And-Ones: Young, Russell, Bogut, Draft
A source close to Nick Young tells Mark Medina of the Los Angeles Daily News that D’Angelo Russell hasn’t apologized directly to him, which conflicts with an earlier report that Young had accepted an apology from the rookie for secretly recording his statements about women other than his fiancee. Young chose not to be in the room when Russell apologized to the team as a whole for the incident, Medina hears. Other Lakers teammates indicated through their remarks Wednesday that they’re ready to move past the tension that’s existed since Russell’s recording went public, but Young declined to address the matter beyond a brief statement, as Medina details. “I don’t want to get into my personal life right now,” Young said. “I think it’s best me and D’Angelo handle the situation we have in a private manner outside of the media. I think it’s something we do need to sit down and talk about. That’s about it. What happened is what happened. We have to work on it.”
See more from around the NBA:
- Andrew Bogut reiterated recently that he’d like to reach an extension deal with the Warriors in the offseason, reports Scott Howard-Cooper of NBA.com. Bogut becomes eligible to formally sign an extension October 25th, just as the regular season begins. He first spoke publicly of his desire for an extension in December with Sam Amick of USA Today.
- Rutgers freshman point guard Corey Sanders will enter the draft without an agent, he announced via Twitter (hat tip to Jon Rothstein of CBSSports.com). The lack of an agent allows him to return to college ball if he withdraws by May 25th. Jonathan Givony of DraftExpress pegs him as just the 73rd-best freshman prospect, and he’s not listed in Chad Ford’s ESPN Insider rankings.
- The Vertical’s Bobby Marks, a former NBA executive, delves into the inner workings of draft promises, a fairly common phenomenon in which a team lets a player know it’ll draft him if he’s available at a certain draft slot. It’s unheard of for teams to renege on promises, and early promises sometimes prompt supposedly long-shot prospects to declare for the draft, knowing the team has their back, as Marks details.
Grizzlies Sign Jordan Farmar For Rest Of Season
The Grizzlies have signed Jordan Farmar for the rest of the season, the team announced via press release. The veteran point guard’s 10-day contract expired overnight. The move restores the Memphis roster to 17 players, two over the normal regular season roster limit, so it appears the NBA has once more given the injury-hit Grizzlies a hardship provision for an extra roster spot. Normally, the league hands out extra roster spots for only 10 days at a time, but it appears it’s made an exception for Memphis and Farmar, just as with the contract Tim Frazier signed for the rest of the season with the Pelicans last week.
Farmar has put up strong numbers, averaging 10.8 points, 3.6 assists and 1.2 turnovers in 25.6 minutes per game across five appearances, three of which were starts. The 10-day deal was his first NBA contract since he reached a January 2015 buyout deal with the Clippers, who are the likely first-round playoff opponent for Memphis this year. Farmar’s contract will carry through the playoffs.
The 29-year-old has received the bulk of the playing time at point guard of late, instead of fellow 10-day signee Ray McCallum, while Mike Conley continues to sit out with a sore Achilles tendon. Four other Grizzlies are also dealing with injuries, as the CBSSports.com injury log shows, including Marc Gasol, who’s out for the season. The team faces a decision regarding McCallum in the next couple of days, as his 10-day contract will expire tonight. Xavier Munford, who’s also on a 10-day deal, is under contract through Tuesday.
Farmar, who’s in his ninth NBA season, will make $111,683 on his new contract. The Grizzlies are on the hook for only $78,011 of it, with the league picking up the rest, presuming Farmar and Memphis didn’t tack next season onto the deal, as is sometimes the case with midseason signees.
Western Notes: Parsons, Speights, Miller, Harris
It’s a long shot, but it’s possible that Chandler Parsons returns to play this season, Mavericks owner Mark Cuban revealed Wednesday, according to Brad Townsend of the Dallas Morning News. “If we make a run and get to the second round [of the playoffs], there’s a chance,” Cuban said. The team’s press release that followed the right knee surgery Parsons had last week referred to the procedure as a season-ender, but Chandler shared Cuban’s optimism Wednesday, saying on the team’s television broadcast of Wednesday’s victory over the Knicks that rehab will be a “piece of cake,” as Townsend also relays. Parsons said he’d be in a brace for two or three weeks and made reference to a four-to-six week timetable for his recovery. Still, he laughed when told of Cuban’s remark and said he wouldn’t count on his return at any point in the playoffs, Townsend tweets.
