NBA Eyeing Sale Of Clippers To Magic Johnson
Magic Johnson has gone back and forth in public statements about whether he wants to buy the Clippers, but many around the NBA believe commissioner Adam Silver and the league’s owners want to sell the team to him, reports Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports. Johnson and the Guggenheim Partners, who together as a consortium own baseball’s Los Angeles Dodgers and the WNBA’s Los Angeles Sparks, are willing to pay in excess of $1 billion to buy the Clippers, Wojnarowski writes. Banned Clippers owner Donald Sterling fears that the league is steering the team toward Johnson, and that’s part of the reason why Sterling keeps assailing Johnson in racially charged rants, according to Wojnarowski.
The Yahoo! scribe first noted the interest of Johnson and the Guggenheim Partners last month, even before Silver issued Sterling’s lifetime ban and the league began to formally move toward forcing the sale of the Clippers. Johnson denied any such interest, but Wojnarowski continued to hear that the Hall-of-Famer wanted the team, and Johnson ultimately acknowledged his desire a couple of weeks ago.
Several groups and investors have made their designs on purchasing the Clippers known, but it appears as though Johnson and the Guggenheim Partners have the inside track. Silver issued an apology to Johnson on Monday after Sterling’s latest verbal attack. Still, legal challenges loom not only from Sterling but also from his wife, Shelly, who jointly owns the team as part of a family trust. There’s little chance that the matter will reach resolution anytime soon, so it could be a while before Johnson or any new Clippers owner takes control of the team.
Cavs Fire Mike Brown, Name Griffin Full-Time GM
The Cavs have fired coach Mike Brown and removed the interim tag from GM David Griffin‘s title, the team announced. Griffin appeared close to appointment as the team’s GM this weekend, just as doubts about Brown’s future lingered. It’s the second time that the Cavs have parted ways with Brown in the past four years. They hired him for a second stint last summer, but he didn’t last after compiling a 33-49 record in a season in which owner Dan Gilbert expected to make the playoffs.
“This is a very tough business. It pains all of us here that we needed to make the difficult decision of releasing Mike Brown,” Gilbert said in the team’s statement. “Mike worked hard over this last season to move our team in the right direction. Although, there was some progress from our finish over the few prior seasons, we believe we need to head in a different direction. We wish Mike and his family nothing but the best.”
Brown rejoined the Cavs last year on a five-year deal worth between $20-25MM, but it appears the team will have to shell out much of that money for a coach who won’t be on their sidelines. Gilbert was reportedly looking for feedback from the players and the front office staff on Brown as he made his decision about whether to retain the coach, and another report indicated that the players were in Brown’s corner, with Dion Waiters his loudest supporter. Brown was hired under former GM Chris Grant, whom Gilbert axed in February. Griffin has been serving in his place ever since.
The team responded well to the switch from Grant to Griffin, winning six in a row immediately after the change and going 17-16 overall. Griffin acquired Spencer Hawes at the trade deadline, and he meshed well with the team, giving it an outside shooter to balance the floor on the offensive end. Isiah Thomas and George Karl were among those who campaigned for the top front office job, and Gilbert considered other candidates, but Griffin gave the impression he’d be retained in a season-ending press conference last month.
“Our ownership group is looking forward to David Griffin leading the basketball side of our business. We interviewed several strong candidates for the GM position including Griff,” Gilbert said. “We chose David as our GM because we believe he is the best person to lead our franchise at this critical time and into the future. David brings over two decades of experience. He knows the ins and outs of this league as well as anyone and is also an outstanding talent evaluator.”
Griffin joined the Cavs as vice president of basketball operations in 2010, serving under Grant. He’d spent the previous 17 years with the Suns, rising from intern to senior vice president of basketball operations, a role in which he assisted Steve Kerr, now the primary coaching candidate for the Knicks.
Maximum Salary
Superstars like LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony are often referred to as “maximum-salary players” as they approach free agency, since they’re likely to command the most lucrative contract offers possible when they hit the market. That holds regardless of whether they’re making less than the max on their current deals, as in the case of James, or have suggested they’ll take less when they next sign, as Anthony has. The NBA’s collective bargaining agreement limits players to salaries based on a percentage of the salary cap, but the maximum varies from player to player. That helps explain why Anthony could sign at a discount this summer and still make a higher salary than James, even if the four-time MVP ends up with the max.
If a player has been in the NBA for six years or fewer, he can earn up to 25% of the salary cap in the first year of his deal. Players with seven to nine years of experience can earn up to 30%, while veterans with 10 or more years in the NBA are eligible for up to 35% of the cap.
