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Author: Chuck Myron

Atlantic Notes: Calderon, Okafor, Celtics

By | at September 9, 2015 12:30 pm

Jose Calderon says the strained left Achilles tendon that prematurely ended his 2014/15 season is fully healthy, and the Spanish point guard is a fan of the moves the Knicks made this summer, even though he tried and failed to lure countryman Marc Gasol to the team, reports Marc Berman of the New York Post. Two seasons still remain on Calderon’s deal, but the 34-year-old added that he hasn’t been concerned that the Knicks might look to unload him this year, in spite of speculation, as Berman relays.
“I was never worried,” Calderon said to Berman. “It doesn’t mean I know for sure, but I was told I wasn’t involved in those trades and people I trust tell me that. And I talked to [coach] Derek [Fisher] during their free-agent meetings so they were keeping me always in the loop.’’
See more from around the Atlantic Division:
  • No. 3 overall pick Jahlil Okafor isn’t just the first Sixers top-10 pick of the past three years who’s healthy entering training camp, he’s also arguably the first truly foundational player that GM Sam Hinkie has added, writes Tim Bontemps of the New York Post (Facebook link).
  • The majority of ESPN’s Summer Forecast panel believes it’s likely the Celtics will pull off a splashy move this season, but Chris Forsberg of ESPNBoston.com finds it tough to envision the team making a major acquisition, given the difficulty of finding a trade partner and the cap constraints on midseason swaps.
  • President of basketball operations Danny Ainge has done his due diligence to put the Celtics in position to acquire major talent, but the luck necessary to ultimately snag a marquee name just hasn’t been present, argues Sean Deveney of The Sporting News.
1 comment Boston Celtics Memphis Grizzlies New York Knicks Philadelphia 76ers

Joe Johnson Switches Agents

By | at September 9, 2015 11:34 am

Joe Johnson has split with the Wasserman Media Group amid the departure of longtime agent Arn Tellem and has joined forces with Jeff Schwartz of Excel Sports Management, a source tells NetsDaily (Twitter links). Johnson, set for free agency next summer, had felt a kinship with Tellem, as NetsDaily notes, and had been with him since he entered the 2001 draft. Tellem changed careers this summer to become an executive with the Pistons organization.

LaMarcus Aldridge made the same Wasserman-to-Excel move after signing his new four-year max deal with the Spurs this summer, but losing Johnson figures to have a greater short-term pinch on Wasserman, since Aldridge’s commission still goes to them. Excel is in line for the percentage, usually 3%, associated with negotiating Johnson’s next deal.

Tellem secured a six-year max contract worth more than $123.658MM for Johnson in 2010, a deal hailed even then, when Johnson was coming off five straight seasons of having averaged 20-plus points per game, as a decidedly player-friendly arrangement. His scoring average hasn’t eclipsed 18.8 PPG since, but the 34-year-old still remains a productive player, having been the second-leading scorer for Brooklyn this past season while pulling down 4.8 rebounds per contest, more than he had in 10 years.

Schwartz is no stranger to the Nets or prominent NBA clients. He represents Jarrett Jack and Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, and he was also the agent for former Nets coach Jason Kidd, as NetsDaily points out (on Twitter). Ex-Nets Deron Williams and Paul Pierce are Schwartz clients, as are Al Jefferson and Brandon Jennings, two other veterans for whom the agent is in line to negotiate next summer.

The move puts one more step of distance between the Pistons and Johnson after a report close to the trade deadline indicated that Detroit had engaged the Nets in trade talks about the veteran scorer. Johnson, given his salary of nearly $24.895MM this season and Brooklyn’s ability to escape the luxury tax with other moves, appears likely to stay put this year.

What do you think Johnson will make on a new deal next summer? Leave a comment to tell us.

2 comments Brooklyn Nets Detroit Pistons

Players Ineligible To Be Traded Until January 15th

By | at September 9, 2015 10:29 am

Teams that make significant investments in re-signing their own free agents usually aren’t in a hurry to turn around and trade them, and the collective bargaining agreement has a rule designed to prevent that from happening anyway. Most free agents who sign new contracts in the offseason are ineligible for inclusion in trade until December 15th. A select group can’t be traded for an extra month on top of that.

