Bulls Notes: Butler, Hoiberg, Gibson, Noah
Jimmy Butler insisted today that he wasn’t calling out Fred Hoiberg when he made a series of pointed comments implicating the coach after Saturday’s loss to the Knicks, notes K.C. Johnson of the Chicago Tribune (Twitter link). The swingman said today that he accepts that he has to fit into Hoiberg’s offense, an issue that’s reportedly raised concern, and that the coach doesn’t have to change as a person, even though he would like to see him demand more, as Johnson also relays (Twitter links). Hoiberg agrees that he can get on his players more than he has and said that he didn’t find Butler’s remarks from Saturday hurtful, according to Johnson (Twitter links). See more on Butler, Hoiberg and other Bulls amid the latest from the Windy City:
- Taj Gibson would net the Bulls a greater return in a trade than Joakim Noah would, but the Bulls have resisted the idea of trading Gibson the last two years, a Western Conference GM told Sean Deveney of The Sporting News. A market does exist for Noah, the GM also said, though he thinks the center is poised to depart Chicago in free agency this summer anyway, as Deveney details.
- Chicago has major locker room problems, and while acrimony doesn’t exist, a lack of camaraderie does, a league source who spoke to Deveney for the same piece said. Butler, whose lone-wolf approach reportedly leaves others feeling alienated, said today that after talking to his teammates, he believes they accept his leadership, even as he admits he has to be a better leader, observe Nick Friedell of ESPNChicago.com and Vincent Goodwill of CSNChicago.com (All Twitter links).
- Doug McDermott has taken a leap forward this season, and he credits a significant part of that to Hoiberg, who attended the same high school as he did, Friedell notes. “He runs stuff for me,” McDermott said. “He gives me that confidence. He’ll run stuff for me and when you’ve got Derrick [Rose] and Jimmy out there you need a floor spacer and I know I’m going to get shots with those guys eventually just because they draw so much attention.”
Celtics Make David Lee Available For Trade
The Celtics are making David Lee available to teams that would like to trade for him, league sources tell TNT’s David Aldridge, who writes in his Morning Tip for NBA.com. That’s no grand surprise, especially since Lee’s average of 15.6 minutes per night this season is lower than the 18.4 minutes per game he saw with the Warriors last year, when he fell out of the rotation. Lee, on an expiring contract, is Boston’s highest-paid player, with a salary of nearly $15.494MM.
The two-time All-Star arrived in Boston with much fanfare over the summer, even though at the age of 32, he’s not the superstar acquisition the Celtics have long been hunting for. Lee’s representatives reportedly worked in conjunction with the Warriors to help him find a new team, and the big man recently said that he doesn’t have regrets about leaving Golden State, even amid an historic start to the season for the Warriors.
Lee averaged 18.2 points and 9.3 rebounds in 33.2 minutes per game for the Warriors in 2013/14, but like last season, he finds himself playing behind other talented frontcourt players this year. Jared Sullinger, Amir Johnson and Kelly Olynyk are all seeing more minutes per game than Lee is, and Tyler Zeller, last season’s starting center for the Celtics, is getting only 7.8 minutes per contest.
The sizable salary Lee has figures to be an obstacle to a trade, especially since expiring contracts aren’t as valuable as they used to be. Most teams are currently over the cap, so they would have to come up with salary of at least $10,493,680 to trade for Lee straight up. No team has a trade exception large enough for him — not even the Cavs, who have the league’s largest trade exception, worth more than $10.5MM.
Do you think there’s a team that would be a fit for Lee? Leave a comment to share your thoughts.
Pacific Notes: Stephenson, Rondo, Karl, Suns
The Clippers are fourth in the Western Conference, but at 16-12, they’re not looking nearly as dominant as they hoped after an offseason of upgrades, as Ben Bolch of the Los Angeles Times examines. They only have five wins against teams with winning records, Bolch notes.
“You’ve got to be honest with yourself as a team,” Griffin said. “I think this is the point of the season where either something’s got to change or we’re not going to put ourselves in a good position come playoff time.”
