Pacific Notes: Cousins, Boozer, Hawes
The Kings have a budding superstar in DeMarcus Cousins, but coach George Karl admits that no one on Sacramento’s roster would be off-limits for the right trade, as Bill Herenda of CSNBayArea.com relays. Obviously, the Kings aren’t looking to trade their best player, but Karl’s comments jibe with what a person familiar with the coach’s thinking told Bleacher Report’s Howard Beck in February about Sacramento’s willingness to make deals.
“I’ve had some great players and I’ve never had one player that I have said is untradeable,” Karl said, as Herenda notes. “You always got to be ready for the possibility of a great trade that could come your way. I know I respect him [Cousins] a tremendous amount … I think our give and take and our communication has been almost on a daily basis … until we can really get to a special place together, I think we’ve got to continue to communicate, what he wants and what I want.”
With the offseason beginning in two days for Sacramento, there’s more on the Kings amid the latest from the Pacific Division:
- Aaron Bruski of NBCSports.com has begun hearing more speculation about Cousins trades among sources, but Bruski cautions that there’s nothing concrete or in the works (Twitter links).
- Carlos Boozer moved to the bench about a month into the regular season and he hasn’t been the sort of contributor the Lakers imagined when they claimed him off amnesty waivers this summer, writes Mark Medina of the Los Angeles Daily News. Coach Byron Scott is nonetheless pleased with the way he “hasn’t rocked the boat” since his benching, Medina notes, adding that it nonetheless seems unlikely that the power forward, a free agent this summer, will return.
- Spencer Hawes admits he isn’t having the sort of season he envisioned when he joined the Clippers on a four-year deal for the full value of the mid-level exception this past summer, observes Broderick Turner of the Los Angeles Times. “It’s been bad,” he said of his performance. “There’s no other way to put it. You just can’t let it defeat you when you go through the low stretches.”
Pacific Notes: Karl, Barnes, Lakers
Magic Johnson casts a shadow over the Lakers organization even though he’s no longer a part of it in any way, having sold his minority ownership share, as Bleacher Report’s Kevin Ding examines. Johnson doesn’t have a relationship with any of the members of the Buss family who control the franchise aside from Jeanie, the team’s Board of Governors representative, with whom he remains close, according to Ding. The Busses have always insisted that the team isn’t for sale, but Johnson would be a prime candidate to front a bid for the Lakers if they ever became available, Ding writes. There’s more on the Lakers amid our look around the Pacific Division:
- George Karl admits he has a great degree of fondness for his former players on the Nuggets, observes Jason Jones of The Sacramento Bee. Bleacher Report’s Howard Beck heard in February that Karl would love for the Kings to acquire Ty Lawson or any of the players he coached on the 2012/13 Nuggets, his last NBA team, but it’s uncertain how much influence, if any, Karl has under new basketball operations chief Vlade Divac.
- Defense, leadership and career-best 36.7% three-point shooting this year are the hallmarks of what’s been perhaps Matt Barnes‘ best NBA season, as Ben Bolch of the Los Angeles Times details. The timing is fortuitous for the Clippers small forward, whose salary of almost $3.543MM for next season is only guaranteed for $1MM.
- Baxter Holmes of ESPNLosAngeles.com examines the conundrum the Lakers face as Rajon Rondo looms as a likely free agent target while incumbent point guard Jordan Clarkson exceeds expectations.
Kings Ink David Stockton To Multiyear Deal
SUNDAY, 12:15pm: The signing is official, the team announced. Stockton’s salary is not guaranteed for next season, reports Bill Herenda of CSNBayArea.com.
SATURDAY, 8:03am: The Kings are planning to sign guard David Stockton to a multiyear deal prior to the season ending, Marc Stein of ESPN.com reports. With Sacramento’s roster count sitting at the league maximum of 15 players, the Kings will need to clear a spot prior to Stockton putting pen to paper on his new pact. The likeliest candidate to go would be big man Sim Bhullar, whose 10-day pact ends today, Stein notes. Sacramento’s next scheduled contest is Sunday against the Nuggets.
