Western Notes: Hill, Buycks, Wolves
Lakers coach Byron Scott believes Jordan Hill, who will enter the final year of his contract with the team next season, needs to change his offseason preparation to avoid crashing at the end of the season like he did this year, Mark Medina of the Los Angeles Daily News writes. Hill, 27, is averaging career-bests in points per game (11.9), rebounds per game (eight) and minutes played per game (26.8) in his sixth NBA season. But Hill’s statistics have declined since February and he has averaged only four PPG in April.
“I don’t know what he does in the summer time to get ready for the season,” Scott said. “But whatever it is, you have to up it. He’s got to up it. Then you have to look at what he’s eating and change eating habits as well. There’s a lot that goes into it when you’re trying to get ready for the NBA season.”
Here’s more from the Lakers and the Western Conference:
- Scott said he expects the Lakers to bring back Dwight Buycks for the team’s final two games, Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders tweets. Buycks’ 10-day deal expires after tonight’s game against the Mavericks. The team can keep Buycks for the rest of the season without waiving anyone, Pincus adds (on Twitter). Buycks has made seven of nine three-pointers in five games with the Lakers.
- The Timberwolves got a glimpse of how bright the future could be when rookies Zach LaVine and Andrew Wiggins each had big games Saturday as the dreadful season, from Minnesota’s perspective, comes to an end, Jerry Zgoda of the Star Tribune writes. LaVine had 37 points and nine rebounds, both career-bests, and Wiggins added a career-high nine assists in Saturday’s loss against the Warriors.
Pacific Notes: Lin, Black, Kings
Jeremy Lin‘s time with the Lakers may be just about done, writes Baxter Holmes of ESPN.com. Lin has missed two straight games with an aching left knee, and although he could return before this season is done, prospects don’t look good for next season. Neither Lin, who will be a free agent this summer, nor coach Byron Scott has publicly addressed the situation, but Scott said the guard had an “up and down” season. Lin, who made $14.9MM this year after being acquired from the Rockets in an offseason deal, has been a frequent target of criticism from Scott and teammate Kobe Bryant.
There’s more from the Pacific Division:
- The outlook is much different for Lakers rookie Tarik Black, according to Joey Ramirez of Lakers.com. Black, who was claimed off waivers from the Rockets earlier this season, leads all rookies in field goal percentage and is third in rebounds, and his future in Los Angeles seems bright. “This is probably the most growth I’ve had in a single season since I started playing basketball,” he said.
- After taking over as Kings coach in midseason, George Karl is looking forward to the offseason to begin putting his stamp on the team, according to Ailene Voisin of The Sacramento Bee. Although there was opposition to it from inside the organization, Karl’s hiring may have brought stability to an unsettled organization. “We have to forget about the blame game, about who is this, who is that, and figure out who we are and what we want to become,” Karl said. “We have a very, very important summer ahead of us.”
Pacific Rumors: Thornton, Lakers, Bogut
Marcus Thornton has not improved his free agent outlook since he was dealt to the Suns at the trade deadline, Paul Coro of The Arizona Republic reports. The Suns only acquired Thornton to facilitate the Isaiah Thomas trade to the Celtics, which allowed them to acquire the Cavaliers’ 2016 first-round pick in the multi-team deal, Coro explains. Thornton, who becomes an unrestricted free agent after the season, has only appeared in nine games since the deal and has been battling a left Achilles’ tendon injury, Coro adds. That has rendered Thornton as a non-rotation player on a non-playoff team, which is not the best way to head into the free agent market, Coro points out.
In other news around the Pacific Division:
- Wesley Matthews, Omer Asik and Khris Middleton are some of the free agents that the Lakers should consider pursuing this summer, Jesse Blancarte of Basketball Insiders opines. The Lakers should target free agents like Matthews and Asik that still have several productive years remaining and could be signed at a reasonable price, as well as budding talents like Middleton, Blancarte continues. What the Lakers should avoid is appeasing Kobe Bryant by signing quick-fix, high-priced free agents like Rajon Rondo, since the Lakers are a long way from contention, Blancarte adds. The club also needs to re-think its offensive strategy and embrace the 3-point shot by bringing in some long-range shooters that can space the floor, Blancarte argues.
- Andrew Bogut‘s gamble when he signed an incentive-laden, three-year extension prior to last season is paying off, Antonio Gonzalez of the Associated Press writes. The Warriors center will play his 65th game of the season Saturday night, fulfilling one of the requirements for a potential bonus. Bogut’s deal calls for him to earn a 15% bonus — or approximately $1.93MM this year — any season he plays at least 65 games and is named to the NBA’s First or Second All-Defensive Team, Gonzalez continues. Bogut leads the league in defensive plus-minus rating, Gonzalez adds.
