Will Hardy Rips Jazz After 37-Point Loss
Hosting the Grizzlies in Utah on Tuesday, the Jazz entered halftime with a one-point lead but fell apart in the third quarter and ultimately lost the game by a score of 140-103. After Utah was outscored 76-38 and outrebounded 33-8 by Memphis in the second half, head coach Will Hardy ripped into his team during his post-game media session, as Andy Larsen of The Salt Lake Tribune relays.
“I’ve talked a lot about how we carry ourselves meaning something to me, and those words are not hollow,” Hardy said. “That second half was really disappointing, and it’s not representative of who we want to be as an organization. It’s not representative of who I want us to be.
“There are very few times where I’ve been disappointed in our group, and tonight I’ll drive home disappointed. But we have to all wake up tomorrow and get back to work. And it is one game. It is one half. I understand that, and I’ll get some sleep and wake up tomorrow with perspective. But during the game, perspective’s for the birds. The lights are on, you’re competing. You’re representing an organization, representing a fan base, our community. That was just unacceptable.”
Rookie forward Cody Williams (0-for-6, -26 in 18 minutes), second-year guard Keyonte George (0-for-4, -19 in nine minutes), and second-year forward Brice Sensabaugh (0-for-2, -22 in 10 minutes) were among the Jazz youngsters who struggled in the second half of the blowout loss to Memphis. It was hardly just on them though — all 11 players who saw the court in the third and fourth quarters had a plus/minus of -10 or worse during their minutes.
While Hardy didn’t single out any specific members of the Jazz in his comments to reporters, he noted that “a lot of our young players are getting the chance to play” in games down the stretch and said he wants those players to recognize that their opportunities shouldn’t be taken lightly. He also called for his team to play less selfishly and take more accountability.
“Pass the mother—-ing ball,” Hardy said when asked for specifics on what he wanted to see from his players. “Run back on defense. When it’s time to communicate what we’re doing on defense, you should do it at a volume louder than I’m talking to you right now. When there is a loose ball, you need to want it more than the other team. You are a member of a team. This is not about you. This is not a personal workout for you.”
As Larsen notes, while Hardy is right that the Jazz should be playing as hard as they can, the front office has put its coaching staff and players in a bad position by making it clear with its actions that winning games isn’t a top priority in the second half of the season. It’s difficult, Larsen continues, to ask players to give it their all when the organization has gone into full-fledged tanking mode and isn’t leading by example.
After Tuesday’s loss, Utah has a 16-57 record on the season and has dropped 13 of its past 14 games.
Still, Hardy is doing his best to push his players to compete harder during the final stretch of the season and to play a more selfless game, telling reporters that when “you make everything about yourself” it becomes an “infection” that affects the rest of the team.
“I understand that one game and one half shouldn’t be something that any of us overreact to,” Hardy said, per Larsen. “But you put a lot of time and energy into it, a lot of thought into it, a lot of emotional energy into it, and it’s disappointing sometimes when you don’t feel like people are pouring into themselves and understanding the opportunity that they have.
“I don’t pretend to have all the answers. I’m a young coach. I’m still figuring a lot out. It’s my 15th year in the NBA, and I’ve seen a lot of players make it and I’ve seen a lot of guys behave in a way that if they could go back in time, they’d take it back. I thought we played like a team for about a half, and then it looked like a pickup game at Lifetime Fitness, where we just all met 10 seconds ago, and we’re all just kind of out here trying to get a workout.”
Mavs’ Kessler Edwards Reaches Active Game Limit
As expected, the Mavericks activated Kessler Edwards for Tuesday’s game against the Knicks. With Anthony Davis sitting out the second end of the back-to-back after returning from his adductor injury on Monday, Edwards earned the start in Dallas’ frontcourt and played 19 minutes in the 15-point loss.
While Edwards has seen action in just 40 games this season, he has been a DNP-CD in 10 others, meaning he has now reached the limit of 50 active regular season games for a player on a two-way contract.
[RELATED: Hoops Rumors Glossary: Two-Way Contract]
In order to play in any additional games this spring for Dallas, Edwards would need to be signed to a standard contract and promoted to the 15-man roster. That’s what the Kings did last week with rookie big man Isaac Jones after he reached his 50-game limit.
