Eastern Notes: Harrington, Siva, Jackson
The Magic didn’t expect Al Harrington would be able to play for them last season after a staph infection in his knee, and they wouldn’t allow him to hang around his teammates, as Harrington alleges in a first-person account with Bleacher Report’s Jared Zwerling.
“Orlando was more about rebuilding, but they could’ve been more professional about my situation,” Harrington wrote. “In fact, the general manager, Rob Hennigan, told my agent that I was done, saying I ‘cannot play.’ Those were his exact words. And I was like, ‘He has some nerve.’ He’s a 32-year-old young executive, and I’ve been in the league longer than him, I probably know more than him and he’s going to tell my agent I’m done, and not think my agent is going to tell me that. So, to me, it was like he told me that pretty much to my face.”
There’s more from the current Wizards forward among the latest from the Eastern Conference:
- Harrington, a free agent at season’s end, isn’t sure he wants to continue playing, and writes in the same piece that he’d ideally re-sign with the Wizards next season after the All-Star break to save early-season wear and tear on his body. He’d like to remain with the Wizards either as a player, coach, or executive, and says he’s had conversations with the team about his future.
- Rookie Peyton Siva is finally starting to see minutes for the Pistons, and though he doesn’t acknowledge the season’s final weeks as a de-facto audition, that’s exactly what it is, since his contract is non-guaranteed for 2014/15, writes MLive’s Brendan Savage.
- Phil Jackson should up his workload and act more like the team president he is and less like a consultant, opines Frank Isola of the New York Daily News, who thinks the Zen Master should take heed to the recent comments of former Knicks coach Larry Brown.
- Trevor Ariza of the Wizards and Shaun Livingston of the Nets, both set to hit unrestricted free agency this summer, are among the most vital-yet-overlooked players in the league, as Michael Pina of Sports On Earth examines.
Lakers Rumors: D’Antoni, Kupchak, Jeanie Buss
Lakers GM Mitch Kupchak has as much job security as anyone with a fresh extension in hand, but the same can’t be said for coach Mike D’Antoni. We have more on both members of the Lakers braintrust, as we detail:
- Dave McMenamin of ESPNLosAngeles.com hears the Lakers aren’t leaning toward keeping D’Antoni for next season (video link), which conflicts with last week’s dispatch from Kevin Ding of Bleacher Report. If anything, the Lakers are leaning toward firing him, McMenamin says, but Mark Medina of the Los Angeles Daily News seconds Ding’s original report, tweeting that the Lakers are indeed leaning toward keeping their coach.
- D’Antoni “probably” won’t be around next season, writes Sam Amick of USA Today, adding that the coach nonetheless has Kupchak’s respect.
- Late Lakers owner Jerry Buss had Byron Scott on a shortlist of coaching candidates, Amick notes in the same piece, though it’s unclear if the Buss family would want to pursue him.
- D’Antoni is weary from a losing season and heaps of criticism, but he still wants to coach the Lakers, as Amick observes. “Hey look, this is a great place,” D’Antoni said. “Any player who has a destination of L.A. — it’s pretty good. I’ve been lucky to be here. I don’t want to say, ‘Oh yeah [I’ll be back],’ but I don’t know. And I’m sure that everybody is going to have to sit down and figure it out. I think the franchise will have a way that they want to get to the best, to the top, and you go with it. And if I’m included in that, great. That’s how it goes.”
- Part of the reason the Lakers extended Kupchak is so he wouldn’t enter next season on an expiring contract, Medina tweets.
- This season “isn’t how we roll,” Lakers owner Jeanie Buss tells Patt Morrison of the Los Angeles Times, but Buss nonetheless sees bright spots and is optimistic the team is on the right path for the future. Buss also touches on fiancee and Knicks president Phil Jackson and her working relationship with brother and co-owner Jim Buss.
Celtics, Kris Humphries Negotiating New Deal
The Celtics and agent Arn Tellem, who represents Kris Humphries, have had preliminary conversations about a new contract for Humphries in the offseason, reports Mark Murphy of the Boston Herald. President of basketball operations Danny Ainge said last week that he’d spoken to Humphries directly about a return for next season. The two sides can’t sign an extension, since the power forward is only on a two-year contract, and Ainge said he can’t make promises at this point, given the uncertainty surrounding the rest of the team. Tellem understands Ainge’s position, Murphy writes, but the Celtics boss is a fan of Humphries, who reiterated his desire to remain in Boston.
