Clippers To Waive Jared Cunningham
The Clippers are expected to waive Jared Cunningham, a source tells Dan Woike of the Orange County Register (Twitter link). The move would come as no surprise, as Arash Markazi of ESPNLosAngeles.com wrote last month that the team was likely to cut ties with the former first-round pick at some point in the coming weeks. Cunningham’s contract is non-guaranteed, but it would become fully guaranteed for the rest of the season if the Clippers fail to waive him by 4:00pm Central on Wednesday. The team is less than $1MM shy of its hard cap, so dropping Cunningham before his minimum salary locks in would give the club a modicum of additional flexibility. The Clips are on the hook for the prorated portion of Cunningham’s salary of more than $915K that he’s already earned, but they’d get to take his entire salary off their books if another team claimed him off waivers.
The 23-year-old shooting guard made the team out of training camp, but he’s failed to garner much playing time, accruing just 1.8 points in 4.7 minutes per game across 19 appearances. Still, Cunningham has played in nearly as many NBA games this season as he did in his first two seasons after becoming the 24th overall pick in 2012.
The team’s deal with Cunningham is its only non-guaranteed pact, as our roster counts show, so releasing him allows the club to maintain flexibility for a signing later in the season. The Clippers may also utilize 10-day contracts, as they did with three players last season, but since the team is already over the tax line and nearing that hard cap, even the slightest of investments come at a higher cost.
Nets Waive Brandon Davies
The Nets have waived recent trade acquisition Brandon Davies, the team announced via press release. Davies has a non-guaranteed salary, so the Nets won’t be on the hook for any additional money for the second-year power forward. However, the prorated salary he earned thus far this season will stick on Brooklyn’s books unless another team claims him off waivers, though any team that would do so would have to guarantee his entire minimum salary of more than $816K for the rest of the season.
Davies made it into seven games after last month’s trade that brought him to the Nets in exchange for Andrei Kirilenko. The 23-year-old averaged 2.3 points in 6.3 minutes per contest, much lower numbers than he put up during his time with the Sixers, who put him on the floor for 19.0 MPG prior to the trade this year. Davies, a Bill Duffy client, was a favorite of Philly coach Brett Brown, who expressed his frustration with the decision the team’s front office made to part with him.
The Nets are left with 14 players, only 11 of whom have full guarantees on their contracts. Cory Jefferson, Jerome Jordan and Darius Morris are the three remaining Nets without fully guaranteed pacts, but it would be surprising if the team waived any of them this week, as Tim Bontemps of the New York Post believes (Twitter link). Wednesday is the last day that teams can waive players with non-guaranteed salary without guaranteeing that salary for the year.
How Monday’s Trade Worked Financially
The teams involved in Monday’s three-way swap had divergent motives, as is so often the case in trades. The Thunder secured a scorer in Dion Waiters to help their title push. The Cavs, another title contender, gave up that scorer to shore up their defense. The Knicks took part in the deal seemingly with next year in mind, receiving only minimum-salary players in return for a pair of key perimeter players.
Each team accomplished those ends using different financial means. The simplest transaction was the Thunder’s. They possessed a $4.15MM trade exception as a vestige of Thabo Sefolosha, as our list of outstanding trade exceptions shows. GM Sam Presti created that exception when he convinced the Hawks to make their signing of Sefolosha this past summer a sign-and-trade rather than an outright signing. It was a move that appeared to have no real benefit to the Hawks, other than to create goodwill, and it’s clear after Monday’s trade that Presti owes Atlanta a favor. Waiters, who makes $4.062MM this season, fits neatly within that Sefolosha exception. Oklahoma City didn’t relinquish any players other than the minimum-salaried Lance Thomas to make the deal happen, as the team would have had to do if not for the exception.
