Atlantic Notes: Sloan, Fisher, Sixers
Donald Sloan knew at this point last season that his salary was guaranteed, and he went on to put up career-best numbers across for the Pacers, but now he is one of seven on the 20-man Nets roster without a full guarantee. He’s nonetheless confident, and Nets coach Lionel Hollins is high on the point guard’s ability, too, observes Tim Bontemps of the New York Post.
“I thought Donald Sloan’s athleticism, size and quickness could help us,” Hollins said. “We’re looking for a third guard, and he was a guy that was out there that showed a little bit of tenacity and toughness, as well as athleticism and quickness.”
Bontemps suggests that Sloan, who has a partial guarantee of $50K, is fighting for the third point guard job, and ostensibly a regular season roster spot, with rookie Ryan Boatright, who has a $75K partial guarantee. See more from the Atlantic Division:
- It was a plane issue that kept Knicks coach Derek Fisher from making it back to New York from Los Angeles for Monday’s practice, not his alleged scrap with Matt Barnes, Fisher contended Thursday, according to Stefan Bondy of the New York Daily News. Fisher added that he’s spoken with his boss, team president Phil Jackson, about what happened. The coach drew criticism for his absence from work.
- Nerlens Noel and new addition Jahlil Okafor experienced some growing pains Thursday as they failed to mesh as well as they had two nights before, and Sixers coach Brett Brown admitted, “We’re going to have this conversation for a while, growing these two guys,” observes Tom Moore of Calkins Media.
- Brown expects Kendall Marshall and Tony Wroten to miss at least the next month as they continue to recover from their injuries, Moore notes in the same piece, further jumbling the point guard picture for the Sixers, who have six point guards on their preseason roster.
Western Notes: Kobe, Morris, Barnes, Davis
The majority of the two dozen team executives, scouts, agents and other figures from around the NBA who spoke with Baxter Holmes of ESPN.com said the Lakers definitely shouldn’t re-sign Kobe Bryant if he decides to play beyond the expiration of his contract at season’s end. Another sizable chunk of respondents said it should depend on his health, while only one said the Lakers should definitely bring him back. Part of the issue involves repeated assertions from people around the league that free agents won’t want to sign with the Lakers and play with their longtime star, as Holmes relays. Bryant has said he won’t play for an NBA team aside from the Lakers, but if he did, few teams would have interest, Holmes hears. One executive mentioned the Knicks as a possibility, and another brought up the Clippers. See more from around the Western Conference:
- Markieff Morris gave further indication Wednesday that he indeed wants to stick around Phoenix, telling reporters, including Paul Coro of the Arizona Republic, that he intends to convince local fans he’s on board. “I’ll win them back,” Morris said. “That’s all I can say about that.” Morris last week backed off his trade demand from the summer, and the Suns apparently have no interest in sending him out, even though the Pistons are reportedly interested.
- Grizzlies coach Dave Joerger and Matt Barnes sloughed off the notion that reports that Barnes physically attacked Knicks coach Derek Fisher will have any bearing on the team, and Joerger expressed full support for his player, notes Ronald Tillery of The Commercial Appeal. Barnes said that he hasn’t spoken with anyone from the league office, but the NBA is investigating, Tillery adds. Memphis traded for Barnes this summer, and he’s entering the final season of his contract.
- Ed Davis prioritized the chance for minutes over money when he decided to sign a three-year, $20MM deal with the Blazers this summer, as Casey Holdahl of Blazers.com details. “I was playing well in Toronto my third year, then I got traded to Memphis,” Davis said. “I played behind [Zach Randolph] and Marc [Gasol] for a year and a half, didn’t really get the opportunity. I was playing 13, 14 minutes a game and there’s no way that’s you’re going to be successful in the NBA with those minutes. That set me back for a year and a half. I guess the media or whatever thought I couldn’t play, or whatever it was. Went to L.A. [Lakers] last year, had a decent year and everything turned. Now I’m in a great situation and I’m looking forward to it.”