“Look at the direction we’re heading in,” Humphries said. “Obviously this year there was disappointment. But [coach] Brad [Stevens is] a winner, Ainge has proven to be a winner on multiple levels. The organization and fans are great. The chance to be part of a playoff team here will be great. I think it’s possible. Ultimately it comes down to what the players do, but it’s one of those things where you get comfortable somewhere, and hopefully you can be there for a while and have success.”
The Celtics were reportedly eyeing a sign-and-trade of Humphries this summer shortly after the trade deadline, and he’s recently been identified on a list of players likely to change teams in the offseason. He was open to a trade away from Boston early this season, his first with the Celtics after they acquired him in last summer’s Kevin Garnett/Paul Pierce blockbuster, but he’s clearly warmed to the idea of sticking around.
Humphries is in the final season of a two-year, $24MM deal he signed with the Nets in 2012. He clearly won’t see nearly as much this time around, given his decline in playing time the past couple of seasons, but the 29-year-old’s size and efficient play should have multiple teams at his door, as our Zach Links wrote when he examined Humphries’ free agent stock.
Kupchak On Kobe, D’Antoni, Jackson, Future
A GM usually isn’t on solid footing near the end of his team’s third straight season with a record worse than the year before. Mitch Kupchak breaks the mold, having just signed an extension that will keep him under contract with the Lakers for at least three more seasons. Kupchak isn’t the only one who makes basketball decisions for the team, with co-owner and executive vice president Jim Buss having final authority in that realm. Kobe Bryant, who signed his own extension through 2015/16 this past autumn, has seemed to have plenty of influence, and while the superstar reportedly wants to see the team make a coaching change, it doesn’t appear as though Kupchak is listening. The GM spoke to Sam Amick of USA Today shortly after the team announced the extension, and we’ll share a few highlights of Amick’s must-read piece for Lakers fans here:
On Bryant and his frustration with the team’s approach:
He had that one outburst, but I think he got caught up in all the sensation of the moment — is Phil [Jackson] going to stay or is he going to go? He wants the same thing we want, which is to win as much as possible as soon as possible. I meet with him. [It’s] not on a regular basis, but in the last two or three months we have met several times, and he gets it.
On whether Bryant will have input on the decision whether to retain Mike D’Antoni:
We won’t consult with him. Our decisions going forward — we’re not going to do knee-jerk stuff. We’ll let the season end, and take some time. We’ve got a lot of injuries and surgeries to sort through. That’s a lot to accomplish.
On whether the team has made its decision on D’Antoni, and the summer ahead:
No. No. In fact, I told Jimmy [Buss] let’s get to the end season, take some time off … then review the season. Look at our roster. I mean we have a plan. We’ve aligned our contracts in such a way where we’re at a position where we’re not financially stuck. But there’s a lot we don’t know. We don’t know where we’re going to get our pick. Are we going to be sixth, are we going to be eighth, are we going to be two or three? We don’t know. We know who may be a free agent, but we don’t know for sure until June 30.
On internal discussions about bringing Phil Jackson back to the Lakers:
Well I don’t know when the most recent one was. We discussed a year or two ago about how could we — and this was Jimmy and I and I know he may have discussed it with his family — and it was open for discussion. And it was kind of a standing understanding, but I think Jeanie [Buss] said it best two weeks ago. At the end of the day, there was no position for a person of his stature.
On rebuilding the Lakers:
Our goal is not to go 41-41. That’s not our goal. Our goal is to be considerably better than that. And maybe we can do it in a year, or maybe it takes two or three years, OK? Any of those scenarios would be wonderful scenarios. I mean there have been teams — seven or eight teams in the NBA who have never even been to the Finals of the NBA and they’ve been around 30 or 40 years.
Lakers Sign GM Mitch Kupchak To Extension
The Lakers have extended their contract with GM Mitch Kupchak, tweets Mike Trudell of Lakers.com, confirming a report from Ramona Shelburne of ESPN.com. Kupchak’s contract was set to expire after 2014/15, but it’s a multiyear extension, according to Shelburne, which indicates that it will run through at least 2016/17. The terms and the precise length of the extension are unclear, though Shelburne notes that Kupchak has long been one of the highest-paid executives in the NBA (Twitter link).