The Knicks had a trio of exceptions to make the trade work on their end, but those weren’t exceptions that team president Phil Jackson or GM Steve Mills created. Instead, they used three different instances of the minimum-salary exception to absorb Thomas, Lou Amundson and Alex Kirk. The minimum-salary exception is a renewable resource of sorts. A capped-out team can use it as many times as it wants to sign players, trade for them, or claim them off waivers, as long as that team didn’t trigger a hard cap. The Knicks have no hard cap, and so they were free to employ the exception as they saw fit. In so doing, they’re allowed to create two new trade exceptions that are significantly more valuable than the minimum-salary exception. Offloading J.R. Smith lets New York come away with a trade exception equivalent to his $5,982,375 salary and another trade exception equal to the $2,616,975 salary for Iman Shumpert.
There’s a different salary figure for Smith as it pertains to the Cavs. Smith has a 15% trade kicker on his contract. Now that he’s been traded, that provides him with a bonus equivalent to 15% of the remaining value of his deal, excluding next year’s salary, since Smith has a player option for next season, and player options don’t count for trade kickers. Monday was the 70th day of the NBA’s 170-day regular season, so the prorated bonus works out to about $533K, making his new salary for this season come to about $6.516MM. Smith inked his deal after the existing collective bargaining agreement came into being, so the Knicks have to pay the bonus that Smith receives for having been traded. However, the salary for Smith that was on the books prior to the trade is the one that counts as outgoing salary in the trade from New York’s perspective, limiting the value of the new trade exception the Knicks can create. Conversely, Cleveland had to make the salaries match based on Smith’s new, bonus-enhanced salary.
The combined salaries of Smith and Shumpert were too much for the Cavs to absorb if they only gave up Waiters, Amundson and Kirk and didn’t use any exceptions. Cleveland has been holding onto a $5,285,816 trade exception left over from Keith Bogans since September, but the team recently gained another exception of similar value. The league granted the Cavs a disabled player exception worth $4,852,273 to compensate for the season-ending injury to Anderson Varejao. That disabled player exception expires March 10th. The Bogans trade exception doesn’t expire until September 27th. So, it makes sense that Cavs GM David Griffin used the asset that would disappear first, and that’s what they’ve done here, as Jason Lloyd of the Akron Beacon Journal confirms they’ve used the Varejao disabled player exception (Twitter link).
That exception wouldn’t work for Smith, since Smith’s not on an expiring contract, and disabled player exceptions only work for deals that don’t extend beyond a single season. Smith’s salary, both before and after the trade kicker, was too large for either the Varejao disabled player exception or the Bogans trade exception, anyway. Shumpert’s deal, set to come off the books at season’s end, fits the bill in terms of length, and his $2,616,975 salary works in terms of value. That leaves Cleveland to match Smith’s trade-kicker-enhanced salary, a task the team can accomplish by combining Waiters’ $4.062MM pay with Kirk’s $507,336 minimum salary and Amundson’s $915,243 cap hold. Smith’s salary is within 125% plus $100K of the combined salaries for Waiters, Kirk and Amundson, so it’s kosher under the salary matching rules for taxpaying teams, which apply to the Cavs since they slipped over the tax line in the deal.
Amundson’s salary is more than $1.3MM this year as an eight-year veteran, but the Cavs were only responsible for the equivalent of the two-year veteran’s minimum salary of $915,243, since he’s on a one-year minimum-salary contract. The league picks up the bill for the rest. For the most part, the league’s help with veteran’s minimum contracts benefits teams, but in this case, it combines with Smith’s trade kicker to prevent the Cavs from creating a trade exception equivalent to Kirk’s salary. If Smith didn’t have the trade kicker, or if Cleveland could plug Amundson’s full salary into the matching math, Amundson and Waiters alone would be enough to match for Smith, allowing the team to come up with an exception for Kirk. Still, trade exceptions equivalent to the rookie minimum salary are rarely useful, so the Cavs don’t miss out on too much.
