Knicks Notes: Cauley-Stein, Russell, Mudiay
The consensus among executives, agents and scouts around the league is that the Knicks will actively seek to trade the No. 4 overall pick for a veteran, reports Frank Isola of the New York Daily News. Still, Marc Berman of the New York Post finds consensus among execs who say the Knicks will ultimately decide to keep it. One of those execs who spoke with Berman described the notion of the Knicks talking to other teams about trading the pick as a matter of due diligence. Team sources tell Berman that the Knicks don’t consider trading down a priority, but if they do move to a lower pick, they’d like to receive a 2016 first-rounder in return, Berman adds. Here’s more from New York:
- Isola sees signs that point to Willie Cauley-Stein as the team’s target, noting Cauley-Stein fits the description of sort of defender team president Phil Jackson wants and that Jackson has told confidants that he likes the Kentucky center. Some people within the Knicks “absolutely love” D’Angelo Russell, a league source told Ian Begley of ESPNNewYork.com, but the Sixers, who pick third, also seem enamored with him, leaving Emmanuel Mudiay as the next best choice, many scouts and draft experts say, as Begley writes.
- Mudiay’s ability to get to the line would help the Knicks, who ranked last in the league in free throw rate this past season, but his tendency to ball-watch on defense is a trait some Knicks already share, as Chris Herring of The Wall-Street Journal examines.
- GM Steve Mills said after the lottery that whomever the Knicks draft will have a “big impact” on the free agents the team targets, Begley observes in a separate piece. Mills also made a remark indicating that the team’s belief about which free agents will be most obtainable will affect the club’s draft decision, as Begley relays. “We’ll look at what kind of guys we think are going to move in free agency and have our draft plans accordingly,” Mills said.
Pacific Notes: Lakers, Divac, Draft, Warriors
The Lakers will look at D’Angelo Russell for the No. 2 overall pick, but preliminary indications are that they’ll take either Jahlil Okafor and Karl-Anthony Towns, depending on which one of those two is left after the Timberwolves pick, as Mike Bresnahan of the Los Angeles Times hears. Trading the pick is also an option, GM Mitch Kupchak says, as Sean Deveney of The Sporting News tweets. In any case, the choices at No. 2 are a bit better than the Lakers would have had if the lottery had gone according to form and the team had ended up with the fourth pick. Here’s more from around the Pacific Division:
- Kings president of basketball and franchise operations Vlade Divac said his team should be open to trading its draft pick, but in comments that Jason Jones of The Sacramento Bee relays, he distanced himself from the mechanics of any such move. “I’m leaving that to my basketball people,” Divac said. It’s an odd statement from the team’s top basketball executive. In any case, Chad Ford of ESPN.com identified the Kings, who pick sixth, among the teams most likely to trade their top-10 pick, along with the Magic, Pistons, Heat and Hornets, as Ford wrote in a chat with readers.
- The Kings and the Pacers are the teams with the most interest in Willie Cauley-Stein, Ford adds in the same piece.
- Andrew Bogut is a fan of the way Steve Kerr handles his assistant coaches, as the big man tells Tim Kawakami of the Bay Area News Group a year after assistant coaches were squarely in the spotlight for Golden State. The departures of assistants Brian Scalabrine and Darren Erman from the Warriors bench last year were symbolic of the tumult near the end of Mark Jackson‘s time as Warriors coach. “In their own way, they all have free reign,” Bogut said of Kerr’s staff. “You see them talk to the media, which is something that wasn’t happening with us the last couple of years. There’s no agendas where a coach thinks, ‘Oh, he’s doing extra workouts with this guy, he’s trying to take my job, or vice-versa, or he’s trying to get himself a head-coaching job.’ We don’t have any of that. We have guys that say something when they need to say something and to be professional throughout.”
