Pacific Rumors: Cousins, Jordan, Stoudemire
Two coaching changes and more losing for the Kings have thrown DeMarcus Cousins for a loop this year, but he’s determined to learn from adversity, as Michael Lee of The Washington Post details.
“It’s been a circus, man. It’s been a complete circus,” Cousins said of this season. “We got off to a hot start. Unfortunately, I got sick, so it ruined the look of the team. I take some blame for that. I know for a fact, if I wouldn’t have gotten sick, things wouldn’t have happened the way it happened. It was no way it could. At the same time, a lot of it is not my fault and we all know why. But this has been a disappointing year.”
George Karl‘s up-tempo system doesn’t really fit Cousins but the center will keep an open mind about it, Lee writes. Cousins is in the first year of a four-year max extension. Here’s more from around the Pacific Division:
- DeAndre Jordan said he loves the city of New York but isn’t thinking about his free agency this summer, as he told reporters, including Marc Berman of the New York Post, after the Clippers beat the Knicks on Wednesday.
- Amar’e Stoudemire‘s said his interest in joining the Suns after his buyout with the Knicks was “extremely high,” according to Eddie Sefko of the Dallas Morning News. “But I wanted to compete for a championship this year,” Stoudemire added. “That’s one reason why I didn’t choose the Spurs, because I knew it’d be a letdown for all my Phoenix Suns fans. I couldn’t do it. It was a tough decision, but I wanted to win this year.”
- Wesley Johnson is finds it frustrating to be hitting free agency for a third year in a row, observes Mike Bresnahan of the Los Angeles Times. The Lakers have a general affection for him, and Johnson has been considering a new deal with the team this summer, in spite of L.A.’s hesitance to give him more than a one-year deal the past two offseasons, as Bresnahan also relays. “It’s one of those things where you definitely don’t want to jump ship when something’s going bad,” Johnson said of the Lakers. I actually want to be a part of it to see if we can get back on the right foot. We’ll see what happens this offseason, see what direction they’re going.”
Southwest Notes: Williams, Gentile, Mills
Dwight Howard will start against the Pelicans tonight in his first game since January 23rd, writes Jonathan Feigen of the Houston Chronicle. That’ll be a boost for Houston as it looks to climb from the third seed in the Western Conference. Here’s more from the Southwest Division:
- The Pelicans have decided against signing Elliot Williams for the remainder of the season, tweets John Reid of The Times-Picayune. New Orleans signaled that choice when it signed Toney Douglas to a deal for the balance of 2014/15 on Tuesday, the day after the team’s second 10-day contract with Williams expired.
- Rockets draft-and-stash prospect Alessandro Gentile doesn’t have an NBA escape clause for 2015 in his contract with Italy’s EA7 Milano, and the deal doesn’t include a buyout provision, either, a source tells HoopsHype. That runs counter to comments EA7 teammate Daniel Hackett made on SkySport television indicating that Gentile has decided to play for the Rockets next season, as Sportando’s Emiliano Carchia notes. Gentile said recently that he’s increasingly intrigued with the NBA and that the Rockets had been in close contact. The small forward is under contract through 2017, as Mark Porcaro shows on our Draft Rights Held Players database.
- Patty Mills had a shoulder injury that would sideline him for the first two months of the season when the Spurs re-signed him this summer to a three-year, $11MM deal, but Spurs president/coach Gregg Popovich had no reservations about the move. Alexander Wolff of Sports Illustrated has the details in a story that looks at Mills’ heritage and the homage the Spurs have paid to it. “It wasn’t even a question,” Popovich said of the deal. “Obviously he can shoot the basketball and has a lot of energy. But he’s beloved on this team for his enthusiasm, his kindness, his understated gravitas. As long as I’m here, he’s going to be here. Unless we can’t afford him.”
- The Spurs top ESPN Insider’s Front Office rankings for a second straight year. The synergy between Popovich, GM R.C. Buford and owner Peter Holt, balance between the future and the present, and structuring of player contracts that include salary declines instead of raises help the Spurs stand out, as Chad Ford and Amin Elhassan opine in a separate Insider story.
- We rounded up the latest on the Mavs earlier today.
Western Notes: Jazz, Hood, Crawford, Spurs
The Jazz‘s willingness to commit to paying building blocks like Gordon Hayward and Derrick Favors has helped the team show signs that it will quickly rebound from its rebuilding project, as Sean Deveney of The Sporting News details. Critical, too, was the deadline-day trade that sent Enes Kanter out, at his request, as the Jazz weren’t interested in paying a premium to keep him in restricted free agency this summer, writes Chris Mannix of SI.com. A greater focus on Favors and Rudy Gobert since then has paid dividends, as Mannix examines.