It’s clear that whatever the Clippers are doing right now isn’t working, posits Dan Woike of the Orange County Register. See more on the Clips amid our look at the Pacific Division:
- In spite of the general disappointment about the team’s performance, coach/executive Doc Rivers has expressed satisfaction with Lance Stephenson, who was recently implicated in trade rumors that Rivers denied, as Melissa Rohlin of the Los Angeles Times relays (Twitter link). “You don’t know a guy until you coach guy or meet a guy,” Rivers said Friday in praise of the swingman with a reputation for volatile personality.
- Rajon Rondo and George Karl don’t always see eye to eye, Karl admits, adding that the conflict isn’t alarming, and Rondo is eager to have more meetings with Karl and other key figures on the team, writes Jason Jones of The Sacramento Bee. “I think he enjoys my philosophies a little bit,” Karl said of the soon-to-be free agent point guard. “Not 100% in agreement, but I’ve always had wrestling matches with most of my point guards – and this is not a bad wrestling match – but we do have our wrestling match going on.”
- The Suns are dealing with more internal strife than they’re letting on, and that transcends the questions regarding the future of Markieff Morris, according to former Suns front office hand Amin Elhassan of ESPN.com, who wrote in a roundtable piece Friday. The team lacks togetherness, ESPN’s Marc Stein observed in the same piece, and they’re active in trade talks, Brian Windhorst of ESPN.com noted.
Length Of Minimum Deals Key To Trade Feasibility
NBA teams have incentive to sign minimum salary players to contracts of at least three years when they can, as I’ve examined in the past. The investment of the cap space or the exception money necessary to do so can pay off when a player exceeds expectations. That keeps him under a bargain contract for a longer period of time than the two years, at most, allowed under the minimum salary exception. Still, those longer contracts come with a catch, since they’re often harder to trade.
Teams over the cap that trade for players on one- or two-year minimum salary deals don’t have to count them toward the amount of incoming salary in the deal, thus lowering the amount of salary they must relinquish in return. Let’s say a non-taxpaying, capped-out team wants to trade a player making $10MM in exchange for a player making $14.5MM and another player on a two-year, minimum salary contract with a salary of $947,276 for this season. Such a deal would be kosher, since the team can slip the player on the minimum salary deal into the minimum salary exception. That allows the team to count only the $14.5MM as incoming salary, which is less than the extra $5MM of salary the team is allowed to accept in return for the player making $10MM.
Now, let’s say the player with the minimum salary contract is on a three-year deal instead of a two-year deal. The same trade wouldn’t work, because the $947,276 would count as incoming salary and be added to the $14.5MM, pushing the total past the $5MM matching range.
Nearly half the teams in the league have at least one player on a minimum salary contract of more than two years. It’s no surprise that the Sixers lead in this category with six, since under GM Sam Hinkie, they’ve consistently pursued a strategy of signing prospects to long-term deals. The Grizzlies have the next most, with three, though they and the Heat found a way around this issue when they each sent out a player making the minimum salary on a three-year contract, with Jarnell Stokes going to Miami and James Ennis to Memphis, to make the Mario Chalmers trade function. The Kings managed to trade Ray McCallum and his three-year deal to the Spurs this summer because San Antonio was under the cap and thus able to accept him without sending anyone in return.
It’ll be difficult for the Cavaliers to pull off a similar maneuver with Joe Harris. Cleveland, with an eye on shedding salary, has reportedly made Harris available. He’s making the minimum in year two of a three-year deal, so they could only send Harris out for no salary in return to a team with cap space or a trade exception. That wouldn’t be the case if the Cavs had signed Harris to only a two-year deal for the minimum. If that were so, the Cavs could trade him for no salary in return to any team in the league, since whoever would take him in could do so via the minimum salary exception.
Such a scenario would have also required the Cavs to have paid Harris only the minimum last year, when he made nearly $400K more than that. It’s common for teams to sign recent second-round draftees to deals that cover three or four years and feature an above-minimum salary in year one and the minimum salary thereafter. Even if those contracts covered only two years, they couldn’t be done with the minimum salary exception, and thus a team can’t use that exception to trade for the player, even if he’s in his second year and is currently making the minimum.
