Kings Sign Trent Lockett
THURSDAY, 10:33am: Darren Wolfson of 1500 ESPN Twin Cities reports (via Twitter) that Lockett's deal with the Kings is a two-year pact, and includes a partial guarantee, as we speculated below.
WEDNESDAY, 7:10pm: The Kings have signed Trent Lockett, the team announced on its website. The 6'5" shooting guard played for Sacramento's summer league team after going undrafted in June out of Marquette. The deal likely amounts to just a training camp invitation, but the formal announcement from the club suggests there may be a partial guarantee involved.
Lockett wasn't a highly rated draft prospect, but we heard that he performed predraft workouts for the Bucks and Knicks, and today's release for the Kings says he worked out for them prior to the draft, too. He averaged 7.0 points and 20.2 minutes per game in five summer league contests for Sacramento last month.
That 7.0 PPG is the same number he put up in 26.6 MPG for Marquette last season, little more than half of his 13.0 PPG output as a junior at Arizona State, where he played three seasons before transferring. ESPN's Chad Ford, who rated him the 132nd-best prospect in the draft, pointed to athleticism and rebounding as his strengths (Insider link). He put up more than five rebounds per game in each of his last three seasons in college.
Lockett is the 15th player under contract with the Kings, as our updated roster counts show. The 14 other players all have fully guaranteed contracts. NBA teams are limited to 15 players during the season, but they can carry as many as 20 players into training camp, so Lockett figures to receive more competition for the final spot on the regular season roster.
Western Notes: Mavs, Kings, Hansen, Blazers
Western Conference teams gave out the two most lucrative contracts by average annual value this summer, but the next four spots belong to players who signed to play in the East. The Thunder, Spurs and Nuggets, the three Western teams with the best records last season, didn't hand out any of the 25 deals on that list. Whether that signals a shift in the balance of power remains to be seen, but in the meantime, here's the latest from the West:
- The Mavs' two most expensive offseason additions have known plenty of coaching instability throughout their careers, but the firmly entrenched Rick Carlisle figures to change that for Monta Ellis and Jose Calderon, writes Eddie Sefko of the Dallas Morning News.
- The Kings announced that they've hired the architectural firm AECOM to design the construction of a new arena in Sacramento, a story that Tony Bizjak of The Sacramento Bee originally reported. Team president Chris Granger said he expects construction to begin about a year from now.
- The anti-arena campaign in Sacramento is still free to use the petition signatures that Seattle investor Chris Hansen bankrolled, but Hansen could also wipe those signatures out, a move that would help him engender some much-needed goodwill, The Bee's Marcos Breton argues.
- Chris Lucia of Blazer's Edge sizes up the effect that new starting center Robin Lopez and an upgraded bench will have on the Blazers rotation.
Odds & Ends: Ivey, Cavs, Fredette, Lakers, Draft
Former second-round pick Royal Ivey has never scored more than 5.6 points per game in the NBA, nor has he averaged as many as 20 minutes a night. Still, the 6'3" combo guard has consistently found work in the league, as he's spent the entirety of the last nine seasons on an NBA roster. He's unsigned this summer, but it looks like he'll have a chance to make it an even 10 years in the Association. Ivey will soon work out for the Hawks and Spurs, tweets Jared Zwerling of ESPNNewYork.com. Here's more on a few others looking to stick around the NBA awhile:
- It was Carrick Felix's performance over the summer that prompted the Cavs to give the 33rd overall pick a slight bump in his first-year salary, the Plain Dealer's Terry Pluto writes. Pluto refers to the contract as a four-year deal, as it was originally reported to be, but Mark Deeks of ShamSports and HoopsWorld's Eric Pincus have it as a three-year pact.
- Pluto has heard renewed chatter linking the Cavs to Jimmer Fredette. Marc Stein of ESPN.com reported in early July that the Kings were dangling Fredette and Chuck Hayes in discussions with the Cleveland, but Pluto says the Cavs haven't spoken to Sacramento in more than a month.
- The deal Elias Harris signed with the Lakers isn't fully guaranteed, but he seems a strong bet to make the team, since he's one of only 12 players under contract. Lakers assistant Mark Madsen shares his thoughts on the undrafted Gonzaga power forward with Mike Trudell of Lakers.com.