“[The trade] helped me work on my game a lot,” Favors said. “Enes was the first option in the post. Since the trade, it’s always been me. It’s helped me work on my game and made me better for it.”
Coach Quin Snyder downplays the connection between the Kanter trade and the team’s ascent in the standings, Mannix notes. Still, Utah was 19-34 at the deadline and has gone 12-3 since. There’s more on the Jazz amid the latest from the Western Conference:
- Jazz higher-ups are “positively giddy” about the future of Rodney Hood, as Mannix reports in the same piece. Utah selected Hood 23rd overall in June after the swingman spoke to Zach Links of Hoops Rumors last spring.
- The Clippers aren’t sure they’ll have Jamal Crawford back for the playoffs, according to Scott Howard-Cooper of NBA.com. Crawford has missed the last eight games because of a bruised right calf that Doc Rivers has deemed a “serious injury” and one that won’t have him back “anytime soon, that’s for sure,” Howard-Cooper notes. L.A. has an open roster spot and Nate Robinson on a 10-day contract.
- The Spurs are keeping a close eye on draft-and-stash prospect Davis Bertans of late, as Lefteris Moutis of Eurohoops.net writes in a slideshow dedicated to the 10 European players who have the best chances of playing in the NBA next season. The power forward has a contract that runs through 2017 with Spain’s Laboral Kuxta (aka Saski Baskonia), as Mark Porcaro shows in our Draft Rights Held Players database, though it apparently contains NBA escape clauses for each year of the deal.
Western Notes: Gasol, Kings, Jazz, Messina
“The understanding is” that Marc Gasol will indeed be the No. 1 target of the Spurs this summer, depending on the fates of fellow soon-to-be free agents Tim Duncan and Manu Ginobili, a Western Conference GM told Sean Deveney of The Sporting News. Gasol has given plenty of signals that he prefers to stay in Memphis, and if he were to leave, he would likely move only to a team that would give him a better chance to win a title, sources also tell Deveney. The Spurs would conceivably fit that bill, but even if they don’t end up with Gasol, one GM expects San Antonio to make a surprise move this summer and hints that it’ll come at draft time, as Deveney details. There’s more on the Spurs amid the latest from around the Western Conference:
- Kings adviser Chris Mullin, reportedly a candidate for the team’s coaching position earlier this season, resisted the recent hirings of coach George Karl and vice president of basketball and franchise operations Vlade Divac, high-ranking team execs tell Ailene Voisin of The Sacramento Bee. GM Pete D’Alessandro also resisted the hiring of Divac, who’s technically atop him in the organization, according to Voisin, though D’Alessandro said to Voisin on Tuesday that he and others are pleased to have the former center around.
- The Hornets have three prominent former members of the Jazz, and Al Jefferson, Marvin Williams and Mo Williams all expressed fondness for their time in Utah when their new team came to Salt Lake City for Monday’s game, observes Mike Sorensen of the Deseret News. Mo Williams will hit free agency again this summer, and Jefferson can, too, if he turns down a $13.5MM player option.
- Spurs assistant coach Ettore Messina would like to become a head coach in the NBA someday, but he’s content with the Spurs and said he’d ask Gregg Popovich and R.C. Buford for advice before pursuing a head coaching job, as Messina told Italy’s La Gazzetta dello Sport (translation via Sportando’s Emiliano Carchia).
Southwest Notes: Llull, Rockets, Anderson
Each club playing in the Southwest Division possesses a realistic shot at making the playoffs this season in the fiercely competitive Western Conference. However, the Pelicans might come just short of a postseason berth thanks to a revitalized Thunder team playing hot down the stretch. Sam Amick and Jeff Zillgitt of USA Today look at the potential impact of changing the structure of the playoffs to include the 16 best teams, regardless of conference. Such an idea would stand to benefit a club like this year’s New Orleans bunch but hinder the postseason dreams of some Eastern Conference squads.
Adam Silver admits there are issues with the way the playoffs are constructed now but contests there’s no easy solution. For now, the Pelicans will just need to continue their strong play if they want to keeping competing past April. We’ll round up the latest coming out of the Southwest below:
- Rockets draft-and-stash prospect Sergio Llull acknowledged that Houston has had interest in signing him over the past two or three years, as the point guard told Marca.com (translation via HoopsHype).
- The Spurs have recalled Kyle Anderson from their D-League affiliate, the team announced via press release. The rookie out of UCLA has had four stints with the Austin Spurs so far this season, as our list of D-League assignments and recalls shows.
