Atlantic Notes: Noel, Knicks, Young, KG
Rookie Nerlens Noel is already essentially the centerpiece of the Sixers, and he has no complaints about the team’s radical rebuilding, as Mike Mazzeo of ESPN.com examines.
“I love the direction that we’re heading in,” Noel said. “I love what [GM] Sam Hinkie is doing with our team: building through the draft, getting young guys and being very particular about the pieces that he brings into this organization. I think this is going to be a very solid team in the next few years and we’re just going to continue to grow together.”
Noel, unlike many other rookies who were drafted in the first round, is set for free agency in 2017, and not 2018, because he signed his rookie scale contract before sitting out the entire 2013/14 season with injury. So, it appears he’ll benefit from a cap surge instead of a potential cap drop like his fellow rookies, as I examined. Here’s more from the Atlantic Division:
- The amount of cash the Knicks sent the Pacers this past June for the rights to 57th overall pick Louis Labeyrie was $1.5MM, a league source told Marc Berman of the New York Post. That counted against New York’s 2013/14 traded cash limit and doesn’t apply toward the $3.3MM the team can send out in trades between the end of the regular season and June 30th this year. Labeyrie recently signed a one-year extension with Paris Levallois in France, so a buyout would have to be paid for him to sign with the Knicks for next season, according to Berman.
- The Nets‘ acquisition of Thaddeus Young for Kevin Garnett helped the team get younger, but it doesn’t erase the ill-fated trade for Garnett and Paul Pierce from 2013, opines Stefan Bondy of the New York Daily News. Garnett did fill a leadership role, but no one has stepped into that void in his absence, Bondy also argues.
- Brooklyn owes its first-round pick to Boston in 2016 because of that Garnett-Pierce trade, and Tim Bontemps of the New York Post examines how that dynamic and others makes Young’s decision about his player option for next season a crucial one for the Nets.
- The Celtics have once more assigned James Young to the D-League, the team announced. It’s the 10th time that Boston has sent 2014’s 17th overall pick on D-League assignment this season, though none of his previous nine trips have covered more than three days.
Northwest Notes: Hunt, Garnett, Young
Nuggets players would endorse the removal of the interim tag from coach Melvin Hunt‘s job title, and it’s a move the organization will at least consider, GM Tim Connelly told Benjamin Hochman of The Denver Post.
“As an organization, we have all been impressed with the job Melvin has done thus far,” Connelly said. “When the season concludes, he will be one of the candidates as we begin an exhaustive search to find a head coach.”
Hunt is an impressive 6-3 in his brief tenure, and Hochman argues that while he deserves a shot, there are other candidates who merit consideration, too. Here’s more from the Northwest Division:
- The injection of 20th-year veteran Kevin Garnett into the inexperienced Timberwolves roster struck an immediate chord, Wolves coach/executive Flip Saunders told reporters, including Newsday’s Roderick Boone. “It was like three little kids looking at Santa Claus coming down the chimney,” Saunders said of the reaction some of his younger players had to meeting Garnett.
- Thaddeus Young indicated to the Wolves that he didn’t intend to pick up his player option worth about $10MM for next season, writes Jerry Zgoda of the Star Tribune. Young had reportedly requested a trade through his agent. Young, who hasn’t decided on opting in with Brooklyn, credits the Timberwolves organization for accommodating his wishes, working with his agent and keeping him in the loop, as Zgoda relays. Saunders this week expressed his affection for Young as a player, as Boone notes in his story.
- The Nuggets have begun to sit key players for rest, but Wilson Chandler, a free agent after next season, is not pleased, as Christopher Dempsey of The Denver Post relays. “It’s tough when you’re fighting together but you’re getting set up for failure,” Chandler said. The decision isn’t coming from the players or Hunt, Dempsey writes, which suggests it’s the front office’s call.
- Mike Sorensen of the Deseret News has more details on Greg Miller’s decision Monday to relinquish his role as CEO of the company that controls the Jazz, a move that team and company officials insist won’t have much effect on Jazz basketball operations.
- The Jazz have recalled Ian Clark from the D-League, the team announced. He averaged just 14.0 points in 32.0 minutes per game but nailed 45.0% of his three-point attempts on an assignment that last nearly a month.
Atlantic Notes: Wallace, Nogueira, Robinson
Gerald Wallace plans to play out the last year of his contract during the 2015/16 season, but he will spend this summer deciding whether he will play past then, writes Gary Washburn of The Boston Globe. “I would love to continue to play, but it’s more about my family and my kids,” he said. “I’m only 32 years old and I’ve been in here 14 years. That’s almost half of my life in this league. My kids are getting older. They’re starting to play high school sports now. It depends on if they’re comfortable with me still playing or they’re ready for me to come home and be part of their lives.” Wallace will make slightly over $10.1MM next season as part of a four-year, $40MM contract he signed with the Nets in 2012. About a year later, the forward was dealt to the Celtics, as Zach Links of Hoops Rumors notes in his latest piece.
