Pelicans Sign Elliot Williams To 10-Day Deal
WEDNESDAY, 10:19am: The deal is official, the team announced. The move, coupled with Justin Hamilton’s release, leaves the Pelicans with 14 players.
TUESDAY, 2:53pm: The Pelicans are expected to sign guard Elliot Williams to a 10-day contract, reports John Reid of The Times-Picayune (Twitter link). The former 22nd overall pick has been playing for the D-League affiliate of the Warriors since shortly after the Hornets terminated their 10-day contract with him early so they could pull off the Mo Williams trade last month. The 25-year-old Elliot Williams would fill the Pelicans’ lone roster vacancy.
New Orleans would be the third team with which Williams has signed a 10-day contract this season, joining Charlotte and Utah, as our 10-Day Contract Tracker shows. He didn’t see action on his lone pact with the Hornets, but he averaged 3.6 points in 8.4 minutes per contest in five appearances for the Jazz, who signed him to two 10-day deals.
Jrue Holiday hasn’t played for the Pelicans since January, so Williams will be the latest to try to plug that gap after the team cycled through 10-day pacts with Nate Wolters and Toney Douglas. Williams is just a season removed from seeing 17.3 MPG in 67 contests for the Sixers.
Pacific Notes: Nash, Dragic, Suns, Divac
Steve Nash hasn’t made any formal pronouncements regarding the end of his career, but he’s under no illusions that he’ll be coming back to the NBA, as he made clear Tuesday on The Bro Jake Show on TSN Radio 1040 Vancouver, as TSN.ca transcribes. Nash’s contract with the Lakers expires at season’s end.
“I never worked as hard as I did the last 18 months, two years, twice a day almost every day to try to just give it that one last year,” Nash said. “And I finally just had to admit that it’s just not meant to be.”
Nash added that he accepts the situation because “I gave it everything I possibly could.” While we wait for the 41-year-old to finally close the book on his career, here’s more from around the Pacific Division:
- The Suns promised Goran Dragic before last summer’s sign-and-trade acquisition of Isaiah Thomas that they wouldn’t add to an already crowded backcourt, multiple league sources tell Bleacher Report’s Ethan Skolnick.
- A lack of leadership and dispassionate, inconsistent play from the Suns doesn’t exactly make the franchise attractive to marquee free agents who want a winning situation, opines Dan Bickley of the Arizona Republic.
- Vlade Divac‘s new position as vice president of basketball and franchise operations for the Kings technically puts him on top of the team’s basketball staff, but the practical implications of that aren’t as clear-cut, according to Ailene Voisin of The Sacramento Bee. The team’s official announcement of Divac’s hiring, released after Voisin’s story, indicates that Divac will be advising the front office and coaching staff.
Atlantic Notes: Young, Datome, Chris Smith
Nets GM Billy King wants to keep Thaddeus Young beyond this season and make him a building block for the team, writes Mike Mazzeo of ESPNNewYork.com. Young, who has a player option worth nearly $10.222MM for next season, is seeing fewer minutes per game since the trade to Brooklyn than in any season but his rookie year, but he’s nonetheless glad to be a part of the team’s plan for the future.
“It means a lot,” Young said. “It means that I’m definitely a player that has come into his own and being able to go out there and do a lot of things to help my team win basketball games. Sometimes I can go out there and be a game-changer with the energy I bring to the table.”
There’s more on the Nets amid the latest from the Atlantic Division:
- The Celtics seem to want a long-term future with Jonas Jerebko, but while president of basketball operations Danny Ainge said he likes Gigi Datome and that the Celtics aren’t looking to release or arrange a buyout with him, he also said that it’s unclear just how he fits with the team. Steve Bulpett of the Boston Herald has the details. The Celtics executive is focused more on player evaluation than wins and losses even as his team sits just a game and a half back of the final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference, Bulpett notes.
- A season of prolific roster turnover has challenged Celtics coach Brad Stevens, but he’s shined amid the team’s many moves, navigating the club into contention for a playoff spot, as Chris Forsberg of ESPNBoston.com examines.
- Deron Williams believes all the trade rumors surrounding him and other high-profile Nets before the deadline affected the performance of the team, which has played better since February 19th passed, as Ohm Youngmisuk of ESPNNewYork.com observes.
