Poll: Do Pelicans Need Major Summer Changes?
The Pelicans didn’t win any games in their series against the Warriors, but they showed they could push Golden State at least to a degree, building a 20-point fourth quarter lead in Game 3 while keeping each game against a 67-win juggernaut reasonably close. They have Anthony Davis, a former No. 1 overall pick who’s lived up to his draft position and then some with strong play that’s approaching an MVP level. They won 11 more games than they did a season ago, but the path to the top in New Orleans isn’t clear.
Part of that is because the team plays in the hyper-competitive Western Conference. The Pelicans finished only a game behind the Wizards this year, and Washington just swept the 49-win Raptors in the Eastern Conference playoffs. Still, there isn’t a second star to go along with Davis, unless the team has faith that Jrue Holiday can regain the form that made him an All-Star in his last fully healthy season in 2012/13, much less the third star that so many championship teams have had. There doesn’t appear to be one on the way, either, since the Pelicans haven’t made a first-round draft pick without an agreement in place to trade it since they took Davis and Austin Rivers in 2012. Rivers showed he can compete on a high level for the Clippers on Sunday, but for the most part, he’s been a profound disappointment for a No. 10 overall pick. New Orleans traded him and Russ Smith for Quincy Pondexter and a second-round pick this year, a paltry return on the team’s investment.
New Orleans plans a max extension offer for Davis, and, as I outlined when I looked at the offseason ahead for the Pelicans, there’s little reason to suspect that the ‘Brow’s next deal won’t be a multiyear arrangement of some sort that keeps him in New Orleans. There’s no guarantee that GM Dell Demps and Monty Williams will be around to see the end of the next contract that Davis signs, or even to present him with that extension offer when he becomes eligible to sign it this summer. Whomever is making the decisions in New Orleans will have some tough ones in front of them.
There isn’t much the team can do to find a star to complement Davis in free agency this year, given the lack of max cap flexibility that will exist once Eric Gordon formally opts in for more than $15.514MM next season, as he seemingly plans to do. Still, there are trades, and soon there will be the summer of 2016, when just about every team will have tons of cap space but few will have the sort of star who can attract marquee free agents the way Davis could.
The Pelicans probably would have finished well outside of the playoffs if the Thunder had been fully healthy this year. New Orleans had its share of injuries, too, and even Davis only played in 68 of 82 regular season games, but Oklahoma City is a prime example of how quickly a superstar’s time under contract can pass. The Thunder haven’t won a title in eight seasons with Kevin Durant, and only in the past few months, with Durant’s free agency looming in 2016, are they making aggressive win-now moves instead of concentrating on the future and the bottom line.
So, let us know if you think it’s time for the Pelicans to make bold changes, or if you think they’re on the right track, and elaborate on your choice in the comments.
Hoops Rumors Glossary: Bird Rights
The Bird exception, named after Larry Bird, is a rule included in the NBA’s Collective Bargaining Agreement that allows teams to go over the salary cap to re-sign their own players. A player who qualifies for the Bird exception, formally referred to as a Qualifying Veteran Free Agent, is said to have “Bird rights.”
The most basic way for a player to earn Bird rights is to play for the same team for at least three seasons, either on a multiyear deal or separate one-year contracts. Still, there are other, more complicated criteria. A player retains his Bird rights in the following scenarios:
- He changes teams via trade. For instance, Alexey Shved is in the third year of his contract. He has been traded three times since August, from the Timberwolves to the Sixers, the Sixers to the Rockets and the Rockets to the Knicks, but he still has his Bird rights because he hasn’t been waived.
- He finishes a third season with a team after having only signed for a partial season with the club in the first year. If Chris Andersen‘s contract were expiring at season’s end, he would have Bird rights this summer, even though he joined the Heat on a 10-day contract in 2012/13.
- He signed for a full season in year one or two but the team waived him, he cleared waivers, and didn’t sign with another team before re-signing with the club for a third year and remaining under contract through the season. If the Hornets re-sign Jannero Pargo this summer and he remains with the team for all of 2015/16, he’ll have Bird rights even though he cleared waivers from the team earlier this season.
