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Month: November 2024

Eastern Notes: Kobe, Wizards, Durant, Lopez

January 26th, 2015 at 12:59pm CST by Chuck Myron

Kobe Bryant wanted to join the Wizards more than a decade ago when Michael Jordan was with the team, Bryant acknowledged to Michael Lee of The Washington Post. While Jordan was playing with the Wizards, Bryant told him several times that he wanted to come to Washington, assuming that Jordan would again head basketball operations for the Wizards as he did before his comeback, sources tell Lee. Jordan was confident he would sign Bryant when he became a free agent in 2004, Lee hears, but the current Hornets owner never got that chance, since then-Wizards owner Abe Pollin decided against letting Jordan run the front office upon his final retirement from playing in 2003. The Wizards missed out on a star then, but they have their sights set on acquiring one a dozen years later, as we detail:

  • It’s a long shot but more than a pipe dream that the Wizards would land Kevin Durant when he hits free agency in 2016, as TNT’s David Aldridge writes in his Morning Tip column for NBA.com. A D.C. income tax loophole would allow Durant to save more than $700K per year in tax payments if he played for the Wizards instead of the Thunder, as Aldridge explains. However, the Thunder, who hold Durant’s Bird rights, can offer better annual salary raises than the Wizards or any other team can.
  • J.R. Smith got over some initial mixed feelings about the trade that sent him from the Knicks to the Cavs and calls playing for Cleveland “the best situation for me as a person,” as he told Aldridge for the same piece. Smith has a player option worth nearly $6.4MM for next season.
  • Trade candidate Brook Lopez would prefer to stay with the Nets, as Marc J. Spears of Yahoo! Sports writes amid his weekly power rankings.
  • Scouts, coaches and GMs at the D-League showcase were puzzled when the Sixers signed Larry Drew II, who had been playing for the Heat’s affiliate, to a 10-day contract earlier this month, as Gino Pilato of D-League Digest hears (Twitter links). Drew put up strong numbers, with 10.1 assists per game and 40.4% three-point shooting in 21 D-League appearances this year, but there were other, more intriguing prospects, Pilato believes. Drew signed his second 10-day deal with Philly earlier today.
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Multiple Teams Interested In Nate Robinson

January 26th, 2015 at 12:21pm CST by Chuck Myron

JANUARY 26TH: The Clips remain interested in Robinson but are looking into other deals first, a source told Spears for his weekly power rankings column.

JANUARY 23RD: The Clippers are still Robinson’s preferred free agency destination, Alex Kennedy of Basketball Insiders reports (Twitter link). Doc Rivers, Los Angeles’ president of basketball operations and coach, recently said that the team intends to use its remaining two roster spots to add veteran players next month. Robinson would certainly qualify as a veteran addition, but there have been conflicting reports regarding L.A.’s level of interest in the diminutive guard.

5:09pm: The Cavs won’t pursue Robinson beyond their initial inquiry, according to Chris Haynes of the Northeast Ohio Media Group (Twitter link).

JANUARY 19TH, 11:55am: Robinson reached out to the Heat, but the Heat still hadn’t responded two days after the inquiry, as Barry Jackson of the Miami Herald hears. That seemingly conflicts with Spears’ report from Thursday that Miami was interested in Robinson (below).

2:12pm: USA Today’s Sam Amick suggests that the Clippers have cooled on the idea of signing Robinson (Twitter link). The situation regarding the former Slam Dunk champ is “fluid,” Amick says.

JANUARY 16TH, 7:45am: The Clippers are “running unopposed” atop Robinson’s wish list, according to Marc Stein of ESPN.com.

JANUARY 15TH, 7:37pm: Washington won’t make a roster move until it knows what Ray Allen‘s plans are, J. Michael of CSNWashington.com tweets.

7:32pm: Robinson would like to play for the Wizards, but the team isn’t currently interested in his services, Jorge Castillo of The Washington Post reports (Twitter link). This conflicts with Spears’ earlier report that Washington was indeed interested in Robinson’s services.

7:04pm: The Clippers are still the frontrunners to land Robinson, Alex Kennedy of Basketball Insiders tweets.

5:49pm: The Wizards and the Heat are also interested in Robinson, Spears tweets.

5:42pm: The Cavaliers have also expressed interest in Robinson, Marc J. Spears of Yahoo! Sports reports (Twitter link).

4:18pm: The Clippers are likely to sign Robinson now that he’s reached a buyout agreement with the Celtics, Arash Markazi of ESPNLosAngeles.com reports (Twitter link).

