Antonio Lang Rumors | Hoops Rumors

Hawks Officially Announce Quin Snyder’s Coaching Staff

June 14th, 2023 at 10:23am CST by Luke Adams

The Hawks have issued a press release confirming several new additions to Quin Snyder‘s coaching staff, most of which have been previously reported.

Those additions are as follows:

Igor Kokoskov, the former head coach of the Suns and most recently a Nets assistant.
Ekpe Udoh, a former NBA center who played for Snyder in Utah from 2017-19 and recently retired as a player.
Bryan Bailey, who worked as an assistant on Snyder’s staff in Utah.
Mike Brey, the longtime head coach at Notre Dame.
Brittni Donaldson, a former assistant with the Raptors and Pistons.
Antonio Lang, a Cavaliers assistant who worked under Snyder in Utah from 2014-19.
Sanjay Lumpkin, a former Jazz player development coach.

The Hawks are also bringing back Steven Klei and Jeff Watkinson, two more former Jazz assistants who joined Snyder’s staff in March.

Additionally, Reggis Onwukamuche – a former College Park Skyhawks player and Jazz video room staffer – is joining the team as a player development coach, while Bryan George – formerly an assistant coach for ASVEL in France – has also been formally added to the player development staff in a video coordinator role.

Snyder replaced Nate McMillan as the Hawks’ head coach midway through the 2022/23 season, so ’23/24 will be his first full year on the team’s bench. As such, it’s no surprise that he was given the opportunity to revamp his staff and replace several of McMillan’s old assistants this spring.

Southeast Notes: Winger, Hornets, Hawks’ Coaches, Bitadze

May 28th, 2023 at 12:01pm CST by Arthur Hill

New Wizards president Michael Winger loves the idea of building a foundation and he’s eager to use the lessons he learned during his time with the Cavaliers, Thunder and Clippers, writes Ben Golliver of The Washington Post. Winger is taking on one of the NBA’s biggest challenges in the Wizards, who haven’t posted a 50-win season in 44 years. He’s inheriting a team that’s desperately in need of a makeover after missing the play-in tournament, but he welcomes that opportunity.

“I wouldn’t want a ready-made organization,” he said. “That’s not very exciting. It’s going to be a matter of establishing a culture and creating an identity that we can latch onto and carry into the next half-decade. Sometimes, change for the sake of change accelerates progress.”

Winger had been with Los Angeles since 2017 and he helped team president Lawrence Frank oversee the transition from the Chris Paul–Blake Griffin era to the new-look Clippers built around Kawhi Leonard and Paul George. Winger comes highly recommended as he looks to perform a similar roster remake in Washington.

“One thing that separates Michael from others is his ability to be a couple steps ahead,” Frank said. “It’s one thing to know what you’re trying to get accomplished. But Michael can show you how the pieces on the board need to move to get it done, and how one move can set up the next. That’s invaluable.”

There’s more from the Southeast Division:

Hornets general manager Mitch Kupchak has a talent for finding useful players late in the draft, and he’ll have an opportunity again this year as Charlotte holds five selections, per Roderick Boone of The Charlotte Observer. They Hornets landed the second slot in the lottery, and they control picks No. 27, 34, 39 and 41 as well. Charlotte has been holding workouts with a lot of players projected to go in that range, including Saturday’s session with Serbian forward Nikola Djurisic. “So at the combine, I hit some shots. I was hitting shots — five in a row, six in a row, which I think the scouts from the clubs can see me shoot, differently from in the game or practice,” Djurisic said. They could see me shoot. But I’m not worried about the 3-point shot because it will come with hard work. But they could see I’m athletic.”
Bryan Bailey, Antonio Lang, Mike Brey and Sanjay Lumpkin will be announced as members of Quin Snyder‘s coaching staff with the Hawks, tweets Emiliano Carchia of Sportando. Jeff Watkinson and Steven Klei will be retained from the current staff, sources tell Carchia.
The Magic have a team option on Goga Bitadze for the 2023/24 season, and Khobi Price of The Orlando Sentinel suggests that the aggressive rebounding he displayed during his brief time in Orlando will make them consider picking it up. Bitadze averaged 5.8 points and 5.2 rebounds after signing with the Magic in February, and he was the team’s primary backup center by the end of the season.

