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About 100 players under contract with NBA teams will hit waivers in the next two weeks as teams pare their rosters down for opening night. An October 31st deadline looms for more than a dozen strong extension candidates. Teams also must make decisions by the end of the month on next year’s rookie scale team options. There are a handful of ways you can follow us to keep tabs on the latest news and rumors as these stories unfold.
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DeAndre Liggins Signs To Play In Russia
WEDNESDAY, 8:44am: The deal is official, the team announced (translation via Sportando’s Emiliano Carchia).
TUESDAY, 9:53am: DeAndre Liggins has agreed to a one-year deal with Krasny Oktyabr of Russia, reports David Pick of Eurobasket.com (Twitter links). The contract will be without an NBA escape clause, Pick adds. The three-year NBA veteran reportedly had a deal last month to join the Clippers for camp, but a later dispatch threw cold water on that idea, and the Clippers wound up leaving him off their camp roster.
The Henry Thomas client signed a pair of 10-day contracts with the Heat last season, but he only appeared in one game for one minute with Miami. Liggins spent most of 2013/14 in the D-League, which named him its Defensive Player of the Year. The swingman averaged 13.4 points and 7.1 rebounds in 38.1 minutes per contest with 35.4% three-point shooting in 61 games split between the affiliates of the Heat and the Thunder.
The 26-year-old spent his first two pro seasons with Oklahoma City and Orlando after the Magic made him the 53rd overall pick in 2011. Liggins will join NBA veterans Marcus Cousin and D.J. Kennedy on the Krasny Oktyabr roster.
And-Ones: Saric, Thompson, Carter-Williams
The father of lottery pick Dario Saric is upset about his son’s lack of playing time for Turkey’s Anadolu Efes and is threatening to end his son’s deal with the Euroleague team, David Pick of Eurobasket.com tweets. Predrag Saric said he’ll look for someone who would finance a buyout if his son, whose NBA rights belong to the Sixers, doesn’t start to see the floor soon, as he told Hrvoje Slišković of Jutarnji.hr, a outlet in Saric’s native Croatia. Dario agreed to a long-term contract with Efes shortly before the draft, one that was to keep him out of the NBA for at least this season and likely until 2016, but it’s not clear if Predrag’s agitation is a precursor to an early NBA jump, particularly since he’s advocated in the past for his son to remain in Europe. There’s more on the Sixers in our look around the league:
- There have been conflicting reports about whether Klay Thompson is asking for the maximum salary in an extension with the Warriors, but Thompson’s father says it’s indeed the max that he’s after. Mychal Thompson made his comments Monday on his own ESPNLosAngeles radio show (audio link), as Diamond Leung of the Bay Area News Group transcribes.
- Mychal, a former Lakers player, also signaled that he’d like to see his son play for the Lakers at some point, Leung observes in the same piece.
- Sixers coach Brett Brown clarified to reporters that the team never gave a recovery timetable for Michael Carter-Williams, writes Keith Pompey of the Philadelphia Inquirer. Carter-Williams said yesterday that he was told when his shoulder surgery took place in May that he would be out six to nine months. Indeed, Philly’s release at the time stated that there was no timetable. Pompey and other reporters gave a two-to-four month estimate shortly after the surgery based on the way others have come back from the injury.
- Shawn Marion, who left Dallas for the Cavs this summer, still has a bitter taste in his mouth from the Mavs‘ decision to let go of Tyson Chandler soon after the team won the championship in 2011, tweets Dave McMenamin of ESPN.com. “We didn’t give ourselves a chance to defend [our title],” Marion said.
James Southerland To Play In France
2:58pm: Limoges has announced the deal (translation via Sportando’s Emiliano Carchia). Southerland will have to clear NBA waivers first before he can play overseas, but that’s likely a mere formality.
1:27pm: Recent Blazers camp invitee James Southerland has a deal with Limoges CSP of France, tweets David Pick of Eurobasket.com. Portland announced Monday that it had waived the small forward, and while no signing can become official until Southerland clears NBA waivers, Pick indicates that Southerland has already put pen to paper.
Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports originally reported that Southerland had a European deal and that the Blazers would release him, but the identity of the overseas team had been unknown. It remains unclear whether the pact includes an NBA escape clause.
Southerland was with Charlotte and New Orleans last season after going undrafted out of Syracuse in 2013, but he saw action in only four NBA games. He spent the bulk of last year playing with the Lakers D-League affiliate, averaging 14.7 points and 6.5 rebounds in 28.6 minutes per game, though he made only 32.3% of the 4.8 three-pointers he shot per contest. Still, his performance landed him on the D-League’s All-Rookie Second Team.
