Pacific Notes: Iguodala, Gay, Bell, Rivers, Pre-Draft Workouts
While Andre Iguodala is no longer the All-Star caliber athlete capable of memorable dunks, he is a vital cog on both sides of the ball for the championship winning Warriors, Connor Letourneau of the San Francisco Chronicle writes.
Iguodala, 33, has not averaged double-digits in points since joining Golden State in 2013 but his play in the 2015 NBA Finals, the first five games of last year’s series, and the first game of this year’s showdown displayed his value. As Letourneau mentions, had the Cavaliers not completed an improbable comeback last year, Iguodala may have been the NBA Finals Most Valuable Award recipient.
After knee and back troubles in recent years, Iguodala is now a key part of the Golden State bench. Following his seven points, three rebounds and two steals in 24 minutes on Thursday, the Warriors will look for similar contributions the rest of the series.“It’s only going to get harder from here,” Iguodala said. “We just have to stay locked in.”
Here are additional notes from the Pacific division:
- The Lakers are set to hold a pre-draft workout for several collegiate players this Monday, according to the team. The list of players scheduled for the workout includes Richmond forward T.J. Cline, Oklahoma State point guard Jawun Evans, Villanova guard Josh Hart, California’s Roger Moute a Bidias, Iowa State point guard Monte Morris, and Syracuse forward Tyler Roberson.
- Former Clippers teammates Glen Davis and Austin Rivers engaged in a mini-feud this week, starting with Rivers’ comments on FS1’s Undisputed that Davis was out of shape, constantly late, and struggled to remember players during his brief L.A. tenure (via NBC Sports). Davis subsequently shot back with an expletive-laden Instagram post, claiming that Rivers walked around with a cocky disposition and that he owes his career to his father.
- Coming off Achilles surgery, forward Rudy Gay was seen at Roc Nation Pro Day earlier this week and reportedly looked in good shape, per Jonathan Givony of Draft Express (via Twitter). Gay, 30, played in 30 regular season games with the Kings before suffering the injury and is expected to exercise his opt-out and hit free agency this offseason.
- Jason Jones of the Sacramento Bee writes that Oregon’s Jordan Bell is an intruiging target for the Kings in the NBA Draft. Known for his toughness and defensive prowess, Bell could add a strong dimension to a Kings team in transition following the trade deadline trade sending DeMarcus Cousins to the Pelicans.
- Doug Haller of The Arizona Republic writes that SMU forward Semi Ojeleye is a good target for the Suns in the second round draft. A built body and athleticism give Ojelye a good shot to mold into a productive NBA player despite limited college experience.
Chris Paul Would Seriously Consider Spurs If He Leaves L.A.
Two teams that have battled for top seeds in the West in recent years may battle for one of this summer’s top free agents next month. According to ESPN’s Marc Stein, Chris Paul intends to seriously consider signing with the Spurs in the event that he leaves the Clippers in free agency.
As much as Paul enjoys Los Angeles, he’s “intrigued” by the idea of teaming up with Kawhi Leonard and playing for Gregg Popovich, and potentially making the deep playoff run that hasn’t materialized with the Clippers, Stein reports. According to the ESPN report, the Spurs are “increasingly considered a lock” to meet with CP3 face to face once free agency officially gets underway on July 1, despite the fact that the team currently doesn’t have the cap room necessary to sign him.
Meanwhile, the Clippers have already begun to consider roster and organizational changes aimed at convincing Paul to re-sign, sources tell Stein. Stein adds that L.A.’s recent push to lure Jerry West from the Warriors is one example of the type of move the team hopes will convince Paul to return, though Steve Kyler of Basketball Insiders (Twitter link) hears that West is staying with Golden State and met with the Clips as a courtesy.
We had already heard about the mutual interest between Paul and the Spurs, and Stein had reported earlier that the Clippers viewed San Antonio as a serious threat, so today’s report isn’t exactly a bombshell. The interest between Paul and the Spurs certainly appears real, but the Clips are still viewed as the favorite to re-sign the veteran point guard, who could use San Antonio’s interest as leverage in an effort to get the full max.
