Western Notes: Pekovic, Wolves, Jackson, Lakers
The difference between unrestricted free agency and restricted free agency can be seen in the divergent plights of the Lakers and Timberwolves this summer. The purple and gold had no say-so when Dwight Howard jumped to the Rockets, while negotiations between the Wolves and Nikola Pekovic dragged on for months, with other suitors seemingly scared off by Minnesota's ability to match offers. Still, the Wolves and Lakers both figure to be among the teams fighting for one of the final playoff spots in the Western Conference, and they're among the teams we focus on in today's look at the West:
- Pekovic is unlikely to meet many of the $8MM worth of incentives in his deal with the Wolves, reports Darren Wolfson of 1500 ESPN Twin Cities (Twitter link). That means that starting next season, those incentives won't count against the cap. As Jerry Zgoda of the Star Tribune surmised earlier, games played is one of the incentives, and Wolfson says Pek will earn a bonus if he appears in at least 70 games a year.
- Pekovic isn't the only Wolves player with durability issues, and president of basketball ops Flip Saunders plans changes to the way the team handles the treatment and prevention of injuries, as Zach Harper of CBSSports.com examines.
- Lakers co-owner Jeanie Buss said last week that Phil Jackson, her fiancee, still yearns to coach, but Jackson seemed to disagree Friday in comments he made to his hometown newspaper. "I have no intention of coaching," he told Mark Jones of the Williston Herald. "I am still recovering from multiple surgeries."
- Keith Schlosser of Ridiculous Upside examines the Lakers' unusual promotion of Nick Mazzella from public relations coordinator to GM of the team's D-League affiliate.
- The strength of someone's relationships is key to doing business in the NBA, and Chris Hansen's funding of an anti-Kings-arena effort shows he doesn't understand not to burn his bridges, SB Nation's Tom Ziller writes.
- The Lakers got a D from HoopsWorld's Moke Hamilton, who graded each Western Conference team's offseason, while the Wolves and Kings both wound up with a B+.
Extension Candidate: Paul George
It's not often that a player somewhat unexpectedly joins the ranks of the superstars, but that might just have happened with Paul George this past season. The former 10th overall pick from Fresno State stepped into Indiana's spotlight with Danny Granger injured, and transformed from a 12.1 points-per-game scorer who played slightly less than 30 minutes a night into an All-Star, a third-team All-NBA selection, and a second-team All-Defensive player. He backed it up when he took the team a round farther in the playoffs than it had been with Granger as the No. 1 option the year before, challenging LeBron James nose-to-nose in seven stirring games.
The question that remains is just how George's emergence changes Pacers president Larry Bird's long-range plans for the team. Bird sat out this past season, turning the club over to venerable executive Donnie Walsh, but Larry Legend has returned to a small-market team with an unusual wealth of talent. Bird and GM Kevin Pritchard kept a key piece of that talent around with a new three-year deal for David West, and made necessary upgrades to the bench with the signings of Chris Copeland and C.J. Watson and the trade for Luis Scola. Either Granger or Lance Stephenson will join that second unit next season, further strengthening what had been the team's major weakness in 2012/13.
All of the team's major moves this summer look like winners, but it's the last big decision of the offseason that could have the greatest long-term impact on the franchise. Comparative value would dictate a five-year, maximum salary extension for George after the Wizards handed out such a deal to John Wall last month. Even though George has only played at his current level for one season, he seems at least as deserving of a max deal as Wall, who showed his brilliance only in stretches during an injury-shortened 2012/13 campaign. The idea that Wall could win the MVP this season, triggering a higher maximum salary via the Derrick Rose Rule, is generally dismissed as unattainable. Yet nearly 40% of Hoops Rumors readers voted in June to indicate their belief that George will someday win the MVP award.
Wall's extension was done by the end of July, after Wizards owner Ted Leonsis made it clear early in the process that Wall was a priority. Blake Griffin's max extension last summer came together just as the negotiating period began. James Harden signed his max extension with the Rockets two days after they acquired him from the Thunder. The Pacers have left George hanging to some degree, forcing him to bat down speculation that he'll sign with his hometown Lakers in free agency. It's clear that George wants to remain with the Pacers, and Bird would obviously like to see him in Indiana long-term, saying last month on radio that the team is prepared to make Paul a "major offer." A "major offer" doesn't necessarily add up to the max, and George indicated in June that he thought of himself as a max player, so perhaps there is a financial gulf between the Pacers and Aaron Mintz, George's agent.
