Kings Waive Jeremy Tyler
The Kings have waived Jeremy Tyler, the team announced. The move was expected, as Sacramento has planned to waive the big man since acquiring him in a trade with the Knicks earlier this month.
Tyler’s $948K contract was scheduled to become partially guaranteed at $100K if the Kings had not waived him by September 15. The move will help Sacramento’s efforts to creep beneath the luxury tax line. The Kings have yet to execute an in-place agreement to deal away Jason Terry to Houston for non-guaranteed contracts. As soon as that transpires, the Kings stand to have approximately $74-75MM in salary slated for 2014/15, including both guaranteed and non-guaranteed arrangements. The team will have to either add guaranteed money or retain some of its non-guaranteed training camp invites, since only 11 of the minimum 13 roster spots are fully guaranteed, not including Terry’s deal.
The Full Court Sports client has split time between the NBA and D-League the last three seasons, seeing action for the Warriors, Hawks, and Knicks. The 6’10” center has averaged 3.6 PPG and 2.7 RPG for his career, with a .451/.000/.557 slash line.
And-Ones: Bledsoe, Monroe, Augustin
Nothing has changed in the standoff between Eric Bledsoe and the Suns, as Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports tweets that the point guard’s agent is holding firm on his demand for no less than a max offer. Here’s more from around the league, including more on the floor general some have dubbed the “mini-LeBron:”
- On his Instagram profile, LeBron James himself challenged the Suns to up their offer to Bledsoe, presumably to the point guard’s desired max salary (H/T Micah Peters of For The Win ). James, like Bledsoe, is represented by Klutch Sports Group agent Rich Paul.
- Chris Mannix of SI.com thinks Greg Monroe‘s decision to sign his qualifying offer with the Pistons is a bold, “high risk, high reward” choice, citing variables that could work against him including injury, diminished play, or reduced playing time under new coach Stan Van Gundy (on Twitter).
- D.J. Augustin tells Keith Langlois of Pistons.com that he wasn’t let down by the two-year, $6MM contract he signed with the Pistons this summer. “Anything can happen in free agency or in this business, period,” said Augustin. “So I had no expectations because it could go either way. I was just happy to be signing with a good organization, a good team and getting the opportunity to play again.”
- The point guard credits Tom Thibodeau, who most recently coached him with the Bulls, for rejuvenating his play. “Not only did he give me the opportunity, he actually brought my love for the game back,” Augustin said. “You kind of lose that a little bit, your passion for the game, throughout the years in the NBA depending on playing time and different situations you may be put in…I owe him a lot. I give him credit for bringing my passion for the game back and wanting to learn and play hard. [Pistons coach Stan Van Gundy] reminds me a lot of [Thibodeau]. They’re both good coaches. He’s putting us on the right track to be a good team.”
Celtics President On Rondo, Young Assets
Piggybacking on his denial that Boston is dealing with a trade demand from Rajon Rondo, Celtics president Rich Gotham told Chris Forsberg of ESPNBoston.com and other reporters that the team is primarily concerned with the point guard’s return to form following ACL surgery in early 2013. Gotham also touched on the Celtics’ roster and team-building strategy moving forward. The whole piece is worth a read, but we’ll round up some of the highlights here:
On Rondo:
“When we talk about Rondo, we talk about his development and recovery from his ACL [surgery],” said Gotham. “So we talk about getting him ready to perform this season and we’re excited about having the old Rondo back. That’s what we talk about. The stuff that gets reported in the media, it’s out of our control. Sometimes you laugh a little bit, sometimes you shake your head a little bit, sometimes you say, ‘Geez, I haven’t heard that, I wonder if there’s anything there?’ But we can’t allow ourselves to pay too much attention to that. What’s important to us is getting the team ready, and paying attention to media rumors doesn’t help us get the team ready.”
On the team’s flexibility in developing or dealing assets:
“The franchise, we’re committed to being patient as we need to be to get the team to where it needs to go. What you want, most importantly, is to have options. Whether it’s developing your young guys and utilizing those draft picks–and utilizing them well–and getting guys that can help you hang that next banner. Or it’s using those picks and cap space as assets to acquire other players, whether it’s via trade or free agency. I think we have all those options available to us, and they’ll continue to be available to us for the foreseeable future. And that’s really all that you can ask for. You can’t be too hasty in trying to make things happen just for the sake of trying to make it happen in order to appease any sense of impatience. You gotta stay true to the process.”
