Pacific Notes: Griffin, Scott, Butler, Booker
Blake Griffin apologized profusely as he spoke with reporters Tuesday about what he said was “poor judgment” on his part in an incident with Clippers assistant equipment manager Matias Testi that left Griffin with a broken hand, according to Dan Woike of the Orange County Register. Coach/executive Doc Rivers reiterated that he has no intention of trading Griffin, as Woike relays, but Rivers made no secret of the profound effect the situation has had.
“Your actions have consequences, and it doesn’t take long. You can have a bad minute or two minutes, and it changes everything,” Rivers said, as Woike notes. “And it has. This changes a lot of stuff for our team. I think that’s the lesson here.”
It’s still not completely clear when Griffin will return to play, and the Clippers have reportedly had serious talks with the Magic about acquiring fellow big man Channing Frye. See more from around the Pacific Division:
- Some within the Lakers are thinking about how Byron Scott would perform as coach if he had more talent, while others ponder just how effective his hard-line approach with the team’s young players has been, according to Mike Bresnahan of the Los Angeles Times, who writes that the team seems torn about whether to keep the coach for next season. The Lakers are committed to him through season’s end, and while he also has a guaranteed salary for next season, too, his job security beyond this spring is in jeopardy, as the Lakers haven’t been reluctant to eat coaching salaries in the recent past, Bresnahan notes.
- Caron Butler is a prime buyout candidate, according to Sean Deveney of The Sporting News. The Kings reportedly promised to trade him in December, but he’s still with Sacramento.
- It’s been a forgettable season in Phoenix, but Devin Booker, whom the Suns drafted 13th overall this past June, gives the team reason for optimism, as Cody Taylor of Basketball Insiders examines.
Northwest Notes: Rubio, Martin, Foye, Green
Bucks coach Jason Kidd, who holds sway over the team’s personnel decisions, has a longstanding admiration for Ricky Rubio, and while the Timberwolves haven’t been looking for Rubio trades, they’re likely to do so this summer, league sources told Adrian Wojnarowski of The Vertical on Yahoo Sports. Other recent reports have indicated that Rubio is currently on the block, though Minnesota doesn’t appear to be in a hurry to deal him for the time being, judging by Wojnarowski’s reporting. See more from Minnesota amid the latest from around the Northwest Division:
- Timberwolves shooting guard Kevin Martin is unlikely to end up in a trade unless he turns down his player option, worth nearly $7.378MM for next season, league sources told Wojnarowski for the same piece. Martin probably won’t do that, since he’d have a tough time making up that money on the free agent market this summer.
- Randy Foye‘s eminently positive locker room presence appeals to the Nuggets, who won’t be quick to give him up, according to Wojnarowski. The Heat reportedly have interest, and Wojnarowski suggests others do as well.
- Erick Green, whose second 10-day contract with the Jazz expired Sunday, will return to the D-League affiliate of the Kings, a league source tells Chris Reichert of Upside & Motor (Twitter link).
- Joey Dorsey, whom the Nuggets acquired in the Ty Lawson trade this past summer and later waived in a buyout, has left Turkey’s Galatasaray and will sign with Barcelona of Spain, international journalist David Pick reports (Twitter links).
Heat Notes: Dragic, Bosh, Trade Targets
The Heat not surprisingly have interest in soon-to-be free agent Mike Conley, Barry Jackson of the Miami Herald passes along via Dan Le Batard of ESPN Radio, and Miami is open to hearing offers for Goran Dragic, Jackson writes. However, the Heat are in no hurry to trade their point guard. The Heat like Jeff Teague and Al Horford, but Miami would need to find a third team to involve in a deal to get Atlanta the assets it wants for them, according to Jackson. DeMarcus Cousins and Jahlil Okafor have also held appeal to Miami, at least as of earlier this season, a source who has spoken with the Heat told Jackson. Moreover, the Heat want to further reduce their luxury tax bill and add a shooter, and they’re continuing to try to make the playoffs despite the health scare for Chris Bosh, who has an encouraging prognosis for his long-term health once his latest blood clot issue is resolved, Jackson reports.