Those percentages are somewhat deceiving, since the NBA uses factors to determine the maximum salary that are slightly different than what goes into calculating the salary cap. That’s why James Harden made $13,701,250 on his max deal in 2013/14 rather than $14,669,750, which is 25% of the $58.679MM salary cap for 2013/14. For players eligible for the 30% max in 2013/14, their top salary was $16,441,500, and the 35% max was $19,181,750. These figures will fluctuate from year to year, depending on the league’s projected Basketball Related Income for a given season.
There are a number of exceptions to the maximum salary, as follows:
- The maximum salary only applies to the first year of a multiyear contract. For example, if Eric Bledsoe were to sign a maximum-salary deal this summer, he would be subject to the maximum salary for the first season, with either 7.5% or 4.5% raises, depending on whether he signs with the Suns or another team. So by the third or fourth year of his contract, he could be earning significantly more than the max.
- A free agent’s maximum salary is always at least 105% of his previous salary. For instance, Anthony’s 2013/14 salary was $21,388,954. He is eligible to sign a new contract that will allow him to earn a maximum of $22,458,402 — 105% of his prior salary. That’s why he could take slightly less and still earn more than James, whose salary in 2013/14 was $19,067,500.
- A first-round pick coming off his four-year rookie scale contract is eligible for a maximum-salary contract extension worth 30% of the cap (rather than 25%) if he meets one of the Derrick Rose Rule criteria. That entails winning an MVP award, being voted an All-Star Game starter at least twice, or being named to an All-NBA team at least twice.
There were 16 players who were either playing on some form of max deal or had signed max extensions when I examined the league’s maximum-salary players in August. Those ranks have since swollen to 18 with the additions of Paul George and DeMarcus Cousins, who inked max extensions. The list demonstrates the many caveats and variations involved with max contracts, which ranged in value from slightly more than $57.5MM to nearly $123.7MM in 2013/14. Simply put, it’s difficult to define the NBA’s maximum salary in a broader sense, since it applies to individual players and not the league as a whole.
Note: This is a Hoops Rumors Glossary entry. Our glossary posts will explain specific rules relating to trades, free agency, or other aspects of the NBA’s Collective Bargaining Agreement. Larry Coon’s Salary Cap FAQ and ShamSports were used in the creation of this post.
A version of this post, written by Luke Adams, was initially published on May 8th, 2012.
Draft Rumors: Wiggins, Payne, McGary
The NBA has released its list of the participants in this week’s draft combine (link via Jonathan Givony of DraftExpress), and the names of Jabari Parker, Joel Embiid and Andrew Wiggins are missing, as expected. Wojnarowski reported Sunday afternoon that Parker and Embiid would skip the combine. He followed Sunday night with confirmation that Wiggins had also withdrawn (Twitter link), hours after Baxter Holmes of the Boston Globe reported that Wiggins was unlikely to show up. Here’s more on the draft:
- Payne and McGary are still expected to travel to the combine and take part in interviews with teams, even though they won’t do any physical work, as Jeff Goodman of ESPN.com clarifies (on Twitter).
Earlier updates:
- Michigan State power forward Adreian Payne and Michigan big man Mitch McGary are on the list of participants, but they’ll miss the combine because of health issues, as Chad Ford of ESPN.com reports (Twitter links).
- The absences of Wiggins, Embiid and Parker from the combine probably won’t knock any of them from the top three picks, but it presents an opportunity for players further down the rankings to impress, writes Steve Kyler of Basketball Insiders.
- South Alabama junior Mychal Ammons entered this year’s draft, but he’s already signed a deal to play in Europe next season, officially inking a two-year deal with KK Feni Indistrija of Macedonia, Sportando’s Emiliano Carchia reports. Fellow Sportando scribe Enea Trapani initially reported the agreement. Ammons can withdraw from the draft anytime between now and June 16th, but he’d be automatically eligible for next year’s draft if he were to do so.
Timberwolves Interested In Shaun Livingston
Nets guard Shaun Livingston will be in Minnesota’s sights as his free agency approaches this summer, tweets Darren Wolfson of 1500 ESPN Twin Cities. Wolfson points to Livingston’s history with Wolves president of basketball operations Flip Saunders, who coached the former No. 4 overall pick with the Wizards in 2009/10.
Brooklyn GM Billy King has said he’ll make re-signing Livingston job No. 1 this summer, but the Nets only have Livingston’s Non-Bird rights, which provide for no more than 120% of the minimum salary he made this past season. Brooklyn could also use its taxpayer’s mid-level exception, which would allow for a starting salary of $3.278MM and a total of nearly $10.3MM over the course of a three-year deal, as I explained Sunday. That wouldn’t be as much as the Timberwolves are likely to be able to offer. Minnesota is in line to have the non-taxpayer’s mid-level, worth $5.305MM in year one. Livingston could draw a four-year deal worth $22.652MM on that exception.