James, Curry, Harden Lead All-NBA Teams
LeBron James and Stephen Curry finished atop the voting for the All-NBA Teams, with James Harden, Anthony Davis and Marc Gasol joining them on the first team, the league announced via press release. Russell Westbrook, LaMarcus Aldridge, Chris Paul, Pau Gasol and DeMarcus Cousins comprise the second team. Blake Griffin, DeAndre Jordan, Tim Duncan, Klay Thompson and Kyrie Irving make up the third team.
Curry, the league’s MVP, and James each received 645 points through a system in which five points are awarded a first team vote, three points go for a second team vote and one point is given for a third team vote. The duo garnered 129 first team votes each, making them unanimous first team selections. They were followed closely by Harden, with 125 first team votes and 637 points, and Davis, who had 119 first team votes and 625 points. Marc Gasol, who’s heading into free agency, wasn’t as widely seen as a first-teamer by the media members who cast their ballots, rounding out the squad with 65 first-team votes and 453.
Every member of the second team received at least one first team vote, and Thompson and Irving were the only members of the third team not to get a first team vote. Al Horford also received a first team vote even though he didn’t make any of the teams. The NBA will soon display the votes of each media member on its website, but the league has already distributed the information via press release, so click here to check it out in PDF form.
Offseason Outlook: Washington Wizards
Guaranteed Contracts
- John Wall ($15,851,950)
- Nene ($13,000,000)
- Marcin Gortat ($11,217,391)
- Bradley Beal ($5,694,674)
- Martell Webster ($5,613,500)
- Otto Porter ($4,662,960)
- Kris Humphries ($4,440,000)
- Ramon Sessions ($2,170,465)
- DeJuan Blair ($2,000,000)
Non-Guaranteed Contracts
- None
Options
- Paul Pierce ($5,543,725 — Player)
- Garrett Temple ($1,100,602 — Player)
Restricted Free Agents/Cap Holds
- None
Unrestricted Free Agents/Cap Holds
- Kevin Seraphin ($7,407,517)
- No. 19 pick ($1,310,300)
- Rasual Butler ($947,276)
- Will Bynum ($947,276)
- Drew Gooden ($947,276)
Draft Picks
- 1st Round (19th overall)
- 2nd Round (49th overall)
Cap Outlook
- Guaranteed Salary: $64,650,940
- Non-Guaranteed Salary: $0
- Options: $6,644,327
- Cap Holds: $11,559,645
- Total: $82,854,912
A year later, the Wizards wound up right where they had been. Washington came closer to the title than it had in more than three decades last season, and this year, the Wizards repeated their run to the sixth game of the conference semifinals against the East’s No. 1 seed. If the three-point shot from Paul Pierce that officials waived off after a replay review at the end of Game 6 against the Hawks had left Pierce’s hands a moment earlier, the Wizards might still be playing. Still, Pierce’s mere presence on the court that night signaled the progress the Wizards have made in the past 12 months, even if the results in the playoffs didn’t show it.
A 10-time All-Star still capable of making a significant contribution such as Pierce wouldn’t have chosen to sign with Wizards if he didn’t find them capable of going far. No one, and probably Pierce included, would have mistaken this year’s Wizards for a title contender, but it’s a franchise with at least a few of the basic ingredients necessary to become one in the near future. John Wall further established himself as an elite point guard, taking fewer shots and dishing more assists. He averaged 10.1 assists per game in the regular season and an even more impressive 11.9 in the playoffs, and he said at the team’s end-of-season press conference that what he’d learned from Pierce this season had a profound impact, as the Wizards Twitter account relays.
Much of the future for the Wizards depends on how much Wall, who’ll turn 25 in September, and Bradley Beal, who won’t be 22 until next month, can improve before they hit their respective peaks. Still, in spite of coach Randy Wittman‘s apparent belief that Pierce will play again next season, the 37-year-old veteran of 17 NBA seasons is making no such guarantees, and even if he does choose to come back, it’s not certain that he will do so with the Wizards. Pierce can become a free agent this summer if he turns down his player option, and as he showed in the playoffs, he probably still has enough left to command a salary similar to the more than $5.5MM he’d make on the option.