However, that’s not an option right now for the Mavericks with Edwards due to their lack of flexibility below the first-apron hard cap. With only about $51K in breathing room under that cap, Dallas can’t fill the 15th spot on its roster until at least April 10, since a minimum-salary deal carries a cap hit of nearly $12K per day.
Edwards has registered modest averages of 4.2 points, 2.9 rebounds, and 1.1 assists in 15.2 minutes per game across his 40 total outings for Dallas this season. But he has played a far more significant role since Davis went down with his injury on February 8. In 17 games since then, the 6’7″ forward has made 15 starts and averaged 8.2 PPG, 4.5 RPG, and 1.7 APG with a .538/.486/.900 shooting line in 24.5 MPG.
Given his importance to the banged-up Mavericks, Edwards is a strong candidate to be promoted during the final week of the season, though the club may have decisions to make on their other two-way players at that point as well. Point guard Brandon Williams is down to just two active games remaining, while center Kai Jones could play in up to seven more. The 35-38 Mavs have nine more games on their regular season schedule.
The Mavs could theoretically promote two – or even all three – of their two-way players to standard contracts if they wait until the last day or two of the regular season to do so, but elevating more than one of them would mean waiving one or more of their current 14 players. It may not make sense for the team to go that route, especially if Dereck Lively (right ankle stress fracture) and Daniel Gafford (right knee sprain) are able to return from their own injuries by that point.
Dallas’ position in the play-in race by that point also figures to be a major factor in any roster decisions — making Edwards, Williams, and/or Jones available for the postseason by promoting them to the 15-man roster wouldn’t be necessary if the team is eliminated from contention. In that scenario, the decision on that 15th roster spot could come down to which player the Mavs can sign to a team-friendly multiyear deal.
In the meantime, Edwards is permitted to continue practicing with the Mavericks after reaching his 50-game limit, notes ESPN’s Bobby Marks (Twitter link). That will also be the case for Williams and/or Jones if and when they run out of games.
Raptors Sign Cole Swider To 10-Day Contract
The Raptors have filled the open spot on their 15-man roster by signing forward Cole Swider to a 10-day contract, the team announced today in a press release.
Swider, who was in camp with the Pacers last fall, signed a two-way contract with the Pistons at the start of the regular season and was waived in January. He has spent most of the season in the G League, first with the Motor City Cruise and more recently with the South Bay Lakers, who traded for his rights last month.
In 31 total outings for those two NBAGL clubs, Swider has averaged 21.0 points, 5.7 rebounds, and 2.1 assists in 34.6 minutes per game, with an excellent shooting line of .482/.442/.952.
An undrafted free agent out of Syracuse in 2022, Swider has played in the NBA for at least some of each of his first three professional seasons, appearing in seven games with the Lakers as a rookie, 18 with the Heat last year, and two with the Pistons this season.
Swider will be taking the roster spot that was previously occupied by center Colin Castleton. Castleton’s second 10-day contract with Toronto expired overnight and the team would’ve had to sign him to a rest-of-season deal in order to keep him on the roster. Castleton appeared in 10 games as a Raptor, averaging 6.9 points and 7.4 rebounds in 25.9 minutes per contest.
Swider will earn $119,972 on his 10-day deal, with the Raptors carrying an identical cap hit. The contract will run through Friday, April 4, covering the club’s next six games.
Cavs Players, Atkinson Advocate For Mobley As DPOY
Since Warriors forward Draymond Green made his case a week ago for this season’s Defensive Player of the Year award, the betting odds have swung significantly in his favor. Green is the new frontrunner for Defensive Player of the Year honors at most sportsbooks, including BetOnline.ag, taking over the top spot from Evan Mobley.
In the view of Mobley’s Cavaliers teammates, those oddsmakers have it wrong.
“Evan was the favorite but then we lost four games in a row and you guys changed it up,” big man Tristan Thompson told Chris Fedor of Cleveland.com (subscription required). “Draymond is the favorite now, right? Draymond is a Hall of Famer and he is the anchor for their defense as well. But he has won Defensive Player of the Year. It’s Evan’s turn. I’ve heard rumblings about maybe (Thunder wing) Lu Dort. Yeah, we’re going for Evan in here. We are the No. 1 team in the East. Defensively, we are up there in the top 10 and no one can consistently score on him, so that’s who my vote is for.”