The timing of the deal is odd, considering the Lakers have clinched their worst record since moving to Los Angeles, and they come off a summer in which Dwight Howard left the Lakers to sign with the Rockets in a rare case of a superstar spurning the purple-and-gold. That the Lakers made the move now shows the regard the Buss family, which owns the Lakers, has for Kupchak, and it’s essentially a vote of confidence in him, Shelburne writes. Kupchak first joined the Lakers front office in 1986 after spending the last five years of his playing career with the team.
Kupchak, one of the NBA’s longest-tenured GMs, has held his current job since the summer of 2000. That was the same offseason that Joe Dumars took over the Pistons front office, and a report Tuesday indicated that Dumars plans to resign soon. The Lakers have won four championships on Kupchak’s watch. Kupchak works in tandem with co-owner and executive vice president of player personnel Jim Buss, who has authority over the team’s basketball decisions.
T.J. Warren Declares For Draft
Tuesday, April 8, 10:49pm: Warren’s decision was announced in an official statement from the school today, per Aaron Beard of The Associated Press.
March 24, 1:11pm: North Carolina State forward T.J. Warren has decided to enter the draft, reports Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports. The sophomore will make a formal announcement in the next few days, according to Wojnarowski. Warren is rated 18th on Jonathan Givony’s list for DraftExpress, while he checks in 20th on Chad Ford’s Insider-only ESPN.com rankings.
Ford and Givony both acknowledge Warren, at 6’8″, is something of a tweener, but he’s had no trouble scoring this season, racking up 24.9 points in 35.4 minutes per game. He increased his ratio of three-point to two-point attempts after going 14 for 27 from behind the arc as a freshman, but that small sample size didn’t carry over to this season, when he shot an abysmal 26.7% on 3.3 three-point looks per contest.
Warren picked the hometown choice for college, so he’ll have to make an adjustment as he leaves the confines of North Carolina’s Raleigh-Durham area to play in the NBA. The Wolfpack lost Thursday in the NCAA tournament, so his collegiate career appears to be over, unless he withdraws before the deadline. It doesn’t appear likely he’ll change his mind, as he’s already meeting with agents, Wojnarowski notes. A player may not return to college once he signs with an agent.
Coaching Rumors: Knicks, Calipari, Ollie
The Knicks reached out in January through a third party to canvass John Calipari‘s interest in coaching the team next season, a source tells Ian Begley of ESPNNewYork.com. The Kentucky coach was intrigued with the idea of working with fellow Creative Artists Agency client Carmelo Anthony, Begley adds, but the talks never proceeded from there. It’s “highly unlikely” a well-known coach like Calipari would take the job since, with Phil Jackson around, the team’s next coach won’t have any control over player personnel, Begley writes. There’s more insight on Calipari and another college coach perhaps more likely to come to the NBA, and we’ll round it up here:
- Most NBA front office types see Calipari as a fine college coach, but they have their doubts about whether he’d perform well in the NBA, tweets Chris Mannix of SI.com. Calipari went 72-112 in parts of three seasons with the Nets in the late 1990s.
- Multiple NBA executives tell Jeff Goodman of ESPN.com, who writes in an Insider-only piece, that they expect Connecticut’s Kevin Ollie to become an NBA head coaching candidate. One exec suggests that the coach’s ties to former teammate Kevin Durant could prompt an NBA team to make a lucrative offer to bring Ollie to the pro sidelines.
- Lakers coach Mike D’Antoni downplayed the notion that he and Marshall University, his alma mater, have mutual interest in him coaching the school’s team next season, as he tells Sam Amick of USA Today. “I love Marshall, and I’ve been so close to them for a long time – especially with the new [athletic director] and the new president, and people there,” D’Antoni said. “It’s a great thing. But my heart is here, and my head is here [with the Lakers]. This is what I know, so I don’t want to get distracted with that. I never have been. It always comes up when they’re looking, but they’re looking and I’m fine.”
Latest On Kenneth Faried
The Nuggets asked a handful of teams six months ago whether they’d be interested in acquiring Kenneth Faried in exchange for a 2014 first-rounder or an attractive wing player on a rookie contract, sources tell Grantland’s Zach Lowe. Faried has improved measurably this season, as Lowe details, and while the power forward tells Lowe that he and the Nuggets haven’t talked about an extension, which he’d be eligible to sign this summer, Faried adds that he’d like to stay in Denver.
