Hornets Active In Trade Discussion
6:33pm: Gerald Henderson has been very available for a few weeks, according to Sam Amick of USA Today (Twitter Link).
11:08am: Michael Kidd-Gilchrist is probably among those the Hornets would make off-limits as they speak with other teams, Lowe tweets.
10:08am: The Hornets have been aggressive in reaching out to other teams about potential trades, Grantland’s Zach Lowe writes. GM Rich Cho and company are seeking upgrades at the wing and power forward, according to Lowe. That would cover every position except the ones where Kemba Walker and Al Jefferson play, and they’re essentially the only players the team isn’t willing to discuss, Lowe hears. It’s unclear whether the Hornets have dangled Lance Stephenson, but few would be surprised if they did, as Lowe writes, noting that Charlotte can’t trade the newly signed shooting guard until two weeks from today.
Charlotte is off to a surprisingly poor 4-14 start, the same record through 18 games as the franchise put up in 2004/05, its very first season, as Michael Lee of The Washington Post points out. The Hornets were roundly expected to continue their ascent up the Eastern Conference standings after grabbing the No. 7 seed last season and signing Stephenson to a three-year, $27.405MM deal this past summer, but it hasn’t worked out so far.
Fellow offseason additions Marvin Williams, Brian Roberts and Jason Maxiell can’t be traded until later this month, either, as our register of trade-eligibility dates shows, and the same is true of Jannero Pargo, who re-signed with the club. Walker apparently isn’t under consideration for a trade, but even if he were, the Poison Pill Provision would make salary-matching difficult in any swap, thanks to Walker’s four-year, $48MM extension. The Hornets have exhausted their cap space and are without a trade exception, further erecting barriers to any deal.
And-Ones: Rookies, Nets, Cavs, Pelicans
The vaunted 2014 draft class hasn’t performed up to par quite yet, notes Sam Amico of Fox Sports Ohio. K.J. McDaniels of the Sixers is the third-leading rookie scorer, as Amico points out, but he’s averaging only 10.2 points per game and was the 32nd overall pick. There’s plenty of time for others to fulfill their promise, but this year’s crop of first-year players isn’t exactly revolutionizing the game. Here’s more from around the NBA as the league gets set to tip off a four-game night:
- Nets GM Billy King told reporters that he’s considering “tweaks” to the roster as he works the phones, but he offered only a “we’ll see” when asked whether the team’s core of Deron Williams, Brook Lopez and Joe Johnson was still viable. Devin Kharpertian of The Brooklyn Game has the details.
- Pelicans coach Monty Williams felt as though he’d given Darius Miller an opportunity to show what he can do after putting him in the starting lineup last week, but he admits that Patric Young still may have had the potential to help the team, observes Jimmy Smith of The Times-Picayune. The Pelicans waived both on Sunday.
- The Cavs have recalled Alex Kirk from the D-League, the team announced. The center had 16 points and six rebounds in 29 minutes for Cleveland’s affiliate Sunday on a one-day assignment.
Players Claimed Off Waivers
The Cavs claimed A.J. Price off waivers this past weekend, but the overwhelming majority of the players who hit NBA waivers go unclaimed during the two-day period that teams have to submit claims. What makes those players expendable for one team usually keeps others from grabbing them, be it inadequate performance, an unwieldy salary, or some combination of the two. Players whom teams waive chiefly for financial reasons are often picked up by other clubs who sign them to cheaper deals shortly after they hit free agency, as their new teams benefit from more team-friendly financial terms than a waiver claim would entail. Any player whom a team claims off waivers continues on his contract as though his old team had never waived him, so there’s often a financial disincentive for teams to submit claims.
Still, nine players have been claimed off waivers since the end of last season, counting Carlos Boozer, whom the Lakers received through amnesty waivers. Most were on minimum-salary contracts with little or no guaranteed money, as we detail in a look at each of those nine:
- Carlos Boozer (amnesty waivers): Bulls to Lakers — Teams can submit bids for only part of a player’s salary through amnesty waivers, unlike conventional waivers, and the Lakers took advantage. They wound up with Boozer at a fraction of his $16.8MM salary and will pay him just $3.251MM this season, the last that his contract covers. He’s receiving the rest from the Bulls as he racks up 13.1 points and 6.5 rebounds in 26.8 minutes per game for a depleted Lakers team.
