Kawhi Leonard Named Defensive Player Of Year
For the second consecutive season, the Spurs’ Kawhi Leonard has been named the NBA Defensive Player of the Year, the league announced via press release. Leonard, a 6’7″ small forward, becomes the first noncenter to earn the honor in back-to-back seasons since Dennis Rodman did so in 1989/90 and 1990/91. The 24-year-old Leonard received 84 first-place votes and 547 total points from a panel of 130 sportswriters and broadcasters. He beat out the Warriors’ Draymond Green, who notched 44 first-place votes and 421 points to finish as runner-up for the second season in a row. The Heat’s Hassan Whiteside came in third with 83 points, garnering two first-place votes. Players were awarded five points for each first-place vote, three points for each second-place vote and one point for each third-place vote, according to the release.
Leonard, a first-time NBA All-Star this season, anchored a Spurs defense that led the NBA in points allowed (92.9 ppg) and defensive rating (96.6 points per 100 possessions). The Spurs, who were a franchise-record 67-15 this season, were significantly tougher on defense with Leonard in the game. According to NBA.com, they had a defensive rating of 94.9 when the five-year veteran was on the court and 99.2 when he wasn’t — a difference of 4.3 points per 100 possessions. Leonard also averaged 1.78 steals, which was good for 12th in the NBA, 5.5 defensive rebounds and a career-high 0.99 blocks to go with career highs of 21.2 points and 2.6 assists on the offensive end.
The final voting results for 2015/16 NBA Defensive Player of the Year:
- Kawhi Leonard (Spurs)
- Draymond Green (Warriors)
- Hassan Whiteside (Heat)
- DeAndre Jordan (Clippers)
- Paul Millsap (Hawks)
- Avery Bradley (Celtics)
- Rudy Gobert (Jazz)
- Tony Allen (Grizzlies)
- Anthony Davis (Pelicans)
- Andre Drummond (Pistons)
- Jimmy Butler (Bulls)
- LeBron James (Cavaliers)
- Trevor Ariza (Rockets)
- Jae Crowder (Celtics)
- Al Horford (Hawks)
- Kyle Lowry (Raptors)
- Chris Paul (Clippers)
To see each voter’s ballot, click here.
Last Playoff Ride For Duncan?
Kobe Bryant claimed the spotlight with his season-long retirement tour, but Tim Duncan could be wrapping up his career more quietly, suggests Jeff McDonald of The San Antonio-Express News. Duncan will turn 40 on April 25th, a day after Game 4 of the Spurs‘ first-round series with Memphis. He has a player option worth $5.5MM for next season, so it’s possible his career will end with the playoffs. “He’s going to wake up one day and say, ‘I’m done,’” said Manu Ginobili, “and you’re never going to see him again.” Ginobili is 38 and has a $2.94MM player option of his own, meaning two members of San Antonio’s historic Big Three may not return next season.
Spurs Better On Defense With Aldridge
- The Spurs became a better defensive team after trading Tiago Splitter and signing LaMarcus Aldridge, according to Matthew Tynan of RealGM. Splitter is considered the better defender, but Aldridge has more range and mobility, Tynan notes, which gives Tim Duncan the more natural role of rim protector.
Ime Udoka Leading Candidate For Nets Job?
10:59am: Sources tell NetsDaily they believe Udoka is the leading candidate. It appears the team is poised to formally cut ties with Tony Brown and his assistant coaches as well as several long-time staffers as Marks plans to hire as many as 10 new staff members, NetsDaily also hears (All Twitter links).
8:25am: Brett Brown, who reportedly isn’t assured of keeping his job with the Sixers, along with Luke Walton, Mark Jackson, Vinny Del Negro and Bucks assistant Sean Sweeney are also in the mix for the Nets job, according to Brian Lewis of the New York Post. The prospect of Brown having the interim tag removed and staying in the head coaching job is no more than a long shot, Lewis adds. Lewis also suggests the Nets still have Mike Conley atop their list of free agent targets.
4:01pm: Hawks assistant Kenny Atkinson has been mentioned as a possibility for the Nets’ coaching vacancy, and he and Marks share the same agent, Mazzeo tweets.
3:00pm: The increasing belief in coaching circles is that neither Tom Thibodeau nor David Blatt will be a candidate for the job, but the search is only just beginning, writes Mike Mazzeo of ESPN.com.