On Boston’s rookie additions:
“I’ve been loving Marcus Smart‘s play, because he’s just tough. He goes out there and he competes. I saw James Young for the first time the other day, and I saw him stroke a couple of lefty 3-pointers from a couple feet beyond the arc and I was like, ‘Hmmm, we could use that.'”
On the other young players on the roster:
“I love thinking about what these guys could become. I watched our draft workouts, but the best workout I saw all summer was Kelly Olynyk putting on a shooting clinic hitting threes. We bring in all these guys, but we’ve got great guys on our team. It’s exciting to think about how these guys will develop over time… I think the expectation for this year’s team is that the future will come a little bit more into focus. Some of the guys who showed promise last year, guys that took a step last year like Jared [Sullinger] and Avery [Bradley] and [Olynyk], I think their continued development is a great reason to be optimistic. The addition of Tyler Zeller helps us a lot as we have a pure center on the roster now. I think a healthy Rondo is a huge difference-maker for us. And so I think, while we were very competitive last year, in a lot of these games, I think we have a better shot to take some of those games that come down to the last two minutes. Guys will have another year in [coach] Brad [Stevens’] system, I think we have great depth on this team, we have quality depth. We just look forward to taking the next step in our progression.”
And-Ones: McGrady, Mudiay, Wright, Faried
Training camp is just four weeks away, and there’s been a recent uptick in players getting invited by NBA teams to compete for camp. Here’s a rundown of news and notes from around the league:
- Tracy McGrady is contemplating an NBA comeback attempt while training with Kobe Bryant to get back in shape, he tells Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports. None of the teams his representatives contacted have registered interest, however, and he’s still contractually obligated to tour China as part of a basketball showcase in October, when NBA teams are in training camp. “The comeback will not happen, unless I have the drive whenever I get back,” McGrady said. McGrady last played, sparingly, with the Spurs in 2012/13, and has since spent time playing Chinese basketball, as well as minor league baseball. McGrady retired roughly a year ago.
- Emmanuel Mudiay, one of the premier 2015 draft prospects, has signed Raymond Brothers to be his agent, tweets Liz Mullen of SportsBusiness Journal. Mullen adds that Brothers negotiated Mudiay’s current contract with a Chinese team.
- Julian Wright, out of the league since 2011, is considering pursuing a comeback via the D-League, tweets David Pick of Eurobasket.com. Wright had been playing with a Russian team and performing well prior to an injury last December, according to Pick.
- Yannis Koutroupis of Basketball Insiders thinks that Kenneth Faried‘s stellar play with Team USA will carry over into the season, and expects the Nuggets to wind up making the power forward their most high paid player. Whether Denver reaches an agreement with Faried on a rookie scale extension before the October deadline, or via restricted free agency next summer, Koutroupis predicts it will take upwards of $14MM in annual salary to lock up “The Manimal.”
Eastern Rumors: Dudley, Sims
Team USA coach Mike Krzyzewski tells Marc Stein of ESPN.com that he plans to play Derrick Rose in three consecutive days of international pool play, an encouraging sign of his confidence in the point guard’s conditioning and progress. Here’s more from around the East:
- Jared Dudley tells Charles F. Gardner of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel he’s ready to prove himself on the Bucks, after being traded there from the Clippers last week. “Going from a contender to a team that’s rebuilding, to me that really doesn’t matter,” Dudley said. “As a professional, you’ve got to come in with the right mind-set and play in the right way.”
- Dudley also tells Gardner that his play suffered last season while he played through knee injuries. “We had so many injuries. J.J. [Redick] was out; Matt Barnes was out. Basically [coach Doc Rivers] wanted me to fight through it,” said Dudley. “I told him I could, I just wouldn’t be 100%. I think what I did was give him a body to hold the minutes down until those guys got back. For me personally, I might have suffered. But from the team standpoint we were able to get that three spot (playoff seeding) we needed to have. When you look back, would I have done it different? Maybe. But that was just me trying to give my body for a new team and a new coach.”
