LeBron James Rumors: Wednesday
Today’s meeting between LeBron James and the Heat in Las Vegas has come and gone, and seemingly the entire league waits to see what will come of it. There are plenty of LeBron-related rumors. We’ll round them up here, with the latest on top as updates continue to come in:
- The Cavs remain confident about their chances with LeBron based on their meetings with his agent, tweets Sam Amico of FOX Sports Ohio.
- A person briefed on the Miami meeting tells Ken Berger of CBSSports.com that LeBron offered no counter to the Heat’s pitch, such as a shorter max contract. James could still make such a counter after deliberating further, of course.
Earlier updates:
- James will not meet with any other teams, a source tells Broussard (Twitter link). The four-time MVP is comfortable with his knowledge of each of his suitors, and will spend the next day or more making his decision with his family, tweets David Aldridge of NBA.com.
- The Heat feel the meeting with James went well, and remain optimistic they can re-sign the superstar, tweets Chris Mannix of SI.com.
- James plans to talk over his decision with his family now, tweets Joseph Goodman of The Miami Herald.
- The decision will not be made or announced this evening, tweets Chris Broussard of ESPN.com.
- At this time, James does not have a meeting scheduled with the Cavs, per Windhorst (on Twitter).
- LeBron’s meeting with the Heat ended without a decision from James on where he will sign, tweets Brian Windhorst of ESPN.com. Bleacher Report’s Ethan J. Skolnick tweets that no announcement is imminent.
- Rival executives across are rooting for LeBron to return to Cleveland, tweets Sam Amico of FOX Sports Ohio.
- Kevin Love would only be interested in getting traded to Cleveland if James was acquired by the Cavs, sources tell Ken Berger of CBSSports.com which lines up with previous reports (Twitter link).
- The Heat doesn’t see the sitdown as an “armageddon” of sorts, but rather a planning session to show James the financial outlook for the roster, tweets Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports.
- Agent Rich Paul, and not James or Heat president Pat Riley, was the one who called the meeting, as Sam Amico of Fox Sports Ohio hears (Twitter link).
- A player close to James who spoke with Bleacher Report’s Ethan Skolnick laughed at the idea that the moves the Heat have made this summer would impress the four-time MVP, presumably referring to the team’s agreements with Josh McRoberts and Danny Granger. That unidentified player believes the Heat would have been better off preserving as much cap flexibility as possible to sell LeBron on a more significant acquisition (Twitter links).
- The latest reports indicate James, Riley, Paul and Heat assistant GM Andy Elisburg will be present for the meeting.
Cray Allred contributed to this post.
Raptors Waive Julyan Stone
8:22pm: In addition to the new teams mentioned, the Raptors remain a possibility to sign Stone, per Charania.
WEDNESDAY, 5:53pm: Stone has cleared waivers and is now discussing a possible deal with the Sixers, Bucks, and Kings, a league source tells Shams Charania of RealGM (Twitter link). Presumably, any deal would slot Stone on a team’s training camp roster and be partially or non-guaranteed, although that’s just my speculation at this point.
MONDAY, 2:49pm: The Raptors have waived point guard Julyan Stone, the team announced (on Twitter). Stone’s non-guaranteed minimum-salary contract was to have become fully guaranteed if he remained on the roster through today, so Toronto saves some cash and some room under the tax line with the move.
Stone’s relationship with Raptors GM Masai Ujiri dates to their time together with the Nuggets, with whom the 25-year-old spent the first two seasons of his career. Still, even news that fellow reserve guard Nando De Colo had turned down Toronto’s offer to accept a deal to play in Russia wasn’t enough to keep Stone on the roster as the Raptors seek to re-sign Greivis Vasquez and stay below the tax threshold.
Mavs Nearing Deal With Vince Carter
WEDNESDAY, 7:35pm: If Rockets don’t match the max offer sheet the Mavs and Chandler Parsons have agreed to, it would eliminate cap room in Dallas, but the Mavs are still hopeful Carter would re-sign under their $2.73MM cap room exception, a source tells Tim MacMahon of ESPNDallas.com. That amount would be a pay reduction from Carter’s previous deal, and lower than the steady sixth man anticipated accepting this offseason.
MONDAY, 3:27pm: Carter is indeed drawing closer to a deal with the Mavs, but several teams remain in the running and some are pushing aggressively to snatch him away, as Jeff Caplan of NBA.com hears (Twitter link).
3:02pm: The Mavericks are closing in on a deal with Vince Carter, a source tells Dwain Price of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram (Twitter link). The team is still in the market for Chandler Parsons, Luol Deng, Lance Stephenson, Trevor Ariza and Pau Gasol, Price adds.
