Sam Dekker To Enter Draft
Wisconsin junior small forward Sam Dekker has told Jeff Goodman of ESPN.com that he will enter the draft. Dekker is up to No. 15 in the rankings that Jonathan Givony of DraftExpress compiles and No. 15 with fellow ESPN scribe Chad Ford. No player had helped his draft stock as much during the first two weeks of the NCAA Tournament as Dekker did, Ford wrote at the time.
The 6’9″ 20-year-old’s numbers dropped off a bit in the national semifinals and the championship game, but it was nonetheless clear as Wisconsin made a strong bid for the title that Dekker has plenty of talent. He rose from a player expected to go in the final 10 picks of the first round to the 10-20 range, Goodman tweets. Dekker put up 13.9 points and 5.5 rebounds in 31.0 minutes per game for the season, but he averaged 19.2 PPG for the tournament as he nailed 15 of 26 three-point attempts, much greater than his 33.1% accuracy on three-pointers for the season.
It wouldn’t be altogether shocking for his stock to cool a bit once he goes through workouts and the memory of his tournament run fades, though that’s just my speculation. Still, it’s not as if Dekker’s stock is reaching unprecedented heights, since Givony had him at No. 11 before the season. He was the 19th-best recruit coming out of high school three years ago, according to the Recruiting Services Consensus Index.
Free Agent Stock Watch: Brandon Knight
The Suns have plenty invested in Brandon Knight, having relinquished a potential lottery pick from the Lakers as well as Miles Plumlee and Tyler Ennis, both of whom have shown promise and are on rookie scale contracts. Knight is also on a rookie scale contract, but unlike Plumlee and Ennis, his deal expires this summer, when the Suns figure to have to shell out eight-figure salaries to keep him. Several GMs told Michael Scotto of SheridanHoops earlier this spring that they believe Knight is worth $12MM a year. Suns GM Ryan McDonough referred to Knight as the best player in the trade, though it’s unclear if he was merely referring to the Knight trade itself or the series of moves the Suns made on deadline day, when they shipped Goran Dragic to Miami in a separate trade. It’s nonetheless clear that McDonough thinks highly of Knight, a former eighth overall pick, having referred to him as a “23-year-old who is a borderline All-Star in the East.”
McDonough and president of basketball operations Lon Babby will have to go chiefly by what Knight did while he was in the East with the Bucks as they wade through his restricted free agency, since a heel injury has ended the season for Knight after he played only 11 games as a Sun. The point guard took just 4.6 shots per game during that small sample size, a figure that would be a career low if extrapolated over a full season. He looked every bit the part of the budding All-Star that McDonough envisions in a 28-point performance against the Magic, but that was less than a week after a one-point, 0-for-6 clunker against the Spurs.
Knight has struggled over the course of his NBA career to become a true point guard, though he’s expressed a desire to embrace the role. The Suns don’t have to worry too much about that with Eric Bledsoe around. He and Bledsoe fit the mold of the small backcourt that’s marked McDonough’s Suns teams, and Bledsoe’s presence also takes pressure off Knight to improve defensively. Bledsoe is second among point guards in ESPN’s Defensive Real Plus/Minus this season, while Knight languishes at No. 50, well into the minus side of the ledger. Knight has been a minus defender in all four of his NBA seasons, according to Basketball-Reference’s Defensive Box Plus/Minus.
There’s still potential for growth on that end of the floor, since he’s only 23, as McDonough notes. He certainly wouldn’t be the only one-way player making $12MM a year if that’s what he ends up with, and he helps in other areas. He averaged 5.2 rebounds per game this season, the 12th most among any player 6’3″ or shorter who saw at least 500 minutes, as Basketball-Reference shows. Bledsoe is third on that list. Knight also bumped his three-point shooting to a career-high 38.9% this season after last year’s regression to 32.5%, and he was at 40.9% in that category this year before his disjointed 11 games with the Suns. His PER was 18.5 with Milwaukee, and though that shrunk to 17.2 thanks to his brief time playing with Phoenix, it’s still a career high.