Lowe’s report adds credence to early-season rumors about a trade involving Faried and Iman Shumpert of the Knicks. Part of the reason the Nuggets made those calls was out of fear that Faried and agent Thad Foucher would seek and find an offer with eight-figure salaries when the former 22nd overall pick hits restricted free agency in 2015, Lowe writes. It’s unclear how much the Nuggets value Faried now, but Nuggets GM Tim Connelly spoke highly of Faried recently, and coach Brian Shaw referred to Faried and Ty Lawson as the team’s cornerstones. Lawson is in the midst of a four-year, $48MM extension he signed when Masai Ujiri was still Denver’s GM.
Faried’s name was in rumors off and on before the deadline, and he said after the deadline passed that the chatter gave him confidence that other NBA teams think of him as a commodity. Executives around the league view him differently than they did before the season, according to Lowe, but his defense continues to be a weak spot. Still, the 24-year-old has become an efficient post-up player and remains a threat on the offensive glass, so the negotiations that he and Foucher have with the Nuggets figure to be among the most intriguing of the offseason.
Pacers Mull Replacing Vogel With Larry Bird?
There’s a chance, albeit a small one, that Pacers president of basketball operations Larry Bird takes over the coaching duties from Frank Vogel before the playoffs begin, as Bob Kravitz of the Indianapolis Star tells Bleacher Report’s Adam Lefkoe in a video interview. Kravitz pegs it as a 5% chance, and cautions that the notion doesn’t come from Bird himself.
Bird told Kravitz nearly a month ago that he thought Vogel wasn’t pushing his players hard enough, and the Pacers have continued their surprising downturn. Indiana was 42-10 before the All-Star break, but the team has gone just 13-13 since and fallen behind the Heat for the top seed in the Eastern Conference. The decline has been mystifying, and Bird’s midseason acquisitions of Evan Turner and Andrew Bynum haven’t panned out.
Vogel has turned the Pacers around after taking over the team for the final 38 games of the 2010/11 season, guiding them to the playoffs that season and every year since. Indiana was a game short of the NBA Finals last season, when Bird took a one-year hiatus from his job in the front office. Bird also coached the franchise within a game of the Finals in 1998, the first of his three-year tenure on the bench. His final season as coach ended with a trip to the 2000 Finals, which Indiana lost to the Lakers.
It would be surprising if the Pacers were to bring Bird back to the sidelines for the postseason, as Kravitz suggests. Even if such a move doesn’t happen, it looks as though Vogel’s job security will be in doubt unless Indiana makes a deep run in the playoffs.
Poll: Who Should Be The No. 1 Pick?
The college season is over, and the time for evaluating top prospects in live game conditions is through. The 2014 draft class didn’t live up to astronomically high expectations, but it still appears to be the best group in the past few years. There will be a lot riding on the decisions that teams holding lottery picks will have to make, and the greatest amount of pressure will rest on the shoulders of the GM with the No. 1 overall pick.
Andrew Wiggins entered as the most ballyhooed of them all and a surefire top overall pick, but he stumbled, and found himself behind Kansas teammate Joel Embiid, a relative basketball neophyte from Cameroon who surged to the No. 1 spot on draft boards in the middle of the season. Jabari Parker was up and down, but he appears more NBA-ready than Wiggins and Embiid. All three have been the leading candidates for the top pick for much of the season.
Chad Ford of ESPN.com has moved Wiggins back to No. 1 in his latest rankings, and that’s where Jonathan Givony of DraftExpress has him, too. Still, Wiggins is third behind Embiid and Parker on Aran Smith’s board at NBADraft.net. Teams remain undecided, and the Kings apparently have Wiggins outside their top three picks, according to Ford.
Much depends on the health of Embiid’s injured back, and the identity of the team picking first overall won’t be known until the May 20th draft lottery. There are plenty of variables that will go into the equation in the 79 days remaining before the draft, but if you were the GM picking first overall and the draft were tonight, whom would you select?
Feel free to consult our prospect profiles on Embiid, Parker and Wiggins to help you make your decision. When you’re ready, cast your vote below, and explain your choice in the comments.