However, a player sees the clock on his Bird rights reset to zero in the following scenarios:
- He changes teams via free agency.
- He is waived and is not claimed on waivers (except as in scenario No. 3 above).
- His rights are renounced by his team. However, his Bird rights are restored if he re-signs with that team without having signed with another NBA team. The Hornets renounced Pargo’s rights in 2013 and 2014, but he’d still be in line to become a Bird player in the summer of 2016.
- He is selected in an expansion draft.
If a player is waived and claimed off waivers, and he would have been in line for Bird rights at the end of the season, he would retain only Early Bird rights, unless he was waived via the amnesty provision.
When players earn Bird rights, they’re eligible to sign maximum-salary contracts for up to five years with 7.5% annual raises when they become free agents. The maximum salary will vary for each player depending on how long he’s been in the league, but regardless of the amount, a team can exceed the salary cap to complete the deal.
Although the Bird exception allows teams to exceed the cap, a team cannot necessarily use free cap room to sign free agents and then re-sign its own players via Bird rights. A team with a Bird free agent is assigned a “free agent amount” or cap hold worth either 190% of his previous salary (for a player with a below-average salary) or 150% of his previous salary (for an above-average salary), up to the maximum salary amount. For players coming off rookie scale contracts, the amounts of those cap holds are 250% and 200%, respectively.
The Trail Blazers, for instance, will have a cap hold of nearly $10.868MM for Wesley Matthews on their 2015/16 books — 150% of his more than $8.775MM salary this season. Portland could renounce Matthews and clear that $10.868MM in cap space, but the Blazers would lose his Bird rights if they did that. That would force them to use either cap room or a different cap exception to re-sign him.
Ultimately, the Bird exception was designed to allow teams to keep their best players. The CBA ensures that teams are always able to re-sign them to contracts up to the maximum salary, assuming the player is interested in returning and his team is willing to go over the cap.
Note: This is a Hoops Rumors Glossary entry. Our glossary posts will explain specific rules relating to trades, free agency, or other aspects of the NBA’s Collective Bargaining Agreement. Larry Coon’s Salary Cap FAQ was used in the creation of this post.
Versions of this post were initially published on April 17th, 2012, and May 2, 2013, and April 24th, 2014.
Celtics Notes: Wallace, Crowder, Free Agency
The Celtics are willing enough to trade Gerald Wallace that to do so, they would part with one of the seven extra first-round picks in line to come their way, sources tell Steve Kyler of Basketball Insiders, who writes in his NBA AM piece. Wallace’s contract is poised to turn into an expiring deal next season, when it calls for a salary of nearly $10.106MM, and while that would ostensibly make it less costly to move, it appears Boston is ready to give up an asset of value to facilitate a swap. Here’s more from Boston one day after a playoff exit:
- Kyler has heard suggestions that the Mavs will make a run at Jae Crowder, as the Basketball Insiders scribe writes in the same piece. President of basketball operations Danny Ainge made it clear that he’d like Crowder back, and the soon-to-be restricted free agent received an auspicious diagnosis of a left ACL sprain after his injury Sunday, the team announced. That isn’t the serious injury that it appeared Crowder might have suffered, observes A. Sherrod Blakely of CSNNE.com (Twitter link).
- Blakely, in a full piece, examines the relative interest the C’s have in re-signing Crowder, Jonas Jerebko, Gigi Datome and Brandon Bass for next season
- A first-round playoff exit was just the sort of outcome Ainge feared for the Celtics, leaving them without a lottery pick or having had much of a playoff run, writes Steve Bulpett of the Boston Herald. Still, people in the organization are warming to the idea that the postseason berth can help, and they’re hopeful that having been on the playoff stage raises the team’s profile for free agents. Already, Kevin Love had reportedly held Boston in high regard as a free agent destination before a tie-up with Kelly Olynyk left the injured All-Star with a “legitimate loathing” of the C’s, as Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports reported earlier.