Teams have choices when it comes to creating and using trade exceptions, so aside from the news that Lloyd reported, there’s no confirmation that the paths I’ve explained here are the ones the teams took. However, these are the most logical scenarios, and in many cases, as with the Thunder, they represent the only way Monday’s transaction could have taken place within the bounds of the collective bargaining agreement. The move leaves plenty of loose ends, especially as far as the Cavs and Thunder are concerned, since it appears to have brought both teams above the $76.829MM tax threshold. Teams aren’t subject to the tax unless they’re above that line on the final day of the regular season, so that suggests more moves are on their way for Cleveland and Oklahoma City.
The Knicks remain above the tax, but they, too, have set the seeds for more trades. The removal of the threat that Smith would exercise his nearly $6.4MM player option for next season gives the team additional flexibility, and the ability to create two new trade exceptions allows the team added means to put that flexibility to use.
Larry Coon’s Salary Cap FAQ and the Basketball Insiders salary pages were used in the creation of this post.
Fallout From Cavs-Thunder-Knicks Trade
Monday night’s three-team trade brought about significant changes to a title contender in each conference and was seemingly a signal that the Knicks are focused more on the future than the present. We’ll look at the ripple effects of the move as they’re felt in Cleveland, Oklahoma City, and New York.
- The Knicks plan to waive two of the three players they acquired in the trade, and Lance Thomas is the most likely among that trio to be kept, tweets Ian Begley of ESPNNewYork.com. The Knicks would look to fill the open roster spots that would create, coach Derek Fisher said, according to Newsday’s Al Iannazzone. “I don’t think this in any way signals the end of our transition process,” Fisher said. “I think our front office will continue to look at what we can do to replace a couple of these guys, but also how we’re going to build our roster going forward in the short term and the long term. I think Phil [Jackson] is continuing to look at how we transition as we change the culture of the New York Knicks.”
- The Cavs kept LeBron James informed about the move, and he understands it as a transaction necessary for the team, as Chris Haynes of the Northeast Ohio Media Group hears. The relationship between James and J.R. Smith, who’s spent summers training with James in the past, is solid, Haynes also reports.
- Kevin Durant is excited about the addition of Dion Waiters to the Thunder and said that he doesn’t think the shooting guard has felt “wanted” the past couple of years, notes Anthony Slater of The Oklahoman (Twitter link). Durant is intent on changing that. “I’m not saying he’s James [Harden]‘s replacement, we’re far past that,” Durant said. “But yeah, he can play, can come off the bench for us and score and make plays. He’s a really good player, man. A lot of people take him for granted, I think. Because he’s been around and you hear different things about him that’s not true. But he can play basketball. So he just needs to come out here and be himself, be aggressive and make plays.”
Hoops Rumors Glossary: 10-Day Contracts
Monday marks the renewal of the annual tradition of the ultimate on-the-job tryout in professional sports. The 10-day contract has been the foot in the door for several players who’ve gone on to lengthy, successful NBA careers, like Anthony Mason, Bruce Bowen, Raja Bell, Kurt Rambis, Howard Eisley and several others. More recently, C.J. Watson saw his first NBA action on a pair of 10-day contracts with the Warriors in 2008, and he’s since blossomed into one of the league’s most reliable backup point guards. He’s putting up career highs in points (11.0) and assists (4.2) per game this season, the last on a two-year, $4.093MM contract he signed with the Pacers.
Ten-day deals also help veterans make comebacks. Chris Andersen languished in free agency for sixth months after the Nuggets used the amnesty clause to get rid of him, but a pair of 10-day contracts with the Heat in 2013 kick-started a revival for the Birdman. He wound up signing for the rest of the season that year and played a key role on Miami’s championship team. Andersen reprised that role on a guaranteed minimum-salary contract last season, and that led the Heat to re-sign him this past summer to a two-year, $10.375MM deal.
Similarly, former first-round pick Gerald Green had been out of the league for three years when he made a splash during his pair of 10-day deals with the Nets in 2011/12. That earned him a contract for the rest of the season, and he parlayed 12.9 points and 48.1% shooting in 25.2 minutes per game for the Nets into a three-year, $10.5MM contract with the Pacers the following summer. Indiana traded him to Phoenix a year later, and he’s making a strong case to see even more on his next deal as he serves as a vital part of the Suns’ attack.
