Southwest Notes: Lee, Dwight, Dirk, Davis
- No teams see Dwight Howard as a plan A for free agency this summer, according to Bleacher Report’s Ric Bucher (video link). Howard would prefer to re-sign with the Rockets, but he finds the prospect of a return to the Magic intriguing, as Bucher reported last week.
- Dirk Nowitzki reiterated that the idea of playing 20 seasons in the NBA appeals to him in an appearance Sunday on ESPN Radio’s “NBA Insiders” show, echoing comments he made in December, as Marc Stein of ESPN.com relays. The 37-year-old who’s in his 18th season in the league addressed his future as it relates to the Mavericks last week.
- The premature end of Anthony Davis‘ season and his lack of progress this year serve as reminders that it’s still uncertain whether he’ll fulfill his potential as a superstar, argues Moke Hamilton of Basketball Insiders. A five-year extension with the Pelicans will kick in for Davis next year, so questions about Davis inexorably become questions about New Orleans. Still, Davis said he’s played with a torn labrum in his shoulder for the past three seasons, so it’s fair to wonder if he’ll improve markedly when fully healthy.
Pistons Sign Lorenzo Brown To Second 10-Day
The Pistons have signed point guard Lorenzo Brown to a second 10-day contract, the team announced via press release. His initial 10-day pact expired overnight. The latest deal costs $55,722 and covers five games, against the Thunder, Mavericks, Bulls, Heat and Magic. Detroit is a game up in the loss column on Chicago for the final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference.
The first 10-day contract was essentially an insurance policy for the team, coach/executive Stan Van Gundy conceded, as Reggie Jackson nursed a virus and Spencer Dinwiddie dealt with a deep bone bruise in his ankle. Neither Jackson nor Dinwiddie currently appear on the CBSSports.com injury report, and fellow point guard Steve Blake is also healthy, but the Pistons are nonetheless keeping Brown in their 15th roster spot for the time being.
Brown has yet to appear in a game with Detroit. He averaged 2.5 points in 7.6 minutes per game across eight appearances on a pair of 10-day contracts with the Suns earlier this year. The 25-year-old who was the 52nd pick in the 2013 draft has spent most of the season with the Pistons D-League team. Detroit is plenty familiar with him not just from his D-League experience but also from his 2014 preseason stint on the Pistons NBA roster.
Boise State’s James Webb III To Declare For Draft
Boise State junior combo forward James Webb III will enter this year’s draft, league sources told Shams Charania of The Vertical. Webb won’t immediately hire an agent, retaining his ability to pull out by the May 25th deadline to keep his college eligibility, though he has plans to bring on an agent at some point before the draft, Charania hears. Webb is a fringe contender to become a second-round pick, ranking 69th in Chad Ford’s ESPN Insider listings and 81st on Jonathan Givony’s DraftExpress board.
Webb averaged 15.8 points and an impressive 9.1 rebounds in 30.5 minutes per game, but his 3-point shooting declined markedly from the 40.9% rate of accuracy he displayed as a sophomore. He shot just 24.8% from behind the arc this season, attempting 3.5 per contest. The 6’9″ Webb is 22 and will turn 23 in August, so he’s old for an underclassman. NBA teams typically prefer younger prospects.
Boise State won 20 games but lost in the first round of the Mountain West Conference tournament and didn’t take part in further postseason play. Webb, the conference’s leading per-game rebounder, delivered perhaps his best performance with a 24-point, 18-rebound effort January 20th against San Jose State. His stock surged during his college career, as he wasn’t among the top 100 Recruiting Services Index prospects coming out of high school in 2012. He spent his freshman year at a community college and redshirted as a sophomore after transferring.
Tim Quarterman To Enter Draft
LSU junior combo guard Tim Quarterman will enter this year’s draft and hire an agent, league sources tell Shams Charania of The Vertical. Underclassmen can retain their college eligibility if they pull out of the draft by May 25th, but not if they hire agents, as Quarterman apparently plans to do. It’s debatable whether the 6’6″ 21-year-old will be drafted at all, as he’s just the 66th-best prospect in Chad Ford’s ESPN Insider rankings and No. 75 with Jonathan Givony of DraftExpress.
