Mobile Menu
HEADLINES

Thunder Rumors

Southeast Notes: Durant, Wittman, Dedmon, Payne

November 10th, 2015 at 11:34am CST by Chuck Myron

Kevin Durant didn’t give the media much to go on as he spoke this morning in Washington, where the Thunder will play the Wizards tonight, but he elaborated on the remark in which he called the attention he received the last time he played in Washington “disrespectful,” as The Oklahoman’s Anthony Slater relays. The Wizards showed a photo of Durant edited to depict him in a Wizards jersey on their scoreboard when the Thunder visited Washington last season, but Durant doesn’t pin any blame on the adulation from Washington fans.

“Nah, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with what the fans do,” Durant said. “Me, I’m just thinking as a player on the other side. Fans gonna do what they gonna do. I appreciate all the support going our way. But I’m just looking at it as an opposing player and if I was on that team and they came in here and did that, I wouldn’t like it. But the fans, hey, they support us. Throughout the whole league, they make it what it is.”

See more on the Wizards and other news from the Southeast Division:

Repost Share Send via email

Eastern Notes: Nets, Beal, Durant, Young

November 9th, 2015 at 3:29pm CST by Chuck Myron

Nets GM Billy King has made exploratory trade calls in response to the team’s 0-7 start, as he told reporters today, including Newsday’s Roderick Boone (Twitter link). It would be tough for Brooklyn to engineer a deal before December 15th, the date most of the players signed this past offseason become eligible to be traded, but the GM isn’t hiding from the blame even as he conceded a quick fix is unlikely, Mike Mazzeo of ESPNNewYork.com relays (ESPN Now link).

“I’m not sitting in here shirking accountability,” King said. “… It stops at me. I’m the GM. You make decisions along the way, and it’s my job now to figure it out and turn it around. … It doesn’t happen overnight. We knew when we traded [the first-round] picks and went down this road that if it doesn’t go well you have to dig yourself out of it, and that’s what we’re doing now.”

See more from the Eastern Conference:

  • Kevin Durant called the less-than-subtle affection that surrounded him during the Thunder’s game at the Wizards last season “disrespectful,” and Bradley Beal concurs, notes J. Michael of CSNMidAtlantic.com. “It is disrespectful because he plays for Oklahoma City,” Beal said. “He doesn’t play for Washington.” The Wizards have made no secret of their desire to attract Durant, a D.C. native, to Washington, and, for what it’s worth, Durant’s friend John Wall said he and the former MVP worked out together over the summer, notes Jorge Castillo of The Washington Post (on Twitter).
  • Beal echoed many of the sentiments of Joakim Noah in praising Billy Donovan, their former college coach who’s now the bench boss for the Thunder, as The Oklahoman’s Anthony Slater observes. “He’s always been like a second Dad to me,” Beal said of Donovan. “He’s a family first guy and granted me a lot of freedom. We talk a lot.” Noah and Beal are both poised for free agency in the summer, but the Wizards can match offers for Beal, who’s said he has no desire to leave Washington.
  • The Celtics have recalled James Young from the D-League, the team announced (Twitter link). Young’s assignment, already his second on the season, lasted just one day. Rookie Jordan Mickey, whom the team sent to Maine with Young, remains with the D-League club.
Repost Share Send via email

Northwest Notes: Durant, Barton, Ingles

November 9th, 2015 at 8:59am CST by Chuck Myron

Kevin Durant feels uncomfortable with the attention his upcoming free agency is generating, but the volume of the talk about it figures to go up a few notches in the next couple of days with the Thunder‘s annual visit to Washington for a game against the Wizards coming Tuesday, as USA Today’s Sam Amick examines. The former MVP wasn’t a fan of what the Wizards did in January the last time Oklahoma City went to Washington, when they showed a photo of Durant on scoreboard with a Wizards jersey edited onto his chest, among other homages to the D.C. native, as Michael Lee of Yahoo Sports relays:

“It was crazy. It was crazy,” Durant said. “It was kind of disrespectful in my opinion, because you’ve got a great team there already, that deserves your full, 100% support. And I wouldn’t like that if I was on that team. And I didn’t like that. But it comes with nowadays. It’s a part of it.

