Flip Saunders On Coaching, Rebuilding, Draft
Flip Saunders gave no indication that he’s planning on stepping away from his Timberwolves coaching duties, as Jon Krawczynski of The Associated Press notes from Saunders’ comments today at his end-of-season press conference (Twitter link). The agreement that Saunders, who also serves as president of basketball operations, made to coach the team is open-ended in terms of length, but Saunders said today that he’ll continue to coach as long as it furthers player development and his vision for where the team will be two years from now, tweets Jerry Zgoda of the Star Tribune. We’ll round up more of the best of Saunders’ remarks here:
- Saunders entered the season with designs on a team that would compete for a postseason berth this year, but he made it clear today that sort of roster is not his ultimate goal, as Krawczynski relays (Twitter link). “I don’t want to get to the playoffs,” Saunders said. “I want to build a team that can win in the playoffs.”
- The team will go with the best player available rather than positional need with its first-round pick, Zgoda notes (on Twitter). Minnesota’s pick will fall within the top four, as the lottery odds show.
- It’s unlikely the team keeps both its second-round picks, at Nos. 31 and 36, Saunders said, according to John Meyer of Canis Hoopus (Twitter link). Darren Wolfson of 1500 ESPN Twin Cities suggested earlier that there was a strong chance the team would either trade one of the picks or use one of them on a draft-and-stash prospect (Twitter link).
- The Wolves will prioritize adding strength, better defense and three-point shooting over the offseason, Saunders said, as Krawczynski tweets.
Free Agent Stock Watch Series
The playoffs have begun, and within two weeks, all but eight of the 30 NBA teams will be finished for 2014/15. That means players on expiring contracts are making their final statements before they hit free agency, if their teams haven’t already been eliminated. So, it’s time to start looking at soon-to-be free agents across the league and gauge their value.
Hoops Rumors will examine several players who are a part of the 2015 free agent class. Our Free Agent Stock Watch pieces will explore what a player brings to a club, what sort of earnings he can expect on his next contract, teams that could be in the market for the player, and where the player might want to end up, along with any other relevant factors.
We’ll be profiling many of the players set for free agency in the next couple of months, and we’ve already begun. We’ll be maintaining the list below as we continue this series, and you can find them in alphabetical order by last name. Potential restricted free agents will have an (R) by their names. A link to this list will stationed on the right sidebar under “Hoops Rumors Features.” You can also find these pieces under our Free Agent Stock Watch tag, and you can set up an RSS feed if you enter this URL into the reader of your choice: hoopsrumors.com/free-agent-stock-watch/feed
Pat Riley On LeBron, Dragic, Wade, Draft
Heat team president Pat Riley said today that he’s “at peace with” the choice LeBron James made last summer to return to Cleveland, and he indicated that everyone else in the organization had moved on, too, as Joseph Goodman of the Miami Herald transcribes (Twitter links). That didn’t appear to be the case when Riley, in response to a question about the draft, said there would be “no more smiling faces with hidden agendas, so we’ll be going in clean,” as Goodman also relays from today’s season-ending press conference (Twitter link). That could be interpreted as a jab at James, whose affection for Shabazz Napier was well-known before the Heat drafted him just weeks prior to James’ departure from Miami, but Riley insists his remark could be a reference to “anyone across the board,” Goodman tweets. Regardless, Riley had much more to say about the Heat’s future, and we’ll round up the highlights here:
- Riley underscored the importance of re-signing Goran Dragic, as Herald columnist Barry Jackson relays. “If he doesn’t sign, my [expletive] is going to be in that seat and I’ll be writing about it,” Riley said to the gathered media. Still, Riley is “very confident” that Dragic will be back, Jackson notes.
- Dwyane Wade‘s health been an ongoing issue, but Riley challenged the 33-year-old to be prepared to play more often. Wade said last week that he intends to opt in for next season. “Dwyane has to change the narrative about his body, his injuries, his missing games,” Riley said. “We’ve had a discussion about that. Night in, night out, there’s always a question of whether he can or cannot [play]. I’d like to see him do whatever he has to do to get himself ready to practice and play every single night. He’s got five months. This is not just a Dwyane Wade problem. It’s throughout the league.”
- Riley would like to see the current starters return, Jackson relays in the same piece. That would indicate that the team wants to keep Luol Deng, who’s undecided about his more than $10.15MM player option.
- The Heat president laid out what he’s looking for in the draft, where the Heat have a lottery pick as long as it falls in the top 10, and the 40th pick, saying that he wants “developed players, experienced players,” Jackson notes. “While we felt we might have had enough on the perimeter, that might be an area where we look,” Riley said. “I don’t want a one-dimensional guy. [I want] guys that can [shoot], guys that are playmakers, guys that can defend. We will take the best player that’s available.”