Players who had full Bird or Early Bird rights and re-signed with their teams on a contract that gives them a raise of 20% or better in the first year of the deal are ineligible to be traded until January 15th, as long as their respective teams were over the cap once they made the signing. That covers many of the free agents sticking with their teams on lucrative deals this summer, including DeAndre Jordan, Kawhi Leonard and Marc Gasol.

Some prominent names fall outside those bounds. LeBron James is making less than 20% more than what he made last season, and that, plus the fact he merely had Non-Bird rights, makes him trade-eligible on the standard December 15th date. Tobias Harris and Paul Millsap aren’t listed here, because their respective teams were still under the cap when they signed them. Still, the Cavs, Magic and Hawks probably aren’t anxious to trade any of them anytime soon.

Here’s the full list of players ineligible to be traded until January 15th this year:

The Basketball Insiders salary pages were used in the creation of this post.

0 comments Hoops Rumors Originals

Cavs Sign Sasha Kaun

By | at September 9, 2015 10:05 am

Olympics: Basketball-Men's Preliminary-AUS vs RUS
Courtesy of USA Today Sports Images

10:05am: Windhorst pegs the total value at $2.6MM (Twitter link).

9:42am: The two-year package is worth $2.5MM total, sources tell Marc Stein of ESPN.com (Twitter link).

SEPTEMBER 9TH, 9:35am: The deal is official, the team announced. Kaun will make $1.2MM this season, as Terry Pluto of the Cleveland Plain Dealer wrote recently.

7:38pm: Chris Haynes of Cleveland.com hears that the second year is not a player option, in contrast to what sources told Windhorst (Twitter link).

6:40pm: The contract gives Kaun a player option for the second year, tweets Brian Windhorst of ESPN.com.

AUGUST 22ND, 4:44pm: Kaun and the Cavs have reached an agreement on a two-year pact, international journalist David Pick reports (via Twitter).

AUGUST 17TH, 4:09pm: Draft-and-stash center Sasha Kaun appears on his way to the Cavaliers for this season, as a source tells Chris Haynes of Cleveland.com that “it’s only a matter of time” before a deal is done. Kaun and the Cavs had reportedly engaged in talks last month, and GM David Griffin confirmed the team’s interest in bringing the big man aboard for this coming season. Griffin pointed to finances as a concern, and while every dollar the Cavs spend this season will likely entail multiple additional dollars going out in tax penalties, Kaun downplayed any financial hurdles. Still, no deal is imminent, and Kaun, who’s in Cleveland this week to house hunt, among other pursuits, is scheduled to leave town Tuesday, and the sides probably won’t have an agreement in place by then, Haynes writes.

The Cavs can offer no more than the $1.276MM sliver of the mid-level exception they have left over after signing Mo Williams to his deal earlier this summer, and that’s much less than the $2.9MM he had been making for Russia’s CSKA Moscow. Using the balance of that exception on Kaun would also make it virtually impossible for Cleveland to offer a market-rate deal to Cedi Osman, whom the Cavs drafted No. 31 overall this year.

The 30-year-old Kaun, who played collegiately at Kansas, was the 56th overall pick in 2008. The Cavs have seemingly been giving thought to bringing him aboard for the season ahead since at least this past March. Cleveland reportedly had talks with the Nets about trading Kaun’s rights to Brooklyn, but it looks like the Cavs won’t be dealing him away. Cleveland has plenty of room on its roster, as Sunday’s apparent deal with Jared Cunningham gives the team contracts or verbal agreements with only 12 players. Re-signing Tristan Thompson remains the focus for the Cavs, Haynes notes.

Do you think Kaun is the right fit for one of the final roster spots on the Cavs? Leave a comment to tell us.

5 comments Cleveland Cavaliers Newsstand Transactions

Northwest Notes: Favors, Bjelica, Malone

By | at September 9, 2015 8:59 am

Derrick Favors had started only eight games the season before he signed his four-year, $49MM-plus extension with the Jazz in 2013, but GM Dennis Lindsey tells Adi Joseph of The Sporting News that the team wasn’t worried. Lindsey credits Favors with having patiently waited his turn to inherit a major role.

“The present screams while the future whispers,” Lindsey said. “And many of those contracts, you do have to project. But Derrick gave us a great sense of calm with how he’s handled himself as a player and as a person.”

