Atlantic Notes: Hinkie, Wroten, Larranaga, Clarke
Sixers GM Sam Hinkie is neither wonderful nor terrible, and the team would be unwise to cut ties with him completely in the wake of the marginalization of his role, opines Marcus Hayes of the Philadelphia Daily News. His autonomy is gone in the wake of the team’s hiring of Jerry Colangelo as chairman of basketball operations, but Hinkie, through his collection of draft assets and other promising young talent, is an asset himself, Hayes argues. Hinkie has said he isn’t worried about his job security, even though the Sixers are reportedly considering a move that would further reduce his role.
See more from the Atlantic Division:
- Tony Wroten‘s minimum-salary pact with the Knicks is non-guaranteed for next season, but a $25K partial guarantee kicks in if he’s still under contract at the end of October 1st, reports Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders (Twitter link). That partial guarantee would increase to $125K if he sticks through opening night and jump to $345K if he makes it through December 15th, Pincus also shows.
- Georgia Tech has reached out to Celtics assistant Jay Larranaga about the school’s head coaching job, reports Jeff Goodman of ESPN.com. The well-respected Larranaga interviewed for the Sixers job three years ago and has drawn mention as a potential candidate for other NBA openings since. Mark Murphy of the Boston Herald reported last year that Larranaga wouldn’t leave the Celtics for a college job, but it’s unclear if that’s still his stance.
- Coty Clarke has returned to the D-League affiliate of the Celtics following the expiration of his second 10-day contract with Boston’s NBA club, reports Chris Reichert of Upside & Motor (Twitter link).
Central Notes: LeBron, Love, Carter-Williams, Bulls
The Cavs are confident LeBron James won’t leave in free agency again, but they understand that at least a slight chance exists that he would if they once more come up short in the postseason, writes Zach Lowe of ESPN.com. James “lashed out” at his teammates during the players-only meeting that followed the firing of David Blatt, sources told Lowe, and many in the Cavs brass have kept a nervous eye on the signs of discontent that James has shown on the court. The four-time MVP has the power to press for changes. Lowe confirms that the Cavs and Celtics spoke about Kevin Love before last month’s trade deadline but hears the Celtics made a lowball offer. The ESPN scribe believes chances are strong that Cleveland will trade Love if the team doesn’t deliver in the playoffs, underscoring the unusual level of concern surrounding a team poised to grab the top seed in the Eastern Conference.
See more from the Central Division:
- It’s a key summer for the development Michael Carter-Williams, Bucks coach Jason Kidd argues, but Kidd maintains his faith in the former Rookie of the Year, as Charles F. Gardner of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel details. Carter-Williams, who’s out for the season with a torn labrum in his left hip, will be eligible to sign a rookie scale extension from July through October. “Michael is able to guard the point,” Kidd said. “Giannis [Antetokounmpo] isn’t going to guard the point. You’ve got to have a small on the floor. With Michael being able to work on his jump shot and become consistent, it only makes us better.”
- Bulls GM Gar Forman and executive VP of basketball operations John Paxson know they need to change the roster this summer, and owner Jerry Reinsdorf seems inclined to empower them to do so, writes Nick Friedell of ESPNChicago.com. Still, Friedell takes Forman and Paxson to task for failing to see the fissures in this group of players last year and for a coaching change that hasn’t panned out. The Bulls, who held a team meeting Sunday, have lost four in a row and are two games in the loss column behind the Pistons for the last playoff spot in the Eastern Conference.
- Cavs GM David Griffin is at fault for failing to put someone in the locker room who can hold LeBron accountable, at least to a degree, but the superstar is ultimately worth all the angst, contends TNT’s David Aldridge in his Morning Tip column for NBA.com.
West Virginia PF Devin Williams To Enter Draft
West Virginia junior power forward Devin Williams will enter this year’s NBA draft, the school announced. The statement doesn’t make it entirely clear whether Williams intends to hire an agent right away, but sources told Jon Rothstein of CBSSports.com that he plans to do so (Twitter link). That means he won’t be able to withdraw from the draft before the May 25th deadline and return to college ball. It’s a risky decision for the 6’9″ 21-year-old, since he’s just the 94th-best prospect in Chad Ford’s ESPN Insider rankings. Jonathan Givony of DraftExpress has him outside the top 100, simply listing him as the 35th-best junior.
