2014 August | Hoops Rumors

Spurs Interested In Ayon, Baynes

August 29th, 2014 at 6:14pm CST by Eddie Scarito

The Spurs have interest in signing power forward Gustavo Ayon, Marc Stein of ESPN.com reports (Twitter link). The Spurs preseason roster count currently stands at 17 players, after the recently announced deals with Josh Davis, Bryce Cotton, and JaMychal Green

Ayon, the 6’10”, 29 year-old played in 26 games for the Hawks last season, averaging 4.3 PPG, 4.8 RPG, and 1.1 APG. In three NBA seasons his career numbers are 4.7 PPG and 4.4 RPG. His career slash line is .536/.000/.504. Most recently, Ayon played for Mexico in the Centrobasket Championship, and was named tournament MVP.

San Antonio’s interest in Ayon is in addition to still desiring to re-sign center Aron Baynes, who is their first priority, notes Stein (Twitter link), The 6’10”, 27 year-old appeared in 53 games for the Spurs last season, averaging 3.0 PPG and 2.7 RPG. Baynes is a restricted free agent, and has mulled inking a deal over in Europe, rather than signing his qualifying offer, worth slightly more than $1.115MM.

Int’l Notes: Dragic, Andersen, Moser

August 29th, 2014 at 4:25pm CST by Zachary Links

Not everyone on the Dream Team can be a Hall of Famer, and Joel Brigham of Basketball Insiders goes back through history to isolate the worst-ever Team USA members. Among those earning the dubious distinction are Kirk Hinrich (2006), Raef LaFrentz (2002), and the 1998 roster, which was made up of college players thanks to the NBA lockout. Speaking of international competition, here’s today’s look around the globe…

NBA teams continue to eye Zoran Dragic, tweets Marc Stein of ESPN.com, who writes in a full story that the younger brother of Goran Dragic “badly wants” to play in the Association. Still, Zoran signed a two-year extension last month with Unicaja Malaga of Spain, which Stein says offers the 25-year-old greater financial security. The Rockets appeared to be at the front of the line for the younger Dragic as of May.
Australian center David Andersen is eyeing a return to the NBA and has kept his dance card open beyond the World Cup, writes Roy Ward of the Sydney Morning Herald. The 34-year-old, who has been traded three times within the NBA, last appeared in the Association with New Orleans in 2010/11. Across 103 career games, Andersen averaged 4.9 PPG and 2.8 RPG in 12.3 minutes per contest.
Despite lots of interest from teams overseas, Celtics summer camp standout Mike Moser will be in an NBA training camp next month, tweets A. Sherrod Blakely of CSNNE.com.

Chuck Myron contributed to this post.

Free Agent Stock Watch: Antawn Jamison

August 29th, 2014 at 3:29pm CST by Chuck Myron

Two years ago, Hoops Rumors readers overwhelmingly voted for Antawn Jamison as the best minimum-salary signee in the league soon after his decision to sign with the Lakers for what looked like a steep discount. A year and a half later, Jamison’s stock had plummeted, and he’s been out of the NBA since the Hawks waived him shortly after acquiring him from the Clippers at the trade deadline this past February. No one is immune to the ravages of age, but it’s tough to imagine that Jamison’s skills have eroded so quickly after he scored 17.2 points per game for the Cavs in 2011/12 that he’s become unworthy of a place on an NBA roster.

The 37-year-old Jamison told DeAntae Prince of The Sporting News recently that he has options in free agency, as we passed along, but the one-time No. 4 overall pick didn’t specify whether any of those options included offers from NBA teams. The Wasserman Media Group client has signed with teams that figured to contend for titles the past two seasons. Should the right NBA opportunity materialize for him this year, it wouldn’t necessarily matter if it involved going to a team without a reasonable chance of winning the title, as Jamison also told Prince.