Lindsey added that he considered supplementing the team’s playoff push this season with a veteran free agent addition or a splashy trade but decided against it when the right player didn’t emerge, entrusting Favors and the other members of the team’s youthful core with taking the next step this season. While we wait to see if they can, see more on the Jazz and their Northwest Division rivals:

  • Favors wasn’t initially sold on Utah, but that’s changed, as he said to Joseph for the same piece. “I didn’t expect to stay [long term], no,” Favors said. “Utah was so different, I was so new to it. I didn’t expect to stay. But as the years have gone on, I’ve grown to love it. I got used to it. I just started feeling comfortable. I like how calm and chill it is in Utah. It’s a good thing and it’s a bad thing. The bad part is, maybe after a big game you want to go out and hang out or whatever, and there’s really not too many spots like that in Utah. Down here, you could go anywhere. Out in Utah, it’s chill, laid-back. There’s not a lot of rah-rah stuff going on. You can focus on your job, your career, whatever else you have going on.”
  • Nemanja Bjelica will fight for minutes at a crowded power forward position as a rookie this year, but the Timberwolves draft-and-stash signee figures to earn his share of playing team, and he’s capable of becoming a star in the NBA, opines SB Nation’s Liam Boylan-Pett. His performance in this week’s Eurobasket tournament has provided glimpses of why he can succeed at the NBA level, as Boylan-Pett examines.
  • The addition of coach Michael Malone is one of the few moves that the Nuggets have made recently that seem to have struck the right chord, writes Shaun Powell of NBA.com in his 30 Teams, 30 Days series.
0 comments Denver Nuggets Minnesota Timberwolves Utah Jazz

Most Lucrative Free Agent Deals By Total Value

By | at September 8, 2015 4:00 pm

LeBron James might have been the most powerful free agent in the NBA this offseason, but it was instead teammate Kevin Love who secured the greatest amount of money in a new contract this summer, or at least tied for the honor with Marc Gasol. James put pen to paper for an amount that provided only the 22nd-greatest total of guaranteed salary among all 2015 free agent signees, though that’s because he prefers the flexibility of a two-year deal with a player option after year one.

Love and James were two of three Cavs who wound up with deals lucrative enough for the top 25. Iman Shumpert, who scored a four-year, $40MM deal, was the other. Tristan Thompson seemingly has a chance to find his way onto the list, though negotiations between the power forward and the team have stalled, and he’s reportedly already looking at the chance for an even greater payday next summer.

For now, it’s hard to touch what the Spurs shelled out this year, with two top 10 deals for Kawhi Leonard and LaMarcus Aldridge. Danny Green is tied with Shumpert for 25th.

The list counts only guaranteed salary. Thus, Omer Asik, whose total package of nearly $53MM would put him at No. 19, is instead No. 23, right behind LeBron. Player option seasons do count, however.

Most lucrative free agent contracts signed in 2015, by total value:

  1. (tie) Marc Gasol, Grizzlies — $113,211,750 (five years)
  2. (tie) Kevin Love, Cavaliers — $113,211,750 (five years)
  3. Kawhi Leonard, Spurs — $94,343,129 (five years)
  4. Jimmy Butler, Bulls — $92,339,878 (five years)
  5. DeAndre Jordan, Clippers — $87,616,050 (four years)
  6. Goran Dragic, Heat — $85,002,250 (five years)
  7. LaMarcus Aldridge, Spurs — $84,072,030 (four years)
  8. Draymond Green, Warriors — $82,000,000 (five years)
  9. Reggie Jackson, Pistons — $80,000,000 (five years)
  10. (tie) Enes Kanter, Thunder — $70,060,028 (four years)
  11. (tie) Wesley Matthews, Mavericks — $70,060,028 (four years)
  12. (tie) Brandon Knight, Suns — $70,000,000 (five years)
  13. (tie) Khris Middleton, Bucks — $70,000,000 (five years)
  14. Tobias Harris, Magic — $64,000,000 (four years)
  15. Brook Lopez, Nets — $63,497,025 (three years)
  16. Paul Millsap, Hawks — $60,216,099 (three years)
  17. DeMarre Carroll, Raptors — $58,000,000 (four years)
  18. Robin Lopez, Knicks — $54,015,500 (four years)
  19. Tyson Chandler, Suns — $52,000,000 (four years)
  20. Greg Monroe, Bucks — $51,437,514 (three years)
  21. Thaddeus Young, Nets — $50,000,000 (four years)
  22. LeBron James, Cavaliers — $46,974,673 (two years)
  23. Omer Asik, Pelicans — $43,999,999 (five years)
  24. Monta Ellis, Pacers — $43,981,000 (four years)
  25. (tie) Danny Green, Spurs — $40,000,000 (four years)
  26. (tie) Iman Shumpert, Cavaliers — $40,000,000 (four years)