I predicted back in June that George would wind up with a four-year, $50MM extension, and that was based on the notion that the Pacers would hesitate to do the max. That would add up to about $10MM less than the max over the course of the deal, and roughly $25MM less than a five-year max extension would entail. The savings could allow the Pacers a chance to re-sign Granger, who'll be a free agent next summer, without going into the tax. Of course, Mintz and George could reject such an offer and wait until George becomes a restricted free agent in 2014, when he'd be free to sign an offer sheet with another team. It seems reasonable to expect that some team would float a max offer George's way in that scenario, barring a major regression this coming season, leaving the Pacers to either match and reduce their flexibility with other players, or watch their young superstar walk away.
It could be that Bird is content to go all in on this year, let Granger go after this season, and sign a cheaper replacement in the summer of 2014 to accommodate a max deal for George. In that scenario, it would behoove George to get a deal done this summer, giving him the opportunity to make another All-NBA team — or win the MVP — and trigger the Rose rule, which would afford him a more lucrative contract than the Pacers or anyone could give him next year. Bird and the Pacers, then, would be the ones preferring to wait past the extension deadline so they can avoid the possibility of getting stuck with a more expensive max deal for George.
The idea that George could hit the open market next year, even as a restricted free agent, merely adds to the intrigue already surrounding the summer of 2014. Bird was never short on confidence as a player, so I'm sure he'd be willing to let George hit free agency and take his chances on re-signing him to a team-friendly deal. Similarly, I'm sure Mintz would relish the opportunity to hock a young superstar to the highest bidder. Ultimately, the decision may come down to George, a 23-year-old with a short track record of success. He could be willing to compromise and take less money as a hedge against a decline in performance. He may be ready to get into a staredown with Bird and put pressure on the Pacers to equal the deal that the Wizards gave Wall. George's financial future, and that of the team he wants to stay with for years to come, is at stake.
Heat Rumors: Roster, Oden, D-League, Jones
Greg Oden's discount contract is the latest example of a player willing to make a financial sacrifice to join the Heat, writes Ira Winderman of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh set the tone with their deals in 2010, and Oden, Ray Allen and Chris Andersen followed this summer. The loss of a little extra cash or flexibility for Oden, Allen and Andersen means much greater gain for the Heat, who have the luxury tax to worry about. Winderman has more on the champs, as we detail:
- Some agents are hearing that the Heat plan to carry only the minimum 13 players this season. That could spell trouble for Jarvis Varnado, whose deal is non-guaranteed for this season, and Eric Griffin, a training camp invitee, since Miami already has 13 guaranteed contracts.
- Winderman suggests that the Heat are already thinking of retaining the D-League rights of a few camp cuts — teams are able to do so with three players they let go before the regular season, sparing those guys from the D-League draft. So, perhaps the Heat will make sure Varnado and Griffin wind up with their affiliate in Sioux Falls.
- The revelation this week that Oden's deal doesn't include a second season means the Heat only have to pay him the two-year veterans minimum, instead of the five-year veterans minimum, with the league compensating Oden for the difference. That's a $143,131 difference for Miami, an amount that will be magnified when it's subtracted from the team's tax bill at the end of the season.
- Even if James Jones doesn't wind up running for union president, a candidacy that LeBron would reportedly get behind, he'll remain secretary-treasurer for another three years, since his term isn't expiring, Winderman points out.
- Just how steep a paycut Wade and Bosh are willing to take in their next deals, if they're willing to take paycuts at all, will be a central question for the Heat going forward, as Winderman opines in his latest mailbag column.
Designated Players
While the term "designated player" may evoke thoughts of baseball's designated hitter rule, there really aren't any similarities. In the NBA, a designated player isn't chosen game by game. Instead, when a team makes someone its designated player, the move can have broad, long-lasting consequences.
A designated player is a former first-round draft pick who receives a five-year extension to his rookie-scale contract. Teams are allowed to sign players to rookie-scale extensions of up to four years as often as they want, but they can only sign one player to a five-year rookie scale extension for as long as that extension is in effect. So, the Wizards, who signed John Wall to a five-year extension in July, can't sign anyone else to a rookie-scale extension of more than four years until the summer of 2019, when Wall's deal expires. The five-year deal makes Wall the team's designated player. That means the Wizards will be limited when they negotiate with Bradley Beal or any other player on the team's roster who can become eligible for a rookie-scale extension before Wall's deal is up.
There are ways the Wizards could get around this, of course. They could trade or release Wall, since he'd cease to be the Wizards' designated player if he's no longer on their roster. That's unlikely to happen. A much more plausible scenario involves the Wizards simply letting Beal hit restricted free agency in 2016, and signing him to a five-year deal then.
