Hawks, Pelicans To Work Out Sean Kilpatrick
Former Timberwolves shooting guard Sean Kilpatrick will be a participant in workouts that the Hawks and Pelicans are set to conduct soon, reports Darren Wolfson of 1500 ESPN Twin Cities (Twitter link). The Lakers and Spurs previously worked him out, as Wolfson notes. The 25-year-old averaged 5.5 points in 17.9 minutes per game across four appearances while on a 10-day contract with Minnesota this past season.
Geography had a significant influence in on Minnesota’s decision to sign the former University of Cincinnati standout, since he was close to New York, where the Wolves were set to play the Knicks without the minimum eight healthy players. Still, he saw plenty of playing time during the 10-day stint and seems to be attracting no shortage of attention from other NBA clubs now. He was on the Bucks summer league squad last month and spent time with the D-League affiliates of the Warriors and Sixers this past season.
The Lakers and Hawks have the $2.814MM room exception to spend, while the Pelicans have their $2.139MM biannual exception and the Spurs are limited to paying no more than the minimum. An all-out bidding war for Kilpatrick seems unlikely, though it wouldn’t be surprising if the interest from multiple teams results in a guaranteed deal of some kind, though that’s just my speculation.
Which team do you think would make the most sense for Kilpatrick? Leave a comment to tell us.
And-Ones: Ross, Bucks, Max Salaries
The Raptors, who on Thursday signed Jonas Valanciunas to a four-year, $64MM extension, have had talks with representatives for Terrence Ross about an extension of his own, GM Masai Ujiri said, according to Ryan Wolstat of the Toronto Sun (Twitter link). Wolstat reported last month that the team would seek extensions for both, though it’s clear that Valanciunas was the first priority. Still, the Raptors and the Aaron Mintz client have plenty of time in advance of the deadline, which would be November 2nd this year instead of the traditional October 31st, since Halloween falls on a Saturday. See more from around the NBA:
- The Bucks see a half-dozen of their players as long-term building blocks, and while that’s a broader view of a nucleus than many teams take, it’s one that can give all six the feeling that the team values them, as Frank Madden of SB Nation’s Brew Hoop examines. “We’re trying to build around some kind of consistency with the nucleus of Michael Carter-Williams, Khris Middleton, Jabari Parker, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Greg Monroe and John Henson,” GM John Hammond said on The Baseline with Warren Shaw and Cal Lee (audio link), as Madden transcribes. “Those six guys are the young core that we look and say that’s kind of the future of this organization, and that’s not discounting anyone else. Other players have to step [up] and become a part of that group with us. But those guys are the group we hope we can build some kind of continuity with.”
- John Wall pointed earlier this summer to Reggie Jackson‘s new five-year, $80MM contract with the Pistons as proof that the Wizards didn’t pay too much when they inked Wall to a deal for a similar amount in 2013, and Wall said recently to Ken Berger of CBSSports.com that some signings are out of line. “But I know when I got my $80MM, they said I didn’t deserve it. Now guys are getting it and they’re not saying anything about it,” Wall said in part. “I’m never knocking those guys because they’re doing what they’re supposed to do. You’re supposed to get that money and take care of your family and get better. I just [criticized max deals] because they made a big deal about me getting $80MM, and now people are getting $80MM, $95MM and they don’t deserve it.”
- Blake Griffin was the only one of the five stars Berger spoke to for his piece who lent much support to the idea of shortening the regular season. “Money is an object, though,” said Griffin’s teammate Chris Paul, who serves as president of the players association. “When we were kids playing AAU, we’d play five games in a day and wouldn’t think twice about it. I don’t know what the right number is. We’ve been playing 82 for a while though, huh? As far as I can remember. That’d be tough [to change].”
Central Notes: Thompson, Landry, Kukoc
Negotiations between the Cavaliers and Tristan Thompson aren’t as contentious as they may seem, as Steve Kyler of Basketball Insiders writes in his NBA AM piece. It simply comes down to Thompson’s desire for a deal approaching the max and the Cavs’ desire to curb their tax bill, as Kyler explains. Indeed, the sides aren’t as far apart financially as it seems, a league source said to Chris Sheridan of SheridanHoops last week, as Michael Scotto of SheridanHoops relays. Thompson doesn’t appear eager to take the team’s qualifying offer and push the possibility of a larger payday back to next year, but insurance policies are available that Thompson could buy if he fears he wouldn’t get the kind of deal he’d be seeking in 2016, Kyler points out. See more from around the Central Division:
- Marcus Landry‘s new contract with the Bucks is for one year at the minimum salary and is non-guaranteed, reports Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders (Twitter link). It has limited injury protection, Pincus adds, so that would indicate that it’s an Exhibit 9 contract that would hold Milwaukee responsible for no more than $6K should Landry get hurt while playing for the team. “It’s not impossible to make [the regular season roster],’’ Landry told Gery Woelfel of The Journal Times. “Guys get traded, teams make moves. I just have to hold up my end of the deal. I’m what they like to call a gym rat and I’m going to try to be in their gym as much as I can though training camp. I’m excited for this opportunity, very excited.’’