Still, the 10-day is usually a fleeting glimpse at NBA life for players on pro basketball’s fringe. Only a small fraction of last year’s 10-day signees remain in the league, as I noted earlier this season. Hunter Atkins of The New York Times followed the player whom Green replaced on the Nets roster, chronicling what turned out to be only a brief passage through the league for 10-day signee Andre Emmett. Lee Jenkins of Sports Illustrated took a similarly revealing look at the life of Zabian Dowdell as he tried to make the most of a 10-day with the Suns four years ago. Dowdell has been out of the NBA since that season.
Teams can sign a player to as many as two 10-day contracts before committing to him for the rest of the season, or, as in many cases, turning him away. Ten-day deals are almost always for a pro-rated portion of the minimum salary, though they can be for more. A minimum-salary 10-day contract for a rookie this season is worth $29,843. A one-year veteran would make $48,028. A minimum-salary 10-day deal with any veteran of two or more seasons would represent a cost of $53,838 to the team. Veterans of greater than two seasons would see more than that, but the league would pay the extra freight. However, teams gain no financial advantage if they eschew 10-day contracts with more experienced players to sign rookies or one-year veterans to 10-day deals in an effort to avoid the tax, as those deals count the same as the ones for two-year veterans when the league calculates a team’s salary for tax purposes.
Teams have to pay slightly more if they sign a player to a 10-day contract and they have fewer than three games on their schedule during that 10-day period. In those cases, the length of the 10-day contract is extended so that it covers three games for the team. It’s rare that any team would have such a light schedule, since most play at least three games a week, but the rule could come into play with this year’s new weeklong All-Star break. So, if a team plays only three games in a 12 day stretch, the player must receive at least 12/170ths of the minimum salary, rather than 10/170ths. Regardless of the length of a 10-day contract, the salary is guaranteed, even though the 10-day signee’s place on the roster isn’t assured. Teams may terminate 10-day contracts before they come to term, and that happened on several occasions last season, such as when the Cavs ended their 10-day contract with Shane Edwards a day early so they could sign Seth Curry to a 10-day deal instead. Players who see their 10-day contracts end early don’t go on waivers, so they become free agents immediately.
A team like the Raptors, who are perilously close to the tax threshold, may be wary of bringing anybody aboard via 10-day contract. Other teams may make liberal use of 10-day deals. The Bulls, who played a game of limbo to duck the tax line last season, signed three players to 10-day contracts, as many as any team other than the Sixers, who employed an NBA-high five 10-day signees in 2013/14.
Usually, teams only have one player on a 10-day contract at a time, though they’re allowed to carry as many 10-day contracts as they have players on the inactive list. If a team has 13 players on the active list, it can carry one more 10-day contract than the number of inactive players it has, meaning that if a team has a full 15-man roster, as many as three of those players may be on 10-day deals.
Veterans whom NBA teams have recently released, like Gal Mekel, Jorge Gutierrez and Shannon Brown, figure to draw consideration for 10-day contracts, as should notable players who’ve gone unsigned this season, like Kenyon Martin, Rashard Lewis and Ronnie Brewer. D-League standouts like Curry, Brady Heslip and Quincy Miller could all find paths to the NBA via 10-day contracts, and hopefuls from the D-League will make their cases to scouts at the five-day D-League showcase, which runs from January 15th-19th.
Note: This is a Hoops Rumors Glossary entry. Our glossary posts will explain specific rules relating to trades, free agency, or other aspects of the NBA’s Collective Bargaining Agreement. Larry Coon’s Salary Cap FAQ was used in the creation of this post.
Versions of this post were initially published on January 5th, 2013 and January 4th, 2014.
Jazz Waive Toure’ Murry
11:16am: The move is official, the team announced.