It’s a complicated issue, as ever with the vagaries of NBA trades. Still, it worth noting that some players making the minimum are more tradeable than others. Here’s a look at each player making the minimum salary this year as part of a contract that spans three or more seasons, thus making them harder to trade than their two-year counterparts:
Bucks
Bulls
Cavaliers
Grizzlies
Hawks
Heat
Jazz
Lakers
Magic
Mavericks
Pistons
Sixers
Spurs
Trail Blazers
The Celtics, Clippers, Hornets, Kings, Knicks, Nets, Nuggets, Pacers, Pelicans, Raptors, Rockets, Suns, Thunder, Timberwolves, Warriors and Wizards don’t possess one of these contracts.
The Basketball Insiders salary pages were used in the creation of this post.
Central Notes: Butler, Hoiberg, Pistons, Love
Jimmy Butler and Fred Hoiberg met Sunday, a day after Butler made sharply critical comments about the coach, and they had what a source who spoke with K.C. Johnson of the Chicago Tribune called a “good talk.” Bulls management likes the work it’s seen from both of them, and with both in the first year of respective five-year deals, neither is going anywhere, Johnson posits. Still, some around the Bulls are dismayed about what they perceive as Butler’s selfishness and perplexed about why he’s reluctant to embrace Hoiberg’s offense, Johnson hears. The former 30th overall pick often warms up on his own, which rubs others the wrong way and prompted Joakim Noah to have a talk with him, a source said to Johnson. Butler’s sympathizers contend that he’s just frustrated that there aren’t many who work as hard as he does, Johnson adds. See more on Butler amid the latest from the Central Division:
- Butler is simply embracing the gritty attitude most would want out of a superstar, argues Vincent Goodwill of CSNChicago.com, who points out that the swingman hasn’t said Hoiberg can’t coach or that the team made a mistake with his hiring.
- Any trade proposal to the Pistons would have to represent a marked upgrade in terms of talent for the team to bite, coach/executive Stan Van Gundy cautioned, as Aaron McCann of MLive.com notes. “I like the chemistry and character of our group,” Van Gundy said. “We won’t make lateral moves or marginal moves because continuity is important.”
- Kyrie Irving‘s return from injury Sunday challenges the Cavs to keep Kevin Love engaged in the offense to the degree that he has been so far this season, observes Joe Vardon of the Northeast Ohio Media Group. Love felt confident as he re-signed with the team this summer that his second season in Cleveland would be better than his first, when he appeared an afterthought at times next to Irving and LeBron James.
And-Ones: Morris, Dwight, Cousins, D-League
Markieff Morris gives the impression that he’s at ease with his situation in Phoenix, even amid his benching, and Suns coach Jeff Hornacek has expressed confidence that Morris will regain his shooting touch, as Paul Coro of the Arizona Republic details. Morris said that he knew when Hornacek told him he was taking him out of the rotation for the team’s December 6th game in an effort to match up better against the Grizzlies that the move wouldn’t merely be for a single night, but the power forward was vague when asked if he wants to be traded, according to Coro.
“I’m just here for the Phoenix Suns,” Morris said. “That’s all I can be.”
The Suns have made Morris “very available” and are engaged in serious discussions with the Rockets about a deal that would send Morris out for Terrence Jones and Corey Brewer, as Marc Stein of ESPN.com reported. See more from the Association:
- Some people around the league think the Rockets might see fit to let go of Dwight Howard if his health won’t allow him to be a consistent presence in the lineup, ESPN’s Chris Broussard said in an appearance on ESPN’s “Russillo @ Kanell” radio show (audio link). Howard is indeed frustrated about his health, his limited role on offense and the team’s losing, but he’s trying to remain positive and make the situation work in Houston, Broussard also said. Howard, whom the Rockets expect to opt out and hit free agency this summer, has only missed one game since November 21st and has appeared in three sets of back-to-backs over that period.
- DeMarcus Cousins‘ name continues to pop up in trade rumors, but Kings GM Vlade Divac once more made it clear that the All-Star center isn’t going anywhere, reiterating to Marc Stein of ESPN.com this week that Cousins is “off the table.”