Southeast Notes: Lowry, Heat, Hawks, Lang, Wizards

May 12th, 2023 at 3:04pm CST by Luke Adams

When the Heat explored the trade market for Kyle Lowry at the trade deadline, teams reportedly sought at least one first-round pick just to take on the veteran guard, who is on a pricey multiyear contract and was dealing with a knee injury at the time. But Lowry is rebuilding his value with his performance so far in the postseason, writes Ira Winderman of The South Florida Sun Sentinel.

Four years removed from being the starting point guard on a Toronto team that won a championship, Lowry has accepted a bench role during this season’s playoffs and has registered no complaints, having told reporters that as long as the Heat are winning, he doesn’t care what his role is.

“He is an ultimate winner,” head coach Erik Spoelstra said. “So what drives him more than anything is winning. And there were just unfortunate circumstances how we got to this. His injury shut him down for five weeks and the plan, as we’ve talked about quite a bit, it just made the most sense initially to bring him off the bench.

“And then it just got so late, we didn’t have a lot of time. He’s been fantastic about it. One of the things we found, you’re bringing a Hall of Fame mind off the bench. And our second unit was struggling for much of the year. You shift him into there, a lot of these things that we were working on endlessly just kind of get taken care of.”

Here’s more from around the Southeast:

Brian Lewis of The New York Post takes a look at how the Heat‘s ability to turn undrafted players into rotation pieces has helped the team withstand injuries and given Miami an advantage in its second-round series vs. New York. As Lewis notes, the Heat have seven undrafted players on their roster, the most of any team in the playoffs.
The Hawks will hire Antonio Lang as one of Quin Snyder‘s lead assistant coaches, league sources tell Michael Scotto of HoopsHype (Twitter link). A Cavaliers assistant for the last four seasons, Lang previously worked on Snyder’s staff in Utah from 2014-19.
If the Wizards were to win Tuesday’s draft lottery and the rights to French phenom Victor Wembanyama, it wouldn’t just change the direction of the franchise — it would alter the entire D.C. sports landscape, according to David Aldridge and Josh Robbins of The Athletic. While Wembanyama wouldn’t necessarily make the Wizards an instant contender, he’d provide much-needed hope for a “depressed fan base,” The Athletic’s duo writes.

And-Ones: Wembanyama, EuroLeague, Coaching Rumors, Bronny

May 8th, 2023 at 11:57am CST by Arthur Hill

Before he becomes the No. 1 pick in next month’s draft, Victor Wembanyama is enjoying a farewell tour of France, writes Tim Reynolds of The Associated Press. The 7’3″ phenom drew 15,000 fans to his game Sunday in Paris, and they responded with loud cheers to every positive thing he did.

Reynolds notes that Wembanyama’s Boulogne-Levallois team typically plays in a high-school-sized gym with crowds of about 4,000. But with Wembanyama as an attraction, the late-season games have been moved to Accor Arena, which is on par with an NBA facility.

“I have the impression that the people here were real basketball fans who bought their tickets in advance,” Wembanyama said after entertaining the crowd with 25 points, 10 rebounds and four assists. “It’s nice.”

The 19-year-old center is considered a generational talent who will make next week’s lottery one of the most anticipated since the event began in 1985. The Pistons, Rockets and Spurs have the best odds to land the top pick at 14% each.

Wembanyama indicated that he’s paying close attention to the procedure, tweeting Sunday in French, “Ten days before knowing my future team. It’s really a crazy thing.”