9:21am: The Jazz will waive Toure’ Murry, a league source tells Chris Herring of The Wall Street Journal (Twitter link). Presumably, the move will be to clear room on the roster for Elijah Millsap, whom the team is set to sign. Murry inked a two-year, $2MM deal over the summer, but only $250K of it was guaranteed. However, he’s already earned more than that partial guarantee, so the Jazz won’t be responsible for any additional salary to Murry should they waive him by 4pm Central on Wednesday, when NBA teams must waive non-guaranteed contracts or guarantee them for the remainder of the season.
Murry, who’s seen only one minute in one game so far for Utah in the regular season, has spent about three weeks’ worth of time in the D-League. The 6’5″ guard saw somewhat more action for the Knicks last season, putting up 2.7 points in 7.3 minutes per game across 51 appearances. That experience clearly impressed the Jazz, who saw fit to give the undrafted talent out of Wichita State his partially guaranteed deal for more than the minimum, but that’s failed to translate into playing time for him in Utah. His name was in trade rumors related to Andrei Kirilenko before the Nets instead dealt Kirilenko to the Sixers.
Utah has injury troubles in the backcourt with Alec Burks gone for the season and Patrick Christopher nursing a dislocated right kneecap that has him out indefinitely. Rodney Hood missed Saturday’s game with a sore left heel. It’s somewhat surprising that the Jazz apparently plan to cut ties with another guard just as they’re set to bring aboard Millsap, a swingman, but with Trey Burke, Dante Exum, Gordon Hayward and Ian Clark available to play guard, Utah doesn’t have a particularly dire need.
Eric Moreland To Miss Rest Of Season
Kings forward/center Eric Moreland will undergo surgery to repair a labral tear in his left shoulder and miss the rest of the season, reports Alex Kennedy of Basketball Insiders (Twitter links). The rookie first injured the shoulder while in college at Oregon State but had been playing through it this season, Kennedy adds. Moreland appeared in just three games for Sacramento and seven contests for the team’s D-League affiliate.
The 23-year-old, whose rookie minimum salary is partially guaranteed for $200K, is set to be on a de facto non-guaranteed contract by Wednesday, the final day on which teams can waive players who don’t have fully guaranteed deals without guaranteeing their salaries for the rest of the season. Moreland will have earned in excess of $200K if he remains on the roster through Saturday. The Kings, who already have an open roster spot, would need to keep Moreland on the roster to receive a disabled player exception. That exception, which would be worth $253,668, wouldn’t be a sizable financial asset, but it would give the team a financial advantage to sign a player later this season to a contract more lucrative than the minimum salary, which prorates, could provide.
The news isn’t much of a blow to the Kings, who seem primarily focused on a long-shot playoff run rather than player development. Moreland is on a three-year contract that’s non-guaranteed in 2015/16 and 2016/17, so the Kings can cheaply keep him on the roster for the long term.
Atlantic Notes: Rondo, Nets, Young
Rajon Rondo will return to Boston as a Celtics opponent for the first time Friday, and he hasn’t quickly forgotten his more than eight seasons in green, as he made clear today to reporters, including Earl K. Sneed of Mavs.com (All Twitter links). Rondo thanked co-owner Wyc Grousbeck and president of basketball operations Danny Ainge for the chance to have been a Celtic, calling the C’s “one of the best franchises in sports history.”
“Hopefully I won’t be too emotional. I’ll try not to cry a little bit,” Rondo said, as Sneed also tweets. “I’m very excited to go back. Those fans are amazing.”
The threat of Rondo’s impending free agency at season’s end surely played into Ainge’s decision to trade him to Dallas, but Rondo’s comments seem to indicate that he was in no hurry to leave Boston. Here’s more from around the Atlantic Division:
- The Nets are discussing numerous deals with several teams, but it’s not certain that Brooklyn will trade Deron Williams, Brook Lopez or Joe Johnson, league sources tell Robert Windrem of NetsDaily. A lot of the proposals the Nets are talking about would add to the payroll, at least for the short term, the NetsDaily scribe also hears.
