Reasons To Believe Brad Beal Could Continue To Improve
A number of developments in Bradley Beal‘s game could help the Wizards two-guard earn his first career All-Star berth, Chase Hughes of CSN Mid-Atlantic writes. Last year, for instance, the guard managed to stay healthy after missing considerable time the previous two seasons and looked to gain confidence attacking the basket as a result.
In 2017/18, with last year to reflect back on, Beal could ride that confidence to a new level. Another component that contributed to Beal’s success last season was his improved ball handling. If that continues, the swingman will be able to slash more competently and maybe even drive up his free-throw attempts as Wizards teammate John Wall has done.
Beal watched his average jump from 17.4 points per game to 23.1 last year and there’s no reason to believe that he can’t continue to thrive heading forward. Still just 24 years old, Beal represents a major part of the core that Wizards owner Ted Leonsis is so eager to keep together.
Wizards Confident In Wall Throughout Extension
- The Wizards are confident John Wall will give them fair value for the full life of his contract extension, writes Chase Hughes of CSNMidAtlantic. The four-year, $170MM extension he agreed to in July takes effect in 2019 and includes a player option for the final season. It will keep the 27-year-old in Washington until he turns 31 or 32. “Thirty is still very young in the NBA nowadays,” said team president Ernie Grunfeld. “But we’ve seen John grow every single year. He’s improved every year he’s been in the league. The last four years he’s been an All-Star. This past year he was an elite-level player making the All-NBA team.”
- Former NBA head coach Eddie Jordan is close to joining the Hornets‘ staff, relays Rick Bonnell of The Charlotte Observer. The team is finalizing a contract for Jordan to replace Bob Weiss, who recently accepted a job as an assistant with the Nuggets. Jordan has a 257-343 record as coach of the Kings, Wizards and Sixers.
High Expectations Key For Scott Brooks' Wizards
- Head coach Scott Brooks wants his Wizards roster to have high expectations heading into the 2017/18 season, Chase Hughes of CSN Mid-Atlantic writes. “We’re trying to establish [a championship mentality] here. We want to have consistent and sustainable success,” Brooks said.
NBA Draft Rights Held: Southeast Division
When top college prospects like Markelle Fultz or Lonzo Ball are drafted, there’s virtually no doubt that their next step will involve signing an NBA contract. However, that’s not the case for every player who is selected in the NBA draft, particularly for international prospects and second-round picks.
When an NBA team uses a draft pick on a player, it gains his NBA rights, but that doesn’t mean the player will sign an NBA contract right away. International prospects will often remain with their professional team overseas for at least one more year to develop their game further, becoming “draft-and-stash” prospects. Nikola Mirotic, Dario Saric, and Bogdan Bogdanovic are among the more notable players to fit this bill in recent years.
However, draft-and-stash players can be former NCAA standouts too. Sometimes a college prospect selected with a late second round pick will end up playing overseas or in the G League for a year or two if there’s no space available on his NBA team’s 15-man roster.
While these players sometimes make their way to their NBA teams, others never do. Many clubs around the NBA currently hold the rights to international players who have remained overseas for their entire professional careers and are no longer viewed as top prospects. Those players may never come stateside, but there’s often no reason for NBA teams to renounce their rights — those rights can sometimes be used as placeholders in trades.
For instance, earlier this summer, the Pacers and Raptors agreed to a trade that sent Cory Joseph to Indiana. Toronto was happy to move Joseph’s salary and didn’t necessarily need anything in return, but the Pacers had to send something in the deal. Rather than including an NBA player or a draft pick, Indiana sent Toronto the draft rights to Emir Preldzic, the 57th overall pick in the 2009 draft.
Preldzic is currently playing for Galatasaray in Turkey, and at this point appears unlikely to ever come to the NBA, but his draft rights have been a useful trade chip over the years — the Pacers/Raptors swap represented the fourth time since 2010 that Preldzic’s NBA rights have been included in a trade.
This week, we’re taking a closer look at the players whose draft rights NBA teams currently hold, sorting them by division. These players may eventually arrive in America and join their respective NBA teams, but many will end up like Preldzic, plying their trade overseas and having their draft rights used as pawns in NBA trades.
Here’s a breakdown of the draft rights held by Southeast teams:
Atlanta Hawks
- Augusto Binelli, C (1986; No. 40): Retired.
- Alain Digbeu, F (1997; No. 49): Retired.
- Marcus Eriksson, G/F (2015; No. 50): Playing in Spain.
- Isaia Cordinier, G (2016; No. 44): Playing in France.
- Alpha Kaba, C (2017; No. 60): Playing in France.
Charlotte Hornets
- None
Miami Heat
- George Banks, F (1995; No. 46): Retired.
- Robert Duenas, C (1997; No. 57): Retired.
Orlando Magic
- Rashard Griffith, C (1995; No. 38): Retired.
- Remon van de Hare, C (2003; No. 52): Retired.
- Fran Vazquez, C (2005; No. 11): Playing in Spain.
- Janis Timma, F (2013; No. 60): Playing in Spain.
- Tyler Harvey, G (2015; No. 51): Playing in France.
Washington Wizards
- Aaron White, F (2015; No. 49): Playing in Lithuania.
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Information from Mark Porcaro and Basketball Insiders was used in the creation of this post.
Wizards Sign Donald Sloan To One-Year Deal
AUGUST 29: The Wizards have finalized their deal with Sloan, officially signing him to a one-year contract, according to RealGM’s transactions log.
AUGUST 17: The Wizards have reached agreement on a one-year deal with free agent guard Donald Sloan, tweets Shams Charania of The Vertical.