Jamison was reportedly among the players the Knicks were considering in February, shortly after his release from the Hawks, but that was before Phil Jackson took over the team’s front office. The Wizards were eyeing him around that same time, and Washington GM Ernie Grunfeld was in place there for the entirety of Jamison’s five and a half seasons in the nation’s capital. Still, one report suggested Washington’s interest in a reunion was only “lukewarm.” The Hawks and Jamison appeared to share interest in parting ways with each other last season, so it doesn’t seem like he’ll be returning to Atlanta anytime soon, even if he’s more willing to consider teams outside the title picture. Reports have linked the former University of North Carolina star to the Hornets (then Bobcats) in previous offseasons. Charlotte has 14 guaranteed deals, as our roster counts show, and while the team appears to be reluctant to use the final spot on a center, that probably doesn’t apply to a stretch four like Jamison. Still, there’s been no chatter connecting Jamison to the Hornets this summer.

The Spurs were apparently another team interested in Jamison this past February, and they wouldn’t force him to give up his title dreams. However, San Antonio is carrying 14 fully guaranteed pacts and three partially guaranteed deals, and the team still has a qualifying offer out to restricted free agent Aron Baynes, so it doesn’t appear there’s room for Jamison there. The Bulls were also linked to Jamison in that same report, and while the team only has 12 players, Taj Gibson, Pau Gasol, Nikola Mirotic and second-round pick Cameron Bairstow crowd the power forward position, so Jamison wouldn’t be a logical fit in Chicago, either.

Jamison took 17.5 shots per game in 2011/12 with the Cavs, matching a career high. His PER that season was 16.1, which set a career low at the time. That suggests that his high scoring average was at least in part the product of a stripped-down roster that gave then-coach Byron Scott few other choices for creating offense. Jamison’s efficiency has continued to decline over the past two seasons, coming in at a still-respectable 15.3 in his lone season with the Lakers before bottoming out at 7.8 in the small sample size of his 248 total minutes with the Clippers. There’s no doubt that Jamison is fading, but it’s debatable whether he’s any worse at this point than most of the players taking up space at the back end of NBA rosters.

He’s not going to win another Sixth Man of the Year award, as he did back in 2003/04, but the 6’8″ Jamison is not far removed from having nailed 36.1% of his three-point attempts with the Lakers in 2012/13, the third highest percentage he’s ever recorded. He’s been consistent from behind the arc, making 34.6% of his treys during his career, save for last season’s 8 for 41 performance in his brief stint as a Clipper. Last year might have soured the league’s front offices on Jamison, but in an NBA increasingly obsessed with analytics, I’m not sure his time with the Clippers provided an acceptable amount of evidence.

There’d be little call for Jamison to reprise the high-volume shooting role he played for the Cavs a few years ago, so even as he opens himself to signing with a non-contender, it seems Jamison is best suited to help teams that want to win now. There are plenty of teams with which he wouldn’t make sense, but it only takes one club that believes in him for the two-time All-Star to wear an NBA jersey again. Jamison said in Prince’s report that while he’s not ruling out retirement, he won’t know what he’s going to do next for at least another month, perhaps suggesting that he envisions signing with a team at midseason rather than going to training camp. Waiting a full year to return to the league would be risky, but when teams are allowed to issue 10-day contracts again in January, such a deal would allow Jamison to make at least small slice of guaranteed money while keeping a team’s initial investment minimal. There’s a strong chance that we’ve seen the last of Jamison in sneakers, but don’t bet on it.

Clippers Rumors: Rivers, Sterling, Raduljica

August 29th, 2014 at 1:50pm CST by Chuck Myron

The Clippers have pulled off a trade, reached a new deal with coach/executive Doc Rivers, and waived two players, and they reportedly met with Ekpe Udoh as they eye fellow free agent Chris Douglas-Roberts. That’s all within the space of the last three days. There’s a long holiday weekend ahead for some, but the Clippers certainly aren’t easing into it. Here’s the latest on the team:

Few knock the coaching credentials of Rivers, but his roster-building skills as an executive are another matter. Plenty of executives around the league question Rivers’ acquisition of Jared Dudley last year and his surrender of a first-round pick in the deal to rid the Clippers of Dudley this week, as Bleacher Report’s Ric Bucher writes. “If [former Timberwolves GM] David Kahn made those deals, they’d have been burning crosses on his lawn,” one NBA executive told Bucher.
Shelly Sterling didn’t know who Steve Ballmer was when he called her this spring to express interest in buying the Clippers, as she tells Linda Deutsch of The Associated Press. Still, she negotiated him up from an initial offer of $1.9 billion to the $2 billion price he wound up paying and obtained a promise from Ballmer that he would never move the team to Seattle, as Deutsch details.
Rival teams called the Bucks to talk about trading for Miroslav Raduljica last season, according to Shams Charania of RealGM. That seems to suggest there will be NBA suitors for the center whose three-day tenure with the Clippers just ended, though that’s just my speculation.

Clippers Waive Carlos Delfino

August 29th, 2014 at 1:10pm CST by Chuck Myron

1:10pm: The move is official, the team announced via press release, so Delfino hits waivers in time for the Clippers to stretch his salary.

12:16pm: The Clippers will indeed waive Carlos Delfino today, a source tells Ben Bolch of the Los Angeles Times (Twitter link). USA Today’s Sam Amick reported earlier this week that the move was likely to happen. The team will use the stretch provision to spread out his remaining salary, just as the Clippers will do with Miroslav Raduljica, whom the Clippers are also reportedly set to release, Bolch adds.

Delfino has a guaranteed salary of $3.25MM for the coming season, while his salary of the same amount for 2015/16 is non-guaranteed. Using the stretch provision allows a team to evenly spread a player’s remaining salary out over two times the number of years remaining on his contract, plus one. That means Delfino’s salary will be stretched over five seasons, as Bolch points out. Since only half of Delfino’s remaining salary is guaranteed, that would reduce his cap hit to $65K for this season and each year through 2018/19. There had been confusion about whether the non-guaranteed season would count, and thus whether Delfino’s guaranteed salary would be stretched over three years instead of five. However, NBA Salary Cap FAQ author Larry Coon confirms to Eric Pincus of the Los Angeles Times that Delfino’s salary will indeed be stretched over five years (Twitter link).

Raduljica’s contract is similarly structured, with fully guaranteed salary for this year and non-guaranteed salary for 2015/16. He’s set to make $1.5MM for this coming season, so waiving and stretching him drops his payout to $300K each year. Put together, today’s anticipated moves would give the Clippers an extra $3.8MM in breathing room against their hard cap. The team had been only $649,228 shy of that cap after Tuesday’s trade, according to the data compiled by Pincus for Basketball Insiders, so this gives the Clippers enough ammunition to sign veterans like Chris Douglas-Roberts and Ekpe Udoh, whom they have been eyeing, as Amick reported this week.

Cutting Delfino and Raduljica would drop the team’s roster to 11 players. The Clippers can only sign free agents for the minimum salary, having exhausted their cap exceptions, but it appears as though they’ll be able to add four minimum-salary veterans to field a full 15-man regular season roster once Delfino and Raduljica are officially gone. The timing of the moves will be key, since Sunday is the last day that teams can use the stretch provision to reduce salaries for the coming season, but it appears that the team will pull the trigger today.

Delfino missed all of last season with a right foot injury, and he’s reportedly expected to miss part of this one. The former 25th overall pick, who turns 32 today, has been a double-digit scorer in three of his last four healthy seasons, so it would seem there would be strong interest if he can fully recover.

Clippers Waive Miroslav Raduljica

August 29th, 2014 at 1:09pm CST by Charlie Adams

FRIDAY, 1:09pm: The move is official, the team announced. It takes place in time for the team to use the stretch provision on Raduljica’s salary, a strategy the team indeed has been planning to pursue, as a report from today on the team’s waiver of Delfino indicates.

THURSDAY, 10:27pm: The Clippers are set to waive Miroslav Raduljica on Friday morning, reports Shams Charania of RealGM (on Twitter). Los Angeles received Raduljica and Carlos Delfino in the trade that sent Jared Dudley packing to the Bucks. Sam Amick of USA Today indicated on Tuesday that the Clips were likely to waive the duo, and the team appears poised to follow through with at least part of that move tomorrow morning.