- HoopsWorld's Yannis Koutroupis checks in with a ranking of the top 40 prospects for the vaunted 2014 draft, and names 20 others who could hear their names called next June.
- This week's trade for Tony Wroten is further indication that the Sixers are all-in on player development, opines Michael Kaskey-Blomain of the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Odds & Ends: James, Bowen, Kidd, Lin, Wright
After tonight's announcement from the NBA Player's Association, we can officially shut the door on any talk that LeBron James should assume the union's head position. What we don't know about James, however, are his intentions after the upcoming season, when he can opt out of his current deal with the Heat. James kept quiet about his plans on an interview that aired on the new Fox Sports 1 on Tuesday night, writes HoopsWorld's Alex Kennedy, who expects James to keep his options open.
Here are some other news and notes from around the league:
- The Kings have named Ryan Bowen as an assistant coach and assistant director of player development, the team announced today in a press release. Bowen spent the past two seasons as an assistant with the Nuggets, where he spent two stints as a player. He also played in Houston, New Orleans and Oklahoma City in his NBA playing career.
- Jason Kidd is ready to make the transition from player to coach with the Nets, writes Fran Blinebury of NBA.com, who lists Tom Heinsohn, Billy Cunningham and Larry Bird among those who have walked a similar path with success.
- Speaking at a youth conference in Taiwan, Rockets point guard Jeremy Lin said he put too much pressure on himself in his first year in Houston and it resulted in his coaches losing faith in him, according to an ESPN news release. Lin will need to rediscover his confidence quickly considering the expectations in Houston this season.
- Dorell Wright says his trust in Blazers general manager Neil Olshey was a big factor in his agreement to sign with Portland, writes Kerry Eggers of the Portland Tribune. Wright said he envisions himself as a bench player, and that he expects the Blazers to vie for a playoff spot.
Western Notes: Mavs, Fredette, Childress, Meeks
The Mavericks had to go to Plan B this season after missing out on Dwight Howard and Chris Paul in free agency, but coach Rick Carlisle is no stranger to adapting to his roster, notes NBA.com's Jeff Caplan. Carlisle will be at the helm of a Dallas team that looks quite different than last year's incarnation, but he says he's comfortable with that.
"I just made a conscious decision that I’m not going to be a coach that’s limited to a certain system," Carlisle said. "I’m hanging my hat on my ability to adapt each year to potentially a roster that’s quite different, and with the new CBA we’re going to have more of that in this league. I’ve done a lot of it in my career leading up to now anyway, so it’s always challenging in those situations, but it’s also exciting."
Here's more from around the Western Conference:
- Appearing on KSL's SportsBeat Sunday, Jason Jones of the Sacramento Bee said the Kings aren't actively shopping Jimmer Fredette, but have fielded calls and will move him in the right deal (link via KSL.com). There have been some conflicting reports this offseason about Sacramento's willingness to move Fredette, but Jones' explanation of the team's stance makes sense to me.
- Josh Childress will work out in New Orleans for the Pelicans this week, agent Chris Emens tells Jorge Sierra of HoopsHype (Twitter link).
- Jodie Meeks left the 76ers last summer in free agency for a chance at a ring with the Lakers, but he has yet to take on a significant role with the club. After battling injury in 2012/13, the 26-year-old guard is ready to make his mark in L.A., writes Dave McMenamin of ESPNLosAngeles.com.
- After being included in two draft-night deals as a salary throw-in, Malcolm Lee has been working hard to prove he deserves a spot on the Suns' roster, as Paul Coro of the Arizona Republic writes.
Zach Links contributed to this post.
Howard-Cooper On Hansen’s Anti-Arena Donation
Seattle venture capital investor, Chris Hansen, who headed the group looking to purchase the Kings and move them to Seattle, was caught donating $100K to the Anti-Kings-Arena group, STOP, which had previously been linked to former Kings owners the Maloofs. Hansen was contrite after the connection surfaced, offering an apology to the people of Sacramento for his underhanded effort to ruin their new arena deal and help facilitate a move to his hometown.
