Bobcats Sign DJ White To 10-Day Deal
FRIDAY, 10:53am: The team has officially announced its 10-day deal with White.
WEDNESDAY, 1:24pm: The Bobcats are planning to sign DJ White to a 10-day contract once they receive clearance from FIBA, reports Rick Bonnell of the Charlotte Observer. Shams Charania of RealGM reported earlier today that the team was strongly considering the big man. FIBA, basketball’s international governing body, requires that players switching countries seek clearance from the organization before signing a contract. White has spent most of the season playing in China with the Sichuan Blue Whales. FIBA approval is usually a formality, meaning it’s probably only a matter of time before the 27-year-old joins the Bobcats.
White spent part of 2010/11 and all of 2011/12 with Charlotte, averaging 7.3 points and 3.8 rebounds in 82 appearances as a Bobcat. That’s so far the most productive stretch the former 29th overall pick has enjoyed in the NBA. He made it into a dozen games with Boston last year, but like this season, White spent most of 2012/13 playing in China. The former Indiana Hoosier averaged 20.2 PPG and 8.5 RPG with Sichuan this year, but he did so primarily as a reserve.
The Bobcats appear to envision White as a third-string center, even though he’s only 6’9″. Charlotte worked out a handful of players last week in hopes of finding a center to replace Brendan Haywood, who appears likely to miss the season, but coach Steve Clifford has acknowledged the difficulty of finding free agent pivotmen this time of year, Bonnell notes.
Charlotte has an open roster spot, so the team won’t have to cut anyone to bring White aboard. I speculated that the Bobcats might offer the Jeff Wechsler client a deal for the rest of the season instead of a 10-day contract, but it looks like White will have to prove himself on a short-term deal before the team commits to him for the balance of the year.
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We’ll turn to the Hoops Rumors Facebook page first this time around, where we asked who should coach the Knicks next season. Reader Rashard Green threw his support behind the embattled incumbent.
- “I’m going to go with [Mike] Woodson. I don’t think all the blame should be put on him. There were various issues the Knicks faced this year that affected the season. In all seven years as the Hawks coach the team improved, so I think he can do the same in New York. I think there may be a few assistant coaching changes and some roster moves. Amar’e [Stoudemire]‘s huge contract has to go. [Raymond] Felton is going to have to go, too, for starters. J.R. Smith better tighten up or he’s going to be gone, too, which is a shame because he could be such a asset when he’s focused.”
The Bobcats traded Ramon Sessions at the deadline, but apparently he harbors no ill will toward the team, and the veteran guard would love to head back to Charlotte in free agency this summer. Such a move would have a ripple effect, ozzie says.
- Sessions did play well while a Bobcat but if he did come back, who would need to sit or go? Sessions and [Gary] Neal seem to play alike. I would think [Luke] Ridnour would be the odd man out depending on the draft.
The notion that the Lakers should trade their lottery pick this year in a deal for Kevin Love is a popular one in some circles, but not with jeremy, who urges patience.
- I would love to see Love as a Laker, but they’re better off signing him as a free agent and using the pick to help build the team. This is a team game, not a one-man show.
We appreciate everyone who adds to the dialogue at Hoops Rumors, and we look forward to seeing more responses like these from you!
Steve Nash Plans To Play Again In 2013/14
MARCH 20TH: Nash plans to return to the Lakers’ lineup on Friday night, a league source tells Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo Sports. He’ll likely come off the bench and serve as a backup to Kendall Marshall.
MARCH 19TH: The Lakers haven’t completely ruled out a return for Nash this season, D’Antoni now says, according to McMenamin (Twitter link).
MARCH 13TH: D’Antoni says definitively that Nash isn’t going to return this season, tweets Mike Bresnahan of the Los Angeles Times. There remains no formal announcement from the team.
MARCH 3RD: Lakers coach Mike D’Antoni doubts point guard Steve Nash will return to play this season, tweets Mike Bresnahan of the Los Angeles Times. D’Antoni isn’t ruling Nash out entirely, as Dave McMenamin of ESPNLosAngeles.com points out (on Twitter), but D’Antoni wants to give minutes to the team’s younger guards, and the 40-year-old Nash apparently still isn’t feeling right. There’s a strong chance the two-time MVP has played his last, given his persistent injuries the past two seasons and the specter that the Lakers would use the stretch provision to waive him in the summer.
Nash recently said he’d either be “back with the Lakers next year or this is it,” dispelling the notion that he’d play for the Clippers. GM Mitch Kupchak has said it would be “unethical” for the team to try to talk Nash into retirement this summer, and Nash recently denied a report that he’s planning to walk away. Still, Nash acknowledged earlier this year that the Lakers could waive him and use the stretch provision to spread his $9.701MM cap hit for next season over the next three years instead.