Seven Traded This Summer For Virtually No Return
Phony assets aren’t just for Wall Street. NBA teams make a habit of trading for draft picks that are likely never to actually change hands when they need to shed salary. Six trades this past offseason involved only a pick with top-55 protection — the greatest level of protection the NBA allows — going to one of the teams in the deal, and in a seventh trade, a team received a top-55 pick and a draft-and-stash prospect likely never to play in the NBA.
If the team that’s supposed to give up the pick finishes with a record outside the top five in the league the season before whichever draft the pick is tied to, the debt vanishes. None of the top-55 protected picks in this summer’s trade carry any further stipulations, so chances are that the teams “giving up” those picks actually received something for nothing. The only cost, aside from the salary obligations and cap hit involved, is the opportunity to trade that pick with top-55 protection in another deal.
Below is a list of this summer’s trades involving picks with top-55 protection.
- Shabazz Napier — Heat to Magic (Heat received Orlando’s top-55 protected 2016 second-round pick.)
- Zoran Dragic — Heat to Celtics (Heat received Boston’s top-55 protected 2019 second-round pick.)1
- Maurice Harkless — Magic to Trail Blazers (Magic received Portland’s top-55 protected 2020 second-round pick.)
- Perry Jones III — Thunder to Celtics (Thunder received Boston’s top-55 protected 2018 second-round pick.)2
- Zaza Pachulia — Bucks to Mavericks (Milwaukee received Dallas’ top-55 protected 2018 second-round pick.)
- Jared Dudley — Bucks to Wizards (Milwaukee received Washington’s top-55 protected 2020 second-round pick.)
- Tiago Splitter — Spurs to Hawks (San Antonio received Atlanta’s top-55 protected 2017 second-round pick.)3
1 — The Heat also gave up $1.5MM cash and their own 2020 second-round pick, without protection.
2 — The Thunder also gave up $1.5MM cash and an unprotected 2019 second-round pick that the Pistons gave them in an earlier trade.
3 — The Spurs also received the rights to Georgios Printezis, a 30-year-old draft-and-stash prospect selected in the 2007 draft whose rights had already been traded six times before.
RealGM’s Future Traded Pick Details database was used in the creation of this post.
Mavs Notes: Parsons, Matthews, Evans
The potential for better floor spacing thanks to the moves the Mavs made this offseason intrigues Chandler Parsons, who nonetheless still rues the about–face DeAndre Jordan made after committing to the team, observes Shams Charania of Yahoo Sports.
“I think I’ve earned the right to speak freely about the Mavs and our future. There was no way DJ was going to come unless I presented our pitch,” Parsons said to Charania. “It’s not like I was gassing him up and lying. Everything he was saying that he wanted, we were going to give to him. Everything: the opportunity to get the ball more, to be an MVP candidate, to be the man and take the next step in his career. It’s not like I was just making this [expletive] up. He’s still a friend. But when I saw him in Las Vegas for Team USA, all I could really say was, ‘Are you [expletive] serious?'”
Absent Jordan, Parsons is embracing the “opportunity to be the man and an All-Star” with the Mavericks as he makes his way back from knee surgery, and he won’t rule out making a rehab appearance with the team’s D-League affiliate, as he tells Charania for the same story. A D-League assignment is nonetheless unlikely, Parsons indicates. See more from Dallas:
- Wesley Matthews isn’t too upset with Jordan his reversal, perhaps unsurprisingly, since the total value of Matthews’ deal escalated from roughly $13MM a year to the max of about $17.5MM annually when Jordan reneged on his agreement. “He made his own decision and that was it,” Matthews said to Grantland’s Jonathan Abrams. “Am I mad that he changed his mind? No. The only thing that I have an issue with is, I’m reaching out [and] he just didn’t hit me back. If you’re like, ‘Hey, man, I feel this way,’ it’s fine. I’m not going to hold a gun to your head and say, ‘You can’t go.’ At the end of the day, we’ve got to make the best decision. If you thought it was here and realized it wasn’t, I can’t fault you for that.”
- The Suns were among the teams that showed interest in Matthews this summer, Abrams notes within his piece.
