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Author: Chuck Myron

Bucks Opt In With Antetokounmpo, Henson

By | at October 16, 2014 2:38 pm

The Bucks have exercised their options to keep Giannis Antetokounmpo and John Henson on their respective rookie scale contracts for 2015/16, the team announced. Antetokounmpo will make nearly $2MM that year, the third season of his deal, while Henson is due about $2.9MM for what will be year No. 4 in his pact, as our Rookie Scale Team Option Tracker shows.

Neither move is surprising, and that’s especially so for Antetokounmpo, as I suggested in August. The phenom from Greece entered the NBA with many question marks surrounding his game after the Bucks took him 15th overall, but he dazzled with his athleticism even though his numbers, with 6.8 points in 24.6 minutes per game, weren’t nearly as eye-popping. Henson is part of a crowded frontcourt in Milwaukee and found his name in trade rumors this past year, but he’s been efficient when he’s hit the floor, having racked up a career 18.0 PER.

The decisions give the Bucks close to $47MM in guaranteed money on the books for 2015/16, though that doesn’t take into account a $4.25MM early termination option for Jared Dudley. Milwaukee would also reportedly like to reach an extension with Brandon Knight before the October 31st deadline to do so, and if they come to terms, there won’t be much room beneath a projected $66.5MM salary cap for next summer.

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Southeast Notes: Jordan, Webber, Hawks

By | at October 16, 2014 1:50 pm

Hornets owner Michael Jordan isn’t on board with shortening games, an idea the NBA is experimenting with this weekend, as Jordan tells Chris Broussard of ESPN.com. Jordan said the league didn’t indicate to him when it let him know of Sunday’s planned 44-minute game between the Nets and Celtics that it was seriously considering such a change for regular season games, Broussard notes. The iconic former player also expressed his disagreement with LeBron James and Dirk Nowitzki, who told reporters this week that they’d like to see the NBA shorten the season.

“It’s not like football,” Jordan said. “We don’t really have to worry about concussions and some of the physical damage that football players deal with after they retire. I can understand football players wanting to play fewer games from a physical standpoint. But basketball’s not the same. I’m not diminishing the fact that we go through a grueling season. But I wouldn’t want to shorten the game or play 15-20 fewer games.”

Still, shorter games clearly have their proponents, so it’ll be interesting to see if Jordan can prevail on his fellow owners to make Sunday’s game a one-time experiment. Here’s more from MJ’s Southeast Division:

  • Chris Webber took to Twitter to confirm his interest in the Hawks, and while he doesn’t disclose the identities of the investors he’s partnering with, he insists they would keep the team in Atlanta.
  • The formal sale process and vetting of prospective owners can’t start for the Hawks until all of the team’s existing owners determine whether they’re selling, and they’ve yet to schedule a meeting to discuss the issue, according to Chris Vivlamore of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
  • Free agent power forward Tyrus Thomas has changed agents as he attempts to return to the NBA, tweets Alex Kennedy of Basketball Insiders. Thomas hired Roger Montgomery of the Montgomery Sports Group, according to Kennedy, replacing John Hamilton of Performance Sports Management. Thomas has been out of the league since the Hornets (then the Bobcats) put him on amnesty waivers in July 2013.
  • Ira Winderman of the Sun Sentinel takes a stab at predicting the Heat‘s opening-night roster amid his latest mailbag column.
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Bucks Waive Elijah Millsap, Chris Wright

By | at October 16, 2014 12:28 pm

The Bucks have waived Elijah Millsap and Chris Wright, the team announced. Both were on non-guaranteed deals. The move had been expected for Wright after coach Jason Kidd told reporters last week that the 26-year-old small forward was headed to play in Europe.

Panathinaikos of Greece had interest in Wright but reportedly decided against signing him, so it’s unclear just where he’ll end up. He was with Milwaukee last season on a pair of 10-day contracts before he signed a deal that carried through the rest of 2013/14 and included a non-guaranteed salary for this coming season. Millsap joined Milwaukee this fall for his first taste of NBA preseason action since he was in camp with the Thunder in 2010. The 27-year-old swingman shared his thoughts with Zach Links of Hoops Rumors last month as he readied for his shot with the Bucks.