- Riley believes the Heat will return to title contention next year, Goodman tweets, and he expressed bitter disappointment about falling short of the postseason this time around, as Ira Winderman of the Sun Sentinel notes (on Twitter). “There is not a person in the organization that doesn’t think we should have made the playoffs,” Riley said.
Lou Williams Wins Sixth Man Of The Year
11:41am: The NBA has released the ballot of each of media member who voted, in keeping with a transparency practice that began last year.
11:14am: Soon-to-be free agent Lou Williams has won this year’s Sixth Man of the Year award, the league announced via press release and on Twitter. Isaiah Thomas, whom the Suns signed to a four-year deal last summer and dealt at the deadline to the Celtics, finished second, with last year’s winner, Clippers guard Jamal Crawford, coming in third.
Williams finally looked back to his normal self this season for the first time since tearing his right ACL in January 2013. He was a strong fit for the Raptors despite the presence of fellow guards Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan, affirming GM Masai Ujiri‘s decision to absorb Williams’ salary in a swap with the Hawks just before the 2013/14 season officially ended last June. The 28-year-old Williams, who made $5.45MM this year, averaged a career-high 15.5 points in just 25.2 minutes per game.
Williams, a Leon Rose client, will look to further boost his stock in the postseason. He’s expressed a preference to return to Toronto, and the team will have his Bird rights. He won the award by a fairly wide margin, garnering 78 first-place votes to 33 for Thomas and topping Thomas 502-324 in total points. Media members cast the ballots, and the NBA assigned five points for each first place vote, three for a second-place vote and one for a third-place vote. Crawford, Andre Iguodala, Nikola Mirotic, Marreese Speights, Corey Brewer and Taj Gibson were the others who drew first-place votes.
Central Notes: Scola, Stuckey, Jackson, Prince
Candace Buckner of the Indianapolis Star looks at each of the soon-to-be free agents on the Pacers, pegging Rodney Stuckey and Lavoy Allen as the most likely among them to return, C.J. Watson and Chris Copeland as unlikely to be back, and Luis Scola and Donald Sloan somewhere in between. President of basketball operations Larry Bird said they’d all like to be back, but Scola, while praising the Pacers organization, doesn’t seem quite ready to commit, as Buckner relays.
“We’ll see what happens. We didn’t have our exit meeting yet. I’m hoping to get some type of feedback there and some type of impression of what they want to do in the future and move on from there,” Scola said last week.
Buckner suggests Stuckey, who drew praise from Bird, wants a multiyear deal with his wedding planned for mid-July. While we wait to see if the Pacers have something picked out for him on his registry, here’s more from around the Central:
- Greg Monroe isn’t ruling out a return to the Pistons, but Reggie Jackson has spoken of communicating with other Pistons over the summer so everyone stays motivated for next season, notes MLive’s David Mayo, pointing to the dichotomy between Detroit’s two main soon-to-be free agents. As for other free agents on the team, the Pistons are unlikely to offer Tayshaun Prince a chance to return, and John Lucas III probably won’t be back with the team next year, Mayo writes.
- Several NBA executives say that they expect Khris Middleton to wind up signing a deal with $8MM annual salaries this summer, reports Gery Woelfel of The Journal Times. That figure is somewhat lower than the $10MM estimate that Michael Scotto of SheridanHoops heard from several GMs and other executives recently. Woelfel points to numbers that don’t suggest much improvement from Middleton this season, though he grants that the Bucks combo forward’s value could escalate with a strong playoff performance.
- Former Bucks center Larry Sanders still doesn’t have a desire to return to the game, Woelfel notes within the same piece.
Teammates Worry LaMarcus Aldridge Will Leave
A Blazers teammate of LaMarcus Aldridge who spoke with The Oregonian’s Jason Quick earlier this month said that he thinks the chances that Aldridge will leave Portland in free agency this summer are just as strong as the chances he’ll re-sign. That’s reflective of the worry that some Blazers have expressed to Quick about the All-Star power forward’s willingness to remain with the team. Still, Quick cautions that Aldridge has grown comfortable in Portland and feels as though the Blazers value him. Aldridge said nearly a year ago that he would re-sign and repeated that before the season.
Aldridge didn’t always sense the Blazers organization was behind him, and he reflected upon that in a recent interview with Michael Lee of The Washington Post, one in which the former No. 2 overall pick wondered if the Blazers would find it easy to move on from him. Quick, who uses the words “fickle,” “moody” and “unpredictable” to describe Aldridge, nonetheless believes the 29-year-old will re-sign. That was the belief of most executives around the league at the All-Star break, even though one executive at that point told Sean Deveney of The Sporting News that the Blazers were “very, very scared” that Aldridge would leave. The exec suggested that it was paranoia of the Blazers’ part, however. Aldridge hasn’t discussed his free agency much since he said again before the season that he would re-sign with the Blazers, though he spoke about his comfort with the Blazers and Portland in December. During the All-Star break, he said that he’d be a fit for the triangle offense and praised Knicks team president Phil Jackson in response to questions from the New York media during the All-Star break.