- The Celtics have sent James Young to the D-League, the team announced. It’s the seventh D-League assignment of the season already for this year’s No. 17 overall pick.
- The Atlantic Division has the worst combined winning percentage of any division in the league, but it boasts two of the 10 underrated offseason acquisitions on Alex Kennedy’s list for Basketball Insiders. Raptors trade steal Lou Williams and Sixers draft find K.J. McDaniels are giving their teams much more than expected.
Poll: NBA’s Biggest Non-LeBron Story Of 2014
Any time that the best player in the game changes teams, that’s usually going to be the top story of the year on Hoops Rumors. That’s even more true when that player turns the heartbreak of four years prior into a heartwarming return home. The choice LeBron James made to leave the Heat and go back to the Cavaliers, his original NBA team, had wide-reaching consequences that changed the balance of power in the league. The Heat, finalists all four years that James was there, have only the eighth-best record in the Eastern Conference this season even though Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh are still in Miami. The Cavs became title favorites in their stead, and the arrival of James helped spur their acquisition of Kevin Love, whom Timberwolves president of basketball operations Flip Saunders insists would still be in Minnesota had it not been for Cleveland’s offer.
The 2014/15 season hasn’t gone as planned for James and his new team, however. The Cavs are just 18-13, and rumors have begun to dog coach David Blatt just six months after Cleveland made the unprecedented hiring of a coach tested only in overseas competition. James figures to be at the center of some of 2015’s top stories, too.
Still, there were several other attention-grabbing headlines on Hoops Rumors this past year, and while a few, like the Love trade, were somehow tied to LeBron, most of them stand on their own. Here’s a look at some of the most noteworthy events of 2014:
- The Clippers and the Donald Sterling saga: Accusations of racism had swirled around Clippers owner Donald Sterling for decades, but none of them stuck until an audio recording became public in the midst of the team’s playoff run this spring. New commissioner Adam Silver acted swiftly, banning the league’s longest-tenured owner for life, even as he still legally clung to the team. Wife Shelley Sterling helped cut the final tie between her husband and the Clippers, agreeing to a record $2 billion sale to former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, and a judge later cleared the way for the transfer to become official.
- The Hawks, Bruce Levenson, and Danny Ferry: Racism again became an issue later in the year when Hawks controlling owner Bruce Levenson announced he would sell his stake in the team amid regret over a racially charged email that he sent in 2012. Soon, racially insensitive remarks from GM Danny Ferry became public, and for the first time, someone from the basketball operations side of a team was swept up in the controversy. Ferry took an indefinite leave of absence, which he still remains on as the team’s sale process forges ahead slowly.
- Carmelo Anthony re-signs with the Knicks: Had it not been for LeBron, Carmelo Anthony would have had the spotlight of free agency mostly to himself. Just one year removed from a scoring title, the star of the Knicks visited with the Bulls, the Mavs, the Rockets and the Lakers before finally inking a massive deal worth more than $124MM with the Knicks and new team president Phil Jackson. As large as the deal is, it’s still over $5MM less valuable than it could have been if he’d signed for the max.
- The NBA’s new TV deal: Soon, more players will be cashing in like Anthony did. The NBA and its television partners agreed to new contracts that will give the league $24 billion over nine years. It’s a nearly three-fold increase on the TV revenues from the last arrangement, and the players are entitled to roughly half of that money. It’ll come by way of a profoundly higher salary cap, though just how swiftly the cap will escalate is still a matter of negotiation between Silver and new union executive director Michele Roberts.
- The Kevin Love trade: It’s true that this move is intricately connected to LeBron, since the conditions that set it in motion wouldn’t have been in place if LeBron hadn’t returned to Cleveland. Yet the deal is still a massive story on its own, given that nearly half the league was trying to acquire Love, who’d made it clear he wasn’t long for Minnesota. The Cavs gave up quite a package in the three-team deal that also involved the Sixers, relinquishing 2014 No. 1 overall pick Andrew Wiggins as well as 2013 top draft choice Anthony Bennett.