12:47pm: The Nets have interest in NBA coaching veteran Jeff Van Gundy and Spurs assistants Ettore Messina and Ime Udoka for their head coaching job, sources tell Marc Stein of ESPN.com (Twitter links). Tony Brown is Brooklyn’s head coach on an interim basis, though it’s unclear whether he’ll have a legitimate shot to remain in the position for next season.
Van Gundy’s name frequently comes up in connection to NBA coaching jobs even though he hasn’t coached an NBA team since the 2006/07 season, his last with the Rockets. Frank Isola of the New York Daily News speculated shortly before the team hired GM Sean Marks in February that Messina would become a candidate if the team indeed brought aboard Marks, who was then serving as a Spurs executive. Marks’ tie to the Spurs also explains the interest in Udoka, who was key to the recruitment of former teammate LaMarcus Aldridge this past summer. Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov has often talked about attracting stars to Brooklyn, and the team has no shortage of cap flexibility for the summer ahead.
Many New York fans still have fond memories of Van Gundy from his time as coach of the crosstown Knicks from 1996-2001, and he’s maintained a high profile as a broadcaster for ABC and ESPN. He reportedly interviewed for the Pelicans head coaching vacancy last year.
Messina has worked for Prokhorov before, when Prokhorov was the owner of CSKA Moscow and Messina was leading the team to two Euroleague championships as head coach. The Spurs hired Messina as an assistant two years ago, and he also served as a coaching consultant for the Lakers in 2011/12, but much of his reputation comes from overseas, where he was one of the most successful coaches in Euroleague history. The Thunder reportedly made him a candidate for their head coaching job a year ago.
Udoka is a veteran of eight NBA seasons as a player, and his last playing contract was with the Nets, who signed him in the 2011 preseason and cut him before opening night. The Spurs hired him as an assistant coach the following summer.
Celtics Sign John Holland
3:54pm: The signing has formally taken place, the team announced (Twitter link). Holland will see $9,266 this season, not including his playoff share, and a non-guaranteed $874,636 next season, provided he signed for the minimum, as is standard for midseason signees.
1:37pm: The deal would cover the rest of 2015/16 plus next season, and next season’s salary would be non-guaranteed, league sources tell Charania (Twitter link).
1:00pm: The Celtics plan to sign former Boston University swingman John Holland into their open roster spot, reports Shams Charania of The Vertical (Twitter link). The deal is contingent upon him passing a physical, notes Adam Himmelsbach of the Boston Globe (on Twitter). The 27-year-old was with the Spurs in the 2014 preseason and has been playing with the D-League affiliate of the Cavaliers this season.
The contract would cover the playoffs, and the Celtics had a desire to carry a full 15-man roster in the postseason in case of injury, Himmelsbach tweets. Coach Brad Stevens said recently the team would prefer a versatile forward, seemingly a hint that former 10-day signee Coty Clarke might return, but instead the team is going with Holland, who is 6’5″ and can play two-guard and small forward but would be significantly undersized at power forward.
Holland averaged 16.0 points in 30.2 minutes per game with 36.9% shooting in 37 regular season appearances with the D-League Canton Charge this season, and he turned it up in two playoff games last week, making 10 of 17 total 3-point attempts and averaging 28.5 points.
It’s unclear whether the deal would carry into next season. Either way, he’d likely receive a prorated rookie minimum salary this season plus a share of the team’s playoff earnings.
West Says Financial Planning Allowed Him To Join Spurs
- David West turned some heads last summer when he decided to turn down his $12.6MM player option with the Pacers to ink a minimum salary deal with the Spurs, but the veteran said that solid financial planning early in his career afforded him the opportunity to chase a ring in San Antonio this season, Jeff McDonald of The San Antonio Express-News relays. “My financial security was something we focused on very, very early in my career so we could make basketball decisions at the end,” said West, whose career earnings before this season topped $87.6MM, McDonald notes. “As opposed to just making them solely on needing to get more money and squeeze the orange, so to speak.”
Highlights From Sam Hinkie’s Resignation Letter
The 13-page resignation letter than GM Sam Hinkie sent to Sixers owners, which Marc Stein of ESPN obtained, lays bare the philosophy of an executive whose tenure was marked by public silence as much as it was by lost games. It was nonetheless a common example of the sort of communication he privately had with the owners, according to Sam Amick of USA Today (Twitter link). In his latest dispatch, Hinkie cites everyone from Abraham Lincoln to Warren Buffett to Bill Belichick, among less notorious figures, as Tom Haberstroh of ESPN.com notes (Twitter link). The ex-GM defends the moves he made, along with the general ideas of taking the long view and going against the grain.
