Mavs Waive Gal Mekel
5:00pm: Dallas has officially placed Mekel on waivers, the team has announced.
WEDNESDAY, 4:00pm: The Mavs intend to waive Mekel once Barea officially clears waivers today, reports Eddie Sefko of the Dallas Morning News.
TUESDAY, 6:10pm: Mavs owner Mark Cuban confirmed that Mekel would be the odd man out if Barea clears waivers and returns to Dallas, tweets Tim MacMahon of ESPNDallas.com.
MONDAY, 2:26pm: The Mavs will waive point guard Gal Mekel to accommodate their planned signing of J.J. Barea, a source tells Jody Genessy of the Deseret News (Twitter link). The move is presumably contingent on Barea clearing waivers, which seems highly likely given Barea’s guaranteed salary of nearly $4.52MM for this season, though that’s just my speculation. In any case, the Mavs would be on the hook for minimum salaries both this year and next for Mekel should he clear waivers. Dallas couldn’t defray Mekel’s salary of more than $816K for this year using the Stretch Provision, but the team could spread the $947K and change that he’s owed for 2015/16 over a period of three years.
The Mavs had reportedly been trying to trade Mekel in an effort to clear roster space without eating guaranteed salary, but those efforts have apparently come up short. The point guard, now 26, saw action in just 31 games for Dallas as a rookie last season, averaging 2.4 points in 9.4 minutes per game. The Israeli native went undrafted in 2009, but the Mavs signed him to a fully guaranteed three-year contract for the minimum salary in 2013 after he won a championship with Israel’s Maccabi Bazan Haifa that season and drew attention from several other NBA teams.
The Dallas roster would remain at 15 as a result of releasing Mekel and adding Barea, though Marc J. Spears of Yahoo! Sports wrote 10 days ago that the Mavs were seeking to open up a spot beneath the 15-man regular season maximum in his report about the team’s interest in trading Mekel. Charlie Villanueva‘s non-guaranteed contract gives Dallas some degree of flexibility, however. It remains to be seen whether the Mavs will guarantee any salary in Barea’s pact.
Cavs Owner On LeBron, Blatt, Luxury Tax
The Cavs still hope to reach an extension with Tristan Thompson before Friday’s deadline, owner Dan Gilbert told reporters today, including Chris Haynes of the Northeast Ohio Media Group, confirming a detail from the latest dispatch on the former No. 4 overall pick. Gilbert also touted GM David Griffin for the Executive of the Year award, talked up the importance of the extension Kyrie Irving signed as soon as he could earlier this summer, and had much more to say about his team, which went from the lottery to a title favorite in mere months. Haynes has the entire transcript of Gilbert’s press conference, so it’s certainly worth checking out, and we’ll pass along Gilbert’s most noteworthy comments here:
On how he perceived his chances of swaying LeBron James to return this summer:
“Of course you never know these things until you’re in front of somebody. But I felt good about it. People have things that happen between them. I certainly don’t keep grudges. He’s not that kind of person, and I don’t think most people are generally, there is a few that are like that, but most people aren’t. There is just too much to do, too much opportunity together that we could work on together, leverage together. So from the second that I went down to Miami I felt like things were going to go on the right path, though we didn’t know until we got the phone call, but it felt pretty good from the second I saw him.”
On hiring David Blatt, after having cited Blatt’s intelligence and coaching track record:
“One of the other major factors was we talked to virtually every single NBA player who was either in the NBA now or was at one point and played for him overseas. And to a man, they raved about him. And that’s really a rare thing when you’re interviewing anybody in business or sports. That every single person you talk to raves about him and says the exact same thing. So that sort of put us over the top.”
On whether he’d shy away from paying the luxury tax:
“That message is unchanged, clearly the cap will be going up in the next couple of years based on the revenues of the league as well, but that message is still there. I think that when you have so much invested, if you want to look at this financially and take away the other stuff, I almost think it’s kind of silly when you invest so much into a franchise and have such high costs already, and then at the margin, I know it’s a lot of raw dollars when you look at it by itself, but relative to everything that’s invested, I was a little bit surprised when our franchise was going to stop right there. To me, it’s like getting to the two‑yard line, and okay, we’re done now. I think it’s not even smart business or maybe not even smart financially, because there is obviously risk involved. But when you’re willing to do that, theoretically, your revenues can offset part of that as well and increase in revenues. Definitely, when the decisions are ours and they’re regarding financial, that should not stop us or be any significant barrier to delivering championship‑caliber basketball here.”
