- The Nets were fined $25K for failing to comply with league policies regarding the reporting of injuries, according to an NBA.com post. The fine was not related to public injury reports distributed to the media, but rather something related to its own internal database, Brian Lewis of the New York Post tweets.
- If Kevin Durant has his way, he’ll be playing next season with Caris LeVert, Chris Chiozza and Jamal Crawford. Durant praised the trio on the Play for Keeps podcast, Lewis relays. That could influence the way the Nets approach roster changes in the offseason. LeVert is considered to be the Nets’ best asset to acquire a third star but Durant may feel differently. “[LeVert] is definitely better than I thought,” Durant said. Chiozza is on a two-way deal, while the veteran Crawford was signed as a substitute player for the restart.
The 2020 NBA draft lottery, originally scheduled for May 19, will now take place on August 20, two weeks from today. Besides happening three months later than usual, this year’s lottery also figures to look a little different, since the ongoing coronavirus pandemic will almost certainly make it impossible for the NBA to bring representatives from the bottom 14 teams to a single location.
As we wait to see what the league has in mind for this year’s event, here are a few updates and reminders on the 2020 NBA draft lottery:
The bottom eight teams are already locked into their lottery spots
Much has been made in the last 24 hours about the Wizards (24-44), who are participating in the NBA’s summer restart, slipping below the inactive Hornets (23-42) in the Eastern Conference standings.
Fortunately for Hornets fans – and unfortunately for Wizards backers – the lottery odds for those two teams won’t hinge on which team finishes with the better overall record. For the NBA’s bottom eight teams, one silver lining of not getting an invite to Orlando this summer for the restart is that their spot in the top eight of the lottery has been locked in, based on the league standings as of March 11.
The Hornets will have the eighth-best odds and the Bulls will have the seventh-best odds even if the Wizards go 0-8 this summer and fall below both teams in the standings.
The race for the No. 8 seed in the Western Conference could impact the lottery odds
With the non-Orlando teams frozen in the top eight lottery positions, the other six spots will be determined by two factors:
- Which six teams in Orlando don’t make the playoffs.
- What their records were as of March 11.
This is great news for a team like Phoenix. Having won their first three games in Orlando – as the Grizzlies lost their first four – the Suns are very much alive in the race for the No. 8 seed in the West. It will still take a strong finish and some luck for the Suns to qualify for a play-in tournament, but let’s suppose they do.
In that scenario, if the Suns win the play-in tournament and earn a postseason spot, their first-round pick would be 15th overall, best among the playoff teams, since they entered the hiatus with a 26-39 record, worse than Orlando or Brooklyn.
If they were to lose a play-in tournament, Phoenix would end up with the 10th-best lottery odds, ahead of the rest of Orlando’s non-playoff teams besides the Wizards, who were the only one of the 22 invited teams with a worse record than the Suns as of March 11.
Essentially, if you want to determine the back half of the lottery standings, you just have to sort the 22 teams in Orlando by their March 11 records, from worst to first, then remove the 16 teams that end up in the playoffs.
The Grizzlies could theoretically still keep their first-round pick
The Grizzlies owe their 2020 first-round pick to the Celtics, but it includes top-six protection.
As long as Memphis makes the playoffs, that protection doesn’t really matter — Boston would receive the pick. However, with the Grizzlies’ hold on the No. 8 seed slipping, there’s still an outside chance that they could keep the pick.
Let’s say Memphis falls out of the No. 8 spot and either loses a play-in tournament or altogether misses out on qualifying for a play-in. In that scenario, the Grizzlies would enter the lottery with the 14th-best odds, since they had a better record on March 11 than any of their fellow lottery teams. That would give them a 2.4% chance at moving into the top four, where their pick would be protected.
Those aren’t good odds. In all likelihood, missing the playoffs would just mean the Grizzlies sent the Celtics the No. 14 pick instead of a selection in the 15-17 range. Still, the outside chance at another top pick would at least be a small silver lining if Memphis can’t grab that No. 8 spot. If the Grizzlies do hang onto this year’s pick, they’d owe Boston an unprotected first-rounder in 2021.
Over in the East, the Nets owe a lottery-protected pick to the Timberwolves and would keep it if they fall out of the postseason. However, the Wizards’ struggles have essentially ruled out that possibility. One more Brooklyn win or Washington loss will ensure that the Nets make the playoffs and send their pick to Minnesota.
Current lottery odds
Listed here are the odds for the teams not invited to Orlando, who will hold the top eight spots in the lottery standings.