The Lakers could invite Nash back on a cheaper contract if they waive him, though it seems unlikely he’d warrant any more than the minimum salary. Nash has suffered from pain stemming from a nerve root irritation that happened as a result of a fractured left leg early last season, just after he’d inked a three-year contract for slightly more than $27.9MM to join the Lakers in a sign-and-trade from the Suns.
Kupchak has said he still has no regrets about the deal, even though it’s seemingly been governed by Murphy’s Law from day one. Nash’s performance declined last year, and this season, he’s appeared in just 10 games. The tenth game made it impossible for the Lakers to wipe his salary for next season completely off their books in a medical retirement scenario.
In any case, Nash isn’t quite ready to declare himself done for the year, as Mark Medina of the Los Angeles Daily News observes (Twitter link).
“We’ll see,” Nash said. “I couldn’t really make a prediction. If I get a chance, it’ll be great.”
Mickael Pietrus Rules Out NBA Return In 2013/14
Mickael Pietrus is focusing on returning to the NBA in 2014/15, agent Bill McCandless tells Chris Haynes of CSNNW.com, adding that the 32-year-old swingman plans to sit out the remainder of this season. Pietrus rejected multiple “significant” overseas offers, but he’s had no luck finding work in the Association this year, even though a pair of NBA teams were reportedly keeping tabs on him as of January.
Pietrus played last season for the Raptors, appearing in just 19 games but making 16 starts. His minutes were close to his career average, but his scoring, rebounding, assists and field goal percentage were all much lower than usual. He received an invitation to Spurs camp over the summer, but he rejected it, and while he tried to find his way onto the Blazers earlier this season, Portland turned him down.
McCandless suggests the reason that Pietrus has been unable to return to the league is because teams want to save room for this year’s draft class. That seems to indicate that Pietrus has been looking for a multiyear deal, though that’s just my speculation. In any case, if a team makes a suitable offer between now and the end of the season, I wouldn’t be surprised if Pietrus goes back on his plans to stay at home.
Eastern Rumors: ‘Melo, Billups, Allen, Heat
Carmelo Anthony is full of optimism about what Phil Jackson can do for the Knicks, as Ken Berger of CBSSports.com observes. ‘Melo is similarly enthusiastic about what he can learn from Jackson and is glad that the Zen Master wants him to stick around beyond this season.
“I was hoping that I would be part of the future plans,” Anthony said. “I never once said that I wanted to leave New York or anything like that. The only thing I said was I’m going to dabble and try the free agency out, that I was going to opt out and become a free agent. … I’m excited about the opportunity to hopefully work with Phil.”
Here’s more from the Eastern Conference:
- Chauncey Billups says he won’t necessarily retire at the end of the season, but teams have already gauged his interest in joining their front offices, Billups told reporters, including Vincent Goodwill of The Detroit News. It’s unclear if the Pistons are one of those clubs, but Billups said he’d consider them if they offered a position. The 37-year-old would like to become a basketball executive at some point, adds Chris Dempsey of The Denver Post, who notes that Billups and Pistons president of basketball operations Joe Dumars are close.
- Ray Allen, a free agent at season’s end, still has affection for Boston, and he’d like to see the Celtics retire his number, writes Mark Murphy of the Boston Herald.
- The Heat have assigned Justin Hamilton to the D-League, the team announced. The center will play in two games for the Sioux Falls Skyforce and return to the Heat after Saturday’s contest, according to Miami’s release.
Knicks Sign Shannon Brown For Rest Of Season
The Knicks have signed Shannon Brown for the rest of the season, the team announced via Twitter. The tweet notes that the team’s latest deal with Earl Clark has expired. The Knicks inked Clark to a pair of 10-day contracts at the same time they did so with Brown, so presumably that means New York doesn’t plan to re-sign Clark. The Knicks now have 14 guaranteed contracts, so they can add another player to replace Clark if they choose.
Brown first joined the Knicks late last month after the team waived Metta World Peace and Beno Udrih. The eighth-year veteran guard saw fewer minutes for New York than Clark did, but neither received significant playing time. Clark played a total of 70 minutes in nine games, averaging 2.6 points per contest. Brown has only seen the floor for 57 minutes across nine games, notching 1.8 PPG. Still, it appears the Knicks prefer to keep an extra guard instead of a forward like Clark.
It’s the first player personnel decision for the Knicks since Phil Jackson came aboard as team president. Brown played for then-coach Jackson for parts of three seasons with the Lakers, winning two championships. Clark also played for the Lakers, but that was after Jackson had stepped down as coach.
Brown has spent much of this season out of the league after the Wizards waived him shortly before the start of the season. He was with the Spurs in February on a pair of 10-day contracts, but San Antonio elected not to keep him for the season. New York’s decision to commit to Brown is a slight boon for the Wizards, who can defray a tiny amount of their remaining debt to the Mark Bartelstein client via set-off rights. Washington released Brown in spite of his $3.5MM guaranteed salary before the season to get down to 15 players after the unbalanced Marcin Gortat trade.