Here’s more from the Atlantic Division:
- The Raptors have recalled Lucas Nogueira from the Fort Wayne Mad Ants of the D-League, according to the team’s Twitter feed. To date, the Brazilian center has only seen 23 minutes of NBA action this season.
- Thomas Robinson, an unrestricted free agent after the season, stopped short of saying he’d like to return to the Sixers, but he said that a team that includes him as well as Nerlens Noel and Joel Embiid would be “scary” in a good way, observes Keith Pompey of the Philadelphia Inquirer. The Sixers can’t re-sign him to a starting salary of greater than $4,660,482 since the Blazers declined their fourth-year rookie scale team option on him this past fall.
- Mason Plumlee, Joe Johnson and Deron Williams were among the Nets to praise Kevin Garnett as they prepare to face him for an opponent for the first time since Brooklyn traded him for Young at the deadline. Mitch Abramson of the New York Daily News and Tim Bontemps of the New York Post have the details. “He meant a lot to this organization and to the team in the short time he was here,” Williams said. “I said it a million times — he’s a guy that you just learn so much from, just watching him every day, his work ethic, his leadership ability and he’s just a great guy to be around.”
Chuck Myron contributed to this post
Atlantic Notes: Young, Jackson, Sixers
Thaddeus Young said Saturday that he wants to remain with the Nets even though he hasn’t decided on his early termination option for next season, worth as much as nearly $10.222MM, observes Andy Vasquez of The Record. Darren Wolfson of 1500 ESPN Twin Cities can’t envision Young turning down that option and pointed to his earlier report that the forward had requested a trade from the Timberwolves through his agent (Twitter links). Young spoke of a mutual feeling of interest in a continued relationship with Brooklyn, and indeed Nets GM Billy King has said the team will do what it can to retain him, as King apparently sees him as a building block for the team’s future. While we wait to see exactly how Young and the Nets proceed, here’s more from the Atlantic Division:
- Marc Berman of the New York Post sees signs that Knicks president Phil Jackson will choose to leave the team before his five-year contract is through. The Knicks have fallen flat in Jackson’s first year at the helm, and he hinted to Harvey Araton of The New York Times earlier this season that he isn’t planning a long-term stay in New York.
- Veterans Luc Mbah a Moute and Jason Richardson are favorites of Sixers coach Brett Brown, notes Bob Cooney of the Philadelphia Daily News, who takes a shot at sizing up the chances that many of the Sixers have of returning to the team next season. Richardson and Mbah a Moute are both set for unrestricted free agency this summer.
- Celtics assistant coach Jay Larranaga has drawn the eye of George Mason University, which plans to make him a focus of its search for a new head coach, reports Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports. Larranaga has surfaced as an NBA head coaching candidate in the past and interviewed for the C’s and Sixers head coaching jobs, Wojnarowski notes.
This Date In Transactions History: Gerald Wallace
On this date three years ago, the Nets paid a hefty price to give star guard Deron Williams some additional help. New Jersey, gearing up for their long-anticipated move to Brooklyn, acquired Gerald Wallace in exchange for Mehmet Okur, Shawne Williams, and a top-three protected 2012 pick. Of course, the trade deadline is typically weeks earlier than March 15th, but the cutoff was pushed up in the 2011/12 season thanks to the NBA lockout, which resulted in an abbreviated 66-game season.
While Crash still had a great deal to offer talent-wise, the deal raised some eyebrows for a lot of people from the Nets’ perspective. For starters, Wallace held a $9.5MM player option for the following season and, theoretically, this trade could have amounted to a ~20 game rental for the Nets, who were certainly not headed to the postseason. Not only were the Nets not playoff bound, but they had the sixth-worst record in the league at 15-29, so they were giving away a highly valuable asset in their first-round pick, even though it was top-three protected. On the plus side, GM Billy King managed to shed Okur’s expiring $10.89MM contract and avoid Williams exercising his $3.1MM option for the following year.
In the offseason, Wallace would decline his player option and the two sides instead inked a brand new four-year, $40MM pact. While Wallace became a fan favorite with his hard-nosed style of play, it was clear that his approach to the game wasn’t the best thing when it came to his longevity. In the following season, Wallace averaged 7.7 PPG (his lowest posting since 2003/04) with an 11.6 PER that put him well below the league average. The Nets finished the 2012/13 season with 49 wins, but they were sent packing early when the Bulls knocked them off in the opening round of the playoffs. Months after that, just one year after the small forward signed that lucrative new deal with the Nets, Wallace was shipped to the Celtics in the blockbuster deal that would bring Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce to the Barclays Center. Later on, as a member of the C’s, Wallace would comment on how that deal was also ill-fated.
