Lloyd’s Latest: Thompson, Allen, Deng
LeBron James is set to play a game in a Cavs uniform less than two weeks from now for the first time in more than four years, but that’s far from the only storyline surrounding the team as it prepares for training camp. Jason Lloyd of the Akron Beacon Journal shares 23 mostly Cavs-related thoughts in honor of James’ No. 23 jersey, and the entire piece is a must-read for wine-and-gold faithful. We’ll pass along three highlights here:
- The Cavs and Tristan Thompson‘s representatives with Klutch Sports have yet to talk numbers in a potential extension for the former No. 4 overall pick, a source tells Lloyd. Still, the Beacon Journal scribe believes agent Rich Paul will ask for a deal in the neighborhood of the four-year, $44MM extension the Bucks gave Larry Sanders and the four-year, $48MM extension the Jazz granted Derrick Favors.
- Cleveland’s brass maintains belief that Ray Allen will sign with the team, as Lloyd wrote Monday, but they anticipate starting camp without him, as their full 20-man roster indicates, Lloyd explains in his latest piece.
- The NBA and the Cavs are fairly certain that the racially derogatory remarks in the infamous Luol Deng scouting report that seemed to come from someone with ties to the Cavs emanated from someone who’s no longer with Cleveland, according to Lloyd. Instead, many around the league are directing their ire toward the Hawks for their handling of the situation, Lloyd writes.
Latest On Rajon Rondo
12:21pm: Ainge says Rondo has given him the indication that he loves Boston and wants to stay there, adding that “very credible people have made things up” in regard to Rondo trade rumors, as Holmes passes along (Twitter links).
10:58am: Celtics coach Brad Stevens rejects the notion that Rondo is difficult to coach, as Baxter Holmes of the Boston Globe tweets. “He’s been around, he works hard and he’s a guy that I’ve really enjoyed coaching,” Stevens said.
9:59am: Celtics president of basketball operations Danny Ainge left himself plenty of wiggle room in his comments over the weekend, saying that a Rajon Rondo trade is unlikely to happen but refusing to rule it out. Co-owner Wyc Grousbeck took it a step further with full-scale mixed messages, calling Rondo “super stubborn” while also pointing to the All-Star’s generosity and love for Boston, as Adam Kaufman of Boston.com details.
“I know if you ask [former head coach] Doc [Rivers], ‘Was he the most coachable guy, or in the top half, 50%?’ he’d say, ‘No, he’s in the bottom 50% of being coachable.’ It’s hard with him,” Grousbeck said Sunday on WBZ-TV, as Kaufman transcribes.
Still, in the same interview, Grousbeck said he “absolutely” wants to keep Rondo, who can become a free agent next summer, for the long haul.
“It’s intangible,” he said. “You just watch him. He played through sort of a broken elbow, a ripped knee. He’s a gamer, he’s a competitor, and he’s got world-class talent.”
Ainge said that he expects to keep Rondo long-term, tweets Gary Washburn of the Boston Globe, and Ainge denied today that the team has fielded trade calls about its point guard, as Ben Rohrbach of WEEI.com notes (on Twitter). Both Ainge and Grousbeck hinted in their interviews that the Celtics recently had the opportunity to make a significant deal, but not one that would have helped the team accomplish its ultimate goals, Rohrbach observes via Twitter. Ainge also dismissed the notion that free agents don’t want to play with Rondo, according to Rohrbach (Twitter link).
And-Ones: Cap, Walker, Bledsoe, Rubio, Wiggins
Some teams think the salary cap will jump above $70MM for next season, as Grantland’s Zach Lowe reports, though Lowe’s dispatch from a week ago indicated that the league has told clubs not to get carried away with their projections for the time being. Clarity on the matter will be important, especially for clubs with players up for extensions to their rookie-scale contracts before the October 31st deadline. Lowe’s latest piece centers on one such case, as the Hornets face a decision about whether to extend Kemba Walker, whom rival executives often say isn’t a “championship point guard,” according to Lowe. We’ll pass along another tidbit from the Grantland scribe amid the latest from around the league:
- The Suns haven’t shown much interest in sign-and-trades involving Eric Bledsoe, Lowe hears, advancing Friday’s report from Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports that threw cold water on the idea that Bledsoe would end up with the Wolves.
- The Wolves and Ricky Rubio‘s camp remain in a stalemate in extension negotiations in part because agents Dan Fegan and Jarinn Akana know that the Knicks and Lakers can open cap space next summer, writes Darren Wolfson of 1500 ESPN Twin Cities (Twitter links).
- Rumors as late as the eve of the draft suggested that the Cavs were conflicted about whom to take No. 1 overall, but coach David Blatt insists the team had settled on Andrew Wiggins long before making him the top pick, as Blatt tells Terry Pluto of the Plain Dealer. Cleveland didn’t hold on to Wiggins for long, of course, shipping him to the Wolves in the Kevin Love trade.