Raduljica, 26, spent his sole NBA season with Milwaukee last year but didn’t get to spend much time on the floor. In 48 contests with the Bucks, the big man averaged 3.8 points and 2.3 rebounds over just 9.7 minutes per night. The Clippers will be on the hook for the $1,500,000 he’s owed this season, but won’t need to pay his non-guaranteed second year worth $1,567,500.

Waiving Raduljica will put the Clips at 12 guaranteed contracts. Should they choose to cut ties with Delfino as well, the team will roster only 11 players, two short of the league minimum. Los Angeles is reportedly likely to use the stretch provision to shed the injured Delfino’s contract. It’s not entirely clear whether or not they intend to use the same provision when they waive Raduljica, but that will presumably be the case, given the team’s proximity to its hard cap.

By moving Dudley and using the stretch provision on one or both of former the Bucks they acquired, the Clippers will distance themselves far enough away from the hard cap to be able bring aboard a veteran to fill out their roster. The team was recently linked to free agent big man Ekpe Udoh, as well as swingman Chris Douglas-Roberts.

Hoops Rumors Featured Feedback

August 29th, 2014 at 12:09pm CST by Chuck Myron

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Jimmy Butler is up for a rookie-scale extension, as we examined, and reader Golie-Lorenzo Green thinks it’s time for the Bulls to open their wallets.

The only reason his shooting percentage dropped is because he was being asked to do so much on defense and then was getting double-teamed on offense because there weren’t any other threats in the backcourt. With Derrick Rose returning, the addition of Doug McDermott, Pau Gasol and Tony Snell stepping it up, I think Butler will do good things offensively. The Bulls should get a contract in place now because if he improves on offense even a little bit they may lose him to free agency when that time comes. Butler is by far a top-five defender of wings in a league full of talented scorers at that position. The Bulls need him more than most realize.

Many Hoops Rumors readers are supportive of Sixers GM Sam Hinkie‘s radical rebuilding project, and count Michael Nguyen among them.

As a Sixer fan I have embraced the tank and still go to games because the seats are so cheap! If the plan works, the Sixers will dominate for at least a decade. If the plan fails they still get high draft picks. The current ownership group did try to win. They went all in and spent money on players and made trades for Andrew Bynum but things just didn’t work out one way or another. But I thoroughly am enjoying Hinkie’s plan.

The Cavs seem to have been scouring the market for centers of late, and Al-Zamar McKinney suggests a veteran who could also offer some rebounding.

I don’t know what the Cavs are waiting for, they need to hurry up and get Greg Stiemsma. He’s the best healthy all-around big man still on the market. He has great touch around the basket, he rebounds well enough to be a solid backup, and he knows how to protect to the rim.

Check out what more readers had to say in previous editions of Hoops Rumors Featured Feedback. We appreciate everyone who adds to the dialogue at Hoops Rumors, and we look forward to seeing more responses like these from you!

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Hoops Rumors Featured Feedback

Poll: Should Bledsoe, Monroe Sign QOs?

August 29th, 2014 at 10:29am CST by Chuck Myron

Monday will mark two months since the start of free agency, and still two of the top five players on the 2014 Hoops Rumors Free Agent Power Rankings remain unsigned. The restricted free agencies of Eric Bledsoe and Greg Monroe have dragged on longer than it seemed reasonable to expect, even though teams and their restricted free agents often engage in protracted negotiations, as the Wolves and Nikola Pekovic did last year. There’s little doubting the game-changing ability of either, but the power for Phoenix and Detroit to match all other offers for their respective young stars appears to have effectively short-circuited the market.

Reports have indicated that both Bledsoe and Monroe are prepared to sign their qualifying offers, the standard one-year offers that teams must make at the start of free agency to retain matching rights on their restricted free agents. One report amid a series of dispatches earlier this month indicated that Monroe had already let the Pistons know he would accept the qualifying offer, though other reports conflict with that notion. Bledsoe is insisting that he either receive a max deal or he’ll take the qualifying offer, according to the latest we’ve seen on him.