Stockton, the son of NBA legend John Stockton, went undrafted last year after four seasons at Gonzaga. The younger Stockton was in training camp with the Wizards but didn’t make it onto Washington’s regular season roster. Sacramento had a chance to sample the 23-year-old’s wares back in February when the team inked him to a lone 10-day pact, but Stockton only appeared in one contest while on that deal, scoring one point in seven minutes of action. The player spent the balance of this season in the D-League with the Reno Bighorns, Sacramento’s affiliate. In 43 D-League appearances he averaged a stellar 20.1 points, 4.2 rebounds, and 9.9 assists.
When Bhullar signed his 10-day deal with the Kings he made history as the first NBA player of Indian descent. The big man saw little action during his time in Sacramento, only appearing in 3 contests. Bhullar averaged 0.7 points and 0.3 rebounds in 1.0 minute per game.
Pacific Notes: Lin, Black, Kings
Jeremy Lin‘s time with the Lakers may be just about done, writes Baxter Holmes of ESPN.com. Lin has missed two straight games with an aching left knee, and although he could return before this season is done, prospects don’t look good for next season. Neither Lin, who will be a free agent this summer, nor coach Byron Scott has publicly addressed the situation, but Scott said the guard had an “up and down” season. Lin, who made $14.9MM this year after being acquired from the Rockets in an offseason deal, has been a frequent target of criticism from Scott and teammate Kobe Bryant.
There’s more from the Pacific Division:
- The outlook is much different for Lakers rookie Tarik Black, according to Joey Ramirez of Lakers.com. Black, who was claimed off waivers from the Rockets earlier this season, leads all rookies in field goal percentage and is third in rebounds, and his future in Los Angeles seems bright. “This is probably the most growth I’ve had in a single season since I started playing basketball,” he said.
- After taking over as Kings coach in midseason, George Karl is looking forward to the offseason to begin putting his stamp on the team, according to Ailene Voisin of The Sacramento Bee. Although there was opposition to it from inside the organization, Karl’s hiring may have brought stability to an unsettled organization. “We have to forget about the blame game, about who is this, who is that, and figure out who we are and what we want to become,” Karl said. “We have a very, very important summer ahead of us.”
Latest On Kings Front Office
Kings owner Vivek Ranadive indeed sees vice president of basketball and franchise operations Vlade Divac as the team’s primary basketball decision-maker instead of GM Pete D’Alessandro, league sources tell Marc Stein of ESPN.com. The team put Divac above D’Alessandro on its organizational chart when it hired its former center in March, though it wasn’t immediately clear whether Divac would be at the controls. D’Alessandro’s future with the club is unclear, as Stein and Grantland’s Zach Lowe (Twitter link) write. Sacramento is looking to hire another front office executive to support Divac whether or not D’Alessandro remains with the Kings, Stein hears.
Former Kings adviser Chris Mullin, who left the team a week ago to coach at St. John’s, his alma mater, was D’Alessandro’s closest ally, according to Stein. Mullin lost influence with Ranadive when he refused to coach the team immediately after the midseason firing of Michael Malone rather than wait until next season, sources tell the ESPN scribe. Mullin and D’Alessandro resisted the hiring of Divac, though D’Alessandro said last month that he and others were pleased to have Divac aboard, as Ailene Voisin of The Sacramento Bee reported then.
Ranadive’s appointment of Divac atop the basketball power structure means the owner has once more hired a top hoops executive after hiring a coach, since George Karl joined the team in February, though Divac has made it clear that he likes Karl, Stein notes. Divac worked in the Lakers scouting department after his retirement in 2005, and he served as president of Serbia’s Partizan Belgrade and as an adviser to Spain’s Real Madrid, as Stein points out. He’s also done Olympic and FIBA administrative work and has a reputation as a unifying force, according to Stein. That jibes with a recent report from The Bee’s Jason Jones that Ranadive has wanted to end the discord that’s marked the front office of late. Ranadive had lost faith in the front office’s plan, Jones tweets.
D’Alessandro came aboard shortly after Ranadive bought the team in 2013. The GM had been former Nuggets GM Masai Ujiri‘s chief aide, and Denver was reportedly leaning toward hiring D’Alessandro for its own GM vacancy in 2013, when Ujiri left to head the Raptors. D’Alessandro’s tenure in charge of Sacramento’s basketball operations was marked by an aggressive posture toward trades, particularly in his first season, when the team acquired Rudy Gay from Ujiri and the Raptors. The Kings under D’Alessandro pushed Gay to opt in for this season and signed him to an extension this past fall, and they gave DeMarcus Cousins a max extension the previous offseason.
