Bulls Pick Up Option On Tony Snell
The Bulls have picked up their rookie scale team option on Tony Snell for the 2015/16 season, the team announced. The athletic third-year forward out of New Mexico will make just under $1.536MM next season, as our Rookie Scale Team Option Tracker shows. Snell, who the Bulls took with the 20th pick in the 2013 NBA Draft, averaged 4.5 points in 16 minutes per game for Chicago in his rookie year. He was named First-Team All-NBA Summer League this summer after averaging 20 points and four rebounds over five games in Las Vegas.
Snell’s elite athleticism and defensive potential made him a popular sleeper in the 2013 draft, which was in many ways similar to how K.J. McDaniels was viewed by some this past June. As of four months ago, the Bulls still seemed sold on Snell as a rotation-caliber talent, though there was talk that he was dangled in trade talks prior to the draft. He’ll enter the season as one of many options off the bench on a deep Bulls team.
The move brings Chicago’s commitments for 2015/16 to $60.2MM. That’s fairly close to the projected $66.5MM salary cap, and that figure doesn’t include a new deal for Jimmy Butler, who’ll be set for restricted free agency if he and the Bulls don’t sign an extension by the end of Friday.
Magic Sign Nikola Vucevic To Extension
THURSDAY, 3:43pm: Vucevic has signed the extension and the deal is official, the team has announced.
7:11pm: The base salary of the deal is for $48MM with incentives that could push it to $53MM, according to Jeff Zillgitt of USA Today (via Twitter).
TUESDAY, 6:21pm: The Magic are finalizing a four-year, $53MM contract extension with Nikola Vucevic, reports Josh Robbins of the Orlando Sentinel. The year-by-year salary breakdown is the only detail still up in the air, according to Robbins (via Twitter). The pact does not include any opt out clauses and will thus keep him in Orlando through the 2018/19 season. The 23-year-old Montenegrin is a former first round pick entering his fourth season in the NBA, which gave the Magic until October 31 to come to an agreement that would prevent him from becoming a restricted free agent next summer. Vucevic is scheduled to make $2.751MM this season in the final year of his rookie deal.
Vucevic exploded in 2012/13 after coming over from Philadelphia in the Dwight Howard blockbuster. He averaged 13.1 points and 11.9 rebounds per game in his sophomore season, making him the league’s second leading rebounder behind Howard. While Vucevic was again excellent last season, his overall numbers seemed to plateau more than an improving young player’s should in his third year, as our Chuck Myron pointed out in Vucevic’s entry in our Extension Candidate series. Chuck also predicted a four-year, $48MM pact for the center in our 2014 Rookie Scale Extension Primer.
We heard in July that the Magic would prioritize extending Vucevic and teammate Tobias Harris, also entering his fourth season, once the season approached. Those rumors proved true even before tonight’s news broke, as there was neutral interest reported last month and just last week there was word that Vucevic and the Magic were in talks.
And-Ones: Roberts, Spurs, Vucevic, Rubio
After his sit down with Michele Roberts, Tim Bontemps of the New York Post doesn’t get the feeling that the new NBPA head is on board with the idea of a gradual increase in the salary cap starting in 2016 (Twitter links). The alternative is to allow the cap to jump up after the 2015/16 season — Bontemps estimates a spike to over $90MM — due to the injection of the money from the league’s new TV deal. That increase, of course, could coincide with the free agency of superstar Kevin Durant.
Let’s take a look at what else is going on around the league on Tuesday:
- It would be shocking if any of Bryce Cotton, Josh Davis or JaMychal Green were to end up on the Spurs’ final roster, writes Jeff McDonald of the San Antonio Express-News. Cotton, Davis and Green all have partially guaranteed deals, but as our Expanded Roster Counts show, the Spurs already have 15 fully guaranteed contracts on the books.
- A strong showing in 2014/15 would have likely netted Nikola Vucevic a more lucrative deal next summer than the one he agreed to earlier tonight, according to Grantland’s Zach Lowe. However, Lowe believes Vucevic’s shortcomings on the defensive end add risk for the Magic while also conceding the deal should be a fair one considering the rising cap (Twitter links).
- Ben Golliver of Sports Illustrated, also pointing to the increasing salary cap, writes that Vucevic’s extension compares favorably to the four-year, $48MM deal Utah’s Derrick Favors inked last October. Golliver adds that the pact eliminates any chance of a bidding war over Vucevic for the Magic next summer which could have resulted in an overpay.