Some of Quarterman’s numbers regressed this season amid a disappointing year for LSU, which failed to capitalize on the presence of elite prospect Ben Simmons, a prime contender to become the No. 1 overall pick. Quarterman’s scoring dipped from 11.5 points per game last season to 11.2 this year, and his assists per game declined from 4.0 to 3.6 as he went in and out of the starting lineup. Still, he significantly curtailed his turnovers, going from 2.4 to 1.6 per game, and he improved his 3-point shooting, knocking down 34.3% after hitting just 31.3% in 2014/15.
Quarterman’s final regular season game in college showed his promise, as he scored 23 points against Kentucky, but he ended with a six-point dud against Texas A&M in the SEC Tournament, and LSU, with a 19-14 record, declined to participate in further postseason play. His draft stock is essentially representative of where he stood coming out of high school in 2013, when he was No. 74 in the Recruiting Services Consensus Index.
Pelicans Sign Tim Frazier For Rest Of Season
SATURDAY, 2:07pm: The signing is official, the team announced via press release.
FRIDAY, 12:48pm: The Pelicans will sign Tim Frazier to a contract that runs through season’s end, GM Dell Demps told reporters, including Scott Kushner of The New Orleans Advocate (Twitter link). Today is the last day of Frazier’s 10-day contract, and the plan is for the team to re-sign Frazier on Saturday, The Advocate’s Brett Dawson relays (on Twitter). Frazier joined the Pelicans on a hardship exception and is one of 17 players on the roster, including Jordan Hamilton, who signed a 10-day contract today. The league normally hands out hardships in 10-day intervals, which would seemingly prevent the team from signing Frazier for the rest of the season unless it offloads other players first, but with five New Orleans players out for the balance of 2015/16, it appears the league has seen fit to bend its policy.
Frazier has delivered a strong performance for the depleted Pelicans, averaging 14.6 points, 4.8 assists and 4.0 rebounds in 26.0 minutes per game. His 3.2 turnovers per contest are disconcerting, but it’s tough to quibble with the numbers the second-year pro has put up in his brief time with New Orleans since inking the 10-day contract March 16th. The 25-year-old point guard didn’t have the same sort of opportunities with Portland earlier this season, when he saw just 7.8 minutes a night, but Frazier showed glimpses of his capabilities last year, when he averaged 5.5 assists and 2.3 turnovers in 21.7 minutes per game across 11 total appearances for the Blazers and Sixers.
Anthony Davis, Eric Gordon, Tyreke Evans, Quincy Pondexter and Bryce Dejean-Jones are the Pelicans expected to miss the rest of the season, while Norris Cole, Jrue Holiday and Ryan Anderson have also been dealing with injuries, according to the CBSSports.com injury report. Toney Douglas has been starting at the point with Frazier backing him up.
The Pelicans still have portions of their mid-level and biannual exceptions remaining, so it’s unclear what Frazier will make. Frazier would see at least $94,448, the prorated minimum salary, if he formally signs Saturday.
Top Bloggers: Jake Pavorsky On The Sixers
Anyone can have a blog about an NBA team, but some set themselves apart from the rest with the dedication and valuable insight they bring to their craft. We’ll be sharing some knowledge from these dialed-in writers on Hoops Rumors with a feature called Top Bloggers. As with The Beat, our ongoing series of interviews with NBA beat writers, it’s part of an effort to bring Hoops Rumors readers ever closer to the pulse of the teams they follow. Last time, we spoke about the Warriors with Nate Parham, who is the managing editor of SB Nation’s Golden State of Mind. Click here to see the entire Top Bloggers series.
Next up is Jake Pavorsky, the managing editor of SB Nation’s Liberty Ballers, a Sixers blog. You can follow Jake on Twitter at @JakePavorsky. Click here to check out his stories.
