Beau Beech Hopes Strong Summer Translates Into Roster Spot
Beau Beech, who inked a partially guaranteed deal with the Nets in August, hopes that his strong showing in summer league play will translate into him earning a regular season roster spot, Cody Taylor of Basketball Insiders relays. “It is just Summer League, but in the same breath, Summer League is correlated to the NBA,” Beech told Taylor. “What happens in Summer League may not be a direct correlation right away, but it definitely has the same kind of game flow, the same schemes and the same thinking for coaches and players. It’s on a smaller scale, but it’s definitely good to have had that experience underneath my belt and it definitely gave me a lot more confidence going into camp.” In five games in Las Vegas this summer, Beech averaged 8.8 points and 3.8 rebounds per game while shooting 33% from three-point range.
The forward understands that he has an uphill battle to break camp as a member of the team, Taylor notes. “[The Nets] signed the roster that they wanted to sign and those players are all very good and I respect all of them,” Beech said. “As a competitor, not having a fully-guaranteed contract, I want a fully-guaranteed contract. That’s my goal and that’s what I want to do. I want to be on this team from day one, but I know the situation at the same time.”
- The crew over at Basketball Insiders weighed in on the Nets‘ and Sixers‘ chances this coming season, with the general consensus being that Brooklyn will compete with Philly for last place in the Atlantic Division.
NBA Teams With Full Rosters
While NBA teams are limited to carrying 15 players on their regular-season rosters (with a few exceptions), roster limits expand to 20 players during the offseason. The five extra roster slots allow clubs to bring in veterans hopeful of earning a place on the regular-season roster, or young players who may eventually be ticketed for D-League assignments.
Most teams will fill up their 20-man rosters for training camp, but at this point in the NBA offseason, it can be difficult to determine which clubs still have room on their rosters. Many potential camp invitees have reportedly reached agreements with teams, but those signings haven’t yet been officially announced.
By our count, there are currently just two team at the 20-man offseason roster limit. One is the 76ers, who were at the 20-man limit for much of the offseason before waiving Carl Landry and Tibor Pleiss. Since then, they’ve added Elton Brand and Cat Barber, though it appears only 11 of the club’s 20 players have fully guaranteed salaries for 2016/17.
Meanwhile, on their official website, the Nuggets list 14 players who have guaranteed contracts, plus Axel Toupane, JaKarr Sampson, and D.J. Kennedy, who are on non-guaranteed or partially-guaranteed deals. In addition to those 17 players, the team has also reportedly reached agreements with Nate Wolters, Robbie Hummel, and Jarnell Stokes, bringing Denver’s total roster count to 20.
Still, not all of Denver’s signings are official, and even once they are, the Nuggets could easily make room for another player by cutting a non-guaranteed salary from their books. The same can be said for Philadelphia. While their rosters may technically be “full,” it’s not as if the Nuggets and the Sixers don’t have the flexibility to replace a camp invitee with a veteran free agent, if they so choose.
A more productive way of determining which teams’ rosters are “full” at this point in the offseason might be to examine the number of guaranteed salaries on their books. The deadline for teams to stretch the 2016/17 salary of a waived player is now behind us, so any team that cuts a player with a guaranteed salary won’t be able to reduce that cap hit unless the player agrees to a buyout. Most teams are reluctant to add much dead money to their cap with such a move, so if a club has 15 guaranteed contracts on its cap, we can assume its regular-season roster is fairly set, barring a trade or a surprise cut.
Here are the NBA teams that currently have 15 (or more) guaranteed salaries on their roster:
NBA Teams Below Salary Floor For 2016/17
On Tuesday, we examined the teams in – or near – luxury tax territory. Due to the size of those teams’ payrolls, they could face penalties at year’s end, paying a few extra tax dollars in addition to the salaries they’ll pay their players.
On the other end of the spectrum are six clubs whose team salaries continue to sit below the minimum salary floor, which is set at 90% of the cap. For the 2016/17 league year, that salary floor works out to $84.729MM. Every franchise will have to spend at least that much on players for the year, so if any team payrolls remain below that figure at season’s end, those teams have to make up the difference by paying a little extra to their own players.