- Earl Clark: Grizzlies to Rockets — The Rockets appear to have made the move solely to obtain Clark’s D-League rights, since Houston waived him just a few days after claiming his non-guaranteed deal. He’s putting up 28.8 PPG and 7.3 RPG for the Rockets D-League affiliate, but he’s reportedly poised to join the Lakers.
- Jarell Eddie: Hawks to Celtics — It’s tough to see just why the C’s claimed Eddie in the final week of the preseason only to waive him shortly thereafter. Unlike the Rockets and Clark, Boston didn’t keep Eddie’s D-League rights, and he’s playing for the Spurs affiliate instead. Regardless, Eddie’s deal was non-guaranteed, so the only cost to the Celtics was the $1K waiver fee.
- Willie Green: Clippers to Magic — The Clippers planned to re-sign Green after they waived him rather than guaranteeing his minimum salary, but the Magic, with plenty of cap space, didn’t mind picking up the tab for him, foiling L.A.’s plan.
- Jordan Hamilton: Raptors to Jazz — The Jazz absorbed a $25K partial guarantee to take on a player who’d performed well in camp for the Raptors, who didn’t have room to keep him into the regular season. Utah soon found it didn’t have much use for Hamilton, either, waiving him about a week later. He’s currently playing with the Grizzlies D-League affiliate.
- Joe Ingles: Clippers to Jazz — Utah has carved out a much greater role for its other waiver claim, though Ingles is only averaging 2.8 PPG in 18.2 MPG on his non-guaranteed minimum-salary contract. Still, the Clippers were stymied again, as they planned to re-sign Ingles after waiving him, just as with Green.
- Chris Johnson: Celtics to Sixers — Philadelphia afforded itself a low-risk opportunity to look at the swingman from Dayton, who’s not to be confused with the former LSU center by the same name who was in camp with the Heat. Johnson’s stint with the Sixers lasted only a month and a half, as Philly waived his non-guaranteed minimum-salary deal about two weeks into the regular season.
- Kendall Marshall: Lakers to Bucks — This was a case of one waiver claim leading to another. The Lakers had to let go of Marshall’s non-guaranteed minimum salary to clear the cap space necessary to finalize a few of their agreements after committing $3.251MM to claim Boozer. Milwaukee made the unusual move of guaranteeing Marshall’s salary for the season, even though he’s seeing only 13.0 MPG this year after averaging 8.8 assists per game in 29.0 MPG for the Lakers last season.
- A.J. Price: Pacers to Cavaliers — Price was impressive enough during his stint with the Pacers last month to convince the Cavs to reverse their decision from the first week of the season to sign Will Cherry and waive Price. Cleveland released Cherry to bring back Price this time around.
Sixers, Furkan Aldemir Agree To Four-Year Deal?
DECEMBER 1ST, 2:50pm: Galatasaray has agreed to let go of Aldemir, Raznatovic tweets (hat tip to Sportando’s Orazio Cauchi), adding that his client is set to come stateside as early as Tuesday. Raznatovic also makes reference to a signed document, presumably referring to the FIBA letter of clearance.
NOVEMBER 30TH, 3:00pm: Despite his Turkish club’s insistence on keeping him, Aldemir remains committed to the NBA and will travel to Philadelphia within the next week, a source tells Shams Charania of RealGM (via Twitter).
NOVEMBER 28TH, 7:52am: A source told Bob Cooney of the Philadelphia Daily News that the sides are perhaps weeks away from reaching any sort of agreement. That’s an odd development, considering all of the details that have been reported so far. Perhaps the source was referring to the time at which an official signing might take place, but that’s just my speculation. In any case, Cooney’s latest report jibes with the lack of clarity that Brown pointed to earlier this week.
TUESDAY, 8:09am: There is a team option on the deal in addition to the non-guaranteed salary involved, according to John Gonzalez of CSNPhilly.com. The deal is pending FIBA clearance, and while it’s expected to become official within the next few days, there’s a decent chance it takes as long as a week, Gonzalez writes. In any case, the NBA has filed a request for a FIBA letter of clearance, Raznatovic tweets (hat tip to Mark Porcaro of Secret Rival). The letter of clearance is a standard document that must be obtained whenever a player moves from a league in one country to another.
MONDAY, 6:14pm: Sixers coach Brett Brown cautioned that the team’s situation with Aldemir isn’t as clear-cut as the reports have made it seem, tweets Bob Cooney of the Philadelphia Daily News.