Backup center Kevin Seraphin already has his sights set on a starting role, signaling that he’s on his way elsewhere, with Marcin Gortat only one year into a five-year contract. Drew Gooden, another frontcourt rotation player, is also a free agent this summer. Washington is already knocking against the projected $67.1MM salary cap, so the team has little capacity to replace the players who walk away. The most significant financial weapon that GM Ernie Grunfeld is likely to have at his disposal will probably be the $5.464MM non-taxpayer’s mid-level exception, though he’ll also have the $2.139MM biannual exception two years after the ill-fated biannual signing of Eric Maynor. The signings that teams make with the mid-level and biannual are hit or miss. The Clippers were the only team to use the non-taxpayer’s mid-level to its full extent last summer, and they probably regret doing so for Spencer Hawes, while the Rockets held on to their biannual into the season and used it in December to nab Josh Smith, who was key in helping Houston oust the Clippers in the playoffs. In any case, the Wizards would be fortunate to find a player who can produce like Pierce did this year at those price points.
Grunfeld and the Wizards were creative in acquiring Kris Humphries and DeJuan Blair via sign-and-trade last summer when they didn’t otherwise have means to sign them for more than the minimum, and while neither of them had an outsized impact, it shows there’s another way to upgrade. Washington has a pair of trade exceptions, one worth $4.625MM and the other more than $2.252MM, to facilitate those sorts of deals.
The Wizards could engender a more significant shakeup if they take heed to Gortat’s preference to play next to a stretch four. Nene doesn’t fit that description, and he’ll be on an expiring contract next season, when he’ll make $13MM. That salary won’t be easy to swap, particularly since many of Nene’s numbers were down this season amid fewer minutes per game than he’s seen since 2007/08, and he’ll turn 33 in September. It’s possible that Grunfeld could find a team with win-now aspirations that would be willing to take a short-term risk, like the Hornets, Kings or Raptors. However, unless one of those teams would be willing to send back an asset of real value, the Wizards are probably better off sticking with Nene and further reducing his role if Pierce, whose teams have played well with him at power forward, returns. Washington can always explore trades for Nene during the season if he grows discontent with his role, and the Wizards needn’t rush to add long-term salary to fix a short-term issue.
However the Wizards spend money in the offseason ahead, it’ll be with the summer of 2016 in mind. It’s no secret that the Wizards would love to persuade D.C. native Kevin Durant. set for free agency that summer, into a homecoming. The Wizards already have about $29MM in guaranteed salary for 2016/17, when preliminary projections show the salary cap surging to $89MM. An estimated starting salary for Durant in his next contract, based on that figure, would come in around $25MM. That would entail roughly $54MM for just three players, since Wall and Gortat are currently the only Wizards under guaranteed contracts for 2016/17. Nene is set to become a free agent that summer, and Otto Porter has a rookie scale team option for 2016/17 that season that the Wizards will surely pick up by the deadline to do so, which comes this year on October 31st. That’s also the last day the team can give an extension to Beal.
The Wizards are reportedly committed to giving Beal the max, and coach Randy Wittman signaled this week that the team intends to keep him around for the foreseeable future. The team has apparently been planning an extension for Beal for quite some time, but a five-year extension this summer is out of the question, since Washington already made Wall its Designated Player. The Wizards could sign Beal for five seasons if they wait until he hits restricted free agency after next season, and as Ken Berger of CBSSports.com noted, that would mean a significantly lower cap hold for Beal entering the summer of 2016, affording the team greater flexibility to chase Durant and others.
Regardless of when it happens, a max arrangement for Beal would mean he’d be making significantly more per season than Wall does, since the max salaries are escalating right along with the salary cap. The max for Beal would start at around an estimated $21MM, about $4MM more than Wall is scheduled to make in 2016/17, the season in which Beal’s next deal, whether in the form of an extension or a new contract, will begin. That might be too much for the shooting guard, even in the adjusted NBA economics that the surging salary cap will bring about, particularly given that he’s never posted a PER as high as 15.0, the mark of an average player. That metric is unfair to Beal, since he’s clearly more valuable than it suggests, but in any case, the Wizards seem poised to make a deeply consequential investment in the Mark Bartelstein client.
