Eastern Notes: Knicks, Wizards, Pistons
There’s been some ugly basketball tonight in the East, with the Cavs losing to the Pelicans, and blowouts coming in the Knicks/Celtics and Pistons/Magic games. Here are some of today’s rumblings from the East:
- Glen Rice Jr. has been recalled from the D-League by the Wizards, per a release on NBA.com. Rice was playing with Washington affiliate Iowa Energy on a rehabilitation stint.
- Vincent Goodwill of The Detroit News believes there’s a 75% chance of the Pistons making a trade between now and the deadline, identifying Rodney Stuckey, Charlie Villanueva, Jonas Jerebko and Greg Monroe as the team’s top trade candidates.
- In a series of tweets, New York Daily News’ Frank Isola noted some peculiar in-arena behavior from Knicks owner James Dolan and other New York brass during the Knicks/Celtics game. Isola speculates that the apparent in-game meetings could have something to do with either Beno Udrih (who has requested a trade) or Iman Shumpert, who hurt his shoulder and hasn’t returned to action.
Odds & Ends: Millsap, Monroe, Lakers
Reigning Eastern Conference Player of the Week Paul Millsap is outplaying his two-year, $19MM contract, which is no surprise. Still, he tells Shams Charania of RealGM.com that he’s content with the Hawks.
“I hope to stay here, but we haven’t discussed [it],” Millsap said. “Now where I’m at, I feel comfortable and, hopefully, it can turn into a long-term thing. Right now, we’re focused on these two years, seeing what we can do. I felt this was the right move for me.”
Here’s more on other teams and players determined to make the right move for themselves:
- The Pistons are “aggressively” sending out signals that they’re not going to trade Greg Monroe to the Wizards, who are reportedly interested in the big man, as Steve Kyler of Basketball Insiders writes in chat with readers. Kyler cautions that Detroit’s stance could change before the deadline.
- Kyler also hears that the Lakers have canvassed the entire league in search of young players and picks, but there’s little interest in what the purple-and-gold have to offer.
- DeMar DeRozan is under contract through 2016/17, but with trade rumors surrounding the Raptors, he made it clear that he prefers to stay in Toronto for the long haul, as part of an interview with BALLnROLL.com (hat tip to Sean Deveney of The Sporting News).
- With J.J. Redick returning to Milwaukee as a member of the Clippers for tonight’s game, Doc Rivers explained to reporters how Redick’s shot-making ability persuaded him to pursue the sharpshooter in free agency this past summer. Charles F. Gardner of the Journal Sentinel has the details, including input from Redick on what went wrong with the Bucks last year.
- The personal trainer for Carmelo Anthony and J.R. Smith has left the Knicks over differences with the coaching staff, reports Ian Begley of ESPNNewYork.com. The hiring of Idan Ravin was widely viewed as a favor to Anthony and Smith, and it’s unclear what role, if any, the split will play in Anthony’s decision regarding free agency this summer, Begley writes.
- Michigan shooting guard Nik Stauskas has been impressing NBA teams of late, according to Chris Mannix of SI.com (Twitter link). The sophomore is No. 16 on the DraftExpress rankings and No. 19 on the ESPN Insider board.
Eastern Notes: Pierce, Lowry, Pistons
It was an emotional Sunday evening in Boston for Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett, who returned for the first time as Nets players, but it might have been especially awkward for Pierce, who had spent his entire career in green before this summer’s trade. The move devastated Pierce, writes Jackie MacMullan of ESPNBoston.com, who says the C’s second all-time leading scorer was near tears almost the entire time she interviewed him this past summer. Pierce told MacMullan that he wondered why the Celtics didn’t allow him to finish his career in Boston.
“I loved it here,” Pierce said Sunday. “Never wanted to leave.”
Here’s more from the Eastern Conference:
- The sense around the league is that the Raptors are more likely to keep Kyle Lowry than to trade him, but that could simply be a matter of Toronto’s high price tag for the point guard, which no other team has accepted yet, according to Marc Stein of ESPN.com (Twitter links). Lowry will be a free agent at season’s end, and Stein suggests that’s motivation for Raptors GM Masai Ujiri to continue trade talks
- Jose Calderon says the Pistons never made him an offer to re-sign with the team this summer, observes Vince Ellis of the Detroit Free-Press. “They were in contact with me, but I think they were waiting for Josh Smith, so I was just waiting and waiting, and Dallas came with a great offer … I couldn’t say no to that,” Calderon said.