The cuts leave the Bucks with 16 players, one more than they can have come opening night. Micheal Eric and Kendall Marshall remain as the team’s only non-guaranteed contracts, and with 14 fully guaranteed deals on the books, Marshall will almost certainly be the team’s choice for the final regular season spot.

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Wizards Release Daniel Orton

By | at October 16, 2014 11:31 am

The Wizards have waived Daniel Orton, the team announced (Twitter link). The center’s contract was non-guaranteed, so the team won’t be on the hook for any of what was to have been a minimum salary. The move leaves 17 players on Washington’s roster.

The 24-year-old former first-round pick inked his deal to join the Wizards for camp after working out for the Pistons and canceling another workout with the Clippers once they signed Ekpe Udoh. Orton also reportedly auditioned for the Lakers. The Ara Vartanian client made the Sixers out of camp last year, but Philadelphia waived him in January shortly before his salary was to have become guaranteed for the rest of the season. The 29th overall pick from the 2010 draft proceeded to sign with the D-League in January, and he played 24 games with the affiliate of the Celtics.

Wizards GM Ernie Grunfeld still has decisions to make before the team finalizes its opening-night roster. Wing players Rasual Butler, Damion James and Xavier Silas are all on non-guaranteed deals and seemingly competing for the 15th spot, though it’s uncertain whether the team will carry the maximum 15 players when the regular season starts.

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Danny Ferry Unlikely To Return To Hawks?

By | at October 16, 2014 8:58 am

Hawks GM Danny Ferry is not expected to return to his job from the indefinite leave of absence he took last month, as Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports writes at the end of his full story on Chris Webber‘s bid for an ownership stake in the franchise. Controlling owner Bruce Levensen and his partners are selling what amounts to a 50.1% share of the franchise, and new owners often make changes in their front offices. The racially derogatory remarks about Luol Deng that Ferry read from a scouting report in a June conference call with Hawks owners precipitated his leave of absence and would presumably make Ferry’s job security especially tenuous once a new owner is in place. Still, Wojnarowski’s report is the most significant indication to date that Ferry doesn’t appear long for Atlanta.

Deng has forgiven Ferry for repeating the scouting report’s comments, and several of Ferry’s longtime associates, including former teammate Tim Duncan, have come to his defense. Commissioner Adam Silver has said he believes Ferry is wise to have taken a leave of absence, though he’s also said that he doesn’t believe the executive has committed any offense that would warrant termination. Still others, including Carmelo Anthony, have said that the entirety of the scandal, which germinates from a racially charged email that Levenson sent in 2012, has left them with a negative perception of the Hawks.

Coach Mike Budenholzer is serving as interim GM while CEO Steve Koonin is running the franchise in Levenson’s stead. A report earlier this month indicated that the team is likely to be sold by the end of the year, though another dispatch from later that same day indicated that it was premature to set such a timetable. Webber is part of a group of bidders that includes more significant financial backing from others, though the identity of the primary investors remains unclear, according to Wojnarowski. The former player would like to become a “prominent figure” in the team’s basketball operations, Wojnarowski writes, though it’s unclear just what sort of role he’s targeting and whether he would want Ferry to return as GM. Hawks executive Dominique Wilkins has also expressed a desire to be part of an ownership group for the franchise, though it’s unclear if he still wants that in the wake of his recent promotion within the team’s front office.

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NBA Players Who Changed Conferences

By | at October 15, 2014 4:20 pm

The Western Conference has been the stronger half of the NBA for more than a decade, and the split couldn’t have been much more profound last season. The Suns finished out of the playoffs in the West with a record that would have tied for third-best in the East. Still, there’s evidence to suggest that the balance leveled to a degree this past summer.

Kevin Love was the most significant player switching conferences, as he pushed Western Conference also-ran Minnesota to trade him to Cleveland, where he joins a Cavs team with title aspirations. New teammate LeBron James was the biggest name to make a move in the offseason, but he stayed in the East. Love was the only player of his caliber to make a conference-to-conference jump, as evidenced by win shares. No other player with double-digit win shares from last season changed conferences, according to the numbers on Basketball-Reference.