The Mavs had been growing confident that they’d reach a deal with Carter, as Tim MacMahon of ESPNDallas.com wrote earlier. It’ll likely be a one- or two-year arrangement between $3.5MM and the $5.305MM mid-level exception, MacMahon adds.
Carter has reportedly been the subject of pitches from the Heat and others, but there’s been strong mutual interest in getting a deal done that would bring the 37-year-old sixth man back to Dallas.
Raptors Sign Bruno Caboclo
6:50pm: Toronto has made the signing official in a team release. Whether Caboclo received the full 120% rookie scale salary has yet to be revealed, but presumably that’s the case.
11:13am: The Raptors have signed surprise No. 20 overall pick Bruno Caboclo, as Caboclo revealed on his verified Twitter account (hat tip to Ryan Wolstat of the Toronto Sun). He’s likely in line for a salary worth $1.458MM this season, assuming he signs for the standard 120% of the rookie scale, as our chart of salaries for 2014 first-round picks shows.
Wolstat wrote last week that the 18-year-old Caboclo was likely to join the team for the coming season, even though there seemed to be a strong chance the unheralded small forward would remain out of the NBA for another year or two. The 6’8″ Brazilian wasn’t on Jonathan Givony’s DraftExpress final rankings of the top 100 prospects in the 2014 draft. Still, the Jazz and Suns were reportedly interested in him as well, and though the Raptors had promised to draft him 37th overall, they did so at No. 20 to get the jump on Phoenix and Utah.
The Raptors are also likely to add another recent first-round pick from Brazil for next season after acquiring the rights to 7-footer Lucas Nogueira from the Hawks late last month.
Carmelo Anthony Likely To Re-Sign With Knicks
5:38pm: In addition to Anthony’s enthusiasm about the Calderon addition in New York, ‘Melo believes the Knicks have a shot at landing Pau Gasol this season, a friend of his tells Marc Berman of The New York Post.
3:36pm: Agent Leon Rose tells Ramona Shelburne of ESPNLosAngeles.com that Anthony has not made a decision yet between the Knicks and Lakers (Twitter link). The wording of Shelburne’s tweet seems to suggest those are the only two teams still in consideration, but that remains unclear.
3:24pm: The Knicks haven’t been told of any decision, but they have no reason to believe that Anthony will sign elsewhere, a source tells Ken Berger of CBSSports.com (Twitter link).
3:16pm: A source cautions to Howard Beck of Bleacher Report that Anthony has yet to render a decision, and the teams that have pursued him have received no definitive word (Twitter link).
2:58pm: Carmelo Anthony is ready to announce that he’ll re-sign with the Knicks, barring a change of heart at the last minute, a person close to Anthony tells Frank Isola of the New York Daily News. The person, a friend of Anthony’s, said that Anthony has been hesitating in an effort to make sure he finds the team with the best chance to win a title, and that Anthony is pleased with New York’s acquisition of Jose Calderon.
Anthony will make an announcement Thursday, the friend added, saying to Isola that Anthony “believes in Phil,” a reference to Knicks president Phil Jackson. Sources tell Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports that within Anthony’s camp, the general belief has been that the idea was to take the maximum salary from the Knicks, a roughly $129MM contract over five seasons, and push for a trade later if necessary (Twitter link).
Presumably Anthony will be signing for the max, which the Knicks offered during their meeting with the star forward last week. Still, there reportedly remains a distinct possibility that he’d agree to take his max salary of nearly $22.5MM this season and raises lower than the maximum 7.5% that New York could give him in subsequent years.
The Knicks were seemingly the front-runners at different points throughout the process, though the latest dispatch cast it as a two-team race between New York and the Lakers. The Bulls seemed like the next most likely destination, followed by the Rockets and the Mavs, with whom Anthony also met. The Heat seemed like a darkhorse, but they hadn’t really been in the discussion, Wojnarowski hears, and Anthony hadn’t even been able to reach LeBron James as of a few days ago, Wojnarowski adds (Twitter links). ‘Melo reportedly dreams of pairing up with James in New York.
NBA Sets Salary Cap, Luxury Tax Line
4:48pm: Five teams wound up as luxury taxpayers for 2013/14, according to a league memo that Hoops Rumors has obtained. The Nets pay a record amount of $90,570,781 in taxes, followed by the Knicks at $36,346,885, the Heat at $14,427,562, the Lakers at $8,960,265 and the Clippers at $1,325,316. The Early Bird amount is $5.632MM, the memo also states, so players with Early Bird rights can re-sign for a starting salary of up to that amount or 175% of their previous salary, whichever is greater.