Pistons Notes: Meeks, Trades, Monroe
The relative weakness of the Eastern Conference and the strength of Stan Van Gundy‘s coaching are among the reasons that some, including Zach Lowe of Grantland, have predicted that the Pistons will make the playoffs this season. Still, health will be key, and Detroit has already absorbed a punch in that area, as we detail:
- Jodie Meeks will miss approximately eight weeks with a stress reaction in his lower back, the team announced. The injury, which knocks the shooting guard out for about six regular season weeks, lends additional intrigue to the decision Van Gundy and his staff have to make regarding the team’s 16 fully guaranteed contracts, one more than the team is allowed to carry come opening night.
- The Pistons are “very diligent and very active” as they look at trade options around the league, as GM Jeff Bower told MLive’s David Mayo for a piece that came out before the news of the Meeks injury. Van Gundy has given Bower the authority to talk to the heads of other basketball operations departments around the league as the two Pistons execs collaborate in the front office and build a larger, more analytically minded staff, Bower explains to Mayo.
- Early word out of Detroit is that Pistons big man Greg Monroe will come off the bench, writes Sam Amico of FOX Sports Ohio. If Van Gundy goes through with it, it’ll be interesting to see how a reserve role could shape Monroe’s value on the open market after this season, when he’ll become an unrestricted free agent.
Zach Links contributed to this post.
Atlantic Notes: Stiemsma, Sixers, Calderon
It’s rare that a Sunday afternoon preseason game draws much attention, but this Sunday’s Celtics–Nets game will be an exception. They’ll play 44 minutes instead of the standard 48 as the NBA experiments with a shorter game time, the league announced. Coaches around the league and the NBA’s competition committee expressed support for the idea, as NBA president of basketball operations Rod Thorn tells Jeff Zillgitt of USA Today. Boston and Brooklyn volunteered to try it out, Zillgitt adds. Still, Jared Dudley took to Twitter to express concern about the way a shorter game would affect playing time and contract value for bench players. The league has no plans at this point to have another 44-minute game, and the experiment also includes fewer timeouts, and thus fewer advertising opportunities, so I’m skeptical that all parties will agree to 44-minute games in the future. Still, it’ll be interesting to see how it goes. Here’s more from around the Atlantic Division:
- Greg Stiemsma‘s contract with the Raptors is partially guaranteed for $25K, Hoops Rumors has learned. That puts him on equal financial footing with teammates Jordan Hamilton and Will Cherry, who have partial guarantees for the same amount. The three appear to be jockeying for a single opening-night roster spot, since Toronto has 13 full guarantees and a $5MM partial guarantee with Amir Johnson.
- The history of teams that win 20 games or fewer shows that they almost always bounce back into the playoffs within a few years, and that helps explain the Sixers‘ confidence in their radical rebuilding plan, as Sean Deveney of The Sporting News examines.
- Dwane Casey continues to be fond of Knicks point guard Jose Calderon, whom he coached on the Raptors, and the feeling is mutual, observes Fred Kerber of the New York Post.
Lowe’s Latest: Rondo, Green, Horford, Sixers
Grantland’s Zach Lowe includes a few eye-openers among his annual preseason predictions, including his assertion that the Suns will again miss out on the playoffs. As usual, Lowe’s must-read column isn’t all conjecture, and he shares a few whispers he’s heard from around the league. We’ll pass along the news items here:
- The Celtics have set a remarkably high price for Rajon Rondo as they’ve gauged the trade market for him over the past year, but Boston is also putting out trade feelers about Jeff Green, Lowe writes. People around the league are higher on Green than the forward’s public reputation would suggest, according to Lowe, who adds the Pelicans to the list of teams that have shown interest in Green in the past. It’s unclear if New Orleans still has eyes for Green, however.
- The Hawks brought up Al Horford‘s name in trade talk with a few teams last year, seeking an unprotected 2014 first-rounder in return, sources tell Lowe.
- Michael Carter-Williams found his name in trade rumors around the draft, and the Sixers indeed made a hard push to find a deal, Lowe hears. The Grantland scribe cautions that the team isn’t necessarily dead set on trading him, writing that the Sixers understand there are plenty of quality point guards to go around and that Philadelphia prioritizes deal that would help the team land more high draft picks.
- It would catch no one in the league offices by surprise if Mikhail Prokhorov eventually decides to give up control of the Nets, according to Lowe.
- The Cavs have shown reluctance to surrender the 2015 first-round pick that the Grizzlies owe them, Lowe writes. It’s the only first-rounder other than their own that the Cavs possess.
Raptors Pick Up Options On Valanciunas, Ross
The Raptors have exercised their options to keep Jonas Valanciunas and Terrence Ross under their rookie scale contracts for 2015/16, the team announced via press release. The moves were expected, as both are mainstays of a team on the rise in the Eastern Conference. Valanciunas will make more than $4.660MM and Ross nearly $3.554MM, respectively, in 2015/16, which will be the fourth pro season for each of them, as our Rookie Scale Team Option Tracker shows.