Often, clubs sitting below the salary floor at this point in the year will get over that threshold at some point during the season. Taking on salary in a trade is one possibility — in the past, when cap room has been a rarer and more valuable commodity, teams like the Sixers have agreed to take on other clubs’ bad salaries as long as they can get something out of the deal themselves, such as second-round picks. That could still happen this year, but that sort of trade may be rarer now that the cap is at an all-time high and teams have more flexibility to maneuver.
Renegotiating a player’s contract and signing him to an extension is another way teams can use up their remaining salary cap space at this point in the season. As we saw with Russell Westbrook and the Thunder, and James Harden and the Rockets, clubs with room under the cap can rework a player’s contract to increase their current-year salary up to the max, while tacking on additional years — but only certain players are eligible.
Of course, signing free agents is another way a team can quickly add salary and reach the floor, but at this point in the offseason, most of the players still available are minimum-salary guys, and most teams’ rosters are fairly set anyway.
Here are the six teams currently below the salary floor:
- Total team salary: $82,752,308
- Guaranteed team salary: $80,791,446
- Eligible for renegotiation/extension: Nikola Pekovic
Utah Jazz
- Total team salary: $81,817,624
- Guaranteed team salary: $79,332,496
- Eligible for renegotiation/extension: Derrick Favors (eligible as of October 19), George Hill
Phoenix Suns
- Total team salary: $80,900,983
- Guaranteed team salary: $79,850,022
- Eligible for renegotiation/extension: None
- Total team salary: $76,948,637
- Guaranteed team salary: $75,563,224
- Eligible for renegotiation/extension: None
- Total team salary: $76,719,065
- Guaranteed team salary: $74,039,362
- Eligible for renegotiation/extension: None
- Total team salary: $70,341,137
- Guaranteed team salary: $65,159,265
- Eligible for renegotiation/extension: Hollis Thompson (eligible as of September 24)
Information from Basketball Insiders was used in the creation of this post.
NBA Expects Nets, Others To Exceed Salary Floor
Six NBA teams are currently below the league’s minimum salary floor of $84.729MM, but a league spokesman tells Liz Mullen of SportsBusiness Journal that the NBA expects all – or almost all – of those clubs to exceed the floor by the end of the 2016/17 league year. Two of those teams, the 76ers and Nets, are in the Atlantic division, with Philadelphia at about $65MM in guaranteed salary while Brooklyn has nearly $76MM in guarantees on its books.
Net Income of NetsDaily is somewhat skeptical that the Nets will add another $7MM+ to their cap by April, pointing to quotes by GM Sean Marks from earlier in the offseason. It’s possible a team will want to dump salary in a trade with Brooklyn, but the rising cap means that fewer teams need to make that sort of in-season move. And as the NetsDaily report notes, there’s not much incentive for Brooklyn to get up to the cap unless the club gets something out of it — the only penalty for failing to spend the minimum is that a team must pay the difference to its own players.
Nets Notes: Stephenson, Ferrell, Mockevicius, Beech
Former Nets GM Billy King turned down a trade proposal last season that would have brought Lance Stephenson to Brooklyn, according to NetsDaily.com. King, who lost the GM title in January in a shakeup that cost coach Lionel Hollins his job, nixed the deal, which would have sent Joe Johnson to Charlotte in exchange for Stephenson and other unidentified players. The trade had the approval of Dmitry Razumov, chairman of the Nets’ board of directors, and NetsDaily shares the story as a way of showing that King had final say on all personnel moves, including the disastrous deal with the Celtics that put Brooklyn in its current position. King, the columnist added, also rejected Razumov’s suggestion to pursue JaVale McGee.
There’s more news tonight out of Brooklyn:
- Yogi Ferrell, Egidijus Mockevicius and Beau Beech will come into camp knowing that they’re likely headed to the Nets’ new D-League affiliate on Long Island, NetsDaily writes in the same piece. All three received “training camp invites,” which don’t become fully guaranteed unless the players remain on the roster until all contracts are guaranteed in early January. The author notes that roster spots could be hard to earn with Brooklyn having 15 players with fully guaranteed contracts, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. Seven of those players have deals that either will expire or can expire after the upcoming season, so the Nets have flexibility if they decide to keep Ferrell, Mockevicius or Beech.