- KB Peja of Kosova has released ex-Knicks guard Chris Smith, notes Ian Begley of ESPNNewYork.com (via Twitter). The 27-year-old brother of J.R. Smith signed overseas last month but struggled to make an impact during his brief time playing in southeastern Europe.
Charlie Adams contributed to this post.
Pelicans Waive Justin Hamilton
5:08pm: New Orleans has waived Hamilton, the team announced in a press release.
3:06pm: The Pelicans are expected to waive Justin Hamilton, league sources tell John Reid of The Times-Picayune (Twitter link). Reid reported minutes earlier that the Pels are expected to sign Elliot Williams to a 10-day contract, but New Orleans doesn’t have to make a corresponding move, since it has an open roster spot. In any case, it appears the team is parting with the big man it acquired from the Heat in a three-team deadline-day trade with Phoenix. Hamilton would be ineligible to appear in the playoffs for another team if he indeed hits waivers, and the Pelicans would be on the hook for his entire minimum salary of more than $816K unless another team puts in a waiver claim.
The 24-year-old had yet to appear in a game for the Pelicans since the trade after averaging 12.0 minutes per contest in 24 appearances, five of them starts, for the banged-up Heat. Still, he had a marginal impact for Miami, averaging just 2.8 points and 2.0 rebounds. The contract that he signed with Miami toward the end of last season had a series of dates that triggered partially guaranteed salary, and he remained on the roster past them all, as well as the leaguewide guarantee date in January that locked in his full salary.
The Heat first acquired Hamilton on draft night in 2012 and twice signed him to deals, but Miami can’t re-sign him until July because the league prohibits teams from re-signing players they trade for one year, or until the end of the traded contract, whichever is sooner. Hamilton was also with Charlotte last season on a 10-day contract.
Nuggets Likely To Target D’Antoni, Gentry, Others
3:38pm: Denver is expected to make former Bulls and Clippers coach Vinny Del Negro a candidate for the job, and according to Ken Berger of CBSSports.com, who also hears mention of ex-Kings coach Michael Malone. Berger hints that’s true of Pelicans assistant Bryan Gates, Pacers assistant Nate McMillan and Celtics assistant Jay Larranaga, too, though that’s not entirely clear. In any case, the Nuggets will likely give Gentry “heavy consideration,” Berger writes.
1:10pm: The Nuggets have yet to any consider long-term candidates, tweets Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports.
1:01pm: Former Warriors coach Mark Jackson, current Warriors assistant coach Alvin Gentry and Bulls assistant Adrian Griffin are believed to be likely candidates to replace the fired Brian Shaw as Nuggets head coach, according to USA Today’s Sam Amick. One-time Mavs and Nets coach Avery Johnson and former Nuggets, Suns, Knicks and Lakers coach Mike D’Antoni are other likely candidates, tweets Marc Stein of ESPN.com, and a source who knows D’Antoni’s thinking told Amick that he would certainly be interested in the job. Still, the Nuggets indicated when they announced Shaw’s firing that Melvin Hunt would remain as interim coach through season’s end and that they would begin a search for a more permanent replacement after that. Sources confirm to Stein that the Nuggets will take a “long-term view” on their search (Twitter link).
D’Antoni recently suggested in a radio appearance with Bleacher Report’s Howard Beck and Ethan Skolnick that he had interest in returning to coach in the NBA (Twitlonger link; Twitter link). That was before Shaw’s firing, Beck cautions (on Twitter). D’Antoni resigned as Lakers coach last spring, and he got his start as an NBA coach with the 1999 Nuggets.
Jackson also coached as recently as last season, though his three-year Warriors stint is his only head coaching experience. Still, his name was linked to both the Magic and Kings openings earlier this season. Gentry has spent parts of 12 seasons as an NBA head coach, the last coming in 2012/13 with the Suns. That was Johnson’s last year of coaching, too, though he was only in charge of the Nets for the first 28 games that season. Johnson had more success in Dallas, where he took the team to the 2006 NBA Finals and won 67 games in 2006/07. Griffin has so far only served as an assistant coach with the Bucks and Bulls since the 2008/09 season, but Chicago promoted him before this season to lead assistant.
Reaction To Nuggets’ Firing Of Brian Shaw
Benjamin Hochman of The Denver Post takes Ty Lawson to task in a piece written before the Nuggets fired Brian Shaw today, and Hochman doesn’t completely believe Shaw is to blame for Lawson’s struggles of late. The post scribe passes along a comment from Shaw in response to a question about whether he should have tried a different approach to coaching Lawson this season.