Raptors Notes: Casey, Ujiri, Valanciunas, Ross
Dwane Casey signed a three-year deal with the Raptors this past offseason, and in response to questions about whether he’d be back for next season after the team’s stunning four-game loss to the Wizards, Casey said he hasn’t heard otherwise, notes Josh Lewenberg of TSN.ca (Twitter link). Players came to the coach’s defense at the team’s season-ending media interviews, with DeMar DeRozan, Kyle Lowry and soon-to-be free agent Amir Johnson among those expressing support, as Lewenberg and James Herbert of CBSSports.com relay (All Twitter links). There’s more from Toronto after the team’s playoff collapse:
- Raptors GM Masai Ujiri refused to sacrifice long-term assets for veteran help at the deadline and, aside from Lowry’s deal, he didn’t make commitments this past summer that would compromise the team’s future flexibility, observes Ryan Wolstat of the Toronto Sun. Ujiri knew the team wasn’t as strong as last season’s run and its early-season play this year indicated, Wolstat writes, adding that while he doesn’t expect Ujiri to completely rebuild from here, the roster is positioned for significant changes.
- Indeed, the team’s brass privately tempered its expectations for this season, knowing that the roster is young and has holes, Lewenberg tweets, expressing his belief that the team will keep Casey around given the low bar the team set.
- Uncertainty looms around Jonas Valanciunas and Terrence Ross, both of whom are eligible for rookie scale extensions this summer, and Frank Zicarelli of the Toronto Sun believes that while each still has much to learn, Valanciunas is the one worth keeping.
Offseason Outlook: New Orleans Pelicans
Guaranteed Contracts
- Tyreke Evans ($10,734,586)
- Jrue Holiday ($10,595,507)
- Ryan Anderson ($8,500,000)
- Anthony Davis ($7,070,730)
- Quincy Pondexter ($3,382,023)
Non-Guaranteed Contracts
- Toney Douglas ($1,185,784)1
Options
- Eric Gordon ($15,514,031 — Player)
Restricted Free Agents/Cap Holds
- Norris Cole ($5,095,515) — $3,036,927 qualifying offer
- Jeff Withey ($1,147,276) — $1,147,276 qualifying offer2
Unrestricted Free Agents/Cap Holds
- Omer Asik ($12,561,969)
- Alexis Ajinca ($947,276)
- Luke Babbitt ($947,276)
- Dante Cunningham ($947,276)
- Jimmer Fredette ($947,276)
Draft Picks
- 2nd Round (56th overall)
Cap Outlook
- Guaranteed Salary: $40,582,846
- Non-Guaranteed Salary: $1,185,784
- Options: $15,514,031
- Cap Holds: $22,593,864
- Total: $79,876,525
Rarely does a single regular season game take on so much importance, but when the Pelicans beat the Spurs in their regular season finale in a make-or-break contest for a postseason berth, there’s a decent chance it forestalled a major shakeup in the team’s braintrust. GM Dell Demps denied a report from Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports that the Pelicans told him and coach Monty Williams that they had to make the playoffs to save their jobs, but there were seemingly questions about the future of each even before the report surfaced.
There are no certainties after the Warriors swept the Pelicans out of the playoffs, but whomever is in charge won’t benefit from a first-round pick this year, as the Pelicans are set to endure a third straight season without one. Technically, it’ll only be two straight years, since New Orleans drafted Nerlens Noel before the trade that sent his rights to the Sixers became official, but Noel never suited up for the Pelicans, who sent out their 2014 first-rounder in that deal, too. This year’s first-rounder went to the Rockets courtesy of the trade that brought Omer Asik to town, and while the Pelicans’ run to the playoffs left Houston with a pick that wasn’t nearly as valuable as it could have been, the lack of burgeoning talent to develop around Davis is nonetheless disconcerting. Reserve center Jeff Withey is the only player on the Pelicans roster who entered the league after Davis did.