4:36pm: Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders has the maximum salary figures (via Twitter): For players with six or fewer years of service, the max is $14.746MM, so that’s what Hayward will receive next season. For those with seven to nine years, it’s $17.6952MM. Players with 10 or more years can receive up to $20.6444MM, meaning that’s the max for James and Bosh. The max that Hayward is getting is also the max for John Wall and DeMarcus Cousins, both of whom signed max extensions last fall.
4:15pm: The NBA has set the salary cap for the 2014/15 season at $63.065MM and the luxury tax line at $76.829MM, the league announced (Twitter link via USA Today’s Adi Joseph). That means the luxury tax apron, an amount $4MM above the tax line that teams that trigger hard caps cannot cross, will be $80.829MM. The numbers go into effect at 11:01 Central time tonight, when the July moratorium ends.
Those figures are slightly less than the projections of $63.2MM and $77MM, respectively, that Salary Cap FAQ author Larry Coon unearthed from a league memo this spring. They nonetheless represent increases of more than 7% from the $58.679MM salary cap and $71.748MM luxury tax for 2013/14.
The minimum team salary will be $56.759MM, the league’s release states, and while some teams may have trouble meeting that figure, the penalty for failing to do so is minimal. Clubs would have to distribute the difference between their team salary and the minimum team salary among the players on their roster if they don’t meet the mark by season’s end.
The league’s maximum salaries, of keen interest to LeBron James, Chris Bosh and particularly Gordon Hayward, who’s already agreed to a max offer sheet, remain unannounced. The same is true for the league’s average salary, which applies to players with Early Bird rights.
Mavs Aggressively Courting Chandler Parsons
3:58pm: Executives around the league expect the Mavs to tender Parsons a “major offer sheet” at some point, according to USA Today’s Sam Amick.
MONDAY, 8:28pm: Dallas is waiting for confirmation that they won’t be able to land James or Anthony before extending an offer sheet to Parsons, a source tells Eddie Sefko of the Dallas Morning News.
2:46pm: The Mavs are making a push to sign restricted free agent Chandler Parsons to an offer sheet, sources tell Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports (Twitter link). Dallas can come to an agreement on the offer sheet at any time, but Houston’s three-day window to match wouldn’t start until Thursday, the first day after the end of the July moratorium.
Parsons has been a popular man since free agency began with the Bulls, Wolves, Lakers, Suns, and Celtics also showing varying degrees of interest in the Rockets’ restricted free agent. The ramped up pursuit of Parsons could be a sign that Dallas feels they’re on the outside looking in when it comes to LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony. Luol Deng has also been mentioned as a possible Plan B for the Mavs if they were unable to land one of this summer’s top two free agents.
Spurs, Gregg Popovich Agree To Extension
The Spurs have reached agreement on a multiyear extension with Gregg Popovich, the team announced. The league’s reigning Coach of the Year also carries a strong front office presence, and decisions are made in tandem with GM R.C. Buford, who won this year’s Executive of the Year honor. The length of the extension is unclear, but Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports hears that Popovich, 65, is eager to coach another four or five years (Twitter link).
Popovich is fresh off having won his fifth championship for San Antonio, and this past season was the second time in three years and third time overall that he won Coach of the Year. He’s poised next season to win his 1,000th game as an NBA head coach, all of them having come with the Spurs.
The fiery sideline boss is 967-443 since taking over the coaching duties for the Spurs in 1996/97. He preceded Buford as GM, having begun in that role in 1994, and he held both the GM and head coaching titles for several years until Buford took over the day-to-day business of running the team.
In a market where coaches with no prior experience are receiving five-year, $25MM deals, Popovich’s value is seemingly several times more lucrative. It’s unclear how much Popovich is receiving on the deal, but it seems likely that, as many of his players have done, he’s working for less than he’s worth.
Spurs Sign Bryce Cotton
2:35pm: Cotton’s guarantee is only for $50K, tweets Mark Deeks of ShamSports.
WEDNESDAY, 8:38am: The contract is “nominally guaranteed” for the first season and non-guaranteed for 2015/16, according to Jeff McDonald of the San Antonio Express-News. It’ll become fully guaranteed if he makes the opening night roster, McDonald adds, though I suspect that full guarantee would apply to this coming season, and not 2015/16 (Twitter links).
MONDAY, 6:23pm: Cotton has officially signed with the Spurs, the team announced.
SUNDAY, 8:55am: A source tells Jabari Young of the San Antonio Express-News that Cotton remains unsigned (Twitter link). Young suggests that the deal on the table from the Spurs is just a summer league arrangement and says that Cotton is on the lookout for something more.
