Mavs Rumors: Jordan, Nowitzki, Matthews
Mavericks owner Mark Cuban admits he has fun with the back-and-forth between his team and the Clippers over the DeAndre Jordan saga, notes Tim MacMahon of ESPN.com. Cuban fired yet another salvo Wednesday after Jordan played his first game in Dallas since pulling out of his commitment to sign with the Mavs this summer and re-signing with the Clippers instead.
“It’s not like DeAndre and I pinkie swore,” Cuban said. “It’s not like we’ve been friends forever. It’s not like he broke some trust we had. You know, he turned out to be who we thought he was.”
Jordan isn’t the only member of the Clippers whom Cuban called out Wednesday, as we detail amid the latest from Dallas:
- Cuban shot a retort at Clippers coach/executive Doc Rivers when told before Wednesday’s game that Rivers had said to reporters that too much was being made of the Jordan story, notes Robert Morales of the Long Beach Press-Telegram. “I have no problem slamming Doc Rivers, even though he’s not going to play,” Cuban said. “I like [Clippers owner] Steve Ballmer. Lots of guys on the team, I like. But look, Doc does his radio interviews and brings it up for a reason, right? Again, Doc’s in the coaching business, he’s gotta do his job. God, there is so much I want to say.”
- Rivers argues Jordan was simply exercising his collectively bargained right when he turned his back on the Mavs, notes Eddie Sefko of the Dallas Morning News. “Teams do it all the time,” Rivers said. “It’s amazing how often teams change their mind on players. They sign free agents, tell them they’re gonna be there for the rest of their lives and they cut them or trade them.”
- Dirk Nowitzki is certain that he’ll play through his current contract but isn’t sure whether he’ll keep playing or retire after that, the 37-year-old tells Sam Amick of USA Today. Nowitzki has a player option worth more than $8.692MM for next season, the last on his pact.
- Wesley Matthews benefited financially when he turned down a four-year offer of about $65MM from the Kings to take what turned out to be an approximately $70MM four-year max offer from the Mavs, and he also dodged the Kings controversy, Amick writes in a separate piece. “I had my own reads [on the Kings], being in the room with the owner and the GM and talking to the coach, the president,” Matthews said to Amick. “I had my own thoughts going into it, my own reads, my own intuition. I think they mean well. I think they mean well. … I didn’t feel confident in meaning well.”
Mavs/Clippers Notes: DeAndre Jordan’s Dallas Visit
DeAndre Jordan knew when his Clippers teammates paid a visit to him in July that his second thoughts about committing to the Mavericks were about to escalate, writes Dan Woike of the Orange County Register.
“When the Clippers came to my house,” Jordan said, “I was like ‘Oh [expletive]. This is going to be bad.’”
It wound up being good for the Clippers, but it was the Mavericks who absorbed the worst of it, with their offseason plans in shambles following Jordan’s decision to vacate his deal with them. Jordan will play in Dallas tonight, but in a Clippers uniform as the Mavs play host to his L.A. team. See more on the grudge match stemming from one of the offseason’s most engaging stories:
- It’s not that Jordan turned his back on the Mavericks, but instead the way he went about it that Dirk Nowitzki found untoward, note Tim MacMahon and Justin Verrier of ESPNDallas.com. “We’ve all changed our mind before,” Nowitzki said. “I think the franchise and the fans were not happy with the way he went about it — not responding to [owner Mark Cuban] and [Chandler] Parsons anymore and kind of put-the-head-in-the-sand strategy, instead of being upfront and saying, ‘Hey, I changed my mind,’ and just being honest about it. I think that’s what rubbed people the wrong way, but it’s over.
- Mark Cuban saved all the text messages that Jordan sent him during the saga, including one in which he told the Mavs owner that he was on a date when he was actually with Blake Griffin, observes Ben Bolch of the Los Angeles Times. “Some day I’ll let you read all the texts and we’ll get into it and we’ll talk about it, but now is not the right time,” Cuban said to Bolch (Twitter link).