The Arn Tellem client has validated his draft position, and while he doesn’t seem the sort who’ll ever be one of the top two players on a contender, he could certainly be the third. Bledsoe’s ceiling is beginning to emerge as a No. 2 on that kind of team. So, the Suns have the groundwork for a contending core, but they lack the superstar piece that’s almost always the hardest to obtain.
A new deal for Knight would essentially put the Suns out of the running to acquire a superstar in free agency this summer, since Phoenix already has about $41MM on the books. It wouldn’t be much of a setback for the franchise if it comes up empty in its star search this summer, since the top five players in the Hoops Rumors Free Agent Power Rankings all seem likely to stay put. It’s the summer of 2016 when the Suns appear positioned to make their move, as they only have about $28MM committed, and even with an eight-figure salary for Knight, they should have no shortage of flexibility with the cap set to catapult to around $90MM. The Valley of the Sun looms as an attractive destination for top free agents as long as the roster infrastructure is there for a superstar to contend immediately upon joining the team, and Knight’s presence helps the Suns toward that roster prerequisite.
Phoenix also has its share of trade assets, with the Heat’s 2021 unprotected first-round pick perhaps the juiciest. The Suns took a step back at the deadline this season, as Babby has acknowledged, with the long term in mind, and that’s why keeping Knight is more or less imperative. There’s been chatter connecting the Lakers to Knight, and it wouldn’t be surprising to see some team with aspirations of contending in the West in the near future pitch an outsized offer sheet to Knight this summer, just to force the Suns to pay a premium. That would carry risk for a team like the Lakers, since it would be difficult for any team to end up paying a defensive minus a salary approaching the max in case Phoenix doesn’t match, but it’s a distinct possibility nonetheless, given the consequences for the Suns if they let Knight walk.
Knight might not be the best player involved in Phoenix’s deadline trades, but he’s the best the Suns have to show from a pivot point in their rebuilding. Phoenix, which still hasn’t made the playoffs since Steve Nash left town, can’t afford to take a step back in both the short and the long term, so expect Knight’s Suns tenure to last a lot longer than 11 games.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
Pacific Notes: Bogut, Green, Suns, Lakers
Trading for Andrew Bogut in 2012 was a turning point for the Warriors, who clinched the league’s best record Thursday, writes USA Today’s Sam Amick. Bogut, who signed a rare veteran extension in 2013, credits the owners and GM Bob Myers for reviving a team that was “in shambles” upon his arrival. That certainly makes it easier to stomach paying the 15% bonus that Bogut appears poised to trigger. There’s more on the Warriors amid the latest from the Pacific Division:
- It’s been a “fitful” season for the Suns, as president of basketball operations Lon Babby puts it, and he acknowledges that the team’s deadline trades were made with the long term in mind and compromised the team this season, as Paul Coro of the Arizona Republic details. Babby also said he continues to support GM Ryan McDonough and coach Jeff Hornacek.
- Myers makes it clear in a long piece from Grantland’s Jonathan Abrams that the Warriors are thinking of soon-to-be restricted free agent Draymond Green as a part of the team beyond the end of his contract this summer. “We really like him,” Myers said. “We believe he’s a core member of our team and we believe he’s a big part of our future.”
- Management, and not Kobe Bryant, is to blame for the inability of the Lakers to attract marquee free agents the past two summers, as Matt Barnes opines to Chris Ballard of SI.com. Barnes spent 2010/11 and 2011/12 with the Lakers before moving on to the Clippers. A report in October cited agents and team sources who said Bryant was driving free agents away from the Lakers.
Atlantic Notes: King, Thomas, Ainge, Young
The Nets will be almost certainly be picking 29th thanks to their pick swap with the Hawks as called for in the Joe Johnson trade, but it would appear to be in keeping with owner Mikhail Prokhorov’s philosophy.
“If you analyze a championship team, 20% is draft picks and 80% of it is trades,” Prokhorov said to reporters Wednesday, according to Stefan Bondy of the New York Daily News (Twitter link).