All of this will weigh on the minds of Davis and agent Arn Tellem as they ponder whether to accept an inevitable five-year maximum-salary extension offer from the Pelicans, who will be eligible to make that tender come July. It would be highly unusual for him to decline such an offer, but there’d be little risk in letting the Pelicans twist in the wind at least until the October 31st deadline for rookie scale extensions. Outside of some catastrophic injury next season, there’s little for Davis to lose if he doesn’t sign an extension at all and instead enters restricted free agency in the summer of 2016. He could further turn the screws if he were to accept his qualifying offer, though that would entail a significantly discounted salary, and few have been willing to go through with such a drastic measure. Unless Davis is altogether displeased with the Pelicans, and he’s given no signs that he is, his next deal will almost certainly be a multiyear arrangement that keeps him in New Orleans.
The Pelicans need not fret about keeping Davis for the next few years. The concern is in using those years to build a roster that will help convince him to stay whenever his next deal is up, and perhaps the most important step toward that this summer involves Asik. Numbers paint a fuzzy picture about whether the center for whom New Orleans relinquished this year’s first-round pick lived up to his reputation as a premier defender. He ranked just 31st in Basketball-Reference Defensive Box Plus/Minus among centers who played at least 500 minutes this season. ESPN’s Real Plus/Minus shows him at No. 20 among centers, though DeAndre Jordan, the third-leading vote-getter in Defensive Player of the Year balloting, was just one spot ahead of Asik in the ESPN metric. The Pelicans gave up only 100.5 points per 100 possessions with Asik and Davis on the floor together, a mark that would have left New Orleans tied for the sixth-best defensive efficiency in the league if it held for the entire team. The Pelicans outscored opponents by 4.6 points per 100 possessions with Davis and Asik on the floor. With the big-man combo of Davis and Ryan Anderson, the Pelicans had a net rating of 6.0, more porous on defense than Davis-Asik combinations but deadly on offense, with a 112.7 offensive rating that would have been the best in the league for a full team.
A new deal with an eight-figure salary for Asik would wipe out any hope the Pelicans have of addressing their hole at small forward with cap space, since, assuming Eric Gordon opts in, as he evidently plans to do, the Pelicans are set to begin the offseason with more than $56MM in commitments. That would leave roughly $10MM worth of cap flexibility if the team preferred to go with Davis and Anderson inside and use the money that would otherwise go to Asik on the true starting-caliber small forward it lacks. Jeff Green, Luol Deng, Khris Middleton and DeMarre Carroll are among the potentially available players who could fit the bill for a salary of about $10MM a year or less.
That would allow the team to use versatile Tyreke Evans as a sixth man, as the team originally envisioned. The team figures to be able to re-sign Alexis Ajinca, whose Defensive Box Plus Minus was identical to Asik’s this year, for much less than Asik would cost. In an ideal scenario, the Pelicans would delay Ajinca’s signing and keep his minimum-salary cap hold on the books while using their cap space on other free agents before circling back to ink Ajinca and using their Early Bird rights on him to exceed the cap.
A different scenario is at play with soon-to-be restricted free agent Norris Cole, the midseason trade acquisition from the Heat. He averaged 9.9 points in 24.4 minutes per game after the trade, though part of that scoring had to do with three-point shooting that had been absent while he was Miami during the first half of the season. He shot 37.8% from behind the arc as a Pelican, but he’s just a 32.6% career three-point shooter, and the 74 three-pointers he attempted for New Orleans provide only a tiny sample size. A healthy Jrue Holiday and the use of Evans as a sixth man would leave little room in the rotation for Cole, an Ohio native and client of Cleveland-based Klutch Sports who looms as a better fit for the Cavs’ hole at backup point guard. Renouncing Cole’s outsized cap hold of more than $5MM would let the Pelicans use the full extent of their cap flexibility.
New Orleans made an 11-game improvement from last season to this one, no insignificant feat. The future holds no shortage of promise as long as Davis is around, and while uncertainty looms as the Benson family fights over control of the franchise, the Pelicans have the true superstar that so many other non-contenders lack. The length of the step forward the team takes next season is largely up to Davis, since the Pelicans have neither a first-round pick nor the ability to change the core of their roster through free agency this year. Still, shrewd management can position the team for more significant growth in years to come. Asik and Cole, the team’s most prominent free agents, aren’t strong fits, so the Pelicans would be wise to move on.