The Basketball Insiders salary pages were used in the creation of this post.

7 comments Uncategorized

NBA Fines Markieff Morris $10K For Trade Demand

By | at September 8, 2015 2:30 pm

2:30pm: Last week’s tweet from Morris was the statement that clinched the fine, Stein writes in a full piece. The NBA makes a habit of giving players the benefit of the doubt, notes former Nets executive Bobby Marks (Twitter link), so that appears to have been the case with the remarks Morris made to Pompey, but the tweet evidently took it a step too far.

12:57pm: The NBA has slapped Markieff Morris with a fine of $10K for publicly demanding a trade from the Suns, the league announced, as Marc Stein of ESPN.com reports (Twitter link). It’s not against the rules for either a player or his agent to go to the team with trade demands, but Morris aired his laundry through the media, which the NBA has been fining players for since the 2005/06 season, Stein points out (Twitter links). Morris told Keith Pompey of the Philadelphia Inquirer early last month that, “I am not going to be there [in Phoenix] at all,” amid his anger over the trade that sent his twin brother, and now ex-teammate, to the Pistons in July.

Morris is set to make $8MM this season, the first in a four-year, $32MM extension he signed last fall, when the Suns allowed him and his brother to split a $52MM pot, so the fine won’t have much of a financial impact on the 26-year-old. Morris doubled down last week on his earlier comments, tweeting that, “My future will not be in Phoenix.” John Gambadoro of Arizona Sports 98.7 radio first reported that Morris wanted off the Suns, though Morris ostensibly wouldn’t have drawn a fine for that dispatch alone, since it didn’t include on-the-record statements from him.

Agent Leon Rose of the Creative Artists Agency has represented Morris, though his brother recently left the agency, so it’s unclear if he’ll do the same. Regardless, the trade demand has placed the Suns in a compromising position, as I examined when I looked at Morris in a Trade Candidate piece. The Suns appear intent on patching up the relationship, but Gambadoro reported that the 2011 lottery pick won’t talk to Suns front office officials and will respond to coach Jeff Hornacek only in one-word answers.

How do you see things ending up for Morris and the Suns? Do you think any room for reconciliation exists, or should the Suns simply take what they can get for him? Leave a comment to tell us.

4 comments Newsstand Phoenix Suns

Pat Riley On Heat’s Title Chances, Wade, Arison

By | at September 8, 2015 2:13 pm

Rumors surrounding Dwyane Wade this spring made it seem as though another piece to Miami’s LeBron James era stood a decent chance to disappear this summer, but Wade instead re-signed for another year at $20MM, and trade deadline acquisition Goran Dragic committed for the long-term, as expected. Those deals, plus the arrival of No. 10 overall pick Justise Winslow and free agent signees like Amar’e Stoudemire and Gerald Green have team president Pat Riley enthusiastic about the Heat’s chances this season, though he admitted to Dan Le Batard and Jon Weiner of ESPN Radio today that he’d be high on his team no matter the circumstances. Barry Jackson of the Miami Herald transcribed that and more from Riley’s radio appearance today. The entire transcript is worth a read, especially for Heat fans, for its insight on what keeps the 70-year-old executive from retiring to his house in Malibu and the way his image affected his teams when he was coaching. We’ll hit the highlights here:

On his expectations for this season:

“I think this team has all of the elements of a championship team. Whether or not you can ever win a championship will depend on a number of factors. I can list them and you can list them. It’s going to come down to this, health, … performance and this guy and that guy. It’s going to come down to can you make shots?”