- Nazr Mohammed‘s contract with the Bulls is non-guaranteed for the minimum salary and covers just one season, reports Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders (Twitter link).
- Clippers signee Jared Cunningham rejected a deal from Serbia’s KK Partizan to instead try his hand at making the opening-night roster in L.A. on his non-guaranteed contract, tweets David Pick of Eurobasket.com.
Scotty Hopson In Talks To Play In Italy?
TUESDAY, 10:16am: Representatives from Enel Brindisi deny that they’re moving toward a deal with Hopson, Carchia tweets.
MONDAY, 11:39am: Scotty Hopson is finalizing a deal with Italy’s Enel Brindisi, sources tell Sportando’s Emiliano Carchia. Hopson is still under contract with the Kings, who officially acquired him in the Jason Terry trade last week, but it seems unlikely that Sacramento would carry his non-guaranteed salary of nearly $1.451MM into the season. Italian outlets Mismatchbrindisi and La Gazzetta dello Sport were the first to report the talks, according to Carchia, who provided a translation of the original dispatches.
Hopson was averaging 10.9 points in 24.9 minutes per game for Turkey’s Anadolu Efes last season when Cleveland signed him at the end of March to a deal that covered the rest of the season, with non-guaranteed salary included for 2014/15. The Cavs used their room exception to make the deal more lucrative and thus more valuable for matching salaries in a trade, though they could have created a more valuable trade chip and saved money at the same if they’d signed a 10-plus-year veteran to a minimum-salary deal. Still, Hopson played out the season and Cleveland indeed shipped him out, sending him to Charlotte, which flipped him to New Orleans less than 48 hours later. The Pelicans sent him along to Houston in the Omer Asik trade less than 48 hours after that, and the Rockets held on to him for two months so they could aggregate his salary with Alonzo Gee‘s in the Terry swap.
A deal overseas would presumably give Hopson some degree of certainty about where he’ll play the coming season after a whirlwind summer, though it’s unclear whether it would contain an NBA escape clause. The 25-year-old swingman saw action in only two games for less than seven minutes combined during his stint with the Cavs, so he didn’t have much of a chance to prove his worth in the Association.
Josh Harrellson To Play In China
Three-year NBA veteran Josh Harrellson has signed with China’s Chongqing Flying Dragons, according to Harrellson’s representatives at the Altius Culture agency (on Twitter). The terms are unclear, but most such deals are one-year arrangements that allow the player to return stateside in time to latch on with an NBA club for the stretch run of the regular season.
The 25-year-old didn’t seem to garner much interest in NBA circles this summer after the Pistons waived him in mid-July rather than guarantee his minimum salary for the season. The 6’10” Harrellson played sparingly for the Pistons this past season, averaging 2.9 points in 9.9 minutes per game, and while he set a career high with 38.7% accuracy from behind the three-point arc, he only attempted 31 treys all year.
The Flying Dragons are about to embark on their first season in the Chinese Basketball Association, the country’s top-flight league. Harrellson joins Andray Blatche, Jordan Crawford, Toney Douglas, Al Harrington and Byron Mullens among players migrating from the NBA to China this offseason.
Hornets Sign Brian Qvale For Camp
The Hornets have signed former University of Montana center Brian Qvale, the team announced via press release. The release also included formal announcements of the team’s deals with Justin Cobbs and Dallas Lauderdale. David Pick of Eurobasket.com originally reported the team was set to sign Cobbs, while Chris Haynes of the Plain Dealer first had the news on Lauderdale. Terms for all three remain unclear, but while the team has the capacity to give each of them more than the minimum salary, it seems unlikely that’s the case with any of the trio.
The 6’11” Qvale has spent the past three years playing overseas after he went undrafted in 2011. His addition to the Hornets roster is particularly surprising, given that he’s never attended camp with an NBA team before and didn’t take part in summer league action this past July. His career has taken him to Turkey, Belgium and last year to Germany, where he averaged 13.1 points, 6.0 rebounds and 1.3 blocks in 26.8 minutes per game for Medi Bayreuth.
Charlotte’s roster swells to 17 with today’s signings. The team has fully guaranteed pacts with 14 players, leaving Qvale, Cobbs and Lauderdale to fight for the 15th spot on the team’s opening-night roster, providing GM Rich Cho decides to carry a full complement of players into the regular season.
Hawks Notes: Silver, Ferry, Owners
It’s been more than two weeks since Hawks controlling owner Bruce Levenson announced his intention to sell his stake in the club stemming from an investigation that uncovered an email with racially charged statements that he’d written in 2012. GM Danny Ferry helped defuse the controversy when he agreed to take an indefinite leave of absence after his own racist statements became public, but the leadership of the Hawks remains in limbo. Here’s the latest:
- A sitting NBA owner told Chris Vivlamore of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the Hawks will move to a new city “over my dead body,” casting further doubt on the notion that a new principal owner will move the franchise. Commissioner Adam Silver will meet Friday with Atlanta mayor Kasim Reed to discuss the state of Hawks ownership, as Vivlamore reports in the same piece.