- Less roster churn for the Sixers, a paucity of teams with open roster spots, and a simple lack of talent are among the reasons why the D-League has seen fewer players called up to the NBA thus far this season compared to this point in 2014/15, as Adam Johnson of D-League Digest examines.
Sixers Hire Mike D’Antoni As Lead Assistant
3:04pm: The hiring is official, the team announced via press release.
7:59am: The Sixers have made Mike D’Antoni their associate head coach, two league sources told Keith Pompey of The Philadelphia Inquirer. The team has yet to make an announcement, but Pompey indicates the hiring has already taken place. He’ll serve as the top aide to Brett Brown, who last week signed an extension that keeps him under contract as Philly’s head coach through 2018/19. Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo Sports reported shortly thereafter that the Sixers were discussing the job of lead assistant with D’Antoni, and the Sixers confirmed those talks to Pompey. TNT’s David Aldridge wrote Monday that the team planned to hire him.
Brown said over the weekend that the addition of the 64-year-old D’Antoni would be a “good thing” and that the team has been looking for a veteran assistant for a while. The pursuit of D’Antoni wasn’t related to the hiring of Jerry Colangelo as chairman of basketball operations, Brown also said, though it’s difficult not to see a connection. D’Antoni joined the Suns while Colangelo was still in charge of the team, and the two also worked together with USA Basketball.
The last time D’Antoni served as an assistant, he was working under Frank Johnson on the Suns at the start of the 2003/04 season. Phoenix fired Johnson in December 2003, moving D’Antoni into the head coaching job, and with the addition of point guard Steve Nash in the summer of 2004, the Suns went from out of the playoffs to a Western Conference Finals appearance in one year. Phoenix returned to the conference finals the next season, but D’Antoni’s teams have only won one playoff series since. He moved on in 2008 to the Knicks, but New York only once finished above .500 while he was there, and D’Antoni resigned shortly after the “Linsanity” run of success with Jeremy Lin. He was an unpopular choice as Lakers coach early in the 2012/13 season, when the team chose him over Phil Jackson, and injuries and disappointment marked his brief time in L.A. before he resigned in the spring of 2014. D’Antoni, the 2004/05 Coach of the Year, has a record of 455-426 in the regular season as a head coach, including one season with the Nuggets before he joined the Suns.
He enters another losing situation in Philadelphia, where the Sixers are a dreadful 1-26 amid the radical rebuilding plan that GM Sam Hinkie has been executing, but the team brought in Colangelo to hasten the climb up the standings. D’Antoni will help direct a roster that features only one player older than 25, though Brown believes the Colangelo hire signaled that the team will add more veteran players. The Sixers have been talking to Elton Brand and Shane Battier, according to Aldridge, though it’s unclear whether they envision them for playing, coaching or front office roles.
Do you think D’Antoni can help the Sixers? Leave a comment to share your thoughts.
Clippers Reignite Jamal Crawford Trade Talk
DECEMBER 18TH, 2:25pm: Crawford “can be had” before the trade deadline, writes Marc Stein of ESPN.com.
DECEMBER 10TH, 2:53pm: The Clippers are surveying the interest that other teams have in trading for Jamal Crawford, league sources tell Michael Scotto of SheridanHoops (Twitter link). Crawford was a frequent subject of trade rumors in the offseason, when reports indicated the team explored trading him around draft time and that the Knicks, Heat and Cavs had interest. Marc J. Spears of Yahoo Sports suggested this week that the Clippers remained open to dealing the 35-year-old shooting guard amid a report that the team recently gauged interest in Lance Stephenson and Josh Smith.
Clippers coach/executive Doc Rivers denied on multiple occasions in the past few days that he’s spoken to anyone about Stephenson and Smith, and he said in September that he’d be “very surprised” if Crawford doesn’t remain with the team through the rest of the season. Any trade talk the Clippers are engaging in at this point is exploratory, a source said to Steve Kyler of Basketball Insiders. Crawford tweeted during the summer that he wished he were a free agent but said at the start of training camp that he was glad to still be with the Clippers.