4:16pm: The final two seasons of the deal are non-guaranteed, according to Tom Moore of Calkins Media (on Twitter).
1:26pm: The Sixers and draft-and-stash prospect Furkan Aldemir have agreed to a four-year deal that features two guaranteed seasons, reports Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports (Twitter link). Wojnarowski adds that the final two seasons are team options, but since only one year may be an option season, it sounds like it’ll be non-guaranteed for at least year three. It’s possible that year four is both a team option and non-guaranteed. Misko Raznatovic, the agent for the 6’9″ power forward, told Cem Pelister of CNNTurk.com that his client had terminated his contract with Turkey’s Galatasaray and the 6’9″ power forward wrote on his Facebook page that he had opted to explore a future in the NBA, as we noted earlier. The Sixers, who obtained the NBA rights to Aldemir in the 2013 Royce White trade with the Rockets, must unload one of their 15 players before their deal with Aldemir can become official.
Aldemir does his best work on the boards, as evidenced by his 9.1 rebounds in 22.7 minutes per game in 11 contests so far this season for Galatasaray, which was reportedly behind on payments in the three-year, $5.3MM deal that Aldemir had signed in the offseason. The 23-year-old has played exclusively overseas since entering the draft in 2012, when the Clippers made him the 53rd overall pick before sending him to the Rockets the next day.
The deal marks one of the first attempts that Philadelphia has made to cash in on its store of overseas talent that includes the rights to No. 12 overall pick Dario Saric and two other 2014 draftees. The Sixers have plenty of cap room to have lavished Aldemir with more than the minimum salary, but it seems unlikely that it took a significant chunk of money to lure him, particularly given Philly’s willingness to guarantee the first two seasons of the deal. The Sixers have been carrying only eight players known to have fully guaranteed salary for this season, one in which they’ve lost their first 13 games in the midst of a radical rebuilding project.
Western Notes: Gasol, Parker, Nuggets
Marc Gasol becomes eligible for a veteran extension next week, though it’s unlikely he’ll sign one, since free agency would be a much more lucrative proposition. Regardless, Grizzlies GM Chris Wallace is vowing to retain his star center, as he tells Billy Witz of The New York Times.
“Speculation really is not a concern of mine,” Wallace said. “The whole free-agency period is a long way off, but what we’ve obviously made known to him is, the first priority of the organization is to keep him. He’s extremely important to us, and we’re going to get him re-signed one way or another, regardless of when that occurs.”
The team’s track record of keeping its core players and Gasol’s ties to Memphis fuel Wallace’s confidence, as Witz notes, and there’s more from his piece on the No. 4 man in our 2015 Free Agent Power Rankings amid the latest from the Western Conference:
- Just how strongly the team commits to winning will be the top consideration for Gasol as he decides whether to re-sign, as he tells Witz for the same piece. “That’s going to be huge for me,” Gasol said. “Because you’ve got to go to work every day and feel good about it, knowing that everyone is seeing the big picture, which is having the biggest chance to win a championship.”
- Faith in the front office is a key for Tony Parker, too, coming off a summer in which he signed a three-year max extension with the Spurs, observes Buck Harvey of the San Antonio Express-News. “Even though one day I’ll be without Timmy [Duncan] and Manu [Ginobili] and [Gregg Popovich],” Parker said, “we’re still going to try to compete and bring in good players and try to be a franchise that wins games . . . I trust the Spurs. I trust [GM] R.C. [Buford] and [owner] Peter [Holt], that we will still have a competitive team.”
- Trade acquisition Arron Afflalo and extension recipient Kenneth Faried allowed the offseason activity to affect their games during the slow start for the Nuggets, as Ty Lawson tells TNT’s David Aldridge, who writes amid his Morning Tip column for NBA.com. The point guard credits coach Brian Shaw for helping set Afflalo and Faried straight amid Denver’s sudden turnaround.
Offseason In Review: Golden State Warriors
Hoops Rumors is in the process of looking back at each team’s offseason, from the end of the playoffs in June right up until opening night. Trades, free agent signings, draft picks, contract extensions, option decisions, camp invitees, and more will be covered, as we examine the moves each franchise made over the last several months.
Signings
- Shaun Livingston: Three years, $16.631MM. Signed via mid-level exception. Third year is partially guaranteed for $3MM.