- Darren Wolfson of 1500 ESPN Twin Cities expects Timberwolves owner Glen Taylor to soon become more involved in extension talks for point guard Ricky Rubio (via Twitter). The Wolves reportedly upped their offer to four years, $48MM shortly after we heard that Rubio and Taylor had spoken several times on the phone. Wolfson, who speculates that a total offer of $52-54MM might do it, adds that Taylor’s loyalty to Rubio could “change the dynamic” of the talks (Twitter links here).
Eastern Notes: Harris, Celtics, Barganani
Here is a look at what is going on in the Eastern Conference on Tuesday night:
- After locking up Nikola Vucevic earlier tonight, the Magic will continue to work on reaching an agreement with forward Tobias Harris, who is also entering his fourth season, reports Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports (via Twitter). While the Magic are reportedly eager to extend Harris, Wojnarowski cautions that the sides are not close on the terms.
- Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders checks in on last week’s Pistons/Celtics trade that sent Will Bynum to Boston and Joel Anthony to Detroit. According to Pincus, the Celtics utilized the $4.25MM trade exception they received in July’s Kris Humphries deal to take on Bynum’s $2.9MM salary, reducing the exception to approximately $1.3MM. They received a new trade exception of $3.8MM for Anthony. Because these exceptions expire a year after the trade in which they’re acquired, Boston essentially downgraded their trade exception by about $450K in return for three months of additional time with which to use it (Pincus Twitter links here).
- Any hope that Derek Fisher and the triangle offense could salvage last summer’s trade for Andrea Bargnani has been temporarily derailed by a preseason hamstring injury, writes Marc Berman of the New York Post. There was talk that Phil Jackson and the Knicks were trying to move Bargnani this offseason, but his bloated $11.5MM salary for this season made that impossible.
Michele Roberts On Union, Salaries, Age Limit
New NBPA head Michele Roberts seems to be making the media rounds after stepping into the role vacated by Billy Hunter. She recently sat down with Tim Bontemps of the New York Post to discuss several topical issues that she is sure to address in her tenure as the executive director of the NBPA. There is a little overlap with her conversation last week with Chris Sheridan of Sheridan Hoops, but the entire story is still worth a read. Here are some of the key quotes from Roberts:
On the status of the union:
“But I think what is equally important, for me, is to repair what has been a foundation that has been subjected to some injury by, unfortunately, my predecessor. What we don’t have, and what we will have, is a management structure that is both able to interact with our counterparties with the league and elsewhere, but a structure that allows the players to do unequivocally what they want to do, and that’s run their own union…. They didn’t hire me, and they were not interested in hiring, someone to run things for them, to simply let them know what’s going on.”
On having a max salary rule:
“I’ve had conversations with guys who have said, ‘Look, when I go to play in New York, I’m not selling out the Garden. I can get on the subway and no one knows who I am. But when LeBron goes to the Garden, he’s selling it out, and he can’t get on the subway because he’ll be mobbed’ … so there’s an appreciation of what we all realize is true. The LeBrons of the world, the Durants of the world, the Kobes of the world, they make a ton of money for this league and empower everybody. So I don’t hear players complaining about max salaries or getting rid of max salaries. Because, frankly, everyone gets it.
On the NBA minimum age:
“It sounds trite, but you can go to war and you can’t make a living. If I had my way, you could work at 14, and whenever someone is prepared to hire you. If people say, ‘They’re not yet members of the union, why should we care?’ Michele cares that anybody that’s able to work can. The notion that the union shouldn’t be concerned about people who will one day become members of the union, that’s nonsense. We may not legally be able to do anything about that, but to not care about people we know are going to become members of our union, of course we care about them, and we should consider any policy that’s going to impact our future members. Michele needs a better argument with respect to why that policy needs to be increased from 19 to 20, but I’ll find out from my bosses what they think, and I’ll let you know.”
On the 2017 labor talks:
“The only way that happens is when people have not been engaged in the process going forward. In other instances [I’ve been in] where there have been multiple stakeholders who have had interest in the outcome but internally and there has been a dissension in the ranks, it’s always been when people are lied to or had a complete misunderstanding of what the goals were.
“I can’t say what happened in 2011 because I wasn’t there, but I was told there was internal dissension, and I can imagine there was a communications breakdown. There’s no sort of magic bullet you can have, but you can certainly minimize the possibility of that happening.