Northwest Notes: Leonard, Durant, Gallinari
Meyers Leonard plans to re-sign with the Trail Blazers as a restricted free agent this summer, observes Jason Quick of Comcast Sports Northwest. Soon-to-be free agents more often than not say they intend to return to their incumbent teams, but Leonard also plans to rehabilitate his season-ending dislocated left shoulder with the Blazers medical staff, as Quick also points out. The injury is expected to keep him out six to eight months, which threatens his availability for the start of next season. The 2016/17 regular season begins in seven months. “It just hurts because I feel like I could help this team win,’’ Leonard said. “I feel like I can be a big piece of what we can do.” Quick examines the close bond Leonard feels with Damian Lillard, a fellow 2012 lottery pick who signed a five-year extension last summer, when Leonard bet on himself and turned down what Quick heard was a considerable extension offer. The scribe guesses that the big man will command a new contract in the neighborhood of $44MM over four years (Twitter link). See more from the Northwest Division:
- University of Connecticut coach Kevin Ollie, a former teammate of Kevin Durant and a rumored candidate for the Thunder coaching vacancy that Billy Donovan filled last year, believes it’ll take a major effort for any team to pry Durant away from Oklahoma City in free agency this year, as Ollie tells Raul Barrigon of HoopsHype. Ollie describes Durant and Russell Westbrook as two of his best friends. “I know he’s going to make a decision with his heart,” Ollie said of Durant. “I know he’s gonna do that, choose the best situation for his family, the best position to win a championship. And OKC has a great team, I know he loves Russell Westbrook, I know he loves playing in front of the Thunder fans, so it’s going to take a team to do a great recruiting job to get him away from OKC.”
- Christopher Dempsey of The Denver Post thinks the Nuggets aren’t quite as opposed to the idea of trading Danilo Gallinari as they are with Emmanuel Mudiay and Nikola Jokic, but the team still envisions Gallinari as a driving force on a team with a legitimate shot at the playoffs next season, as Dempsey writes in a mailbag column.
- The Thunder has assigned Josh Huestis to the D-League, the team announced. It’s the 14th time the team has sent the No. 29 pick from 2014 to the D-League this season.
Timberwolves To Retain GM Milt Newton
Timberwolves GM Milt Newton will be in charge of the draft and free agency for the team this summer, owner Glen Taylor said today on “The Chad Hartman Show” on WCCO-AM, according to Darren Wolfson of 1500 ESPN Twin Cities (Twitter links). Newton hadn’t previously been assured of remaining the team’s top basketball executive beyond this season after inheriting the role this past fall upon the death of president of basketball operations Flip Saunders. Taylor also said that it’s unlikely he’ll complete a deal with Grizzlies part-owner Steve Kaplan, who was to purchase a 30% share of the Wolves and perhaps eventually succeed Taylor as controlling owner. Kaplan, who’d have to sell his stake in the Grizzlies to buy into the Wolves, has reportedly met resistance from primary Grizzlies owner Robert Pera.
Newton and coach Sam Mitchell have essentially been on one-season trials since Saunders’ death, as Jon Krawczynski of The Associated Press noted in a recent interview with Hoops Rumors. The fate of Mitchell’s job remains undecided, but it appears Newton is safe for now. Minnesota has had a largely quiet season on the personnel front outside of buyouts with Anthony Bennett, Kevin Martin and Andre Miller. The team didn’t make a trade. The offseason ahead figures to be pivotal, however. Minnesota, which has the last two No. 1 overall picks on its roster, is in line for another top-five selection, as our Reverse Standings show.
How much say Kaplan would have had about whether to retain Newton and Mitchell was one of the issues that he and Taylor were sorting through as they tried to finalize a deal on the ownership share, but Taylor had been preparing to make those decisions on his own as of earlier this month, as Jerry Zgoda of the Star Tribune wrote then. Taylor, 74, has said that he won’t sell the team to anyone who’d move it out of Minnesota, and it appeared as though Kaplan was on board with the franchise staying put, so the dissolution of their negotiations throws the franchise’s long-term future into some doubt. Taylor said it looks like it’ll take years for Kaplan to resolve his situation in Memphis, as Wolfson notes.