Cap Footnotes
1 — Douglas receives a full guarantee if he remains under contract through August 1st.
2 — Withey’s cap hold would be $947,276 if the Pelicans decline to tender a qualifying offer.
The Basketball Insiders Salary Pages were used in the creation of this post. Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
Draft Notes: Garcia, Pauli, Looney
We’re inside of two months to go until the draft, and Sunday represented a key deadline. It was the final day for prospects to formally enter the draft, and a couple of names trickled in early this morning after they apparently made their decisions in the final hours, as we detail amid the latest draft news:
- Spanish shooting guard Marc Garcia submitted his name for the draft, his representatives at Octagon Basketball revealed, according to Jonathan Givony of DraftExpress (Twitter link). Givony ranks the 19-year-old as the fifth-best prospect among players from overseas who were born in 1996, while Chad Ford of ESPN.com has Garcia as the 83rd-best prospect overall.
- Oriol Pauli, another Octagon client from Spain, has also entered the draft, the agency says, as Givony tweets. Pauli, a 20-year-old small forward, is No. 38 among Givony‘s top international prospects born in 1994, but Ford doesn’t list him in his rankings.
- Lottery prospect Kevon Looney has hired both Aaron Goodwin of Goodwin Sports Management and Todd Ramasar of Stealth Sports to represent him, reports Marc J. Spears of Yahoo! Sports (Twitter link). Ford ranks the power forward from UCLA as the 10th-best prospect in this year’s draft and Givony lists him 18th.
- The league will likely release its official list of early entrants for the draft in the next day or two, but click here to see all of the players reported to have entered, as well as the top college underclassmen who reportedly won’t be in this year’s draft.
Thunder Notes: Brooks, Malone, Gentry, Kanter
Thunder GM Sam Presti admits that former coach Scott Brooks had plenty of positive influence on the franchise, and The Oklahoman’s Jenni Carlson believes that Brooks’ development of Russell Westbrook, Serge Ibaka, Steven Adams and others is a testament to his value. Carlson argues that at full health, the team was better in 2012/13 and 2013/14 than it was when it went to the Finals in 2012, and that Brooks was central to the Thunder’s continued improvement. While we wait to see if Oklahoma City’s next coach wins the title that the Thunder didn’t get under Brooks, here’s more from OKC:
- Grantland’s Zach Lowe suggests that the Thunder will take a close look at former Kings coach Michael Malone and Warriors assistant Alvin Gentry if their top choices don’t pan out. Kevin Ollie, one of those reported top targets, has pulled out of the running.
- There was little grounds for termination in this injury-plagued season for the Thunder and Brooks, Lowe argues in the same piece, contending that if the Thunder had decided he wasn’t fit to lead them to a championship, they should have reached that conclusion earlier. The Grantland scribe wonders if the cost of paying off more than one year of Brooks’ contract made Oklahoma City hesitate to make the move sooner.
- Accountability from players had become a problem in Oklahoma City under Brooks, sources tell Royce Young of ESPN.com, but the team’s move to cut ties with the coach is about the future and not the past, Young writes. The stakes are high as Kevin Durant enters a contract year, and the Thunder won’t settle for continuity, as Young details.
- It’s no surprise that the Thunder would want to hold on to soon-to-be restricted free agent Enes Kanter, who excelled after the midseason trade that brought him to Oklahoma City, and Presti envisions the big man sticking around, as The Oklahoman’s Anthony Slater relays. “We wouldn’t have traded for him if we didn’t feel like we’d be in a position to have him with us going forward,” Presti said. Kanter has expressed a desire to stay, though he just underwent left knee surgery that will sideline him for four to six weeks.
Tom Thibodeau Confidants Believe He’ll Be Fired
People close to Tom Thibodeau are convinced that the Bulls will fire him after the season is over, writes Grantland’s Zach Lowe, who notes that the Bulls front office has continually batted down persistent rumors of a rift with the coach. The Bulls are in as strong a position as they’ve been in some time with a 3-0 series lead on the Bucks and a presumptive matchup with LeBron James and the Cavs looming, as Lowe examines. Still, few around the NBA expect the former Coach of the Year to be back in Chicago next season, according to Tim Bontemps of the New York Post, who notes that many view Iowa State coach Fred Hoiberg as the likely replacement for Thibodeau.