- Jordan’s flip-flop wasn’t altogether shocking for his Clippers teammates, who are familiar with his impulsiveness and indecisive nature, Ramona Shelburne of ESPN.com told the Dallas Morning News in an interview. Shelburne believes Jordan didn’t want to be the pre-eminent star in Dallas and instead simply sought better treatment and appreciation from the Clippers.
- Eddie Sefko of the Dallas Morning News suggests Jordan took the easy way out, declining the chance to embrace the mantle of leadership and the work that comes with it.
Southwest Notes: Mavs, Pelicans, Spurs
Dirk Nowitzki said that he still is surprised by the decision made by DeAndre Jordan and added Jordan abruptly stopped texting with the Mavs star when he reversed course and elected to re-sign with the Clippers, Tim MacMahon of ESPN.com relays. Jordan declined to comment when asked about the decision. Mavs owner Mark Cuban said he has not spoken to Jordan since July 9th, MacMahon adds.
“I think we were disappointed, but we still have to move on as a franchise, and that’s what we did,” Nowitzki said. “That happens in free agency sometimes.”
Here’s more from the Southwest Division:
- Pelicans coach Alvin Gentry wants his team to play a better style of defense, with an emphasis on the perimeter, and to utilize their roster versatility to switch on pick-and-rolls, Sean Deveney of The Sporting News details. To that end, Gentry wants to limit the amount of time Anthony Davis spends in the post. That is in stark contrast to how Davis, the league’s leading shot blocker last year, has been used in the past, Deveney adds.
- Rasual Butler told reporters, including Mike Monroe of the San Antonio Express-News, that he is delighted to have made the Spurs‘ regular season roster. “This is the gold standard of the NBA,” Butler said. “To have the opportunity to be part of this culture; to play for Coach [Gregg] Popovich just the way that we play the game is a huge deal for me. It’s very exciting to be a part of this.”
- Optimism surrounds the Mavs because of Chandler Parsons‘ impending return and Dallas’ ball movement in coach Rick Carlisle‘s motion-driven system on offense, opines Eddie Sefko of The Dallas Morning News.
Southwest Notes: Chandler, Mavs, Anderson, Sykes
It caught Tyson Chandler off guard when the Mavs pursued DeAndre Jordan instead of him, and Chandler felt as though he needn’t take a backseat to anyone, as Eddie Sefko of the Dallas Morning News details. An extension was on the table before the start of last season, as Chandler and Mavs owner Mark Cuban both confirmed to Sefko, but Chandler elected to become a free agent, since doing so would have allowed him to re-sign with Dallas for five years instead of three, Sefko notes. Instead, the Mavs looked elsewhere, and Chandler signed with the Suns, a turn of events that left Chandler with a right to be bitter about what happened in Dallas, as Cuban said, according to Sefko.
“I would be, too,” Cuban said. “We had extension discussions for a reason. And then we went for it on a player that wasn’t ready to be gone for.”
Still, Cuban added he felt justified in going after Jordan, saying he’d “rather swing and miss than not step up to the plate,” as Sefko relays. See more on Chandler amid the latest from around the NBA:
- Chandler made it clear Wednesday that he doesn’t feel animosity toward Cuban, observes Tim MacMahon of ESPNDallas.com, though comments the center made on Tuesday that Paul Coro of the Arizona Republic conveyed showed that his feelings are still raw. “I definitely felt like, after winning a championship and [helping] bring it there, that I was going to be there for the long run,” Chandler said Tuesday. “I never heard of a championship team being broken up like that. When they traded for me to come back, I sat at the podium with everybody else and heard them say this was going to be a long-term deal and they weren’t going to make the same mistake as last time and blah-blah-blah. Seven months later, the same thing happens again. But I learned in this business that you can’t trust everybody. That’s why it is what it is.”
- Ryan Anderson endured personal and physical hardships the last two years, but this summer, he finally had a chance to concentrate on his game, and new Pelicans coach Alvin Gentry is impressed so far, as Josh Robbins of the Orlando Sentinel details. Anderson is entering the final season of his contract.
