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Cavs Notes: Love, Draft, Dellavedova

June 9th, 2015 at 11:46am CST by Chuck Myron

Team officials around the league are split on whether Draymond Green or Kevin Love is the better player, and no one on the Warriors would trade Green for Love straight-up these days, Grantland’s Zach Lowe writes. That represents a dramatic shift from the beginning of the season, but Cavs GM David Griffin, whose team had been discussing Love trades with the Timberwolves two years prior to last August’s trade, is adamant that the Cavs want to keep Love, according to Lowe. There’s more on Love, who likewise continues to insist that he wants to stay in Cleveland, amid the latest on the Cavs:

Cleveland’s willingness to have given up Andrew Wiggins for Love in the first place was tied to the choice LeBron James made to return to Cleveland, Griffin admitted in his interview with Lowe. “You have a finite window when you’re dealing with a player that’s 30,” Griffin said, citing James’ age. “The organization had wanted Kevin for a while, but we paid the price we paid entirely because of LeBron’s presence.”
Lowe nonetheless suggests that the Cavs could have kept Wiggins and acquired Thaddeus Young from the Sixers instead of Love, sending salary filler to Philadelphia along with the same first-round pick that ended up going to Sixers in the three-team Love trade.
The Cavs had workouts scheduled Monday with Arizona power forward Brandon Ashley, Michigan State guard Travis Trice, Wisconsin-Green Bay point guard Keifer Sykes, Louisville swingman Wayne Blackshear and Stanford small forward Anthony Brown, sources told Michael Scotto of SheridanHoops (Twitter link).
Matthew Dellavedova is proving former Cavs GM Chris Grant wise as he makes an outsized impact in the Finals at the tail end of the two-year minimum-salary deal Grant signed him to in 2013, as Chris Mannix of SI.com examines. Dellavedova is set for restricted free agency this summer.

Cavs Notes: Love, Kerr, Gilbert

June 5th, 2015 at 4:20pm CST by Eddie Scarito

After watching Game 1 of the Finals on Thursday night, Kevin Love reiterated his desire to return to the Cavs. When asked by Ramona Shelburne of ESPN.com if he wanted to be back in Cleveland next season, Love said, “Yes. I want to win.” Speculation has swirled all year long about what Love might do, but the big man isn’t concerned about that. “It’s just the way the world works now. People talk so much and might tell themselves a lie so much they start to believe it. From there, the narrative starts to change. I haven’t changed my narrative. I’m going to keep supporting these guys, and we’ll be talking to Cleveland after the season,” said Love.

Here’s more out of Cleveland:

While Warriors coach Steve Kerr offered nothing but praise for the fans and culture of Cleveland, he admitted that he understands why free agents might be deterred from signing with the Cavs because of the the weather and less glamorous feel of the city, as Chris Haynes of the Northeast Ohio Media Group transcribes.
Tristan Thompson credits LeBron James and his work ethic for helping turn around the Cavs’ culture, and sparked Thompson to work harder to improve himself as a player, Ryan Wolstat of The Toronto Sun writes. “He was the first one in the gym, had a full, dripping sweat and we were just walking in, getting ready to start,” Thompson said. “I think that first encounter really changed the whole culture of the franchise. When your best player, arguably one of the best players to ever play this game, is in the gym at 9 a.m., on Labor Day, that says a lot. It says how serious he is about being great and bringing us back to the promised land, which is being in the Finals.“
Team owner Dan Gilbert has now rebuilt the Cavaliers as a franchise twice, with both instances sparked by the arrival of James, Bob Wojnowski of The Detroit News writes in his profile of Gilbert. “It’s not vindication, it just feels good, and now we gotta take advantage and finish the job,” Gilbert said. “I just feel so good that we all got a second bite of the apple, LeBron, us, the city, the franchise. Everybody.”

Zach Links contributed to this post.

Eastern Notes: Cavs, Sefolosha, Sessions

May 31st, 2015 at 8:57am CST by ChrisCrouse

LeBron James admitted that Kyrie Irving was a factor in his decision to return to Cleveland, Chris Fedor of the Northeast Ohio Media Group writes.