But Scott Howard-Cooper of NBA.com opines that Hansen's back-handed donation hurts Seattle more than it might have hurt Sacramento. Howard-Cooper argues that Hansen owes an apology to the people of Seattle more so than the one he gave Sacramento on Friday.
Seattle still remains a city without a basketball team after Clay Bennett moved the Seattle Supersonics to Oklahoma City in the summer of 2008 ostensibly after the city voted against publicly funding a new stadium. Hansen's actions have drawn the ire of the NBA, and Howard-Cooper says it has created another obstacle in the path of professional basketball's return to rainy Seattle.
Howard-Cooper adds, via Twitter, that Hansen's public scolding is a nice cherry on top for Sacramento since the league approved the sale of the team to a Sacramento-group led by Vivek Ranadive. He wonders why Hansen donated the money when he had to be aware it would eventually be made public (Twitter). But he also cautions, with a tweet, that this sort of corporate sabotage happens all the time when this much money is at stake; it just usually goes unreported.
Western Notes: Pekovic, Wolves, Jackson, Lakers
The difference between unrestricted free agency and restricted free agency can be seen in the divergent plights of the Lakers and Timberwolves this summer. The purple and gold had no say-so when Dwight Howard jumped to the Rockets, while negotiations between the Wolves and Nikola Pekovic dragged on for months, with other suitors seemingly scared off by Minnesota's ability to match offers. Still, the Wolves and Lakers both figure to be among the teams fighting for one of the final playoff spots in the Western Conference, and they're among the teams we focus on in today's look at the West:
- Pekovic is unlikely to meet many of the $8MM worth of incentives in his deal with the Wolves, reports Darren Wolfson of 1500 ESPN Twin Cities (Twitter link). That means that starting next season, those incentives won't count against the cap. As Jerry Zgoda of the Star Tribune surmised earlier, games played is one of the incentives, and Wolfson says Pek will earn a bonus if he appears in at least 70 games a year.
- Pekovic isn't the only Wolves player with durability issues, and president of basketball ops Flip Saunders plans changes to the way the team handles the treatment and prevention of injuries, as Zach Harper of CBSSports.com examines.
- Lakers co-owner Jeanie Buss said last week that Phil Jackson, her fiancee, still yearns to coach, but Jackson seemed to disagree Friday in comments he made to his hometown newspaper. "I have no intention of coaching," he told Mark Jones of the Williston Herald. "I am still recovering from multiple surgeries."
- Keith Schlosser of Ridiculous Upside examines the Lakers' unusual promotion of Nick Mazzella from public relations coordinator to GM of the team's D-League affiliate.
- The strength of someone's relationships is key to doing business in the NBA, and Chris Hansen's funding of an anti-Kings-arena effort shows he doesn't understand not to burn his bridges, SB Nation's Tom Ziller writes.
- The Lakers got a D from HoopsWorld's Moke Hamilton, who graded each Western Conference team's offseason, while the Wolves and Kings both wound up with a B+.
Chris Hansen Funded Anti-Kings-Arena Effort
7:50pm: Hansen has issued a statement saying that he made a mistake in donating to STOP, and won't contribute further funding to any anti-arena efforts. Hansen added that the decision was his alone, and wasn't made on behalf of his potential Seattle ownership group. Tony Bizjak has the details in a series of tweets.
6:06pm: The FPPC has confirmed that Hansen was behind the donation to STOP, according to Bruski (via Twitter). There's no evidence that the Maloofs had any involvement, according to the FPPC's Gar Winuk (Twitter link via Kasler).
Hansen actually donated $100K to the anti-arena effort, rather than the $80K previously reported, according to Steve Large of CBS Sacramento (Twitter links). The Bee's report has been updated with that $100K figure as well.
5:40pm: A report last week revealed that a law firm which had previously represented the Maloof family had provided funding to an ongoing petition effort against a new Sacramento arena. However, it wasn't the Maloofs who were behind the $80K in funding from the firm of Loeb & Loeb. According to Carmichael Dave of KHTK 1140 (via Twitter) and Tony Bizjak and Dale Kasler of the Sacramento Bee, Seattle investor Chris Hansen was the mystery donor.