See more from Miami:
- The most likely course of action regarding Bosh’s health would probably knock him out for three months, according to Ira Winderman of the Sun Sentinel, though agent Henry Thomas told Winderman that it’s too soon to know what will happen.
- The Heat probably wouldn’t benefit from missing the playoffs as much as they did last year when they snagged the No. 10 pick and Justise Winslow, making Bosh’s situation potentially devastating for the franchise, contends Tim Bontemps of The Washington Post. Miami’s first-round pick is again top-10 protected, but lottery and draft-night luck played in the Heat’s favor last year.
- Jackson lists Mirza Teletovic, Jerryd Bayless and Wayne Ellington as “options” for the Heat as they look for a shooter, though it’s not entirely clear whether the Heat are indeed interested in them.
Kings Interested In Thabo Sefolosha
The Kings have interest in Thabo Sefolosha, a league source tells ESPN’s Chris Broussard (Twitter link). Sacramento has been on the lookout for a major upgrade at shooting guard and veteran contributors, as Jason Jones of The Sacramento Bee reported Tuesday. The 31-year-old Sefolosha is in his 10th NBA season and can play the two, but it’s debatable whether he’d constitute a major upgrade over starter Marco Belinelli, whom the Kings are reportedly making available, and former No. 7 overall pick Ben McLemore, whom Sacramento is apparently “desperate” to trade.
Sefolosha’s best work comes on the defensive end. ESPN’s Defensive Real Plus Minus rankings list him as a small forward and peg him sixth in the league. Oddly, he’s shooting a career best 51.8% from the floor while enduring the second-worst 3-point shooting season of his career, canning only 30.9% of his shots from behind the arc. That’s even though his shot distribution hasn’t changed much, according to Basketball-Reference. The net effect is his scoring is up to 6.8 points per game from 5.3 last season as he takes slightly more shots and sees about five more minutes a game than he did last year.
It’s unclear what it would take to pry Sefolosha from the Hawks, who sorely missed him in the playoffs last spring while he was out with a broken leg and ankle ligament damage suffered during an encounter with police, one for which he’s filing a civil suit after being cleared of wrongdoing. He’s making $4MM this season and will see $3.85MM next year in the final season of his contract.
And-Ones: Horford, Anderson, Rondo
Many teams are estimating the salary cap will rise to $92MM next season, above the league’s $89MM projection, according to Zach Lowe of ESPN.com. Some around the league can envision the cap going as high as $95MM, reports Tim Bontemps of The Washington Post (Twitter link), echoing an October dispatch from Sean Deveney of The Sporting News, who heard from many league executives and agents who believed the cap would surge to that $95MM figure. A $95MM cap would produce maximum salaries worth approximately $22.3MM for players with six or fewer years of experience, $26.8M for players with between seven and nine years of experience, and $31.3M for veterans of 10 or more seasons, notes Amin Elhassan of ESPN.com (Twitter link). Those figures would be $21.6MM, $25.9MM and $30.3MM on a $92MM cap, Elhassan also tweets.
Here’s more from around the league:
- Hawks GM Wes Wilcox is asking teams to “wow” him with their offers for Al Horford, sources also tell Lowe. People close to the Hawks big man tell Lowe that the ability of the team with his Bird rights in free agency to give him a fifth year in a new contract this summer will be more important to him than just about any other facet in negotiations. That would appear to mean the Hawks, who have those Bird rights, are in a strong position to retain him. Horford will nonetheless look around at other teams, and he likes the idea of playing in a larger market with more people who are from the Dominican Republic, as he is, several sources tell Lowe. However, he treasures the continuity of the Hawks, Lowe writes.