Prokhorov expressed comfort with GM Billy King and praised his “bold” approach, Prokhorov also said, complimenting coach Lionel Hollins, too, seemingly indicating that both will be back next season, writes Tim Bontemps of the New York Post. We passed along more from Prokhorov’s chat with the media earlier today, and there’s more from around the Atlantic Division:
- Lance Thomas has started 33 games this season and 20 with the Knicks, earning praise from team president Phil Jackson, and the New Jersey native signaled a desire to re-sign with New York in unrestricted free agency this summer. Thomas made his remarks in a video interview with Jonah Ballow of Knicks.com. “My experience as a Knick has been great, and I hope it doesn’t end,” Thomas said. “This is my hometown team, and I would love to represent New York, so I’m going to do everything in my power to hopefully make that happen.”
- Celtics president of basketball operations Danny Ainge is impressed with how his roster has performed after all the trades he pulled off, as Gary Washburn of The Boston Globe details. Ainge named soon-to-be free agents Jae Crowder and Brandon Bass among several he believes have excelled.
- The Kevin Garnett/Thaddeus Young trade has been a steal for the Nets, argues Daniel LoGuidice of NetsDaily, who believes the arrival of Young, and not the resurgence of Brook Lopez, was the true catalyst for Brooklyn’s late-season run for a playoff spot. Bontemps, writing in a separate piece, believes Young’s on-court presence has helped Lopez operate so effectively. Young hasn’t decided on his player option for next season but has said he wants to remain in Brooklyn.
Towns Headlines 7 Kentucky Players Off To Draft
Forward/center Karl-Anthony Towns and six other Kentucky underclassmen are entering this year’s draft, as they formally announced today in a joint press conference. Towns, whom both Chad Ford of ESPN.com and Jonathan Givony of DraftExpress project as the No. 1 pick, joins center Willie Cauley-Stein, power forward Trey Lyles, shooting guard Devin Booker, center Dakari Johnson, combo guard Andrew Harrison and shooting guard Aaron Harrison in declaring for the draft. Point guard Tyler Ulis, Ford‘s 47th-ranked prospect and Givony‘s No. 88, is staying in school, as are power forward Marcus Lee and injured combo forward Alex Poythress, neither of whom was a top-60 prospect for this year’s draft.
Towns, a freshman, passed Duke center Jahlil Okafor in Ford and Givony’s rankings during the NCAA Tournament, though it still appears it’ll be a close call among the two for whichever NBA team wins the draft lottery. The 7-foot Towns averaged only 10.3 points and 6.7 rebounds in 21.1 minutes per game, but it was chiefly the profoundly deep Wildcats roster that kept his numbers down.
Cauley-Stein could easily have been a second-year NBA player by now had he come out as a freshman instead of as a junior as he’s doing now. Givony has him sixth and Ford seventh in their respective rankings after he put up 8.9 PPG and 6.4 RPG in 25.9 MPG, another example of a Wildcat’s stats as a poor reflection of his talent.
Lyles is No. 18 with Ford and No. 19 with Givony after a freshman season spent in and out of the starting lineup. He put up 8.7 PPG and 5.2 RPG in 23.0 MPG. For more on Booker, Johnson, and the Harrison twins, click on their names in this sentence to see earlier reports indicating that they would declare for the draft.
The seven will collectively attempt to set a record for the most players drafted from one school in a single year. The current mark is six, shared by Kentucky in 2012 and UNLV in 1977, though the draft was an eight-round affair when UNLV pulled off its feat. The swing player would appear to be Aaron Harrison, who isn’t within the top 60 prospects in Ford’s and Givony’s rankings. Jeff Goodman of ESPN.com nonetheless hears from many around the league who believe he’ll be drafted in the second round.