“It was one of those stories of a get-rich-quick scheme. You either hit it big or you don’t,” Wallace said, according to Stefan Bondy of the New York Daily News. “They took a gamble. It backfired.”
The Blazers, in essence, took advantage of the Nets’ desperation to fast forward their timetable for contention while taking on very little ($3.5MM thanks to Williams’ option) in future salary. That first round pick from the Nets gave Portland the No. 6 overall choice in the 2012 draft, which they used to select guard Damian Lillard. The pride of Weber State shot up draft boards in the weeks leading up to the draft and he has obviously proven to be worth the hype. Lillard has blossomed into a two-time All-Star and one of the very best point guards in the NBA today. Meanwhile, the Nets have watched Deron Williams decline sharply just three years after signing him to a five-year, ~$100MM deal.
Atlantic Notes: Noel, Young, Pressey, Turner
Nerlens Noel hopes to be a part of the Sixers‘ long-term plans, according to Tom Moore of Calkins Media. Noel, technically still a rookie after sitting out last season with an injury, has seen a lot of change during his brief time in Philadelphia. But he hopes the Sixers’ core group will stay together, even if the team brings in someone like Duke’s Jahlil Okafor with a high draft pick. “I really hope nothing happens,” Noel said. “I like this team. I like what we’re building. I hope we can stick together and continue to grow.”
There’s more news from the Atlantic Division:
- Former Sixer Thaddeus Young, now with the Nets, told Moore he hasn’t made up his mind about free agency this summer (Twitter link). “I’m not a free agent [yet],” Young said. “I have to [decline] my option” to become a free agent. Young will make more than $9.7MM next season if he doesn’t opt out.
- An occasional great game helps the Celtics‘ Phil Pressey deal with the frustration of being stuck on the bench, writes Mark Murphy of The Boston Herald. The second-year guard may not be in Boston’s regular rotation, but he made his presence known with a 10-point, 10-assist performance Friday against Orlando. Coach Brad Stevens has noticed Pressey’s effort. “He works the right way,” Stevens said. “If he doesn’t play he’s the loudest guy on the bench, and if he does play he’s an energizer. And he’s not going to play perfect, but nobody is, and if you can sustain that and not get down and be confident there’s always a role for him. And that’s a great compliment.”
- Pacers coach Frank Vogel admits current Celtics guard Evan Turner was a bad fit in Indiana last season, tweets Candace Buckner of The Indianapolis Star. “If I needed a guy and wanted to put the ball in his hands 30-40 times,” Vogel said, “he would’ve been the guy.” (Twitter link). But the coach added that wasn’t what the Pacers needed last season. (Twitter link).
Nets Rumors: Chemistry, Changes, Prokhorov
Poor chemistry has led to a disappointing season for the Nets, Tim Bontemps of the New York Post writes. Injuries and underachieving players have forced coach Lionel Hollins to constantly tinker with his rotation, leading to 17 different lineup changes, Bontemps adds. “[Chemistry is] very fragile,” Hollins said to the team’s beat reporters. “You constantly have to work at it, and adversity is the first thing that can kill chemistry. You have a little adversity and something happens and it splits, and then you have to get it back. It’s a time-consuming thing to get chemistry, and then you have some success and you have a little more adversity and then it goes back again. It’s hard to define why. You just have it, or you don’t.”
In other news concerning the Nets:
- The team’s management plans to revamp the roster to bring in younger, more athletic players, according to a story on the team’s official website nba.com/nets. GM Billy King promised season-ticket holders in a conference call on Thursday that roster changes were coming this summer. “I think it could turn around really quickly,” King said in the call. “We’re going to explore every option to continue to add some athleticism so we can be a better defensive team, become a more athletic team, so we can get out and run. That’s the plan. We’ll look and explore every option. There will be no stone unturned as we go forward.”
- Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov is no longer seeking to sell a majority interest in the team, according to Josh Kosman and Claire Atkinson of the New York Post. Negotiations to sell the team never became serious because of uncertainty over Prokhorov’s interest in also selling the rights to Barclays Center, sources told the Post. Prokhorov is now actively shopping a minority interest in the team that does not include a sale of the arena, the Post adds. Evercore Partners, an investment banking firm Prokhorov hired to help facilitate a prospective sale of the team, made the decision to end their relationship with the Nets.
- Prokhorov recently quit the Russian political party he founded, Civil Platform, and his motivation may have included his desire to protect foreign assets such as the Nets, according to an rt.com story. A relatively new Russian law that prevents senior officials and legislators from possessing foreign bank accounts and securities could have spurred Prokhorov’s decision, the story reveals.