- The Nets may pick up another player before camp with the intention of sending him to the D-League, NetsDaily adds. The rights of the last four players cut would automatically go to the Long Island affiliate if they aren’t claimed off waivers. Brooklyn currently has 18 players headed to camp, two shy of the NBA limit.
Booker Has Opportunity In Brooklyn
- The Nets are counting on Trevor Booker to help replace the production lost when Thaddeus Young was traded to the Pacers, according to NetsDaily. Brooklyn signed the former Utah power forward to a two-year, $18.5MM deal shortly after free agency began. The 6’8″ Booker averaged 5.9 points and 5.7 rebounds with the Jazz last season, and he will be counted on to help improve the Nets’ interior defense.
- The Nets might be in the worst position of any team in the league, writes Shaun Powell of NBA.com. Powell likes the additions of GM Sean Marks and coach Kenny Atkinson, as well as some of the other offseason moves, but cautions that it will take a long time to change the situation in Brooklyn.
Shane Larkin: No Regrets Over Opt-Out Decision
Nearly every NBA player with a player option for the 2016/17 season turned down that option, electing free agency and seeking a better contract. Most of those players indeed found better deals — DeMar DeRozan, Bismack Biyombo, Chandler Parsons, and Pau Gasol were among the veterans who got huge raises and multiyear contracts after opting out of their deals.
One player who didn’t strike pay dirt after declining an option was point guard Shane Larkin, who turned down a $1.5MM salary from the Nets in order to look for a new contract. Larkin ultimately signed with Baskonia in Spain, and while he’s expected to earn more after taxes this season than he would have with Brooklyn, the pay increase is marginal and he won’t be an NBA player.
Larkin, who changed agents during his free agency, spoke to Jorge Sierra of HoopsHype, about his opt-out decision, his search for a new team, and his outlook going forward. Here a few highlights from the former first-round pick:
On whether he regretted his decision to turn down his player option with the Nets:
“Not really. The situation in Baskonia is a better situation than Brooklyn, knowing that they wanted to go in a different direction. I could have possibly been in a bad situation with the guards they drafted perhaps playing in front of me because the new management might want to see them play. That situation wasn’t ideal. I don’t feel any regret about my decision. Obviously, it’s not all about the money, but I’m playing for more money this year than I did last year and I’m playing in a good situation where I’m going to have a lot of people watching me play and seeing my improvement.”
On why he decided to seek new representation, and how it affected his free agency:
“It was a pretty anxious free agency for me. I had a few teams that were interested in me. I don’t really know where the conversations went with those teams, but I ended up switching agents halfway through free agency because I wasn’t really happy with the direction I was going in with my other agent. So I made that switch and by the time it happened it was really late in free agency and all the teams pretty much had their spots taken up.”
On his choice to sign in Spain rather than with an NBA team:
“A few teams called with invitations to training camp with partial guarantees and options like that, but I just thought the opportunity to play in Spain and in the Euroleague with the option to get big minutes, work on my game and become a better basketball player was the better opportunity at the time compared to the other options on the table. If you go to a team on a partial guarantee, the opportunity might be there, but obviously you’re not going to be one of their first options. Baskonia really wanted me and wanted me to be a big piece of the team.”
On what he’s expecting as he heads overseas for the 2016/17 season:
“In a lot of ways, me playing overseas and getting this experience being one of the most important players on the team will help me, whether I stay playing in Europe multiple years or go back to the NBA. Obviously, everybody wants to play at the highest level of basketball and, although the Euroleague is a very high level, everybody’s goal is to win an NBA championship. The mindset is you have to be aggressive and be a bulldog as a small guard and I think Baskonia can help me develop that mentality and make me a better [player].”