Here’s more from around the basketball world:

The EuroLeague has reached an agreement to have its games streamed on ESPN 3, according to BasketNews. The rights deal will cover the remainder of this year’s playoffs and all of the 2023/24 season. “I am delighted that all U.S. basketball fans will have the possibility to watch all EuroLeague games on ESPN platform,” said Alex Ferrer Kristjansson, Euroleague Basketball marketing and communication senior director. “Globalization is a cornerstone for sports market growth in general and basketball in particular. We are confident that all U.S. basketball fans will appreciate the diversity of our stories and the experience that the EuroLeague delivers during the whole season.”
Michael Scotto of HoopsHype passes along some information on NBA coaching staffs in his latest column. Scotto reports that Bryan Bailey, Alex Jensen, Igor Kokoskov and Antonio Lang are candidates for Quin Snyder‘s staff with the Hawks; G League head coach Scott Morrison will join Will Hardy’s staff with the Jazz; and David Adkins likely won’t return as the Trail Blazers‘ director of player development next season. Sources also tell Scotto that Will Voigt is a candidate to become the head coach of either the Blazers’ or Spurs‘ G League affiliate.
Fans shouldn’t pre-judge Bronny James because of however they feel about his father, states Joe Vardon of The Athletic, who agrees with LeBron James that USC is getting “a great kid.”

Cavaliers Notes: Trades, Coaches, Lineup Changes

February 20th, 2020 at 10:50pm CST by ChrisCrouse

The Cavaliers underwent a major change this week, moving on from coach John Beilein. Yet, more needs to be done if the team is going to turn the franchise around, as I recently wrote on Heavy.com.

If Andre Drummond opts in this offseason, then making trades will be key to unlocking Cleveland’s fortunes. Kevin Love and Collin Sexton are among the players who could bring the franchise long-term value in deals.

Here’s more from Cleveland:

Assistant Lindsay Gottlieb will rotation with J.J. Outlaw to the front of the bench under new coach J.B. Bickerstaff, Kelsey Russo of The Athletic tweets. It will depend on which coach as the scouting report for a given game. Russo adds that Antonio Lang is the new lead assistant, for now.
Bickerstaff plans to experiment with the lineups, Chris Fedor of Cleveland.com passes along. “Are there things that we can do to be creative? Like you talk about K.P., can he play the point? Can we put the ball in his hand and let him initiate some stuff? Those types of things,” Bickerstaff said.
Bickerstaff didn’t see Beilein’s exit coming over the All-Star break, as he was in the Caribbean vacationing, Fedor writes in the same piece. However, the team and Bickerstaff had previously spoken about the associate head coach taking over after Beilein was done, though no one expected it this soon.

Central Notes: Garland, Bulls, GRIII, Cavs

June 20th, 2019 at 3:11pm CST by ChrisCrouse

The Bulls‘ reported interest in Darius Garland may be a smokescreen, one source tells Joe Cowley of The Chicago Sun-Times. That source believes Chicago is more focused on forwards like De’Andre Hunter, Cam Reddish, or Sekou Doumbouya.

Garland is expected to be selected with the No. 4 overall pick in tonight’s draft, so the Bulls would need to put together a package that entices the Pelicans in order to land him, assuming their interest is real. Even if Chicago managed to add Garland, the team would look to bring in a veteran point guard, a source tells Cowley.

Patrick Beverley could be an addition this offseason, as there are reports of mutual interest between him and the Bulls. Chicago wants to add depth, so the club could sign multiple players in free agency. Cowley names Ish Smith and Cory Joseph as potential targets in addition to Beverley.

Here’s more from the Central Division:

The Pistons will likely decline Glenn Robinson III‘s team option for the 2019/20 season, Vince Ellis of the Detroit Free press tweets. A source also told James Edwards III of The Athletic (Twitter link) that the option is unlikely to be picked up. The Michigan product would have earned slightly below $4.3MM next season if the option was exercised.
Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert is out of the hospital and will undergo “intensive” rehab, Chris Fedor of Cleveland.com relays on Twitter. Gilbert suffered a stroke late last month.
The Cavaliers have hired Jazz assistant Antonio Lang as an assistant coach on John Beilein‘s new staff, per the team’s website. Tony Jones of The Athletic (Twitter link) first reported that Cleveland was prying Lang from Utah.

