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Central Notes: Hibbert, Love, Bucks

April 29th, 2015 at 9:30pm CST by Eddie Scarito

The Pacers performed their due diligence last summer and shopped center Roy Hibbert, but Indiana predictably found no takers for the big man, Sean Deveney of The Sporting News writes. This offseason may offer the franchise more luck in dealing the 28-year-old since he’ll be on an expiring contract, provided Hibbert exercises his player option worth $15,514,031, Deveney notes. One NBA assistant coach said Hibbert might be a worthy gamble for another team if the big man could be motivated to stay in shape, Deveney adds. “The last two years, he has dropped off in the second half of the season,” the assistant said. “With big guys like that, the first thing you think of is conditioning. If you can make sure he is in shape for all 82 games, maybe give him time off here and there, he would be worth the risk.”

Here’s more from the Central Division:

  • LeBron James says that he hasn’t spoken with Kevin Love recently about whether or not the big man intends to opt out of his deal, Dave McMenamin of ESPN.com writes. When asked if Love would return to the Cavs next season, James said, “That’s a question that I can’t answer right now. I think that’s the last thing on his mind right now. What’s on his mind is his shoulder and how disappointed he is, how hurt he is over the fact that he can’t play in this postseason. I don’t think he’s thought about the offseason or what he wants to do. I haven’t had that conversation with him, and I shouldn’t have to have that conversation with him, especially right now when we’re going through this challenge and this battle of trying to win a championship. So I can’t answer that question.“
  • The mid-season trade for Michael Carter-Williams shows that the Bucks are looking toward their future rather than trying to simply make the playoffs, Deveney writes in a separate piece. “That’s the difference between the past and now,” GM John Hammond told Deveney. “There’s the big difference. We’re not building toward that now. We’re building toward becoming a championship-caliber team.”
  • The Pistons would like to bring back unrestricted free agent Joel Anthony to fill the role of backup center next season, but the team needs to address more pressing needs prior to making a decision regarding the big man, Keith Langlois of NBA.com writes.
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And-Ones: Tomic, Huertas, Free Agents

April 28th, 2015 at 10:30pm CST by Eddie Scarito

Jazz draft-and-stash prospect Ante Tomic is set to sign a three-year extension with FC Barcelona, and will not be making the jump to the NBA next season, Jose Ignacio Huguet of Mundo Deportivo.com reports (translation by Jody Genessy of The Deseret News via Twitter). It was Tomic’s wife who vetoed the move to the NBA, tweets David Pick of Eurobasket.com, though the idea of being stuck behind Rudy Gobert and Derrick Favors on Utah’s depth chart could have played a part as well, Genessy adds (Twitter link). Tomic had previously suggested that this offseason was likely going to be his last opportunity to enter the NBA.

Here’s more from around the league and abroad:

  •  Brazilian point guard Marcelo Huertas, also known as Marcelinho Huertas, is planning a move to the NBA next season, Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports reports. The 31-year-old is expected to be aggressively pursued as a backup guard this offseason, Wojnarowski notes. In 29 games for FC Barcelona this past season, the 6’3″ Huertas averaged 7.4 points, 2.3 rebounds, and 4.4 assists in 21.7 minutes per contest. “This is the right time,” Huertas told Wojnarowski. “[Rockets guard] Pablo Prigioni is the guy most likely to get compared to me, because our career trajectory had been similar in Europe. And like him, I can run a team without worrying about scoring.”
  • According to A. Sherrod Blakely of CSNNE.com, five free agents whose playoff performance helped improve their stock are Khris Middleton (Bucks), Tristan Thompson (Cavs), Jae Crowder (Celtics), Josh Smith (Rockets), and Austin Rivers (Clippers).
  • On the flip side, Blakely lists Patrick Beverley (Rockets), Brandon Bass (Celtics), Lou Williams (Raptors), Omer Asik (Pelicans), and Rajon Rondo (Mavs) as players whose stock has taken a hit since the postseason began.
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Atlantic Notes: Love, Celtics, Brand, Raptors