Thompson, advising award voters not to “f–k it up,” made it clear that Mobley’s case for DPOY is about more than just it being “his turn” to be recognized.
“He is the key for us defensively,” Thompson said. “Able to guard one through five. Alters shots. Blocks shots. In the passing lanes. Rule of verticality. Switches onto guards. He is able to do so much at that end of the court. Like I’ve always said, he is a young Anthony Davis. Ev is a nightmare defensively.”
Cavaliers guard Darius Garland agreed, suggesting that Mobley as this season’s Defensive Player of the Year should be a “no-brainer” pick for voters.
“He’s definitely the best defender in the league by far. Switching onto guards and bigs,” Garland said. “… He’s gotten robbed out of a couple awards already. I don’t want him to be robbed out of this one too. He’s deserving of it. He’s been doing it for three years now. He hasn’t gotten an award yet. I think it’s time the league gives him the recognition he deserves.”
As Fedor writes, Mobley has a strong statistical case for the award. He ranks sixth in the NBA in total blocked shots and third in contested shots per game and is in the top 20 in categories like defensive win shares, defensive box plus-minus, defensive rating, defensive rebound percentage, and defensive estimated plus-minus.
As head coach Kenny Atkinson points out, Mobley’s on/off court numbers also reflect the impact he has on that end of the court. The Cavs’ overall defensive rating for the season is a solid 111.4, good for eighth in the NBA. With Mobley on the court, that number improves to 107.7, which would make Cleveland the No. 2 defensive team in the league (and No. 1 in the East) by a comfortable margin.
“It’s just one simple stat — how we’re rated defensively with him on the court and then without him,” Atkinson told Fedor. “(President of basketball operations) Koby (Altman) always says this. He impacts winning and defense at a level he’s never seen and he has done it since he’s been in the league. This is not to put down any of the other candidates, he has won and leads a top 10 defense. Usually that lines up with Defensive Player of the Year.”
Besides Green and Mobley, other potential candidates for Defensive Player of the Year include Dort, Hawks guard Dyson Daniels, Grizzlies big man Jaren Jackson Jr. Those players will have an opportunity during the final two-and-a-half weeks of the regular season to make their final on-court arguments for recognition, though Mobley said he has no intention of altering his approach to try to strengthen his DPOY case.
“All the guys believe in me, and I believe in myself,” Mobley told Fedor. “I’m not going to change or do anything different. Just be myself. I feel like the numbers and the things that aren’t necessarily tracked, I feel like I play a big part in those things. Some guys won’t even take shots just because I’m down there. I’m going to keep going out there and playing the best defense I can and hopefully I get the award.”
Injury/Health Notes: Lillard, Tatum, Jokic, Sheppard
After initially being listed as out last week due to calf soreness, Damian Lillard was experiencing discomfort and pain inconsistent with a typical calf strain, according to Eric Nehm and Sam Amick of The Athletic, who hear from a source that the Bucks guard sought clarity on the cause.
That prompted a “rigorous discovery process” that ultimately involved Lillard meeting with five of the country’s top hematologists, either in person or via Zoom, with each of those specialists receiving his MRIs and sonograms. Lillard, who was diagnosed with deep vein thrombosis in his calf, began taking blood thinners last Friday, per The Athletic’s source, and the early indications are that the treatment is working well.
In a separate story for The Athletic, Nehm explores how the Bucks will get by without Lillard, noting that leaning on defense is probably their best path forward. That effort begins with having a strong perimeter defender like Ryan Rollins starting in place of Lillard.
“Obviously, nobody is going to be Dame but Dame,” Bucks center Brook Lopez said earlier this week. “But (Rollins) has done a great job coming in, being himself and finding a niche, that like Dame, only he can do. It’s specifically Ryan. He comes out there and he makes a difference in his way. He gets into guys, defends them full-court, picks up 94 feet.”
Here are a few more injury-related notes from around the NBA:
- The Celtics‘ injury report for Wednesday’s game in Phoenix is another sign that Jayson Tatum‘s ankle injury isn’t significant. Tatum isn’t expected to play vs. the Suns, but he hasn’t officially been ruled out yet — he’s listed as doubtful (Twitter link).