- The Pelicans have been pushing to trade Ryan Anderson because the team doesn’t think it will be able to re-sign him this summer, Adrian Wojnarowski of The Vertical on Yahoo Sports relays. Teams trading for Anderson believe that he’ll command a starting salary of $16MM-$18MM per season on his next deal, Wojnarowski adds. New Orleans has been struggling trying to get equal value in return for the stretch-four and has spoken with the Wizards and the Pistons about the forward, though the conversations with Detroit occurred prior to the team landing Tobias Harris from the Magic, the Vertical scribe notes. Detroit had discussed a larger three-team trade involving the Pelicans and Magic that would have sent Anderson to Detroit and Harris to New Orleans, but Orlando was reluctant to part with Evan Fournier, Wojnarowski adds.
- The Wizards are asking around in search of a reserve big man, league sources tell Lowe for the same piece.
- It’s a “lock” that either Terrence Jones or Donatas Motiejunas will leave the Rockets as restricted free agents this summer, according to Lowe.
- Rajon Rondo intends to keep an open mind about signing with the Knicks when he’s a free agent this coming summer, a league source tells Marc Berman of the New York Post. Recently fired coach Derek Fisher had some pointed comments after Rondo criticized the triangle offense, and Berman wonders if Fisher wasn’t aware of team president Phil Jackson‘s respect for Rondo’s game. Sources who spoke with Berman indicated that Fisher and Jackson didn’t talk as much during the coach’s time with the Knicks as Jackson thought they would.
Chuck Myron contributed to this post.
Western Notes: Griffin, McRae, Durant
It’s likely the Clippers hang on to Blake Griffin through at least the rest of this season, but he isn’t “untouchable” in trade talk and the Clippers are listening to offers, writes Zach Lowe of ESPN.com. Still, while the team is liable to take a more aggressive stance about trading Griffin if it finds out before the trade deadline that it has no shot at Kevin Durant this summer, the Clips would demand a huge offer just to trade him away before draft time in June, much less Thursday’s 2pm Central trade deadline, according to Lowe. Clippers executives are adamant that they don’t intend to trade their star power forward, with one of them telling Dan Woike of The Orange County Register that the team never offered Griffin and Lance Stephenson to the Nuggets for a package of four players, as had been reported.
Here’s more from the Western Conference:
- The Kings are seeking a major upgrade at shooting guard and are not looking for younger players who couldn’t provide significant contributions immediately, Jason Jones of The Sacramento Bee notes (on Twitter). Sacramento is said to be desperate to deal away shooting guard Ben McLemore, with the Timberwolves and other teams reportedly interested in the young wing.
- The Mavericks would be interested in Wolves shooting guard Kevin Martin if he works a buyout with Minnesota, Tim MacMahon of ESPN.com relays (via Twitter). Dallas would be reluctant to trade for Martin because of the fear he would pick up his player option for next season worth $7,377,500, MacMahon notes.
- Clippers coach/executive Doc Rivers said the team is looking to add a guard via a 10-day deal, but that isn’t likely to occur prior to the team’s next two contests, Dan Woike of The Orange County Register tweets.
- The Warriors find themselves in a difficult position at trade deadline time as the team attempts to repeat as NBA champions while trying to set itself up for a run at Durant, who is set to become an unrestricted free agent this summer, Tim Kawakami of The Bay Area News Group writes. Golden State has to weigh its pursuit of the all-time regular season victory mark against the chance to land Durant this offseason, Kawakami notes. In order to clear enough cap room to ink Durant outright, the Warriors would need to part ways with a significant chunk of talent, which could derail the team’s chances at bringing home a title in 2015/16, Kawakami adds.
- The Suns have recalled shooting guard Jordan McRae from their D-League affiliate in Bakersfield, the team announced. McRae, who is with Phoenix on a 10-day deal, was sent to the D-League so he could participate in the league’s All-Star game, wherein he notched seven points and five assists in 14 minutes of action.
- The Kings don’t appear to want to bring George Karl back next season even though they’ve committed to him through the end of this season, sources tell Adrian Wojnarowski of The Vertical on Yahoo Sports. He’ll have $6.5MM in guaranteed salary remaining on his contract once this season is done.