- Michael Kaskey-Blomain of The Philadelphia Inquirer doesn’t believe Henry Sims will become a starting-caliber center, but thinks starting Sims on the 2014/15 Sixers could help him develop into a quality rotation player, while also aiding in the development of Nerlens Noel, who would spend more time at power forward as a result.
California Notes: Warriors, Crawford, Nash
The NBA landscape in California has undergone quite the transformation in recent years. In the past, there have been long stretches with the Kings near the top of the division, while the Warriors and Clippers have often scraped the bottom. Currently, Golden State and the formerly hapless Los Angeles franchise have established themselves as perennial playoff teams, while Sacramento underwhelms at the bottom of the division. The Lakers’ decline might turn out to be the most startling development, especially if the purple and gold don’t emerge from their downturn in the next couple seasons. Here’s a rundown of California rumblings this evening:
- Rusty Simmons of the San Francisco Chronicle confirms that the contracts of Warriors camp invites James McAdoo and Mitchell Watt are partially guaranteed.
- Agent Andy Miller has already signaled Jamal Crawford‘s interest in signing an extension when he becomes eligible next summer, and it sounds like the reigning Sixth Man of the Year will have a friendly face on the other side of the negotiating table. Crawford has a longstanding relationship with Clippers owner Steve Ballmer based on their Seattle connections, as Crawford details to Jeff Caplan of NBA.com. “We’ve done a lot of [charity] events together in Seattle, so I’ve known him before he was actually the owner,” Crawford said. “We were texting throughout the year and emailing each other and staying in contact and continuing to work together with charities around Seattle. It’s exciting. I don’t know how many people have actually known their owner before they actually played for the team they were on. So it’s pretty cool.”
- Despite some thought given by the Lakers to use the stretch provision on Steve Nash, the deadline to execute the maneuver came and went without Los Angeles doing so. Eric Pincus of the Los Angeles Times reports that the team was still considering stretching Nash’s deal before its top free agent targets of LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, and Chris Bosh decided to sign elsewhere, eliminating the team’s need to gain cap flexibility from such a move.
Chuck Myron contributed to this post.
Reggie Jackson On Extension Negotiations, Role
Fourth-year point guard Reggie Jackson spoke to Darnell Mayberry of The Oklahoman about the upcoming season, including his role on the team for 2014/15 and ongoing negotiations for a rookie scale extension with the Thunder. The entire interview is worth the read, and we’ll roundup some of the highlights here.
On wanting to be a starter:
“I don’t think about ever coming off the bench for any team. If that’s the role I’m put in, that’s what I’m put in. But since the day I thought about playing in the NBA, I’ve always been a starter. Everything I’ve thought about, whether it be middle school, high school, kids leagues, I never envisioned coming off the bench. When you think about playing basketball, you see the first five guys get on the floor, and that’s something I’ve always prided myself on being…
It’s very prideful for me. I feel like I’m very talented. I feel like I can lead a team. That’s just how I’ve been raised and that’s just how I’ve always felt. I want to be the guy in charge. I want to be the guy leading the team. The head of the snake. I guess that’s just how I’m encrypted DNA-wise.”
On whether he expects to reach an extension agreement with Oklahoma City this summer:
“We haven’t really talked about it much this summer. I know my representation and the Thunder have been talking. But mostly I haven’t really gotten to talk super much about it. I’ve been busy. I think we’re just trying to figure things out and hopefully we can get a deal done… I’m not sure. I’m always hopeful. I’m hoping for the best, expecting the worst. That’s just how I kind of approach things. I’m just happy and blessed to be able to play basketball another day and wake up another day. Just seeing another day is a blessing. I hope to get things done. But if not, it is what it is. I can’t really dwell on it. I have to go out there and compete. That’s where I am. I have to go out there and enjoy the game and trust that my representation and us sitting down and figuring things out is hopefully going to lead to us getting something done before the deadline.
[It will take] communication. We have to figure out things that we can do on both ends. What we envision for the organization from both ends. I’d like to play a certain way. When it’s all said and done and I hang up my jersey, hang up my shoes, I have many goals that I want to accomplish. So I think it’s going to be about what’s the vision for obtaining those goals from both parts and what’s the vision that we have moving forward… I would love to get a deal done, but if that’s not what happens, that’s not what happens. I can’t necessarily dwell on it and think about that too much. I have to go out there and compete.”