- Spurs camp cut Keifer Sykes plans to join the team’s D-League affiliate once he clears waivers, a league source tells Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo Sports (Twitter link).
Mavs Notes: Parsons, Matthews, Evans
The potential for better floor spacing thanks to the moves the Mavs made this offseason intrigues Chandler Parsons, who nonetheless still rues the about–face DeAndre Jordan made after committing to the team, observes Shams Charania of Yahoo Sports.
“I think I’ve earned the right to speak freely about the Mavs and our future. There was no way DJ was going to come unless I presented our pitch,” Parsons said to Charania. “It’s not like I was gassing him up and lying. Everything he was saying that he wanted, we were going to give to him. Everything: the opportunity to get the ball more, to be an MVP candidate, to be the man and take the next step in his career. It’s not like I was just making this [expletive] up. He’s still a friend. But when I saw him in Las Vegas for Team USA, all I could really say was, ‘Are you [expletive] serious?'”
Absent Jordan, Parsons is embracing the “opportunity to be the man and an All-Star” with the Mavericks as he makes his way back from knee surgery, and he won’t rule out making a rehab appearance with the team’s D-League affiliate, as he tells Charania for the same story. A D-League assignment is nonetheless unlikely, Parsons indicates. See more from Dallas:
- Wesley Matthews isn’t too upset with Jordan his reversal, perhaps unsurprisingly, since the total value of Matthews’ deal escalated from roughly $13MM a year to the max of about $17.5MM annually when Jordan reneged on his agreement. “He made his own decision and that was it,” Matthews said to Grantland’s Jonathan Abrams. “Am I mad that he changed his mind? No. The only thing that I have an issue with is, I’m reaching out [and] he just didn’t hit me back. If you’re like, ‘Hey, man, I feel this way,’ it’s fine. I’m not going to hold a gun to your head and say, ‘You can’t go.’ At the end of the day, we’ve got to make the best decision. If you thought it was here and realized it wasn’t, I can’t fault you for that.”
- The Suns were among the teams that showed interest in Matthews this summer, Abrams notes within his piece.
- The Mavericks like the versatility of Jeremy Evans, and he’s performed well so far in his initial preseason action for the team, as Eddie Sefko of the Dallas Morning News chronicles. Evans signed a fully guaranteed two-year, minimum salary deal this summer. “It’s pretty clear he’s going to be one of our better defensive players with his activity and length,” coach Rick Carlisle said. “He’s an above-the-rim kind of guy. He’s going to have to guard a lot of different positions.”
- Check out Mark Cuban’s idea for a supplemental draft that he detailed in a Hoops Rumors exclusive.
Southwest Notes: Williams, Parsons, McGee, Butler
Deron Williams admits he bought into the idea of himself as a reduced player the past few seasons with the Nets, but both he and Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle are optimistic about what the 31-year-old point guard can do in Dallas, as Tim MacMahon of ESPNDallas.com details.
“I want to prove myself wrong,” Williams said Monday. “I started to doubt myself in the past. Mentally, it took a toll on me. I just got to get out of that rut that I was in the last couple years mentally, and I look forward to this situation. I think I’m past that. This fresh start has definitely helped that a lot. I’m looking forward to this year. It’s a better situation.”
The Mavs invested a two-year, $11MM deal in the hopes that Williams can indeed perform better. See more on the Mavs and their Southwest Division rivals:
- Chandler Parsons spoke about his close relationship with Mavericks owner Mark Cuban in an interview with GQ’s Alex Wong that further addressed the Mavs’ failed effort to recruit DeAndre Jordan this summer. “He didn’t do anything illegal. I’m not mad at him,” Parsons said of Jordan. “At the end of the day, he’s a grown man and he’s entitled to do whatever he wants,” Parsons says. “He’s one of the best young centers in the NBA, and I wanted to play with him. He could have made us great. But he screwed us over.”
- JaVale McGee is unlikely to be healthy enough to play at the start of the regular season, MacMahon tweets. McGee, who continues to recover from a recurring stress fracture in his left tibia, has a partially guaranteed contract, and his continued place on the Mavs roster depends on how other players perform in camp, MacMahon says. McGee’s partial guarantee of $250K jumps to $500K if he remains under contract through the end of business today.