The numbers in the chart indicate percentages, so the Warriors, for example, have a 14% chance of landing the No. 1 pick and a 47.9% chance of ending up at No. 5. If a team’s odds are listed as >0, that percentage is below 0.1%.
| Team | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GSW | 14 | 13.4 | 12.7 | 12 | 47.9 | – | – | – | – | – | – | – |
| CLE | 14 | 13.4 | 12.7 | 12 | 27.8 | 20 | – | – | – | – | – | – |
| MIN | 14 | 13.4 | 12.7 | 12 | 14.8 | 26 | 7.1 | – | – | – | – | – |
| ATL | 12.5 | 12.2 | 11.9 | 11.5 | 7.2 | 25.7 | 16.8 | 2.2 | – | – | – | – |
| DET | 10.5 | 10.5 | 10.6 | 10.5 | 2.2 | 19.6 | 26.7 | 8.8 | 0.6 | – | – | – |
| NYK | 9 | 9.2 | 9.4 | 9.6 | – | 8.6 | 29.6 | 20.6 | 3.8 | 0.2 | – | – |
| CHI | 7.5 | 7.8 | 8.1 | 8.5 | – | – | 19.7 | 34.1 | 12.9 | 1.3 | >0 | – |
| CHA | 6 | 6.3 | 6.7 | 7.2 | – | – | – | 34.5 | 32.1 | 6.7 | 0.4 | >0 |
The tentative odds for the bottom six spots, assuming the Grizzlies hang onto the No. 8 seed, can be found right here.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
On Wednesday night, Nets interim head coach Jacque Vaughn told reporters that guard Jamal Crawford will miss a few games with a strained hamstring, per Nick Friedell of ESPN (Twitter link).
Crawford only played six minutes off the bench, scoring five points and dishing out three assists. Without Crawford for the foreseeable future, the Nets could turn to Tyler Johnson and Timothe Luwawu-Caborrot, who started in place of Joe Harris and Caris LeVert.
- Despite the Nets being one of the most injury-ravaged squads among the 22 NBA teams in Orlando, wing Garrett Temple expects his Brooklyn teammates to compete, according to Brian Lewis of the New York Post. “We’re trying to win,” Temple said after the seventh-seeded Nets defeated the East’s top-seeded Bucks today. “We’re not going out here to just mess around or have moral victories.”
- Nets interim head coach Jacque Vaughn is cautiously optimistic about the health status of injured 40-year-old guard Jamal Crawford, Brian Lewis of the New York Post noted in a separate article. Crawford played just five minutes before apparently suffering a strained left hamstring. “I’m telling you, I love having him around and it was awesome to see him on the floor, and look forward to him being on the floor again,” Vaughn said.
The last time Jamal Crawford appeared in an NBA game, on April 9, 2019, he poured in 51 points. His return to action today for the Nets wasn’t quite as successful.
After being cleared to play for the shorthanded Nets against Milwaukee, Crawford came off the bench and racked up five points and three assists in six minutes, but the veteran guard was forced to leave the game early after suffering a left hamstring injury (Twitter link via team).
It’s not clear yet whether the injury is a minor one that Crawford could return from soon, or if it may jeopardize his availability for the remainder of the season. We’re hoping for the former, but we’ll have to wait for an update from the Nets, who have had some awful health luck this summer.
Three veterans involved in Tuesday’s Bucks/Nets contest have been cleared to play for the first time this summer, the two teams confirmed this morning.
Eric Bledsoe and Pat Connaughton will be available for Milwaukee, according to head coach Mike Budenholzer, who added that both players will see “reasonably low” minutes, per ESPN’s Malika Andrews (Twitter link). Meanwhile, Jamal Crawford is set to make his debut for Brooklyn, tweets Andrews.
Bledsoe and Connaughton both arrived late to Orlando this summer after contracting COVID-19. As we noted when they were ruled out for Milwaukee’s opener against Boston last Friday, there was no need for the the club to rush either player back, since the Bucks have essentially locked up the East’s No. 1 seed and just need to get their key guys up to speed for the start of the postseason.
As for Crawford, he signed with the Nets as a substitute player last month, but it took the 40-year-old a little extra time to get back into game shape. Having cleared him for Tuesday’s game, Brooklyn is apparently confident in Crawford’s conditioning level.
The veteran guard may be leaned on to play rotation minutes immediately, since the shorthanded Nets will be without Caris LeVert, Joe Harris, and Jarrett Allen today. Head coach Jacque Vaughn said Crawford will come off the bench and figures to play in “short stints” (Twitter link via Andrews).
The Nets will be without three of their key players on Tuesday, with head coach Jacque Vaughn announcing today that Caris LeVert (thigh contusion), Joe Harris (back tightness), and Jarrett Allen (rest) won’t play against Milwaukee (Twitter links via Alex Schiffer of The Athletic).
Tuesday’s game against the Bucks will be the first half of a back-to-back set for the Nets, which Vaughn noted today when announcing his inactives. Allen, at least, should be good to go on Wednesday vs. the Celtics after playing 38 minutes on Sunday vs. Washington — we’ll have to wait to find out if LeVert and/or Harris will be back for Wednesday’s game as well.