- Silver said today that he thought Ferry was wise to take his indefinite leave of absence, as Chris Herring of The Wall Street Journal tweets. Silver said earlier this month that he doesn’t think Ferry committed any offense that should prompt the team to fire him.
- Vivlamore’s piece also provides a breakdown of the Hawks ownership shares. Levenson owns 24% of the team, but his share combined with those of Ed Peskowitz and Todd Foreman total 50.1%, and all three are selling. Michael Gearon Sr. and Michael Gearon Jr. own approximately 42% of the team combined, while the rest of the club is in the hands of Rutherford Seydel, Beau Turner and a New York-based investment group that includes Steven Price.
Franklin, Blue Work Out For Wizards
Free agent shooting guards Jamaal Franklin and Vander Blue are working out today at the Verizon Center in Washington, the home court of the Wizards, as Jorge Castillo of The Washington Post observes (Twitter link). It’s not entirely clear whether the Wizards are putting Franklin and Blue through their paces or if they’re working out on their own, but it nonetheless seems as though they’re auditioning for the club one way or another.
Franklin was reportedly in San Antonio last week to work out for the Spurs, with whom he presumably has an in thanks to his connection with former San Diego State teammate Kawhi Leonard. Rumors have been sparse surrounding Blue since the Celtics elected not to re-sign the former Marquette standout following the expiration of his 10-day contract with the team this past season. Blue was in camp last fall with the Sixers, who cut him before opening night, while Franklin spent the season on the Grizzlies roster after Memphis made him the 41st overall pick in 2013. Franklin saw only 165 total minutes in the regular season and playoffs combined, and the Grizzlies waived him in August, using the stretch provision to defray the immediate cost of his guaranteed salary.
The Wizards struck camp deals with Xavier Silas and Damion James last week, bringing their roster to 16. Washington has fully guaranteed deals with 13 players and a partially guaranteed arrangement with Glen Rice Jr., but J. Michael of CSNWashington.com wrote last week that there’s a strong chance that Washington will open the regular season with fewer than 15 players. Even so, Silas told Michael that the Wizards are giving him a “legitimate chance” to make it to opening night, so GM Ernie Grunfeld is apparently in no rush to make decisions.
Bulls Re-Sign Nazr Mohammed
The Bulls have re-signed center Nazr Mohammed, the team announced (Twitter link). It’s not clear whether the 37-year-old is coming back with any guaranteed money in his contract, but Chicago almost certainly isn’t giving him more than the minimum salary he’s earned the past two seasons with the club, since that’s all the Bulls can hand out to free agents. They renounced their Early Bird rights to Mohammed in July.
It’s somewhat surprising to see Mohammed wind up back with Chicago, given the team’s beefed-up front line that includes newcomers Pau Gasol and Nikola Mirotic. Mohammed worked out for the Heat late last month, but there’s otherwise been little interest in the 16-year veteran. He appeared in 80 regular season games for the Bulls last season, but he averaged just 7.0 minutes per outing and totaled five minutes over two playoff appearances.
The Excel Sports Management client nonetheless maintained confidence throughout the summer that he’d find a deal, tweets K.C. Johnson of the Chicago Tribune. The question remains whether he’ll still find himself under contract come opening night. Chicago has 12 fully guaranteed deals plus a partially guaranteed arrangement with E’Twaun Moore, but the team hasn’t carried more than the NBA-minimum 13 players on opening night in any of the last three seasons.
Mavs Sign Doron Lamb
The Mavericks have signed shooting guard Doron Lamb, the team announced (Twitter link). All of the terms aren’t immediately clear, but Dallas is limited to giving out no more than the minimum salary. There’s no guaranteed money involved, according to Tim MacMahon of ESPNDallas (on Twitter).
Lamb, who turns 23 in November, has been on the market since shortly after the Magic waived him at the end of June to avoid guaranteeing his minimum salary for the season. Up to that point he’d been on the same contract that he’d signed after the Bucks made him the 42nd overall pick in 2012. He put up similar numbers in his first two seasons in the league, split between Milwaukee and Orlando. The Arn Tellem client has averaged 3.5 points in 12.7 minutes per game in the NBA, but he’s made his mark with 39.4% shooting on 1.3 three-point attempts per contest.
It’ll be an uphill battle for Lamb if he’s to make the opening-night roster, since Dallas already has 15 fully guaranteed deals, plus partially guaranteed arrangements with Eric Griffin and Ivan Johnson. Charlie Villanueva is also with the Mavs on a non-guaranteed deal.