- Rasual Butler‘s deal with the Spurs is non-guaranteed for the minimum salary and only covers this season, reports Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders (Twitter link).
- Jeff Adrien‘s one-year, minimum salary contract with the Pelicans is non-guaranteed, reports Pincus also reports (Twitter link). The team’s non-guaranteed pact with Corey Webster is for two years, not three, as initially reported, Pincus reveals.
Southwest Notes: Parsons, Jordan, Leonard, Wright
Chandler Parsons was headed to Las Vegas for his girlfriend’s birthday and not to Houston to recruit DeAndre Jordan when he touched off the infamous Twitter iconography battle that served as a sideshow to Jordan’s free agency flip–flop, as Parsons said on The Ben & Skin show on KRLD-FM 105.3 in Dallas (transcription via the Dallas Morning News).
“At that point, it was already over and he was going back to the Clippers, so might as well make light of it,” Parsons said in part.
Rhetoric concerning Jordan’s turnabout has escalated again this past week, a sure sign that one of the offseason’s most significant storylines isn’t about to vanish into memory even as the season is about to get underway. See more on Jordan, the Mavs and the rest of the Southwest Division:
- Jordan was unlikely to become the sort of offensive presence the Mavs sold him on becoming, opines Shaun Powell of NBA.com. Still, his change of heart casts the team into a transition phase, further reducing the chances that Dallas wins a title before Dirk Nowitzki retires, and the Mavs did well to retain cap flexibility for future seasons and maintain a strong position for trades, Powell believes.
- Kawhi Leonard staggered to the finish line in the playoffs last season, and while that would have been acceptable in previous years, that’s no longer so for the 24-year-old, whom the Spurs are counting on now, writes Dan McCarney of the San Antonio Express-News. Leonard re-signed on a five-year max contract in July.
- Free agent signee Brandan Wright, and not trade acquisition Matt Barnes, was the best offseason addition for the Grizzlies, argues Ben Dowsett of Basketball Insiders, citing Wright’s versatility, among other traits. Dowsett sees Wright as an upgrade over Kosta Koufos, who left in free agency for the Kings.
Western Notes: Rivers, Grizzlies, Rush
Clippers coach/executive Doc Rivers told Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo Sports that almost losing DeAndre Jordan to the Mavericks made him realize how fragile a franchise’s window of contention can be, and it pushed him to improve the team as a whole this summer. “Losing him would’ve always gnawed at me,” Rivers said. “But it wouldn’t have stopped me. I would’ve said, [expletive] that, we’re going to figure out a way to get this right.’ But it also triggered something else for me. It might have been my front-office wake-up call. I was not a pleasant guy to me, or my staff, after I thought we lost him – and even after we got him back. We had a lot of ‘come-to-Jesus’ meetings.”
“And we rolled up our sleeves, and we got better,” Rivers continued. “Listen, maybe it’s because when we got here, the team was pretty good and we didn’t think we had to get that much better. I don’t know why. At end of the day, even the way D.J. did it, it turned out to be a blessing for our franchise. For me, it made me understand fully. We’ve got to do this [expletive] right, and build this team. It’s our responsibility.”
Here’s more from out West:
- It remains to be seen if the Grizzlies can manufacture enough offense from the outside to take the next step toward a title, and while the team has improved in this area over the summer, Memphis may be lucky just to escape the first round of the playoffs, Tim Bontemps of New York Post (Facebook link) opines in his season preview.
- After a 2014/15 campaign that saw him shoot an abysmal 11.1% from beyond the arc, Brandon Rush hopes to emerge as a viable sixth man candidate for the Warriors this season, Monte Poole of CSNBayArea.com writes. “It was a bad year for me, an awful year,” Rush told Poole. “It was one of the worst years I’ve ever had, individually. I’ve shot in the mid-40s [from three-point range] for most of my career. To be able to go out there last year and not be able to make a shot, not be able to play . . . it made me hungry to get into the gym and go hard this summer.”
