Atlantic Notes: Williams, Stephenson, Wiggins
The Knicks have the league’s worst record, but commissioner Adam Silver isn’t concerned about their lack of success on the court in the league’s largest market, even with the All-Star Game coming to Madison Square Garden, as Peter Botte of the New York Daily News details. The Nets will host part of the All-Star festivities, too, but they’re 16-23 and appear ready to hit the reset button. Here’s more on the struggling Atlantic Division, where only the Raptors are above .500:
- There’s apparently plenty of interest in Brook Lopez, but the Nets have had such trouble finding a taker for Deron Williams that one source tells Marc Stein of ESPN.com that the point guard will be staying put through the trade deadline.
- A source close to Lance Stephenson told Stefan Bondy of the New York Daily News a month ago that Stephenson wasn’t mentally prepared to play for his hometown Nets (Twitter link). The shooting guard would apparently like to play for Brooklyn at some point, but the Nets also reportedly have their doubts.
- The Raptors are listening to offers but not shopping, and while a minor move is conceivable, a significant change is highly unlikely, reports Cathal Kelly of The Globe and Mail. They remain poised to pursue Marc Gasol as they prepare to chase marquee big men this summer, and GM Masai Ujiri is studying what prompted Carmelo Anthony to re-sign with the Knicks this past summer to better understand the free agency process. The Raptors are already making plans for a run at Ontario native Andrew Wiggins, who can’t elect unrestricted free agency until 2019 at the earliest.
- Chris Forsberg of ESPNBoston.com analyzes the sum of the many moves of the Celtics, who since September have traded nine players and one second-round draft pick for 15 players and what’s likely to turn to out be nine second-rounders, Forsberg notes.
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Celtics Waive Nate Robinson In Buyout Deal
6:43pm: The Celtics have officially waived Robinson, the team has announced.
THURSDAY, 3:40pm: Boston has placed Robinson on waivers, according to Shams Charania of RealGM, though the team has yet to make any official announcement (Twitter link).
WEDNESDAY, 9:09am: The Celtics and trade acquisition Nate Robinson have completed a deal on a buyout that will allow the guard to hit free agency, reports Sam Amick of USA Today (Twitter link). Marc J. Spears of Yahoo! Sports reported that Boston intended to reach a buyout with Robinson soon after the swap. The guard is making nearly $2.107MM this season on an expiring contract, but it’s not immediately clear how much he’s giving up.
Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports suggested the Clippers as a possible suitor for Robinson should he clear waivers, noting that the Clips had spoken with the Nuggets about trading for Robinson before the Celtics traded for him. Brian Windhorst of ESPN.com identified the Cavs as a potential team in the mix for Robinson, too.
Boston has reportedly been trying to clear room on its roster for a pair of expiring contracts to accommodate the team’s deal to send Austin Rivers to the Clippers. The C’s have been carrying 15 players, so dropping Robinson would open up one spot, and dealing Rivers away would allow them to take back a pair of players.
The 30-year-old Robinson, who went to the 2010 Finals with the Celtics during his first stint with the team, wouldn’t have been a strong fit with the rebuilding program that’s since taken hold in Boston. He’s averaging career lows in points and minutes per game so far, though he’s played in 33 of Denver 37 games so far and started once in place of Ty Lawson.
Jazz Sign Elijah Millsap To Second 10-Day Deal
The Jazz have signed Elijah Millsap to a second 10-day contract, the team announced. The first one expired Wednesday night. Utah will have to make a decision about whether to keep the 27-year-old for the rest of the season or let him go once his newest deal expires, since NBA teams can only ink any one player to two 10-day deals per season. Still, it would be quite a surprise if the Jazz don’t keep him for the balance of 2014/15, as Jody Genessy of the Deseret News believes (Twitter link).
The Daniel Hazan client saw plenty of action during his first 10 days with Utah, averaging 5.6 points and 2.8 rebounds in 24.0 minutes per game across five contests. He’d been playing with the D-League affiliate of the Suns prior to joining the Jazz, and he was with the Bucks during the preseason. The younger brother of former Jazz forward Paul Millsap spoke with Zach Links of Hoops Rumors in September as he embarked on his quest to make an NBA roster.
The signing brings Utah’s roster back to 15 players. Fellow Jazz 10-day signee Elliot Williams is under his contract until the end of Friday.
And-Ones: Draft, Martin, Jazz, Nets, Europe
Jahlil Okafor‘s Duke team is faltering, but the center’s grip on the top spot in the 2015 draft isn’t any looser, as he tops the latest Big Board from Chris Mannix of SI.com and the updated top 100 prospect list from Jonathan Givony of DraftExpress. Ohio State combo guard D’Angelo Russell is up to No. 4 on Givony’s list, while Mannix has him at No. 8, still a leap from his No. 11 position in Mannix’s last rankings. Russell’s also in the top 10 in the latest Hoops Rumors Draft Prospect Power Rankings. Here’s more from around the NBA:
- Kenyon Martin went unsigned this season before he joined the Bucks on a 10-day contract last week, but he admits that his recovery from ankle surgery wouldn’t have allowed him to be ready for training camp this past fall, Newsday’s Al Iannazzone tweets.