- The Mavericks like the versatility of Jeremy Evans, and he’s performed well so far in his initial preseason action for the team, as Eddie Sefko of the Dallas Morning News chronicles. Evans signed a fully guaranteed two-year, minimum salary deal this summer. “It’s pretty clear he’s going to be one of our better defensive players with his activity and length,” coach Rick Carlisle said. “He’s an above-the-rim kind of guy. He’s going to have to guard a lot of different positions.”
- Check out Mark Cuban’s idea for a supplemental draft that he detailed in a Hoops Rumors exclusive.
Top Bloggers: Eric Griffith On The Trail Blazers
Anyone can have a blog about an NBA team, but some set themselves apart from the rest with the dedication and valuable insight they bring to their craft. We’ll be sharing some knowledge from these dialed-in writers on Hoops Rumors in a new feature called Top Bloggers. As with The Beat, our ongoing series of interviews with NBA beat writers, it’s part of an effort to bring Hoops Rumors readers ever closer to the pulse of the teams they follow. Last time, we spoke with William Lou of the score and Raptors Republic. Click here to see the entire Top Bloggers series.
Next up is Eric Griffith of SB Nation’s Blazer’s Edge. You can follow Eric on Twitter at @DeeringTornado and click here to check out his stories. You can also follow Blazer’s Edge at @blazersedge.
Hoops Rumors: How surprised were you that LaMarcus Aldridge went from pledging a long-term commitment a year before free agency, to reiterating that pledge before the start of last season, to bolting for the Spurs when he finally did hit the open market?
Eric Griffith: I was pretty surprised by Aldridge’s decision. From a financial perspective, it made a ton of sense for him to sign a one-year contract with Portland and then hit the market the following season. By signing a long-term deal with the Spurs this offseason he left literally tens of millions of dollars on the table. I thought the money alone would be enough of an incentive to stick it out for one more year with the Blazers.
In January, Aldridge also elected to play through a thumb injury rather than have surgery and miss several weeks during a crucial part of the season. To most Blazers fans that decision implied that Aldridge truly believed the Blazers had a shot at contending. For a player that rarely interacts publicly with the fans and is visibly uncomfortable in front of a mic and camera, that decision spoke volumes about his confidence in the team. Going into the offseason, I hoped that his belief in Portland as a championship caliber team had not wavered after an early playoff exit and that Neil Olshey could keep the team together for one more season. Unfortunately, Aldridge apparently decided that the aging Spurs are THAT much better than an intact Portland team. I’ll admit I was a bit surprised by that as well.
Hoops Rumors: Few teams can lose a star and have another, younger star lock in for a five-year extension the very same summer. How quickly do you think the Blazers can rebuild around Damian Lillard and become a surefire playoff team?
Eric Griffith: As of right now, the Blazers have one proven NBA starter and a team full of reserves. For Portland to become a consistent playoff threat they will need some of those reserve-level players to develop into quality NBA starters. The most likely candidates are Noah Vonleh, C.J. McCollum, and Meyers Leonard. Portland’s playoff chances will get a huge shot in the arm if one or two of those players can show consistent development this season.
The Blazers will also need at least one more All-Star to pair with Lillard, preferably at one of the wing positions. Unfortunately, there are few max-level free agents available next summer and the Blazers do not have the assets to complete a trade for a superstar, so they will likely have to rely on the draft to get that superstar.
As for when Portland will be a surefire playoff team, I think it’s virtually impossible to accurately predict right now. Too much of their future will be determined by player development this season and lottery luck over the summer. If they do get a “hit” on some of their young talent and do get a high lottery pick, then the Blazers could be a consistent playoff threat by 2018. But if all goes awry, they could easily be pressing the reset button again in a couple of seasons. (Griffith went into further detail on this topic here and here).
Hoops Rumors: Which of the moves the Blazers made this summer, aside from the Lillard extension, will help the team the most?
Eric Griffith: Both Mason Plumlee and Ed Davis have shown potential to become quality big men and they both will get plenty of chances to prove themselves this season. Both players also pair well with the perimeter game of Leonard. Either Plumlee or Davis could turn out to be the most helpful addition to the team for this season.