The news jibes with several reports from the past few months. Marc Stein of ESPN.com wrote earlier this month that the Bulls and Thibodeau were “widely expected” to part ways and K.C. Johnson of the Chicago Tribune in January described the relationship between Thibodeau and the front office as “beyond repair,” which drew a denial from GM Gar Forman. In any case, it would appear the onus to cut ties would be on the team, as Johnson recently surmised that the coach probably wouldn’t walk away from the job if it were entirely up to him.
The Magic have interest in Thibodeau should he become available, as several league sources suggested to Chris Mannix of SI.com and as Stein later confirmed. People connected to Thibodeau have explored the Magic, among other teams, as a possible landing spot should he no longer be coaching the Bulls, according to Bleacher Report’s Ric Bucher. It’s unclear if Thibodeau would emerge as a serious candidate for the Nuggets or Thunder openings, but given his resume, it wouldn’t be surprising. Thibodeau has compiled a record of 255-139 in five seasons with the Bulls, guiding them to the playoffs each year in spite of a multitude of injuries to Derrick Rose and others, and before that he spent two decades as an NBA assistant, winning a title with the Celtics in 2008.
Chris Walker Declares For Draft
Sophomore power forward Chris Walker is entering this year’s draft, the University of Florida announced (Twitter link; hat tip to Jeff Goodman of ESPN.com). Evan Daniels of Scout.com reported earlier this week that the 20-year-old wouldn’t be back at Florida and would either transfer or enter the draft. Walker isn’t in the top 100 prospects for this year with Chad Ford of ESPN.com or Jonathan Givony of DraftExpress. Ford lists the once-heralded college recruit as the No. 61 prospect for 2016, while Givony has him as the No. 20 sophomore for this year.
Walker was No. 7 in the final 2013 Recruiting Services Consensus Index, one spot ahead of Noah Vonleh, who went ninth overall to the Hornets in last year’s draft. Givony projected Walker as a 2015 lottery pick when he decided against entering the 2014 draft, and the same was true at the start of this season, when Givony slotted him 13th. Ford had Walker as the No. 12 prospect at that same time. By mid-January, he was at No. 39 on Givony’s board, and the slide continued.
The 6’9″ Walker saw only 4.8 minutes per game as a freshman, and while his role grew this past season, he still scarcely saw the sort of playing time that usually comes to a top-flight talent. He put up 4.7 points and 3.5 rebounds in 14.6 MPG, and his final appearance was a seven-minute, two-point outing against Kentucky in an SEC Tournament loss that ended a 16-17 season for coach Billy Donovan‘s Gators.
Nedim Buza Enters Draft
Small forward Nedim Buza has entered this year draft, agent Alexander Raskovic tells Jonathan Givony of DraftExpress (Twitter link). The 6’8″ native of Bosnia and Herzegovina is the 38th-best prospect according to Chad Ford of ESPN.com, while Givony ranks him 53rd. Buza entered last year’s draft, too, before withdrawing in advance of the deadline to do so. He made last year’s decisions in tandem with OKK Spars Sarajevo teammate Adin Vrabac, who’s since moved on to play in Germany, though Vrabac decided last week to enter the draft again this year.
The 19-year-old Buza, who turns 20 next month, had an expanded role this season with OKK Spars Sarajevo, a club in his home country, averaging 12.0 points and 5.1 rebounds in 26.5 minutes per game. He kept up his decent three-point shooting, nailing 35.3% of his attempts. Buza is coming off a six-point, 13-minute performance in the recent Nike Hoops Summit.
Buza scheduled workouts with the Bucks, Timberwolves and Nuggets last year, Raskovic said then, and he figures to draw more predraft auditions this year. He’s not automatically draft-eligible until 2017, so he can pull out again by June 15th if he wants.