- Playing for the Bucks is a “dream come true” for Landry, as the Milwaukee native also told Woelfel for the same piece. Landry made it clear to agent Keith Kreiter that he he wanted to play for his hometown team, and Kreiter worked with the Bucks over several weeks to engineer a deal, Woelfel writes.
- The Bulls have hired Toni Kukoc as a special adviser to president and COO Michael Reinsdorf, the team announced. Kukoc’s duties will be wide-ranging and include “relating to the international players on our team.” The native of Croatia joins former teammate Scottie Pippen, who holds the same title for the organization.
Column: Do Bucks Stop Here? Doesn’t Seem Like It
Bucks Sign Marcus Landry
3:27pm: The signing is official, the team announced.
3:17pm: The Bucks have decided to sign former University of Wisconsin power forward Marcus Landry, sources tell Michael Scotto of SheridanHoops (Twitter link). The move had been expected, according to Gery Woelfel of The Journal Times, who reported this morning that the one-year NBA veteran was set to work out for Milwaukee today. That audition apparently went well, as Scotto indicates that Landry has put pen to paper, though the team has yet to make a formal announcement. It’s unclear just what sort of terms are involved in the pact, though with the Bucks already carrying 15 guaranteed deals, it’s likely a minimum salary deal with a partial guarantee, at best.
It’ll be the fifth time an NBA team will have brought Landry to training camp, though he only made the regular season roster once, on his first try in 2009. The Knicks had him that year and he appeared in 17 games, averaging 2.6 points in 6.4 minutes per contest, but they shipped him to the Celtics at the deadline in a trade involving Nate Robinson. The C’s released Landry after he made just one appearance for them, and while he’s signed with the Kings, Suns and Lakers since then, he’s yet to see another opening night.
The Milwaukee native has made his mark in Spain and in the D-League as a three-point sharpshooter, and that’s a skill that the Bucks could use. Damien Inglis and Johnny O’Bryant have less than $1MM coming their way this year despite fully guaranteed salaries, so perhaps they’d be the most vulnerable to be cut if Landry proves worthy of sticking for the regular season, though that’s just my speculation based on the costs involved. The addition of Landry seemingly makes it tougher to envision Jorge Gutierrez remaining with the team after camp, since his deal is non-guaranteed.
If they keep Landry, which of the Bucks do you think should go? Leave a comment to tell us.
Bucks Likely To Sign Marcus Landry After Workout
The Bucks will work out former University of Wisconsin power forward Marcus Landry today and are expected to sign him, tweets Gery Woelfel of The Journal Times. Presumably, a deal is contingent on the audition going well, but it appears Milwaukee is already leaning toward bringing the one-year NBA veteran onto the roster. Milwaukee has 15 players with fully guaranteed deals, so it would seem that Landry would face an uphill climb to stick on the roster past the preseason if he indeed signs with the team.
Landry went undrafted in 2009 and saw his lone NBA regular season action in 2009/10 with the Knicks and Celtics. He last had a brush with the league in 2013, when the Lakers signed him for the preseason after he played on their summer league team. He’s been a mainstay in Spain over the past few seasons, having played last year for CAI Zaragoza, for whom he averaged 10.1 points and 3.4 rebounds in 23.6 minutes per game. He’s also seen action in the D-League and in China.
The native of Milwaukee has made it clear that he’s always wanted to play for the Bucks, Woelfel points out (on Twitter). The team wouldn’t appear to be bringing him aboard for developmental purposes, since he turns 30 in November and because the Bucks don’t have a one-to-one D-League affiliate, so I’d speculate that Milwaukee sees him as capable of beating out someone with a guaranteed deal and making the opening night roster. At 6’8″, he’s a proficient outside shooter, having made 36.8% of his three-pointers last season in Spain and 40.5% of his attempts from behind the arc over 98 career D-League games, and that would fill a need for a Milwaukee team that traded Ersan Ilyasova to the Pistons in June.
Do you think that Landry would have a realistic chance of making the regular season roster for the Bucks this year? Leave a comment to let us know.