“Part of the reason I decided to come back from the beginning was how special [Irving] was. I noticed that,” James said. “To see him grow and see him learn what it means to truly be a professional every day since I’ve been here is a been a huge reward and it’s great to see it. To see his mind process so many different things over the course of these months and be able to translate that not only on the court but off it as well, has been a treat to watch.”

The point guard didn’t fully appreciate how great James was on the court until the four-time MVP joined the team in July.

“I was just speechless,” Irving admitted. “I became a fan to be honest with you. It’s a different feeling when you’re on a team with someone you’ve watched for so long.”

James and Irving averaged 47.0 points per game as a a tandem, which was more than any other pair of NBA teammates. The Cavs will take on the Warriors in the NBA finals and they hope to bring Cleveland its first professional sports championship since 1964.

Here’s more from the Eastern Conference:

Thabo Sefolosha believes his April arrest damaged his reputation, Kevin Arnovitz of ESPN.com writes. “We are talking about the stress that it has brought to the entire family, you know, my mom and dad in Switzerland, my brothers and sisters, my wife. Also, the damage to my reputation. I’ve had people texting me about what they saw in the newspaper and things like this. Every aspect of my life was affected by something like this, and I think putting light on the aftermath of something like this, I think that’s also something that’s important,” Sefolosha said. The forward is under contract with Atlanta through the 2016/17 season.
Ramon Sessions, who filled in admirably for John Wall when the All-Star was injured, was a great mid-season acquisition by the Wizards, Brandon Parker of The Washington Post opines. The University of Nevada product figures to lead Washington’s second unit next season and he will make slightly over $2.17MM.

And-Ones: Wolves, Lakers, Pacers, Celtics

May 28th, 2015 at 2:28pm CST by Chuck Myron

Several players and agents suggested to Alex Kennedy of Basketball Insiders that any given Eastern Conference team would be more attractive than a comparable one from the Western Conference given the disparity between the conferences. One agent told Kennedy that players “absolutely” want to be the East and that he hopes his draft clients are taken by Eastern teams, though an executive cautioned that the presence of LeBron James might dissuade free agents from jumping out of the West. James is set to represent the East for the fifth straight time in the NBA Finals, and while we wait more than a week for tip-off, here’s more from around the NBA:

Chad Ford of ESPN.com hears D’Angelo Russell is in the mix for the Timberwolves at No. 1, says Karl-Anthony Towns, but not necessarily Jahlil Okafor, would be a lock for the Lakers at No. 2, and also writes in his chat with readers that the Pacers and Celtics would love to move up. Ford has heard chatter among GMs that the Thunder have promised Cameron Payne they’ll take him at No. 14, but he isn’t sure just how much truth there is to that, as the ESPN scribe writes in the same piece. Sources have suggested to Alex Kennedy of Basketball Insiders that Payne has a promise from some team. Our Eddie Scarito has Payne going to the Thunder in the Hoops Rumors Mock Draft.
UNLV shooting guard Rashad Vaughn had an especially impressive workout this past weekend, Ford observes in an Insider-only piece, and Vaughn also opened eyes in his workout Tuesday for the Heat, reports Barry Jackson of the Miami Herald. Ford adds in his piece that scouts have told him that French center Alpha Kaba is willing to stay in the draft rather than withdraw by the June 15th deadline if he receives a promise from a team.
The Bulls and Pelicans have interest in former 16th overall pick Royce White, reports Shams Charania of RealGM, though it’s not clear if they’re yet considering him for any sort of deal that would go beyond summer league.

LeBron Wants To Keep Thompson On Cavs

May 25th, 2015 at 2:16pm CST by Chuck Myron

LeBron James made his thoughts clear about soon-to-be restricted free agent Tristan Thompson‘s future in Cleveland, telling beat writers that the power forward “should probably be a Cavalier the rest of his career,” notes Dave McMenamin of ESPN.com (Twitter link). Thompson and James both employ Rich Paul of Klutch Sports as their agent, and James clearly has an influence on the Cavs.