- Brandon Rush: Two years, $2.417MM. Signed via minimum-salary exception. Second year is player option.
- Leandro Barbosa: One year, $1.448MM. Signed via minimum-salary exception. Partially guaranteed for $150K.
- Justin Holiday: One year, $816K. Signed via minimum-salary exception. Partially guaranteed for $35K.
Extensions
- Klay Thompson: Four years, $68.979MM. If maximum salary for 2015/16 is less than $15.501MM, contract value will be amended downward accordingly.
Trades
- None
Waiver Claims
- None
Draft Picks
- None
Camp Invitees
- Aaron Craft
- Jason Kapono
- Sean Kilpatrick
- James Michael McAdoo
- Mitchell Watt
Departing Players
Rookie Contract Option Decisions
- Harrison Barnes (fourth year, $3,873,398) — Exercised
- Festus Ezeli (fourth year, $2,008,748) — Exercised
- Nemanja Nedovic (third year, $1,151,760) — Declined
For a team without draft picks, cap space, or any members of its starting five entering free agency, the Warriors sure made some critical and potentially franchise-altering decisions this past offseason. A controversial coaching change, a steadfast commitment to Klay Thompson in failed trade talks with the Timberwolves about Kevin Love, and a near-maximum extension for Thompson only seemed to dial up the pressure to challenge for the title.
The Warriors entered the playoffs in 2013 not having been to the postseason in six years and as an underdog in the first round against the 57-win Nuggets. They won that series and put a scare into the Spurs before succumbing in the next round, and since then, co-owner Joe Lacob’s expectations for the team have ratcheted up. Golden State won four more games in the regular season last year than it did the year before, but it didn’t improve its playoff seeding, and though the Warriors took the Clippers to seven games this past spring before falling in the first round without an injured Andrew Bogut, it didn’t save Mark Jackson‘s job. Jackson had presided over a rapid turnaround in his three seasons as Warriors coach, and he had forged a profound trust with his players, but he failed to get along with some of his assistant coaches and other key figures within the Warriors organization. He also reportedly made a play for other NBA head coaching jobs while still with Golden State. His ultimate shortcoming was in failing to convince Lacob that the team’s on-court performance and locker-room morale were strong enough to justify his continued employment, and the Warriors axed him.
That touched off a wide-ranging search for a replacement that at one point seemed to zero in on Stan Van Gundy, but by the time Golden State met with him, the Pistons had already spoken to him about the dual executive/coaching role he ultimately took on in Detroit. The Warriors were instead seeking a coach who would be just that and leave front office decision-making others. Somewhat curiously, they hired former Suns GM Steve Kerr, whose only experience is as an executive and not as a coach, though Kerr made it clear that he wanted to transition into coaching long before he hooked up with the Warriors, and he reiterated that after his hiring this year. Kerr agonized over choosing the Warriors instead of the Knicks, with whom he could have served under mentor Phil Jackson, but Kerr’s West Coast ties, and doubtlessly the vast gulf in talent between the Warriors and Knicks, proved too strong.
Kerr made it a point to win over Jackson supporters like Stephen Curry and others on the Warriors roster, and the team is off to a roaring start this season. Golden State’s 14-2 record also helps validate the team’s decision to keep Klay Thompson for this season and for the foreseeable future. There’s no guarantee that the Warriors would have wound up trading Thompson to the Wolves if they had been more willing to include him in proposals, particularly given how pleased Minnesota was with the package it received from the Cavs. The deal never would have been Love-for-Thompson straight up, since the salaries wouldn’t have matched, and a variety of other factors involving David Lee, Kevin Martin and Harrison Barnes complicated the discussions, as Tim Kawakami of the Bay Area News Group chronicled.
The inertia didn’t itself guarantee a long-term future together for Thompson and the Warriors, since the fast-rising former No. 11 overall pick was extension-eligible and agent Bill Duffy was going after the max. Lacob vowed this past spring to strike a deal with Thompson, though it wasn’t clear whether he was talking about an extension or a new pact in restricted free agency during the summer of 2015. The owner apparently resisted giving Thompson $15MM salaries, amounts that the max will almost certainly entail. Thompson held firm, and other teams reportedly sniffed around as the extension deadline drew near to see if the Warriors were willing to change course and trade the 24-year-old, but the sides ultimately struck agreement on a pact with an unusual structure.