And-Ones: Bucks, Oden, McRoberts, Nets
A new arena for the Bucks moved one step closer to reality today, when Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker signed a bill that calls for $250MM of public financing, write Mary Spicuzza And Jason Stein of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Walker has long backed the arena project and said when the bill emerged from the state legislature late last month that he’d sign it. The team must still arrange for a land sale with Milwaukee County and receive approval for construction from the Milwaukee Common Council, Spicuzza and Stein note, but Bucks executives have said that can take place between now and the fall. Groundbreaking must take place soon for the team to stay on schedule to meet a league-imposed deadline, lest the league seize the franchise from its owners and move it elsewhere, but today’s news indicates that the Bucks remain on track to stay in Milwaukee. Here’s more from around the league:
- Former No. 1 overall pick Greg Oden will take part in a weeklong workout later this month for Jiangsu Kentier of the Chinese Basketball Association, the Altius Culture agency tweets. It’ll constitute an audition for the team, the agency indicates. He reportedly drew eyes from the Mavs, Hornets and Grizzlies early in the summer.
- Josh McRoberts had a frustrating, injury-riddled year for the Heat last season after his breakout campaign for Charlotte in 2013/14, and the subtraction of his nearly $5.544MM salary would go a long way toward preventing the Heat from paying repeater tax penalties this season. Still, he’s eager to return to playing in Miami, as he tells Kyle Neddenriep of his hometown Indianapolis Star. “I feel confident and comfortable going back there,” McRoberts said. “I kind of saw how things were last year. I’m excited to be back and part of the team because when you’re hurt, you are kind of isolated on your own. You’re not practicing and playing in games with them every day. I’ve worked with the coaches throughout the summer different times and feel good about the direction we’re headed.”
- Nets majority owner Mikhail Prokhorov agreed to push back today’s deadline for minority owner Bruce Ratner to pay back his company’s debts to Prokhorov’s company, reports Scott Soshnick of Bloomberg.com (Twitter links). Ratner’s group now has until September 8th to pay or let their 20% share become 8%, with Prokhorov’s group taking over the other 12%.
Extension Candidate: John Henson
The Bucks trudged through the muck of a 15-win season in 2013/14, and they watched the career of Larry Sanders, the breakout star of the 2013 playoff team, come apart at the seams. So, they deserve tons of credit for their fast ascent over the past 12 months, snagging the sixth seed in the Eastern Conference this past season and landing Greg Monroe, No. 7 on the June Hoops Rumors Free Agent Power Rankings. John Henson, Milwaukee’s lottery pick from 2012, has been there for all of it, and it seems like both sides want to continue their partnership for years to come, as they’re reportedly on track for a rookie scale extension before the October 31st deadline.
Still, Henson hasn’t exactly seemed the most likely candidate to become a franchise cornerstone. He’s never started more than 23 games in a season, and last year, he averaged just 18.3 minutes per game. Monroe’s presence makes it difficult to envision his role expanding, unless Milwaukee wants to play two traditional big men, the sort of arrangement that appeared to hasten Monroe’s departure from the Pistons. Besides, Jabari Parker looks like the team’s future at power forward, particularly with Giannis Antetokounmpo and Khris Middleton commanding spots on the wing. Henson may well start early in the season if Parker isn’t healthy, but the No. 2 overall pick will almost certainly reclaim his job before long.
Henson seems destined to become, at best, a sixth man if the Bucks keep their existing core together. Still, Milwaukee apparently sees him as a key part of that group, even though he seemed to be available, if only for a truly attractive return, at the trade deadline. Grantland’s Zach Lowe speculated last month that Henson would end up with salaries of $10MM or more, money that’s not altogether unwarranted for a 24-year-old center with a lottery pedigree who’s indeed been productive in his limited time on the floor. The perplexing part is that it’s the Bucks who appear ready to pay him.
The former 14th overall pick’s field goal percentage has risen each of the past two years from a subpar 48.6% as a rookie. He shot 56.6% this past season, a year in which he attempted a far greater percentage of his shots from 3 feet and in, according to Basketball-Reference data. Henson’s PER has held steady, and his 18.0 figure from 2014/15 matches his career mark. He’s a strong defender who did just fine inheriting the role of rim protector from Sanders, as he averaged an impressive 2.0 blocks per game in spite of his short minutes last season. Indeed, Basketball-Reference’s Defensive Box Plus Minus shows he made quite a leap this past season, though ESPN’s Defensive Real Plus Minus wasn’t quite as kind, ranking him as only the 31st-best center in that category. Still, the Bucks were a better defensive team with Henson on the floor by a measure of 2.5 points per 100 possessions, as NBA.com shows. Yet perhaps most noteworthy among the NBA.com data is that the Bucks were stronger overall when Henson wasn’t playing because of the disparity on offense. Milwaukee scored 102.4 points per 100 possessions when Henson sat and just 96.2 when he hit the court.