- James Michael McAdoo was recalled by the Warriors on Saturday after he helped the D-League’s Santa Cruz Warriors win a playoff series over the Oklahoma City Blue, the team’s website reports. McAdoo has appeared in 14 games with Golden State this season, averaging 3.9 points and 2.6 rebounds in 8.6 minutes. He had 25 points and 13 rebounds in Santa Cruz’s clinching win over the Blue on Friday.
Southeast Notes: Harris, Sefolosha, Dragic
Tobias Harris says he and his representatives haven’t spoken about the idea of accepting a qualifying offer worth nearly $4.434MM this summer, as the soon-to-be restricted free agent tells Josh Robbins of the Orlando Sentinel. Rumors linking him to the Knicks have been somewhat distracting, Harris also tells Robbins, but the combo forward insists he hasn’t thought much about his free agency and points out that he’s not in control of his next NBA destination, since the Magic can match offers. Just how willing Orlando will be to use its right of first refusal remains to be seen, particularly given the depth around the league at Harris’ primary position of small forward and the presence of fellow combo forward Aaron Gordon on the Magic’s roster, Robbins writes. Here’s more from around the Southeast Division:
- The Hawks and the players union are separately scrutinizing the circumstances surrounding Thabo Sefolosha‘s arrest after he remained in custody for several hours without treatment for the broken fibula he suffered in the incident, reports Kevin Arnovitz of ESPN.com. The injury has ended the season for the swingman.
- Goran Dragic rated Miami his favorite American city in an interview with Jason Lieser of the Palm Beach Post. The Heat guard, who plans to hit free agency this summer, ranks non-NBA city San Diego No. 2, followed by New York, San Francisco and Phoenix. Dragic reportedly made the Knicks, Lakers and Heat his favored destinations amid a trade request before the deadline, and Dragic has Los Angeles as an honorable mention on his top cities list.
- A shakeup of Erik Spoelstra‘s Heat coaching staff this coming offseason is a distinct possibility, as Ira Winderman of the Sun Sentinel speculates in his mailbag column.
Pacific Notes: Bogut, Green, Suns, Lakers
Trading for Andrew Bogut in 2012 was a turning point for the Warriors, who clinched the league’s best record Thursday, writes USA Today’s Sam Amick. Bogut, who signed a rare veteran extension in 2013, credits the owners and GM Bob Myers for reviving a team that was “in shambles” upon his arrival. That certainly makes it easier to stomach paying the 15% bonus that Bogut appears poised to trigger. There’s more on the Warriors amid the latest from the Pacific Division:
- It’s been a “fitful” season for the Suns, as president of basketball operations Lon Babby puts it, and he acknowledges that the team’s deadline trades were made with the long term in mind and compromised the team this season, as Paul Coro of the Arizona Republic details. Babby also said he continues to support GM Ryan McDonough and coach Jeff Hornacek.
- Myers makes it clear in a long piece from Grantland’s Jonathan Abrams that the Warriors are thinking of soon-to-be restricted free agent Draymond Green as a part of the team beyond the end of his contract this summer. “We really like him,” Myers said. “We believe he’s a core member of our team and we believe he’s a big part of our future.”
- Management, and not Kobe Bryant, is to blame for the inability of the Lakers to attract marquee free agents the past two summers, as Matt Barnes opines to Chris Ballard of SI.com. Barnes spent 2010/11 and 2011/12 with the Lakers before moving on to the Clippers. A report in October cited agents and team sources who said Bryant was driving free agents away from the Lakers.
Pacific Notes: Green, Bogut, Scott
Agent Kevin Bradbury is upset with Suns coach Jeff Hornacek‘s criticism of client and soon-to-be free agent Gerald Green, as Bradbury makes clear in his comments to Sean Deveney of The Sporting News. Hornacek brought up Green’s defense as one reason why the swingman hasn’t seen as much playing time as he’d like, as Paul Coro of the Arizona Republic relayed earlier this week, and that in particular drew Bradbury’s ire.
“It’s completely unfair to misrepresent Gerald and his game like this,” Bradbury said. “You’re talking about a player that wants to win at any cost and is a tremendous locker guy and teammate. I don’t see the benefit for the coach to go about things this way.”
