There are a number of young up-and-coming small forwards in the league. John Zitzler of Basketball Insiders profiles the ones he thinks will have breakout seasons in 2014/15. Here’s more from around the league:
- Victor Oladipo underwent surgery to repair a facial fracture and is expected to be out for a month, tweets Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports. The Magic guard said that the surgery went well and vowed to come back strong in a pair of tweets.
- $100K of Jerome Jordan‘s minimum salary was locked in today, as he remained on the roster beyond the partial guarantee date, as noted on the updated Nets salary sheet maintained by Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders.
- The Nets used their trade exception of $788,872 to receive Casper Ware‘s $816,482 contract in the trade that sent Marquis Teague to the Sixers, tweets Pincus. The incoming salary is allowed to exceed the exception within $100K. The Nets created a new exception equivalent to Teague’s salary, as we noted last night.
- If Kobe Bryant has indeed scared away potential free agents, then Lakers management is to blame for the state of the franchise, Ken Berger of CBSSports.com writes. One league executive tells Berger, “They’re [the Lakers] the ones that gave him a $48MM extension knowing that nobody wanted to play with him. And they were also the ones that gave away multiple first-round picks for an over-the-hill Steve Nash. Not to mention firing every coach that Magic [Johnson] decided he didn’t like.”
- The Warriors‘ Klay Thompson has two outspoken allies in his quest for a contract extension, writes Diamond Leung of Bay Area News Group. Thompson’s father Mychal, a former NBA player, has insisted that his son is worth a maximum-salary extension. The senior Thompson’s opinion was echoed earlier this week by former Warriors coach and current ESPN broadcaster Mark Jackson. “It’s good to hear from guys like that because they both played in the NBA, and both were successful in the NBA and [have] been around the game for so many decades,” Klay Thompson said. “So if they think I’m that quality type of player, it makes me think highly of myself as well.”
Arthur Hill contributed to this post.