Durant said he’s learning to embrace the hoopla, as Amick notes, and that could be key as the season goes on and the noise grows louder. Here’s more from the Northwest Division:

  • Nuggets coach Michael Malone is a fan of Will Barton‘s versatility and motor, traits that are paying dividends for the team, observes Christopher Dempsey of The Denver Post. Barton re-signed with the Nuggets this summer on three-year, $10.6MM deal after originally having joined the team via the Arron Afflalo trade. “I’m starting fresh,” Barton said, according to Dempsey. “And they embraced me when I came here in the trade. So it was like I wanted to come back and get a full year under my belt and show the fans really, really what I can do. I think I teased them last year and it’s just a great feeling, a great vibe from the front office to the players. Everybody wanted me back. So it was just like ‘Let’s get it done.'”
  • Versatility is also helping Joe Ingles impress Jazz coach Quin Snyder, notes Jody Genessy of the Deseret News. Snyder wants him to improve defensively, but he’s otherwise pleased with the 28-year-old who re-signed on a two-year, $4.5MM deal in the offseason.
  • The Thunder carried an underlying anxiety during their three-game losing streak, with a new coach, new players and Durant’s free agency in their thoughts, but a win Sunday that highlighted their deep bench showed what can happen if Billy Donovan continues to experiment, observes Royce Young of ESPN.com.
Repost Share Send via email

Northwest Notes: Durant, Mudiay, Papanikolaou

November 6th, 2015 at 10:17pm CST by Eddie Scarito

Kevin Durant is well known around the league for his humility, which was certainly on display when he called teammate Russell Westbrook the best player on the Thunder, Anthony Slater of The Oklahoman relays. The Slim Reaper’s comments came mere months after he had proclaimed himself the “world’s best player,” Slater notes. When asked about Westbrook comment, Durant explained, “That’s how I feel. And he feels the same about me. We hold each other on that pedestal. That’s what makes us great teammates. I believe he’s the best player in the world, and he believes the same about me. Of course I’m gonna say that. There’s gonna be nights where I’m the best player on the team. There’s gonna be nights where he’s the best player on the team, when Dion Waiters is the best player on the team. That’s how I feel about my teammates. A lot of people may read into it but any given night it’s different.”

Here’s more from out of the Northwest:

  • Not surprisingly, Nuggets coach Michael Malone doesn’t have the doubts about Emmanuel Mudiay‘s ability that Byron Scott said he had going into the draft, when the Lakers picked D’Angelo Russell instead. Bill Oram of the Orange County Register has the details. “Unlike some others, we feel he is a point guard that can make good decisions and we feel he’s going to showcase that throughout the season,” Malone said.
  • Kostas Papanikolaou‘s two-year, minimum salary deal with the Nuggets includes a partial guarantee of $350K for the 2015/16 season, Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders relays (via Twitter).
  • Thunder big man Enes Kanter is fitting in well with the team and the community, a distinct difference from his time spent in Utah with the Jazz, Nick Gallo of NBA.com writes. “Enes has really embraced the community since he arrived in Oklahoma City last season,” said Christine Berney, the Thunder’s Vice President of Community Relations. “From planting trees in Myriad Gardens during NBA Green Week last spring to stopping by the OKC Turkish Festival this fall to visiting the kids and families at OU and Children’s Hospital after the tragedy at OSU’s Homecoming parade, Enes has been so generous with his time. He’s a great ambassador for the team, and a pleasure to work with.”

Chuck Myron contributed to this post.

Repost Share Send via email

Southeast Notes: Hawes, Lamb, Napier, Chalmers

November 5th, 2015 at 8:59am CST by Chuck Myron
Spencer Hawes feels refreshed in the wake of the offseason trade that took him from the Clippers to the Hornets, and he’s shown signs of bouncing back after a poor season last year, as Rick Bonnell of the Charlotte Observer examines. Hawes regrets his decision to sign with the Clippers in 2014.
“When you feel like you made the wrong decision, it adds a lot of pressure and it builds and builds. Good as it looked on paper, it just wasn’t the right fit for whatever reason. That’s what ate at me the most, that I felt like I kind of failed myself,” Hawes said to Bonnell. “Then when you get a clean cut, it allows you to start over and build a new foundation and get your career back on track. I feel like going out there, individually it took a turn and not for the better.”
The 27-year-old center is seeing about the same amount of playing time with the Hornets that he did in L.A., but he’s shooting 52.0% compared to last year’s 39.3%. See more on the Hornets and other Southeast Division insight:
Repost Share Send via email

And-Ones: LeBron, Noah, Lopez, Lamb, Ross

November 4th, 2015 at 12:46pm CST by Chuck Myron

The combination of his on-court brilliance and his influence over coaching matters and player personnel give LeBron James unprecedented power, and GM David Griffin concedes to Bleacher Report’s Ric Bucher that no one in the Cavs organization other than Dan Gilbert is as powerful as James is.

“He’s going to have the biggest voice, he’s the most important, accomplished player in the league and he’s an absolute basketball savant,” Griffin said. “He has the most thorough understanding of X’s and O’s on the floor and best mind for the game off the floor of any human being I’ve ever known. Coach, front-office person, anything. It would be crazy for me not to consult with him on what we want to do.”