Williams does his best work on the boards, having pulled down an impressive 9.5 in just 25.4 minutes per game this season, the top per-game rate in the Big 12. He averaged 13.3 points a night but isn’t a floor-stretcher at all, having missed the only 3-point attempt he took during his college career. He does have a solid midrange game, according to Ford, and he led the Big 12 in defensive rating this year, according to Sports Reference.
The stoutly built Williams helped the Mountaineers to a No. 6 ranking in the Associated Press poll at one point this year, but West Virginia’s season ended with a first-round upset loss to No. 14 seed Stephen F. Austin in the NCAA Tournament, despite 17 rebounds from Williams, one off his season high. Williams was coming off a career-high 31 points against Kansas in the Big 12 championship game. He steadily improved throughout his college career after finishing high school at No. 55 in the Recruiting Services Consensus Index.
And-Ones: Hinrich, Rubio, Leuer, Draft
Kirk Hinrich says he’s enjoying his time with the Hawks, but the trade that sent him to Atlanta from the Bulls last month took him from his family, and they’ll be a consideration as the 35-year-old decides whether to retire this summer, observes K.C. Johnson of the Chicago Tribune. Hinrich’s contract expires at season’s end. “I would love to keep playing if the situation was ideal,” Hinrich said. “At this point, I have to think about my family as well.” The 13th-year veteran’s chances of an extended stay in Atlanta don’t appear too strong, as he’s a third-stringer and has appeared in only seven games since the February 18th trade.
See more from around the NBA:
- Ricky Rubio acknowledged that the Timberwolves had trade talks about him last month, but he’s confident the team isn’t going to ship him out, as he said in an appearance on the “Tot Gira” show on Catalunya Radio in Spain (transcription via Gigantes del Basket; translation via HoopsHype). Rubio, under contract through the 2018/19 season, was linked in trade deadline rumors to the Bucks and, less prominently, the Knicks.
- Jon Leuer‘s playing time on the Suns this season has been wildly inconsistent, but he’s put up the best numbers of his career, and interim coach Earl Watson is pushing the soon-to-be free agent to fulfill the potential he sees in him, as Paul Coro of the Arizona Republic details. “I’m tough on Jon because I think the world of him.” Watson said. “His skill is unique. Our biggest challenge with Jon, and it was direct, was we need to be tougher, more aggressive in the paint, more aggressive rebounding. Go out in the post and just lose yourself to changing the game defensively.
- South Florida freshman point guard Jahmal McMurray will test the draft waters, the school announced, indicating that he won’t immediately hire an agent. Thus, he’ll retain his college eligibility in case he decides to withdraw before the May 25th deadline to do so. McMurray is a long-shot prospect, falling outside the rankings that both Chad Ford of ESPN.com and Jonathan Givony of DraftExpress compile.
Atlantic Notes: Colangelo, Rambis, Galloway, Clarke
- Kristaps Porzingis has broken out of his slump, as Fred Kerber of the New York Post examines, and the numbers show he’s putting up essentially the same sort of production under Knicks interim coach Kurt Rambis as he did under the fired Derek Fisher, notes Ian Begley of ESPNNewYork.com. That dismisses one of the arguments against the team removing the interim tag from Rambis’ title, Begley suggests.
- The Knicks have reportedly given up on the idea of Langston Galloway as a point guard, but Rambis insists the team is still high on the soon-to-be free agent, Newsday’s Al Iannazzone relays. New York can make him a restricted free agent with a qualifying offer of about $1.18MM. “We like his defense, we like his ability to organize and execute our offense,” Rambis said. “We just continue to challenge him to broaden his game . . . He’s just not playing at his best right now.”
- A versatile forward is what the Celtics probably want if they’re to fill their roster vacancy, coach Brad Stevens said today, according to Adam Himmelsbach of The Boston Globe (Twitter link). Coty Clarke, whom the team has elected not to re-sign following the expiration of his second 10-day contract, would ostensibly fit that bill, but Boston prefers the flexibility of an open roster spot over another deal for him, wary of the possibility that an injury will create a need at another position, Himmelsbach wrote this weekend. Any new deal for Clarke would have to cover the rest of the season and the playoffs.