3:33pm: The Clippers have interest in Nate Robinson, who’s agreed to a buyout deal with the Celtics, and they’d still like to sign him once they complete the Austin Rivers trade, tweets Ben Bolch of the Los Angeles Times. Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports suggested earlier this week that the Clippers were a possible suitor, and Bolch indicates that’s indeed the case. The Clippers had spoken with the Nuggets about acquiring the 5’9″ guard via trade before the Nuggets instead sent him to Boston this week, Wojnarowski also wrote.

Clippers president of basketball operations and coach Doc Rivers was Robinson’s coach when Robinson was with the Celtics for parts of 2009/10 and 2010/11, including Boston’s run to the 2010 NBA Finals. Robinson, whose seeing a career-low 14.1 minutes per game, reportedly wants to have a chance to showcase his talents in advance of this summer’s free agent market as well as to again play with a contender.

The Clippers would give him a crack at another title, but their backcourt is fairly crowded, with Chris Paul, Jamal Crawford and J.J. Redick in prominent roles. Backup point guard Jordan Farmar has averaged almost precisely as much playing time this year as Robinson did with the Nuggets, and Farmar has apparently been wanting more. Farmar doesn’t appear likely to head to Boston in the Austin Rivers trade, but Kings have reportedly discussed swapping Ramon Sessions for Farmar.

The Clips’ roster is at 15 players, including Dahntay Jones, whom the team signed to a 10-day contract Wednesday, though much remains up in the air. The Clippers are less than $1MM shy of the hard cap as it stands, and it’s not quite clear what they’ll relinquish in the Rivers trade and where they’ll stand in relation to that $80.829MM hard cap once the trade goes through, but they’d need roughly $450K available to sign Robinson anytime soon to a prorated minimum salary for the rest of the season.

Brian Windhorst of ESPN.com suggested this week that the Cavs are in the mix for Robinson, too. The Celtics have yet to officially waive Robinson, though Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders indicated Wednesday that they were waiting on Jameer Nelson to complete his physical with the Nuggets, which would put a bow on the trade that sent Robinson to Boston (Twitter link).

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Sixers Sign Larry Drew II To Second 10-Day Pact

January 26th, 2015 at 11:56am CST by Chuck Myron

The Sixers have signed Larry Drew II to his second 10-day contract with the team, Philadelphia announced via press release. His initial 10-day deal expired at the end of Sunday. This will be the final 10-day arrangement this season between the Sixers and the point guard, who’ll have to decide whether to ink a deal for the rest of the season or part ways when his latest contract runs out.

Drew has seen fairly heavy use during his time with the Sixers, appearing in six contests for an average of 18.7 minutes per game. He’s putting up 4.7 points and 4.3 assists per night, his solid ball-distribution representative of his time for the Heat’s D-League affiliate earlier this season. The ASM Sports client set a D-League record for assists in a single game with 23 on Christmas Day.

The 24-year-old Drew will continue to help bolster a Sixers team that’s lost backup point guard Tony Wroten to a torn ACL. Drew’s new contract puts Philadelphia back up at 16 players, one more than the standard 15-man limit. Andrei Kirilenko‘s presence on the suspended list gives the team the extra roster spot.

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Draft Rights Held Players

January 26th, 2015 at 10:14am CST by Mark Porcaro

Each year around draft time you’ll hear the term draft-and-stash being tossed around in regard to international players and late second-round picks, but what happens to these players? It seems like the majority of them stay overseas and never make it to the NBA. The truth is the very best of these players are honing their skills in some of the best leagues around the world. The remainder become trade assets for the teams holding their rights.

This season we have seen five such players join the league after having been stashed overseas. The most recent was Furkan Aldemir, who joined the 76ers last month nearly two and a half years after he was drafted. Others, like Chicago’s Nikola Mirotic and Brooklyn’s Bojan Bogdanovic, have made strong impressions in their rookie seasons. Kostas Papanikolaou and Lucas Nogueira, in Houston and Toronto respectively, also have debuted this season after playing last season abroad. All five players have plenty of skill and potential to boot and all have something else in common. Every one of those five players was drafted by a different team and their rights were traded elsewhere.