The Nets’ active roster on Tuesday will look almost nothing like the group that the team relied on for much of the season. Even with LeVert, Harris, and Allen in the lineup, Brooklyn entered the restart shorthanded, missing injured players like Kyrie Irving, Kevin Durant, and Nicolas Claxton, as well as Spencer Dinwiddie, Taurean Prince, DeAndre Jordan, and Wilson Chandler, all of whom either opted out of the restart or were ruled out following positive coronavirus tests.
On Tuesday, the Nets will be led by the likes of Tyler Johnson, Garrett Temple, Chris Chiozza, Rodions Kurucs, Lance Thomas, and Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot as they go up against the NBA’s best team.
- Nets guard Jamal Crawford will work out Sunday and Monday with hopes of getting his conditioning up to speed, interim coach Jacque Vaughn said, as relayed by Brian Lewis of the New York Post (Twitter link). Crawford, a respected veteran across the league, has yet to appear in a game with Brooklyn due to his conditioning issues.
The Nets were overmatched in their first reseeding game Friday against the Magic, and it’s a trend that will likely continue throughout their stay in Orlando, writes Mike Vaccaro of The New York Post. Brooklyn started out strong in the 128-118 loss, which dropped the team into eighth place in the East, but a lack of proven NBA talent was too much to overcome. The Nets are missing seven members of their regular roster.
“We need to embrace that stuff a little bit,” coach Jacque Vaughn said. “We’ll have to be extremely gritty, put a body on someone every single possession. That gave us more than 40 opportunities to shoot 3s and when teams do that you have to make them pay.”
There’s more on the New York teams:
- Veteran guard Jamal Crawford was held out of Friday’s game and may not make his debut with the Nets tomorrow, tweets Brian Lewis of The New York Post. Crawford is listed as questionable for the contest with the Wizards because of conditioning issues. Brooklyn holds a six-game lead over Washington and can effectively clinch a playoff spot with a win.
- Now that Tom Thibodeau is officially the new head coach of the Knicks, Jonathan Macri of Sports Illustrated looks at five of his former players who could potentially play for him in New York. He notes that when Thibodeau was hired in Minnesota, he brought in several of his ex-players from Chicago. In addition to Taj Gibson, who is already on New York’s roster and is waiting for the team to make a decision on his $9.5MM option for next season, Macri’s list includes D.J. Augustin, Zach LaVine, Jeff Teague and Dario Saric.
- The Knicks are this year’s highest-valued NBA team on the annual list from Forbes. Despite seven straight losing seasons, the Knicks are third overall at $4.6 billion, trailing only the Dallas Cowboys and New York Yankees. The Lakers rank fourth at $4.4 billion and the Warriors are fifth at $4.3 billion.
Veteran guard Jamal Crawford hasn’t made his debut with the Nets yet, but feels comfortable enough with his new team that he’d be on board with the idea of sticking around for next season if Brooklyn wants to bring him back, he tells Steve Selby of The New York Post.
“That would be unbelievable for me ’cause (Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving) are two of my closest friends in the league, that I haven’t actually played with, but just have genuine friendship,” Crawford said. “I’m just trying to stay in the moment, be thankful for this opportunity.”
Although Crawford is enthusiastic about his new NBA home, he’s not expected to play in the team’s first seeding game on Friday against Orlando, according to Brian Lewis of The New York Post. The 40-year-old still needs to get his conditioning up to game speed, per head coach Jacque Vaughn.
- As Joe Vardon and Alex Schiffer of The Athletic and Brian Lewis of The New York Post write in a pair of stories, the Nets appear to be giving Jacque Vaughn every chance to claim the team’s full-time head coaching position. However, Vaughn’s summer audition for a job coaching Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving next season will have to be done without those two stars, resulting in an unusual evaluation period for Vaughn and the Nets.
- Knicks GM Scott Perry said on Thursday that new head coach Tom Thibodeau will have the autonomy to fill out his own coaching staff, but Thibodeau confirmed that the team’s front office will have some input in those choices, as Marc Berman of The New York Post relays. “I’m confident that we’re going to sit down, I’m going to listen (to) the people that they have, I’m going to recommend some people that I know. Some of them are going to be on both lists,” Thibodeau said. “I’m real comfortable with that. I think we’re going to get a great staff and I’m looking forward to getting started with it.”
- In a separate story for The New York Post, Berman notes that new Knicks president of basketball operations Leon Rose said on Thursday that there’s “no timeline” for the team to move out of its rebuild and focus on contending. “We are taking it one day at a time,” Rose said. “We felt Tom was that coach who can take us with development to becoming a perennial winner. That happens one step at a time.”