Thompson will get the max for a player of his experience in the first year of his extension next season, as long as that max doesn’t exceed the $15.5MM that it’s projected to hit, as Grantland’s Zach Lowe reported. It’s a compromise of sorts for both sides, though there’s a strong chance it won’t have wound up costing Thompson a penny if the max doesn’t come in higher than thought. The Warriors appear to have made the more significant concession, especially since the Thompson extension gives them nearly $78.8MM in commitments for next season, including Brandon Rush‘s minimum-salary player option. Former second-round pick Draymond Green wasn’t eligible for an extension even though he was entering the final season of his rookie contract, so he’ll hit restricted free agency in the summer. He’s poised to merit a sizable raise that would make it difficult for the Warriors to avoid the luxury tax should they keep him.
The Warriors figure to have little capacity to spend on upgrades next summer, but they took advantage of the full mid-level exception this year, inking Shaun Livingston months after he finished his strongest campaign since his catastrophic knee injury in 2007. He’s not the player he was before he got hurt, when the Clippers made him the fourth overall pick in 2004, but he was a vital part of a revival for the Nets after they started slowly last season, as his unusual combination of 6’7″ height and ball-handling proved troublesome for opponents. The Warriors struggled all of 2013/14 to fill the role that combo guard Jarrett Jack played in 2012/13 before he departed in free agency, so they outmaneuvered the Nets as well as the Heat, Hornets, Spurs, Wolves and Kings in hopes that Livingston would fill that gap. A toe injury slowed him at the start, and he has barely played half as many minutes per game as Jack did in his season by the Bay, but there’s plenty of time left this year, and the Warriors have no need to press him for more, as well as they’ve played as a team.
In any case, the answer at point guard won’t be Nemanja Nedovic, even though Golden State is just a year and change removed from investing the last pick of the first round in him. The Warriors declined his third-year rookie scale option before the season and waived him shortly thereafter, eating only about half of his guaranteed salary for this season thanks to a buyout arrangement. The parting of ways was a somewhat troubling sign for the team, since it gave up $600K in cash and a second-round pick in an odd sequence of trades to acquire Nedovic on draft night in 2013, but, Jimmy Butler aside, late first-rounders often fail to become contributors, much less stars. The Warriors gave a vote of confidence to 2012 30th overall pick Festus Ezeli when they picked up his fourth-year option in October after an injury wiped out his sophomore season, so there’s still a chance that he’ll help the Warriors.
Regardless, this past offseason wasn’t about moves on the margins for Golden State. The Warriors made potentially franchise-altering decisions even though their core remains intact, and the onus is on that core to produce like never before. Lacob has every financial reason to affect significant change and avoid the tax next season, so the Warriors must show they’re close enough to winning a title to ensure that the team as constituted will continue to have chances to do so.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images. The Basketball Insiders salary pages were used in the creation of this post.
Pacific Notes: Frye, Ellington, Thomas
Four Pacific Division teams have winning records, and even the one that doesn’t picked up a win Sunday, as the Lakers took advantage of a Raptors team missing DeMar DeRozan to score an overtime victory. Still, every win for the Lakers is in some way a gain for the Suns, too, since Phoenix receives L.A.’s first-round pick for 2015 if it falls out of the top five. The Lakers hold a tenuous one-game lead on the Wolves for the fifth spot in the Reverse Standings in what’s shaping up as one of the best draft position races of the season. There’s more on the Lakers and the Suns amid the latest from the Pacific:
- A “theory floated out” suggested that the Suns were upset when Channing Frye turned down his player option this past summer and chose to instead go after marquee targets like LeBron James and Kevin Love, as John Denton of Magic.com writes. The Suns nonetheless reportedly made a push to re-sign Frye on the first day of free agency, though he’s pleased with his new home in Orlando, as Denton details. “It’s just a business part of it and it’s hard to separate business and personal stuff, especially with me being from [Phoenix] and loving the teammates here as much as I did. But at the end of the day, I know I made the right decision [signing with the Magic],’’ Frye said. “I made the right decision, not only for me, but for my family. The [Suns] organization did pretty dang well [when I was in Phoenix] and they are doing well without me. So no hard feelings. Of course, I wanted to continue to play with my [Suns] boys, but I’m finding new friends and working things out in Orlando.’’