That’s a noisy stat, since it doesn’t account for the other personnel on the floor. Still, it highlights the notion that it would be a risky proposition to commit eight-figure salaries to a player who’s averaged only 8.1 points per game for his career.
The Bucks nonetheless have money to burn. They have only about $36MM committed for 2016/17, though that doesn’t include nearly $13.3MM in rookie scale team options for Parker and others that Milwaukee seems likely to exercise. Still, $49.3MM against a projected $89MM salary cap leaves plenty of flexibility, and the Bucks have to spend at least 90% of the salary cap anyway. Committing part of that money to an efficient, shot-blocking center who’s on the upswing probably wouldn’t constitute the worst move a team has ever made.
Most years, the smart play for the Bucks would entail waiting another year to see how they would find time and space for Henson amid the presence of Monroe, and whether Henson would take another step forward in his development. Next summer’s rising cap and relatively thin crop of 2016 free agents, after a few stars on the top, seems to be driving Milwaukee to the bargaining table now. The extension window provides for exclusive negotiating, so another team with even more cap space to play with, one that could offer Henson a starting job, can’t jump in with an eye-popping number and force the Bucks to match a player-friendly offer sheet, as might be the case in restricted free agency next summer.
The Jim Tanner client may jump at such an opportunity to cash in a year from now, but if the Bucks indeed come with an extension offer of $10MM or more per year, it would be exceedingly difficult for a player who didn’t see 20 minutes per game last season to pass that up. It’s somewhat reminiscent of the Alec Burks extension from last fall, though Burks had played 28.1 minutes per game the season before the Jazz bestowed a deal worth $42MM plus incentives over four years. Burks missed most of this past season with a shoulder injury, and it’s not a given that the Jazz would be so munificent if he were a restricted free agent this summer. An injury, and a team that performs well in his absence, just as the Jazz did without Burks down the stretch this year, might lead the Bucks to conclude that Henson is expendable.
So, I think the sides will indeed come to an extension, and while Lowe’s $10MM-plus prediction seems surprising on the surface, the circumstances suggest that it’s a reasonable expectation. At worst, a fairly priced Henson could become a valuable trade chip for the Bucks down the road.
Do you think the Bucks and Henson will do an extension, and if so, how much do you think he’ll get? Leave a comment to tell us.
Eastern Notes: Afflalo, Hilliard, Bucks
Arron Afflalo, who inked a two-year deal worth $16MM with the Knicks this offseason, told Ian Begley of ESPNNewYork.com (Twitter link) that Carmelo Anthony played a big part in his decision to come to New York. The guard indicated that he spoke with Anthony prior to and during the free agent signing period, and Afflalo believes that Melo was instrumental in his signing with the team, tweets Al Iannazzone of Newsday, and Afflalo also noted that the Knicks received a glowing recommendation regarding himself from Anthony, who was a former teammate of Afflalo’s in Denver, Stefan Bondy of The New York Daily News adds (on Twitter).
Here’s more from the Eastern Conference:
- Afflalo also indicated that he and Anthony are extremely optimistic about the Knicks‘ chances at making the playoffs this coming season, Begley adds (Twitter links).
- Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker plans to sign a bill next week that will provide $250MM in taxpayer money to pay for a new arena for the Bucks, the Associated Press reports. The public funding plan for the proposed arena had previously been approved by the Wisconsin State Assembly by a 52-34 vote.
- Darrun Hilliard, who the Pistons drafted with the No. 38 overall pick and officially signed to a three-year deal, will have the first year of his contract with Detroit fully guaranteed, and he received a $500k partial guarantee for the second year, Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders relays (via Twitter).
- Adonis Thomas received a partial guarantee of $60k for the 2015/16 campaign from the Pistons, Pincus tweets. The forward inked a training camp deal with the team in July.
Latest On Bucks, John Henson Extension Talks
AUGUST 4TH, 9:05am: The Bucks and Henson remain “on course” for an extension, several league sources tell Grantland’s Zach Lowe, who speculates that Henson will end up with eight-figure salaries.
JULY 12TH, 10:40pm: Contract extension talks are ongoing between the Bucks and center John Henson, and they appear to be gaining momentum, but no deal has been struck, Charles F. Gardner of The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports. ESPN.com’s Marc Stein also tweets that the two sides are indeed heading toward a deal.
Henson, as Gardner points out, will be in the final year of his rookie-scale deal in the 2015/16 season but can sign an extension prior to the end of October. Henson averaged seven points per game and 4.7 rebounds per game in 67 appearances. He is expected to have an expanded role as Greg Monroe‘s backup, Gardner adds.
The Bucks regard Henson as a key part of their core, Stein tweets. In February, however, the Bucks dangled the big man in the trade market with the hope of acquiring a top point guard.