There’s no single stat that provides a true measure of a player’s production, but win shares is as all-encompassing as any, and the picture that the metric paints shows that the East gained steam this summer. The players who ended the 2013/14 season on Western Conference rosters and now find themselves on Eastern teams totaled win shares of 78.2 last year. The total for East-to-West movers was only 61.2. Trevor Ariza, with 8.0 win shares, was the leader among the East-to-West group, and while he certainly helped the Wizards last season, he’s far from the sort of player whose movement indicates a seismic shift in the NBA landscape.

There are other factors at play, of course. Many Western Conference teams have built their success thanks to shrewd drafting, and the results from this past June aren’t reflected here. And not all of the win shares represented here were necessarily compiled in the players’ respective conferences last year, since some of them changed conferences midseason. Still, it’s instructive to see how they stack up. Here’s a look, with each player’s win shares in parentheses and the total win shares in parentheses atop each category:

EAST TO WEST (61.5)

WEST TO EAST (78.2)

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And-Ones: Raptors, Faverani, Kobe, Love

By | at October 15, 2014 1:23 pm

The Raptors, like many teams, have their sights set on chasing star free agents in the summer of 2016, but such plans will make it tough for the team to find room to grant extensions to both Jonas Valanciunas and Terrence Ross when they’re eligible a year from now, writes Ryan Wolstat of the Toronto Sun. GM Masai Ujiri did the perfunctory duty of exercising Toronto’s 2015/16 rookie scale team options on Valanciunas and Ross on Tuesday, but the team’s decisions regarding the pair won’t be so easy next fall, as Wolstat points out. Here’s more from around the league:

  • Danny Ainge on Tuesday dismissed the notion that the Celtics will waive injured center Vitor Faverani and his fully guaranteed contract, meaning the team is exploring other ways to alleviate its logjam of 16 fully guaranteed deals and 15 opening-night roster spots. Steve Bulpett of the Boston Herald has the details. “We have things we can do before we waive someone,” Ainge said.
  • Kobe Bryant predicted the NBA will move for another lockout in 2017 and had some harsh words for owners around the league when he spoke to reporters Tuesday, including Bill Oram of the Orange County Register. Still, Bryant showered praise on the Lakers, who’ll again be paying him the league’s highest salary this season. “I think it speaks volumes,” he said. “Not only to me or this city but to other players around the league, as well. You look around at some of the other owners that try to milk their players or get rid of them or discard them, this organization doesn’t do that.”
  • The Lakers appeared to have the inside track for Kevin Love at times last season, but Love stressed to reporters Tuesday that playing on a contending team like the Cavs means more to him than playing in a large market, notes Dave McMenamin of ESPN.com.
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Mavs Sign Yuki Togashi

By | at October 15, 2014 11:52 am

OCTOBER 15TH: Dallas has followed up with a formal announcement of the signing, via press release.

OCTOBER 7TH: The Mavs have signed undrafted point guard Yuki Togashi, according to the RealGM transactions log. The team has yet to make an official announcement, but Togashi’s agents with Cloud9 confirmed the deal to Ed Odeven of The Japan Times. Dallas is limited to handing out minimum-salary deals, but it’s unclear if there’s any guaranteed money involved for the 21-year-old.

The 5’7″ Togashi had been playing professionally in Japan for the Akita Northern Happinets since February 2013. He joined the Mavs summer league team in July, and Dallas apparently remains intrigued by the Japanese native who came to the U.S. and attended the same Maryland high school where Kevin Durant matriculated. Dean Murray, an assistant for the Mavs D-League affiliate, praised Togashi’s on-court decision-making but expressed concerns about his defense to Odeven after summer league ended in July.

It would seem the Mavs signed Togashi with the D-League in mind, since they’d already been carrying 15 fully guaranteed contracts. The move brings Dallas to the 20-man preseason roster limit, but the Mavs can retain the D-League rights to up to four of the players they cut before opening night, and it seems likely they’ll do so with Togashi.

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Poll: Should W’s Give Thompson Max Extension?