Extension talks between Thompson and the Cavs broke down as the deadline for the sides to sign one approached this past fall. Thompson reportedly turned down an offer worth $52MM over four years from the Cavs. Cleveland signed fellow big man and James confidant Anderson Varejao to an extension the same day that talks ended with Thompson. Uncertainty over just how the salary cap would look apparently helped discussions unravel with the former No. 4 overall pick, but neither side left the negotiating table with hard feelings, according to Sam Amico of Fox Sports Ohio. The union in March issued a final rejection of the league’s proposal to phase in salary cap increases, ostensibly bringing more clarity to bear for when Thompson and the Cavs can pick up negotiations this summer.

Cleveland appears set to zoom past the projected $67.1MM cap and $81.6MM tax threshold if it is to keep its team together next season, though owner Dan Gilbert hasn’t signaled that he wants any belt-tightening. Rival executives thought Thompson would end up with an extension for between $10-12MM a year while he and the Cavs were talking this past fall, as Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports reported during the season, but Thompson has appeared more valuable than ever in the playoffs. He’s averaging 3.9 offensive rebounds in 34.6 minutes per game in the postseason, having inherited a starting role following Kevin Love‘s injury. The Cavs appear to have meshed better with Thompson at the four than they did with Love.

Steve Kyler of Basketball Insiders figures Thompson’s camp will start talks with a request for the max this summer. Kyler also writes in that same NBA AM piece that agents commonly believe that teams will be more willing than usual to give max and near-max offers this summer, the last before major escalation in the salary cap. So, it seems there’s a decent chance other teams will drive up Thompson’s price point with fat offer sheets. A further complication is the future of Love, who’s said he’ll opt in. Whether he does or he doesn’t, he wouldn’t be tied to Cleveland for more than another year, putting pressure on Cleveland to retain at least one of its top-line power forwards unless Love opts out and commits to a new long-term deal.

James, Curry, Harden Lead All-NBA Teams

May 21st, 2015 at 10:32am CST by Chuck Myron

LeBron James and Stephen Curry finished atop the voting for the All-NBA Teams, with James Harden, Anthony Davis and Marc Gasol joining them on the first team, the league announced via press release. Russell Westbrook, LaMarcus Aldridge, Chris Paul, Pau Gasol and DeMarcus Cousins comprise the second team. Blake Griffin, DeAndre Jordan, Tim Duncan, Klay Thompson and Kyrie Irving make up the third team.

Curry, the league’s MVP, and James each received 645 points through a system in which five points are awarded a first team vote, three points go for a second team vote and one point is given for a third team vote. The duo garnered 129 first team votes each, making them unanimous first team selections. They were followed closely by Harden, with 125 first team votes and 637 points, and Davis, who had 119 first team votes and 625 points. Marc Gasol, who’s heading into free agency, wasn’t as widely seen as a first-teamer by the media members who cast their ballots, rounding out the squad with 65 first-team votes and 453.

Every member of the second team received at least one first team vote, and Thompson and Irving were the only members of the third team not to get a first team vote. Al Horford also received a first team vote even though he didn’t make any of the teams. The NBA will soon display the votes of each media member on its website, but the league has already distributed the information via press release, so click here to check it out in PDF form.

Cavs Notes: Love, James, Thompson

April 25th, 2015 at 3:45pm CST by Eddie Scarito

As painful as it was for the city of Cleveland, LeBron James‘ departure for Miami back in 2010 laid the groundwork for the Cavs’ title chances this season, Steve Bulpett of The Boston Herald writes. If James had remained, the franchise would not have been in the position to draft Kyrie Irving, nor have had the opportunity to select Andrew Wiggins, who was the centerpiece of the deal to acquire Kevin Love, Bulpett notes.

