The Hawks will also have a tough decision to make involving Schroder, with him eligible for a rookie contract extension, Vivlamore adds. Atlanta could wait to see how he performs in 2016/17 and issue Schroder a qualifying offer next summer, which will likely be around $4.5MM if he maintains his starter criteria. making him a restricted free agent, the scribe adds. The deadline to agree to an extension is October 31st, and if the team does decide to float Schroder an offer, it would likely be close to that deadline, Vivlamore opines.
The Hawks already have 15 fully guaranteed contracts on the books for this season, plus one more player with a partial guarantee, but the team is still looking to add players prior to training camp beginning on September 26th, Chris Vivlamore of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution relays. Atlanta would still like to sign another point guard and a frontcourt player to bulk up its roster for the preseason, Vivlamore adds.
The team was reportedly speaking with Bryce Cotton prior to the guard signing a one-year deal with the Turkish club, Anadolu Efes. Among the numerous players whom Atlanta has already worked out are: forward Ryan Kelly, guard Xavier Munford and guard Dionte Christmas, Vivlamore notes. Obviously, none of those players came away with deals, but the team could conceivable circle back if no other options present themselves.
Atlanta also has workouts scheduled on Wednesday and Thursday with forward Richard Solomon, Emiliano Carchia of Sportando reports (via Twitter). The 24-year-old spent the 2015/16 campaign overseas in Japan with Toyota Alvark, appearing in 59 games and averaging 11.3 points, 8.9 rebounds and 0.9 assists. Solomon’s shooting line was .536/.179/.660. Over the summer he played in Orlando for the Thunder’s summer league squad and then in Las Vegas for the Magic’s entry. Solomon reportedly worked out for the Jazz on Monday and again today.
- Although their style of play is quite different, Dwight Howard will essentially be taking Al Horford‘s spot on the Hawks, and he’ll have some big shoes to fill in Atlanta, writes Jesse Blancarte of Basketball Insiders.
While NBA teams are limited to carrying 15 players on their regular-season rosters (with a few exceptions), roster limits expand to 20 players during the offseason. The five extra roster slots allow clubs to bring in veterans hopeful of earning a place on the regular-season roster, or young players who may eventually be ticketed for D-League assignments.
Most teams will fill up their 20-man rosters for training camp, but at this point in the NBA offseason, it can be difficult to determine which clubs still have room on their rosters. Many potential camp invitees have reportedly reached agreements with teams, but those signings haven’t yet been officially announced.
By our count, there are currently just two team at the 20-man offseason roster limit. One is the 76ers, who were at the 20-man limit for much of the offseason before waiving Carl Landry and Tibor Pleiss. Since then, they’ve added Elton Brand and Cat Barber, though it appears only 11 of the club’s 20 players have fully guaranteed salaries for 2016/17.
Meanwhile, on their official website, the Nuggets list 14 players who have guaranteed contracts, plus Axel Toupane, JaKarr Sampson, and D.J. Kennedy, who are on non-guaranteed or partially-guaranteed deals. In addition to those 17 players, the team has also reportedly reached agreements with Nate Wolters, Robbie Hummel, and Jarnell Stokes, bringing Denver’s total roster count to 20.
Still, not all of Denver’s signings are official, and even once they are, the Nuggets could easily make room for another player by cutting a non-guaranteed salary from their books. The same can be said for Philadelphia. While their rosters may technically be “full,” it’s not as if the Nuggets and the Sixers don’t have the flexibility to replace a camp invitee with a veteran free agent, if they so choose.
A more productive way of determining which teams’ rosters are “full” at this point in the offseason might be to examine the number of guaranteed salaries on their books. The deadline for teams to stretch the 2016/17 salary of a waived player is now behind us, so any team that cuts a player with a guaranteed salary won’t be able to reduce that cap hit unless the player agrees to a buyout. Most teams are reluctant to add much dead money to their cap with such a move, so if a club has 15 guaranteed contracts on its cap, we can assume its regular-season roster is fairly set, barring a trade or a surprise cut.
