Knicks Notes: Woodson, Assistants, Thibodeau, Harkless
Former Knicks head coach Mike Woodson, who interviewed for the team’s top coaching position again this time around, is expected to rejoin the organization in some capacity, sources tell Shams Charania of The Athletic (Twitter link).
There were rumors during the Knicks’ coaching search that Woodson was a candidate to be hired as an assistant, so Charania’s report doesn’t come as a real surprise. Still, it’s worth noting that on a conference call with reporters on Thursday, Knicks GM Scott Perry said that Thibodeau will have the autonomy to build his own coaching staff, as Stefan Bondy of The New York Daily News tweets. Perry added that the staff will be “diverse,” with a focus on player development.
Based on reports to date, it sounds like the support for Woodson has come from within the Knicks organization. If he ends up joining the team’s coaching staff, that should be confirmation that Thibodeau wants him on board as well.
Here’s more on the Knicks and their new head coach:
- In addition to Woodson, Mike Miller, Rick Brunson, and Daisuke Yoshimoto are the names that Steve Popper of Newsday keeps hearing as possibilities for Thibodeau’s new coaching staff (Twitter link). Brunson and Yoshimoto both worked under Thibs in Minnesota.
- Speaking to reporters today, Thibodeau cited three main reasons why he viewed the Knicks’ job as an attractive one, tweets Mike Vorkunov of The Athletic. Thibs praised the current roster, referring to it as “young and talented” with “room for growth”; he said he’s excited about the draft assets and cap flexibility the team has at its disposal; and he indicated that the presence of Leon Rose and William Wesley in the front office is also appealing.
- Maurice Harkless, an unrestricted free agent this fall, isn’t sure whether or not he’ll be back with the Knicks in 2020/21, but he’s intrigued by the hiring of Thibodeau, calling him a “great coach,” writes Marc Berman of The New York Post. Harkless hasn’t played for Thibodeau before, but met him earlier in 2019/20 when the veteran coach visited the Clippers.
Bucks’ Bledsoe, Connaughton Not Yet Ready To Return
The Bucks will be without a pair of rotation players when their season resumes on Friday against the Celtics, as head coach Mike Budenholzer confirmed today that Eric Bledsoe and Pat Connaughton will remain sidelined for now, per Eric Woodyard of ESPN.
Both Bledsoe and Connaughton tested positive for COVID-19 earlier in the summer, delaying their arrivals to the NBA’s Walt Disney World campus. They’ve each cleared quarantine and have returned to practice, but Budenholzer believes the two veterans need a little more time to get their conditioning and rhythm up to par.
“Everybody else is getting ready to play in a live game and have had 10 to 12 to 14 days of probably 5-on-5 every other day and individual work and all that, so I think giving Bled and Pat a couple of 5-on-5 sessions at a minimum and getting some 3-on-3 in other situations or days,” Budenholzer said, per Woodyard. “They just need to play, so I think that’s a big hurdle and with playing will come both conditioning and their rhythm, so we’re going to make sure they get some of that before we put them in an NBA game.”
With a comfortable 6.5-game lead on the Raptors for the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference, the Bucks can afford to play it safe in the seeding games as they gear up for the postseason. They’ll want Bledsoe and Connaughton to be back at 100% by the time the playoffs get underway on August 17.
Bledsoe, Milwaukee’s starting point guard, averaged 15.4 PPG, 5.4 APG, and 4.6 RPG and played strong perimeter defense in 56 games (27.2 MPG) this season. Connaughton provided depth on the wing, averaging 5.1 PPG and 4.2 RPG in 61 contests (18.3 MPG).
The duo hasn’t been ruled out beyond Friday, so it’s possible one or both of them will be ready to go on Sunday night when the Bucks face Houston.
Pacific Notes: Kings, Len, LeBron, Williams, Warriors
The Kings, who previously furloughed some employees starting on June 1, have now laid off some staffers as well, according to Sean Cunningham of ABC10 Sacramento (Twitter links). According to Cunningham, no members of the Kings’ basketball operations department were part of this week’s layoffs.
Cunningham estimates that about 100 employees within the organization were impacted by the earlier furloughs. And based on a statement from John Rinehart, the Kings’ president of business operations, it sounds like a portion of those workers have now been laid off.
