Southwest Notes: Green, Barea, Ellis, Demps

Danny Green hopes to re-sign with the Spurs this summer, though he’s bitter about the lost opportunity to win another championship this year with 13 of the 15 players left over from last season’s title-winning squad, as he tells Mike Monroe of the San Antonio Express-News.

“It hasn’t sunk in yet, but this is a special group,” Green said. “That’s why it sucks so bad, especially for Timmy [Duncan] and Manu [Ginobili]. We had an opportunity to do something special for them. All I can do is hope and pray for another group like that in the future, but I have a feeling some of those guys will be back. [GM] R.C. [Buford] and [coach/president Gregg Popovich] do a great job of bringing in new guys.”

Here’s more from the two other Southwest Division teams that failed to make it out of the first round:

• J.J. Barea has said he’d like to re-sign with the Mavs and that it’ll be easier for the team to keep him than when he left for a four-year, $18MM deal in 2011, but he’s looking for about $3MM a year for the next two or three years, a source told Tim MacMahon of ESPNDallas.com. That would exceed the amount the Mavs can spend using his Non-Bird rights and force the team to dip into cap space or another exception to retain him.

Earlier updates:

• The Mavericks carried the second-fewest number players from 2013/14 into the start of 2014/15, and December’s Rajon Rondo trade meant even more turnover. Plenty of changes are likely on their way again this year, as I examined, but Devin Harris believes the upheaval from the past 12 months presented a challenge for this season’s Mavs, notes Earl K. Sneed of Mavs.com. “It was a trying year,” Harris said. “With all the new guys we had coming into the season and making an in-season trade while trying to get guys adjusted, it was just kind of an uphill battle all year long. We were trying to get everybody to play to their strengths, and it was tough.”
• Mavs coach Rick Carlisle credited Monta Ellis for “two terrific years” in Dallas and Dirk Nowitzki made it clear he’d like the shooting guard to return as Ellis ponders an $8.72MM player option that Sneed, writing in the same piece, suggests he’s likely to decline.
• Pelicans GM Dell Demps deserves a passing grade for his midseason moves this year, but he’s made his share of miscues in the past, including the decisions that leave New Orleans once more bereft of a first-round draft pick this year, opines Jimmy Smith of The Times-Picayune.