- Jazz draft-and-stash prospect Ante Tomic still has aspirations of making the NBA, as he tells David Pick of Eurobasket.com (Twitter links). FC Barcelona Regal, his Spanish team, holds a team option for next season and “anything is possible,” Tomic said. The 27-year-old center was the 44th overall pick in the 2008 draft.
- Possible bidders for the Nets include former Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, investor David Bonderman and hedge fund manager David Einhorn, as Josh Kosman and Tim Bontemps of the New York Post hear, though it’s unclear if any of them are indeed poised to bid. Entertainment mogul David Geffen has been interested in the team in the past, an insider told Robert Windrem of Nets Daily.
- Commissioner Adam Silver envisions four teams in Europe some day, but he admits the league has a long way to go to get there, notes Sean Deveney of The Sporting News, who adds that the NBA seems to keep pushing the idea farther into the future.
- Magic coach Jacque Vaughn‘s job security appears to be in doubt, but Brian Schmitz of the Orlando Sentinel believes GM Rob Hennigan should be feeling the heat, too.
- Quincy Miller, whom the Clippers nearly signed a 10-day contract, Spurs camp cut JaMychal Green and one-year NBA veteran Seth Curry are among the potential NBA signees to watch at the D-League showcase, which begins today. Marc J. Spears of Yahoo! Sports look at those three and others who’ll be angling for NBA jobs.
Teams With Disabled Player Exceptions
Today is the last day for NBA teams to apply for disabled player exceptions to offset the loss of players who are likely to miss the rest of the season. The league granted five such exceptions this season, but it’s unlikely that any more are forthcoming, barring a major injury today. Eric Moreland is the only one among current NBA players expected to miss the balance of the season whose team is over the cap, which a team must be in order to receive an exception, and whose team hasn’t already received a disabled player exception for him. Still, he’s making the rookie minimum salary this season, so the exception, which would be worth half of that, wouldn’t give the Kings much more financial wherewithal than they already have.
The deadline to use disabled player exceptions isn’t until March 10th, so they’ll remain a factor on the market until then. Only one of the league’s five disabled player exceptions has been used so far. The Cavaliers took Iman Shumpert in via trade from the Knicks using the $4,852,273 disabled player exception they received for Anderson Varejao. Shumpert is making not quite $2.617MM this season, but even though the Cavs used little more than half of the exception, the rest of it is no longer available. Teams can only acquire a single player with a disabled player exception, unlike the trade exception, mid-level exception and biannual exception, which can be split into parts for multiple players. The only team that’s able to use a disabled player exception twice is the Lakers, and that’s only because they have two disabled player exceptions, one for Steve Nash and another for Julius Randle.
Below is a summary of the disabled player exceptions the NBA has granted this year, along with the amount they’re worth and the players for whom they were granted. Teams can use the exceptions to sign, trade for, or make a waiver claim of a player. Teams can use the value of the exception plus $100K to trade for a player, but they can’t exceed the amount of the exception if they’re signing someone or claiming a player off waivers. For more information on disabled player exceptions, check out our Hoops Rumors Glossary Entry.
- Pacers: Paul George ($5,305,000)
- Cavaliers: Anderson Varejao ($4,852,273) — USED: Iman Shumpert
- Lakers: Steve Nash ($4,850,500)
- Heat: Josh McRoberts ($2,652,500)
- Lakers: Julius Randle ($1,498,680)
The Basketball Insiders Salary pages were used in the creation of this post.
Clippers Sign Dahntay Jones To 10-Day Pact
5:20pm: The deal is official, the Clippers have announced.
8:32am: The Clippers have decided to sign Dahntay Jones to a 10-day contract instead of Darius Miller, reports Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports. Wojnarowski reported earlier that the Clips would sign Miller to a 10-day deal, but the team changed its mind, as the Yahoo! scribe writes in his latest dispatch. It’s simply a matter of the team liking Jones a bit better, tweets Dan Woike of the Orange County Register, and the 30 points that Jones put up Tuesday for the Fort Wayne Mad Ants of the D-League surely didn’t hurt.
Jones is expected to join the Clippers for tonight’s game against the Blazers, according to Woike (on Twitter), so unless the team is ready to formalize its deal to acquire Austin Rivers from the Celtics, it doesn’t appear as though the Jones signing is contingent on the completion of the trade. The Clippers already have an open roster spot to accommodate Jones.
The Jazz brought the 10-year veteran Jones to training camp this past fall, but they released him before the start of the regular season. The 34-year-old went without a deal last season, save for a preseason stint with the Bulls, and he last appeared in an NBA regular season game with the Hawks in 2012/13. He’s averaged 14.4 points in 29.3 minutes per game with 38.5% three-point shooting for the D-League Mad Ants this year.