On his attention paid to the paths restricted free agents like Eric Bledsoe, Gordon Hayward, and Chandler Parsons have taken this summer:
“I pay attention to a lot of moves going on in the league. It’s a business. You want to figure out what every team is doing, not necessarily just from a contract standpoint. I want to figure out the landscape of the NBA and what teams are trying to do. What teams are really looking to contend and what’s the landscape and whats going to happen in the league. But I probably have paid attention a little more to [Bledsoe’s] situation.
I definitely factor in all those things. Young players getting paid. Especially with Gordon, who I believe was the class before me, and then Chandler who was in my class. A second-round pick who I’m happy for… You definitely kind of have to weigh yourself on what’s going on around the league. So you have to look at guys around you in similar classes and similar positions to try to get a barometer for what you should probably make. It’s been some groundbreaking deals going on this summer, and I have to take that into account when it comes to trying to get a deal done.”
And-Ones: Wiggins, Dragic, Ingles
While a dark cloud hung over the Wolves franchise from the moment Kevin Love made it known he was prepared to move on, Jon Krawczynski of The Associated Press reports that the team’s fan base has been energized by the package Minnesota received in the Love trade. The Wolves just set a team record for most season-ticket packages sold in a week, after netting Andrew Wiggins, Anthony Bennett, and Thaddeus Young in the franchise-altering move. Here’s more from Minnesota and the rest of the league:
- Wiggins tells Jerry Zgoda of the Star Tribune that he is happy to have been traded to the Wolves, where he will be thrust into a much bigger role than he would have carved out with the superstar-heavy Cavs.“I wanted to go to a place where I’m pushed to do a lot and become a special piece for the team. It’ll help me reach my potential,” said Wiggins. “I said I wanted to play for a team that wanted me, and now I’m here and I feel nothing but love.”
- The Pacers are one of the teams interested in Zoran Dragic, reports Orazio Cauchi of Sportando. The younger brother of Goran Dragic is under contract in Spain. It is unclear if the guard is poised to exercise any sort of escape clause that would allow him to come stateside, although he’s reportedly eager to someday play in the Association.
- Joe Ingles is generating interest from multiple NBA teams, tweets David Pick of Eurobasket.com. Pick says the Australian wing, who spent last season with Maccabi Tel Aviv, will need to perform well at the FIBA World Cup to get a shot.
Poll: Which 2013/14 Trade Will Have Greatest Impact?
When you look through last season’s trades, you’ll quickly notice that many of the deals revolved around players on the last years of their contracts, second-round draft picks, and other low-impact assets. A good amount of the players traded last year have already moved on from the team that acquired them, and many of the moving pieces failed to significantly help or hinder the fate of the teams involved for 2013/14.
Still, any given trade’s legacy can drag on for many years and in unexpected ways, as Eddie Scarito’s Hoops Rumors Trade Retrospective series has shown. I’ve gathered some of last year’s trades with loose ends and/or ramifications that have already stretched beyond last season.
- Kings and Raptors swap Rudy Gay, Greivis Vasquez, Patrick Patterson, and other pieces. While Quincy Acy, Aaron Gray, and John Salmons are no longer a part of either franchise, Gay, Vasquez, and Patterson are all on the same rosters through at least 2014/15. Toronto became a playoff team after this trade, and Gay played some of the best basketball of his career as a King. Each franchise hopes to have cemented part of its future core with this deal.
- Cavaliers and Bulls swap Luol Deng, Andrew Bynum, and picks. Deng is now a member of the Heat, and Bynum is an unsigned free agent. The Bulls are still owed Sacramento’s first-round pick, which is top-10 protected through 2017, along with a handful of others from this deal. Chicago also avoided the tax by waiving Bynum’s partially guaranteed contract, and this deal marked the beginning of a strategy to chisel out enough cap flexibility acquire a marquee talent this summer. The team aimed for Carmelo Anthony, but ultimately signed Pau Gasol.
- Sixers and Pacers swap Danny Granger, Evan Turner, and more. The Sixers still own the Warriors second-round pick for 2015, and Indiana re-signed Lavoy Allen after receiving him in this trade. The bigger names in Granger and Turner have both landed in Miami and Boston, respectively. The Sixers bought out Granger after the deal, and the remaining hole at shooting guard plays into Philadelphia’s plans to remain less than competitive for the coming season. Granger was no longer a high-impact player for the Pacers at the time of the deal, although the team struggled mightily after his departure and is now without Paul George and Lance Stephenson for 2014/15, offensive talents that made Granger expendable at the time.