“But if you get people engaged and involved in the discussion as early as possible, and if you have a common agenda and everyone knows this is what we’ve agreed we’re going to do and try to accomplish, it would minimize — I think dramatically — the possibility of people fighting internally. It could happen, but it will not happen because I don’t get people I needed to be in the room in the room, and so we’re going to start getting people in the room right now.”
And-Ones: Suggs, Suns, Nuggets, Daniels
Let’s take a look at some of the news and notes coming out of the NBA on this Tuesday evening:
- Acquiring the D-League rights to Scott Suggs of France’s Chalon-Sur-Saone as part of today’s Seth Curry deal might eventually pay off for the Warriors, as Marc J. Spears of Yahoo! Sports hears that the former Washington Husky has legitimate NBA talent (via Twitter).
- The Suns anticipated a skyrocketing salary cap when they handed out $122MM to Eric Bledsoe, Marcus Morris and Markieff Morris last month, writes Paul Coro of the Arizona Republic. After accumulating draft picks for years and locking up some of their better players, the team believes they are in an ideal position to add to an already impressive core, Coro writes.
- The Nuggets‘ extension of Kenneth Faried projects to be very reasonable in the current cap climate and is a good bet to become a bargain after the inevitable cap adjustment, according to ESPN Insider’s Kevin Pelton. Pelton fully expects teams to put an emphasis on locking up their young players for as long as they can.
- Chris Dempsey of the Denver Post provides a player-by-player look at how the inflation of the salary cap would affect the Nuggets, who seem to be well-positioned to build around Ty Lawson and Faried.
- Marquis Daniels, who played in the NBA as recently as the 2012/13 season, is in the early stages of a transition to coaching, writes Jessica Camerato of Basketball Insiders.
Eastern Notes: Nets, Allen, Cavs, Muscala, Wright
Nets GM Billy King took questions from reporters today, including Tim Bontemps of the New York Post. While King originally refused to comment on the Guggenheim ownership talks, he would eventually say Mikhail Prokhorov “isn’t selling” and described the current ownership’s commitment to winning as “unwavering” (Twitter links here). This further confirms the majority of reports over the last week that Prokhorov intends to remain the majority owner.
Let’s take a look at what else is coming out of the Eastern Conference on Tuesday night:
- Jim Tanner, the agent for free agent Ray Allen, shot down any speculation that his client has or is about to sign with the Cavaliers. After speaking with Allen today, Tanner, through the Twitter account of Tandem Sports and Entertainment, indicated that Allen has yet to decide whether or not he will play this season (Twitter links here). Allen was linked to several teams this summer, but as of last month Cleveland still believed they will land the veteran sniper.
- Speaking of the Cavaliers, the team isn’t panicked about their need for rim-protection, writes Grantland’s Zach Lowe, who suggests the Cavs aren’t going to rush to remedy the situation via trade. Instead, they’re more likely to target a wing defender whose salary would fit into their nearly $5.3MM Keith Bogans trade exception, according to Lowe.
- The Hawks are high on the development of Mike Muscala, writes Chris Vivlamore of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Atlanta has 14 guaranteed contracts on the books for the upcoming season and Vivlamore’s report is just the latest evidence that they will award the final spot to Muscala, whose contract is partially guaranteed.
- Greek’s Panathinaikos took a pass on Chris Wright, who’s decided to leave the Bucks, and the small forward rejected a $200K offer from Besiktas in Turkey, Sportando’s Orazio Cauchi reports. That seemingly leaves Wright in a limbo of sorts, but the Bucks have yet to formally place his non-guaranteed contract on waivers.
Chuck Myron contributed to this post.
Latest On TV Deal: Paul, CBA, Durant
This morning, our own Chuck Myron outlined the number of players that inked deals this offseason that won’t allow them to immediately take advantage of the league’s new TV contracts in the summer of 2016. LeBron James, of course, is famously not among that group after signing a two-year deal with the Cavs. Chris Haynes of the Cleveland Plain Dealer profiles emerging super agent Rich Paul, the orchestrator of that deal, in a lengthy but worthwhile read. Paul also coordinated Eric Bledsoe‘s reconciliation with Phoenix last month, completing an offseason that has left others in the industry impressed, including James’ former agent Aaron Goodwin. “What Rich was able to do this summer was mighty impressive. The sky is the limit for him,” Goodwin tells Haynes.