Here are the NBA teams that currently have 15 (or more) guaranteed salaries on their roster:
- Source close to the Hawks tell Kyler that the relationship between Paul Millsap and the team is “actually pretty good,” despite the fact that Atlanta seriously explored trading him this offseason. The two sides have had talks about Millsap’s role and his future with the franchise, but Kyler wonders if the Hawks would become more inclined to trade him if they play poorly in the first half. After losing Al Horford this summer, Atlanta may want to avoid repeating that situation in 2017.
[SOURCE LINK]
As our list of 2016 offseason trades shows, five of the deals agreed upon on draft night this year featured one team sending cash to the other. The NBA’s Collective Bargaining Agreement allows clubs to include cash payments, but only up to a certain amount.
In the 2016/17 league year, teams are allowed to receive a total of $3.5MM in trades, and can also send out $3.5MM in trades. Those limits are separate, so a team that sends $3.5MM in a deal and then later receives $3.5MM doesn’t get a fresh, new slate — that club is capped out for the league year. In 2014/15, the limit for cash sent and received in trades was $3.4MM.
Since the league year ends on June 30, teams that hadn’t taken advantage of those cash allowances earlier in the season will often use remaining cash during the draft to move up or to snag an extra pick. Many of the cash details on those draft-day deals for 2016 were previously reported. For instance, we already knew about the following payments:
- Warriors sent $2.4MM to Bucks to acquire No. 38 overall pick (Patrick McCaw).
- Trail Blazers sent $1.2MM (and a 2019 second-round pick) to Magic to acquire No. 47 overall pick (Jake Layman).
- Cavaliers sent approximately $2.5MM to Hawks to acquire No. 54 overall pick (Kay Felder).
Based on those numbers, it appears the Warriors got a much better deal from the Bucks than the Cavaliers did from the Hawks. Of course, if the Cavs badly wanted Felder, the cost to move into the draft was hardly exorbitant — Atlanta likely asked the Cavs for the maximum amount of money they could send, since Cleveland used over $900K in a separate trade earlier in the year.
In addition to those three swaps, two other draft-night deals featured money changing hands, and Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders has the details on those payments, along with several others from the 2015/16 league year. According to Pincus, these are the details on the other two draft trades involving cash:
- Nets sent $3MM (and the No. 55 overall pick) to Jazz to acquire No. 42 overall pick (Isaiah Whitehead).
- Thunder sent $730K to Nuggets to acquire No. 56 overall pick (Daniel Hamilton).
Once again, one of these deals looks far more favorable than the other, with the Thunder paying a fraction of what the Nets did for a second-round pick. But again, the available players and interested teams essentially set the market for these cash payments.
In the case of the Nets/Jazz deal, Brooklyn clearly wanted to make sure not to miss out on Whitehead, and the team was willing to pay a relatively significant amount to secure him. The Thunder, meanwhile, offered all their available remaining cash to the Nuggets for the 56th pick, and Denver likely had no better offer and no player targeted at that spot — so the Nuggets took what they could get.
Be sure to check out Pincus’ piece at Basketball Insiders for more thorough details of how teams spent and received cash in trades during the 2015/16 league year.
Veteran guard Jason Terry recently inked a one-year contract with the Bucks, and while it’s only a minimum-salary deal, it’s fully guaranteed, which is something of a rarity at this point in the NBA offseason. In an interview on SiriusXM NBA Radio (SoundCloud link), Terry admitted that the free agency process can be tough at this late stage in his career (he’ll turn 39 next month). He also identified several of the teams he considered before landing in Milwaukee.
“I had a couple contenders that I was really seriously looking at. Two of them were in the Finals, so that tells you right there who they were,” Terry said, referring to the Cavaliers and Warriors. “I made a call to [Gregg Popovich]. San Antonio’s another one. They were my arch-enemy for eight years when I was in Dallas, but that’s another phone call — if they call, you pick up, there’s just no question about it. … I always thought about going back and trying to finish off where I started in Atlanta. I like what they did. And then I seriously considered Boston, though we did not have a conversation.”