- The partial guarantee on Wayne Ellington‘s minimum salary jumps from $315,646 to $581,692 if the Lakers keep him through today, as our Schedule of Contract Guarantee Dates shows and as Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders originally reported.
- The up-tempo style of the Suns helped influence former Kings point guard Isaiah Thomas to choose to head to Phoenix this past summer, as he tells Gary Washburn of The Boston Globe. “My teammates are good guys, the organization is great, and the style of play is perfect,” Thomas said. “It’s a big reason why I chose here because it favors my strengths, getting up and down, scoring and shooting at will, and using our strength, which is our guards.”
James Nunnally Signs To Play In Israel
MONDAY, 8:01am: The signing is official, the Israeli Winner League announced (Twitter link; hat tip to Pick).
THURSDAY, 2:18pm: James Nunnally is set to sign with Israel’s Maccabi Ashdod, reports David Pick of Eurobasket.com (Twitter link). The 24-year-old small forward who spent parts of last season with the Hawks and Sixers had inked a deal this past summer with Estudiantes of Spain, but his time with the club appeared to be nearing an end as of this past weekend, as Marcos Fernández of Planeta ACB reported (translation via Sportando’s Emiliano Carchia).
Nunnally worked out for the Lakers in September, shortly before he signed with Estudiantes. The Jazz and Warriors had a look at him in May, apparently with the summer league in mind. He appeared in 13 NBA games last season after signing two 10-day contracts apiece with Philadelphia and Atlanta, averaging 3.4 points in 12.7 minutes per contest overall. Nunnally otherwise spent much of the season in the D-League, where he put up 18.1 PPG in 33.6 MPG and nailed 41.3% of his three-point attempts. He shot just 32.0% from behind the arc during his NBA stints and was only a 31.8% three-point shooter in seven games for Estudiantes so far this season, however.
The Suns had Nunnally in training camp before the 2013/14 season, and the Cavs, Bulls and Thunder reportedly showed interest in signing him before he received his first 10-day contract from the Hawks. He’ll join fellow former NBA player Terrel Harris on Maccabi Ashdod, assuming Nunnally’s deal becomes official.
And-Ones: Labor, Mudiay, Prospects, Cobbs
The sharp exchange between Adam Silver and Michele Roberts of late has seemingly served as indication that a work stoppage is on the way in 2017, but Roberts is optimistic that the sides will be able to settle their differences, as she explains to Chris Mannix of SI.com.
“But of course I think it’s avoidable,” Roberts said of a work stoppage. “Does anyone really expect Adam and I will sing kumbaya every day? We’re grown ups. He has a constituency, and I do. We disagree. But that’s the world. You know what we do agree on? We don’t want a work stoppage. Neither one of us wants to see that happen. We have said it to each other. We have said it out loud. Our teams are all smart, we all have the same goals and we should be able to sit down and avoid it. I’d be surprised, frankly, if we had one, but I’m ready if we do.”
While NBA fans hope that Roberts is right about that, here’s the latest from around the league:
- About half of the league’s teams plan to send either scouts, executives or both to China to check out highly touted draft prospect Emmanuel Mudiay, and teams are calling almost daily for information about the point guard, a source tells Bleacher Report’s Jared Zwerling (Twitter link). Mudiay, who signed with China’s Guangdong Southern Tigers rather than attend SMU for what would have been his freshman season this year, is No. 2 in the rankings of both Jonathan Givony of DraftExpress and Chad Ford of ESPN.com.
- Errick McCollum, who worked out for the Cavs, Kings and Rockets this summer, is one of several overseas prospects who are making a mark after having gone undrafted, as David Pick examines for Basketball Insiders.
- German club VEF Riga has let go of Hornets camp invitee Justin Cobbs after what amounted to a one-month tryout, the team announced (Twitter link; translation via Sportando’s Emiliano Carchia). Cobbs signed with Riga earlier this month shortly after the Hornets released him in advance of opening night. The 23-year-old point guard averaged just 2.0 points in 13.7 minutes per game across seven overseas appearances.
Hoops Rumors Glossary: Hardship
[See the updated version of this post here]
The availability of a 16th regular season roster spot to NBA teams was little-used and little-known when the season began a month ago today. The league granted the Timberwolves an extra roster spot in the 2012/13 season, and it did the same for the Pelicans near the end of 2013/14, but the league doesn’t “hand those things out like candy,” as Wolves executive Flip Saunders recently observed. However, poorly timed injuries and illnesses have already prompted three teams to receive clearance to sign extra men this season, and the Wolves and Lakers have explored the possibility of becoming the fourth. All of it has cast the NBA’s hardship roster rules into the spotlight and resolved some of the mystery surrounding them.