The offseason additions of Stephenson, Wesley Johnson and others made it seem as though Crawford, a two-time Sixth Man of the Year, would have a reduced role with the team this season, but so far his minutes have been consistent with the playing time he saw last year. His shots per game are down, from 13.1 to 11.4, and he’s connecting on just 36.8% of his field goal attempts, his worst percentage since his rookie season. The upgraded Clippers bench of which Crawford is a part hasn’t seemed to click thus far, but L.A. is still in fourth place in the Western Conference, at 13-9, and just a half-game out of third.
Crawford is in the final year of his contract, which pays him $5.675MM. He’s eligible to be traded immediately, though many others around the league will become trade-eligible Tuesday, so deals are generally more likely from that date forward. It’s unclear if Miami, Cleveland or New York maintains interest.
What should the Clippers demand in return for Crawford? Leave a comment to give your input.
What Today’s ‘Aggregation Deadline’ Means
The February 18th trade deadline is two months from today, but it’s already close enough to have an effect on player movement. Teams can’t trade any of the players they sign within three months of the deadline, and the two-month mark also represents a key date. Today is the final day a team can trade for a player using an exception and still be allowed to flip that player in another trade that aggregates his salary before the trade deadline. In more simple language, that makes it harder, but not impossible, for teams to construct trades that send out anyone they recently traded for in a package with another player.
To understand the implications of today’s deadline, it’s important to understand the NBA’s traded player exception rules. NBA teams with cap space are free to make trades as they wish without regard to matching salaries, as long as no trade takes them more than $100K above the cap. However, most teams operate above the cap during the season. So, to make trades, they have to use the traded player exception, which involves limits on how much salary they can take back compared to the salary they take in. When teams don’t receive any salary, they receive a one-year credit for the salary they relinquished. That credit is commonly known as a trade exception.
Most of the trades that take place during the season make use of the traded player exception one way or another, whether or not one of those credits is involved. So, if the Rockets, who are over the cap, were to trade Ty Lawson, they’d do so pursuant to the rules of the traded player exception. Let’s say, hypothetically, they trade him to the Cavs on Saturday for Mo Williams and Anderson Varejao. That’s purely a hypothetical — no one is suggesting that such a trade is even remotely being considered. We’re just using it as an example.
Since the Cavs, in our hypothetical scenario, acquired Lawson one day past the “aggregation deadline,” and since they’re also over the cap and used the traded player exception (but not necessarily their trade exceptions) to swing the deal, they can’t aggregate Lawson’s salary in another trade. If they wanted to trade Lawson and Sasha Kaun to the Bucks for Greg Monroe next month, they couldn’t do it, even though the salaries would be a match, because they couldn’t aggregate Lawson’s salary with Kaun’s.
Now, let’s say the Cavs decided to put Lawson and Kaun in a trade together for Khris Middleton. This would be legal. That’s because the Cavs wouldn’t have to aggregate Lawson’s salary with Kaun’s to come within 125% plus $100K of Middleton’s salary under the matching parameters of the traded player exception. They could simply trade Lawson for Middleton, and trade Kaun for no salary in return in what would the NBA would treat as a separate transaction, even if it all happened at the same time.
Needless to say, the concept is complex, and it’s why many rumored trades don’t end up happening. It’s difficult to construct legal trades within the rules. But, the point is that while it’s more complicated for teams to flip the players they trade for after today, it is possible for them to do so, even in multiplayer deals.
Larry Coon’s Salary Cap FAQ was used in the creation of this post.
The Beat: Jason Lieser On The Heat
Nobody knows NBA teams better than beat writers, save for those who draw paychecks with an NBA owner’s signature on them. The reporters who are with the teams they cover every day gain an intimate knowledge of the players, coaches and executives they write about and develop sources who help them break news and stay on top of rumors.
We at Hoops Rumors will be chatting with beat writers from around the league and sharing their responses to give you a better perspective on how and why teams make some of their most significant moves. Last time, we spoke with Monte Poole of CSN Bay Area about the Warriors. Click here to see all the previous editions of this series.