For the long term, many Blazers fans are salivating over Vonleh. He appears to have the potential to develop into an All-Star and is a good bet to at least become a solid rotation player. Olshey acquired Vonleh for Nicolas Batum, who was likely to leave in free agency after this season anyway, so anything Vonleh can give the Blazers can be considered a bonus.
A sneaky choice for the most helpful move might be trading a top-55 protected second round pick for Moe Harkless. The rumors coming out of training camp are that Harkless has been wowing his teammates with his athleticism and that his three-point shot has returned.
Hoops Rumors: How would the Blazers be different, both for this season and the future, if the Thunder hadn’t matched the Enes Kanter offer sheet?
Eric Griffith: It would have been interesting to see how Leonard would have been affected by Kanter’s presence. With the current roster, Leonard will, by necessity, be the primary scoring option from the power forward/center positions. Kanter presumably would have taken some of those shots from the low post instead of Leonard shooting from the perimeter. Leonard also fits well with the complementary skill sets of Davis and Plumlee, but defense would have been an issue if Leonard and Kanter had been paired together.
To me, the Kanter offer sheet (and the Greg Monroe one before it) is interesting because it implies that the Blazers are not content with their current power forwards and centers even though the 4/5 spots are the deepest and most complete on the roster. It’s easy to imagine the Leonard/Vonleh/Davis/Plumlee rotation becoming very effective in a year or two but, apparently, Olshey thinks that lineup still needs more tinkering.
Hoops Rumors: What are reasonable expectations for the Blazers this season? Is a playoff spot truly attainable?
Eric Griffith: The Blazers lost five of their top six players and struck out on their top two free agent choices. It’s tough to imagine any team making the playoffs after that kind of offseason, and the Blazers are no exception. Also, as mentioned above, they have only one established NBA starter. It’s going to be tough for them to win games, especially early in the season.
Looking at the Western Conference standings, it’s hard to pick out a team that is definitely worse than the Blazers. As of now, it seems like they’ll be in the conference basement with the Lakers, Nuggets, and possibly Timberwolves. So a reasonable expectation for Portland this season is probably a 13th-place finish in the conference. Over the last six seasons the 13th-place team in the west has averaged 27.7 wins, suggesting that a win total in the high 20s is a fair prediction.
Arinze Onuaku Signs To Play In Israel
THURSDAY, 11:19am: The signing has taken place, the Israeli team announced.
MONDAY, 3:04pm: Two-year NBA veteran Arinze Onuaku is expected to sign with Israeli powerhouse Maccabi Tel Aviv, a source tells Sportando’s Orazio Cauchi. International journalist David Pick, writing for One.co.il, also reports the deal, adding that it covers three months and that it includes an option worth $200K that would extend it for the entire season (Twitter link). Onuaku finished 2014/15 with the Timberwolves, who used a hardship provision of a 16th roster spot to sign him for the final week of the season.
Onuaku, who turned 28 in July, averaged 4.5 points and 3.5 rebounds in 11.4 minutes per game across six appearances for Minnesota this past April. It was the most significant action of the power forward’s brief NBA career, as he made it into only five combined games for the Pelicans and Cavaliers in 2013/14. He was with the Pacers for the preseason a year ago, but he’s chiefly played with Cleveland’s D-League affiliate the past three years. The former Syracuse player put up 17.5 PPG and 12.2 RPG in 34.6 MPG over 41 appearances for the D-League Canton Charge this past season.
Minnesota had the opportunity to tender a $1,147,276 qualifying offer to make him a restricted free agent this summer, but the Wolves declined. Instead, he’ll join Jordan Farmar and draft prospect Dragan Bender with Maccabi Tel Aviv, which just played a pair of exhibitions in the U.S. last week.
And-Ones: LeBron, Silver, Labissiere, Bender
LeBron James isn’t pressuring the Cavs to make moves amid the absence of key players, observes Joe Vardon of the Northeast Ohio Media Group. Kevin Love is set to take part in a full practice for the first time this weekend, Vardon’s Northeast Ohio Media Group colleague Chris Haynes writes, but Kyrie Irving is still out, Iman Shumpert isn’t expected back for about three months, and Tristan Thompson remains unsigned.