The term “hardship” used to be a common part of the league’s vernacular in reference to players who entered the draft before exhausting their college eligibility, but it has a completely different meaning in regard to the size of NBA rosters. The NBA’s Constitution and By-Laws, in their definition of hardship, give the Board of Governors the power to approve special provisions counter to the NBA’s roster limits with a majority vote. Yet the rule also spells out circumstances in which injury and illness would allow teams to receive extra roster spots without Board of Governors approval. In these cases, a team must have four players who have missed at least three straight games because of injury or illness. Should the Commissioner’s Office determine, using an independent doctor if it so chooses, that all four of those players will continue to be unable to play, the team may acquire an extra player. The commissioner can grant additional extra roster spots to the team should he deem that conditions warrant it. The Thunder, one of the teams that carried a 16th player this month, was reportedly ready at one point to seek Adam Silver’s approval for a 17th spot.
The league’s by-laws expound on such roster dynamics much more broadly than the collective bargaining agreement, and the first-time public release of the by-laws, which happened this past spring amid the Donald Sterling scandal, provided new insight into the hardship rule. Yet the by-laws leave some significant questions unanswered, and the way the league has handled the situations involving the Thunder, the Pacers, and a somewhat related scenario in which the Grizzlies received a 16th roster spot, has helped show just how the NBA applies these rules.
The NBA granted the Thunder and Pacers 10-day windows in which they could keep a 16th player on the roster, as several reports have made clear (Update: The 10-day windows can’t cover more than one season, as Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders and the Los Angeles Times noted). The Pacers essentially acknowledged as much when the league granted them a second window that allowed them to keep A.J. Price, their 16th man. The more hidebound Thunder made no such announcement when they retained Ish Smith for a second 10-day period, but Darnell Mayberry of The Oklahoman, among others, made reference to a pair of 10-day stints for Smith. The Thunder also demonstrated another facet of the hardship rules when they waived Sebastian Telfair instead of Smith to reduce their roster to 15 players. Telfair had been on the roster since the start of the regular season, but even though it was Smith whom the hardship allowed the team to sign, the Thunder were at liberty to choose the player they wanted to unload to get back down to 15 men, as this week’s move indicated.
There appears to be a time limit on the front end of the hardship, too. (Update: That limit is two days, as Mike Bresnahan of the Los Angeles Times indicated via Twitter). The Pacers scuttled their deal with Gal Mekel when a visa complication would have kept him from signing until a day after the Pacers were ready to put pen to paper. That extra day would have pushed the Pacers past the time the league allowed them to add a 16th player, according to Marc Stein of ESPN.com (Twitter link), so they turned to Price instead.
The Wolves considered applying for an extra roster spot this month but were wary of doing so because it would have meant that Nikola Pekovic and Ronny Turiaf would have had to remain out during the 10-day window, as Jerry Zgoda of the Star Tribune reported last week. That suggests that even if injured players make a recovery on a more rapid timetable than the league had thought they would, they’d still be ineligible to play until the 10-day hardship expired.
That didn’t come into play for the Grizzlies, who earlier this month signed Kalin Lucas and Hassan Whiteside to take their roster from 14 to 16 men on a night when five Grizzlies were sick with a stomach virus. Memphis waived Lucas and Whiteside the next day, and a day after that, some of the Grizzlies returned from the virus to play. The 16th roster spot for Memphis was a curious provision on the surface, since the Grizzlies hadn’t had four players miss at least three straight games. But what triggered the extra roster spot for Memphis wasn’t the same as what allowed Indiana and Oklahoma City to add 16th men.
The Grizzlies could take on both Lucas and Whiteside because Nick Calathes was serving a league suspension that had caused him to miss more than five games. In such cases, teams are allowed, without need for Board of Governors approval, to transfer their suspended players to the Suspended List rather than the Active or Inactive Lists. Teams may do the same when a player has served at least three games of a team suspension. When teams put such players on the Suspended List, they’re allowed to add an extra man, and the Grizzlies took advantage.
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 (or in this case, the NBA’s Constitution and By-Laws). Larry Coon’s Salary Cap FAQ was used in the creation of this post.