Draft Notes: Fox, Ball, Mitchell, Workouts
In a draft expected to be dominated by point guards, John Wall thinks De’Aaron Fox will be the best of the bunch, relays Chase Hughes of CSNMidAtlantic. Wall insists his opinion stems from watching Fox play and isn’t because they went to the same school. “A lot of people say it’s bias because he’s from Kentucky, but I think De’Aaron Fox might end up being the best point guard out of that class,” Wall said. “He reminds me of myself a lot, just a lefty.” Wall was the first player picked in 2010 and has been a four-time All-Star. Fox is widely projected to be taken early in the lottery, but after point guards Markelle Fultz and Lonzo Ball.
There’s more news as the draft looms three weeks away:
- Fox is the latest rookie to get a shoe deal before being drafted, tweets Nick DePaula of The Vertical. Fox, who was highly sought after by shoe companies, agreed to a multi-year deal with Nike.
- Ball may need an exceptional workout with the Lakers to be the No. 2 pick, according to Steve Kyler of Basketball Insiders, who notes that L.A.’s interest is growing in Fox and Kansas forward Josh Jackson. Ball’s camp, which once said he would only meet with the Lakers, is now willing to hold meetings, but probably not workouts, with the Sixers and Kings.
- Donovan Mitchell is a non-traditional point guard who may be a steal for somebody in the middle of the draft, writes Kevin O’Connor of The Ringer. The Louisville product is celebrated for his defense, but doesn’t possess great passing skills.
- Oregon guard Dylan Ennis has been among the most active prospects in pre-draft workouts, tweets Oliver Maroney of Dime Magazine. Ennis has already worked out for the Thunder, Raptors and Celtics, and has sessions with the Clippers, Kings and Spurs set for next week. He is listed by DraftExpress as a long shot to be selected.
- Pitt’s Jamel Artis will work out for the Magic on Thursday, tweets Michael Scotto of Basketball Insiders.
- Purdue’s Caleb Swanigan was the top name at Tuesday’s Raptors workout, tweets Blake Murphy of Raptors Republic. Swanigan was joined by Virginia’s Austin Nichols, Dayton’s Scoochie Smith, Houston’s Damyean Dotson, North Carolina’s Nate Britt and Southeast Missouri’s Antonius Cleveland.
- The Knicks welcomed six players on Tuesday, posts Ian Begley on ESPN Now. At the workout were Kentucky’s Isaiah Briscoe, South Carolina’s Sindarius Thornwell, Duke’s Amile Jefferson, Colorado’s Derrick White, Florida’s Canyon Barry and Columbia’s Luke Petrasek.
Clippers Interested In Luring Jerry West From Warriors
3:37pm: West is “very intrigued” by the idea of working with the Clippers, a source tells Brad Turner of The Los Angeles Times (Twitter link).
12:00pm: While West’s level of interest in joining the Clippers remains unclear, he has already held talks with Rivers and team owner Steve Ballmer, Stein reports (via Twitter).
7:56am: When the Lakers overhauled their front office earlier this year, they reportedly didn’t show any real interest in bringing Jerry West back into the fold. However, that’s not the case for the other team in Los Angeles. According to Marc Stein of ESPN.com, the Clippers are interested in luring West away from the Warriors.
League sources tell Stein that the Clippers would want to hire West as a consultant, which is essentially the role he currently holds in Golden State. Doc Rivers is the Clippers’ president of basketball operations, with Lawrence Frank also holding a key role in the team’s front office, so if West were to join the group, it would be as a complementary voice, rather than to supplant L.A.’s current execs.
While West was said to have some interest in getting involved with the Lakers earlier this year, it’s not clear if his level of interest in the Clippers would be as high. According to Stein, teams have made similar runs at West in the past, with little success. Additionally, Warriors owner Joe Lacob has confirmed that his club wants to extend West’s contract, so Golden State won’t let him get away without a fight.
Still, if the 79-year-old West is seeking a greater challenge at this point in his career, joining the Clippers’ front office would certainly qualify. The Warriors – 12-0 in the postseason and the favorites in the Finals – already have a stacked roster and fully expect their stars to re-sign this summer, while the Clippers appear to be at a crossroads, with Chris Paul, Blake Griffin, and J.J. Redick facing free agency.