- Nuggets center Nikola Jokic, who has missed the team’s past five games, has been upgraded to doubtful for Wednesday’s matchup with Milwaukee (Twitter link via DNVR Sports). Jokic’s initial injury report designation last week indicated he was dealing with both a right elbow contusion and a left ankle impingement, but only the ankle issue is still listed, which suggests the elbow is no longer a problem.
- Rockets rookie Reed Sheppard, out since March 6 with a fracture in his right thumb, had a scan on Sunday that showed good calcification around the fractured bone, according to head coach Ime Udoka, who said on Tuesday that Sheppard would be reevaluated in four or five days. Sheppard is still wearing a splint on the thumb part-time, but he takes it off when he works out, per Danielle Lerner of The Houston Chronicle (Twitter link).
NBA Team Owners To Review Proposed European League
March 26: An NBA spokesperson tells Sportico that while team owners could vote on the proposed European league at any time, no formal vote is currently scheduled to take place during this week’s meeting.
“At this week’s NBA Board of Governors meeting, the league will report on its exploration of a new men’s basketball league in Europe, in partnership with FIBA,” the spokesperson said.
March 25: NBA team owners will vote this week on whether to move forward with a plan for a new professional basketball league in Europe, according to Scott Soshnick and Eben Novy-Williams of Sportico (subscription required).
Reporting throughout the season has indicated that the NBA was exploring the possibility of launching its own league in Europe in order to both expand the sport’s presence overseas and to put the NBA in position to “share more directly in the economics of that growth,” as Soshnick and Novy-Williams write.
According to Sportico, the NBA believes that the basketball ecosystem in Europe and the Middle East could be worth up to $3 billion in annual revenue.
Here are some of the details of the proposal, as outlined by Sportico:
- The goal would be for the league to have eight to 10 teams.
- It’s a “semi-open” proposal, which means there would be up to four spots available for top EuroLeague teams to compete in the NBA’s European league the following year.
- The league’s permanent franchise slots would be sold to outside investors, with the NBA holding 50% equity in the league and the franchise owners holding the other 50%.
- The NBA would prefer to sell franchises to people outside of the league. Sportico suggests that potential buyers could include sovereign wealth funds, private capital, wealthy individuals, or existing European basketball clubs.
- Franchises in cities like London or Paris could sell for at least $500MM, per the NBA’s proposal.
The NBA’s team owners are set to meet this week in New York. The vote on the European league will reportedly take place during those meetings.
Community Shootaround: The NBA’s Tanking Problem
Late-season tanking is a perennial issue for the NBA, but it has been particularly bad so far in 2025, with teams who have their eye on the draft lottery employing new strategies in an apparent effort to get around the league’s player participation policies.
As Tom Haberstroh of Yahoo Sports and John Hollinger of The Athletic write, one approach that multiple teams have used this month is to hold key players out of crunch-time situations. Haberstroh refers to it as “quiet quitting.”
For instance, while Raptors forward Scottie Barnes has only missed one game this month, he has played more than 30 minutes in just three of 11 outings after averaging 34.7 MPG in 46 pre-March contests. Barnes and other Raptors starters have been on the bench in the fourth quarter of multiple games.
Because players like Barnes and Jazz forward Lauri Markkanen qualify as “stars” under the NBA’s player participation policy, holding them out of games entirely without a valid reason could prompt a league investigation — Utah has already faced one $100K fine for its usage (or lack thereof) of Markkanen.
However, that policy only explicitly applies to players who have made an All-Star or All-NBA team over the past three seasons. That means that the Nets, for instance, were able to hold a “non-star” like Cameron Johnson out of last Thursday’s game for “rest” even though Johnson was healthy and Brooklyn didn’t play on either Wednesday or Friday, Haberstroh observes.
When the NBA flattened its lottery odds several years ago, the goal was to reduce the incentives for losing games. But those changes haven’t been as effective as hoped in part because the league hasn’t incentivized winning for lottery-bound teams, Hollinger argues.
As Hollinger explains, even if losses didn’t improve a team’s lottery odds and draft position, a club like Toronto or Utah may not be incentivized to compete hard for wins at this point of the season, since there’s little reason to push a franchise player like Barnes or Markkanen, who are on lucrative long-term contracts, too hard in games that essentially don’t matter. “Asking a team to put meaningful players at risk in meaningless games is inherently a contradiction,” Hollinger writes.