Southwest Notes: Cuban, Vaughn, Pelicans
Clippers coach and executive Doc Rivers had been critical of some comments reportedly made by Mavs team owner Mark Cuban in the wake of DeAndre Jordan changing his mind about signing with Dallas in order to return to Los Angeles this offseason. In an interview on “The Herd with Colin Cowherd,” Cuban fired back at Rivers (h/t Dallas Morning News), saying, “First of all [Rivers] obviously didn’t actually hear or see what I said. Because I didn’t say a whole lot. I think I said — I responded to DJ’s Twitter apology, and that’s pretty much it. I haven’t said a whole lot about it at all, so I don’t know where he’s getting what he’s got. But I think the most interesting thing is, it shows you what someone will do when their entire future is vanishing in front of them. And that’s exactly what Doc did and I give him credit for it. His professional life was over if he didn’t get DJ. And so his back was against the wall and he did what he needed to do. More power to him. Sometimes the deals you don’t do are the best ones, so we’ll see. But Doc obviously hadn’t heard what I had said because I really didn’t say anything.”
Here’s more from the Southwest Division:
- The Mavericks will begin training camp without three key contributors being fully cleared for basketball activities, Tim MacMahon of ESPN.com relays. Swingman Wesley Matthews, small forward Chandler Parsons and center JaVale McGee are all expected to gradually work themselves back into full participation in practices as they continue to recover from major injuries, MacMahon notes.
- The Spurs announced today that former Magic head coach Jacque Vaughn has been hired by the team as a pro scout. The news that San Antonio was to hire Vaughn was first reported by Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo Sports.
- Pelicans GM Dell Demps says that the blueprint of assembling an up-tempo team with ample depth that he envisioned three years ago is finally coming to pass, writes John Reid of The Times Picayune. ”We set out a plan three years ago to be exactly where we are right now,” Demps said. ”This is a big year for us. We’re really looking for this group jelling and taking that next step. I think we have over 20 games on national television, which is a great sign that people have expectations on us. We look forward to it and embrace the opportunity. We can’t wait, we’re really excited. I think it’s really going to be exciting for the fans to watch. I think it’s going to be great for the players.”
DeAndre Jordan Drops Relativity Sports Agents
DeAndre Jordan told Relativity Sports agents Dan Fegan and Jarinn Akana last week that he’ll no longer be using them as representatives, a source said to Broderick Turner of the Los Angeles Times (Twitter links). Fegan has close ties to Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who helped convince Jordan to agree to a deal with Dallas before the center did a 180 and re-signed with the Clippers instead. It’s unclear whom Jordan will hire as his next agent, though he’ll have to wait 15 days to officially make his choice, Turner notes (Twitter link).
Fegan and Akana will still receive the 4% commission on the four-year, maximum salary deal worth $87,616,050 that Jordan wound up signing with the Clippers, as Turner points out (Twitter link), but they lose a high-profile client who can hit free agency again in 2018, a few weeks shy of his 30th birthday. They’re not the first agents with whom Jordan has parted ways. The center began with Joel Bell and moved on to the Wasserman Media Group before joining Relativity, Turner recounts via Twitter.
Today’s news means Jordan and LaMarcus Aldridge, perhaps the two most talked-about free agents this summer, both changed agents after signing their new deals, as former Nets executive Bobby Marks observes (Twitter link). Aldridge went from Wasserman Media Group to Excel Sports Management, as international journalist David Pick reported earlier this month.
Jordan’s move isn’t altogether surprising, given the trappings of the way his commitment to the Mavericks turned into a new deal with the Clippers. Cuban said he was with Fegan while Jordan was apparently in the process of changing his mind, and when Jordan signed his Clippers contract shortly thereafter, it was reportedly Akana, not Fegan, who was present. Austin Rivers, the son of Clippers coach/executive Doc Rivers, also left Relativity this summer, shortly after the agents represented him in negotiations for his new two-year deal worth nearly $6.455MM.