Lowe’s Latest: Lopez, Biyombo, Davis
Most executives around the league expect Brook Lopez to turn down his player option for next season, worth more than $16.744MM, writes Grantland’s Zach Lowe. That’s on the heels of his surge over the past month, as he averaged 20.9 points and 9.1 rebounds per game in March, and he’s upped those numbers to 22.8 PPG and 9.8 RPG so far in April. Lowe wrote in December that most execs thought Lopez would pick up the option, so it seems his hot streak has changed thinking around the league. Still, Bleacher Report’s Howard Beck wrote just a week after Lowe’s report in December that he had heard from many executives who expected even then that Lopez would opt out. The Nets center said a few weeks ago that he hadn’t thought about what to do with the option, so there’s some mystery here. Lowe has more rumors from his latest column, which focuses on players with decent chances of becoming this year’s version of what DeMarre Carroll was in 2013, when he signed a two-year, $5MM pact that wound up a bargain deal for the Hawks.
- Bismack Biyombo will almost certainly see the value of his qualifying offer from the Hornets shrink from more than $5.194MM to nearly $4.046MM thanks to the starter criteria that he has virtually no chance of meeting. Executives are “nearly unanimous” that he wouldn’t command annual salaries of that nearly $5.2MM amount in free agency this summer, according to Lowe, though while most people believe a team could snag him for about $4MM a year, no one is sure about that, Lowe adds.
- Ed Davis rejected a multiyear contract offer from the Grizzlies this past summer, several league sources tell Lowe. He instead signed with the Lakers on a two-year deal for the minimum salary with a player option that he’s said he plans to decline in search of a long-term deal this summer. Davis turned down a rookie scale extension in the fall of 2013 that would have given him annual salaries of $5-6MM beginning this season, as Ronald Tillery of The Commercial Appeal reported this past October.
- Derrick Williams doesn’t intrigue front offices as much as he did a year ago, Lowe writes. He, too, is in line for a reduced qualifying offer from the Kings for failing to meet the starter criteria.
- Lowe identifies the Spurs as a team to watch on Mirza Teletovic, though it’s unclear if that’s just speculation. The Nets can match offers if they extend a qualifying offer of more than $4.21MM.
2015/16 Salary Commitments: Kings
With the NBA trade deadline passed, teams are focusing on locking down playoff spots or vying for a better chance in the draft lottery. Outside of the players who are added on 10-day deals, or those lucky enough to turn those auditions into long-term contracts, teams’ rosters are relatively set for the remainder of the season.
We at Hoops Rumors are in the process of taking a look ahead at each franchise’s salary cap situation heading into the summer, and the free agent frenzy that occurs every offseason. While the exact amount of the 2015/16 salary cap won’t be announced until July, the cap is projected to come in somewhere around $67.4MM, with the luxury tax threshold projected at approximately $81MM. This year’s $63.065MM cap represented an increase of 7.7% over 2013/14, which was well above the league’s projected annual increase of 4.5%.
We’ll continue onward by taking a look at the Kings’ cap outlook for 2015/16…
Here are the players with guaranteed contracts:
- Darren Collison — $5,013,559
- DeMarcus Cousins — $15,851,950
- Wayne Ellington (Stretch Provision) — $923,780
- Rudy Gay — $12,403,101
- Carl Landry — $6.5MM
- Ben McLemore — $3,156,600
- Nik Stauskas — $2,869,440
- Jason Thompson — $6,431,250
Here are the players with non-guaranteed contracts:
- Ray McCallum — $947,276
- Eric Moreland — $845,059
Players with options:
- None
The Kings’ Cap Summary for 2015/16:
- Guaranteed Salary: $53,149,680
- Options/Non-Guaranteed Salary: $1,792,335
- Total: $54,942,015
The Basketball Insiders salary pages were used in the creation of this post.
Pacific Notes: Robinson, Bullock, Ellington
The Clippers are keeping close tabs on the health of guard Nate Robinson, and if he is healthy enough to play by next week the team will consider re-signing him, Arash Markazi of ESPNLosAngeles.com tweets. Robinson has already had two 10-day contracts with the team, so any new deal would need to cover the remainder of the season. Los Angeles currently has 15 players on its roster, so a corresponding personnel move would be required. The most likely candidate to go would be Lester Hudson, who is inked to a 10-day pact that expires on Tuesday.