“Until Kyrie and Tristan and Shump is ready, we have enough guys that will all help,” James said. “It’s not about me carrying the team and that nature. We’re all grown men, we’re all professionals and they’re here to do their job.”
While we wait to see if the Cavs can indeed overcome being shorthanded, here’s more from around the league:
- It’s unclear whether formal labor talks between commissioner Adam Silver and union executive director Michele Roberts have taken place, but Silver told Raúl Barrigón of HoopsHype that the two have remained in communication (All Twitter links). “We continue to talk all the time,” Silver said. “I think Michele Roberts and I both have the same goal which is to avoid any sort of work stoppage. And we know one of the ways to avoid a work stoppage is to talk early and often. And we’re doing that.”
- Top 2016 draft prospect Skal Labissiere has yet to receive NCAA clearance to play this season at Kentucky, his guardian tells Jeff Goodman of ESPN.com. The NCAA has scrutinized the relationship between the guardian and the 7’0″ forward/center, Goodman hears, but it’s not clear if that’s the reason for the holdup. Labissiere is the top prospect in Jonathan Givony’s DraftExpress rankings while Chad Ford of ESPN.com has him second.
- Dragan Bender impressed NBA scouts and executives with his play in exhibitions in Chicago and New York last week, according to Ford, who has the 17-year-old small forward at No. 3 in his ranking of the top 2016 draft prospects (Twitter links).
- Wilson Chandler and Danilo Gallinari became the first players to sign renegotiations-and-extensions under the current collective bargaining agreement this summer, but with the cap rising, a greater chance exists that this rarely used contract tool comes into play more often, notes Nate Duncan of Nylon Calculus. Duncan examines potential renegotiation-and-extension scenarios for DeMarcus Cousins, James Harden and others, arguing that such a move would make sense for both Cousins and the Kings in 2017.
Atlantic Notes: Bennett, Fisher, Celtics, Knicks
Anthony Bennett doesn’t regret having become the No. 1 overall pick in 2013, but in encouraging him to move past that, Raptors GM Masai Ujiri hinted in comments to Marc J. Spears of Yahoo Sports that he can envision keeping Bennett beyond this season even if he doesn’t make a leap this year. Toronto signed Bennett to just a one-year deal for the minimum salary when the team brought him aboard last month.
“We look at giving Anthony an opportunity to actually grow and be a player,” Ujiri said. “It’s not a one-year thing here. It’s going to take time. All that No. 1 pick and all that stuff, we had a conversation with him. Let’s move on from that. Now it’s about how you become a very good NBA player, which we all know he can be.”
See more from the Atlantic Division:
- It was Derek Fisher who was the victim when Matt Barnes reportedly attacked him, but the Knicks coach invited scrutiny when he skipped practice to travel 3,000 miles away, ostensibly to see his children, and wound up at the home of Barnes’ ex-wife, opines Frank Isola of the New York Daily News. The missed practice and the distraction brought upon his team will make Fisher’s job performance a more common subject for criticism this season, Isola believes.
- The first-round picks that the Nets, Timberwolves and Mavericks owe them and the playoff appearance from last season signal that the Celtics would be well-served to put more of an emphasis on winning this year, as Steve Bulpett of the Boston Herald argues. Bulpett points to this summer’s moves as evidence that the C’s feel the same way.
- The Knicks formally hired Mike Miller as the coach of their D-League affiliate, the team announced. Miller, who’s not the player by the same name, is a former associate head coach at Kansas State. Isola first reported in August that the move was close.
Exclusive: Mark Cuban Offers Idea For Draft
Teams across the NBA are loaded this time of year with players who signed as undrafted free agents. The impending addition of former Rutgers power forward Kadeem Jack to the Pacers will make it 44 players on NBA rosters who went undrafted this year. They outnumber the 2015 draftees, of whom only 41 are under contract with NBA teams. A few GMs reportedly believe a decent chance exists the NBA draft will expand beyond two rounds once the D-League has 30 teams, but Mavericks owner Mark Cuban has an idea for a different sort of draft entirely, as he explained when Hoops Rumors asked him what he would change about NBA free agency.