The 29-year-old played in China last season for the second time in his career. His last NBA experience was in 2015/16, when he played 61 games for the Nets, starting 33.
Sloan has been a journeyman since signing with the Hawks in 2011 after going undrafted out of Texas A&M. He played just five games for Atlanta and three for New Orleans during his rookie year and finished the season with Cleveland. He later returned to New Orleans, then spent two seasons in Indiana.
A 6’3″ combo guard, Sloan is averaging 5.5 points and 3.0 assists per game through his NBA career.
The Wizards now have 19 players under contract, one short of the maximum, with camp a little more than a month away.
Scott Brooks Understands Importance Of Protecting Core
The Wizards have gone all-in on preserving their core and head coach Scott Brooks understands just how important that can be. Brooks has, Chase Hughes of CSN Mid-Atlantic writes, seen what happens when a promising young roster falls apart thanks to his time with the Thunder.
“We have our three players that we drafted all wanting to stay here and stay long-term,” the Wizards’ bench boss said. “That’s good. That’s good because if you don’t have your best players wanting to stay here, then nobody wants to stay here.”
Thanks to Wizards’ owner Ted Leonsis‘ willingness to commit to their young players, Washington was able to match the offer sheet that the Nets signed Otto Porter to this summer and then follow that up with a supermax contract extension for John Wall.
Under their current deals, Wall, Beal and Porter will be under Wizards control for seven total years. Eight, if Porter ultimately exercises his player option for the 2020-21 season.
Gortat Now Sounds Committed To Wizards
Marcin Gortat, who expressed doubt about his future with the Wizards during his exit interview in May, now says he’s fully committed to the team, relays Chase Hughes of CSNMidAtlantic. Gortat, who usually spends summers in Poland, joined the team for its informal summer mini-camp this year. Now in his fifth season with the team, Gortat is signed through the 2018/19 season.
“First of all, I knew it right away that I would be coming back,” Gortat said this week on the Wizards TipOff Podcast. “I still have a contract and at the end of the day, I’m a Wizards player. I still have two fully guaranteed years. When I went for the exit interview, I was just preparing myself for the worst. You’ve gotta be ready in this business. You’ve gotta be ready that one day you might get a phone call saying that ‘Hey, I appreciate everything that you did, but we’re going to go in a different direction and trade you.’ I’ve been traded twice in my life. I know how it is. So, at the exit interview I just said I was going to talk to my agent and whatever is going to happen. That doesn’t mean I wanted to be traded.”
Wall Unphased By Disappointing Playoff Loss
- Figuring to make the Celtics–Wizards rivalry slightly more interesting in 2017/18 is the fact that Marcus Morris, brother of Wiz forward Markieff Morris, will suit up for Boston. “I think we’ll still have that rivalry because we don’t like those guys and they don’t like us,” Markieff told Ben Standig of FanRag Sports. “I don’t think that should change with my brother on the team.“
- The Wizards came up short against the Celtics in their second-round playoff series but John Wall isn’t letting the fact that he went cold down the stretch. “Game 7 was not the way we wanted it to end, but I definitely went out swinging,” the guard told Chase Hughes of CSN Mid-Atlantic. “I didn’t go 0-for-0. I went 0-for-11. I shot the ball and played the game I wanted to play. At least I wasn’t being passive. I was aggressive like I was the whole playoffs. I can deal with losing that way and use that as motivation for this season coming up.“
Verizon Center Rebranded As Capital One Arena
- Since 2006, the Wizards have played in the Verizon Center. Effective immediately, the venue that houses both the basketball club and its hockey counterpart will be known as the Capital One Arena, an Associated Press report says.
Poll: Which Southeast Team Had Best Offseason?
For multiple teams in the Southeast, the 2017 offseason was more about retaining their own players than going out and making a major splash via trade or free agency. That was especially true for the reigning division champs in Washington.
Not only did the Wizards match Brooklyn’s four-year, maximum salary offer sheet for Otto Porter — the club also completed another four-year, maximum salary extension, locking up John Wall far beyond the remaining two years on his current contract. Washington also made other minor changes to its roster, adding Jodie Meeks and Tim Frazier, but the team’s major moves involved keeping its current core intact.
The same can be said about the Heat, who pursued Gordon Hayward, but missed out and quickly shifted their focus back to their own free agents, finalizing new long-term contracts with James Johnson and Dion Waiters. Miami also made the biggest investment in the division on an outside free agent, striking a four-year, $45.6MM deal with Kelly Olynyk, which could be worth even more via incentives.
The Hawks brought back Ersan Ilyasova and Mike Muscala on new deals, but opted not to re-sign their top free agent, letting Paul Millsap go to Denver. The move was one of several made by Atlanta that will re-shape the roster for 2017/18. Dewayne Dedmon, Miles Plumlee, and Marco Belinelli are among the newly-added Hawks, while Tim Hardaway, Dwight Howard, Thabo Sefolosha, and Mike Dunleavy are a few of the players who left Atlanta this summer.
The Hornets were on the other end of a major trade with Atlanta, landing Howard in exchange for Belinelli and Plumlee. The cap-strapped Hornets didn’t have a lot of flexibility to make upgrades, but the additions of Howard, Malik Monk, and Michael Carter-Williams are intriguing moves for a club that underperformed in 2016/17.
Meanwhile, the Magic didn’t make any big-money investments in free agency, but landed Jonathon Simmons, Shelvin Mack, Arron Afflalo, and Marreese Speights on affordable deals, and added a tantalizing athlete in Jonathan Isaac in the draft.
What do you think? Which Southeast team has had the best offseason so far? Vote in our poll and then head to the comment section to share your thoughts.
Trade Rumors app users, click here to vote.
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