Nets Notes: Sale, Karasev, Prokhorov, 2016
Evercore Partners, an investment banking firm Mikhail Prokhorov hired to help facilitate a prospective sale of the team, made the decision to end their relationship with the Nets, and not the other way around, as previously indicated, according to Mike Ozanian of Forbes.com. Prokhorov and company would prefer to sell a minority stake in the club, as Robert Windrem of NetsDaily reported previously and as Ozanian reiterates, calling it the primary holdup for the sale of any portion of the team. The “sale process was a mess,” a sports banker tells Ozanian, who also hears that interest from would-be buyers has been weak. There’s plenty more on the Nets, as we detail:
- The Nets anticipate that Sergey Karasev will be healthy in time for training camp next season, the team announced. The 2013 19th overall pick underwent season-ending surgery on his right knee.
- Prokhorov is much less of a presence around the Nets than he used to be, notes Stefan Bondy of the New York Daily News, who cites all the shortcomings of the team as he goes over reasons why the owner might want to hide.
- Almost every team is set to be able to open cap room for a maximum-salary contract in the summer of 2016, but Tim Bontemps of the New York Post believes free agents are more likely to choose the Nets and Knicks over small market clubs that lack contending cores.
2015/16 Salary Commitments: Nets
With the NBA trade deadline now passed, teams are focusing on locking down playoff spots or vying for a better chance in the draft lottery. Outside of the players who are added on 10-day deals, or those lucky enough to turn those auditions into long-term contracts, teams’ rosters are relatively set for the remainder of the season.
We at Hoops Rumors are in the process of taking a look ahead at each franchise’s salary cap situation heading into the summer, and the free agent frenzy that occurs every offseason. While the exact amount of the 2015/16 salary cap won’t be announced until July, the cap is projected to come in somewhere around $68MM, with the luxury tax threshold projected at approximately $81MM. This year’s $63.065MM cap represented an increase of 7.7% over 2013/14, which was well above the league’s projected annual increase of 4.5%.
We’ll continue by taking a look at the Nets’ cap outlook for 2015/16…
Here are the players with guaranteed contracts:
- Bojan Bogdanovic — $3,425,510
- Jarrett Jack — $6.3MM
- Joe Johnson — $24,894,863
- Sergey Karasev — $1,599,840
- Mason Plumlee — $1,415,520
- Deron Williams — $21,042,800
Here are the players with non-guaranteed contracts:
- Markel Brown — $845,059
- Cory Jefferson — $845,059
- Darius Morris — $1,015,421
Players with options:
- Alan Anderson (Player Option) — $1,333,484
- Brook Lopez (Player Option) — $16,744,218
- Thaddeus Young (Early Termination Option) — $10,221,739
The Nets’ Cap Summary for 2015/16:
- Guaranteed Salary: $58,678,233
- Options/Non-Guaranteed Salary: $31,004,980
- Total: $89,683,213
The Basketball Insiders salary pages were used in the creation of this post.
Atlantic Notes: Nets Sale, Wiggins, Embiid
Amar’e Stoudemire‘s $2.5MM buyout from the Knicks only represented a net loss of $2,014,330 for him, since it was offset by his prorated minimum salary deal with the Mavs, but it was a savings of $6.25MM for the Knicks, as Marc Berman of the New York Post points out. The $2.5MM that Stoudemire gave up, an amount that Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders first reported, as we noted last month, would have entailed an extra $3.75MM in luxury taxes had the big man remained under contract. Still, Stoudemire collected a total of more than $97.2MM in salary from the Knicks over the course of his five-year contract, and New York is in line to pay at least some tax for a third straight year, meaning the team will incur repeat-offender penalties if it goes over the tax next season. Here’s more from the Atlantic:
- Sources told Steve Kyler of Basketball Insiders that they suspected the sale of the Nets was to have been based off a $1 billion price for the Hawks, but those same sources believe the Atlanta franchise will go for around $900MM instead, as Kyler relays (Twitter links). Multiple sports bankers had believed the Nets would sell for as much as $2 billion, as they told Josh Kosman and Claire Atkinson of the New York Post earlier this month, but that price point never materialized, Kyler hears (Twitter link). Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov appears to be backing away from the idea of a sale.
- There are whispers that Andrew Wiggins would love to play for the Raptors, but he’s under contract through 2018 and would have to take discount salaries if he wants to play in his native Canada anytime this decade, writes Eric Koreen of the National Post. In any case, the talent pool in Canada has grown enough such that GM Masai Ujiri need not dig deep to fulfill his promise of bringing a domestic talent onto the Raptors, making the GM’s pledge “harmless,” Koreen believes. Still, a majority of Hoops Rumors readers believe that Ujiri shouldn’t concern himself with a player’s nationality.
- The “minor setback” that Joel Embiid has suffered as he continues to recover from a broken right foot bears watching, but it’s not worth an overreaction, Sixers coach Brett Brown told reporters, including Keith Pompey of the Philadelphia Inquirer. The franchise still believes that Embiid is capable of becoming its cornerstone if he can get healthy, Pompey writes.