Washington didn’t make the progress in the postseason it might have hoped for this season, but the franchise is still in a much better position than it had been for many years, and more importantly, still seemingly a contender for Durant. Upgrades this summer would further the cause of attracting a superstar when the Wizards will have money to play with in 2016, but Washington is largely boxed in financially for now. A creative approach from the front office would help, but patience will be the key word for Grunfeld and company this summer.
Cap Footnotes
1 — The cap hold for Pierce would be $6,366,000 if he opts out.
2 — The cap hold for Temple would be $947,276 if he opts out, but he said he’s likely to opt in.
The Basketball Insiders Salary Pages were used in the creation of this post.
Northwest Notes: Rubio, Singler, Jones, Crabbe
Ricky Rubio did his best to stamp out rumors that his camp is pushing for a trade, making it clear in comments to Jon Krawczynski of The Associated Press that he’s not making any such effort to leave Minnesota and that he wants to be there when the team starts winning (Twitter links). “I really want to make it work here,” Rubio said. The point guard’s four-year, $55MM extension kicks in for 2015/16, a season in which the Wolves are in position to become the first team to have three consecutive No. 1 overall picks on the roster. Here’s more from around the Northwest Division:
- Kyle Singler‘s tenure with the Thunder got off to a rough start, but the team wants him back, and the soon-to-be restricted free agent makes it clear that interest is mutual, as The Oklahoman’s Darnell Mayberry details. “I want to be back for sure,” Singler said. “This is the type of environment that I think I thrive in. A winning team. A winning organization. Talented players. This is where I want to be.” Singler also said that joining the team at midseason gives him a leg up on next year in Oklahoma City, furthering the notion that he expects to re-sign.
- Perry Jones III has one more year left on his rookie scale contract, but it seems as though there’s some uncertainty that he’ll return to Oklahoma City for next season, given the Thunder‘s roster logjam, writes fellow Oklahoman scribe Anthony Slater. He’s eligible for a rookie scale extension this summer, but I’d feel safe in speculating that it’s a longshot that he’d receive such a deal.
- A quartet of Blazers beat writers, in a piece for The Oregonian, agree that Portland seems likely to retain Allen Crabbe, whose contract is non-guaranteed for next season. That’s in part because of the low cost associated with the deal, which calls for him to make the minimum, observes Joe Freeman of The Oregonian.
Wizards Ready To Give Max To Bradley Beal
The Wizards have made it clear that they’re committed to paying Bradley Beal the maximum salary, as Ken Berger of CBSSports.com writes amid his Playoff Buzz column. Berger raises the question of whether it’ll come in the form of an extension this offseason or a new contract in the summer of 2016, though J. Michael of CSNWashington.com reported in October that the club was planning an extension for the promising shooting guard. Coach Randy Wittman signaled earlier this week that the Wizards intend to keep Beal, whose rookie scale contract expires after next season, for the long term.
Giving Beal the max, regardless of whether it comes in the form of an extension or a new contract, would be a bold investment from Washington, since the deal would kick in just as the salary cap jumps to a projected $89MM for 2015/16. League execs nonetheless told Shams Charania of RealGM that they were confident that Beal would be able to command the max this summer, as Charania reported in November. Max salaries rise right along with the cap, and Beal would garner an estimated starting salary of around $21MM, about $4MM more than the team is set to pay John Wall that season.
Wall just finished the first season of a five-year max extension he signed in 2013, which made him the team’s Designated Player. That means the Wizards can’t give Beal an extension that covers more than four seasons, though they can ink him to a new five-year contract if they allow him to hit restricted free agency in 2016.