Based on Terry’s comments, it’s not clear how many of those teams he reached out to, and how many reached out to him, so it’s possible that interest wasn’t mutual in all those scenarios. Terry also admitted that while he had some interest in the Lakers, that interest wasn’t reciprocated, since Los Angeles already had a good idea of what its 15-man roster would look like.
“I called my good friend Luke [Walton],” Terry said. “I told him if he needed any help — veteran leadership, in that capacity, with an ability to coach at the end of my deal, then that was something I would be looking forward to. He utterly declined, and I respect him for that.”
Although he’s not the scorer he was early in his career, Terry was still a solid contributor in Houston over the last two seasons, averaging 19.5 MPG in 149 regular-season contests, and averaging 6.5 PPG, 1.7 APG, and 0.8 SPG while shooting 37.5% on three-pointers. In both of his seasons with the Rockets, Terry received a bump in playing time during the postseason.
- The Hawks seriously explored a Millsap trade in July, but those talks came to an end after the team lost Al Horford. Sources tell Kyler that Millsap has been assured he won’t be dealt anytime soon, though the veteran’s potential 2017 free agency looms as a possible concern if Atlanta struggles out of the gate.
[SOURCE LINK]
Atlanta’s roster underwent some major changes this offseason, with longtime Hawks Al Horford and Jeff Teague departing and Dwight Howard among the incoming additions. However, the team managed to re-sign Kent Bazemore, and may end up undergoing even more roster turnover in 2017 — only five of the Hawks’ 17 current players have guaranteed salaries for the ’17/18 season.
One of those players who enters this season on an expiring contract is Thabo Sefolosha, who spoke to Chris Vivlamore of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution about a handful of topics, including the club’s outlook for the coming year, and some of his new teammates. He also addressed his contract, though he’s trying to avoid thinking about 2017 free agency at this point.
“I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t in the back of my mind,” Sefolosha said. “Once it is basketball season, I believe that if you take care of what you have to the rest will take care of itself. I’m going to focus on what I can control, play my game and take it from there.”
Sefolosha acknowledged that it will probably take the Hawks a little time to get used to the roster changes, including Horford’s and Teague’s departures. He also pointed out that the addition of Howard will alter the team’s style of play, particularly on the offensive end, since D12 doesn’t have the same shooting range that Horford does.
“On the offensive end, we have a style of play that we move the ball so much,” Sefolosha said. “I think what Al was doing – catching the ball up top and swinging and going to the pick-and-pop – now it’s going to give us some different options by rolling to the basket a lot more, bringing some force to the basket, maybe giving guys open shots on the outside. It’s going to be interesting.“
Finally, Sefolosha praised the Hawks’ rookie additions, suggesting that first-round pick Taurean Prince should be able to “provide some minutes fairly quickly,” while calling the signing of veteran rookie Malcolm Delaney “a big plus.”
What do you expect for the Hawks this season? Will the team take a step back, or is this still a solid playoff team in the East? Will this be Sefolosha’s last season in Atlanta? Weigh in below in the comment section.
- Tiago Splitter believes the Hawks will be a much better defensive team with Dwight Howard replacing Al Horford at center, according to Chris Vivlamore of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He also cited an improvement in defense at point guard, where Dennis Schroder is taking over for the traded Jeff Teague. “[Howard] is a little bit more of a defensive player than Al, more rebounds, more physical presence on the court,” Splitter said. “That is going to change our team. … Dennis, he is also a great defender. He’s a better defender than Jeff. He will pressure the point guard the whole court.” Splitter, who had hip surgery in February and was limited to 36 games last season, also figures to improve the defense with his return to the lineup.
- The Hawks hired Richard Midgley as their west coast scout, Vivlamore writes in a separate story. Midgley has been a coach at Modesto Christian High School in California for the past two seasons.