- The Wizards spent their bi-annual exception this summer on Eric Maynor, who’s fallen so far out of the rotation that he isn’t even playing in blowouts, notes J. Michael of CSNWashington. Still, there’s plenty of reason why Maynor and the Wizards won’t soon be parting ways. His guaranteed contract includes a $2.1MM player option for next season, and he probably wouldn’t command as much if he were to become a free agent, Michael points out.
- The Sixers have assigned Lorenzo Brown to the D-League, the team announced. It’ll be the third time the point guard has gone to the Delaware 87ers this season, but his last pair of D-League stints lasted only a single day.
Odds & Ends: Bledsoe, Cuban, Gortat
Yannis Koutroupis of Basketball Insiders runs down six things you need to know about the Suns, including their enviable cap position. While some might think that Phoenix would have a hard time landing big free agents, Eric Bledsoe is the kind of guy who other elite players will want to play with because he’s a fierce competitor and unselfish. It also helps that Jeff Hornacek is a player’s coach, being a former player himself.
- Can an NBA owner do a sufficient job while living on the other side of the world? No, says Mavs owner Mark Cuban, according to Tim Bontemps of the New York Post. “Absolutely not,” Cuban said. “Hypothetically speaking — and this only applies to individuals 6-foot-5 and under — you can’t,” Cuban said as an obvious shot at 6-foot-7 Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov. “That’s why I sit so close. It’s like trying to run a company and not being able to go to the sales meetings, not being able to go to the customer service meetings or the support meeting.”
- The Hawks announced that they have recalled guard Jared Cunningham from the Bakersfield Jam of the NBA Development League. Cunningham, who was re-assigned to Bakersfield on January 1st, has averaged 15.2 points, 4.2 assists, 3.5 rebounds and 1.1 steals in 29.8 minutes in 17 games (14 starts) over three stints with the Jam this season. He has appeared in three games with the Hawks this year and will be available tonight at Milwaukee. To keep up with all of this year’s D-League assignments and recalls, check out our running list.
- Wizards big man Marcin Gortat says he looks back on his time with the Suns fondly, writes Paul Coro of the Arizona Republic. Gortat has also found a nice home for himself in Washington and the Wizards are very interested in locking him up long-term.
- Scott Rafferty of Ridiculous Upside has a breakdown of P.J. Hairston’s 40 point performance for the D-League’s Texas Legends. The former UNC standout figures to be a first-rounder in the 2014 draft and could vault himself up the board with more performances like that one.
Pacific Notes: Suns, Lakers, Collison
Owner Robert Sarver tells Dan Bickley of The Arizona Republic that he feels “OK,” but not “great” about his surprising Suns, who sit at 24-17 in seventh place in the West
“We’re a work in progress,” he said. “What I feel really good about, and what I feel, is optimism. It’s optimism that we have some really good pieces, a good coaching staff and a number of assets that, if we make smart decisions, will lead us back to the elite level of play.”
Sarver had much more to say, and we covered his comments on Eric Bledsoe earlier today. We’ll pass along another item of note from Bickley’s interview amid our look at the Pacific Division:
- Suns president of basketball ops Lon Babby endorsed Jeff Weltman, then with the Bucks and now with the Raptors, for the Phoenix GM job this summer, but Sarver made the decision to hire Ryan McDonough instead, according to Bickley.
- The Lakers aren’t sure they want to make a significant investment in any free agent other than LeBron James this summer, so they’ll probably instead pursue lower-tier free agents with short-term deals and gear up for 2015, Bleacher Report’s Kevin Ding writes. Regardless, the team won’t use the draft as its primary vehicle toward contention, according to Ding.
- Darren Collison‘s success in place of Chris Paul raises the odds that he’ll opt out of his contract, as Jeff Caplan of NBA.com surmises. Collison signed his deal with the Clippers when it became apparent to him that the Mavs didn’t want him back, a stance the point guard saw as disrespectful. “As a competitor you look at it that way,” Collison said. “They had their situation. I’m just glad that I fell into a situation like the Clippers that’s given me an opportunity. Now I have a chance to play for a contending team that’s going to try to play for something more special.”
- Marcin Gortat is grateful to the Suns and says he harbors no hard feelings about their decision to trade him this past fall, though he admits there will be emotions involved as he returns to Phoenix with the Wizards for tonight’s game. Michael Lee of The Washington Post has more.