“I would have a supplemental draft every summer for undrafted free agents of the current and previous 3 years,” Cuban wrote in an email to Hoops Rumors. “If you are more than 3 years out you are not eligible and just a free agent.”
The supplemental draft would have two rounds, and teams would hold the rights to the players they select for two years, Cuban added. Players can opt out and choose not to make themselves eligible, but those who get picked would receive fully guaranteed minimum-salary contracts when they sign, according to Cuban’s proposal.
“That would make it fun a few weeks after the draft and pre-summer league,” Cuban wrote. “It would prevent some of the insanity that goes on to build summer league rosters.”
Cuban said that he’s raised the idea in some conversations, though no formal discussions have taken place. Instituting a second-chance draft like this would require approval from the players association and probably necessitate changes to the language in the collective bargaining agreement. Commissioner Adam Silver and union executive director Michele Roberts are already talking, if only informally, about labor issues, with both sides having the power to opt out of the labor agreement in 2017, so an idea like this could come to the table in the months ahead.
The players would certainly like the idea of fully guaranteed deals, since most of the undrafted free agents who would be eligible for Cuban’s supplemental draft and who signed this summer have only partial guarantees, at best. They’d also probably like that they’d be able to opt out of the supplemental draft entirely, since it would preserve their ability to negotiate with multiple teams if they want to. That power in many cases puts undrafted players in more favorable positions than the ones their second-round brethren are in, so part of the intrigue of the supplemental draft would be seeing which players would be willing to sacrifice that flexibility in exchange for the chance at a guaranteed contract.
I’d speculate that some teams would want to tweak the proposal so that they have the ability to opt out, too. That would come in handy for teams that enter July with a high volume of guaranteed contracts already on the books. Of course, teams wouldn’t have to sign the players they selected immediately, just as with the conventional draft, though in the stipulations Cuban laid out, they would only have two years to bring supplemental draftees onto the roster before their draft rights expire. The existing draft allows teams to roll over a player’s draft rights in perpetuity as long as they keep making non-guaranteed required tenders every year.
The proposal would take some of the hassle out of summer league for teams, and it would also further legitimize summer league, since it would more closely tie summer league rosters to camp and regular season rosters. It would involve not just players freshly passed over in the draft but those who’d already played professionally for a few years, too. Cuban didn’t say whether players with NBA experience would be involved, though presumably players under NBA contracts or with Bird rights tied to an NBA team would be excluded.
Cuban’s idea is somewhat reminiscent of Major League Baseball’s Rule 5 draft, which involves overlooked prospects and requires teams to keep draftees on big-league rosters. Cuban answered affirmatively when Hoops Rumors asked if the current system allowed for enough creativity in structuring deals, but clearly, he wouldn’t mind seeing an extra layer of intrigue to the NBA’s offseason. Time will tell if the other owners and the players are willing to go along.
What do you think of Cuban’s idea for a supplemental draft? Leave a comment to share your take on his plan and any proposals of your own.
Bucks Waive Jon Horford, Charlie Westbrook
The Bucks have waived camp invitees Jon Horford and Charlie Westbrook, the team announced (Twitter link). Both were on non-guaranteed contracts that they signed last month. The moves leave Milwaukee with 18 players. It’s no surprise to see them hit waivers, since the team has 15 fully guaranteed deals.
Horford, the brother of Hawks star and 2016 free agent Al Horford, didn’t score in six minutes of action Tuesday against the Bulls in Milwaukee’s first preseason game. Westbrook had four points and three rebounds in nine minutes. Both are undrafted, though Horford is fresh out of college, having finished up with Florida last year. Westbrook was in his second NBA training camp since coming out of South Dakota in 2012, as he’d spent time with the Heat in 2013.
Jorge Gutierrez, Marcus Landry and Josh Powell are the Bucks without guaranteed money remaining on the roster. Milwaukee doesn’t have a D-League affiliate, so the team won’t be able to continue its partnership with Horford, Westbrook, or any of the other players it waives.