Clippers Remain ‘Overwhelming Favorite’ To Re-Sign Chris Paul
There is reportedly “mutual interest” between the Spurs and Chris Paul, and the Clippers are said to view San Antonio as a legit threat in the CP3 sweepstakes. However, that doesn’t mean the Spurs are the frontrunners to land the All-Star point guard. According to Adrian Wojnarowski of The Vertical, the Clippers remain the “overwhelming favorite” to re-sign Paul.
Appearing on CBS Sports Radio with Gary Parrish on Sunday, Wojnarowski said he has a hard time imagining Paul leaving Los Angeles. Not only can the Clippers offer more years and dollars than any other team, but CP3 also still has significant marketing opportunities in the L.A. area, Wojnarowski observes. By comparison, the Spurs appear to be more of a long shot to sign Paul.
“I’ve spent a lot of time around the Spurs this spring,” Wojnarowski said. “They would have to just tear up that entire payroll. It’s almost unlike anything the Spurs would’ve done or would do to even have a chance at him. I mean, they’d have to really gut the roster. And to do that for a 30-plus-year-old point guard, who has a couple great years left, there’s no question — I think there’s more pressure on the Clippers to have to re-sign him than for the Spurs to turn their whole franchise over to make a run at him.”
As Wojnarowski alludes to, the Spurs don’t currently have the cap room to make a run at Paul, so if they were to seriously pursue him, they’d have to move some salary, which would likely mean surrendering key pieces.
Even if San Antonio had the space to make a max offer to CP3, the team’s proposal would still fall $50MM+ short of what the Clippers could put on the table — L.A. can go up to five years (instead of four) with 8% raises (instead of 5%) for Paul. Based on a $101MM cap projection, Paul could land up to about $205MM over five years with the Clips.
Spurs Notes: Free Agents, Simmons, Paul, Lee
The Spurs’ decision on whether to pursue Chris Paul will play a role in which free agents return next season, writes Jeff McDonald of The San Antonio Express-News. The organization would have to clear a massive amount of cap space to offer Paul a max deal, which would probably mean renouncing Patty Mills and not matching an offer sheet for restricted free agent Jonathon Simmons. In addition, Dewayne Dedmon and David Lee both have player options and might also be renounced if they opt out. If the Spurs are able to sign Paul, they will have to fill out the roster using their mid-level exception and veterans minimum deals.
There’s more news out of San Antonio:
- If the Spurs want to keep Simmons, they will get some help from an “arcane” rule, McDonald notes in the same story. The Gilbert Arenas provision limits first-year offers to Simmons to the non-taxpayer mid-level exception, which will be roughly $8.4MM next season. Of course, offer sheets can be heavily backloaded over the final two years, similar to what the Nets did with Tyler Johnson last summer. If the Spurs are operating over the cap, they won’t have the ability to spread the hit evenly over four seasons, so they could be looking at a substantial salary commitment in 2019/20 and 2020/21 for a player who turns 28 in September.
- To make a realistic run at Paul, the Spurs would have to find a taker for LaMarcus Aldridge, Danny Green or Tony Parker, writes Nick Moyle of The San Antonio Express-News. That means trading them without taking back salary, which will almost certainly require giving up draft picks. Aldridge would probably be the most difficult of the three to move, as he is signed for $21.461MM for next season, along with a $22.347MM player option for 2018/19. Green will make $10MM next year, with a $10MM player option the following season. Parker is entering the final year of his contract at $15.453MM.
- Lee won’t need surgery for a strained patellar tendon in his left knee, tweets Ramona Shelburne of ESPN.com. The injury, which Lee suffered in Game 3 of the Western Conference finals, is expected to heal in about six weeks.
Stern Wanted To Rework Chris-Paul-To-Lakers Deal
Former NBA Commissioner David Stern addressed the NBA’s most famous non-trade during a recent appearance on the Nunyo & Company podcast [hat tip to Dan Feldman of NBC Sports].