Signing the qualifying offer would represent a drastic step. Monroe’s QO is worth a shade less than $5.48MM, while Bledsoe would make just $3.727MM this season if he signed his. The Pistons and Suns appear to have made long-term offers that would pay much more than that. Phoenix reportedly has four years and $48MM on the table for Bledsoe, while the Pistons are apparently willing to give Monroe more than $54MM over four years. Still, the max for both would be a five-year, $84,789,500 contract, and it seems neither would be satisfied settling for less. Sign-and-trades remain a possibility, but it doesn’t appear as though there’s much traction toward one for either of the free agents stuck in limbo.

Bledsoe and Monroe could hit unrestricted free agency in a year if they sign their qualifying offers, and while it would seem that both would field more competitive offers from teams who would no longer have to worry that the Suns or Pistons would match, there are no guarantees. Bledsoe has only started 78 games in his career, and it appears few around the NBA regard Monroe as someone worthy of a maximum-salary contract. Only 17 players have signed qualifying offers in the past two decades, and none have carried cachet of either Bledsoe or Monroe, underscoring just what an unusual move it would be.

Let us know whether you think signing the qualifying offer, and the chance to hit unrestricted free agency in a year that comes with it, would be worthwhile for Bledsoe and Monroe, or if you think they should take the more lucrative long-term deals in front of them. Weigh in on your choice in the comments.

Jordan McRae To Play In Australia

August 29th, 2014 at 8:48am CST by Chuck Myron

Sixers second-round draftee Jordan McRae has signed with CTI Melbourne United of Australia, the team announced (hat tip to Sportando’s Orazio Cauchi). The terms aren’t immediately clear, but it looks like this year’s 58th overall pick is set to spend the season overseas rather than with Philadelphia, which acquired his NBA rights in a draft-night swap with the Spurs.

The 23-year-old shooting guard gradually emerged as a scoring force over his time at the University of Tennessee, averaging 18.7 points per game as a senior this past season, 10.1 more than he’d poured in as a sophomore. McRae led the Volunteers in scoring this year, outpacing 35th overall pick Jarnell Stokes, and he also possesses a 7’0.5″ wingspan, according to DraftExpress, to aid him defensively. McRae prides himself on his versatility and is confident he can play point guard, too, as he told Zach Links of Hoops Rumors prior to the draft for our Prospect Profile Series. McRae will have a chance to refine his skills in Australia, where he’ll play for former Bulls and Mavericks center Chris Anstey, the CTI Melbourne United head coach.

Philadelphia was among the teams to have McRae in for a predraft workout, as McRae also informed Zach. The patiently rebuilding Sixers will wait to bring him stateside, just as they’re doing with No. 12 overall pick Dario Saric and 52nd overall pick Vasilije Micic, two others among the six 2014 draftees whose rights the team possesses. McRae will join fellow second-round pick DeAndre Daniels, whose NBA rights belong to the Raptors, in Australia this season.

Northwest Notes: Love, LeBron, Morrow

August 28th, 2014 at 10:12pm CST by Charlie Adams

Earlier today, Utah announced that Toure’ Murry had signed with the team on a multi-year deal. With his pact in tow, the Jazz boast a total of at 18 contracts on their books as training camp approaches. Teams can only roster 15 players once the regular season begins, so Utah will need to decide which guys on partially guaranteed deals are worth keeping around. Here’s tonight’s look at the Northwest Division:

Kevin Love recently made comments indicating that he spoke to LeBron James about teaming up while still a member of the Wolves, but such an admission won’t allow the league to hit Cleveland with a tampering penalty, as salary cap expert Larry Coon explains on SiriusXM NBA Radio (audio link via SoundCloud).
After being heavily shopped by the Sixers at last season’s trade deadline, Thaddeus Young now feels like he’s “wanted” as a member of the Wolves, as Marc Narducci of the Inquirer details.
Although Anthony Morrow isn’t exactly a big name, Susan Bible of Basketball Insiders points out that his presence in Oklahoma City should help bolster the Thunder’s weak shooting. Bible says the decision to bring in the former Pelicans swingman could eventually be considered a great move down the road.

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