DeAndre’ Bembry Enters Draft
St. Joseph’s junior small forward DeAndre’ Bembry has declared for the draft and hired an agent, as he said in a statement to Dick Jerardi of the Philadelphia Daily News. It’s unclear which representative the 21-year-old has chosen, but signing with any agent disqualifies him from returning to college ball. Bembry is a strong NBA prospect, coming in 23rd in Chad Ford’s ESPN Insider rankings and 35th with Jonathan Givony of DraftExpress.
Bembry had a decorated career at St. Joseph’s, as Jerardi details, coming away with Atlantic 10 Player of the Year honors this season. He scored a season-high 30 points in the A-10 championship game and had 16 points and 12 rebounds in a five-point loss to West Region top seed Oregon in the second round of the NCAA Tournament.
Ford praises his defense and passing in addition to his scoring, but his outside shooting raises a red flag. He nailed just 26.6% of his 3-point looks this season, a disconcerting black mark in a year in which he averaged 17.4 points, 7.8 rebounds and 4.5 assists per game. The 6’6″ Bembry also shot just 65.7% from the free-throw line. He nonetheless improved his stock markedly while at St. Joe’s, as he wasn’t among the top 100 in the Recruiting Services Consensus Index coming out of high school in 2013.
Suns Want To Sign Bogdan Bogdanovic This Summer
The Suns are serious about signing draft-and-stash prospect Bogdan Bogdanovic for next season, reports international journalist David Pick (Twitter link). This summer will be the last that NBA’s rookie scale would apply to the shooting guard whom the Suns picked 27th overall in 2014. Delaying a signing until the summer of 2017 or later would give the sides more latitude to work out mutually acceptable terms, but it could be more costly for Phoenix, so it’s no surprise to see the team intent on making a deal happen this year.
The 23-year-old native of Serbia has averaged 10.7 points in 27.3 minutes per game for Turkey’s Fenerbahce Ulker in Euroleague action this season, with 14.8 points in 26.3 minutes per contest in domestic league play. Most encouragingly, he’s hit 45.2% of his 3-point attempts for Fenerbahce overall.
Phoenix already has the sharpshooting Devin Booker in its backcourt along with Eric Bledsoe and Brandon Knight, but the Suns are just 20-53, in part because of injuries, and they could use an injection of talent in just about any form. The Suns are poised to enter the draft lottery in the third position, as our reverse standings show, giving them a 15.6% shot at the No. 1 pick.
A rookie scale contract for Bogdanovic would pay $1,196,040 next season if the Suns signed him for the standard 120% of scale. However, the buyout in his pact with Fenerbahce is reportedly 1 million euros, the equivalent of about $1.12MM. Phoenix can pay only $650K without the buyout affecting his NBA contract, so the sides will have to get creative. The Suns can structure their deal with Bogdanovic so he gets only $797,360, equal to 80% of scale, and add as much as that same amount on top of the $650K they’re otherwise permitted to pay toward the buyout.
Bogdanovic is not to be confused with Bojan Bogdanovic of the Nets, a 26-year-old from Herzegovina who’s in his second NBA season.
Wade Baldwin To Enter Draft
First-round prospect Wade Baldwin will enter this year’s draft and hire an agent, sources told Jon Rothstein of CBSSports.com (Twitter link). The sophomore point guard from Vanderbilt will be ineligible to return to college ball once he signs with an agent, though it’s not surprising that he would commit to this year’s field. Baldwin is the 16th-best prospect on Jonathan Givony’s DraftExpress list and No. 22 with Chad Ford of ESPN.com.
Ford suggests Baldwin could also play two-guard in the NBA, but he’s only 6’3″. He defends well, Ford adds, and that will help offset somewhat underwhelming offensive numbers. He notched 14.1 points, 5.2 assists and 2.8 turnovers this past season for a talented Vanderbilt team that didn’t quite live up to expectations. The Commodores won just 19 games and lost in an NCAA First Four play-in game to Wichita State on a night when Baldwin scored only nine points.
Still, Baldwin had his moments, including a 19-point, nine-assist, six-rebound game against Mississippi on February 6th. He’s a strong 3-point shooter, nailing 40.6% of his looks from behind the arc this season and 42.2% for his college career. He turns 20 on Tuesday, and his two years at Vanderbilt have been beneficial for his stock, since he wasn’t in the Recruiting Services Consensus Index top 100 coming out of high school.