- The Rajon Rondo trade: The Celtics were one of the teams that tried and failed to deal for Love, and that shortcoming helped lead to another star changing hands. Celtics president of basketball operations Danny Ainge dodged Rajon Rondo rumors for more than a year before finally sending the point guard to the Mavericks. The Celtics came away with a return that little resembles the kind of haul that Minnesota received for Love, aside from the $12,909,090 trade exception that the move allowed Boston to create.
- Paul George‘s injury and the implosion of the Pacers: The sudden decline of the Pacers is even more profound than that of the Heat, who beat them in the last two Eastern Conference Finals. Indiana’s core first started to crumble when the Pacers played hardball with Lance Stephenson, failing to make him an offer to his liking before watching him sign with the Hornets for salaries similar to what they had put on the table. Indiana’s season then came crashing apart when Paul George broke his leg in gruesome fashion during a Team USA exhibition game that was promptly stopped. The injury is likely to keep him out all season. The Pacers, last year’s No. 1 seed in the East, are 11-21.
- Pistons waive Josh Smith: A late entry to the conversation, the Pistons pulled a stunner last week when they released Josh Smith rather than accept trade offers that weren’t to their liking or continue to allow him to take up space on the roster. Detroit coach/executive Stan Van Gundy used the stretch provision to take the $13.5MM that Smith was set to receive in each of the next two seasons and spread it over the next five years instead, and set-off rights will likely allow the Pistons further financial cushion. Still, it’s a stunning move for the team’s prize free agent acquisition of 2013.
So, which non-LeBron story was the most compelling of the year? Let us know, and feel free to mention any write-in candidates you might support in the comments.
Jazz GM On Burks, Extension, Roster
The Jazz delivered some tough news Tuesday, announcing that Alec Burks will have left shoulder surgery and miss the rest of the season. That the team just two months ago signed Burks to a four-year extension worth $42MM plus incentives makes his absence even tougher to swallow. GM Dennis Lindsey spoke with reporters, including Aaron Falk of The Salt Lake Tribune, shortly after making the announcement, and Lindsey let the media in on his thoughts about the extension as well as what comes next for the team. The entire question-and-answer session that Falk shares is worth a look, but we’ll pass along Lindsey’s three most noteworthy comments here:
On whether the team knew about Burks’ shoulder issues when he signed his extension:
“Yeah. We knew because we knew about it during the draft. This is an [injury] that predated Alec and the Utah Jazz. … Really, I think as much as anything, the reason why he was so durable is a credit to Alec, [trainer Gary Briggs and strength coach Mark McKown] and all the pre-hab.”
On whether he’s disappointed that he signed Burks to the extension:
“I don’t think so. Every contract signing and certainly extension signing, our medical staff does a [thorough] review — X-rays, MRIs, physical examinations — and Alec, at that point in time, passed. So no disappointment because we don’t think this is going to impact his long-term playing career, either from a length standpoint or a quality standpoint. So we’re very comfortable with the decision that we made and the knowledge we had at that particular time.”
On whether the absence of Burks will prompt a roster move:
“So we have 15 [players] now. Some are partially guaranteed, some are non-guaranteed, so we do have some flexibility. We’re comfortable with where we’re at. Again, someone’s misfortune is another’s opportunity. Certainly Rodney [Hood] will get a lot of those minutes. We wanted to see Rodney as a two-guard so here’s a little bit of his opportunity. Last night, Dante [Exum] played a lot with Trey [Burke] and Dante’s certainly big enough to [handle] the position as well. And then there are some guys who haven’t received as much opportunity, Ian Clark, Toure’ Murry, Patrick Christopher, that we’ll be able to kick the tires [on] a little bit and take a look at. And as you can imagine, we’ll be evaluating what’s available to us. But frankly, [coach] Quin [Snyder]’s very comfortable with where we’re at and we’ll see how the young guys do.”