Julius Randle To Miss Season With Broken Leg
2:44pm: Randle will miss the entire season after undergoing surgery to repair the leg today, reports Mike Bresnahan of the Los Angeles Times (Twitter link).
11:24pm: The concern Tuesday night was that Randle would miss four to six months, but it will be difficult to know for sure until after he undergoes an evaluation following surgery, according to Ramona Shelburne of ESPNLosAngeles.com (Twitter link). The regular season ends in about five and a half months.
8:41am: Lakers lottery pick Julius Randle suffered a broken tibia in his debut Tuesday, the team confirmed via press release. TNT’s Rachel Nichols was the first to report that the No. 7 overall selection from this year’s draft had fractured his leg (Twitter link). There’s no timetable for recovery yet on what the Lakers caution is an initial diagnosis, but the injury will almost certainly knock the rookie out for several months, if not the entire season, putting further strain on a roster that will already be without Steve Nash for all of 2014/15.
The Lakers are already planning to apply for a disabled player exception for Nash, and they could do so for Randle, too, if his injury is deemed a season-ender. The exception would only amount to half of Randle’s approximately $2.997MM rookie scale salary, or about $1.499MM, not nearly as lucrative as the Nash exception that’s worth close to $4.851MM. In any case, the Lakers are stuck with two players who have long-term injuries on their roster, so unless they decide to offload either Nash or Randle, they’ll have no more than 13 healthy players for the foreseeable future, even if they’re granted and use multiple disabled player exceptions. Point guard Ronnie Price and shooting guard Wayne Ellington have non-guaranteed contracts that become partially guaranteed on November 15th, while the team’s other 13 contracts, including those for Nash and Randle, are fully guaranteed.
Randle was highly touted coming out of the University of Kentucky, and Jonathan Givony of DraftExpress ranked the power forward as the No. 2 prospect for the 2014 draft going into his freshman season before he slipped a bit over the course of the year. Concern over how the broken foot he’d suffered as a high school senior had healed likely helped him fall to the Lakers at No. 7. The Lakers’ decision to claim Carlos Boozer off amnesty waivers this summer looks prescient in the light of Randle’s injury, though the team isn’t expected to be in playoff contention this season. The Suns will receive the Lakers’ 2015 first-round pick if it doesn’t fall within the top five selections.
Pacific Notes: Kings, Thomas, Clippers
Workers broke ground today on a new arena for the Kings that’s set to open in two years, the team confirms via press release. It’s the latest in a long line of steps toward a new building that the NBA has mandated must take place in a timely fashion in advance of a 2017 deadline for completion. The league would have the power to take control of the team and move it to another city if the Kings either miss the deadline or don’t show sufficient progress, but it seems the franchise is well on its way to opening the doors of its new home in Sacramento. There’s more on the Kings amid our latest look around the Pacific Division:
- The Kings are indeed looking for help on the wing even though they’re not ready to sign Terrence Williams at this point, according to Jason Jones of The Sacramento Bee (Twitter links). Williams, a four-year NBA veteran, reportedly worked out for Sacramento recently, and the Kings, who have an open roster spot, are looking for experience, Jones says.
- New Suns guard Isaiah Thomas confirms that he had interest in signing with the Lakers this summer, adding that the interest was mutual, as he tells Grantland’s Zach Lowe. “First off, it’s the Los Angeles Lakers. Who wouldn’t want to play for them? Second off, I felt like they always needed a point guard — a small guard like myself,” Thomas said. “I always envisioned myself playing with the Lakers, but like you said, they were waiting on Carmelo [Anthony] and other moves. The Suns came out of nowhere and showed a lot of interest, and I fell in love with them.”
- A report early in free agency indicated that the Lakers, Heat and Pistons were Thomas’ preferred teams, and he says to Lowe that all three, as well as the Mavs, showed interest, noting that Miami’s pursuit took place before LeBron James left, as Lowe passes along in the same piece.