Eastern Notes: Stephenson, Pistons, Knicks
The Nets and unrestricted free agent Lance Stephenson have nothing going on, Mike Mazzeo of ESPN.com reports (on Twitter). Mazzeo’s report squashes the rumors that suggested Stephenson was joining Brooklyn. Stephenson, a New York native, had made a post on Instagram with the caption, “Dreams come true,” which ignited the rumors.
Here’s more from around the Eastern Conference:
- Reggie Jackson likes the moves the Pistons made this summer, which includes drafting power forward Henry Ellenson and signing Ish Smith, Jon Leuer and Boban Marjanovic, and expressed confidence that Detriot will make a deep playoff run, Brian Manzullo of the Detroit Free Press relays. “I don’t believe there necessarily is a ceiling,” Jackson said. “We can go as far as we want. But it’s really going to come from internal growth as a team. Not just in skills but mentally, as well, and being ready for the burden of the season.”
- Lance Thomas, whom the Knicks re-signed to a four-year deal in July, applauded the hiring of Jeff Hornacek as coach because the coach wants to win and wasn’t interested in just landing a job, Kristian Winfield of Elite Sports NY writes.
Nets Viewed Whitehead As No. 18 Prospect In Draft
- The Nets clearly value rookie guard Isaiah Whitehead very highly, writes Net Income of NetsDaily. As we noted earlier today, Brooklyn paid $3MM to move up on draft night to nab Whitehead, who was ranked 18th in the team’s 2016 mock draft, per NetsDaily.
Details On Cash Used In 2016 Draft Trades
As our list of 2016 offseason trades shows, five of the deals agreed upon on draft night this year featured one team sending cash to the other. The NBA’s Collective Bargaining Agreement allows clubs to include cash payments, but only up to a certain amount.
In the 2016/17 league year, teams are allowed to receive a total of $3.5MM in trades, and can also send out $3.5MM in trades. Those limits are separate, so a team that sends $3.5MM in a deal and then later receives $3.5MM doesn’t get a fresh, new slate — that club is capped out for the league year. In 2014/15, the limit for cash sent and received in trades was $3.4MM.
Since the league year ends on June 30, teams that hadn’t taken advantage of those cash allowances earlier in the season will often use remaining cash during the draft to move up or to snag an extra pick. Many of the cash details on those draft-day deals for 2016 were previously reported. For instance, we already knew about the following payments:
- Warriors sent $2.4MM to Bucks to acquire No. 38 overall pick (Patrick McCaw).
- Trail Blazers sent $1.2MM (and a 2019 second-round pick) to Magic to acquire No. 47 overall pick (Jake Layman).
- Cavaliers sent approximately $2.5MM to Hawks to acquire No. 54 overall pick (Kay Felder).
Based on those numbers, it appears the Warriors got a much better deal from the Bucks than the Cavaliers did from the Hawks. Of course, if the Cavs badly wanted Felder, the cost to move into the draft was hardly exorbitant — Atlanta likely asked the Cavs for the maximum amount of money they could send, since Cleveland used over $900K in a separate trade earlier in the year.
In addition to those three swaps, two other draft-night deals featured money changing hands, and Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders has the details on those payments, along with several others from the 2015/16 league year. According to Pincus, these are the details on the other two draft trades involving cash:
- Nets sent $3MM (and the No. 55 overall pick) to Jazz to acquire No. 42 overall pick (Isaiah Whitehead).
- Thunder sent $730K to Nuggets to acquire No. 56 overall pick (Daniel Hamilton).
Once again, one of these deals looks far more favorable than the other, with the Thunder paying a fraction of what the Nets did for a second-round pick. But again, the available players and interested teams essentially set the market for these cash payments.
In the case of the Nets/Jazz deal, Brooklyn clearly wanted to make sure not to miss out on Whitehead, and the team was willing to pay a relatively significant amount to secure him. The Thunder, meanwhile, offered all their available remaining cash to the Nuggets for the 56th pick, and Denver likely had no better offer and no player targeted at that spot — so the Nuggets took what they could get.
Be sure to check out Pincus’ piece at Basketball Insiders for more thorough details of how teams spent and received cash in trades during the 2015/16 league year.