- Chris Herrington of the Commercial Appeal looks at the struggling Grizzlies and wonders if Jeff Green‘s presence might be negatively impacting the club’s overall performance. Herrington compares Green to Rudy Gay and thinks in order to succeed, Memphis will need to potentially change the way they’re using him in the offense.
- We heard this afternoon that the Mavs are no longer interested in bringing aboard JaVale McGee.
Chuck Myron contributed to this post.
Hawks Sign Austin Daye To 10-Day Contract
SUNDAY, 12:07pm: The signing is official, according to the team’s Twitter feed.
SATURDAY, 12:31pm: Austin Daye will sign a 10-day contract with the Hawks, Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo Sports reports. The Hawks needed depth at the forward position after Mike Scott broke the big toe on his left foot this week. Daye was playing for the team’s D-League affiliate, the Erie BayHawks, where he averaged 16.0 points and 7.0 rebounds in 10 games.
Daye was waived in January by the Spurs after appearing in 26 games this season, averaging 4.0 points and 2.3 rebounds in those contests. Daye, a first-round pick by the Pistons in 2009, has also played for the Grizzlies and Raptors over the past three seasons. Daye can play either forward spot and gives the Hawks another 3-point threat. He’s a 35.2% shooter from long range over his career.
Scott, who was averaging 7.5 points and 2.7 rebounds, is out indefinitely, according to Chris Vivlamore of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The club decided not to re-sign guard Jarell Eddie to a second 10-day contract on Saturday because of Scott’s injury.
Central Notes: Sanders, J.R. Smith, Pistons
Kyrie Irving exploded for 57 points in an overtime win for the Cavs against the Spurs on Thursday. Even before that, it was clear that Irving has maintained his value as the talent around him has improved, as Bradford Doolittle of ESPN.com wrote in an insider-only piece before Thursday’s game. Cleveland signed Irving to a five-year maximum-salary extension this past summer. Here’s more from the Central Division:
- There’s been a ton of conflicting information about the precise amount of Larry Sanders‘ buyout and whether the Bucks used the stretch provision, but Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders confirms that Milwaukee indeed spread the remainder of his deal over seven years (Twitter link). The Bucks will pay him $1,865,546 a year from 2015/16 all the way through 2021/22, which jibes with what Gery Woelfel of The Journal Times reported last week when he said Sanders would receive approximately $1.9MM. That means the Bucks have only about $2.266MM on the books for 2016/17, vaulting them into third place for the most cap flexibility for the summer of 2016, when the cap is set to spike to about $90MM. Sanders is getting $9,005,882 this season, as Pincus shows on the Basketball Insiders Bucks salary page. So, he gave up precisely $21,935,296 of his $44MM contract.
- J.R. Smith has a player option worth nearly $6.4MM for next season, and while he hasn’t decided on whether to exercise that, he seems to want a long-term future with the Cavs, as Joe Vardon of the Northeast Ohio Media Group details. “I am enjoying myself more here than anywhere I’ve been,” Smith said. “I want to be here, hopefully we can have the same team next year if everything goes well.”
- Pistons owner Tom Gores isn’t dismayed even as his team once more slips from playoff contention, as MLive’s David Mayo relays. “The thing is, Stan [Van Gundy] has a plan,” Gores said. “The guys we lost at the All-Star break, it was hard to lose them. They were part of the culture. But we’re trying to build for the future now and we believe in everything that’s going on.”
- K.C. Johnson of the Chicago Tribune delves into Tom Thibodeau‘s relationship with Bulls management, among other Bulls-related issues, in a mailbag column.
Southwest Notes: Gentile, Conley, Ajinca
Swingman Alessandro Gentile didn’t join the Rockets after they drafted him 53rd overall this past June, but he’s growing increasingly fascinated with the idea of playing in the NBA, as he tells the Italian newspaper La Gazzetta dello Sport (translation via Sportando’s Emiliano Carchia). The Rockets have traveled to scout him and been in frequent contact, and they’ve made him feel like a family member, Gentile added. All of it seems like a departure from Gentile’s comments in September, when he said that he had no interest in playing in the NBA and questioned whether he ever would. Here’s more from around the Southwest Division:
- The Grizzlies have benefited from Mike Conley‘s discount deal since the 2010/11 season, but they’ll face a challenge when it comes off the books just when teams are set to have plenty of cash to throw around in 2016, as Amin Elhassan of ESPN.com examines in an Insider-only piece.
- Jim Eichenhofer of Pelicans.com examines the changes to Alexis Ajinca that have allowed him to become a contributor for New Orleans since rejoining the NBA last season after an absense of more than two years. Ajinca’s minimum-salary deal with the Pelicans is up at season’s end.