- Steve Ballmer can write off about half of the $2 billion he paid to buy the Clippers as he files his federal taxes over the next 15 years, report Arash Massoudi and Alan Livsey of the Financial Times (hat tip to Sean Deveney of The Sporting News).
Jazz, Enes Kanter Break Off Extension Talks
12:49pm: Ergul cited Kanter’s potential for growth this season with new Jazz coach Quin Snyder as well as the influx of TV money into the league as reasons why he and his client walked away from negotiations, as Ergul told Aaron Falk of The Salt Lake Tribune (Twitter links). Ergul praised Lindsey and Snyder and pointed to Kanter’s satisfaction with the franchise’s direction, Falk notes, which suggests strong interest in a deal next summer.
12:11pm: The Jazz and Enes Kanter have decided against signing an extension by Friday’s deadline, agent Max Ergul tells Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports. That sets the forward/center up to become a restricted free agent next summer. The Jazz continue talks with fellow extension-eligible Alec Burks, according to Wojnarowski.
“We have mutually agreed with Utah to concentrate on the season and look at our options again in the summer,” Ergul told Wojnarowski. “Enes likes Utah and the organization very much, and now he can concentrate on continuing to grow as a player and helping them win.”
Jazz GM Dennis Lindsey acknowledged extension talks with both Kanter and Burks a month ago and spoke of his desire for a long-term commitment to the two of them, suggesting that he’d continue to pursue that even if they weren’t able to close on extensions. Still, neither has the sort of star potential that’s usually associated with players who sign rookie scale extensions, as I noted when I examined the extension candidacies of both Kanter and Burks.
Fellow big men Derrick Favors, who signed a four-year, $48MM extension a year ago, and Rudy Gobert, who’s entering the second season of his rookie scale contract, complicate the notion of Kanter’s future in Utah, since there’s only so much playing time to go around. The Jazz have about $40.3MM on the books for 2015/16, and while deals for both Kanter and Burks would probably leave the team with significant leftover cap room, Utah has several other former first-round picks who’ll become extension-eligible in the years ahead, which threatens to put a squeeze on the club’s flexibility.
Warriors Unlikely To Pick Up Nedovic’s Option
The Warriors are “leaning strongly” toward declining their team option for 2015/16 on Nemanja Nedovic, tweets Shams Charania of RealGM. The option is worth nearly $1.152MM, as our Rookie Scale Team Option Tracker shows. That’s not much in the grand scheme of Golden State’s payroll, but the team is poised to have trouble avoiding the tax for 2015/16, as I outlined earlier.
Nedovic put up 1.1 points in just 5.9 minutes per game as a rookie last season, and he was an afterthought even though Golden State struggled to find a backup to Stephen Curry at the point. The Warriors signed Shaun Livingston this summer to a three year contract worth about $16.631MM in large measure to fill the backup point guard role, helping cloud the future of Nedovic, who was the 30th overall pick in 2013.
The Warriors will have about $58.1MM in commitments for next season once they pick up Festus Ezeli‘s option, as they reportedly will do, and presumably they’ll do the same with Harrison Barnes, adding about another $3.873MM. Those option pickups plus the max deal for Klay Thompson that the shooting guard is looking for would put the Warriors at roughly $77MM for eight players next season, not counting a nearly $1.271MM player option for Brandon Rush. That would put the team over the tax based on this year’s threshold, but it’s unclear where that tax line will be next year. Co-owner Joe Lacob reportedly has no desire to pay the tax at this point even though he’s spoken in the past of a willingness to do so.
Jason Levien Seeking To Buy Hawks
Former Grizzlies CEO Jason Levien is looking to form a group of investors to purchase the Hawks, reports Ronald Tillery of The Commercial Appeal (Twitter link). He joins former players Dominique Wilkins, Dikembe Mutombo and Chris Webber and attorney Doug Davis among those with apparent interest in owning the franchise. Controlling owner Bruce Levenson is seeking to unload his stake following the discovery of an email with racial overtones that he sent in 2012.