“I believe what I’m doing. I don’t know if I’d say I’d do anything differently,” Shaw said. “There are a lot of circumstances that when [we talk to the media], I can’t talk about. I’ve always tried to be as honest as I possibly can. But there are also a lot of things I can’t say, because these are young men, and I look at them like I do my three kids — they make mistakes because they’re young. Our philosophy has been — make new mistakes, don’t make the same old mistakes. I feel obligated that when a guy makes a mistake — and I’m not talking about on the court, I’m talking about off the court — that I say, ‘I’m not going to jump on the bandwagon and dump on him because he made a mistake.’ “
Ultimately, those mistakes cost Shaw his job, and there’s plenty of news surrounding Denver’s decision apart from the latest on likely candidates, which we passed along earlier. Here’s more surrounding the firing:
- There were moments of tension between Shaw and Lawson in the locker room this season, several league sources tell Grantland’s Zach Lowe (Twitter link).
- It was just days ago that Nuggets GM Tim Connelly said that Brian Shaw’s job was “absolutely” safe in comments the executive made in an video interview with The Denver Post’s Woody Paige and Les Shapiro, as Christopher Dempsey of the Post notes in his story on Shaw’s dismissal.
- Shaw knew the “1, 2, 3 … six weeks!” chant the Nuggets gave as they broke a huddle Friday was a reference to the time left in the season, a league source tells Chris Broussard of ESPN.com (Twitter link). Shaw claimed Monday that the chant was about the six weeks that had passed since the team’s last home victory.
- Pacers power forward David West pointed to a lack of “grownups” on the Nuggets roster as he expressed his disdain for the firing, notes Scott Agness of VigilantSports.com (on Twitter). Shaw coached West, who has a $12.6MM player option for next season, when he was a Pacers assistant.
Suns Sign Earl Barron To Second 10-Day Pact
12:33pm: The deal is official, the Suns announced.
10:13am: The Suns and center Earl Barron have reached agreement on a second 10-day deal, a league source told Shams Charania of RealGM (Twitter link). His first 10-day contract with Phoenix expired Monday. It’ll be the third time Barron has inked with the Suns this season, including his training camp deal.
The ninth-year veteran failed to make it to opening night with the team, but the Suns retained his D-League rights and he’s spent much of the season with Phoenix’s affiliate. Barron averaged 20.2 points and 10.9 rebounds in 32.6 minutes per game across 27 appearances for the D-League Bakersfield Jam, but he’s seen just 5.5 MPG in his five-game stint with the big club, his first NBA regular season action since 2012/13.
Phoenix has just 13 players signed through the end of the season after its flurry of deadline moves. So, GM Ryan McDonough and company would continue to have flexibility even if they re-sign Barron for the season, which they’d have to do to bring the 33-year-old back once his latest 10-day deal expires.
Nuggets Fire Brian Shaw
12:25pm: The firing is official, the team announced. Hunt will be the interim coach through the end of the season, the Nuggets also confirmed. Denver will conduct an “extensive” search for a head coach after the season, the statement also indicates.
“I want to sincerely thank Brian for his time with our organization,” Connelly said. “You won’t find a better guy than Brian and he is one of the brightest basketball minds I’ve ever been around. Unfortunately things didn’t go as we hoped, but we know with his basketball acumen that he has a very bright future ahead of him.”
11:40am: Hunt will indeed be the interim coach, and he’ll fill that role for the balance of the season, a source tells TNT’s David Aldridge (Twitter link). Hunt, a holdover from George Karl‘s staff, has been an assistant in Denver since 2010/11. He was previously an assistant coach with the Cavs, Lakers, and Rockets, and it was Houston that gave him his start as a video coordinator in the 1990s.
11:36am: Assistant Melvin Hunt is the front-runner to assume the job on an interim basis, but that’s not set in stone, according to Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports (Twitter link). Denver plays tonight against the Bucks.
11:23am: The Nuggets are letting go of coach Brian Shaw, a source tells Chris Dempsey of The Denver Post. Dempsey indicates that the move took place this morning, though the team has yet to make an official announcement. Denver has dropped 17 of its last 19 games amid roster turnover at the deadline. Shaw insisted Monday that his team’s “1, 2, 3 … six weeks!” chant during Friday’s game wasn’t a reference to the time left in the season but instead to the number of weeks since the team’s last home win. Either way, it wasn’t a positive omen for the coach. It’s not immediately clear who will replace him.