Wizards Eye New Deal With Marcin Gortat
1:40pm: Stein’s full story suggests the Wizards have made an extension offer to Gortat, though the terms of any such offer are unclear.
12:31pm: The Wizards will make it a priority to re-sign Marcin Gortat this summer if they can’t sign sign him to an extension before his contract runs out at the end of June, reports Marc Stein of ESPN.com (Twitter links). Washington’s brass is “thrilled” with the client of Guy Zucker, according to Stein. The news comes on the heels of a Monday report that the Wizards are interested in fellow big man Greg Monroe and would like to trade for him before the deadline or sign him as a restricted free agent this summer.
Gortat, who’ll turn 30 next month, is averaging 12.0 points and 8.8 rebounds with a 16.0 PER for the Wizards this year after coming over a few days before the season began via trade from the Suns. He’s capably filled the hole created when Emeka Okafor, who went to Phoenix in the same trade, suffered a preseason neck injury that’s kept him out of action ever since.
The Wizards have big man Nene on a contract that pays him $13MM a year through 2015/16, so the team would logically have room for only one of Gortat and Monroe along their front line. Monroe presents a younger option who’s putting up slightly superior numbers as a 23-year-old this season, and he has the hometown appeal of having played for Georgetown University. It’ll probably be difficult to obtain him, since the Pistons will have the right to match offers if they keep him until the summer, and the trade market for promising young big men is always full of competition.
Gortat would figure to come more easily, since he’s already in Washington and the Wizards have his Bird Rights. The seventh-year veteran can re-sign for as much as five years with the Wizards if he hits free agency, but could only add three years to his existing deal if he were to sign an extension, making it more financially sound for him to wait until July, Stein notes.
The Polish Hammer is finishing up a five-year deal that pays him more than $7.7MM this season, but he signed that contract when he was still a backup for the Magic, so I think he’s in line for a raise that would put his annual take at around $10MM. Gortat’s age would suggest he’d like the security of a long-term deal, but I’m not sure the Wizards would be willing to do a fifth year unless he and Zucker agree to a steep discount. Even a fourth year could be an ambitious proposition for the Wizards, though that could be mitigated if they can arrange for the fourth season to be partially guaranteed.
Gortat admits to Michael Lee of The Washington Post that it’s been an adjustment playing aside another big man in Nene and serving as a complimentary player on offense, neither of which he experienced while with the Suns. Still, he believes he’s much more content in Washington than he would have been if he were still in Phoenix.
“Playing in Phoenix was a totally different story,” he said. “I had more space under the basket. I knew that [I] was going to get the ball inside and I was the guy who was going to work. Here, it’s a different story. But I can say, I don’t mind doing that. As long as we’re winning, I don’t mind at all.”
Southeast Rumors: Beal, Magic, Heat, Wade
The max extension John Wall received this summer had an influence on Bradley Beal‘s willingness to stay with the Wizards when he becomes a free agent, as the second-year shooting guard tells USA Today’s Adi Joseph.
“It’s good for the team,” Beal said of Wall’s contract. “He’s the leader. He’s the head of the snake. It just makes my decision that much easier, if I want to continue to play with him over the next couple of years.”
Beal won’t become extension-eligible until the summer of 2015, and the earliest he could hit restricted free agency is the summer of 2016. Still, Wall’s contract appears to have forged some stability for Washington, which has sorely lacked it in recent years, as Joseph notes. Here’s more from the Southeast Division:
- The Magic were one of 26 NBA franchises to turn a profit last year, according to a Forbes.com report, but teams typically dispute those figures. Magic CEO Alex Martins tells Josh Robbins of the Orlando Sentinel that his club didn’t wind up in the black. “We have not made a profit in over a decade,” Martins said. That’s a product primarily of the DeVos’ approach that they’re going to continue to reinvest in the business and continue to reinvest in the product on the floor. But to assert that we made an operating profit last year is completely inaccurate.”
- The Heat‘s money-saving moves have weakened the team at the wing positions, making them more vulnerable to the Pacers, as Brian Windhorst of ESPN.com examines.
- Heat stars Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh are two of the most noteworthy omissions from the preliminary roster that Team USA released this morning, and it’s a sign of the times for the 32-year-old Wade, who’ll miss his fourth straight game tonight with knee soreness. Joseph Goodman of the Miami Herald has more. “We appreciate the service he gave us … but it’s time for us to move on,” USA Basketball executive director Jerry Colangelo said of Wade.