“As part of the organization’s ongoing evolution of efforts to align with the changes in our business, we have made the difficult decision to transition a portion of previously furloughed full-time roles to a reduction in workforce effective July 31 and extend the furlough period for the remaining segment of previously furloughed employees to tentatively November 1 due to continued uncertainty surrounding the resumption of live events at Golden 1 Center resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic,” Rinehart said, per Cunningham.
Here’s more from around the Pacific:
- Kings center Alex Len, who reported to the NBA campus late after a bout with COVID-19, will likely miss the team’s first summer game on Friday, head coach Luke Walton said today (Twitter link via James Ham of NBC Sports California). However, it shouldn’t be too much longer before Len is ready to go.
- Within an ESPN.com piece about the Lakers‘ unusual 2019/20 season, Dave McMenamin suggests that LeBron James wasn’t thrilled about Lakers players being asked last fall to address the NBA/China controversy before commissioner Adam Silver or Rockets GM Daryl Morey did. Morey’s tweet supporting Hong Kong protestors instigated that dispute between the league and its Chinese partners.
- Lou Williams‘ violation of the NBA’s protocols means he’s serving a 10-day quarantine and missing at least two seeding games, but his Clippers teammates and head coach Doc Rivers have Williams’ back, as Mark Medina of USA Today writes. “Lou’s one of the most-liked guys in the whole organization and is always trying to get everyone together on the road,” center Ivica Zubac said. “Lou is a true leader. The fact that everyone is coming to the defense of him speaks everything about him.”
- Anthony Slater of The Athletic takes a deep dive into James Wiseman‘s potential fit with the Warriors, pointing out that if Golden State does end up using its top-five pick this fall, it will represent an opportunity to secure a long-term building block — not just a role player who can fit in with the current core.
Knicks Officially Hire Tom Thibodeau As Head Coach
The Knicks have made it official, announcing today in a press release that Tom Thibodeau has been named the franchise’s new head coach. ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski first reported on Saturday that the two sides were finalizing a five-year contract.
“Tom Thibodeau is a proven winner who gets the most out of the players and teams that he has coached,” Knicks president of basketball operations Leon Rose said in a statement. “He will bring leadership, accountability, and a hard-working mentality to our organization. We are excited to bring him back to New York and look forward to collaborating with him and his staff toward a successful future.”
An assistant coach with the Knicks from 1996-2004, Thibodeau also worked on coaching staffs in Minnesota, San Antonio, Philadelphia, Houston, and Boston before getting his first head coaching opportunity with the Bulls in 2010.
In five seasons as Chicago’s head coach, Thibodeau led the team to a 255-139 (.647) record and five consecutive postseason appearances. The Bulls won four playoff series and earned a spot in the Eastern Finals during that stretch.
Thibodeau later served as the head coach and head of basketball operations in Minnesota, leading the Timberwolves to their first postseason appearance in 14 years during the 2017/18 season. However, his time with the Wolves came to an abrupt end in ’18/19 following a messy divorce with star swingman Jimmy Butler.
Thibodeau didn’t coach during the ’19/20 season, opting to take the year off to visit with a number of teams and await his next opportunity. He was cited as a potential target for the Nets and Rockets as well, but with those teams still active and not guaranteed to be seeking new head coaches this offseason, Thibodeau was increasingly linked to the Knicks, the only club that has conducted a full-fledged coaching search so far this year.
Even as they interviewed 10 other candidates, the Knicks seemed focused on Thibodeau throughout their process. There was a time last week when it appeared as if talks between Thibodeau and the Knicks had hit a snag — Jason Kidd was said to be emerging as the new frontrunner, as veteran reporter Frank Isola confirmed in a recent radio appearance (8:35 mark). However, even then, Thibodeau was viewed as New York’s top choice, and was eventually able to reach an agreement with the club that reunites him with Rose, his former agent at CAA.
The team that Thibodeau inherits is in flux. The Knicks have a number of veteran players on non-guaranteed contracts for next season after striking out in their quest for a superstar player last offseason. They’re expected to be one of a handful of teams with significant salary-cap space this offseason and also have some interesting young pieces under contract, including center Mitchell Robinson and last year’s lottery pick, RJ Barrett.