Wall signed for the max, and the designated player rule requires that contracts be for the max in at least the first season. The salaries can decrease by as much as 7.5% of the first-year salary each season, providing some measure of flexibility in the total value of the deal. The Bucks and Larry Sanders are closing in on a four-year, $44MM extension, a below-max deal overall. If they wanted to add a fifth year to the arrangement, front load the deal and bring the total value to $58,230,313, they could do so, triggering the designated player rule for Sanders. When I examined the prospects for a Sanders extension, I figured his agent would ask for a fifth year, particularly since the Bucks don't have any former first-round picks on their roster who figure to warrant such a long-term deal when they become extension-eligible. It looks like Sanders won't get that fifth year, perhaps because the Bucks want to retain flexibility in case they find other worthy talent in the next two drafts.
Teams that have designated players do have the option of trading for another team's designated player. So, the Wizards, in theory, could trade for Blake Griffin, the designated player of the Clippers, at some point during the life of their respective extensions. The Wizards couldn't, however, trade for both Griffin and another designated player, such as James Harden. The notion that Washington or any club could put together such a superteam is a little far-fetched, but the stipulation that no team may trade for more than one designated player is in place nonetheless.
The designated player rule doesn't apply to veteran extensions, and it doesn't apply to second-round picks or undrafted players. So, if the Rockets want to sign Chandler Parsons to a five-year extension when he becomes eligible next summer, they can do so without making him their designated player, since Parsons was a second-round pick. Nikola Pekovic's new five-year deal with the Wolves doesn't make him the team's designated player for two reasons: he signed it once his original contract expired, so it's not an extension, and that original contract was for only three seasons, which made him ineligible for an extension anyway.
Not every team has to have a designated player, and few teams do, in part because the designated player rule came into being only recently, when the new collective bargaining agreement went into effect in 2011. Here's the complete of designated players:
- Russell Westbrook, Thunder (expires 2017)*
- Derrick Rose, Bulls (expires 2017)
- James Harden, Rockets (expires 2018)
- Blake Griffin, Clippers (expires 2018)
- John Wall, Wizards (expires 2019)
*— Kevin Durant also signed a five-year extension, but he did so before the new CBA took effect, so he was exempt from the designated player rule, allowing the Thunder to sign Westbrook to his five-year deal.
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.
Lakers Sign Elias Harris
AUGUST 14TH: The Lakers have officially signed Harris, the team announced today.
JULY 26TH: The Lakers and power forward Elias Harris have agreed to a two-year deal, tweets Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports. Agent Brad Ames tells Wojnarowski that the agreement includes a "significant" guarantee for this coming season.
The 24-year-old Harris was a member of the Lakers summer league squad this month in Las Vegas, and he averaged 10.2 points and 5.6 rebounds in 26.9 minutes per contest. He went undrafted last month out of Gonzaga, where he shared the front line with 13th overall pick Kelly Olynyk, now with the Celtics.
Harris' contract will have to be for the minimum, though it's not clear just how "significant" his guarantee is. The word "substantial" was used to describe the guarantee for Robert Covington's deal with the Rockets earlier this summer, and it appears $150K of Covington's $490,180 salary this year is guaranteed.
Mark Madsen, one of the coaches on the Lakers summer league team, was particularly struck by Harris' defensive versatility, as he told Eric Pincus of the Los Angeles Times.
Timberwolves To Interview Milt Newton
MONDAY, 10:45am: According to Saunders, the Wolves have yet to formally interview Newton, but have asked for and received permission from the Wizards to speak to him. Saunders would like to talk to Newton about a front office job involving scouting and personnel (Twitter links via Jerry Zgoda of the Star Tribune).
SUNDAY, 8:56am: Wizards vice president of player personnel Milt Newton sat down this week for a formal interview with the Timberwolves for their GM position, reports Marc Stein of ESPN.com (Twitter link). Stein first reported two and a half months ago that the team was considering Newton for the job. Minnesota president of basketball operations Flip Saunders wants to hire a pair of executives to assist him in the front office. Darren Wolfson of 1500 ESPN Twin Cities reported early in July that Newton was likely to stay with the Wizards, but a week later, Wolfson said Newton was still in the mix to join the Wolves.
Wolves director of basketball operations Rob Babcock also appears to be a candidate for the GM job, though he could instead become the team's vice president of basketball operations, the other position Saunders is looking to fill. The Wolves also had their eyes on Tim Connelly before he became Nuggets GM.
Newton, who grew up in Washington, D.C., has spent the past decade in the Wizards organization. Before that, he served as an executive with the D-League, scouted for the Sixers, and worked for USA Basketball.