Here’s more from the Pacific Division:
- Reggie Bullock is finally getting some playing time for the Suns, and the swingman is using the exposure to show Phoenix why he should be part of its plans for next season, Paul Coro of The Arizona Republic writes. “I wanted to play when I first got here but I’m still a young player in this league,” Bullock said. “The coaches know what I’m capable of, defending and shooting the ball. I’m just staying ready for when my name is called and continue to build and take this confidence to next season.“
- Injured Lakers guard Wayne Ellington is done for the season courtesy of a separated right shoulder, and will become an unrestricted free agent this summer. Los Angeles’ coach Byron Scott says that the team’s rebuilding plan hinges on the NBA draft and pursuing marquee free agents, but the Lakers’ front office would “absolutely” consider re-signing Ellington, Mark Medina of The Los Angeles Daily News writes.
- When Sim Bhullar signed his 10-day deal with the Kings he made history as the first NBA player of Indian descent, the significance of which is not lost on the big man, Antonio Gonzalez of The Associated Press writes. “It’s a big moment in the history of the NBA and the history of my country in India,” Bhullar said. “I know my family’s going to be proud of me and everybody’s going to be proud of me and cheer me on the court.”
Northwest Notes: Lawson, Wright, Robinson
Most executives from teams around the league expect the Jazz to gauge the market for their first-round pick this year, and while front offices usually don’t give much thought to trading lottery picks before the lottery happens, Grantland’s Zach Lowe tosses out some hypothetical scenarios. The Nuggets asked for multiple first-round picks in Ty Lawson trade talks leading up to the deadline, sources told Lowe at the time, and the Grantland scribe speculates that he’s a possible fit for the Jazz. Lowe also names the Kings and Celtics as teams to watch in regard to Lawson, though it’s unclear if that’s also merely speculation. In any case, here’s more from around the Northwest Division:
- Dorell Wright is expected to miss the next four to six weeks with a broken left hand, the Trail Blazers announced (Twitter link). That’s a blow for Portland, which will seemingly be without him for at least the first round of the playoffs, though the team’s deadline acquisition of Alonzo Gee, who’ll likely see more minutes, and Arron Afflalo continues to pay dividends, tweets Jabari Young of CSNNW.com. Wright will be a free agent at season’s end.
- The Nuggets and Thomas Robinson mutually decided against having Robinson stick around Denver for the rest of the season after the midseason trade that brought him aboard, as Christopher Dempsey of The Denver Post writes in his mailbag column. The Sixers claimed Robinson off waivers from the Nuggets in February.
- Enes Kanter has been more productive following the trade that sent him to the Thunder than he ever was with the Jazz, and that’s in large measure because of the on-court chemistry he has with Russell Westbrook, as Josh Kopelman of Daily Thunder examines.
Kings Sign Sim Bhullar To 10-Day Contract
THURSDAY, 11:01am: The deal is official, the Kings announced.
WEDNESDAY, 1:23pm: The Kings are about to sign Sim Bhullar to a 10-day contract, reports Marc Stein of ESPN.com (Twitter link). He’ll be the first NBA player from India, as Stein points out, and he’ll play for a team with the league’s first Indian owner, Vivek Ranadive. The Kings have been hoping that the massive 7’5″ center’s conditioning would improve so that they could see fit to bring him aboard, as Ailene Voisin of The Sacramento Bee recently wrote. Sacramento has a full 15-man roster, but David Wear is on the last day of his 10-day contract.
Bhullar, like Wear, was with Sacramento during the preseason, and they both spent most of the year with Sacramento’s D-League affiliate. Bhullar has averaged 10.1 points and 8.6 rebounds in 25.5 minutes per game. He’s seen only 6.0 field goal attempts per game in the D-League team’s go-go offense, which helps explain a scoring output that’s below what most NBA-level prospects put up against D-League competition.
Scoring wasn’t his strong point in college, as the 22-year-old went undrafted out of New Mexico State last year, but he used his size to his advantage, recording 3.4 blocks per game for the Aggies last season. He’s swatted even more shots during his time in the D-League, averaging 3.8 BPG.