Washington also stands to benefit from a new contract instead of an extension because that would allow the team to keep Beal’s 2015/16 cap hold of about $11.389MM on the books into the summer of 2016, as Berger points out. D.C. native Kevin Durant is poised to headline the 2016 free agent class and it’s no secret that the Wizards would like to talk him into a homecoming. Passing on an extension with Beal and signing him in restricted free agency could afford the team an extra $10MM or so in flexibility to chase Durant or other targets in 2016. The Wizards could wait to officially sign Beal while chasing other free agents, though there’s always the risk that Beal would find an offer sheet with terms more to his liking from another team, forcing Washington to decide whether to match. Making it clear that they intend to give him the max would dissipate that threat, however.
Melvin Hunt’s Chances At Nuggets Job Improving
2:45pm: The Nuggets are “not an option” for Thibodeau, sources tell Ken Berger of CBSSports.com, though it’s unclear if there’s a lack of interest from Denver’s side, from Thibodeau’s, or both.
12:46pm: The odds that the Nuggets will formally fill their head coaching vacancy with interim coach Melvin Hunt are getting better, though Mike D’Antoni remains in the mix, reports Marc Stein of ESPN.com (Twitter link). Scott Brooks has dropped out of the running, as Adrian Wojnarowski reported today, and while the field of potential coaching candidates remains wide, the emergence of the Pelicans on the coaching market last week has given Denver more competition.
The Nuggets are apparently willing to spend, as Christopher Dempsey of The Denver Post heard, and it’s believed that Tom Thibodeau is the front-runner if he becomes available, according to Steve Kyler of Basketball Insiders. Of course, Thibs appears to be the front-runner elsewhere, too, so there are plenty of obstacles between the Nuggets and him. Alvin Gentry is a Nuggets candidate, too, but he’s already interviewed with the Pelicans, according to Wojnarowski. Gentry’s also an apparent favorite to replace Thibodeau in Chicago if he and the Bulls indeed part ways. Michael Malone, Scott Skiles, Fred Hoiberg and David Vanterpool are others who’ve been in contention for the job, as Wojnarowski reported last month.
The team’s search was to have intensified within the last couple of weeks, Dempsey wrote earlier this month, though it still seemed likely then that it would run through May. The Nuggets apparently prefer a veteran, according to Sean Deveney of The Sporting News, but GM Tim Connelly said last month that the team would indeed consider Hunt, who had never held an NBA head coaching job before taking over for the fired Brian Shaw in March.
D’Antoni has spent parts of a dozen seasons, including one with Denver, as an NBA head coach, and Stein first identified him as a likely candidate in the immediate wake of Shaw’s dismissal. Other names that surfaced at that time include Mark Jackson, Adrian Griffin, Avery Johnson, Vinny Del Negro, Nate McMillan, Pelicans assistant Brian Gates and Celtics assistant Jay Larranaga, though there hasn’t been much to advance the idea that any of them are indeed in the picture for Denver.
Interest Remains Between Celtics, JaVale McGee
The notion of JaVale McGee and the Celtics circling back to negotiate a deal this summer isn’t out of the question after the sides failed to close on a contract in early March, according to A. Sherrod Blakely of CSNNE.com. Boston wouldn’t be able to sign him until after the July Moratorium, and it would be surprising if the Celtics prioritized him, but it appears as though there’s an opportunity for the 7-footer to return to the NBA after he went unsigned following his release from the Sixers.
Blakely suggests that a two-year deal with a player option for 2016/17 would be in order, though it’s not entirely clear if that’s merely speculation. Negotiations between the Celtics and the B.J. Armstrong client this past season reportedly fell apart over McGee’s insistence on a player option for 2015/16, though weeks later the center backed off the idea that he had to have a player option wherever he signed.
The Celtics have only about $40.4MM committed for next season, so they can open significant cap room, though doing so would wipe out the team’s copious trade exceptions. Still, it wouldn’t be entirely surprising to see McGee settle for the minimum, since Philadelphia’s obligated to $12MM for McGee next season after waiving him shortly after the trade deadline without striking any sort of buyout arrangement.