Devin Booker To Declare For Draft
Kentucky freshman shooting guard Devin Booker will enter this year draft, sources tell Evan Daniels of Scout.com (Twitter link). Kentucky coach John Calipari indicated earlier this week that he and Dakari Johnson were on the fence, but with Johnson also reportedly headed for the draft, it appears the Wildcats will be sending seven underclassmen to the pros this year. The Wildcats prospects are set to formally announce their decisions within the hour.
Booker is the 17th-ranked prospect in Jonathan Givony’s DraftExpress ratings, while Chad Ford of ESPN.com has him 19th. Calipari somewhat curiously used the 6’6″ 18-year-old as a reserve behind Aaron Harrison, who appears at best to be a second-round prospect. Still, Booker, who turns 19 in October, saw a fair amount of playing time in Kentucky’s platoon system, racking up 10.0 points in 21.5 minutes per game. He shot 41.1% from behind the arc, and that’s a key to his game, as he struggles getting to the rim, as Ford notes in his profile.
He’s was No. 13 in the latest Hoops Rumors Draft Prospect Power Rankings, which debuted before the NCAA Tournament, and Eddie Scarito of Hoops Rumors wrote then that the postseason would serve as a stage for him to truly make his mark as a long-distance threat. Booker failed to seize the opportunity, going just 4 for 15 in Kentucky’s first four tournament games, and he didn’t attempt a three-pointer in the team’s loss to Wisconsin in the national semifinals.
Vince Hunter Entering Draft
UTEP sophomore power forward Vince Hunter has told Jeff Goodman of ESPN.com that he’s entering this year’s draft (Twitter link). It’ll be a long shot effort for Hunter to hear his name called at the June 25th draft, since he’s just 108th in fellow ESPN scribe Chad Ford‘s rankings. Jonathan Givony of DraftExpress doesn’t list him within his top 100 prospects, instead pegging the 6’8″ Hunter as 30th-best among NCAA sophomores.
Hunter averaged 14.9 points and a Conference USA-leading 9.2 rebounds in 28.5 minutes per game this season. He’s versatile, having guarded shooting guards and small forwards in addition to power forwards for UTEP, according to Givony, and indeed, Ford has him listed as a small forward. Still, he doesn’t offer much spacing on the other end, especially at small forward, having attempted just 10 three-pointers all season.
The 20-year-old didn’t see as many minutes as might be expected for a pro prospect on a non-power team, but he was efficient in his time on the floor, leading his conference with a 25.8 PER. He and his UTEP teammates, playing for former Bulls and Pelicans coach Tim Floyd, won 22 games and lost in the first round of the NIT this year.
Latest On Cavs, Salah Mejri
11:35am: Real Madrid has a team option on Mejri for next season, though various Spanish media reports have suggested there’s a decent chance the team will turn down that option, according to Sierra. Mejri is pleased with the club, but he would rather leave if he won’t see playing time, Sierra writes. The Cavs first reached out to the big man’s representatives in December, and though a high-dollar buyout clause kept the talks from getting far at that time, Cleveland has remained in contact, Sierra hears.
9:47am: The Cavs are indeed interested in Real Madrid center Salah Mejri, Jorge Sierra of HoopsHype tweets, confirming an earlier report from Chema de Lucas of Gigantes Del Basket. Mejri, his agent and Cavs director of pro player personnel Koby Altman dined together and Altman watched the 7’1″ native of Tunisia in action, reports David Pick of Eurobasket.com (Twitter links).
Mejri went undrafted in 2008, so no NBA team holds his rights in any sort of draft-and-stash arrangement. He reportedly was to work out for the Mavericks in 2012, and he saw summer league action with the Jazz the same year. Mejri seemingly continued to draw NBA interest in 2013, but he remained zeroed in on Europe. A lack of playing time has helped keep his numbers low. His overseas production doesn’t paint a picture of an intriguing prospect, and while that’s often the case with European players drawing the eye of NBA teams, who focus instead on upside, Mejri is 28 and turns 29 in June. He’s put up 4.6 points, 2.4 rebounds and 0.8 blocks in just 9.8 minutes per game.