JULY 2ND, 11:24am: The deal is expected to be formally signed on Wednesday, Charania writes in his full piece, and since minimum-salary contracts are some of the few that can become official during the July moratorium, that suggests that Cotton is indeed getting the minimum. Several teams offered to draft him if he agreed to play overseas next season, but he rejected those entreaties, according to Charania, who identified the Mavs as another team that had interest. The second season is fully guaranteed if he makes the team out of training camp, Charania adds, presumably referring to this year’s training camp.
11:11am: The Spurs and undrafted Providence guard Bryce Cotton have agreed on a partially guaranteed two-year deal, reports Shams Charania of RealGM (Twitter link). Presumably the arrangement is for the minimum salary, or something close to it.
San Antonio worked out Cotton prior to the draft, and while the team held multiple late second-round picks at one point, it wound up trading two of them and using the 54th overall pick on Nemanja Dangubic. I wouldn’t be surprised if the shoulder injury to Patty Mills, which may keep him out for up to seven months, played a role in Cotton’s deal.
Cotton notched 21.8 points, 5.8 assists and 2.4 turnovers per game in his senior season with the Friars. He also averaged 39.9 minutes per outing, nearly the length of an entire college game.
‘Melo Wants To Play With LeBron On Knicks
1:59pm: Heat assistant GM and salary cap expert Andy Elisburg will also be at Miami’s meeting with LeBron, according to Wojnarowski (Twitter link).
12:31pm: James and agent Rich Paul will meet with only Riley today, according to Broussard, who corrects his earlier report that Spoelstra, Arison and Wade would take part (Twitter link).
11:51am: Several teams believe Anthony is delaying his decision until he knows what James is going to do, as Ian Begley and Ramona Shelburne of ESPN.com write. There’s been a strong belief of late that Anthony is likely to choose between the Lakers and Knicks, the ESPN scribes say. The Lakers are waiting on both Anthony and James, but they’re beginning to get impatient, worried that they’ll miss out on Pau Gasol and Trevor Ariza, among others, as they hesitate, according to Begley and Shelburne. The Lakers, like the Suns and Cavs, have explored the notion of clearing cap room both Anthony and James, but they haven’t gotten far, according to the ESPN report.
10:38am: There’s still a belief among GMs that James will end up re-signing with the Heat on a one- or two-year max contract, tweets Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports. That conflicts with Mannix’s report that James is seeking a three-year commitment.
8:47am: Carmelo Anthony dreams of playing with LeBron James on the Knicks, a friend of Anthony’s tells Marc Berman of the New York Post. Berman reported earlier this week that the Knicks were worried that Anthony was hesitating to make a decision while the possibility still exists that he could join James on the Heat or the Lakers, but it appears that ‘Melo’s ideal setting for that scenario would instead be New York. Still, Anthony’s friend says the Knicks star hasn’t made up his mind about returning to New York.
Most NBA executives are confident that Anthony will return to the Knicks, given the inherent financial advantage of re-signing with the team, according to Frank Isola of the New York Daily News. Still, money won’t be the only factor in the decision, a person close to Anthony tells Isola. Anthony worked out with Thunder star Kevin Durant in Los Angeles recently, and Durant gave Anthony a strong endorsement of new Knicks coach Derek Fisher, tweets Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports.
Knicks president Phil Jackson is attempting to clear cap room to facilitate Anthony’s long shot hopes of teaming with James in New York, as Berman hears from Anthony’s friend. The Knicks have reportedly shopped Amar’e Stoudemire, and perhaps Andrea Bargnani as well, to open up space. Yet there’s a growing belief that Jackson would be open to a sign-and-trade with another team should Anthony decide to play elsewhere, Isola writes.
The friend of Anthony’s who spoke to Berman insists that James is fond of Jackson and would like the chance to play with ‘Melo. Another source tells Berman that the buzz surrounding the possibility that James would sign with the Cavaliers is coming from the Cavs themselves in an effort to enhance their reputation. The Mavs expect another meeting with LeBron’s representatives again this week in Las Vegas, although it isn’t clear whether or not LeBron will attend, a source tells Eddie Sefko of the Dallas Morning News.
James is meeting today with Heat president Pat Riley, and Chris Broussard of ESPN.com hears coach Erik Spoelstra, owner Micky Arison and Dwyane Wade will also be in attendance (Twitter link). Miami’s contingent enters the sitdown with “nervous anticipation” and no real sense of how James will react to the club’s offseason moves, tweets Chris Mannix of SI.com. James is looking for a three-year commitment in his next deal, Mannix adds (Twitter link), contradicting earlier reports that indicated he would look for an opt-out after one season.
Ryan Raroque contributed to this post.