Still, Griffin rejects the notion that James runs the franchise, and executives around the league tell Bucher that Griffin has earned the trust of the four-time MVP. While we wait for James to resume his quest for a fifth MVP tonight against the Knicks, see more from around the NBA:

  • Joakim Noah makes it clear that he reveres Thunder coach Billy Donovan, who was his coach at the University of Florida, but Noah, poised to hit free agency this summer, wouldn’t say in a Q&A with Nick Friedell of ESPNChicago.com whether he’s considered playing for Donovan again. Noah’s Bulls and Donovan’s Thunder play Thursday. “I just know I’m going to want to win really bad. Not because I’m playing against Coach Donovan; I love Coach Donovan, obviously,” Noah said to Friedell. “He’s like a father figure to me. Somebody that I’ve gone through a lot with. My time with him as a coach was the best time of my life, and it was a lot more than just basketball.”
  • Brook Lopez and his representatives sought to persuade the Nets to keep his name out of trade rumors as they negotiated the three-year max deal that Lopez ultimately signed with Brooklyn this past summer, as he tells Chris Mannix of SI.com. Reports indicated that the Wasserman Media Group client twice nearly ended up in deals that would have sent him to the Thunder last season. “We asked them to temper those ideas,” Lopez said. “We told them to pump the brakes a little.”
  • Jeremy Lamb will have to make major improvements to justify his three-year, $21MM extension, writes Ben Golliver of SI.com, who argues that Charlotte has too optimistic a view on the potential of the former lottery pick. The Terrence Ross deal meanwhile offers a decent chance for both him and the Raptors to extract value, Golliver opines as he hands out grades for both extensions.
Repost Share Send via email

NBA Teams Designate Affiliate Players

November 3rd, 2015 at 4:01pm CST by Chuck Myron

NBA teams cut as much as 25% of their rosters at the end of the preseason, but franchises that have D-League affiliates have a way to maintain ties to many of the players they release from the NBA roster. An NBA team can claim the D-League rights to up to four of the players it waives, as long as the players clear waivers, consent to join the D-League, and don’t already have their D-League rights owned by another team. These are known as affiliate players, as our Hoops Rumors Glossary entry details.

NBA teams allocated 46 affiliate players to the D-League at the beginning of the season last year, and this year, that number has risen to 56, according to the list the D-League announced today. These players are going directly to the D-League affiliate of the NBA team that cut them and weren’t eligible for the D-League draft that took place Saturday. Teams that designated fewer than the maximum four affiliate players retain the ability to snag the D-League rights of players they waive during the regular season, but for now, this is the complete list:

Boston Celtics (Maine Red Claws)

Cleveland Cavaliers (Canton Charge)

Dallas Mavericks (Texas Legends)

Detroit Pistons (Grand Rapids Drive)

Golden State Warriors (Santa Cruz Warriors)

Houston Rockets (Rio Grande Valley Vipers)

Indiana Pacers (Fort Wayne Mad Ants)

Los Angeles Lakers (Los Angeles D-Fenders)

Memphis Grizzlies (Iowa Energy)

Miami Heat (Sioux Falls Skyforce)

New York Knicks (Westchester Knicks)

Oklahoma City Thunder (Oklahoma City Blue)

Orlando Magic (Erie BayHawks)

Philadelphia 76ers (Delaware 87ers)

Phoenix Suns (Bakersfield Jam)

Sacramento Kings (Reno Bighorns)

San Antonio Spurs (Austin Spurs)

Toronto Raptors (Raptors 905)

Utah Jazz (Idaho Stampede)

Also, several players who were on NBA preseason rosters are on D-League rosters through means other than the affiliate player rule. Most of them played under D-League contracts at some point within the last two years, meaning their D-League teams have returning player rights to them. Others entered through last weekend’s D-League draft, while others saw their D-League rights conveyed via trade. Most of these players aren’t with the D-League affiliate of the NBA team they were with last month, with a few exceptions.

Roster information from Adam Johnson of D-League Digest, Chris Reichert of Upside & Motor and freelancer and Hoops Rumors contributor Mark Porcaro was used in the creation of this post.

Repost Share Send via email

Western Extension Notes: Waiters, Ezeli, Leonard

November 3rd, 2015 at 10:58am CST by Chuck Myron

Thunder GM Sam Presti cited the rising salary cap and “the potential for further changes to the cap system itself as a whole prior to the summer” as reasons why he, Dion Waiters and Waiters’ representatives agreed to table contract talks until July, notes Royce Young of ESPN.com. Still, mutual interest exists, Presti insists.

“Dion has made it clear that he feels he has found a basketball home in Oklahoma City and is committed to being a part of the culture that exists, and the team sees him as someone who has his best basketball in front of him and has the potential to be a contributor for years to come with more time to develop in our program,” Presti said in the statement he issued to media.