April 28th, 2015 at 3:13pm CST by Chuck Myron

People around the Celtics were intrigued to hear of what had been Kevin Love‘s growing fondness for the team, and while the C’s plan to pursue him, they believe he’ll back with the Cavs for next season, a league source told Mark Murphy of the Boston Herald. That was before Cavs GM David Griffin announced that Love will likely miss the rest of the playoffs and that surgery on his injured shoulder is a possibility. It’s unclear whether the Celtics will land Love or another star, but an active summer is surely ahead, as I wrote today in examining the Celtics offseason, and Murphy has more clues about what’s ahead for Boston amid the latest from the Atlantic Division:

  • Jae Crowder and Jonas Jerebko are among the Celtics who want to re-sign with the team, Murphy notes in the same piece as he looks at the status of every player on the team’s roster. The Celtics are interested in keeping Crowder but haven’t decided on Jerebko or Brandon Bass, whose desire to remain in Boston is well–documented, as Murphy details.
  • The Knicks expressed their interest in Elton Brand to the big man immediately after free agency began last July, and he’d consider signing with them if they pursue him again this summer, the 36-year-old New York native tells Marc Berman of the New York Post. Brand, who’s also pondering retirement, passed on a minimum-salary offer from the Knicks last year to sign a one-year, $2MM deal with the Hawks, as Berman details. Knicks team president Phil Jackson might have had more than Brand in mind last summer, since Brand’s agent, David Falk, also represents Greg Monroe, a rumored Knicks target, tweets Frank Isola of the New York Daily News.
  • Sportsnet’s Michael Grange views Kyle Lowry‘s comments about coach Dwane Casey on Monday as a rather tepid endorsement, though those who know the point guard tell Grange there wasn’t any hidden meaning and that there’s no tension between player and coach. GM Masai Ujiri offered praise for Lowry today but wouldn’t commit to bringing Casey back. Grange argues that Casey couldn’t have been expected to take the Raptors much farther.
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Latest On Kevin Love, Free Agency

April 27th, 2015 at 5:05pm CST by Chuck Myron

5:05pm: Love will miss Cleveland’s second-round series because of his shoulder injury, the team says, according to Tom Withers of The Associated Press (Twitter link). It’s a left shoulder dislocation, as the team details.

8:58am: People around the Cavaliers and the rest of the league have been of the belief that Kevin Love wouldn’t hesitate to leave Cleveland, but the shoulder injury he suffered in Sunday’s game throws Love’s future into flux, according to Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports. The Celtics had made up ground on the Lakers on Love’s list of preferred destinations, and while Boston was no certainty for Love, they had a better shot than many thought, Wojnarowski writes. However, the tangle with Kelly Olynyk in which Love was injured, a “bush-league play” as Love described it, left the All-Star with a “legitimate loathing” of the Celtics, as Wojnarowski put it. The Cavs expect Love to miss at least the next two weeks, as Brian Windhorst of ESPN.com reported earlier.

Love said in January that he planned to pick up his player option of more than $16.744MM for next season, even though there’s a strong chance he could earn more next year on a new maximum-salary deal. However, teams who’ve investigated the possibility of chasing Love are convinced he’ll “minimally explore” the free agent market this summer, according to Wojnarowski. Love was intrigued with the possibility of playing for the Celtics after visiting Boston last spring, and people who know Love and Celtics coach Brad Stevens believe the Celtics would have become the front-runners once Love took a meeting with the C’s, as Wojnarowski details.

The Yahoo! scribe suggests that the confrontation Kendrick Perkins had with Jae Crowder and the flagrant foul J.R. Smith delivered later on Crowder demonstrated that the Cavs were in Love’s corner and sought a measure of revenge for his injury. Still, none of the Cavs went quite as far as Love did in comments about the play in which Love was hurt, with LeBron James and Kyrie Irving probably going the farthest to support Love in saying that it wasn’t a basketball play, as Jason Lloyd of the Akron Beacon Journal writes in his Final Thoughts column.