Dwight Eyes Magic Return But Prefers Rockets
Dwight Howard would prefer to re-sign with the Rockets this summer, but the Magic have heard that he’d entertain the idea of returning to Orlando, league sources told Bleacher Report’s Ric Bucher for a video report (Twitter link). Howard is expected to turn down a player option worth about $23.282MM to seek a maximum salary deal that would pay him some $30MM next season. Previous reports have indicated his interest in the Bucks and Knicks.
A return to Orlando, where Howard spent the first eight seasons of his career and made his only Finals appearance, has seemed far-fetched ever since the team dealt him to the Lakers in August 2012. Magic GM Rob Hennigan was in his first offseason on the job when he traded Howard away, ending an acrimonious saga that dragged on over the final months of Howard’s tenure in Orlando. The Magic, with only mathematical hopes of a postseason berth this year, have yet to make the playoffs since.
Howard’s future plans have long been difficult to pin down. USA Today’s Sam Amick suggested earlier this week that the Rockets were merely a fallback option for the former All-Star, and Houston engaged in well-publicized trade talks with several teams about him before last month’s deadline. The 30-year-old former No. 1 overall pick was in the midst of changing agents while the trade talk was going on, dumping Dan Fegan for Perry Rogers, the representative for fellow ex-Magic center Shaquille O’Neal.
The Rockets were reportedly in touch with the Mavericks, Bulls, Hawks, Celtics, Hornets, Heat, Bucks and Raptors about Howard as they engaged teams about their interest in him, but Houston found the market underwhelming. Howard is averaging 14.3 points and 8.8 shot attempts per game, his lowest numbers in either category since the 2004/05 season, when he was a 19-year-old rookie with the Magic.
Dirk Nowitzki Plans To Opt In With Mavs
2:13pm: MacMahon posted a YouTube video of Nowitzki’s comments today to reporters, and it includes a direct explanation of the comments he made Thursday on the “Ben and Skin Show” on KRLD-FM.
“If I’m not mistaken, the question was, if we’re going through a rebuilding phase, is what they asked me yesterday, and obviously I want to compete,” Nowitzki said. “I want to compete at the highest level. I always want to make the playoffs, and even more. So, if that’s what the Mavs are going to do is rebuild, then, you know, well, we’ll just have to wait and see.”
1:27pm: Dirk Nowitzki plans to pick up his nearly $8.7MM player option for next season to return to the Mavericks, as he said to reporters, including Tim MacMahon of ESPNDallas.com (Twitter link). Nowitzki added that he’s envisioned playing the rest of his career with the Mavs ever since they won the 2011 title, but he doesn’t want to be part of a rebuilding effort, MacMahon tweets. The former MVP deflected a question in a recent radio interview about whether he’d leave the Mavs if they went into rebuilding, not making a definitive statement one way or another. However, it appears that he’ll be in a Dallas uniform through at least next season, the last on a discounted three-year contract he signed in 2014.
“I always said I wanted to play those three years to the end,” Nowitzki said.
Nowitzki told USA Today’s Sam Amick in November that he planned to “ride this contract out,” presumably a signal that he would opt in. He said in the same interview that he’s not sure whether he’ll retire after next season, but he hinted at sticking around longer when he spoke to MacMahon in a subsequent chat, saying he values the idea of playing 20 years with the Mavericks. This season is Nowitzki’s 18th in the NBA, all of them with Dallas.
Mavs coach Rick Carlisle recently spoke about Nowitzki’s loyalty to the organization, which became abundantly clear when he signed his existing contract, worth only $25MM total over three seasons, when he could have held out for significantly more. The idea that Nowitzki sees rebuilding as anathema ostensibly leaves the door open for him to leave Dallas at some point, but his willingness to make financial sacrifices means the Mavs have an easier financial path to surrounding him with top-flight talent, making it less likely they rebuild. Dallas would have as little as about $37.7MM on the books for next season against a salary cap of between $90MM and $95MM if Nowitzki opts in, though that doesn’t count any salary for Chandler Parsons, who’s expected to opt out, or Deron Williams, who has a player option worth roughly $5.6MM.
Nowitzki remains highly productive, leading the team with 18.8 points per game. His 38.6% 3-point percentage is right in line with his career 38.3% rate of accuracy.