“I’m grateful for the opportunity to return to this historic franchise as head coach and work alongside a talented front office that I have great trust in and respect for,” Thibodeau said in a statement. “I know what New York is like when the Knicks are successful and there is nothing comparable. I look forward to being a part of what we are building here and can’t wait to get to work.”
The Knicks are counting on Thibodeau to develop those young players and instill a winning culture. New York was 21-45 this season and missed the playoffs for a sixth straight season.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images. Dana Gauruder contributed to this story.
NBA Summer Restart Primer
During the 2019 NBA offseason, the league went 131 days between games, from Game 6 of the 2018/19 NBA Finals on June 13 to opening night of the ’19/20 regular season on October 22.
Since the coronavirus pandemic shut down the ’19/20 season on March 11, the league has gone 141 days between games, meaning we’ve waited more than the length of an offseason for the NBA season to resume.
That resumption date is finally here though. The league’s summer restart – its “re-opening night” – will tip off on Thursday, with a Jazz/Pelicans matchup followed by a Lakers/Clippers showdown.
In preparation for the NBA’s return, here’s what you need to know:
The Plan
We provided a full breakdown of the NBA’s return-to-play plan back in June, but here’s the abridged version: Rather than having teams travel from city to city to play games in empty home arenas amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, the league has gathered its top 22 teams in one place, at Walt Disney World in Florida.
There, those 22 teams will play eight “seeding games” apiece at The Arena, HP Field House, and Visa Athletic Center, three facilities that are part of the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex at Disney. Those seeding games essentially function as regular season games and – when combined with each team’s pre-hiatus record – will determine the final standings.
From there, the top seven teams in each conference will make the postseason. The eighth seed in each conference will be determined by a play-in tournament if the No. 9 team is within four games of the No. 8 team. In that scenario, the two teams would essentially play a best-of-three series, with the No. 8 staked to a 1-0 head start. If the No. 9 club isn’t within four games of the No. 8 club, the No. 8 team automatically claims the final playoff spot.
The postseason will begin on August 17 and will move forward as usual, with best-of-seven series in each round. The NBA Finals will potentially end as late as October 13, with the draft and free agency to follow shortly thereafter.
The Schedule
When the NBA suspended its season in March, teams had about 15-18 games left on their respective schedules. They’ll only play eight more this summer, meaning about half of their remaining matchups have been excised from the schedule.
The fact that the league’s bottom eight teams weren’t invited to the restart made it easy to remove a number of games from the schedule, and the NBA did its best to put together the remaining slate based on games each club originally had on tap for March and April.
As a result, some teams have a tougher road this summer than others. The Grizzlies, who are attempting to hold onto the No. 8 spot in the West, will open their schedule with games against three teams chasing them – the Trail Blazers, Spurs, and Pelicans – before facing the Jazz and Thunder and then closing out their summer slate against the East’s top three seeds, the Raptors, Celtics, and Bucks.
The Pelicans, meanwhile, have a softer schedule as they look to catch up to Memphis. After opening with a pair of tough matchups against Utah and the Clippers, their final six games are against sub-.500 teams.
Seeding games will take place over the next 16 days, concluding on August 14. That will leave room for potential play-in games on August 15 and 16 before the postseason begins in earnest on August 17.
From there, you can budget about two weeks for each round. The tentative start dates for the second and third rounds are August 31 and September 15, respectively, with the NBA Finals on track to begin on September 30.
The full schedule for the seeding games can be found right here.
The Standings
Here’s what the standings in each of the two conferences look like heading into the seeding games:
Eastern Conference:
- Milwaukee Bucks (53-12)
- Toronto Raptors (46-18)
- Boston Celtics (43-21)
- Miami Heat (41-24)
- Indiana Pacers (39-26)
- Philadelphia 76ers (39-26)
- Brooklyn Nets (30-34)
- Orlando Magic (30-35)
- Washington Wizards (24-40)
Western Conference:
- Los Angeles Lakers (49-14)
- Los Angeles Clippers (44-20)
- Denver Nuggets (43-22)
- Utah Jazz (41-23)
- Oklahoma City Thunder (40-24)
- Houston Rockets (40-24)
- Dallas Mavericks (40-27)
- Memphis Grizzlies (32-33)
- Portland Trail Blazers (29-37)
- New Orleans Pelicans (28-36)
- Sacramento Kings (28-36)
- San Antonio Spurs (27-36)
- Phoenix Suns (26-39)
With home court advantage no longer a real consideration, certain seeding races will lose a bit of their luster, but positioning is still important. For example, while the Celtics won’t be motivated to catch the Raptors for the No. 2 spot in the East in order to gain home court advantage in a potential second round matchup, moving up in the standings would allow them to avoid a tough first-round series against a team like Indiana or Philadelphia.