“To develop truly contrarian views will require a never-ending thirst for better, more diverse inputs,” Hinkie writes. “What player do you think is most undervalued? Get him for your team. What basketball axiom is most likely to be untrue? Take it on and do the opposite. What is the biggest, least valuable time sink for the organization? Stop doing it. Otherwise, it’s a big game of pitty pat, and you’re stuck just hoping for good things to happen, rather than developing a strategy for how to make them happen.”
We’ll hit the highlights of the more than 7,000-word opus here:
- Robert Covington is with the Sixers now, but he was originally with the Rockets, a sore point for Hinkie, who says he wanted him immediately after he went undrafted in 2013 but instead returned from his postdraft press conference to discover Covington was off the market. Hinkie writes that he stewed over that for more than a year until signing him in November 2014, a few weeks after Houston waived him.
- Hinkie claims that the Sixers set an all-time NBA record in acquiring the rights or swap rights to more than 26 draft picks in his first 26 months as GM.
- Celtics president of basketball operations Danny Ainge received Hinkie’s Executive of the Year vote in 2014 after the Celtics acquired a first-round pick and a second-round pick along with Joel Anthony in a January trade that year. Hinkie had worked to acquire the same package, he writes.
- Hinkie points to a recent quote from Peter Holt, the former primary owner of the Spurs, who said the free agent signing of LaMarcus Aldridge was years in the making. Buck Harvey of the San Antonio Express-News originally had the story. “Give R.C. Buford credit,” Holt said. “[Gregg Popovich] is a great coach, but R.C. came to us with this plan three years ago, four years ago — seriously. And we’ve worked at it ever since. He, by far, was the general. We wouldn’t be where we are, in this position, if it hadn’t have been for R.C. Buford.”
Tim Duncan's Bonus Costs Spurs
- San Antonio’s success this year has come at a tangible cost, and part of that is a $750K bonus that Tim Duncan earned when the Spurs won their 62nd game of the season last week against Memphis, notes Bobby Marks of The Vertical on Yahoo Sports. It means San Antonio is in line for an extra $1.5MM in projected tax penalties, which go on top of the $750K the Spurs have to shell out to Duncan. The win also inflated the cap figure for Duncan’s player option for next season to $6,393,750, since the league considers it likely he’d trigger the bonus against next season.
Aldridge Among Leaders Of Record-Setting Spurs
- Free agent addition LaMarcus Aldridge has teamed with Kawhi Leonard to become the nucleus of a record-setting Spurs team, writes Jeff McDonald of The San Antonio Express-News. The two All-Stars have eased the burden on the aging Big Three of Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili. San Antonio picked up a franchise record 64th win Saturday and is two victories away from posting the first perfect home record in league history. “There’s not much we’re allowed to care about,” Danny Green said. “… Being healthy and winning games in the playoffs – those are the things we care about.”
- James Ennis had little time to prepare for his first game with the Pelicans after being called up from the D-League this week, relays Jim Eichenhofer of NBA.com. “He just got here to the arena about 20 minutes ago,” coach Alvin Gentry said before Wednesday’s contest with the Spurs. “We’ll give him a quick overview of what we try to do, but he’ll definitely be in the game tonight.”
2015/16 Salary Cap Update: San Antonio Spurs
The NBA’s salary cap for 2015/16 is set at $70MM, which is good for an 11% increase from last season, and the luxury tax line is fixed at $84.74MM. With the February 18th cutoff date for trades and the de facto deadline of March 1st for buyouts now past, we at Hoops Rumors are in the process of updating the salary cap commitments for each NBA franchise for the 2015/16 campaign. Here’s the cap breakdown for the San Antonio Spurs, whose regular season roster can be viewed here:
- 2015/16 Salary Cap= $70,000,000
- 2015/16 Luxury Tax Line= $84,740,000
- Fully Guaranteed Salary Commitments= $86,844,995*
- Remaining Cap Room= –$16,844,995
- Amount Above Luxury Tax Line= $2,104,995
*Note: This amount includes the $507,711 due Jimmer Fredette and the $947,276 owed Ray McCallum, both of whom were waived by the team.
Cap Exceptions Available:
- None
Cash Available to Send Out In Trades= $3,400,000
Cash Available to Receive Via Trade= $3,400,000
Note: Despite the trade deadline having passed, the NBA season technically doesn’t end until June 30th. Teams are able to again make trades upon the completion of the regular season or when/if they are eliminated from the playoffs, whichever comes later. So these cash limits still apply.
The Basketball Insiders salary pages were used in the creation of this post