Chuck Myron contributed to this post.
Kings Seek To Deal Ben McLemore; Wolves Eye Him
TUESDAY, 12:10pm: Sacramento is “desperate” to trade McLemore, a league source told Sam Amico of Amico Hoops.
3:17pm: The Timberwolves are among the teams talking to Sacramento about McLemore, reports Darren Wolfson of 1500 ESPN Twin Cities (Twitter link).
MONDAY, 2:53pm: The Kings and Ben McLemore are working together to find a new team for the former lottery pick as the trade deadline approaches, report Marc Stein and Brian Windhorst of ESPN.com. The Cavaliers are one of multiple Eastern Conference teams with strong interest in the shooting guard, as Chris Haynes of the Northeast Ohio Media Group and the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported last week, though it appeared then that Sacramento was resisting offers for the Rich Paul client. Sacramento wants someone who can help them immediately and not future draft picks, Stein and Windhorst write. McLemore, the seventh overall pick from 2013, is making almost $3.157MM in year three of his four-year rookie scale contract.
The effort to trade McLemore is similar to the one the Kings made to try to facilitate a trade for Caron Butler in December, according to Stein and Windhorst. However, Butler remains with Sacramento.
The Kings drafted Nik Stauskas at No. 8 in 2014, one year after they took McLemore, but they traded Stauskas this to Philadelphia past summer, ostensibly designating McLemore as their shooting guard of the future. Instead, his minutes have shrunk from 32.6 last season, when he started all 82 games, to 21.0 this year. He’s shooting career bests of 37.2% from 3-point territory and 45.1% from the field, but it hasn’t translated into more playing time, and he wasn’t in the starting lineup for the last two games in which he appeared before going out with a wrist injury for Sacramento’s final three games leading up to the All-Star break.
Kings Eye Ryan Anderson, Make Belinelli Available
The Kings would like to sign Ryan Anderson in free agency this summer, and they’re pondering whether it would be wise to trade for him at the deadline to gain his Bird rights and the ability to give him a fifth year in a new contract this summer, reports Zach Lowe of ESPN.com, adding that the same is true for the Pistons. Sacramento is making several players available for a trade, including Marco Belinelli, according to Chris Mannix of The Vertical on Yahoo Sports (audio link; scroll to 14:45 mark), who also mentions the availability of Rudy Gay and Ben McLemore, which earlier reports made clear. It’s unclear if any of them are connected to Anderson. The Pelicans rejected a proposal from Sacramento of Anderson for Gay, as Michael Scotto of SheridanHoops reported, though James Ham of CSN California cast doubt on the notion of whether that offer took place.
Several teams have shown interest in Belinelli as well as Gay, Ham later reported, though it’s unclear just who’s in the mix for Belinelli, in particular. The shooting guard who turns 30 next month recently entered the starting lineup, but he’s shooting a career-worst 29.9% from 3-point range, off precipitously from last season’s 37.4% clip and his career mark of 38.1%. He’s nonetheless averaging more 3-point attempts than in any of his nine seasons so far. Sacramento signed him this past summer to a three-year, $19MM deal, fending off the Warriors, Hornets and Heat. The contract gives him nearly $6.061MM this season.
Anderson’s name has been mentioned frequently in rumors of late, both as a trade candidate and a looming free agent. Miami, like the Kings and Pistons, has also drawn mention as a team with interest in signing him over the summer, but it’s unclear if the Heat have any inclination to trade for him. A source with an NBA team told Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders a while ago that he expects Anderson to command a maximum-salary contract with a projected starting salary of $24.9MM. Lowe makes passing mention of $20MM as a possibility for Anderson’s salary next season.