The Lakers, Rockets and Hornets [now known as the Pelicans] worked out a three-team trade in 2011 that would have sent Chris Paul to Los Angeles. Stern, acting as owner of the New Orleans franchise after George Shinn sold it to the league, vetoed the deal on the basis that the Hornets weren’t getting enough in return for an All-Star point guard who was just entering his prime.
The full trade would have sent Paul to L.A., Pau Gasol to Houston and Lamar Odom, Kevin Martin, Luis Scola, Goran Dragic and a first-round pick to New Orleans. Stern blocked the deal, but says he intended to rework it.
“In fact, in the course of the weekend, we thought we could re-do the deal,” Stern explained. “We really thought that Houston would be ready to part with [Kyle] Lowry, and we had a trade lined up for Odom that would have gotten us a good first-round draft pick – not we, but my basketball folks. But [Lakers GM] Mitch Kupchak at the time panicked and moved Odom to Dallas. So the piece wasn’t even there for us to play with at the time. So that was it — just about what was good for the then-New Orleans Hornets.”
Later that year, New Orleans dealt Paul to the Clippers in exchange for Al-Farouq Aminu, Eric Gordon, Chris Kaman and a 2012 first-round pick that became Austin Rivers. The Lakers lost a potential star to pair with Kobe Bryant for the final part of his career and haven’t been a title contender since.
Clippers Would Be Wise Not To Offer No-Trade Clauses
- If the Clippers are going to bring Luc Mbah a Moute back next season, it will likely mean finding a taker for Wesley Johnson on the trade market, Bobby Marks of The Vertical speculates. Marks notes that Johnson, who has two years and slightly over $12MM remaining on his contract, no longer has a meaningful role on the team.
- The Clippers should learn a lesson from the Knicks and avoid giving Blake Griffin or Chris Paul no-trade clauses in their respective contracts, Marks cautions in the same piece. Carmelo Anthony received the clause in his deal and it has suppressed his trade value on the market.
Spurs Viewed As Legitimate Threat For Chris Paul
The Clippers view San Antonio as a serious threat to sign Chris Paul this summer, tweets Marc Stein of ESPN.com. “Mutual interest” between Paul and the Spurs was suggested earlier this week by ESPN’s Zach Lowe, and L.A. officials see that as a concern despite San Antonio’s lack of cap space. Paul is expected to use an early-termination option and hit the free agent market. He is eligible for a five-year deal worth about $205MM from the Clippers and four years at roughly $152MM from anyone else. The Spurs only have about $10MM in cap room right now, with Dewayne Dedmon ($3MM) and David Lee ($1.6MM) both owning player options.
Hoops Links Vol. 6: Coleman Flashbacks, Biedrins Flashbacks, More
Welcome back to Hoops Links. Here we round up some of our favorite blog content that we come across over the course of the week. As always, we’d like to encourage writers to send us their best stuff for possible inclusion in future editions. Remember, what we’re looking for is unique, entertaining material that showcases why the internet is so gosh darn fun.
Send your best pieces to HoopsRumorsTips@Sports.ws or simply yell at me on Twitter (@AustinKent). Similarly, you can flag down any Hoops Rumors staffer at a grocery store and immediately hit them up with a choreographed dance routine explaining why your Jared Dudley hot take deserves top recognition in next week’s link dump.
Note: We typically publish Hoops Links on Thursday, but next week’s edition will be published on Friday (June 2). This will be a one-time change so that we can all observe Smush Parker‘s birthday privately with our families. We’ll slide back to Thursday for Hoops Links Vol. 7 on June 8.
The skill set that Ben Simmons has shown and the college numbers he produced during his one year at LSU are on par with some of the greatest of our generation. Much of his success, however, will come down to circumstance. Can the Sixers ensure that Simmons is in a situation to live up to his potential? Or, as Kwame Fisher-Jones of the 76er Files cautions, is he destined to underachieve like similarly versatile former Sixers forward Derrick Coleman?