“Could he have won a championship if he stayed here? We’ll never know,” said former Cav Jim Chones, who is the team’s radio color commentator. “But we do know this, and this is a fact, that we’re better than we were the first time he was here. And we also have other opportunities down the road because of draft picks that we’ve stored up, so Cleveland is in a position where they’re going to be good for a while, not just a flash in the pan. Looking back to when LeBron left, philosophically speaking, it created an acute awareness within our organization that we had to be better at everything we did. Him leaving … we were so dependent on him, as most teams are with the super players, that it put us in a position that we weren’t prepared for.”

Here’s more news out of Cleveland:

Though their relationship hasn’t been perfect this season, James understands the difficulties that Love has had to deal with since coming to the Cavs, Sam Amico of FOX Sports Ohio relays. “He’s been highly criticized this year,” James said. “I know why. For a team that finally gets together, when you have a ‘Big Three,’ they’ve got to find someone. When I was in Miami, Chris Bosh was that guy at one point. I’ve seen it before. When you’ve been in position where you’ve had your own team and now you come and join forces, at one point in Miami we were 9-8. They started pointing fingers at anybody. They’ve got to find somebody.“
The Cavs’ role-players are proving this postseason that Cleveland is more than just the “big three,” Tom Withers of The Associated Press writes. Just as James, Irving and Love have had to make personal sacrifices, the Cavs’ second-stringers have forgone individual accolades for team success, Withers adds. “It’s like a company. You have your janitor, your CEO. You have your secretaries,” said Tristan Thompson, who knows that his job is to bring energy as a reserve. “I don’t mind being the cleanup guy, punching the clock. I’ll do all the little things.”

Heat Notes: Johnson, Haslem, Luxury Tax

April 22nd, 2015 at 4:39pm CST by Eddie Scarito

The athletic Tyler Johnson impressed with his ball-handling and playmaking this season for the Heat, and he’ll need to show more improvement with those ball-handling skills and shoot more consistently, as Surya Fernandez of Fox Sports Florida examines. Johnson has a non-guaranteed minimum salary for next season that becomes 50% guaranteed if he remains under contract through August 1st, and he made his case for the Heat to keep him. “He’s relentless with his work ethic and with his drive,” coach Erik Spoelstra said. “A lot of players would have gotten discouraged by being cut after a full summer and having to go to [D-League] Sioux Falls. He looked at it as an opportunity to get better and play minutes under our guidance and our system. Doors happen to open for players like that and it did when we re-signed him and he made the most of his opportunities so I know he’s poised and looking forward to this offseason.”

Here’s more out of Miami:

Sean Deveney of The Sporting News has doubts about Heat owner Micky Arison’s willingness to pay the luxury tax next season, noting that bringing back Goran Dragic, Dwyane Wade and Luol Deng would give the Heat room for little else. If Dragic re-signs for the max and Wade and Deng return with salaries equivalent to the values of their player options, the rest of the guaranteed salary on the books for the Heat would send them above next season’s projected $81.6MM tax.
Heat president Pat Riley has offered Udonis Haslem to several teams in trade conversations in the past few years, league sources tell Brian Windhorst of ESPN.com. Windhorst’s piece juxtaposes Riley’s willingness to sacrifice loyalty for winning against similar choices LeBron James has made in light of Riley’s recent remarks that seem to show the Heat president questioning James’ decision to leave for Cleveland.

Chuck Myron contributed to this post.

Pat Riley On LeBron, Dragic, Wade, Draft

April 20th, 2015 at 12:23pm CST by Chuck Myron

Heat team president Pat Riley said today that he’s “at peace with” the choice LeBron James made last summer to return to Cleveland, and he indicated that everyone else in the organization had moved on, too, as Joseph Goodman of the Miami Herald transcribes (Twitter links). That didn’t appear to be the case when Riley, in response to a question about the draft, said there would be “no more smiling faces with hidden agendas, so we’ll be going in clean,” as Goodman also relays from today’s season-ending press conference (Twitter link). That could be interpreted as a jab at James, whose affection for Shabazz Napier was well-known before the Heat drafted him just weeks prior to James’ departure from Miami, but Riley insists his remark could be a reference to “anyone across the board,” Goodman tweets. Regardless, Riley had much more to say about the Heat’s future, and we’ll round up the highlights here:

Riley underscored the importance of re-signing Goran Dragic, as Herald columnist Barry Jackson relays. “If he doesn’t sign, my [expletive] is going to be in that seat and I’ll be writing about it,” Riley said to the gathered media. Still, Riley is “very confident” that Dragic will be back, Jackson notes.
Dwyane Wade‘s health been an ongoing issue, but Riley challenged the 33-year-old to be prepared to play more often. Wade said last week that he intends to opt in for next season. “Dwyane has to change the narrative about his body, his injuries, his missing games,” Riley said. “We’ve had a discussion about that. Night in, night out, there’s always a question of whether he can or cannot [play]. I’d like to see him do whatever he has to do to get himself ready to practice and play every single night. He’s got five months. This is not just a Dwyane Wade problem. It’s throughout the league.”
Riley would like to see the current starters return, Jackson relays in the same piece. That would indicate that the team wants to keep Luol Deng, who’s undecided about his more than $10.15MM player option.
The Heat president laid out what he’s looking for in the draft, where the Heat have a lottery pick as long as it falls in the top 10, and the 40th pick, saying that he wants “developed players, experienced players,” Jackson notes. “While we felt we might have had enough on the perimeter, that might be an area where we look,” Riley said. “I don’t want a one-dimensional guy. [I want] guys that can [shoot], guys that are playmakers, guys that can defend. We will take the best player that’s available.”
Riley believes the Heat will return to title contention next year, Goodman tweets, and he expressed bitter disappointment about falling short of the postseason this time around, as Ira Winderman of the Sun Sentinel notes (on Twitter). “There is not a person in the organization that doesn’t think we should have made the playoffs,” Riley said.

And-Ones: Cavs, Stephenson, Payne, Dekker

March 31st, 2015 at 9:00pm CST by Eddie Scarito

J.R. Smith, and not Iman Shumpert, was the player whom LeBron James most wanted the Cavs to obtain from the Knicks, according to Brian WIndhorst of ESPN.com (audio link), who spoke on the B.S. Report podcast with Grantland’s Bill Simmons, as RealGM transcribes. Of course, Cleveland traded for both in the January deal that sent out Dion Waiters.

“He [James] is so excited about the talent on this team,” Windhorst said. “He loves playing with [Timofey] Mozgov. He loves Smith. He was the guy who pushed for that trade. The Cavs were trying to get Iman Shumpert; that’s what the conversations were and of course the Knicks were saying ‘We’ll give you Shumpert, but you have to take J.R.’ They went to LeBron and he said ‘No, you get J.R. and if you get Shumpert with him that’s great.’ He, I think, really loves their top seven.”

Here’s more from around the league:

Lance Stephenson says that despite his struggles during his first season in Charlotte, he doesn’t regret signing with the Hornets, Steve Reed of The Associated Press writes. “I love this system. I love my coaches. I love my teammates,” Stephenson said. “Some people come into systems and fit right in. Some people it takes time. I feel like with me I’m going to take time.” In 58 appearances this season Stephenson has averaged 8.3 points, 4.7 rebounds, and 4.1 assists in 26.4 minutes per night.
Murray State sophomore guard Cameron Payne is leaning toward entering this year’s draft, Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports reports. Payne averaged 20.2 points and 5.7 assists while shooting 37.7% from three-point range this season. The 20-year-old is ranked No. 23 by Chad Ford of ESPN.com and No. 32 by Jonathan Givony of DraftExpress.
New No. 1 prospect Karl-Anthony Towns, Justise Winslow, Frank Kaminsky and Jerian Grant are among those who helped themselves during the second week of the NCAA Tournament, according to Ford, who writes in an Insider-only piece. Still, no prospect has boosted his stock more during the tournament than Sam Dekker, whom Ford believes has risen into the back end of the top 20 prospects.

Chuck Myron contributed to this post.