See more from the Western Conference:
- Andrew Bogut is bullish on the free agent stock of teammate Harrison Barnes, and the Warriors center also thinks reserve big men Festus Ezeli and Marreese Speights are in line for major paydays when they hit the market this summer, as Diamond Leung of the Bay Area News Group relays. “[Speights has] been absolutely huge for us this season, and someone’s obviously going to give him a lot of money,” said Bogut, who’s under contract through next season. “Hopefully, it’s us.” Speights spoke with Hoops Rumors about his contract year before it began.
- The Timberwolves signed Andre Miller, Kevin Garnett and Tayshaun Prince last summer in part to provide veteran assistance for their young core, but Miller nonetheless criticized the Wolves last week on a podcast with The Vertical’s Chris Mannix for relying too heavily on their young players, notes Jerry Zgoda of the Star Tribune. Miller bought his way out of Minnesota and signed earlier this month with the Spurs. “There was no way I was going to stay in Minnesota on a team that never had any goals, from what I thought,” Miller said. “I didn’t want to sit there and let this be my last year. There were no expectations in Minnesota with that team and which way they wanted to go. It wasn’t communicated, so I was like, ‘If this is my last year, I can’t go out like this.’ ”
- The Nuggets no longer feel an urgency to make an upgrade at two-guard after Gary Harris delivered in what was a vital season for his hopes of securing a long-term starting position, observes Christopher Dempsey of The Denver Post. Harris, the 19th pick in the 2014 draft, is under contract for two more years.
Lakers Notes: Russell, Young, Nance
Nick Young has accepted D’Angelo Russell‘s apology over the controversial video that had seem to drive a wedge between Russell and his teammates, a source told Mike Bresnahan of the Los Angeles Times (Twitter link). Lakers players reportedly shunned Russell following the public release of a video he secretly recorded that depicted Young talking about women other than his fiancee. Russell apologized to the team before Wednesday’s win over Miami, Jordan Clarkson said, according to Mark Medina of the Los Angeles Daily News (on Twitter), and the rookie expressed profound contrition in an interview with The Vertical’s Adrian Wojnarowski.
“The thing is, we record ourselves doing dumb stuff all the time,” Russell said. “On the road or home, wherever. We go back and watch what we did and said and laugh at ourselves. I guess I just never thought that these pranks we pull on ourselves could have bigger consequences. That was a big lesson I learned. I’ve said to myself over and over: What could anyone possibly gain by intentionally doing something that could hurt someone else’s relationship? I never wanted to hurt anyone. I’m sorry for it.”
The flap that temporarily cast the future of last year’s No. 2 overall pick in doubt seemed to dissipate amid the team’s victory and the appearance of Lamar Odom, who attended his first NBA game after a health scare that threatened his life in October. Kobe Bryant said after the game that Odom’s recovery stands as an example for Russell of how a dire situation can improve over time, notes Eric Pincus of the Los Angeles Times (Twitter link). See more on the Lakers:
- A prominent agent who spoke with Sean Deveney of The Sporting News laughed off the notion that players around the league would be reluctant to play with the Lakers if Russell is still on the team, and Deveney suggests the long-term implications of the video incident are overblown. Given Young’s poor production this season, his status on the team is more tenuous than Russell’s, Deveney insists.
- The agent pointed to the Lakers’ money and geographic location as reasons why they’re a draw for players, but the results of this past offseason, when LaMarcus Aldridge and others spurned the team, say otherwise, contends Tim Bontemps of The Washington Post, who believes the team’s issues go far beyond the video.
- Larry Nance Jr. had never played small forward before this season, but the Lakers have him at the three now and will keep him at the position for summer-league play with an eye toward using him as a long-term complement to power forward Julius Randle, as Medina details.
USC PG Julian Jacobs To Declare For Draft
USC junior point guard Julian Jacobs will enter this year’s NBA draft, league sources tell Shams Charania of The Vertical. He’s undecided about hiring an agent, a move that would prevent him from returning to the Trojans for his senior year even if he withdraws by the May 25th deadline. Rankings indicate the 6’4″ 22-year-old is a long shot for the draft, as Chad Ford of ESPN.com doesn’t list him and Jonathan Givony of DraftExpress has him as only the 75th-best junior. However, executives from NBA teams are fond of his drive, and they expect it won’t take long during the predraft process for Jacobs to make it clear that he’s worthy of a second-round pick, Charania writes.
Jacobs had a breakout season of sorts, averaging double figures in points for the first time and significantly raising the volume of his assists while his number of turnovers held steady. He posted 11.6 points, 5.4 assists and 2.7 turnovers per game and shot 32.6% from 3-point range, the best percentage of his college career.