So what could be done to address the issue? Tim Bontemps and Kevin Pelton of ESPN spoke to sources around the NBA about that subject and came up with a few possible ideas, some more viable than others.
Flattening the lottery odds even further was one of the ideas mentioned. Another was determining the odds based on how the lottery teams fare against one another during the season. However, both suggestions are complicated by the fact that a borderline playoff team may decide that having a viable shot at the No. 1 pick is a better outcome than eking out a playoff spot and being on the receiving end of a first-round beatdown from a top seed.
There would also likely be resistance to any proposal that significantly reduced the odds of the league’s very worst teams having a shot at top draft picks, since the NBA still wants to encourage competitive balance and avoid miring a club in a rebuild that it can’t find its way out of.
Multiple sources suggested to ESPN that removing mid-lottery pick protections on traded draft picks could be one step in the right direction. For instance, one of the most egregious cases of tanking in recent years saw the 2023 Mavericks rest players at the end of the season in an effort to hang onto their top-10 protected pick, even though they still had a shot at the play-in tournament. Allowing a pick to be top-four protected or top-14 protected, without any options in between, could eliminate that kind of scenario.
Another idea posed by sources who spoke to Bontemps and Pelton would be to count team wins instead of losses after the All-Star break for the sake of determining the draft lottery order.
For example, if a team posted a 19-35 record before the All-Star break, then went 18-10 the rest of the way, its “lottery record” would be 29-53, with its pre-All-Star wins added to its post-All-Star losses. If a second team that was also 19-35 at the break went 10-18 after the All-Star game, its “lottery record” would be 37-45, resulting in less favorable odds than the club that performed better down the stretch.
We want to know what you think. Does the NBA need to take steps to address its tanking problem? If so, what approach makes the most sense?
Head to the comment section below to weigh in with your thoughts!
Knicks Notes: Brunson, Dolan, McBride, Kolek, Hart
Knicks guard Jalen Brunson is making “really good progress” in his recovery from a sprained right ankle, head coach Tom Thibodeau said on Monday, according to Ian Begley of SNY.tv.
Brunson is feeling “a lot better” and has been able to do more rehab work every day, per Thibodeau, who referred to his point guard as “day-to-day, basically.” The team announced on Saturday that Brunson was expected to remain sidelined at least one more week.
“(He’s) doing a lot of shooting, working the pool, working the bike. Stuff like that. “So his conditioning is pretty good actually,” Thibodeau said, adding that getting clearance to take part in practice is “probably” the next step in Brunson’s recovery process.
While Begley has heard that Brunson’s rehab is moving faster than initially expected, he stresses that the Knicks have no intention of bringing back the 28-year-old until he’s 100% healthy. Still, according to Begley, there has been no consideration that Brunson will remain out for the rest of the regular season.
Here’s more on the Knicks:
- In an in-depth story for The Athletic, Mike Vorkunov digs into the adversarial relationship that Knicks owner James Dolan has established with the NBA. Dolan’s long list of grievances with the league include the way in which the new media deals devalue teams’ regional sports networks (including Dolan’s MSG Networks) and the NBA’s revenue sharing system. “Dolan hates the idea of giving money on revenue sharing,” one former team owner told Vorkunov. “He’s been totally against it from the beginning.”
- With Miles McBride ruled out for a second straight game on Tuesday vs. Dallas due to a left groin contusion/strain, rookie Tyler Kolek may be in line for a rotation role again after registering eight assists in 18 minutes in Saturday’s win over Washington. Thibodeau believes the first-year guard is up to the task, referring to him as a “gym rat” who’s getting better every day, as Bridget Reilly of The New York Post details. “He’s worked hard all year. The things that he needed to do, he did,” Thibodeau said. “He works, he’s a tireless worker. Performed well in the G League. So when the opportunity came, he was ready. And there’s still obviously a lot of work to be done but he keeps getting better and better and that’s a good sign.”
- Knicks forward Josh Hart is averaging just 9.9 points per game on 40.8% shooting during Brunson’s absence, compared to 14.5 PPG on 54.7% shooting up until that point of the season. He spoke to reporters on Monday on how his role changes with Brunson – and now McBride – not on the floor. Reilly has the story and the quotes for The New York Post.