By | at October 15, 2014 11:48 am

There’s been a little confusion lately about whether Klay Thompson is seeking the maximum salary in extension talks with the Warriors or an amount that would be a shade beneath it, but his father this week attempted to clear that up, insisting that his son is indeed going after the max. So, the Warriors face tough a decision between now and the October 31st extension deadline, since co-owner Joe Lacob apparently has reservations about paying Thompson any more than the roughly $15MM salaries that David Lee is set to make this season and next.

It’s not clear at this point just how much a maximum-salary extension would entail, since the maximums for 2015/16, when the extension would kick in, won’t be known until next July. A five-year maximum extension, one that would make Thompson the team’s Designated Player, would come in at around $85MM based on this year’s figures, while a four-year max would run about $66MM. Still, this year’s figures aren’t necessarily as indicative of next year’s as they normally would be. The salary cap is projected to jump to around $66.5MM for next season, a sizable uptick that doesn’t take into account the league’s new TV deal that’ll kick in come the summer of 2016. If the league decides to fold even a fraction of that money into the 2015/16 cap, the number will go higher still. Maximum salaries are tied to the salary cap, so a lot is unknown.

The luxury tax line is another X-factor that won’t be resolved until the league sets the salary cap, and it’s of particular concern to the Warriors. Golden State has about $56.1MM in commitments for 2015/16, not including a nearly $3.9MM team option on Harrison Barnes that the Warriors will almost assuredly pick up. That’s $60MM on the books without a new deal for Thompson or Draymond Green, whose contract is also set to expire at season’s end. This year’s tax line is $76.829MM. Lacob has spoken of a willingness to pay the tax in the right circumstances in the past, but he’ll surely attempt to avoid it if he can.

The owner has promised to strike a deal with Thompson, though he didn’t specify whether it would be an extension or a new contract in restricted free agency next summer. The Warriors took a hard line against including Thompson in Kevin Love trade proposals that otherwise met the demands of the Timberwolves, and it would surely sting the Bay Area if Thompson were to hit the open market and somehow get away.

I predicted in late July that Thompson and agent Bill Duffy would settle for a discount and laid out the reasons why when I examined the shooting guard’s extension candidacy the next month, but in hindsight, it doesn’t sound like they’ll be willing to do so. Absent a change of heart, the onus is on the Warriors to figure how to secure an asset they clearly value. Let us know how you think Golden State should proceed, and explain your choice in the comments.

Should The Warriors Sign Klay Thompson To A Maximum-Salary Extension?
No 52.39% (274 votes)
Yes 47.61% (249 votes)
Total Votes: 523
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Northwest Notes: Aldridge, Timberwolves, Billups

By | at October 15, 2014 10:04 am

The Thunder have won the Northwest Division each of the past four seasons, but it’s conceivable that the team will receive a stiff challenge from the Blazers this year if Kevin Durant is slow to recover from the fracture in his foot. While we wait to see if there’s a competitive race in the Northwest, here’s the latest from the division:

  • Portland’s improvement last year was crucial to LaMarcus Aldridge‘s desire to continue playing for the Blazers, as he admitted in appearance with Justin Termine and Mike Dunleavy Sr. of Sirius XM NBA Radio, as Casey Holdahl of NBA.com’s Forward/Center blog transcribes. Aldridge added that was hoping to cash in on the NBA’s windfall of TV money when he passed on an extension to set up free agency next summer, but he suggests that he won’t try to sign a one-year deal this summer to become a free agent again in 2016, when the new TV deal starts. That jibes with a report from The Oregonian’s Joe Freeman, who heard earlier this month that the TV deal won’t affect Aldridge’s plan to sign a new long-term deal with the Blazers in 2015.
  • Timberwolves backup guard Mo Williams isn’t a fan of the NBA’s experiment with shorter games, as he tells Jerry Zgoda of the Star Tribune, who hears similar disdain for the idea from Corey Brewer and J.J. Barea. “I come off the bench, man,” Williams said. “They need to put 50 minutes on that so my minutes would be up. I need more minutes, not less.”
  • Despite fielding interest from the several different teams, including the Nuggets, about taking on a coaching or front office role, Chauncey Billups has decided to join the ESPN crew as an analyst, reveals Richard Deitsch of Sports Illustrated. Billups cited a long-term commitment to broadcasting and said he’s not thinking of becoming a coach or executive.
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