The Las Vegas native nonetheless slumped toward the end of the season, scoring fewer than 10 points in four of his last seven games and delivering a clunker in USC’s first-round NCAA Tournament loss to Providence, a game in which he scored eight points and had three assists and five turnovers. It was a sour ending to a college career that began auspiciously, as he became a starter in just his second game for the Trojans. He was outside the top 100 in the Recruiting Services Consensus Index coming out of high school in 2013.
Bulls Thinking About Trading Jimmy Butler?
The Bulls appear to be considering the idea of a Jimmy Butler trade this summer, according to “rumblings” that Chris Mannix of The Vertical has heard (video link; scroll to 6:40 mark). Mannix, who says there’s “legitimate interest in Chicago in potentially dealing Jimmy Butler this offseason,” doesn’t make it entirely clear just how willing the Bulls would be to trade the swingman who signed a five-year, $92.34MM deal last summer, but it nonetheless looks like it’s not out of the question.
Several executives who spoke with Mannix identified the Magic as a team to watch regarding Butler, as Mannix wrote earlier this week, when he confirmed earlier reporting that the Celtics, among others, reached out to gauge Chicago’s interest in a deal at the deadline. The Bulls turned those teams away, but execs told Mannix that they’re going to try again.
Butler made waves in December when he criticized coach Fred Hoiberg, who’s also in the first year of a five-year contract, for his laid-back demeanor and said he wanted to be coached harder. Butler insisted that he didn’t mean to call out Hoiberg, but some around the Bulls have seen Butler as selfish and were confused about why Butler wasn’t embracing Hoiberg’s offense, as K.C. Johnson of the Chicago Tribune reported around that time.
The Bulls played well for a stretch after Butler’s comments about the coach, winning seven of their next nine games, but injuries to Butler and others and poor play in the time since have left Chicago at 37-37, two games behind the Pacers for the final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference. A strained left knee kept Butler out for a month earlier this season, and he sat three more games right after coming back March 5th, leading Vertical colleague Bobby Marks to express concern about his long-term health in the same video.
Butler has played in every game since March 14th but has averaged only 14.3 points in 33.8 minutes per game. Overall, he’s posting a career high 21.0 points per game this season.
What would a fair deal for Butler look like? Leave a comment to share your thoughts.
DeMarre Carroll’s Return This Season In Doubt
5:40pm: The swingman says he will “ramp up'” his recovery from knee surgery and that he hopes to play in a couple games prior to the end of regular season, tweets Chris Vivlamore of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
12:35pm: Carroll has recently sought second opinions and chatted with the doctor who performed his surgery, and he’ll escalate the intensity of his training if he receives assurance that his knee is OK, Grange writes. The way the knee responds in the next week to 10 days is crucial, as Grange details.
WEDNESDAY, 9:34am: Reports conflict over Carroll’s status, with Sportsnet’s Michael Grange hearing that he’s expected to resume on-court activity as soon as today amid optimism that he’ll be back in games before the end of the regular season (Twitter links). Wolstat insists pessimism still exists on that front (Twitter link). Coach Dwane Casey said Tuesday that he expects Carroll to return this season.
TUESDAY, 1:01pm: Every indication is that DeMarre Carroll has suffered some kind of setback that has cast serious doubt on his ability to return this season, writes Ryan Wolstat of the Toronto Sun. The team’s prize offseason acquisition was reportedly likely to return by month’s end from the right knee surgery he had in early January, but Carroll’s status has been shrouded in mystery the past few weeks, as Wolstat details. Some around the league raised the possibility of Carroll missing the rest of the season when he had the surgery, as Wolstat reported then, but the Raptors were confident at that point that he would be back.
Carroll was driving to the basket against assistant coaches and shooting 3-pointers a few weeks ago as he awaited clearance for contact, but the team has been quiet about him since, and he’s been in Atlanta tending to personal business, Wolstat writes. Rookie Norman Powell has impressed in a fill-in role, but he’s far from Carroll’s equal, and Kyle Lowry‘s balky right elbow is clearly affecting his shot and has become a major concern, as Wolstat examines.
Toronto doesn’t have much roster flexibility with 15 players signed through season’s end. The team is devoid of other injuries aside from a minor hand issue for Terrence Ross, so a hardship exception for a 16th roster spot isn’t in play. The deadline for a disabled player exception has long since passed, and no one the team could add at the back end of its roster would realistically make up for the potential loss of Carroll anyway.
The Raptors signed the 3-and-D extraordinaire to a four-year, $58MM contract this past summer after he had a career year with the Hawks last season. Toronto has nonetheless done well without him, going 28-10 since he last played.
Hoops Rumors Chat Transcript
4:01pm: We hosted the weekly live chat.