Cheick Diallo To Test Draft Waters
Kansas freshman forward/center Cheick Diallo will declare for this year’s NBA draft but hold off on hiring an agent, a source told Jon Rothstein of CBSSports.com (Twitter link). He’ll be able to withdraw until May 25th as long as he doesn’t have an agent. The 6’9″ Diallo was a lottery prospect at the beginning of the season but is an early second-round candidate at this point, coming in 36th in Chad Ford’s ESPN Insider rankings and 39th with Jonathan Givony of DraftExpress. Still, some NBA executives believe he has a shot to go in the first-round, according to Shams Charania of The Vertical.
Diallo didn’t play until December thanks to an eligibility battle with the NCAA, and his minutes were sparing once he did suit up. He posted 3.0 points and 2.5 rebounds in just 7.5 minutes per game across 27 appearances, never topping the 13 points he scored in his debut against Loyola of Maryland. The 19-year-old played in only one of the Jayhawks’ four NCAA Tournament games, though he was productive in the seven minutes he saw against Austin Peay in the first round, scoring nine points on 4 of 5 shooting.
The native of Mali intrigues with his length, athleticism, defense and rebounding, but his offensive game needs work, as Ford writes in his profile. NBA teams will no doubt relish the chance to work up close with him during predraft workouts and the combine, given the lack of exposure he got at Kansas. Diallo is not entirely an unknown, however. He was the MVP of the McDonald’s All-American Game last year and was sixth in the Recruiting Services Consensus Index. He attended high school in New York.
Timeline: Injuries Force Grizzlies Roster Turmoil
March Madness usually applies to college basketball, but it’s also fitting for the Grizzlies this year. Injuries have prompted a whirlwind of changes, and the number of players on the team has fluctuated from 14 to a whopping 18, three above the normal regular season limit. Perhaps most eye-catching among the team’s many moves was the March 10th decision to cut ties with Mario Chalmers, who had torn his Achilles tendon the night before. Chalmers was on an expiring contract and obviously isn’t going to play again this season, so the only net effect is that Memphis forfeited its Bird rights with the point guard. Still, the Chalmers release speaks to the depth of the problems the Grizzlies have faced as they’ve scrambled to tread water without Marc Gasol, Mike Conley and many others.
The Grizzlies are still strong bets for the playoffs because of the work they did before the injuries hit. Memphis has a six-game lead for a playoff spot with nine games to play, and the team is up four games in the loss column on the Trail Blazers for fifth place in the Western Conference. The Grizzlies have seen 27 different players appear in a game for them this season, tying the record set by the 1996/97 Mavericks, as Marc Stein of ESPN.com points out (Twitter links). Memphis is also poised to become the first playoff team in the history of NBA to have fielded more than two dozen players.
Gasol, Conley, Matt Barnes, Zach Randolph, Tony Allen, Vince Carter, Lance Stephenson, P.J. Hairston, Brandan Wright, Chris Andersen and Jordan Adams have all missed games for the Grizzlies in March, forcing GM Chris Wallace and Dave Joerger to work overtime. Here’s a timeline of the team’s roster moves:
- March 2nd — Waived James Ennis. Signed Ryan Hollins to a minimum-salary contract for the rest of the season. Roster at 15.
- March 10th — Waived Mario Chalmers. Roster at 14.
- March 11th — Signed Briante Weber to a 10-day contract. Roster at 15. (Conflicting information raised debate about whether the team signed Weber on March 9th or March 11th, but he played in the team’s game on March 19th, which would have been impossible if he had signed March 9th, since he didn’t sign a second 10-day contract. RealGM, which initially showed the transaction happening on March 9th, now shows it as having taken place on March 11th.
- March 12th — Signed Ray McCallum to a 10-day contract. Signed Alex Stepheson to a 10-day contract. Both moves came via the hardship provision, which allows the team to exceed the 15-man roster limit. Roster at 17.
- March 16th — Signed Xavier Munford to a 10-day contract via hardship. Roster at 18.
- March 20th — Last day for Weber’s 10-day contract. Roster at 17 at day’s end.
- March 21st — Signed Jordan Farmar to a 10-day contract via hardship. Last day on the 10-day contracts for McCallum and Stepheson. Roster at 16 at day’s end.
- March 22nd — Signed McCallum to a second 10-day contract via hardship. Roster at 17.
- March 25th — Last day for Munford’s 10-day contract. Roster at 16 at day’s end.
- March 27th — Signed Munford to a second 10-day contract via hardship. Roster at 17.