According to the Sacramento Bee's report, Hansen made the $80K donation to the anti-arena effort about a month after the NBA elected to keep the Kings franchise in Sacramento rather than sell it to Hansen's Seattle-based group. The donation was made to a group known as STOP (Sacramento Taxpayers Opposed to Pork), which has attempted to gather signatures for a petition demanding a public vote on the proposed Sacramento arena.
The reports of Hansen's involvement in the donation come shortly after a lawsuit was filed by California's FPPC (Fair Political Practices Commission) against Loeb & Loeb, demanding to know the identity of the donor. The contributor should have been disclosed last month, but wasn't, according to the Bee report.
The secretive $80K donation to STOP may have hurt the group's efforts as much as it helped, with the Bee noting that two political consultants quit the petition campaign last week, saying they were "taken aback by the secrecy surrounding the donation." Additionally, city officials say that about 1,700 people who initially signed the petition now want to have their names removed. STOP must accumulate 22,000 signatures by December in order to put the issue on Sacramento's ballot for next June.
Aaron Bruski of Pro Basketball Talk (Twitter link) hears from a league source that if the allegations against Hansen turn out to be true, they won't be viewed favorably by the NBA. In his public comments following the league's decision on the Kings, Hansen was contrite about playing the role of a "predator," attempting to relocate another city's team.
Cole Aldrich Working Out For NBA Teams
It was only three summers ago that Cole Aldrich was an NBA lottery pick, selected 11th overall by New Orleans in the 2010 draft. Now, Aldrich is still looking for an NBA job, and is working out for a handful of teams in the hopes of earning a contract.
Earlier in the week, we heard that Aldrich had worked out for the Kings, the team with whom he finished last season. According to Jared Zwerling of ESPNNewYork.com (via Twitter), the former Kansas big man, who shares an agent with Tyson Chandler at Excel Sports, has also been on the Knicks' radar. Zwerling doesn't make it clear whether or not Aldrich has a workout scheduled with the Knicks, but hears from a source (Twitter link) that New York will almost certainly sign one more big man, whether it's Aldrich, Hamed Haddadi, Earl Barron, or someone else.
Darren Wolfson of 1500 ESPN Twin Cities also passes along word of Aldrich's NBA workouts (Twitter link), but hears from a source that the Timberwolves are unlikely to be one of the teams for whom the 24-year-old auditions.
Aldrich has underwhelmed in limited minutes during three NBA seasons with the Thunder, Rockets, and Kings, averaging 2.0 PPG and 2.3 RPG in 89 contests (7.9 MPG).
Western Notes: Pekovic, Rockets, Zanik, Aldrich
One of the biggest names on this summer's free agent market finally came off the board today when Nikola Pekovic reached a five-year, $60MM agreement with the Timberwolves. The deal will make Pekovic the highest-paid restricted free agent of the offseason, by both overall value and annual salary. He also landed the third-highest overall guarantee, behind only Chris Paul and Dwight Howard. Here's more on Pekovic and other items from around the Western Conference:
- The new deal for Pekovic won't affect the Timberwolves' ability to keep Ricky Rubio or Kevin Love long-term, president Flip Saunders told reporters today, adding that the team views those three players as the franchise's cornerstones (Twitter links via T-Wolves PR). Saunders also confirmed that Pek's contract doesn't include any team or player options, tweets Jerry Zgoda of the Star Tribune.
- About 15 months before they ultimately landed Howard, the Rockets reached a tentative agreement to acquire the All-Star center from the Magic at 2012's trade deadline, according to Ken Berger of CBSSports.com. Orlando planned to move D12 at the deadline if he didn't waive his early termination option, and had offers from the Rockets and Nets — Magic officials preferred Houston's offer, says Berger.
- Agent Justin Zanik, who has worked with Andy Miller at ASM Sports in recent years, is set to join the Jazz front office as the team's assistant GM, reports Jeff Goodman of CBSSports.com (Twitter links). Jody Genessy of the Deseret News has a few more details on the hiring of Zanik, who represented NBA players such as Omer Asik, Timofey Mozgov, and Sergey Karasev.
- Cole Aldrich worked out for Sacramento on Monday, according to Jonathan Santiago and James Ham of Cowbell Kingdom. The Kings have an open roster spot, though it's interesting that they'd need to work out Aldrich, considering they got an extended look at the big man last year after acquiring him at the trade deadline.