Livingston recently indicated a contentment in Brooklyn, but this offseason the Henry Thomas client figures to draw more interest than he ever has since a gruesome knee injury knocked him out for the entire 2007/08 season and nearly ended his career. He averaged 8.3 points this season, his most since the injury, but more importantly, his 6’7″ size was critical for Brooklyn once Jason Kidd inserted him into the starting lineup alongside Deron Williams, causing matchup headaches for opponents. Livingston turns 29 in September, so there’s a decent chance this summer represents his best financial opportunity.
Clippers Rumors: Free Agency, Rivers, Sterling
A prominent agent told Sean Deveney of The Sporting News that he has clients who don’t intend to sign with the Clippers this summer unless Donald Sterling is “gone completely.” That indicates the Sterling saga will indeed have an effect on free agency, as there’s almost no chance the situation will be resolved by July, as Deveney points out.
“I don’t think the whole thing winds up with Sterling back in charge, that is just hard to imagine,” another agent told Deveney. “There’s the chance, though. There’s a chance you wind up working for Sterling. That’s the problem.”
Here’s more from a team that fought off the Thunder and a media circus to overcome a 22-point deficit in Sunday’s win:
- People around the league feel as though Doc Rivers won’t leave the Clippers even if the league hasn’t completely severed its ties with Sterling by this summer, Deveney writes in the same piece. Rivers hasn’t said definitively that he’ll return to the team for next season after raising questions about his future shortly after the Sterling fiasco began.
- The league believes it can strip Shelly Sterling’s ownership of the team when it does so with her husband, as we passed along last night, though Shelly Sterling intends to fight that interpretation, as she told ABC’s Barbara Walters. “To be honest with you, I’m wondering if a wife of one of the owners, and there’s 30 owners, did something like that, said those racial slurs, would they oust the husband?” Shelly Sterling said. “Or would they leave the husband in?”
- Pierce O’Donnell, the attorney for Shelly Sterling, cited the U.S. Constitution in his rebuttal to the league’s contention that it can take the team from her. Legal experts have emphasized to Mark Medina of the Los Angeles Daily News that the Constitution doesn’t apply to businesses like the NBA, and lawyers make it clear that such a defense is flimsy, Medina adds (Twitter links).
- Shelly Sterling also told Walters that she’s been speaking to attorneys for the last 20 years about a divorce, which could further complicate the league’s efforts to remove the Sterlings.
- Donald Sterling attempted to explain his racially charged remarks and asked the league’s forgiveness in an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper.
Latest On Warriors, Knicks, Van Gundy, Kerr
The Warriors are coalescing behind Stan Van Gundy as their primary coaching target as their chances of landing Steve Kerr become increasingly remote. A formal interview between Golden State and Van Gundy is “imminent,” as Marc Stein of ESPN.com tweets, while it seems as though Kerr is choosing between coaching the Knicks and remaining in broadcasting, according to Ian Begley of ESPNNewYork.com. There remains a slight chance Kerr could end up with Golden State, Marc Berman of the New York Post writes, but the Warriors are moving forward with other candidates.
The Warriors haven’t had serious discussions with Kerr in days, and co-owner Joe Lacob is coming over to the side of his front office staff, who believe Van Gundy is the best option to coach the team, tweets Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports. A report on Thursday indicated that some of the Warriors players were Van Gundy’s most significant proponents, with the front office sold on Kerr. That suggests the team’s brass is especially sensitive to the players’ wishes following the ouster of Mark Jackson, who was popular among those in uniform, but that’s just my speculation.
Kerr and his representatives are hoping for a resolution with the Knicks soon, Berman writes, a reversal of the dynamic from last week, when it appeared as though Knicks president Phil Jackson was becoming impatient as he waited for an answer from his would-be coach. The Knicks are wary of overpaying Kerr, and they’re reluctant to give him a long-term deal, preferring a contract that accords him more like the coaching neophyte that he is an less like a sought-after commodity, Wojnarowski reports (on Twitter).
Kerr and the Knicks discussed a five-year, $25MM deal earlier this month, Begley hears, suggesting that those terms probably escalated when Golden State became involved. Kerr has reportedly been seeking a five-year deal with money similar to the four-year, $24MM contract that the Knicks gave former coach Mike D’Antoni in 2008. Salaries between $5MM and $6MM on a contract that lasts four or five years would make him one of the league’s most well-compensated coaches, seemingly counter to the Knicks’ desire.
Mid-Level Exception
The mid-level exception is the most common way for NBA teams that are over the salary cap to sign free agents from other clubs. Teams can make use of the mid-level every season, and they can split it among multiple players. Different mid-level exceptions apply based on a team’s proximity to the cap.