Levien parted ways with the Grizzlies this spring, reportedly after tension had built for months between him and owner Robert Pera. The Grizzlies had entrusted Levien with running their basketball operations when Pera bought the team two years ago, and he’d pushed for an analytics-driven movement that led to a split with then-coach Lionel Hollins. Levien had worked in the Kings front office and was a minority shareholder of the Sixers prior to joining the Grizzlies, and he currently owns the D.C. United of Major League Soccer.
Much is still undetermined surrounding the fate of the Hawks franchise, as the team’s ownership group has yet to decide just how much of the club will go up for sale. Levenson and his partners own 50.1% of it and can force the sale of up to 60%, but the NBA seems to be pressuring all of the Hawks owners to give up their stakes, as Chris Vivlamore of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution wrote last week. A report from Daniel Kaplan of SportsBusiness Journal this week indicated that the full franchise would sell for between $750MM and $1 billion.
Clippers Opt In For 2015/16 With Reggie Bullock
The Clippers have picked up their team option for 2015/16 on Reggie Bullock‘s rookie scale contract, according to the RealGM transactions log. The team has yet to make an official announcement. Bullock will make more than $1.252MM that season, as our Rookie Scale Team Option Tracker shows. The team has been facing a Friday deadline to make its decision.
Bullock wasn’t particularly impressive as a rookie last season, but it’s nonetheless no surprise to see the Clippers keep him for another year, as I suggested during the offseason. The 25th pick in the 2013 draft averaged just 2.7 points in 9.2 minutes per game as a rookie, and he saw similar playing time during the preseason this month. Still, the 23-year-old shows promise, and the Clippers are weakest at the wing positions, where Bullock plays.
Exercising the option puts the Clippers at nearly $58.9MM in commitments for 2015/16, though that entails fully guaranteed salary for only six players. The team has partially guaranteed salary out to Jamal Crawford and Matt Barnes for that season, and if they remain on the team and Jordan Farmar picks up his player option worth close to $2.2MM, it adds approximately $8.7MM to the team’s ledger. DeAndre Jordan is also poised to hit unrestricted free agency next summer, so the Clips will have a tough time avoiding the tax.
Hornets Push For Extension With Kemba Walker
Hornets owner Michael Jordan intends to sign an extension with Kemba Walker rather than let him hit free agency and said that he’s hopeful that the “real conversations” between the sides bear fruit in advance of Friday’s deadline, as he tells Rick Bonnell of the Charlotte Observer (All Twitter links). Marc Stein of ESPN.com reported earlier this month that Charlotte was in talks with the Jeff Schwartz client.
Executives around the league often say that Walker isn’t a “championship point guard,” as Grantland’s Zach Lowe wrote about a month ago, though the 24-year-old hasn’t had much chance to show what he can do in meaningful games during his three years with the team. Last year’s playoff appearance was his first, and he held steady at 17.7 points per game during the 2013/14 regular season in spite of the addition of marquee free agent Al Jefferson. The Hornets are poised to return to the postseason this year, but it appears Jordan is anxious to strike a deal before skeptical executives have a chance to drive up the point guard’s value next summer.
The Hornets only have about $45.2MM in guaranteed salary for 2015/16 even with Walker’s extension. That doesn’t include a $13.5MM player option for Jefferson nor a $6MM player option for Gerald Henderson, however.
Photo courtesy USA Today Sports Images.
Knicks Opt In With Tim Hardaway Jr. For 2015/16
The Knicks have exercised their option to keep Tim Hardaway Jr. on his rookie scale contract through 2015/16, the team announced (Twitter link). He’ll make close to $1.305MM that season, as our Rookie Scale Team Option Tracker shows. Reports indicated that New York would pick up Shane Larkin‘s 2015/16 team option, too, but it appears that’s still up in the air.
Hardaway impressed in his rookie season after the Knicks made him the 24th overall pick in the 2013 draft. The 6’6″ shooting guard averaged 10.2 points in 23.2 minutes per game across 81 appearances, earning an All-Rookie First Team selection.
New York, which has targeted next summer for a free agent push, has about $32.7MM in commitments for 2015/16 as a result of today’s move. That doesn’t include Larkin’s option or a new deal for Iman Shumpert, who’d hit restricted free agency if he and the Knicks don’t sign an extension by the end of Friday.