D-League Notes: Canaan, Roberson, Rice Jr.
Playoff teams in both conferences have tweaked their rosters with some recent D-League maneuvers. Here’s a look at the moves the Rockets, Thunder, and Wizards are making with their rookie players..
- The Rockets have re-assigned point guard Isaiah Canaan to the Rockets’ D-League affiliate Rio Grand Valley Vipers, according to the Rockets’ official Twitter account. Canaan has spent a third of this season at Rio Grand Valley.
- The Thunder called up shooting guard Andre Roberson from the Tulsa 66ers D-League squad, per NBA.com. Roberson is only averaging 8.4 MPG, but has made four starts in place of Thabo Sefolosha when the latter has sat out due to injury.
- The Wizards are sending shooting guard Glen Rice Jr. down to the Iowa Energy, per The Washington Post’s Michael Lee, in what head coach Randy Wittman described as a rehabilitation stint.
Wizards Expected To Pursue Greg Monroe
The Wizards are interested in the Pistons’ Greg Monroe, either by trade this season or as a restricted free agent in the offseason, per Alex Kennedy of Basketball Insiders. The Wizards have cap room next year, when an extension for Monroe would kick in. Marcin Gortat, the Wizards’ current starting center, will also be a free agent at that point.
When the Pistons signed Josh Smith last summer, it created a very big starting five in Detroit, with Andre Drummond at center, Monroe at power forward, and Josh Smith at small forward. This lineup has had spacing issues in a league increasingly dependent on the three-point shot. Smith is near the bottom of the league’s long-distance shooters at .239 from deep, and the team’s 17-24 start hasn’t silenced questions about the long-term viability of the unconventional roster.
Drummond is highly prized and on the second year of his rookie deal, and Smith has three years remaining after this season on his four-year, $54MM contract. The 23-year-old Monroe will be a restricted free agent next year, and has averaged 13.6 points, 8.9 rebounds, and 1.2 steals over his three-plus years in the league. Our readers voted Monroe the most likely to be traded from the Pistons yesterday, and Kennedy says the Pistons’ front office is considering whether to do just that: “Rival executives have said that there is “turmoil” within the organization and that they haven’t decided what to do as the deadline approaches.”
The Pistons are still in contention for the eighth seed in the weak Eastern Conference, and they are expected to be active before the trade deadline. Whether the front office tries to bolster the current foundation, or deconstructs some of the “ill-fitting pieces” such as Monroe could be determined by the team’s performance in the near term.
Eastern Notes: Bogans, Bucks, Nets, Rice
A source tells Steve Bulpett of the Boston Globe that Keith Bogans intends to “stick it out” with the Celtics this season, seemingly indicating the guard isn’t thinking buyout (Twitter link). The C’s and Bogans agreed to have the 33-year-old stay away from the team as Boston pursues takers for him via trade. It wouldn’t really be a surprise if Bogans doesn’t want to do a buyout, since that would mean giving up some of his more than $5MM in guaranteed salary for the season, the largest take of his career. Here’s more from the Eastern Conference:
- Bucks owner Herb Kohl is signaling to the team’s management that he’s ready to give up the pursuit of a playoff berth this season, as Chad Ford of ESPN.com writes in his latest Insider-only “Tank Rank” column. That contradicts what we heard earlier from Sam Amico of Fox Sports Ohio, who says the team would be “more than willing” to trade for veteran help.
- Mark Deeks of ShamSports breaks down the trade agreement between the Bulls, Nets and Pelicans in a piece for SB Nation, noting that the cash Brooklyn is sending to New Orleans will be enough to cover the rest of Tyshawn Taylor‘s contract, which expires at season’s end. He also says the Nets briefly looked into a deal for Jazz point guard John Lucas III, echoing a report from July.
- The Wizards assigned Glen Rice Jr. to the D-League today, the team announced (Twitter link). It’s a rehab stint for the rookie as he makes his way back from a fractured right wrist, coach Randy Wittman says, according to Michael Lee of The Washington Post. Wittman also says it’s possible the team will send No. 3 overall pick Otto Porter to the D-League at some point, too.
- The Sixers will decide within the next two or three days whether to bring back Dewayne Dedmon on a second 10-day deal, coach Brett Brown told reporters, including Tom Moore of Calkins Media (Twitter link). The center’s deal expires after Thursday night.