Avery Bradley, Celtics Maintain Mutual Interest
Avery Bradley reportedly turned down a four-year, $24MM extension offer from the Celtics this past summer, but shortly thereafter, he and Celtics president of basketball operations Danny Ainge made it clear that they want to continue their partnership. Bradley hasn’t altered his position as his restricted free agency draws near, observes Ben Rohrbach of WEEI.com, and neither has Ainge, as Rohrbach notes via Twitter. Bradley says he relishes the opportunity to play alongside Rajon Rondo and wants to keep doing so.
“I would love it,” Bradley said. “I would love to play for Boston, and I would love to play with Rondo, so I wouldn’t mind it at all. I’m pretty sure any guard in the NBA would love to play with Rondo.”
Rondo was something of a trade candidate before the deadline this season, though Ainge made it clear that it would take a monumental offer to pry the point guard from Boston. There’s been plenty of speculation that the Celtics could be more inclined to trade Rondo as time goes by, since he’s set to become an unrestricted free agent in 2015. Rondo has nonetheless said he wouldn’t mind spending the next decade in Boston, so he certainly doesn’t appear anxious to leave.
A report before the deadline pegged Bradley as a trade candidate, too, suggesting that the Celtics would send him out if they could only find a taker for him. There was little other chatter indicating the C’s would do so, and the 23-year-old defensive stalwart remains in Boston.
Ainge says now that he has “every intention” of having Bradley with the team in the future. Bradley was apparently seeking $8MM a year when he turned down the extension offer, and Rohrbach believes the $2MM gap in annual salaries shouldn’t be difficult to bridge this summer.
Ainge and company reportedly eyed Iman Shumpert last summer, but they lost interest in him as Bradley continued to develop this season. Several NBA executives believed in December that Bradley would wind up with a four-year deal in the neighborhood of $30MM, which suggests that the Celtics might be the ones who’ll have to budge the most when they resume negotiations with Mitchell Butler, Bradley’s agent. Bradley has continued to help his case since then, having put up a career-high 14.3 points per contest this season as he’s become a significant part of Boston’s offense. The former Texas Longhorn has also pushed his rebounds per game to a new high of 3.8, which isn’t shabby, considering he’s only 6’2″.
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Lakers Notes: D’Antoni, Jackson, Henry
A recent report suggested that Kobe Bryant wants Mike D’Antoni out as Lakers coach, but Bryant didn’t quite put it that way in a radio interview Wednesday. He still said he’s not sure if D’Antoni deserves to return as coach next season, and another Lakers figure is similarly reticent to make that sort of statement, as we note in a look at the latest on the purple-and-gold:
- Mitch Kupchak stopped short of saying that D’Antoni should remain coach of the Lakers, but the GM nonetheless backed the sideline boss in an interview with Mark Medina of the Los Angeles Daily News. “I don’t want to get into that with those kind of questions,” Kupchak said. “He’s done a great job and dealt with a year last year when he was here part-time and a ridiculous amount of injuries this year.”
- Kupchak told Dave McMenamin of ESPNLosAngeles.com that he never spoke at length with Phil Jackson during the Zen Master’s negotiations to join the Knicks, and Kupchak characterized the New York job as “too good to be true and too good to pass up” for Jackson. Earlier today, we heard that the Lakers initially thought Jackson would merely be taking a consulting gig with the Knicks.
- Xavier Henry, a free agent at season’s end, is playing through pain to solidify his value as an NBA player after his early-season breakthrough, as McMenamin details in separate piece.
Isola’s Latest: Jackson, Lakers, Dolan
Phil Jackson‘s hiring as Knicks president has been one of the most well-documented stories in the NBA this season, but Frank Isola of the New York Daily News has managed to reveal a few fresh angles to the news. We’ll share the highlights of his latest piece here:
- The Lakers believed Jackson was going to take a salary of $2MM a year to join the Knicks as a consultant when New York first began talks with Jackson in December. Instead, he’ll make $12MM a year as team president, though he’ll still spend time in Southern California as well as New York.
- Dolan, in spite of his promise to remove himself from basketball decision-making for the Knicks, still considers himself a “basketball guy” and wants to be remembered for bringing Jackson and Carmelo Anthony together.
- Two of Mike Woodson, Andrea Bargnani and J.R. Smith won’t be with the Knicks next season, and none will be around for 2015/16, Isola writes. It would be no shock if Woodson is in his final days with the Knicks, but Bargnani’s deal runs through next year, and Smith’s goes until the summer of 2016, so it appears that Isola is suggesting the team will trade Bargnani and Smith.
- Woodson, Bargnani and Smith are all Creative Artists Agency clients, but the emergence of Eagles manager Irving Azoff as a trusted confidant of James Dolan has helped diminish CAA’s once-widespread influence at Madison Square Garden.