The most valuable kind of mid-level exception is available to teams that are over the cap but less than $4MM above the tax threshold. Still, clubs deep into the tax, and even those under the cap, have access to less lucrative versions of the mid-level. Here’s a glance at how all three forms of the exception are structured:
For teams with cap room:
- Called the mini mid-level, or the room exception
- Maximum two-year contract
- Maximum 4.5% annual raises
- First-year salary is worth $2,732,000 for 2014/15
For over-the cap teams:
- Called the full mid-level, or the non-taxpayer’s mid-level exception
- Maximum four-year contract
- Maximum 4.5% annual raises
- First-year salary is worth $5,305,000 for 2014/15
- Once used, the team cannot surpass the “tax apron” ($4MM above tax line) for the remainder of the season.
For taxpaying teams:
- Called the mini mid-level, or the taxpayer’s mid-level exception
- Maximum three-year contract
- Maximum 4.5% annual raises
- First-year salary is worth $3,278,000 for 2014/15.
The value of the starting salary in each exception increases by about 3% each season under the current collective bargaining agreement. Here’s the maximum contract a free agent could receive this summer using each of these three forms of mid-level exception:
Room Exception
- 2014/15: $2,732,000
- 2015/16: $2,854,940
- Total: $5,586,940
Non-Taxpayer’s MLE
- $5,305,000
- $5,543,725
- $5,782,450
- $6,021,175
- Total: $22,652,350
Taxpayer’s MLE:
- $3,278,000
- $3,425,510
- $3,573,020
- $10,276,530
Note: This is a Hoops Rumors Glossary entry. Our glossary posts will explain specific rules relating to trades, free agency, or other aspects of the NBA’s Collective Bargaining Agreement. Larry Coon’s Salary Cap FAQ was used in the creation of this post.
Versions of this post, written by Luke Adams, were initially published on April 24th, 2012 and May 10th, 2013.
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The Mavs have their eyes on a couple of Knicks, but reader William McGowan would prefer to see Dallas acquire the less splashy of the two, choosing Tyson Chandler over Carmelo Anthony.
- I do not want Carmelo on this team. But if we could get Chandler back, that would make me happy again. We never should have let him go. I would love to see Luol Deng as a Maverick. He would be an upgrade over [Shawn] Marion. But I would love to see Marion back as well. We would be set at small forward. We can’t continue to have two guards that can’t defend well. One of them has to go. Though I like [Jose] Calderon, I do believe we should use him as a trade piece. Dallas has a lot of work to do to build a team for the 2014-2015 season. I am excited to see what we do.
News of mutual interest between the Lakers and Chris Bosh sparked a lively discussion with a range of opinions, but John Moore captured the general tenor of the reaction from Lakers fans.
- No, no, no! Trading Pau [Gasol] for another kind of Pau is the way I see it. If the Lakers get tied up in another big salary for an aging but still functional player it’s not what I see as a solution.
A point guard that plays D would be a true asset, but there are no instant cures out there (that I see).
The Warriors made a move that had grown increasingly likely in the past several weeks, firing coach Mark Jackson despite a 51-win regular season that was the team’s best in 22 years. Jackson didn’t get along with Warriors management, and Randolph_Knackstedt sees it as an unjust dismissal that nonetheless presents an opportunity for the ousted coach.
- Three years as the warriors coach. Each season the warriors have increased scoring and decreased opponents scoring while making it to the playoffs two years in a row. But the Warriors front office doesn’t care because they couldn’t control Jackson like they wanted to. At least Jackson can now coach for an organization that actually appreciates him.
We appreciate everyone who adds to the dialogue at Hoops Rumors, and we look forward to seeing more responses like these from you!
Pacific Rumors: Kings, Thompson, Lakers
The Kings are canvassing their fans for input on this year’s draft, and GM Pete D’Alessandro will meet with those who submit the best ideas for player evaluation and invite a few of them into the team’s war room on draft night, as he explained in a Reddit chat today. Whether he’ll actually listen or if it’s just a publicity stunt remains to be seen, but it’s another example of the experimental approach the new Kings brass has been taking. Here’s more from the Pacific Division:
- The Kings will favor the best player available over positional needs in the draft, D’Alessandro also said on Reddit.
- Marcus Thompson of the Bay Area News Group suggests that Klay Thompson will wind up with $12MM annual salaries in an extension from the Warriors this summer (Twitter link). Co-owner Joe Lacob has vowed to strike a deal with the shooting guard.
- Kobe Bryant, in an appearance Thursday on Jimmy Kimmel Live, said he wants the Lakers to consult him on their next coach and claimed they didn’t do so when they hired Mike Brown and Mike D’Antoni, but that’s revisionist history, writes Bleacher Report’s Kevin Ding. Bryant is on record as having said he spoke with co-owner Jim Buss about D’Antoni during the team’s 2012 coaching search, Ding points out.
- Bryant also said on Kimmel’s show that he “didn’t care” whether the Lakers retained D’Antoni, who resigned last week. Dave McMenamin of ESPNLosAngeles.com rounds up more from Bryant’s turn on late-night TV.