A team’s track record of draft success and player development, combined with the deal’s timeliness, all factor into our expectations. Which trade do you expect to look back on as more than a wrinkle in the NBA landscape?
Extension Candidate: Kenneth Faried
Kenneth Faried is spending the summer with Team USA, but agent Thad Foucher is surely spending his time angling for a rookie scale extension with the Nuggets. If the power forward makes the leap that some others have made after playing alongside the world’s elite players, it wouldn’t hurt his case. The Nuggets have presumably already met with Foucher about an extension, who are expected to seek at least $10-$11MM in annual salary for their client.
In his first three seasons, Faried’s game hasn’t changed much. A high-energy rebounding force out of college, “The Manimal” immediately demonstrated the hunger and athleticism that led Denver to select him in the first round of the 2011 draft despite his playing for an under the radar mid-major in Morehead State. His career averages of 12.1 PPG, 8.6 RPG on .554 shooting have made his selection at No. 22 in the draft very worthwhile.
Faried has been effective, if one-dimensional on offense, taking 82% of his shots inside the paint. Faried is always eager to rise up for an alley-oop or slip in a putback when the defense lets its guard down, but doesn’t look to score outside the lane. While Faried is one of only five players to shoot above .545 in each of the last three seasons, it came on a high volume of inside looks, where Faried was actually rather pedestrian (.586) compared to the league average.
While energy and effort are important characteristics for NBA players to demonstrate, it’s not ideal for a starter to rely solely on those traits for their production. Faried’s efficiency has generally gone up when he plays less minutes, and he’s never cracked 30 minutes a night for a full season. Hefty extensions aren’t typically handed out to players that haven’t been trusted with more than 28.1 minutes a night. In fact, in his first year with the team, head coach Brian Shaw cut Faried’s playing time a bit last season. Despite starting 77 of Denver’s games, Faried saw fewer minutes than many of the league’s bench players, including Kyle Singler, Martell Webster, Matt Barnes, and Nick Young, along with other more heralded sixth men.
Most of Faried’s shortcomings are on the defensive end of the floor. At 6’8″, Faried is often overmatched against the league’s bigger frontcourt players, and he doesn’t have the skillset to slide to the wing. While Faried held opponents to a respectable .494 field goal percentage when defending at the rim, he only challenged 5 attempts there per contest, an underwhelming number for an athlete like Faried in the interior. Worse, Faried came in at 148 out of 169 in defensive rating among players that played more than 25 minutes per game,
Faried’s lack of development likely concerns the Nuggets, especially considering the fact that he played four years in college and will be nearly 26 by the time the first year of an extension would kick in. However, the high-flying big showed polish and effectiveness in the post when given greater opportunity in the second half of last season, as Grantland’s Zach Lowe detailed, and he’s earned a starting role thus far for Team USA over the likes of DeMarcus Cousins and Rudy Gay. If Denver believes in the promise he’s shown of late, waiting for him to bloom next year, likely the front end of his prime stretch, without locking him up could prove more costly than inking him while doubts remain.
In the Hoops Rumors Rookie Scale Extension Primer, our own Chuck Myron predicted the Wasserman Media Group client would receive a four-year, $44MM extension before the October 31 deadline. Both Shaw and GM Tim Connelly voiced their hopes that Faried would remain a Nugget for the future, although Denver floated Faried as a trade candidate for much of last season.
It wasn’t long ago when former Denver GM Masai Ujiri signed Nene to a five-year, $65MM contract that proved tradeable even when the big man didn’t factor into the Nuggets’ long-term plans. More recently, Denver inked JaVale McGee to a four-year pact at $12MM per season, with many more questions surrounding his game than Faried’s. Considering Faried’s floor seems to be established as an above-average frontcourt piece, I would expect Denver to be willing to sign him at or below the $11-$12MM range that Larry Sanders and Derrick Favors have received on their own rookie scale extensions. If his representatives push for a salary more in line with the league’s premier frontcourt players, I would imagine Denver will take their chances with restricted free agency, giving themselves this season to see whether his game has reached a level to merit such a contract.