Today, we gain insight on the Heat from Jason Lieser of The Palm Beach Post. You can follow Jason on Twitter at @JasonLieser and the Post’s Heat coverage on Facebook, and check out his stories here and here.
Hoops Rumors: What has Dwyane Wade done differently this season to allow himself to play at such a high level, and did the Heat have any idea this was coming when they gave him his one-year, $20MM contract?
Jason Lieser: The misconception nationally over the past few years has been that Wade’s skills are in decline, when really it was a decline in health. Since the end of the 2013/14 season, however, there have been gradual improvements. Wade missed 20 games last year, but all of them were a direct result of something that happened on the court — not the ambiguous, lingering knee pain. As long as his knees are in reasonably good shape, he has reworked his game to remain one of the best scorers in the league and should be in the mix to earn an All-Star spot. That said, the upward trend in his health won’t last forever, and he turns 34 next month. As far as the return on that $20MM, that was probably over market value for him for the 2015/16 season, but not by much. Klay Thompson is making close to $16MM this season, and his offensive stats last year were comparable with Wade’s.
Hoops Rumors: The leaguewide trend is toward small-ball, but the Heat have two of the best big men in Chris Bosh and Hassan Whiteside. With Whiteside hitting free agency this summer, do you think the Heat have seen enough yet to be sold on the pairing for the long term, and is there any legitimacy to the idea that the Heat would trade him this season?
Jason Lieser: The Heat are absolutely sold on Bosh as a top-tier player at his position, and he is in the conversation among the best and most versatile defenders among big men. Whiteside is an interesting case because his value on the court is drastically disproportionate to his $981K contract. That basically makes him untradeable because it will be almost impossible to get good value in return given that salary has to match. I can’t envision Miami letting an asset like Whiteside walk out the door, so if there is no suitable trade I expect the Heat will pay whatever it takes to re-sign him.
Hoops Rumors: What can the Heat do to offset their lack of outside shooting?
Jason Lieser: They can start making more. That’s about it. They do not have the roster flexibility to add anyone at the moment unless they make a trade or flat out cut somebody. They can’t pluck a shooter out of the D-League and give him a shot. The Heat are third in the NBA in 2-point shooting percentage (50.9) and second-worst in 3-point accuracy (31.6%). This is on course to be their worst 3-point shooting season since 2002/03. Miami is never going to be the Warriors, but it is realistic to expect modest improvement. Goran Dragic, Luol Deng and Gerald Green are all shooting significantly below their career averages, and that should come close to balancing out by the end of the season.
Hoops Rumors: Have you noticed a significant difference in the way the Heat have played since the Mario Chalmers trade, or have they been able to go on more or less without skipping a beat?
Jason Lieser: This is difficult to assess at the moment because Tyler Johnson is dealing with an impingement in his shooting shoulder. He was out three games and tried to return Wednesday in Brooklyn, but it wasn’t going well and he quickly exited. In a small sample size, he averaged 10 points in 22.7 minutes per game while shooting 50.6% over the 12 games after Chalmers was dealt. That works fine offensively, plus he improved his outside shot over the offseason and is an above-average defender.
Hoops Rumors: Gerald Green seems back in the team’s good graces following his suspension, and he’s seeing more playing time than anyone on the bench except for Justise Winslow. What has Green done that’s given Erik Spoelstra such confidence in him?
Jason Lieser: The No. 1 factor in Green’s playing time is his defense, and few outside the organization anticipated such a dramatic improvement. He talked a lot about the impetus for such a change in this article, which has some numbers that illustrate his progress: Green is obviously an gifted scorer, and the Heat need that off their bench, but his defense is keeping him on the court and earning him significant minutes late in games.
Hoops Rumors: What’s kept the Heat from turning to Amar’e Stoudemire much at all?
Jason Lieser: Good luck getting a straight answer on this. Spoelstra keeps saying he is in “rehabilitative recovery” or on “a maintenance program,” but he won’t explain what that means. Stoudemire has played 27 minutes over three games so far. My best guess is that they intend to use him for a shortened season starting in January or February — they did that with Greg Oden a few years ago — and they use him only in emergency situations prior to that.
More from Jason Lieser