- The final pick of the 2014 first-round is headed on D-League assignment for the fourth time this season, as the Spurs have sent Kyle Anderson to their affiliate, the team announced. Still, Anderson has averaged 12.6 minutes per game and made eight starts for the big club this season.
- The Mavericks have recalled Dwight Powell from the D-League just one day after sending him down, tweets Earl K. Sneed of Mavs.com. The rookie power forward scored 33 points in 37 minutes Wednesday for the D-League Texas Legends.
Western Notes: Rondo, Neal, Lakers
Rajon Rondo is willing to return to Mavs but probably will not get a contract offer he expects from the club heading into unrestricted free agency, Tim MacMahon of ESPNDallas.com tweets. In fact, McMahon doubts the Mavs will come close to his asking price. Rondo said recently he would consider re-signing with Dallas despite a verbal altercation with coach Rick Carlisle late last month that led to a one-game suspension. Rondo will be one of the biggest names on the free-agent market this summer but he hasn’t improved his stock since he was traded by the Celtics in December. Rondo has struggled running Carlisle’s offense, averaging 9.4 points and 6.2 assists, compared to his career averages of 10.9 PPG and 8.4 APG. He’s also shooting 41.5% from the field, well below his career average of 46.9%.
In other news around the Western Conference:
- The Timberwolves are interested in re-signing Gary Neal thanks to his strong play and veteran leadership, according to Alex Kennedy of BasketballInsiders.com. Neal, who becomes an unrestricted free agent this summer after making $3.25MM this season, was acquired from the Hornets at the trade deadline. He has averaged 18.8 points over the last four games and coach Flip Saunders said that Neal has been a good influence on his young players, Kennedy adds.
- Julius Randle has been cleared to begin non-contact basketball activities but Lakers coach Byron Scott reiterated the rookie forward will not return this season, Eric Pincus of the Los Angeles Times reports. The lottery pick broke his right leg on opening night and also had a surgical procedure on his right foot in January. “This is all in preparation for getting him ready for summer league,” Scott said to Los Angeles beat reporters.
- Danny Granger has been impressed by the Suns trainers and their ability to manage his knee issues, according to Paul Coro of the Arizona Republic (Twitter link). Those same trainers helped Grant Hill extend his career and Granger, who has a player option of approximately $2.17MM on his contract for next season, could take that into consideration when deciding whether to exercise that option. He has not appeared in a game with Phoenix since the Heat dealt him at the trade deadline.
- Kyle Anderson was recalled by the Spurs from their D-League affiliate in Austin on Monday, the team announced. Anderson has bounced between the two leagues in his rookie season, appearing in 27 games with San Antonio this season and 19 games in Austin, where he averaged 22.2 points, 9.1 rebounds and 4.9 assists. Anderson provides some depth at the wing positions, though the Spurs do not have any reported injuries.
Eastern Notes: Beasley, Gasol, Mo Williams, Cavs
Michael Beasley signed his second 10-day contract with the Heat on Sunday, a move that the Heat had no hestitation in making, according to coach Erik Spoelstra, as Barry Jackson of the Miami Herald observes.
“He stepped out of his comfort zone and was fantastic in that zone,” Spoelstra said of Beasley’s play during his first 10-day deal. “I feel very comfortable with Mike. We have gotten to know each other extremely well over the years. We felt it was a no-brainer. We’ve been running the majority of our offense through him, a la Chris Bosh. He’s a close facsimile in our system.”
That would seem to bode well for Beasley’s chances of receiving a deal through at least the rest of the season once his latest 10-day deal runs out. Here’s more from the Eastern Conference:
- Pau Gasol said Sunday that the Thunder and Spurs were his other top choices this summer before he made his decision to sign with the Bulls in what he described as a “close call,” as Sam Smith of Bulls.com relays.
- Mo Williams has been sensational for the Hornets since they traded for him a month ago, averaging 21.7 points, 8.7 assists and 2.8 turnovers in 35.4 minutes per game, but coach Steve Clifford anticipates a regression to the mean, notes Rick Bonnell of the Charlotte Observer (Twitter link). Williams will be a free agent at season’s end.
- The Cavs‘ January overhaul, featuring a pair of significant trades, has resulted in a team that takes more non-corner three-pointers and fewer point-blank looks, as Jason Lloyd of the Akron Beacon Journal examines. The results have been successful, though coach David Blatt has concerns about the preponderance of outside looks that LeBron James doesn’t appear to share, Lloyd notes.