Portland can give Aldridge a fifth year and 7.5% raises on his next deal, while other teams are limited to four years and 4.5% raises. A teammate of Aldridge’s nonetheless suggested to Quick that money won’t be the primary deciding factor. Aldridge, No. 4 in our latest Hoops Rumors Free Agent Power Rankings, is a native of Seagoville, Texas, which is close to Dallas, and the Mavs reportedly plan to pursue him. There’s been off-hand chatter among executives about the Spurs and Aldridge, as Grantland’s Zach Lowe documented in January.
Jakob Poeltl Decides Against Entering Draft
8:15am: Poeltl confirmed that he’s staying out of this year’s draft in an announcement released through the school (hat tip to Jeff Goodman of ESPN.com).
7:58am: Projected lottery pick Jakob Poeltl has decided not to enter this year’s draft, report Kyle Goon and Matthew Piper of The Salt Lake Tribune. The freshman center from the University of Utah is the No. 11 prospect in Jonathan Givony’s DraftExpress rankings, and Chad Ford of ESPN.com has him 14th. Poeltl is so far the most highly regarded prospect for this year’s draft to opt against entering, though he’ll have until Sunday to enter if he changes his mind.
The Austrian-born 19-year-old impressed defensively against top-two prospect Jahlil Okafor in the NCAA Tournament, holding the Duke big man to just six points on 3-of-6 shooting, even though Poeltl’s Utes lost to the eventual national champion Blue Devils. Poeltl didn’t put up strong numbers offensively, averaging just 9.1 points in 23.3 minutes per game and shooting just 44.4% from the free-throw line this season. The 7-footer could stand to refine his game some more in college, as Eddie Scarito of Hoops Rumors wrote in our latest Hoops Rumors Draft Prospect Power Rankings, advocating for Poeltl to stay in school as he’s apparently decided to do.
This year’s draft is top-heavy with big men, so it would seem Poeltl stands a better chance of being selected more highly next year. There aren’t many centers projected to go in the back half of the first round this year, so teams that have needs on the interior and a mid first-round pick are probably disappointed.
Following Specific Players On Hoops Rumors
The playoffs are underway, but the season is over for nearly half the league. Soon, more teams will shift their focus to the draft and free agency. In addition to methods of keeping up with your favorite teams as they plot for the future, Hoops Rumors also provides ways to easily follow the latest on all of your favorite players and soon-to-be free agents. If you want to stay up to date on Kevin Love rumors, you can find Love’s page right here. For intel on where Greg Monroe might end up, go here. Updates on top draft prospect Karl-Anthony Towns are found on this page.
Every player we’ve written about has his own rumors page. You can find any player by using our search box (located in the right sidebar); by clicking his tag at the bottom of a post in which he’s discussed; or, by simply typing his name in your address bar after hoopsrumors.com, substituting dashes for spaces. For example, Love’s page is hoopsrumors.com/kevin-love.
You can also set up an RSS feed for any of our player pages by adding /feed to the end of the page URL, like this: hoopsrumors.com/kevin-love/feed. Entering that URL into the reader of your choice should enable you to get updates whenever we write about Love. It works for teams, too. If you’re a Warriors fan, you can enter hoopsrumors.com/golden-state-warriors/feed into your reader and stay on top of all the latest from the Bay Area.
In addition to players and teams, there are a number of other subjects you can track by clicking on the tags that we use at the bottom of posts. You can keep tabs on news related to this year’s draft right here. Items related to the NBA D-League can be found on this page. You can simply scan our top stories here. Again, you can set up a feed with any of these pages by adding /feed to the end of the URL.
Latest On Sale Of The Hawks
APRIL 17TH, 7:45pm: The league’s owners are pleased with a potential sale amount in the $900MM range, though prospective buyers aren’t offering that amount yet, Jeff Zillgitt of USA Today tweets. The group fronted by Kaplan are the current favorites to purchase the team, Zillgitt adds. The Bridgeman group is not out of the running yet, Zillgitt notes in a second tweet.
APRIL 15TH,8:15pm: Ressler and Hill have replaced Rachesky in the group that includes Starker and Itzler, with Ressler now the leader of that bid, as Soshnick explains in a full piece.
APRIL 14TH: Ares Capital’s Tony Ressler, who is fronting a group that includes Hill, is making a bid to purchase the Hawks, Scott Soshnick of Bloomberg News tweets. Mark Rachesky is also no longer involved with bidding for the team, Soshnick adds.