Let’s take a look at some of the latest takes on the NBA’s new TV contracts:
- Union executive director Michele Roberts told Bleacher Report’s Howard Beck before the league signed its new TV contracts that she saw it as a “safe bet” that the union will opt out of the CBA in 2017, adding that it would be “silly” to assume otherwise. The TV deal is game-changing on many levels, and Beck hears estimates that would set the salary cap as high as $84MM in 2016/17, with maximum salaries for veterans of 10 or more years climbing to $34MM at the back end of their deals. Still, it was no secret that there would be plenty of TV money even before the deals were struck, as Beck notes.
- Kevin Durant weighed in on the league’s new TV deal on Tuesday, suggesting that the financial windfall is just the latest reason to abolish the maximum contract, writes Anthony Slater of the Oklahoman. “Look at it like this. Kobe Bryant brings in a lot of money to Los Angeles, that downtown area. People go to watch the Lakers. Clippers are getting up there, Chris Paul, Blake Griffin and those guys are bringing in a lot of money as well. Look at Cleveland, look at Miami when LeBron was there. These guys are worth more than what they are making because of the amount of money they bring to that area. That’s a conversation you can always have, but until it’s changes you never know what will happen to it,” he said.
- The NBA’s new TV deals represent an 186 percent increase in price from the current one, writes ESPN’s Darren Rovell, who adds that it is the largest jump of any of the four major sports leagues. Rovell also examines why the NBA commanded such a price, citing the league’s international appeal and the commercial importance of watching sports live as primary reasons. Rovell also mentions that, as part of the deal, the networks gain the rights to collaborate with the NBA on a digital channel that could potentially be used to target a worldwide audience.
Chuck Myron contributed to this post.
And-Ones: Butler, Spurs, Magic
Let’s round up the latest news and notes from the Association on Tuesday night:
- Jimmy Butler said extension talks between his representatives and the Bulls were going in the right direction, telling reporters that he wants to remain with the team “however long it takes,” writes Nick Friedell of ESPNChicago.com. The deadline for an extension is October 31st, but Butler could instead re-sign with the team as a restricted free agent next summer.
- Dan McCarney of the San Antonio Express-News examines the Spurs roster, reminding us that San Antonio already has 15 guaranteed deals on the books, as shown in our 2014/15 Expanded Roster Counts. If the Spurs do decide they want to keep Bryce Cotton, Josh Davis, JaMychal Green or John Holland, McCarney opines that they might consider eating the $1.063MM salary of Austin Daye.
- Orlando’s deals with Peyton Siva, Kadeem Batts, Drew Crawford and Seth Curry all contain partial guarantees, according to Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders. The Magic have promised Siva $100K, Batts $150K, Crawford $75K and Curry $100K despite having room for only one more fully guaranteed deal on their roster (via Twitter).
Chuck Myron contributed to this post.
West Notes: Jokic, Kanter, Burks, Gasol, Beasley
Here are the latest news and notes coming out of the Western Conference on Tuesday night:
- There’s been no word of a deal between the Nuggets and Nikola Jokic, and his name isn’t among the 19 on the preseason roster that the Nuggets released today, so presumably the 41st overall pick from this year’s draft will remain under contract with Serbia’s KK Mega Vizura this season.
- On the heels of yesterday’s report that the Jazz have opened extension talks with Enes Kanter and Alec Burks, GM Dennis Lindsey said the team anticipates the duo to be with the Jazz for a “long time,” writes Aaron Falk of the Salt Lake Tribune. “They’re both valued members and we’re really proud of where they’re at as people and as players,” Lindsey said. “We’ll see if we can get something done early … but we anticipate both of them being with the Jazz for a long time.”
- When asked about his impending free agency next summer, Marc Gasol reiterated his affinity for his teammates and the city of Memphis, writes Geoff Calkins of The Commercial Appeal in a subscription-only piece. Gasol also suggested that it would be hard to sign an extension prior to next summer knowing how quickly things can change in the NBA. Grizzlies owner Robert Pera said in August he’s determined to keep Gasol in Memphis for the rest of his career.
- Also from Calkins’ story, Grizzlies head coach Dave Joerger had the following to say when asked what it would take for Michael Beasley to end up on the roster: “Just be as good as he can be on the court and off the court. He’s going to have to come in and take somebody’s spot, and he knows that.”
Chuck Myron contributed to this post.