The middle of the pack in each conference will be worth watching for seeding purposes, and it will also be interesting to see if any of the Western Conference challengers can pull away from the pack to challenge the Grizzlies for the No. 8 seed. Don’t forget — even if the Pelicans or Kings were to finish within four games of Memphis, it wouldn’t do them any good if they don’t also pass the Trail Blazers. Only the No. 9 seed gets to participate in a play-in tournament.
The Rosters
Not every team will pick up right where it left off in March in terms of its roster makeup. For some teams, that’s a good thing.
The Raptors, for instance, should have a fully healthy roster for the first time since the fall. The Trail Blazers will have Jusuf Nurkic and Zach Collins playing together in their frontcourt for the first time all season. The Magic should have standout defender Jonathan Isaac back in their lineup for the first time since January 1.
For other teams though, the hiatus took a toll. Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving remain sidelined with injuries for the Nets, who will also be missing Spencer Dinwiddie, DeAndre Jordan, Taurean Prince, Wilson Chandler, and Nicolas Claxton due to a combination of injuries, opt-outs, and positive COVID-19 tests.
The Wizards, likewise, will be shorthanded this summer — star guards Bradley Beal and John Wall are recovering from injuries, while sharpshooter Davis Bertans opted out due to health concerns prior to his upcoming free agency.
The full list of rosters can be found right here. We’re also tracking players who have opted out or been ruled out due to the coronavirus, and the substitute players who have been signed to replace them.
During the seeding games, teams can continue to sign substitute players to replace anyone who voluntarily opts out or contracts the coronavirus. After the seeding games end in mid-August, players who test positive for COVID-19 can be replaced, but substitute players must have no more than three years of NBA experience.
The Storylines
We’re leaving this section to you. Which storylines will you be keeping a close eye on in the coming weeks?
Do you expect Giannis Antetokounmpo to win his first title, Kawhi Leonard to win his third, or LeBron James to win his fourth? Do you view a team like the Rockets or Sixers as a dark-horse championship contender if they can put it all together? Do you believe Zion Williamson or Damian Lillard can lead their respective teams to a playoff berth? Or will you simply be most interested in finding out if the NBA’s “bubble” experiment actually holds up for the next two-plus months?
Head to the comment section below to weigh in with your thoughts on the most intriguing storylines of the NBA’s restart!
Photos courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
Greg Monroe Joins BC Khimki
JULY 30: BC Khimki has officially announced the addition of Monroe for the 2020/21 season (Twitter link).
JULY 28: Veteran center Greg Monroe is close to a deal with BC Khimki, a source tells Emiliano Carchia of Sportando (Twitter link).
The seventh overall pick in the 2010 draft, Monroe spent nine years in the NBA before heading to Germany to play for Bayern Munich in 2019/20. He averaged a team-high 12.9 PPG and 6.8 RPG in 28 EuroLeague games.
As an NBA player, Monroe averaged 13.2 PPG and 8.3 RPG in 632 career regular season games with the Pistons, Bucks, Suns, Celtics, Raptors, and Sixers. The 30-year-old logged 43 appearances in 2018/19 with Toronto, Boston, and Philadelphia, playing in another 10 postseason contests for the 76ers.
Monroe was said to be drawing interest from another Russian team, Zenit St. Petersburg, earlier in the month. If he finalizes a deal with Khimki, he’ll spent the 2020/21 season playing in Moscow.
Draft Decisions: Dennis, Lewis, Green, Teague, Camper, Vogt
As Sam Vecenie of The Athletic observes within his latest big board for the 2020 NBA draft, the unusual circumstances surrounding this year’s NBA and NCAA calendars have created an unprecedented situation for early entrants.