Usually, if a player doesn’t come over within two years of having been drafted, he will never make the leap. Mirotic and Bogdanovic are two exceptions to the rule, as both joined their teams three years later, but both were highly regarded prospects to begin with. Only five other such cases exist in the last 10 drafts, with Joel Freeland (six years later) standing as the only player to stay overseas longer than three years after he was drafted and still make the NBA jump. From 2005-2012, there were 90 international players drafted who played their predraft seasons overseas. Fifty-five of them, or 61.1%, have made their NBA debuts. Twenty-nine of those players were first-round picks, and all except for Fran Vazquez (the 11th pick in 2005) and Petteri Koponen (the 30th pick in 2007) have played in the NBA at some point.  That’s a 93.1% success rate!  That also means the success rate for second-round picks is just 45.9% (28 of 61).  It’s even grimmer if we take just the second half of the second round (picks 46-60), wherein just 13 of 36, or 36.1%, of players have worn a NBA jersey.

While not all players pan out the way teams expect them to, they at worst become tradeable assets for teams that don’t want to part with a future second-round pick.  Each team must give up something in a trade, which is why you will see a lot of top-55 protected second-round picks moving around the league.  Older draft rights held players who clearly will never come over to the NBA are essentially the same, for all intents and purposes.  One recent example is 2004 draft pick Serhiy Lishchuk.  At the beginning of the season, Lishchuk’s draft rights were held by Houston.  On December 19th, Houston took part in a 3-team trade that netted them Corey Brewer.  In that deal, Houston sent out a combination of three future second-round picks to Minnesota and Philadelphia.  Instead of sending a fourth pick, Houston sent Lishchuk’s rights to Philly.  About two weeks later, Philly acquired Jared Cunningham from the Clippers with the sole intention of waiving his contract.  Not wanting to part with an asset of any value (even top-55 protected picks can end up being conveyed), the sole asset that the Sixers sent out was the rights to Lishchuk.

So, with all that being said, here’s the list of all current players who still have their draft rights held by a NBA team:

Updated 8-15-15

Atlanta Hawks

  • Dimitrios Agravanis
    • Drafted 59th overall in the 2015 draft by Atlanta
    • PF, 6-10/230, 20 years old from Greece
    • Currently playing in Greece for Olympiacos
    • Under contract until 2018
  • Marcus Eriksson
    • Drafted 50th overall in the 2015 draft by Atlanta
    • SG, 6-5/195, 21 years old from Sweden
    • Currently playing in Spain for Barcelona
    • Under contract until 2018
  • Sergii Gladyr
    • Drafted 49th overall in the 2009 draft by Atlanta
    • G/F, 6-5/190, 25 years old from Ukraine
    • Currently playing in Turkey for Istanbul BB
    • Under contract until 2016
  • Alain Digbeu
    • Drafted 50th overall in the 1997 draft by Atlanta
    • SG, 6-6/220, 39 years old from France
    • Retired in 2011

Read more

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And-Ones: Hummel, Bullock, Celtics, Draft

January 26th, 2015 at 9:00am CST by Chuck Myron

There’s been a run of tough luck over the past few days, with Kobe Bryant, Brandon Jennings, Tony Wroten and Mirza Teletovic all likely having been knocked out for the season. There’s news on another injury this morning as the NBA hopes inclement weather in the Northeast won’t interfere with a seven-game night:

  • The Wolves have lost Robbie Hummel to a broken right (shooting) hand, the team announced (on Twitter), and Hummel said he’ll be out four to six weeks, reports Jerry Zgoda of the Star Tribune. Hummel has started four of the last five games for Minnesota, which has a full 15-man roster, including Miroslav Raduljica, who’s on a 10-day contract.
  • Suns coach Jeff Hornacek believes new acquisition Reggie Bullock will fit into Phoenix’s plans for the future, as he told reporters, including Arash Markazi of ESPNLosAngeles.com. Bullock engaged in what he calls a “great conversation” with Clippers coach/executive Doc Rivers when he found out that Rivers had pulled the trigger on the deal that sent him to Phoenix, Markazi observes.
  • The original plan was for Andre Dawkins to remain on D-League assignment for the duration of his 10-day contract with the Celtics, but coach Brad Stevens indicated there’s a decent chance that will change, notes Steve Bulpett of the Boston Herald. In any case, Gino Pilato of D-League Digest examines the reasons why NBA teams would sign a player to a 10-day deal and immediately send him to the D-League, as Boston did with Dawkins.
  • Tyler Harris said the idea that he intends to enter this year’s NBA draft didn’t come from him, tweets Adam Zagoria of SNY.tv. A report last week indicated that the Providence junior small forward planned to declare for early entry.
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Central Notes: Mozgov, Pistons, Bulls