Valanciunas played overseas for a year after the Raptors drafted him fifth overall in 2011, but Toronto wasted little time in giving him a prominent role during his rookie season, when he started in all but five of his 62 appearances. The native of Lithuania started all 81 games he played this past season, averaging 11.3 points and 8.8 rebounds in 28.2 minutes per contest. Ross was a reserve for Toronto the season after the team picked him eighth overall in 2012, but he blossomed last year, when the Rudy Gay trade opened the starting small forward position for him. Ross put up 10.9 PPG in 26.7 MPG and raised his three-point shooting to 39.5% from the 33.2% mark he posted as a rookie.
The exercised options give the Raptors about $49MM in commitments for 2015/16, or about 17.5MM beneath the projected $66.5MM salary cap. That would give Toronto a chance to go after a restricted free agent with an offer at or near the maximum salary, but next summer is still a ways off, and many moves are yet to come.
Southeast Notes: Hayward, Hornets, Hawks, Heat
Owner Michael Jordan‘s presence in Charlotte’s pitch meeting with Lance Stephenson was key to the team’s ability to strike a deal with the shooting guard, but the mere presence of Jordan via video conference was enough for Gordon Hayward, as Hayward tells USA Today’s Sam Amick. Hayward was “ecstatic” about the idea of playing for the Hornets before the Jazz matched Charlotte’s max offer sheet this summer, Amick writes.
“I didn’t know what to expect … but they blew me away with their presentation,” Hayward said of the Hornets. “They came in and did a whole analytical presentation too, which was really, really impressive. It spoke to the analytical part of me. I was a computer engineer and math major in college, so that was really impressive to see. It just showed that they’re taking steps to try and become a next-level team and push toward trying to win a championship.”
There’s more from Amick’s profile of Charlotte’s legendary player-turned-owner amid the news out of the Southeast Division, as we pass along:
- Hornets assistant coach Patrick Ewing was also in the team’s meeting with Stephenson, and head coach Steve Clifford credits the presence of the former Knicks star as a linchpin in the recruitment of Stephenson, a Brooklyn native, as Amick details.
- The Hawks will probably release camp invitee Jarell Eddie, since he has a non-guaranteed deal and the team has at least partially guaranteed money out to 15 others, but the swingman has impressed the team’s brass so far, writes Chris Vivlamore of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
- Justin Hamilton has only a partially guaranteed deal with the Heat and has missed time with a heart condition, but coach Erik Spoelstra on Monday gave a subtle hint that suggests the team intends to keep him around, observes Ira Winderman of the Sun Sentinel. Spoelstra pointed to Hamilton’s absence as a reason why the team’s frontcourt rotation is in flux, Winderman notes.
And-Ones: Towns, Wayns, Ennis
Scouts and executives are convinced that forward/center Karl-Anthony Towns is the best of Kentucky’s prospect-laden roster, but the team’s NBA showcase might have benefited point guard Tyler Ulis more than any other Wildcat, observes Chad Ford of ESPN.com (Insider-only). Still, several GMs were skeptical about how much they could learn from coach John Calipari‘s unusual combine, as Ford relays.
“There’s a herd mentality in the NBA,” said a GM who spoke to Ford. “We came because everyone else was coming and you want as much information as you can. Things like this don’t really tell you much and can, in fact, be dangerous. We saw these guys exactly how Calipari wanted us to see them. But this event isn’t reality. The game is reality. Watching Cal in a real practice when he’s really getting on guys is reality. This was a show. I keep reminding my scouts of that.”
More from around the Association..
- Executives from teams who’ve spoken with TNT’s David Aldridge are eyeing a 2016/17 salary cap anywhere from $75MM to $101MM, though the figures are merely “guesstimates,” as Aldridge notes in his Morning Tip column for NBA.com.
- Former Sixers and Clippers point guard Maalik Wayns and Zalgiris Kaunas of Lithuania have mutually agreed to end their contract, the team announced via Twitter (hat tip to Sportando’s Emiliano Carchia). Wayns will undergo surgery on his left knee according to the Euroleague’s website and David Pick of Eurobasket.com tells Hoops Rumors the injury is severe. Wayns played in 27 NBA games over the past two seasons before signing this summer with the Lithuanian team.
- Heat rookie James Ennis isn’t a lock to make the Heat roster, but he’s helping his chances with strong play in the preseason, writes Joseph Goodman of The Miami Herald. Ennis has a three-year deal with Miami that includes a partial $200K guarantee for this season that becomes a full guarantee if he’s on the roster through opening night.
Zach Links contributed to this post.