“I’ve seen a lot of tie-ups in my day and that tie-in was a little different,” James said. “We were very upset that it happened.”

The Celtics would probably need to convince Love that Olynyk’s move, in which he hooked Love’s arm as they chased a loose ball, wasn’t intended to hurt him, Wojnarowski surmises, having heard private suggestions from the Celtics that it happened in part because of Olynyk’s “uncoordinated,” “awkward” nature. Several Celtics went on the record with similar statements to Mark Murphy of the Boston Herald. Gerald Wallace said it’s simply how Olynyk has to play, and Evan Turner looked at Tyler Zeller and asked, “Tyler? Doesn’t he foul that way every day in practice?” Olynyk denies trying to injure Love, as Murphy also relays.

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And-Ones: Love, Williams, Bass

April 26th, 2015 at 9:22pm CST by Will Joseph

While nothing will be official until the results of an MRI are expected to be announced Monday, the Cavaliers are expecting Kevin Love to miss at least two weeks, Brian Windhorst of ESPN.com tweets. Love suffered a dislocated left shoulder in Sunday’s game against Boston and will be evaluated further, the Cavaliers announced. The Cavs will open their semifinal series on either May 2nd or May 4th, depending on when the Bulls–Bucks series concludes.

Here’s more from around the league:

  • Nets coach Lionel Hollins told reporters, including Stefan Bondy of the New York Daily News, that Deron Williams, who was involved in trade rumors earlier this season, isn’t the same player he was four years ago when he was heralded by the team as the league’s best point guard and that’s OK. “That’s four years ago. We’re now. No player is the way he was four years ago. All I’m saying is now is that the guy is playing well,” Hollins said. “Somebody picks out that he has two points [in Game 2 against the Hawks]. So what? He played well. It’s not just about the scoring. If it was just about the scoring, there’s a lot of teams that would be better because they have guys who score a lot of points. But it’s about winning. It’s about doing the right things for the team. And I’ll defend Deron until the end on that and all my players to the end if you think that just because a guy makes a lot of money and is supposed on a level because everybody put him on that level — whether it be the organization, or whomever — it’s still where we are now. And we have to deal with now. And I support him 100%.”
  • Soon-to-be unrestricted free agent Brandon Bass hinted that he would like to return to the Celtics, but acknowledged that it’s not solely his call, Jessica Camerato of Basketball Insiders writes. “I don’t know what the future holds,” Bass said following the Celtics’ Game 4 elimination to the Cavaliers on Sunday. “That’s up to [President of Basketball Operations] Danny Ainge. But Boston’s been great to me over the last couple years, so it’ll be great for me to come back.”
  • Enes Kanter, Rajon Rondo and Kevin Garnett were listed by Moke Hamilton, Alex Kennedy and Jessica Camerato of Basketball Insiders as players who are poised to be overpaid as free agents. Hamilton argues that Kanter, a soon-to-be restricted free agent, will cash-in on a small, 26-game sample size. The Timberwolves hold Garnett in such high regard they will most likely offer him a larger contract than teams without previous ties would, Camerato writes.
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Central Notes: Love, Butler, Pistons, Hill

April 26th, 2015 at 4:06pm CST by Arthur Hill

Kevin Love suffered a dislocated left shoulder in Sunday’s game against Boston and will be evaluated further, the Cavaliers announced. The incident happened in a first quarter skirmish between Love and the Celtics’ Kelly Olynyk. Love immediately headed for the locker room and did not return. The Cavaliers said Love will receive “examination, imaging and evaluation at Cleveland Clinic Sports Health over the next 24 hours.” His status for the rest of the playoffs will depend on the results of those tests. Love was wearing a sling after the game, but said his shoulder was feeling better and he hopes to be ready for Game 1 of the next series, tweets Chris Haynes of the Northeast Ohio Media Group. Love wasn’t forgiving toward Olynyk, tweets Dave McMenamin, saying, “I thought it was a bush-league play … I have no doubt in my mind that he did it on purpose.”