International Notes: McGrady, Cooley, Snaer
The NBA free agent market is drying up, leading many players to look for work overseas. Here's the latest from the international scene:
- Tracy McGrady spent most of 2012/13 in China before hooking on with the Spurs in the final week of the regular season, and he's mulling whether to return to China or seek another NBA deal, according to the Global Times.
- We heard yesterday that undrafted big man Jack Cooley spurned several training camp invitations from NBA teams for a deal with a Turkish team, and agent Adam Pensack let Shams Charania of RealGM.com know the identity of those clubs, some of whom offered partially guaranteed contracts. The Blazers, Grizzlies, Spurs, Thunder, Nets, Heat, Lakers, Rockets, Pacers and Cavs all wanted to sign Cooley, Pensack says.
- The Nets also invited Michael Snaer to camp, but Sportando's Enea Trapani hears that he'll sign with Enel Brindisi of Italy instead (Twitter link).
- A report last month indicated that 42nd overall pick Pierre Jackson, whom the Pelicans acquired in the Jrue Holiday trade, would sign with ASVEL Villeurbanne of France, and Jackson added confirmation via Instagram. Tony Parker owns a share of the French team.
- Shooting guard Carlon Brown was in training camp with the Warriors last fall and spent the season in the D-League, but he'll be overseas for 2013/14, having signed with Hapoel Tel Aviv of Israel. The Israeli league announced the signing via Twitter (hat tip to Emiliano Carchia of Sportando).
Extension Candidate: Larry Sanders
The Bucks and Larry Sanders are in the final stages of negotiations on a long-term extension, one that reportedly is likely to pay the center more than $10MM a year. That's heady territory for a player who's only once averaged more than 14.5 minutes per game. Sanders has never scored as much as 10 points per game in any season either, but he's made it clear that he's a game-changer on the defensive end. Bucks GM John Hammond seems prepared to make the judgment that Sanders' defensive contributions far outweigh whatever shortcomings he has on offense.
Milwaukee outscored its opponents by 1.9 points per 100 possessions last season with Sanders on the floor, but the Bucks as a whole were minus 1.4 points in that category. Similarly, the Bucks gave up just 98.8 points per 100 possessions with Sanders in the lineup, a rate that would have been the third-best in the league if Milwaukee's subs had kept it up when Sanders went to the bench. Alas, the Bucks gave up 102.3 points per possession as a team, demonstrating a significant drop-off when Sanders, with his nearly 7'6" wingspan, wasn't protecting the middle. That meant the Bucks were just 12th in that category.
The Bucks were worse offensively, ranking 20th in points per 100 possessions, even with a stockpile of players proficient at either shooting or getting to the hoop, like Brandon Jennings, Monta Ellis, Ersan Ilyasova, Mike Dunleavy and, for the second half of the season, J.J. Redick. Sanders wasn't a complete offensive liability last season, and he showed improvement, averaging 9.8 PPG on 50.6% shooting after notching 3.6 PPG and 45.7% shooting the year before. He became a more effective finisher at the rim, where nearly two-thirds of his field goal attempts came from, according to Basketball-Reference. He shot 63.3% from point-blank range last season, better than his 58.6% shooting on such attempts in 2011/12. The problems show up on shots between three and 10 feet away from the basket, where he connected on a woeful 29.7% of his 111 attempts last year. That demonstrates a lack of an ability to score from the block.
The former 15th pick out of VCU is an effective rebounder, averaging 9.5 per game last season, more than three times the amount he grabbed in about half as many minutes in 2011/12. Still, he's not as effective on the boards as perhaps he could be, and if he improves on an offensive rebounding percentage that ranked 16th in the league last season, he could boost his scoring average with increased tip-in opportunities.
Sanders finished third in Defensive Player of the Year voting, and there are similarities between him and Serge Ibaka, who narrowly missed out on Defensive Player of the Year honors in 2011/12, the season before the Thunder rewarded him with a four-year, $49.4MM extension. Ibaka plays power forward on a contending team while Sanders is the center on a club that finished below .500 last year, but both have taken massive strides since entering the league, prompting excitement over just how much better they can become. Ibaka developed a mid-range shot after receiving the extension, helping the Thunder offset the scoring they lost in the James Harden trade. With Jennings, Ellis, Redick and Dunleavy all gone from Milwaukee, the Bucks may hold out hope that Sanders can similarly expand his offensive game.
Sanders averaged 2.8 blocks per game last season, third-best in the NBA, but nearly a block a game fewer than Ibaka had the year before he signed his extension. Still, opposing players quickly caught on to Sanders' basket protection and simply stayed out of the lane, as evidenced by the drop in his blocks per game from 3.2 before the All-Star break to 2.3 after.