The deal that Waiters, a Landmark Sports Agency client, passed up from the Thunder was team-friendly, and his camp hopes the projected surge in the salary cap bears an improved market for him, according to Steve Kyler of Basketball Insiders. See more on the aftermath of Monday’s extension deadline around the Western Conference:

  • The Warriors and Festus Ezeli were close to a deal on an extension, but his agent talked him out of signing what some called a team-friendly deal, sources tell Kyler for the same piece. Ezeli is a client of agent Bill Duffy.
  • Meyers Leonard declined a “considerable” offer from the Trail Blazers when he and the team failed to reach an agreement before Monday’s extension deadline, a source tells Jason Quick of CSNNW.com. Still, Leonard, who said he’s betting on himself, would prefer to re-sign with the team in restricted free agency next summer, as Casey Holdahl of Blazers.com relays. “I like Portland a lot, I love this team, I love the city,” Leonard said in part. “So hopefully after this year we’ll get something done, because I truly believe that we have a good core group of guys. I came in with Damian [Lillard], CJ [McCollum] is just a year behind us, all the other guys that [president of basketball operations] Neil [Olshey] has brought in. I feel like we’re just going to keep going up, and that’s a good thing.”
  • Five of the seven players who signed rookie scale extensions this year were in the Eastern Conference, but the two most lucrative deals of the bunch went to Western Conference representatives, as our extensions recap shows.
Repost Share Send via email

Extension Off Table For Thunder, Dion Waiters

November 2nd, 2015 at 11:02am CST by Chuck Myron

The Thunder and Dion Waiters have decided against signing a rookie scale extension before tonight’s 11pm Central deadline, a source tells TNT’s David Aldridge (Twitter link). That means Waiters is set to become a restricted free agent in July. Marc Stein of ESPN.com reported late Sunday that the sides were continuing talks, but it appears they’ve broken them off. The Landmark Sports Agency client was enthusiastic about reaching an extension as the Thunder actively explored the idea last month, as Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo Sports heard a few weeks ago.

Oklahoma City likes to reward players who want to be there and the team is more concerned with building Kevin Durant a stable supporting cast for the long-term than making too many commitments to non-stars in the event that he bolts in free agency, as Royce Young of ESPN.com recently explained. GM Sam Presti said in September that only slight adjustments were necessary for Waiters to make a significant impact. That seemed to make the case why the Thunder would have interest in an extension, but it nonetheless appears as though it wasn’t compelling enough for the sides to come to terms.

The team was open to the idea of an extension over the summer, but only if he would concede to a discount, Steve Kyler of Basketball Insiders reported. It’s unclear just how much of a discount would have been required, but the value of the 23-year-old had seemingly plummeted last season as he failed to reach either 40% shooting from the floor or 30% from behind the arc and reached new lows in points and minutes per game.

Assuming Waiters proves worthy of more than the mid-level exception, it could prove challenging for the Thunder to replace him if he signs elsewhere next summer and Oklahoma City elects not to match. The team has nearly $66MM on the books for 2016/17, with projections that show the salary cap at $89MM and a maximum salary for Durant at $24.9MM, with many reportedly believing those numbers will surge even higher. That would leave little opportunity for the Thunder to open cap space to sign a replacement if they don’t use their Bird rights on Waiters to retain him.

Do you think the Thunder will keep Waiters beyond this season? Leave a comment to let us know.

Repost Share Send via email

Extension Rumors: Sunday

November 1st, 2015 at 11:13pm CST by Will Joseph

It seems unlikely that Wizards shooting guard Bradley Beal and Warriors center Festus Ezeli will receive rookie-scale contract extensions and thus will be restricted free agents come July, barring an unexpected late turnaround in negotiations, Marc Stein of ESPN.com reports.

The news regarding Beal does not come as a surprise because though the Wizards fully intend to sign him to a maximum-salary contract, they prefer to do so next summer. Stein adds that the Wizards have been consistent with their message that they see Beal as a future and long-term star for the franchise. Reports have conflicted about how much negotiating has occurred between Ezeli and the Warriors, but an extension never seemed imminent.

The window for former first-round picks to sign contract extensions during the fourth and final year of their rookie contracts is Monday.

Here is more news on extensions:

  • Players known to still be in negotiations entering the deadline include Raptors shooting guard/small forward Terrence Ross, Trail Blazers center Meyers Leonard and Thunder shooting guard Dion Waiters, according to Stein. Regarding Ross, it’s likely to go down to the wire and the Raptors would be open to giving him an extension, if the price is to their liking, Josh Lewenberg of TSN.ca. reports. “I mean it would be an honor to get an extension,” Ross told Lewenberg. “If that doesn’t happen then we’ll take it from there.”
  • Extensions at this point are looking unlikely for Sixers shooting guard Tony Wroten and Celtics big men Tyler Zeller and Jared Sullinger, according to Stein.
Repost Share Send via email
Load More Posts