Cleveland has a full 15-man roster, with each player signed through at least the end of the season, so presumably the apparent interest in Mejri is geared toward next season. The Cavs have only about $26MM in commitments for 2015/16, but that doesn’t include salary for four of their five starters, including LeBron James. There’s a strong chance Cleveland ends up above the tax apron, which would give the team only the $3.376MM taxpayer’s midlevel exception to spend above the minimum on outside free agents.
Pacific Notes: Green, Bogut, Scott
Agent Kevin Bradbury is upset with Suns coach Jeff Hornacek‘s criticism of client and soon-to-be free agent Gerald Green, as Bradbury makes clear in his comments to Sean Deveney of The Sporting News. Hornacek brought up Green’s defense as one reason why the swingman hasn’t seen as much playing time as he’d like, as Paul Coro of the Arizona Republic relayed earlier this week, and that in particular drew Bradbury’s ire.
“It’s completely unfair to misrepresent Gerald and his game like this,” Bradbury said. “You’re talking about a player that wants to win at any cost and is a tremendous locker guy and teammate. I don’t see the benefit for the coach to go about things this way.”
Bradbury told Deveney that opposing teams were willing to give up assets in significant trade offers for Green at the deadline, only to have the Suns turn them down. Green, who hits free agency this summer, said that in spite of his lack of minutes that he wants to re-sign with Phoenix and retire as a Sun, though he’s not sure if Phoenix feels the same way, as Coro relays. Here’s more from the Pacific Division:
- Andrew Bogut is closing in on a key milestone tied to a bonus clause in his deal, as Tim Kawakami of The Bay Area News Group points out. He played his 63rd game of the season Tuesday, so if he plays in two of the Warriors‘ last four regular season contests, he’ll hit the first criteria for triggering the bonus. He’d need to either win Defensive Player of the Year or make one of the league’s two All-Defensive teams for the bonus to kick in, but Bogut will almost certainly earn an All-Defensive nod, Kawakami writes.
- The prospect of Bogut triggering the bonus, worth 15% of his $12.973MM salary this season, was one reason why the Warriors didn’t give serious thought to adding a veteran the past few months, according to Kawakami. Golden State is well shy of the tax threshold for this season. Bogut’s cap figure for 2015/16 will be higher if he earns the bonus this year, but it won’t count toward the team’s salary for tax purposes next year unless he again hits the same benchmarks next season.
- Lakers coach Byron Scott on Wednesday tempered his earlier remark that he “wouldn’t want to be in a fox hole with” many of his players, which seemed to indicate a desire for an offseason overhaul. Scott said that he made that comment out of frustration and that he’s been pleased with the effort of his players for most of the year, as Baxter Holmes of ESPNLosAngeles.com details.
Jake Layman To Stay Out Of Draft
Maryland junior small forward Jake Layman will pass up a strong chance to become a second-round pick this year and stay with the Terrapins for 2015/16, a source tells Jeff Goodman of ESPN.com. Layman is the No. 36 prospect for 2015 in Jonathan Givony’s DraftExpress rankings, and Chad Ford of ESPN.com has him 52nd. Multiple NBA executives told Goodman that Layman would have been selected somewhere between 25th and 45th.
The 21-year-old put up 12.5 points and 5.8 rebounds in 30.1 minutes per game this season while continuing to improve his outside shot. He knocked down 37.8% of his three-pointers this year and is at 35.0% for his college career. Layman made two of three attempts from behind the arc in Maryland’s round of 32 loss to West Virginia in the NCAA Tournament, but he otherwise had a quiet March, averaging just 7.5 PPG combined in the Big Ten and NCAA tournaments.
NBA personnel will hope that the 6’9 Layman adds strength and a better ability to create his own shot in the year to come, as Ford notes in his profile. Scouts will surely keep a close eye on Maryland in 2015/16, with freshman point guard Melo Trimble, another second-round prospect for this year, also returning to the school, and high school recruit Diamond Stone, No. 4 on Givony’s 2016 mock draft, joining the team.