Rating: 8 out of 10 NBA Jam Legends
Author: Kwame Fisher-Jones – @MrJonesNBA
Link: Ben Simmons’ potential
When LeBron James clanged a wide open dunk off the back of the rim in Game 4 of the Cavaliers–Celtics series, it robbed Kevin Love of a potential Assist of the Year. Not surprisingly, Carter Rodriguez of Fear the Sword has put the wheels in motion to file a formal petition to credit the big man with a much deserved assist anyway. What even is an assist when you think about it, man?
Rating: 9 out of 10 They Have A Points…
Author: Carter Rodriguez – @Carter_Shade
Link: Kevin Love’s outlet assist
In a world where nearly everything that takes place on a basketball court is trackable, the one thing that experts can’t seem to quantify is the impact team chemistry has on success. Brian Freeman of Blazer’s Edge explored the gaps in our understanding of team chemistry and suggests what might play a role in successful organizations capitalizing on it.
Rating: 8 out of 10 Intangibles
Author: Brian Freeman – @BrianFreeman_NBA
Link: Team chemistry in the NBA
The Warriors are the team NBA fans love to hate. Eric He of Blue Man Hoop, however, thinks that everybody needs to slow down, quit hating and actually appreciate the franchise. Given Golden State’s role in revolutionizing the league, he does have a point. Can’t we just be happy for the organization less than five years removed from giving Andris Biedrins a standing ovation for hitting a pair of free throws?
Rating: 8 out of 10 Monta Ellis Scooters
Author: Eric He – @EricHeSports
Link: Appreciating the Golden State Warriors
If Chris Bosh is able to fully part ways from the Heat and work his way back onto a basketball court, the Clippers should take a look at him as a possible reserve big man, Blake Harris of Clipperholics writes. Though his health will always be the most important consideration, Bosh could very well be a major steal for whichever club takes a chance on him.
Rating: 7 out of 10 Mo Speights Replacements
Author: Blake Harris – @BlakeHHarris
Link: Chris Bosh and the Clippers
There’s no denying that Kemba Walker has stepped up as the greatest New Generation Hornets player, but is he wasting his prime toiling away in mediocrity? For Swarm and Sting, Elijah Edwards discusses the idea of letting the point guard pursue success elsewhere if the franchise isn’t able to surround him with the help he needs to compete.
Rating: 7 out of 10 Miles Plumlee Contracts
Author: Elijah Edwards
Link: Trading Kemba Walker
When Gordon Hayward hits free agency this summer, he’ll do so as perhaps the most coveted, reasonably attainable option on the market. Evan Dyal of Sir Charles in Charge took a good long look at the five most likely destinations for Hayward, delving beyond simply the Celtics and Jazz, two clubs regarded as frontrunners for his services.
Rating: 8 out of 10 Professional StarCraft Circuits
Author: Evan Dyal – @EvanDyal
Link: Gordon Hayward free agency
After his first year at the helm, Hawks point guard Dennis Schroder showed that he’s a worthy starter with plenty of room to grow. Thomas Jenkins of Peachtree Hoops recently broke down what might be in store for the 23-year-old, suggesting that so long as Schroder continues to develop, the club’s future looks bright.
Rating: 8 out of 10 Blonde Patches
Author: Thomas Jenkins – @TJenkins122
Link: Dennis Schroder potential
Admit it, you knew that it wouldn’t be long before the thorough analysis would come regarding whether or not the Celtics truly need Isaiah Thomas. For Nylon Calculus, Ian Levy broke down the situation, including Boston’s improbable Game 3 victory and the squad’s all-around improvement on the defensive end of the ball when Thomas is sidelined. The C’s don’t need to oust Thomas any time soon but they could afford to spare him if the right opportunity arose.
Rating: 9 out of 10 Scatter Plots
Author: Ian Levy – @HickoryHigh
Link: The Celtics without Isaiah Thomas
Don’t expect the fourth pick in the NBA Draft to turn things around for the Suns, Valley of the Suns contributor Robert Neal writes. So how does the franchise, then, figure out where to go after a tanked season gone awry? Neal explores ways the Suns can tangibly improve their roster without relying on a rookie.
Rating: 7 out of 10 #FreeChriss Campaigns
Author: Robert Neal – @RobertN4110
Link: Phoenix Suns offseason
Photos courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.