Jazz Notes: T. Brown, Gobert, Lang, Favors

June 2nd, 2018 at 8:47pm CST by Arthur Hill

Utah’s desire to add players who can handle multiple positions could make Oregon’s Troy Brown attractive in the draft, writes Tony Jones of The Salt Lake Tribune. The 6’7″ freshman, who worked out for the team Friday, has displayed an ability to play anywhere from point guard to small forward.

“I just wanted to show that I’m more of a playmaker and that I can score the ball and shoot the ball,” Brown said. “I wanted to show that I can play the game the right way. I want to be able to do everything on the floor. I want to be a two-way player. Just being versatile is important to me.”

The Jazz, who own the 21st pick, were happy with the results of Friday’s session, which also included Michigan’s Moritz Wagner, West Virginia’s Jevon Carter, Kansas’ Sviatoslav Mykhailiuk and Malik Newman and Georgia’s Yante Maten.

There’s more tonight from Utah:

Center Rudy Gobert, one of the finalists for the NBA’s Defensive Player of the Year Award, received a similar honor today from the players’ union, relays Eric Woodyard of The Deseret News. Gobert was the winner of the Locksmith Award, presented to the league’s best defender as part of the Players’ Voice Awards. “It really means a lot to me knowing that the guys that I compete against every night are showing some love and recognition and I really appreciate it,” Gobert said. Jazz rookie Donovan Mitchell was chosen as the NBPA’s Leader of the New School.
The Jazz made a coaching move today, promoting assistant Antonio Lang to the front of the bench, Woodyard writes in a separate story. Lang, who was among Quin Snyder’s first hirings in 2014, will replace Igor Kokoskov, who left to become head coach of the Suns. “I’m truly blessed,” said Lang, who played six years in the NBA before turning to coaching. “Hope to continue to improve and help the group.”
The Wizards, Bucks and Warriors are all potential destinations for free agent Derrick Favors if he leaves Utah, according to Frank Urbina of HoopsHype. Favors, who started a career-high 77 games this season, has been with the Jazz since arriving from the Nets in a 2011 trade.

Western Notes: Randolph, Sterling, Jazz

June 24th, 2014 at 8:10pm CST by Ryan Raroque

Mark Deeks of ShamSports.com explains the odd circumstance concerning Zach Randolph‘s player option with the Grizzlies next season. According to the current CBA, a player cannot earn less money in a player option year relative to how much he made in the previous season. As it currently stands, Randolph will make $16.5MM if he decided to opt in for 2014/15, which is considerably lower than the $17.8MM he made in 2013/14.

Tim Duncan had a similar issue in his contract with the Spurs, as his player option for the upcoming year was initially less than what he made this past season. While Duncan’s contract was ultimately modified to address the error, Randolph’s remains unchanged simply because the contract had been signed too long ago, Deeks hears. Randolph and Memphis reportedly are moving toward a multi-year deal, but if he opts in and the deal winds up coming in the form of an extension, Randolph’s missing money will come into play.

Here are more noteworthy links to pass along tonight:

A Los Angeles Superior Court judge said that the terms of the Sterling family trust may give Donald Sterling little room to challenge the finding that he is mentally incapable of continuing as co-owner of the Clippers, writes James Rainey of the Los Angeles Times. This would appear to give Shelly Sterling the advantage in her case to affirm both her control of the trust and sale of the team.
The Jazz announced the additions of Brad Jones, Antonio Lang, Alex Jensen, Mike Wells, and Johnnie Bryant to Quin Snyder’s coaching staff. Jones will be Snyder’s lead assistant, according to Jody Genessy of the Deseret News (Twitter link).
Maccabi Tel Aviv has opted out of its contract with Joe Ingles, reports David Pick of Eurobasket.com (Twitter link). Back in March, we passed along that Ingles was considering a move to the NBA this summer. The Grizzlies and Jazz were among the Western Conference teams reported to have interest in the Australian-born forward.