The NCAA’s withdrawal deadline for players to pull out of the 2020 draft class is August 3. However, the NBA is allowing early entrants to declare up until August 17, since the draft itself has been postponed until October.
As a result, Vecenie confirms, an NCAA underclassman who is struggling with his decision could withdraw by August 3, then re-enter by August 17 if he has change of heart. At that point, he’d be forgoing his remaining college eligibility, but it would essentially give him an extra two weeks to make up his mind.
With that detail in mind, here are a handful of updates on players withdrawing their names from the draft pool:
- Wichita State guard Dexter Dennis will return to school for at least one more year, he announced on Twitter. Dennis averaged 9.2 PPG and 5.0 RPG in 28 games (25.8 MPG) as a sophomore for the Shockers.
- James Madison guard Matt Lewis will head back to school for his senior season, he tells Jeff Goodman of Stadium (Twitter link). Lewis was, by far, the Dukes’ leading scorer in 2019/20, posting 19.0 PPG on .410/.373/.715 shooting in 30 games (35.6 MPG).
- Northern Iowa’s AJ Green is withdrawing from the draft after testing the waters, a source tells Goodman (Twitter link). The 6’4″ guard is coming off a big sophomore year in which he averaged 19.7 PPG on .416/.391/.917 shooting in 31 games (34.8 MPG).
- MaCio Teague is returning to Baylor for his senior year, he announced in a Twitter video. The 6’3″ guard previously spent two years at UNC Asheville before transfering to Baylor and averaging 13.9 PPG in 28 games for the Bears in 2019/20.
- Siena swingman Manny Camper will return to school after testing the draft waters, the program announced in a press release. “Even though I couldn’t do a ton, it was still great to be able to get a little feedback from the NBA on what I need to work on and also what I do well that I can continue to improve on,” Camper said in a statement.
- Cincinnati center Chris Vogt confirmed on Twitter that he’s rejoining the Bearcats for a “last go around.” The big man averaged 11.0 PPG and 5.9 RPG in 30 games (28.5 MPG) as a junior.
Hoops Rumors Glossary: Waivers
When a team releases a player, he doesn’t immediately become a free agent. Instead, the player is placed on waivers, which serves as a sort of temporary holding ground as the other 29 NBA teams decide if they want to try to add him to their roster.
A player remains on waivers for at least 48 hours after he is formally cut by his team. During that time, a team can place a waiver claim in an attempt to acquire the player. If two or more clubs place a claim, the team with the worst record takes priority (before December 1, records from the previous season determine waiver order).
If a team claims a player off waivers, it assumes his current contract and is on the hook for the remainder of his salary. The claiming team also pays a $1,000 fee to the NBA office. If no claims are placed on the player, he clears waivers at 4:00 pm CT two days after his release (or three days later, if he was cut after 4:00 pm CT) and becomes an unrestricted free agent.
While the waiver format is simple enough, not every team will have the salary cap flexibility to make a claim for any waived player it wants. There are only a handful of instances in which a club is able to claim a player off waivers:
- The team is far enough under the salary cap to fit the player’s entire salary.
- The team has a traded player exception worth at least the player’s salary.
- The team has a disabled player exception worth at least the player’s salary, and he’s in the last year of his contract.
- The player’s contract is for one or two seasons and he’s paid the minimum salary.
- The player is on a two-way contract.
Since most NBA teams go over the cap and sizable TPEs and DPEs are somewhat rare, the majority of players who are claimed off waivers are either on minimum salary contracts or two-way deals. Claiming those players simply requires an open roster slot.
More often than not though, waived players go unclaimed. In that case, the player’s original team remains on the hook for the rest of his salary. Unless the player is in the final year of his contract and is waived after August 31, his club has the option of “stretching” his remaining cap hit(s) over multiple years using the stretch provision, which we explain in a separate glossary entry. A team that waives a player and uses the stretch provision on him cannot re-acquire that player until after his contract would have originally expired.
In the case of any player without a fully guaranteed contract, the non-guaranteed portion of a player’s salary is removed from a club’s cap immediately once the player is waived.
When a player is “bought out” by his club, he’s placed on waivers as part of the agreement. He and his team agree to adjust the guaranteed portion of his contract, reducing the amount owed to the player by the team, assuming he clears waivers.