On whether he was truly worried that Wade would leave:

“Yeah, I had some concern because we have lost players before. … There was a time I said anything is possible because of what had happened with LeBron. The landscape of the NBA now and player mentalities sometimes get into the way of the priorities that you have to face as a player and as also an organization. It really is more than ever a big — big, capital letters — business now. The business has grown tentacles so far from the court … that anything is possible. Deep down in my gut, Dwyane is a lifer here and I felt he and [owner] Micky [Arison] and [CEO] Nick [Arison] would work it out. When you deal with a player like Dwyane at this stage in his career, it’s just not eyeball to eyeball with me and Henry Thomas, his agent. It got a lot more personal in a good way because the owner got involved in it because that’s how much we care about Dwyane.”

On his relationship with Micky Arison:

“Being here for 20 years. I feel blessed. I really do. I feel blessed to be in one city with great people I’ve been with for a long time, a great owner in Micky, his wife, Madeleine. We’ve become more than just boss and employee. We’ve become very good friends. It’s like all your firsts go away. Your first love goes away, your first girlfriend, your first baby. … And then all of a sudden you have to create new firsts. We’ve had a lot of firsts here and they’re gone and now we have to create new one. … Our dream, or my dream, of what we put together in 2010 had not shattered but had changed.”

0 comments Miami Heat

Three 2016 Max Offers Await Tristan Thompson?

By | at September 8, 2015 12:12 pm

Agent Rich Paul has heard from three teams that are willing to offer a maximum-salary contract to Tristan Thompson next summer if he hits unrestricted free agency, sources tell Michael Scotto of SheridanHoops (Twitter link). Paul reportedly believes he can get a max deal from the Raptors for Thompson, a Toronto native, but it’s unclear if they are one of the three. The Trail Blazers and Sixers are the only teams capable of coming close to what the Cavs have offered this year, so Cleveland would appear to be largely in control of Thompson’s fate for the coming season.  However, Paul has said that Thompson, who’s lingered in restricted free agency since July 1st, wouldn’t re-sign with the Cavs next summer if he were to sign his one-year qualifying offer of nearly $6.778MM, which is on the table from the Cavs until the end of this month.

The Cavs and Thompson’s camp have had little communication, if any, of late amid a separation of some $14MM in their respective proposals, as Chris Haynes of the Northeast Ohio Media Group and the Cleveland Plain Dealer told us last week. Thompson is looking for a five-year max deal, which would be worth $94,343,129, and the Cavs have offered $80MM over five years.

The value of Thompson’s qualifying offer is nearly $10MM less than what he would make on the starting salary of a max deal, but the power forward could nonetheless benefit financially from taking the qualifying offer if max offers from other teams are indeed waiting for him next year. Max salaries go up in accordance with the salary cap, and with the cap set to spike for 2016/17, next summer’s projected maximum for a player with Thompson’s experience is $20.4MM. With 4.5% raises over a four-year contract, the best terms he could get if he doesn’t re-sign with Cleveland, a max deal with a new team next summer would be worth a total of $87.108MM, based on that $20.4MM starting salary projection. Combined with the qualifying offer, Thompson would make almost as much going that route as he would signing a five-year max with Cleveland this year.

Of course, much can change between now and next July, and teams currently willing to pay the max have the right to change their minds based on Thompson’s performance this season as well as their own financial circumstances. Interest at the level of salaries exceeding $20MM seem tenuous at best for a player who came off the bench for most of this past season and scored only 8.5 points per game, despite his pedigree as the No. 4 overall pick in 2011. The Cavs have Kevin Love and Timofey Mozgov at the inside positions, so Thompson would seemingly be in line for a return to the bench after he started in place of an injured Love during the postseason.

Do you think teams will be willing to offer Tristan Thompson the max next summer? Leave a comment to share your thoughts.

5 comments Cleveland Cavaliers Newsstand Toronto Raptors

Featured Posts On Hoops Rumors

By | at September 8, 2015 10:13 am

Hoops Rumors offers a variety of resources on our right sidebar that are available with a single click, such as our Free Agent Tracker, our Extension Candidate Series and the Hoops Rumors Glossary. Some of our best work is under the menu titled “Featured Posts.”

We recently updated that menu, so let’s run down what’s available there:

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