and Hawks star Trae Young. McMillan’s job security came into question following that incident, per Charania, but sources tell The Athletic that his job has been considered safe and the team wants him to finish the season in his role.
However, McMillan “appears to be near the end of his tenure with the Hawks after the season,” Charania writes, which presumably means the club is mulling the idea of making a coaching change in the spring — if McMillan hasn’t stepped down before then.
Sources tell The Athletic that no McMillan resignation is imminent and that he and new head of basketball operations Landry Fields have had positive recent conversations about the direction of the team.
Still, Charania points to the alleged confrontation between McMillan and Young as a sign of the “disconnect” between the two. Given that Young is in the first season of a five-year, $215MM contract, he’s unlikely to be the odd man out if the franchise ultimately has to make a decision between its head coach and its star player.
As Charania observes, McMillan spoke last week about the challenges of coaching today’s players, telling reporters, “They see the game different than when I played it and when I started coaching.”
The Hawks hoped to take a major step forward this year after trading for Dejounte Murray over the summer, but it has been up and down season in Atlanta so far. The team has an underwhelming 17-18 record and ranks ninth in the Eastern Conference.
McMillan was initially hired in 2020 by Travis Schlenk, first as an assistant, then as Lloyd Pierce‘s replacement in 2021. Schlenk transitioned last week from Atlanta’s president of basketball operations to a senior advisory role.
According to Charania, the Hawks made some other changes to their front office while reassigning Schlenk and promoting Fields — senior adviser Rod Higgins, director of pro scouting Stephen Giles, and VP of player personnel Derek Pierce were all let go, sources tell The Athletic. It remains to be seen whether a coaching shake-up will follow the one that occurred in the front office.
Bogdan Bogdanovic Fined $25K By NBA
Hawks guard Bogdan Bogdanovic has been fined $25K by the NBA, the league announced today in a brief statement (Twitter link).
Bogdanovic received the penalty for kicking the game ball into the spectator stands at the end of Atlanta’s loss to the Nets on Wednesday.
The incident occurred after Dejounte Murray missed a three-point attempt as time expired in the Hawks’ 108-107 loss. The ball ricocheted off the rim toward Bogdanovic, who kicked it out of frustration (video link). While the offense was a minor one, the NBA has been consistently fining players this season for throwing or kicking the ball into the stands.
The $25K penalty won’t make much of dent in Bogdanovic’s pay check — he’s earning $18MM this season in the third season of a four-year, $72MM deal with Atlanta. He holds an $18MM player option for next season, so he’ll have the ability to reach free agency in the summer of 2023.