NBA Still Projecting 10% Cap Increase For 2025/26
The NBA has provided teams with an updated salary cap projection for the 2025/26 season, reports Bobby Marks of ESPN (Twitter link).
According to Marks, the NBA’s latest projection remains exactly in line with its estimate from last summer. The league is still calling for a 10% cap increase for ’25/26, which is the maximum increase permitted in any single season under the current Collective Bargaining Agreement.
This season’s salary cap line is $140,588,000, so the projection for next season remains at $154,647,000. That’s the figure we’ve used to project minimum salaries, maximum salaries, and mid-level and bi-annual amounts for 2025/26.
As Marks details, a 10% cap increase would also cause the luxury tax line and the first and second tax aprons to rise by the same amount. They would be as follows:
- Luxury tax: $187.9MM
- First apron: $195.9MM
- Second apron: $207.8MM
The 2024/25 season represents the first year in which all of the new apron-related restrictions have been in place. Navigating those aprons has proven to be a challenge for many teams, in large part because the cap only rose by about 3.4% last offseason, as Marks observes (via Twitter).
A 10% increase in 2025 – and perhaps in the next couple seasons after that, aided by the league’s lucrative new media rights deal – will help push those apron numbers higher, creating a more manageable landscape for teams going forward.
Central Notes: Bulls, Vucevic, Giannis, Rivers, Bickerstaff
After trading DeMar DeRozan and Alex Caruso during the 2024 offseason and Zach LaVine at last month’s trade deadline, the Bulls – who had a 21-29 record at the time of the LaVine deal and had reacquired full control of their 2025 first-round pick – were considered likely to tank the rest of the season.
Instead, the club has played some of its best basketball of the season in recent weeks. Chicago has posted a .500 record (11-11) since the LaVine trade and has been especially hot as of late, winning eight of its last 10 games. That stretch includes road victories this past week over the Kings, Lakers, and Nuggets, as well as back-to-back Player of the Week awards for guard Coby White.
“I just think we kind of embraced the challenge and took pride in showing that people kind of wrote us off when Zach got traded,” Nikola Vucevic said on Monday, per Joe Cowley of The Chicago Sun-Times. “I think we’ve really come together as a group. Our chemistry has been really good. When you lose someone, a player like (LaVine), it opens up opportunities for other players, and guys have really stepped up — Josh (Giddey), Coby, Tre (Jones) before he got hurt, Kevin (Huerter). Like, Kevin wasn’t playing much in (Sacramento), and he came here with a chip on his shoulder and showed he can still contribute at a high level, and he has been.”
Vucevic was widely expected to be on the move prior to the February 6 trade deadline and is now considered an offseason trade candidate. However, according to Cowley, the veteran center is buying into the new-look group and wouldn’t be opposed to finishing out the final year of his current contract in Chicago.
“Who knows what happens in the summer, but right now I’m focused on this group of guys,” Vucevic said. “I’ve really enjoyed playing with them. Guys with good character, guys that really want to win, they care. We play for each other, we compete, and that’s what you want.”
Here’s more from around the Central:
- In a wide-ranging interview with Sam Amick of The Athletic, Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo lauded Milwaukee’s role players, reiterated that he cares much more about winning another championship than another MVP award, and downplayed a recent post-game meeting involving him, Damian Lillard, and head coach Doc Rivers.
- Rivers ranks eighth all-time among NBA head coaches in regular season wins and will tie Phil Jackson at 1,155 with the Bucks‘ next victory. Rivers spoke to Marc J. Spears of Andscape about what it would mean to surpass Jackson on that list, as well as a handful of other topics, including what Milwaukee needs to do in order to have postseason success this spring. “No. 1 is health,” Rivers said. “But this team is an interesting team. We have proven on given points that we can beat anybody. They decided they were going to win the (NBA) Cup and no one was going to beat us. But then we go backwards.”
- Speaking to Tim Reynolds of The Associated Press, J.B. Bickerstaff explained why the Pistons‘ head coaching position appealed to him last spring when the team was coming off a 14-68 season and why his decision to accept the job was the right one. “I have 1,000% fallen in love with this group,” Bickerstaff said. “And all my focus goes into them and seeing them elevate and seeing them grow. That’s the thing that I find the most joy in.”