Here are several more notes related to waiver rules:
- Players can be waived and claimed off waivers during the July moratorium (or, in 2020, during the October moratorium).
- A player waived after March 1 is ineligible for the postseason if he signs with a new team.
- A player on an expiring contract can’t be waived between the end of the regular season and the start of the next league year.
- A player claimed off waivers can’t be traded for 30 days. If he’s claimed during the offseason, he can’t be traded until the 30th day of the regular season.
- If a player is traded and then is waived by his new team, he cannot re-sign with his old club until one year after the trade or until the July 1 after his original contract would have expired, whichever is earlier.
- A player who has Early Bird or full Bird rights retains Early Bird rights if he’s claimed off waivers.
- If a team makes a successful waiver claim, it doesn’t lose its spot in the waiver order — the 30th-ranked team at the end of a season remains atop the waiver priority list until December 1 of that year, even if that team makes multiple offseason claims.
- A team with a full roster can submit a waiver claim and wouldn’t have to clear a spot on its roster for a claimed player until it is determined that the claim is successful.
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.
Earlier versions of this post were published in 2012 and 2018.
Zion Williamson Clears Quarantine, Set To Practice With Pelicans
JULY 28: Williamson has cleared quarantine and will practice with the Pelicans on Tuesday evening, reports ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski (via Twitter).
It remains to be seen whether Williamson will be available when New Orleans’ season resumes in just over 48 hours, but the fact that he’s set to return to practice on Tuesday is a positive sign. As Wojnarowski notes (via Twitter) that will give him two practices before the team has to decide his status for Thursday.
JULY 27: The Pelicans are hoping to get Zion Williamson back at practice by Wednesday after his four-day quarantine period ends, executive VP of basketball operations David Griffin tells Malika Andrews of ESPN.
“In theory, his quarantine would end Tuesday afternoon-ish,” Griffin said of the star rookie. “The problem is he has to test and get the results before they release him.”
After initially reporting to the NBA’s Walt Disney World campus with the rest of the Pelicans, Williamson left on July 16 due to an urgent family matter. He was away for a little over a week before returning to Orlando on Friday.
According to Griffin, Williamson was able to conduct some light workouts while he was away from the campus and has been given a yoga mat and a few other pieces of workout equipment while he quarantines in his hotel room. However, the Pelicans will have to see how the former No. 1 overall pick responds to Wednesday’s practice before determining whether he’ll be available for the club’s first seeding game on Thursday vs. Utah.
“Literally any player on our roster who went 13 days without doing any physical activity, it isn’t going to be a given that we would just cut them loose in that next game,” Griffin told Andrews. “Particularly a player that generates as much torque as he does. So we will see where he’s at.”
And-Ones: A. Gordon, OTAs, Draft, Avdija
With teams around the NBA preparing for the possibility that the 2020 offseason could be significantly truncated, one league executive tells Sean Deveney of Forbes that “there are already a lot of conversations” going on about possible offseason trades.
“If you want to get something done, you need to make sure you have the framework in place, that you know where you stand on everything because there just won’t be time to pull the trigger on these things,” the exec said.
With that in mind, Deveney spoke to a pair of executives about potential offseason trade candidates, including Magic forward Aaron Gordon. An Eastern Conference exec suggested that Gordon, who was shopped by Orlando before the February deadline, is “probably the most likely big name to be traded.”
Here are more odds and ends from around the basketball world:
- As the NBA continues to work on a plan for allowing its bottom eight teams to conduct offseason workouts, Steve Popper of Newsday (Twitter links) hears that the league may approve of up to three weeks of OTAs for those clubs. In that scenario, there likely wouldn’t be a separate campus created for the bottom eight teams, as had been previously explored, Popper notes.
- The NBA hopes to create a platform called “Combine HQ” that would help provide teams with profiles, stats, and interviews for the 105 draft-eligible prospects who received the most votes to be invited to the combine, a source tells Marc J. Spears of The Undefeated (Twitter link). It remains to be seen if such a tool would supplement an actual combine or be used in place of one.
- Lottery prospect Deni Avdija has been named the Most Valuable Player of the Israeli Basketball League, making him the youngest player ever to win the award (Twitter link). The promising young forward currently ranks fifth overall on ESPN’s 2020 big board.