January 25th, 2015 at 11:02pm CST by Chuck Myron

The Cavaliers are suddenly the hottest team in the Central Division, and with their sixth straight win Sunday, over the Thunder, they own the NBA’s longest winning streak aside from the Hawks and their 16 wins in a row. Here’s the latest from Cleveland and the rest of the Central:

  • The record will show that the Cavs gave up two first-round picks in their deal to acquire Timofey Mozgov, but in the original structure of the trade, Cleveland never would have held one of those first-rounders, as Chris Haynes of the Northeast Ohio Media Group details. The Mozgov swap was supposed to have been part of the team’s three-way deal with the Knicks and Thunder involving Dion Waiters, Haynes reports. A scheduling conflict on Denver’s end broke what would have been one four-team transaction into separate trades, and the Thunder’s protected 2015 first-rounder that was destined for Denver wound up with the Cavs for the two-day period in between swaps, according to Haynes.
  • Stan Van Gundy acknowledged that the Pistons are looking for a third point guard to go with D.J. Augustin and Spencer Dinwiddie in the wake of the season-ending Achilles injury to Brandon Jennings, TSN’s Josh Lewenberg tweets. Detroit is looking either to swing a trade or sign a D-Leaguer, sources tell Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports. The D-League option would jibe with the team’s reported interest in Lorenzo Brown.
  • Van Gundy’s brother, ESPN commentator Jeff Van Gundy, accused Bulls management on Friday of trying to undermine coach Tom Thibodeau, and Bulls executive vice president of basketball operations John Paxson shot back Sunday, as K.C. Johnson of the Chicago Tribune writes. “Tom Thibodeau isn’t being undermined at all,” Paxson said. “What’s being undermined is the entire Bulls organization by [Jeff] Van Gundy, who has an agenda against our organization for whatever reason and has for years. I guess he thinks he’s trying to protect his friend, but he’s doing just the opposite. It’s pretty pathetic when you think about it, and truth be told he owes Jerry Reinsdorf an apology for his disparaging remarks.”
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Hoops Rumors Originals

January 25th, 2015 at 10:30pm CST by Zachary Links

A look at the original analysis generated by the Hoops Rumors staff this week…

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Hoops Links: Ainge, Okafor, Wiggins

January 25th, 2015 at 9:04pm CST by Zachary Links

On this date in 1986, Manute Bol of the Washington Bullets blocked 15 shots in a 111-103 win over Atlanta. His total is tied for second (Orlando’s Shaquille O’Neal had 15 rejections at New Jersey on November 20, 1993), behind the NBA record of 17 blocks by the Lakers’ Elmore Smith on October 28, 1973.  Bol would match that total about 13 months later when he swatted 15 shots against the Pacers in February of 1987.

Got a great basketball blog post that you want to see featured on Hoops Rumors? Send it to Zach at HoopsLinks@gmail.com. Here’s this week’s look around the basketball blogosphere…

Please send submissions for Hoops Links to Zach at HoopsLinks@gmail.com.

 

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Atlantic Notes: Knicks, Teletovic, Celtics

January 25th, 2015 at 8:37pm CST by Zachary Links

Despite what some may believe, the Knicks‘ goal was never to lose games this season, as Al Iannazzone of Newsday writes.  “I do believe that we put a lot of hard work in to kind of get to this point,” Knicks star Carmelo Anthony said. “To see the results of winning basketball games after the work we put in, after the chemistry we’re trying to build, the culture that we’re trying to build, just to see us put together a few wins right now is a great feeling.”  More from the Atlantic Division..

  • Odds are strong Nets three-point shooting specialist Mirza Teletovic will recover from his pulmonary embolism and play at some point next season in the NBA.  However, medical experts tell Marc Berman of the New York Post that there are no guarantees this doesn’t turn into a career-threatening episode.  Teletovic is a restricted free agent this summer.
  • All of the losing will have been worthwhile for the Knicks if they can land Jahlil Okafor, opines Fred Kerber of the New York Post.  A scout who spoke with Kerber loved his upside, saying teams “see the next LeBron or Kevin Durant down the road.”  Meanwhile, one NBA GM called him “the No. 1 pick without question.”
  • The Celtics‘ extreme makeover is nearing the final stretch, writes Jeremy Gottlieb of Boston.com.  Gottlieb writes that there’s still more work to be done, however, including trading Brandon Bass and figuring out what to do with Jared Sullinger.
  • With Celtics big man Kelly Olynyk out of action, Bass can now improve his trade value, writes Brian Robb of Boston.com.
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Week In Review: 1/19/15 – 1/25/15

January 25th, 2015 at 6:30pm CST by Zachary Links

A look back at the week that was..

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