Cavs Rumors: Thompson, Jackson, Love
The Cavs offered Tristan Thompson a four-year, $52MM extension this past fall before the October 31st deadline for rookie scale extensions passed, league sources told Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports. Opposing teams aren’t gearing up to make that rich of an offer to Thompson in restricted free agency this summer, Wojnarowski writes, adding that rival executives were expecting Thompson to sign an extension for between $10MM and $12MM a year. Here’s more on the Cavs, who’ve sunk beneath .500:
- Wojnarowski suggests in the same piece that the Cavs understand they have little choice but to turn to Mark Jackson if LeBron James won’t play for David Blatt. Cavs brass “wanted nothing to do” with hiring Jackson as a coach before James came back to Cleveland, Wojnarowski adds. Jackson and James are both clients of agent Rich Paul.
- Cavs players have frequently and openly spoken about the team’s coaching issues with players and other personnel from opposing teams, according to Brian Windhorst of ESPN.com.
- The Cavs indeed met with Kevin Love before their trade to acquire him from the Timberwolves was official, as Windhorst writes in the same piece, noting that if the two sides talked about any contractual terms during the visit, it would have violated league rules. Love said Tuesday that he plans to opt in for next season, a likely financial sacrifice.
Blazers, Clippers Interested In Wilson Chandler
WEDNESDAY, 1:36pm: The Blazers and Clippers are among many teams who have strong interest in acquiring Chandler, Dempsey reports, though coach Brian Shaw denies that the team is trying to trade either Chandler or Afflalo. Chandler says the Nuggets told him they wouldn’t trade him, Dempsey writes, echoing his earlier report, though the swingman doesn’t dismiss the possibility that the team would nonetheless deal him away. Shaw clarifies that while the team isn’t shopping anyone, the Nuggets won’t turn away offers of the sort that pried Mozgov loose. The Nuggets have been “flooded with inquiries” about nearly everyone on the team, Dempsey writes.
“I’d be willing to go out on a limb and say that anybody on our team and everybody on our team, if there were an offer that was too good to pass up, everybody would be expendable,” Shaw said. “If Phil Jackson came out of retirement and said he wanted to come coach the Denver Nuggets, I’m expendable. You know what I mean? It is what it is. We all have had to deal with it at some point in our careers. They’ll be fine.”
TUESDAY, 9:30am: The Nuggets are aggressively shopping Wilson Chandler in a future-focused pursuit of assets, TNT’s David Aldridge reports (Twitter link). It appears there’s plenty of interest from other teams in the eighth-year veteran, as Ramona Shelburne of ESPNLosAngeles.com reported Monday that the Nuggets were receiving numerous calls about Chandler as well as Arron Afflalo. Christopher Dempsey of The Denver Post also heard last month that the team had fielded multiple inquiries about Chandler, though he added that the Nuggets had told the 29-year-old that they preferred to keep him. That was before the team traded Timofey Mozgov last week in a deal that brought back two first-round picks.
The Thunder reportedly checked on Denver’s willingness to part with Chandler, according to a report from Chris Mannix of SI.com a month ago, though a trade last week may have changed the equation for Oklahoma City, too, since the Thunder have acquired Dion Waiters. Chandler wanted to play for the Pistons in the past, Vince Ellis of the Detroit Free Press tweets, though it’s unclear if that’s the case now. The swingman is making nearly $6.758MM this season, but next season’s salary of almost $7.172MM is only guaranteed for $2MM, putting him on an expiring contract of sorts.
Denver had been drawing closer to the realization that the playoffs are most likely out of reach, as Grantland’s Zach Lowe wrote last week, but the team has won four in a row. Still, the Nuggets are 17-20, three and a half games behind the Suns for eighth place in the Western Conference. A Chandler trade could help Denver escape mediocrity, as I wrote when I examined his trade candidacy.
Sixers Explore Michael Carter-Williams Trades
The Sixers have engaged in exploratory talks with several other teams over the past few weeks about trading Michael Carter-Williams, as Chad Ford of ESPN.com reports amid his reader chat. Some but not all among Sixers officials don’t view him as a long-term asset, according to Ford, who suggests that Philadelphia is holding out for a high return. Carter-Williams is making slighly more than $2.3MM this season in the second year of his rookie scale contract.
Ford reported this past May that the Sixers had considered trading the reigning Rookie of the Year, and Grantland’s Zach Lowe wrote that they made a hard push to do so around the draft. The Lakers wanted Carter-Williams and then-Sixer Thaddeus Young in return for the No. 7 pick and Steve Nash, though the Sixers rebuffed that proposal, as Ford wrote then. Sean Deveney of The Sporting News suggested the Lakers weren’t serious about that pursuit.
Scoring is down for the 23-year-old Carter-Williams this year after offseason shoulder surgery, and while his assists are up, so are his turnovers. Backup point guard Tony Wroten has continued to progress for Philadelphia, so much as to draw the rumored pursuit of the Clippers, so the Sixers have a an in-house replacement should they opt to deal Carter-Williams.