The Mavs apparently had serious interest in McGee this spring but later dropped out, and he was also linked to the Rockets, Raptors and Heat. The Sixers acquired him along with a protected first-round pick from the Nuggets at the deadline. The 27-year-old put up career lows this season in several categories, including his 11.1 minutes per game across 23 appearances split between Denver and Philadelphia as he struggled to regain his health after missing all but five games last season with a stress fracture in his left leg.
Leonard, Green, Allen Lead All-Defensive Teams
Kawhi Leonard, Draymond Green, Tony Allen, DeAndre Jordan and Chris Paul comprise this year’s All-Defensive First Team, the NBA announced via press release. Anthony Davis, Jimmy Butler, Andrew Bogut, John Wall and Tim Duncan are on the second team. Bogut’s selection is perhaps most important, since he triggers a bonus worth 15% of his nearly $12.973MM salary for this season, giving him approximately $1.946MM in extra pay. It also means his cap hit for next season jumps to $13.8MM instead of $12MM, since the bonus will fall in the category of a likely bonus. Still, the extra $1.8MM wouldn’t count against the tax next season unless Bogut again plays in 65 games and makes an All-Defensive team.
Leonard was the leading vote-getter from the media members who cast the ballots, which is no surprise, since he also won the Defensive Player of the Year award. The latest honor is further ammunition for a max contract this summer from the Spurs, though it appears he and San Antonio were already set to quickly agree to terms on one come July. Green and Jordan are also soon-to-be free agents on the first team, while Butler and Duncan are heading to free agency from the second team.
Davis, who’s eligible for a rookie scale extension this summer, topped the voting among second-teamers. The balloting went by a points system in which two points were awarded for a first team vote and one point for a second. Rudy Gobert, who received five first team votes, garnered the most points among those who missed the cut for both teams. LeBron James, Russell Westbrook, Avery Bradley, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, Klay Thompson, Marc Gasol and Mike Conley were others who garnered multiple first team votes but didn’t make it on either team. Click here to see how each media member voted.
Scott Brooks To Turn Away Pelicans, Nuggets
Former Thunder coach Scott Brooks plans to decline opportunities to interview with the Pelicans and Nuggets and seems to be leaning toward taking next season off, league sources tell Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports. It’s not entirely clear from the report whether New Orleans, Denver or both had extended invitations to interview for their vacancies, though Wojnarowski wrote Monday that the Pels were interested in the coach whom Oklahoma City dismissed last month. The Yahoo! scribe heard from league sources who identified Brooks as a top candidate for Denver and for the Magic in the immediate wake of his exodus from the Thunder, and Steve Kyler of Basketball Insiders wrote recently that Brooks was second behind Tom Thibodeau on Orlando’s list of preferred candidates. It’s uncertain what Brooks would do if the Magic came calling, but Wojnarowski (on Twitter) describes Brooks as “likely” to sit out 2015/16.
Brooks spent most of the last seven seasons as the Thunder’s coach, his first NBA head coaching gig. His 338-207 record there is impeccable, but he’s only 39-34 in the playoffs and took the vastly talented Thunder to the NBA Finals only once, losing to the Heat in 2012. Still, the lack of postseason success had to do with injuries as much as it did with any of Brooks’ strategic shortcomings to which critics often pointed, and health was the culprit this season as Oklahoma City missed the playoffs. Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook and Serge Ibaka, the team’s preeminent stars, all missed significant time in 2014/15.
The 49-year-old Brooks still wants to coach again at some point, but he’s planning to concentrate on television opportunities and family in the season ahead, Wojnarowski hears. Oklahoma City will still be paying Brooks his salary next season, as Wojnarowski points out, since his contract had one more guaranteed season left when the team cut him loose, so the coach has the financial wherewithal to stay out of the game for a while.