Bradbury told Deveney that opposing teams were willing to give up assets in significant trade offers for Green at the deadline, only to have the Suns turn them down. Green, who hits free agency this summer, said that in spite of his lack of minutes that he wants to re-sign with Phoenix and retire as a Sun, though he’s not sure if Phoenix feels the same way, as Coro relays. Here’s more from the Pacific Division:
- Andrew Bogut is closing in on a key milestone tied to a bonus clause in his deal, as Tim Kawakami of The Bay Area News Group points out. He played his 63rd game of the season Tuesday, so if he plays in two of the Warriors‘ last four regular season contests, he’ll hit the first criteria for triggering the bonus. He’d need to either win Defensive Player of the Year or make one of the league’s two All-Defensive teams for the bonus to kick in, but Bogut will almost certainly earn an All-Defensive nod, Kawakami writes.
- The prospect of Bogut triggering the bonus, worth 15% of his $12.973MM salary this season, was one reason why the Warriors didn’t give serious thought to adding a veteran the past few months, according to Kawakami. Golden State is well shy of the tax threshold for this season. Bogut’s cap figure for 2015/16 will be higher if he earns the bonus this year, but it won’t count toward the team’s salary for tax purposes next year unless he again hits the same benchmarks next season.
- Lakers coach Byron Scott on Wednesday tempered his earlier remark that he “wouldn’t want to be in a fox hole with” many of his players, which seemed to indicate a desire for an offseason overhaul. Scott said that he made that comment out of frustration and that he’s been pleased with the effort of his players for most of the year, as Baxter Holmes of ESPNLosAngeles.com details.
Western Notes: Ginobili, Lakers, Green
Manu Ginobili says he plans to retire either this coming offseason or next, as he tells Diego Morini of Argentina’s La Nacion (translation via HoopsHype). Ginobili, 37, has spent his entire 13-year NBA career with the Spurs, who he joined after playing four years in Italy and three years in his native Argentina. His contract expires at the end of the season.
“Every retired [player] tells me, ‘Enjoy it, play one more year.’ And, well, I’ve been doing this for 19 years and if it’s not at the end of the season, it will be the following year,” Ginobili said. “Then it’s over and it won’t come back.”
There’s more from the Western Conference:
- Lakers coach Byron Scott has a good idea which of his players are still fighting this season and which he wouldn’t like to see return to Los Angeles next season, Broderick Turner of The Los Angeles Times writes. “I got a sense of a whole lot of them I wouldn’t want to be in a fox hole with,” Scott said. “I think they’d end up shooting me in the back. So I’ve got a pretty good sense of the guys that I think are going to be around, that we will build around, build together in this process and go through it.“
- Nick Young has taken Scott’s comments, which he believes were partly directed at him, with a grain of salt, Baxter Holmes of ESPNLosAngeles.com relays. “Nah,” Young said of buying into Scott’s coaching advice to become a more complete player. “I don’t know. I feel like it’s just a target toward me. It’s a little unfair. But it’s cool.“
- Gerald Green, who will be an unrestricted free agent after the season, said he is frustrated with his lack of playing time since the end of January, Paul Coro of The Arizona Republic writes. The Suns reportedly made Green available before the deadline, and the Clippers were among teams that expressed interest. Since Green was benched on January 30th, the Suns are 11-18 with Green appearing in 22 of those games and averaging 14.7 minutes in them, Coro notes.
Will Joseph contributed to this post.
Lowe’s Latest: Lopez, Biyombo, Davis
Most executives around the league expect Brook Lopez to turn down his player option for next season, worth more than $16.744MM, writes Grantland’s Zach Lowe. That’s on the heels of his surge over the past month, as he averaged 20.9 points and 9.1 rebounds per game in March, and he’s upped those numbers to 22.8 PPG and 9.8 RPG so far in April. Lowe wrote in December that most execs thought Lopez would pick up the option, so it seems his hot streak has changed thinking around the league. Still, Bleacher Report’s Howard Beck wrote just a week after Lowe’s report in December that he had heard from many executives who expected even then that Lopez would opt out. The Nets center said a few weeks ago that he hadn’t thought about what to do with the option, so there’s some mystery here. Lowe has more rumors from his latest column, which focuses on players with decent chances of becoming this year’s version of what DeMarre Carroll was in 2013, when he signed a two-year, $5MM pact that wound up a bargain deal for the Hawks.