The market for centers has long been inflated, even if some evidence from this summer shows front offices don't always pay for size. Sanders recently hired agent Dan Fegan, notorious for his representation of Dwight Howard, and Fegan will no doubt point to the four-year, $44MM contract the Nuggets gave JaVale McGee based largely on McGee's potential. McGee's per-36-minute scoring and rebounding numbers from the year before he signed his lucrative deal far outpace Sanders' production in those categories from this past season, but it's clear that Sanders possesses a far more nuanced understanding of the game.
Sanders seems destined for a deal worth between McGee's $11MM salary and Ibaka's more than $12MM+ annual pay. The question may lie in whether the Bucks will give him a four-year deal or lock him up for five seasons. Teams can only sign one player coming off a rookie-scale extension to a five-year deal, and it doesn't seem like there are any others on the Bucks roster who'll be worthy candidates when they're eligible in a few years. The Bucks figure to be a lottery team this year, and they could net a talented player in the rich crop of 2014 draft talent. Yet, with Milwaukee owner Herb Kohl in favor of fielding competitive teams rather than stripping the roster and angling for better lottery position, it could be a long time before the Bucks have another player on a rookie deal with Sanders' potential. If Hammond and company are believers in that potential, Sanders could be a major obstacle in front of Milwaukee's basket for years to come.
Atlantic Rumors: Sixers, Brown, Pierce, Knicks
The Sixers and Brett Brown are negotiating the terms of a deal that would end the team's nearly four-month search for a coach, as Keith Pompey of the Philadelphia Inquirer reports. That jibes with what Marc Stein tweeted Friday, when the ESPN.com scribe wondered if the Sixers would make their offer tempting enough to pry Brown away from his assistant coaching position with the Spurs. Here's more from Philly and the rest of the Atlantic Division:
- Hinkie has been plain about his intentions, so no one should be shocked that the Sixers have waited so long to hire a coach, Pompey argues.
- Paul Pierce tells Gary Washburn of the Boston Globe that he sensed he was headed out of Boston months prior to the trade that brought him to the Nets, so much so that he told his wife to start packing up their stuff even before this past regular season ended. Pierce still isn't certain of what lies ahead. "Who knows what’s going to happen after this year?" Pierce said to Washburn. "I don’t know what the future is going to bring. I don’t know if I’m going to be back with the Nets. I don’t know if I’m going to retire, you never know what’s going to happen. I feel like I have more in the tank but you never know with injuries, how your body feels. Sometimes those things tell you a lot quicker. Right now, I’ve been feeling good. My legs, my body feels strong."
- Washburn had more from Pierce, who sympathizes with Celtics president of basketball ops Danny Ainge. "We were pretty much stuck on a treadmill as far as where we were and people don’t see the financial part of it," Pierce said. "That kind of straps a team from getting better. We were kind of in that position. How do we get better without spending money? So you have to determine if we want to stay right where we are, which is [a] four through eight seed? Or do we want to rebuild and hopefully get a player that can take us to that next level . . . This was pretty much almost inevitable."
- David Lee takes a trip down memory lane with Marc Berman of the New York Post to ponder what might have been if Knicks brass had stuck with Lee and others from a fast-starting team five years ago.
Magic Let $17.8MM Trade Exception Expire
The Magic seem to have done as well as, if not better than, any of the four teams involved in last year's Dwight Howard/Andrew Bynum trade, but yesterday they lost a significant asset they acquired through the blockbuster deal. Orlando's massive $17,816,880 trade exception lapsed when the team failed to use it by the end of yesterday, the one-year anniversary of the day the Magic relinquished their star center. The Magic could have used the exception to absorb salary in a trade without having to come up with matching salaries in return.
The expiration comes as no shock, since Magic GM Rob Hennigan has steadfastly sacrificed the present for the future, and bringing aboard a player or group of players making such a sizable chunk of money could compromise that effort. Josh Robbins of the Orlando Sentinel wrote a couple of weeks ago that the exception would likely go unused, and without rumors linking the Magic to a major trade this summer, it's been apparent for a while that the exception would probably expire.
Hennigan and company were aggressively pursuing trades during the season, and while they pulled off a pair of deadline swaps, neither of them involved the team dipping into the Howard trade exception. The Magic never seemed destined to use the full amount to acquire a player on a high-dollar contract, but I'm surprised they didn't use at least a small portion of it to bring in a veteran on a short-term deal or a young player with room for improvement.
The precise amount of the exception was derived from subtracting Nikola Vucevic's $1,719,480 salary for 2012/13 from Howard's $19,536,360 pay last season, as Luke Adams of Hoops Rumors explained in detail. For more information about trade exceptions, check out our glossary entry.