There’s more from the Central Division:

  • Jimmy Butler has emerged as the ideal complement to Derrick Rose in the Bulls‘ backcourt, according to Nick Friedell of ESPNChicago.com. Heading into free agency this summer, Butler has left behind his “role player” days and has become a full-fledged star, Friedell writes. “We have a very strong backcourt right now,” said center Joakim Noah. “Both him and Derrick, it’s very good. I’m very happy to have them as teammates.”
  • After upgrading at point guard with the trade for Reggie Jackson, the Pistons now face the challenge of improving at other positions, writes Keith Langlois of Pistons.com. He praised coach and president of basketball operations Stan Van Gundy for being willing to part with depth and three-point shooting to acquire Jackson, who is very much in the team’s future plans despite being a free agent this summer. He also noted that the Pistons seem likely to bring back Anthony Tolliver, who has a $3MM contract, with only $400K guaranteed.
  • The Pacers‘ Solomon Hill took advantage of the opportunity given to him when Paul George broke his leg, writes Andrew Perna of Real GM. The second-year player was given increased court time and responded by being the only Pacer to appear in all 82 games. He is under Indiana’s control through the 2017/18 season.
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Cavs Notes: Love, James, Thompson

April 25th, 2015 at 3:45pm CST by Eddie Scarito

As painful as it was for the city of Cleveland, LeBron James‘ departure for Miami back in 2010 laid the groundwork for the Cavs’ title chances this season, Steve Bulpett of The Boston Herald writes. If James had remained, the franchise would not have been in the position to draft Kyrie Irving, nor have had the opportunity to select Andrew Wiggins, who was the centerpiece of the deal to acquire Kevin Love, Bulpett notes.

“Could he have won a championship if he stayed here? We’ll never know,” said former Cav Jim Chones, who is the team’s radio color commentator. “But we do know this, and this is a fact, that we’re better than we were the first time he was here. And we also have other opportunities down the road because of draft picks that we’ve stored up, so Cleveland is in a position where they’re going to be good for a while, not just a flash in the pan. Looking back to when LeBron left, philosophically speaking, it created an acute awareness within our organization that we had to be better at everything we did. Him leaving … we were so dependent on him, as most teams are with the super players, that it put us in a position that we weren’t prepared for.”

Here’s more news out of Cleveland:

  • Though their relationship hasn’t been perfect this season, James understands the difficulties that Love has had to deal with since coming to the Cavs, Sam Amico of FOX Sports Ohio relays. “He’s been highly criticized this year,” James said. “I know why. For a team that finally gets together, when you have a ‘Big Three,’ they’ve got to find someone. When I was in Miami, Chris Bosh was that guy at one point. I’ve seen it before. When you’ve been in position where you’ve had your own team and now you come and join forces, at one point in Miami we were 9-8. They started pointing fingers at anybody. They’ve got to find somebody.“
  • The Cavs’ role-players are proving this postseason that Cleveland is more than just the “big three,” Tom Withers of The Associated Press writes. Just as James, Irving and Love have had to make personal sacrifices, the Cavs’ second-stringers have forgone individual accolades for team success, Withers adds. “It’s like a company. You have your janitor, your CEO. You have your secretaries,” said Tristan Thompson, who knows that his job is to bring energy as a reserve. “I don’t mind being the cleanup guy, punching the clock. I’ll do all the little things.”
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Central Notes: Carter-Williams, Smith, Love

April 24th, 2015 at 6:00pm CST by Eddie Scarito

J.R. Smith has fit in much better with the Cavaliers than many predicted he would when the guard was acquired earlier this season from the Knicks, Dave McMenamin of ESPN.com writes. “For J.R., I think he’s been misunderstood,” LeBron James said. “He had a great column last week about the perception of him before he got here. I think you should read it, it’s pretty great. And he said at the end, it doesn’t matter if he’s playing in New York, or Cleveland or Denver or Timbuktu, all he cares about is winning. For a guy that’s been highly scrutinized throughout his career, saying he’s not a team guy and takes bad shots and he follows around everyone else, I think it’s unfair to him. He comes out every single day and works his tail off to try to get better, to help our team win. He defends at a high level and he’s a great teammate and he’s a great guy.” Smith has a player option worth $6,777,589 that he can opt out of this summer if he wishes to become an unrestricted free agent.