New Orleans reportedly made Anderson available for a swap earlier this season, but the team wasn’t anxious to trade him, as Steve Kyler of Basketball Insiders reported. The Wizards have apparently asked about him and the Rockets “kicked the tires” on Anderson earlier this season, Kyler also reported. The Raptors have strong interest in trading for him, as Vince Ellis of the Detroit Free Press heard. New Orleans apparently had talks with the Suns that involved Anderson, too.
And-Ones: Morris, Kings, Gasol
The Suns want a package that includes a younger player and a first-round pick for power forward Markieff Morris, several league executives told Adrian Wojnarowski of The Vertical on Yahoo Sports. Phoenix has no intention of bringing back Morris next season but GM Ryan McDonough could wait until the summer to deal him if he doesn’t get the desired package, Wojnarowski continues. Phoenix already owns five first-rounders over the next three drafts, which motivates McDonough to get more than just a pick for Morris, Wojnarowski adds.
In other news around the league:
- The Kings and Magic are under internal pressure to make the playoffs and that increases the chances of those teams making a deadline deal, David Aldridge of NBA.com tweets. Kings owner Vivek Ranadive and vice president of basketball operations Vlade Divac were also canvassing league officials during the All-Star break on possible GM candidates, Wojnarowski reported in his trade deadline update. Divac holds the title of GM but the team is looking for someone who has more experience working with the collective bargaining agreement to assist him, as Wojnarowski details.
- The Knicks could make a play for the Bulls’ Pau Gasol, an unrestricted free agent this summer, even though center is not a clear position of need, Marc Berman of the New York Post opines. A source told Berman that money isn’t a primary concern for Gasol, which bodes well for the Knicks. Gasol is one of Knicks president Phil Jackson’s favorite players and he would make a perfect mentor to rookie power forward Kristaps Porzingis, Berman continues. The Knicks could attempt to trade current starter Robin Lopez to open up a spot for Gasol and might also clear cap space sooner by dealing backup big man Kyle O’Quinn, whom they’ve reportedly offered around, before the trade deadline, Berman adds.
- Lakers reserve shooting guard Nick Young is hopeful of getting traded to a playoff-bound team, Mark Medina of the Los Angeles Daily News reports. The club wants to move Young, as it tried to do during last season’s trade deadline and the offseason, but has struggled to find a taker, Medina continues. Young has two years and approximately $11.1MM remaining on his contract after this season, with a player option on the final year.
- There is only a slim possibility that the Warriors will make a trade before Thursday’s deadline, a source told Marc J. Spears of Yahoo Sports (Twitter link).
Cavs Interested In Kosta Koufos
The Cavaliers have pursued Kosta Koufos, sources tell Marc Stein of ESPN.com (Twitter link). It’s one of many names to which Cleveland has been linked in recent weeks, including fellow King Ben McLemore. Sacramento reportedly rejected the idea of trading for Timofey Mozgov, though It’s unclear if Cleveland’s pitch for Koufos, who’s a native of nearby Canton, Ohio, involved either Mozgov or McLemore. Stein reported last year that the Cavs reached out to the Grizzlies about trading for Koufos while the backup center was still with Memphis.
The Cavs have reportedly sought a 3-and-D wing player, but they’ve also been linked to Omer Asik as they’ve reportedly explored the market for Mozgov. Cleveland has apparently been shopping Kevin Love, but with a high price attached to him. Koufos, a former Ohio State player, is making $7.7MM in the first season of a four-year deal worth about $32.879MM that he signed with the Kings this past summer. That salary would fit within the largest of Cleveland’s three trade exceptions, so the Cavs theoretically wouldn’t have to send matching salary in return.
However, the Kings seem determined to make the playoffs this season, and they’ve sought a “quality young player” or someone whose contract runs past this season in return for Rudy Gay, as Stein reported late last month. Koufos isn’t the most logical fit next to Kings big men DeMarcus Cousins and Willie Cauley-Stein, both of whom are, like Koufos, on long-term deals, but Koufos’ name has largely been absent from trade rumors this season.
What should the Cavs offer in exchange for Koufos? Leave a comment to share your thoughts.