GM Tim Connelly said nearly a month ago that the team had no plans of firing Shaw before season’s end, but it appears as though the team’s continued losing has changed that stance. The second-year head coach, who turns 49 in a few weeks, has been publicly critical of his players this season, one in which the Nuggets had hoped the return of several who’d missed time last year with injury would boost the club into contention for a playoff berth.
Shaw was reportedly making about $2MM a year in the second year of a three-year deal he signed when the Nuggets hired him in the summer of 2013. The pact includes an option for a fourth year, presumably belonging to the team.
The coach’s job security seemed to take a negative turn earlier this season after the Nuggets had stiff-armed a pursuit from Knicks team president Phil Jackson, who previously employed Shaw as an assistant with the Lakers. Speculation that Shaw was in danger began in November amid a 2-7 start, but a five-game winning streak brought the team back to .500. The Nuggets haven’t seen the break-even point since they were 9-9 in December, and even that wouldn’t have put the Nuggets in line for a playoff spot in the rugged Western Conference.
Shaw tried unconventional methods this season, doing away with shootarounds and even rapping pregame personnel reports, as Steve Bulpett of the Boston Herald noted. Still, it wasn’t enough amid a season in which the Nuggets current roster has only Will Barton and Jameer Nelson to show for a series of trades in which the team relinquished Timofey Mozgov, Arron Afflalo, Nate Robinson, JaVale McGee and Alonzo Gee. It appears Shaw will finish his Nuggets tenure at a combined 56-85 for this season and last.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
Mavs Re-Sign Bernard James For Season
The Mavericks have re-signed Bernard James to a contract that covers the balance of the season, as Earl K. Sneed of Mavs.com tweets and as the team announced via press release. The news is no surprise, since Mavs owner Mark Cuban said even before the club’s second 10-day contract with James was official that he would eventually sign him for the rest of the season. That second 10-day pact expired Monday. Neither the team nor Sneed indicate that it’s a multiyear pact, which suggests that it doesn’t contain any non-guaranteed salary for next season as such contracts often do.
The move locks Dallas into 15 contracts that run until at least season’s end, so the team would have to eat one of them to make another signing. So, that likely precludes any lingering chance that Jermaine O’Neal would join the team, and the Mavs don’t appear likely to end up with JaVale McGee, either.
Of course, Dallas didn’t mind taking the full hit for James’ guaranteed full-season minimum salary when the Mavs waived him at the end of the preseason to make room for Charlie Villanueva, who was then on a non-guaranteed pact. Still, James, a 30-year-old former Air Force Air Force staff sergeant, filled a prominent role for the banged-up Mavs on his 10-day deals, averaging 4.4 points and 4.4 rebounds in 17.4 minutes per game across five appearances, two of them starts. That’s significantly more minutes a night than the Happy Walters client saw in either of his first two seasons in the NBA, both of which were with the Mavs.
Heat Re-Sign Henry Walker To Second 10-Day
TUESDAY, 11:35am: The deal is official, the team announced via press release.
MONDAY, 5:29pm: Walker confirmed that he’s signing another 10-day deal, as he informed reporters, including Jason Lieser of the Palm Beach Post (Twitter link).
12:01pm: The Heat and Henry Walker have reached agreement on a second 10-day contract, as Shams Charania of RealGM reports (Twitter link), and as a source confirms to Hoops Rumors. His first 10-day deal with the team is up at the end of today. Miami has been carrying Walker as well as Michael Beasley on 10-day contracts that occupy what would otherwise be the team’s only two open roster spots.
It’s no shock to see the Heat keep the 27-year-old Walker around after he started and played 26 minutes in Saturday’s game. He’s averaged 11.8 points in 27.8 minutes per game in his four appearances with Miami, his first NBA action since the 2011/12 season. That’s slightly more playing time than he’d seen with the Heat’s D-League affiliate, for whom he’d averaged 27.7 MPG in 17 games earlier this season.
A decision of greater consequence looms regarding another deal between Walker and the Heat, since players can only sign two 10-day deals with any one team during a single season. Miami would have to re-sign the Mike Naiditch client through at least the end of the season next time around.