APRIL 7TH: The group that included Hill has given up its pursuit of the team, two sources tell USA Today’s Jeff Zillgitt. Presumably, that’s the group Vivlamore referred to that believed it was out of the running. Zillgitt identified Hill and Bridgeman as the leaders of the now defunct bid, of which Bryan Colangelo and neuropsychologist Richard Chaifetz were also reportedly a part. Zillgitt also refers to Kaplan and Rachesky as the leaders of their respective bidding groups.
APRIL 3RD: A bidding group that involves baseball legend Hank Aaron as well as former Grizzlies CEO Jason Levien and current Grizzlies minority owner Steve Kaplan is one of two that have become favorites to win control of the Hawks, reports Chris Vivlamore of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Investor and Lionsgate Entertainment chairman Mark Rachesky, brokerage firm founder Steven Starker and rapper-turned-entrepreneur Jesse Itzler are principles in the other, as Vivlamore details. There’s a deadline of April 10th for final bids, according to Vivlamore, though that date is flexible, and Vivlamore suggests there’s a distinct possibility that the process drags on into June.
Tampa Bay Rays part-owner Randy Frankel is also reportedly a member of the Rachesky-Starker-Itzler group, while Indonesian sports and media moguls Erick Thohir and Handy Poernomo Soetedjo are in the Aaron-Levien-Kaplan partnership. A long list of other names have been connected to the sale since controlling owner Bruce Levenson announced in September that he would sell the team after he self-reported racially charged emails that he had sent. The team’s other ownership groups eventually agreed to sell their stakes, too, putting 100% of the franchise on the market. Preliminary offers have reportedly ranged as high as about $800MM.
One group of bidders believes its out of the running after a long gap in communication with the search firms that are facilitating the sale on behalf of the existing owners, according to Vivlamore. Another group has expressed displeasure with Philips Arena, as Vivlamore details.
Former Suns and Raptors GM Bryan Colangelo, former players Grant Hill and junior Bridgeman and neuropsychologist Richard Chaifetz are reportedly teaming for a bid. Dominique Wilkins has been expected to be a prominent part of one of the groups. Dikembe Mutombo and Chris Webber have also reportedly held interest. Kelly Loeffler and Mary Brock, who own Atlanta’s WNBA team, were also reportedly interested in bidding for the Hawks, along with their husbands, Jeffrey Sprecher and John Brock. Attorney Doug Davis is apparently in the mix, too. Investors Thomas Tull and Chris Hansen were seemingly poised to mount separate longshot bids to buy the Hawks and move them to Seattle, though commissioner Adam Silver has insisted the team will stay put. The Chinese investment conglomerate Fosun has also reportedly bid for the team.
Southwest Notes: Rondo, Gasol, Spurs
Rajon Rondo has been a disappointment for the Mavericks since they traded for him in December, owner Mark Cuban admits to Grantland’s Kirk Goldsberry, and as the point guard readies to take on the Rockets in the playoffs with free agency looming this summer, Rondo’s time is now.
“He hasn’t been as good of a fit as we would’ve liked,” Cuban said. “And Rajon would tell you the same. I think that he is a guy that is built for the playoffs, and we haven’t had a lot of practice time together. He’s been here for maybe five or six practice days.”
While we wait to see if Rondo, who’s fallen out of the top 10 in the Hoops Rumors Free Agent Power Rankings, can recover some of his value with a strong postseason, here’s more from around the Southwest Division:
- Marc Gasol in February cast doubt on the idea that an early postseason exit for the Grizzlies would dissuade him from re-signing, and owner Robert Pera echoed his center in comments to Ronald Tillery of The Commercial Appeal, who writes in a subscription-only piece. “It’s a very long season and there are always going to be ups and downs,” Pera said. “You can’t get too high when shots are falling or too low when they aren’t. With respect to Marc, he is unique in that he is as much a Grizzlies stakeholder as I am. He has been a Grizzly his entire career, experiencing the lows of rebuilding and the highs of the past few seasons. I believe his goal, like mine, is to build a winning culture in Memphis that will carry on long after we have both faded into the background. In that sense, I believe his decision will be based not on any one particular result but on the process generally and his confidence in the direction of our franchise.”
- Spurs coach/president Gregg Popovich has made Danny Green his whipping boy, but it’s not because he isn’t high on the swingman, as Jeff McDonald of the San Antonio Express-News explains. One unnamed executive who spoke with Michael Scotto of SheridanHoops recently estimated Green’s value at $6MM a year.
- The Spurs have assigned rookie Kyle Anderson to the D-League, the team announced. San Antonio’s affiliate has a playoff game tonight, while the NBA club doesn’t tip off its first-round series against the Clippers until Sunday night.