- Bismack Biyombo will almost certainly see the value of his qualifying offer from the Hornets shrink from more than $5.194MM to nearly $4.046MM thanks to the starter criteria that he has virtually no chance of meeting. Executives are “nearly unanimous” that he wouldn’t command annual salaries of that nearly $5.2MM amount in free agency this summer, according to Lowe, though while most people believe a team could snag him for about $4MM a year, no one is sure about that, Lowe adds.
- Ed Davis rejected a multiyear contract offer from the Grizzlies this past summer, several league sources tell Lowe. He instead signed with the Lakers on a two-year deal for the minimum salary with a player option that he’s said he plans to decline in search of a long-term deal this summer. Davis turned down a rookie scale extension in the fall of 2013 that would have given him annual salaries of $5-6MM beginning this season, as Ronald Tillery of The Commercial Appeal reported this past October.
- Derrick Williams doesn’t intrigue front offices as much as he did a year ago, Lowe writes. He, too, is in line for a reduced qualifying offer from the Kings for failing to meet the starter criteria.
- Lowe identifies the Spurs as a team to watch on Mirza Teletovic, though it’s unclear if that’s just speculation. The Nets can match offers if they extend a qualifying offer of more than $4.21MM.
Protected 2015 Second-Rounders Up For Grabs
The regular season ends a week from Wednesday, and by now most of the playoff spots and non-lottery draft order have been decided. A team’s place in the draft order can mean a lot when there are protections attached to a pick that’s been sent out in a trade. There are two first-round picks that could change hands or stay put based on the final days of the regular season, as we chronicled last week, and there are also second-round picks still up in the air. The protection clauses attached to some of them are complex, so we’ll dive in and analyze each of the three cases individually:
- The Clippers owe their second-round pick to the Lakers if it falls from No. 51 through 55 and the Nuggets if it’s 56th through 60th. The Clips can’t finish with a record outside of the top 10 in the league, which they’d need to do to keep the pick. Still, whether it goes to the Lakers or the Nuggets is anybody’s guess. It would go to the Nuggets as it stands, but the Clippers are only a half-game better than the Spurs, with the Blazers and Cavs right behind them. So if any of those teams passes the Clippers, the pick goes to the Lakers.
- The Wizards owe their pick to the Celtics, but only if it falls from No. 50 to No. 60. Washington would pick 49th if the season ended today, but the Raptors are only one game better, and the Mavericks and Bulls are tied at one game above Toronto. So, while the Wizards could improve their playoff seeding, it could cost them their second-rounder. Washington’s obligation to the Celtics would end if the pick doesn’t convey this year, so it all comes down to the final games of the season.
- The Trail Blazers and Bulls will be giving up their second-rounders this year, but the teams that get those respective picks could switch places. The Magic get whichever pick is better, and the Cavaliers get the other one. Chances are that Chicago’s pick will be going to Orlando and Portland’s to Cleveland, since the Blazers have a four and a half game lead on Chicago. Still, the Bulls aren’t mathematically eliminated from passing the Blazers just yet.
RealGM was used in the creation of this post.
Western Notes: Young, Green, Clarkson
The Lakers committed more money to Nick Young than to any other free agent last summer, but coach Byron Scott is threatening to reduce Young’s minutes if the team makes a more significant foray into free agency this year, as Mark Medina and Robert Morales of the Los Angeles Daily News write. Scott wants to see Young become less of a gunner when he returns from injury next season, but the swingman, who signed a four-year deal worth more than $21.326MM, feels as though Scott unfairly targets him for criticism. While we wait to see how that dynamic plays out, there’s more on the Lakers amid the latest from the Western Conference:
- Rookie Erick Green hasn’t seen much playing time for the Nuggets this season, and he realizes he has to seize the opportunity when he does, as he tells Christopher Dempsey of The Denver Post. The former second-round pick saw a career high of just 25 minutes Saturday, and his minimum salary for next season is non-guaranteed.
- That’s in stark contrast to Lakers rookie Jordan Clarkson, a fellow former second-rounder who’ll remain with the Lakers for next season, as coach Scott said directly on Saturday, tweets Mike Trudell of Lakers.com. Clarkson, who’s excelled as he’s made 33 starts, also has a non-guaranteed minimum salary for 2015/16.
- The Jazz have recalled Grant Jerrett from the D-League, the team announced. The power forward hasn’t put up impressive numbers while on assignment, averaging 13.5 points and 6.8 rebounds in 28.4 minutes per game across 19 appearances for both the Thunder and Jazz affiliates this season. He’s knocked down 41.2% of his three-pointers on his frequent D-League trips this year, but he’s only managed to make it into six NBA games.