3:00pm: Dwight Howard is reportedly thinking about rejoining one of his former teams in free agency this summer, but it’s not the turmoil-stricken Lakers. Instead, the Rockets center is apparently considering the idea of playing for the Magic again, though staying with the Rockets would be his first choice. Houston has plenty of issues of its own, as The Dream Shake’s Ethan Rothstein examined in a talk with Hoops Rumors, but nothing like the Kings, the NBA franchise that has epitomized unrest lately but nonetheless signed GM Vlade Divac to an extension today. We can talk about all this and more in today’s chat.
Pelicans Sign James Ennis To 10-Day Contract
2:05pm: The signing is official, the team announced. The contract will cover six games, against the Spurs, Nuggets, Nets, Sixers, Celtics and Lakers.
1:31pm: The NBA has indeed given the Pelicans another hardship provision for an 18th roster spot, as Jim Eichenhofer of the team’s website confirms. Eichenhofer doesn’t mention Ennis but suggests the team may make a signing as soon as today. New Orleans has a two-day window from the time the league grants the provision to use it.
8:47am: The Pelicans will sign former Heat and Grizzlies swingman James Ennis, sources tell Scott Kushner of The New Orleans Advocate (Twitter links). The move appears to be a signal that the NBA has given New Orleans another hardship exception for an extra roster spot. Seven Pelicans are out for the season with injuries, including Jrue Holiday and Alonzo Gee, whose season-ending maladies the team announced Tuesday. The Pelicans already have 17 players under contract, two over the normal limit.
Memphis waived Ennis on March 2nd to make room on its roster for Ryan Hollins, and somewhat curiously, the Grizzlies and Ennis haven’t circled back to each other even as the team has made a flurry of moves and received multiple hardship exceptions amid a rash of injuries similar to the trouble the Pelicans have gone through. The Grizzlies nonetheless seemed to have little use for the 25-year-old who was the 50th overall pick in 2013, sending him on eight D-League assignments and only putting him on the floor in 10 games at the NBA level.
Ennis began the season with the Heat, for whom he saw much more playing time before they shipped him out in November via the Mario Chalmers trade. The Heat never sent Ennis to the D-League once they signed him in 2014, and he averaged 5.0 points in 17.0 minutes per game across 62 appearances for Miami last season.
He’ll see $49,709 on his 10-day contract with New Orleans and add to a shrinking reserve of healthy Pelicans. Dante Cunningham, Omer Asik, Luke Babbitt, Toney Douglas, Tim Frazier, Jordan Hamilton, Kendrick Perkins and Alexis Ajinca are the only New Orleans players without some sort of ailment, The Advocate’s Brett Dawson notes (Twitter link).
Central Notes: Butler, Noah, Antetokounmpo
Several executives around the NBA say the Magic are a team to watch in regard to Jimmy Butler, The Vertical’s Chris Mannix reports. The swingman is in the first season of a five-year contract with the Bulls, but the tension between him and coach Fred Hoiberg, who’s just starting a five-year deal of his own, led several teams, including the Celtics, to ask the Bulls about trading for Butler before last month’s deadline. Orlando, with enough cap flexibility to add Butler and another maximum-salary player this summer, has several intriguing young players and coach Scott Skiles, a defensive taskmaster with similarities to former Bulls coach Tom Thibodeau.
See more from the Central Division:
- Many expect Joakim Noah to leave the Bulls in free agency this summer, Mannix writes in the same piece. Noah has also been linked to the Magic, though only speculatively.
- Bucks coach Jason Kidd said a few days ago that Giannis Antetokounmpo won’t be guarding point guards and alluded to the need for a traditional point guard like Michael Carter-Williams to fill that duty, but Kidd on Tuesday said Antetokounmpo will be the team’s primary ball handler next season, notes Charles F. Gardner of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Antetokounmpo and Carter-Williams will both be eligible for rookie scale extensions in the offseason.
- Miles Plumlee is fond of the Bucks organization and Kidd admires the center’s perseverance, Gardner notes in the same piece. Plumlee is set for restricted free agency at season’s end.
- Some Thunder players still have raw feelings about Reggie Jackson, who pushed his way off the team and into the trade that sent him to the Pistons last season, as Royce Young of ESPN.com details. Russell Westbrook disapproved of Jackson’s animated celebration at the end of Detroit’s win Tuesday over Oklahoma City. “Yeah, I did actually,” Westbrook said. “Honestly, I think that was some real [expletive]. I don’t appreciate it for our team and our organization. I don’t like it at all. But it is what it is. We’ll see him down the line. We’ll take care of that when we get there.”