Here’s more from the Central Division:

  • Bucks coach Jason Kidd sees a lot of himself in Michael Carter-Williams, and he believes that the change of scenery from the losing culture the Sixers have cultivated will be good for the young guard, Ohm Youngmisuk of ESPN.com writes. Kidd also believes that having a healthy offseason can help Carter-Williams improve his outside shooting, which is a glaring weakness in the young point guard’s game, Youngmisuk adds.
  • Acquiring Carter-Williams also helped the Bucks‘ salary cap situation, Youngmisuk notes. By swapping Brandon Knight, who is set to become a restricted free agent this offseason, for Carter-Williams, who has two years remaining on his rookie contract, the team can now focus solely on re-signing Khris Middleton, who will also be a restricted free agent this summer, the ESPN scribe adds.
  • Kevin Love has seemingly found his niche with the Cavaliers now that the playoffs have begun, and the veteran forward appears to be more at peace with being in Cleveland, Jason Lloyd of The Akron Beacon Journal writes. “People have focused my whole career on what I couldn’t do rather than what I could do,” Love said. “I know my teammates and coaching staff has my back. I know the organization has my back. I’m sending the love right back to them.”
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2014/15 D-League Usage Report: Cavaliers

April 23rd, 2015 at 7:46pm CST by Eddie Scarito

The D-League’s regular season is now complete, and the three-round D-League playoffs are winding down. The relationship between the NBA and the D-League continues to grow, and 17 NBA franchises currently have one-to-one D-League affiliates amongst the 18 D-League teams. The remaining 13 NBA teams shared the Fort Wayne Mad Ants this season.

We at Hoops Rumors will be recapping each team’s use of the D-League this season, looking at assignments and recalls as well as the players signed out of the D-League. We’ll begin with a look back at how the Cavaliers utilized the D-League during the 2014/15 campaign…

D-League Team: Canton Charge

Affiliation Type: One-to-one

D-League Team Record: 31-19

Number of NBA Players Assigned To D-League: 2

Total D-League Assignments: 14

Player Stats While On Assignment:

    • Alex Kirk: 5 assignments, 41 games, 12.2 PPG, 6.5 RPG, 1.2 APG. .492/.219/.727.
    • Joe Harris: 11 assignments, 11 games, 14.1 PPG, 5.4 RPG, 3.5 APG. .391/.261/.733.

D-League Signings

  • None

Assignment/Recall Log

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Eastern Notes: Cavs, Riley, Harkless

April 20th, 2015 at 8:00pm CST by ChrisCrouse

The Cavs improved their win total over last season’s by 20 games and appear to be the favorite to win the Eastern Conference. LeBron James returning to Cleveland was a huge factor in the team’s improvement, but GM David Griffin deserves credit for the moves he made during the last 14 months, as I wrote in his Executive of the Year Candidate piece.

Here’s more from the Eastern Conference:

  • President of Basketball Operations Pat Riley may have taken a jab at LeBron James during the Heat’s season ending press conference today, Joseph Goodman of the Miami Herald writes. “No more smiling faces with hidden agendas, so we’ll be going in clean,” Riley said in response to a question about the draft. When ask to clarify if that comment was about James, he said, “that could be anyone across the board. I’ve already got about half a dozen emails from people I don’t even know recommending [a player], and somewhere in that email or text is always a smiley.”  
  • Maurice Harkless regressed during his third season in the league and Ken Hornack of Fox Sports Florida believes he is unlikely to remain in Orlando long-term. The forward is eligible for a rookie scale extension this offseason.
  • The Cavs have recalled Joe Harris from their D-League affiliate, the Canton Charge, according to the team’s website. To date, the guard has played in 48 games for Cleveland this season while seeing only 9.1 minutes per game.
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