2015 September | Hoops Rumors

Northwest Notes: Rubio, Donovan, Matthews

September 25th, 2015 at 12:59pm CST by Chuck Myron

Timberwolves GM Milt Newton poured cold water on persistent Ricky Rubio trade rumors, telling Jon Krawczynski of The Associated Press that the front office is “not talking to anybody about trading Ricky” and that the team expects the point guard to play an integral role.

“He’s one of the best facilitators in the NBA,” Newton said. “We’ve got a young team of guys that are athletic, that are going to get up and down. And we’re going to utilize those talents that they have. Who better than Ricky to be the one leading the charge, pushing the pace, pushing the ball and getting our guys easy opportunities and getting the ball where they can be their best? We’re looking to him to be that person.”

Bleacher Report’s Ric Bucher said earlier this month that the Wolves had lost faith in Rubio and had gauged the market for him, though Bucher added that he heard trade talks weren’t ongoing. Since then, Newton assumed control of the front office from the ailing Flip Saunders, who’s on a leave of absence as he recovers from cancer treatments. See more from the Northwest Division:

Thunder GM Sam Presti said this week that he didn’t have any influence in Billy Donovan‘s assistant coaching hires, moves that complement the first-year NBA head coach with veterans Monty Williams and Maurice Cheeks, as The Oklahoman’s Berry Tramel details. “Billy, great quality about him, he did not know Monty, and he did not know Maurice Cheeks,” Presti said. “He interviewed those guys. He really liked them. He felt like they could help. He was totally aligned with our vision for an organization. One of the things that make him able to do that, he naturally and intrinsically gravitates to those kinds of people. Those guys have been great together. We’re grateful those guys were willing to jump in. Both those guys have accomplished a lot.”
The Trail Blazers had no reason to pay a premium to retain Wesley Matthews once LaMarcus Aldridge left, given Matthews’ torn Achilles and the rebuilding phase that Portland is entering, contends Shaun Powell of NBA.com in his review of the team’s offseason. Jabari Young of Comcast SportsNet Northwest presented a different take on that in our latest installment of The Beat.
The max deal Matthews signed with the Mavs appears on the list of the five worst contracts for the future that Ben Rohrbach of Yahoo Sports compiled. Also on the list is Enes Kanter, who signed an offer sheet with the Blazers that the Thunder matched, and former Thunder point guard Reggie Jackson, now on a five-year, $80MM deal with the Pistons.

Lakers Rumors: Playoffs, Buss, Hibbert, Huertas

September 25th, 2015 at 12:00pm CST by Chuck Myron

The Lakers roster is strong enough for the team to have legitimate playoff aspirations, GM Mitch Kupchak contends, as USA Today’s Sam Amick writes. “The goal every year, of course, is to win the championship,” Kupchak said. “I’m really hopeful that we can be fun to watch, and certainly win a lot more games than we won last year. I don’t know why hopes of a playoff position shouldn’t be in the picture. That’s kind of where it stands.” Still, Kupchak was more guarded than he was a year ago, when he declared that the expectation for last season’s squad was to win a championship, observes Mike Bresnahan of the Los Angeles Times. The Lakers instead finished a franchise-worst 21-61. See more on the purple-and-gold:

Kupchak downplayed the idea that co-owner Jim Buss will resign from his job as the team’s executive VP of basketball operations if the Lakers don’t make the Western Conference Finals by 2017, a standard to which primary owner Jeanie Buss has said she’ll hold her brother. Mark Medina of the Los Angeles Daily News has the details. “If he felt that way and I agreed, we would’ve traded our picks for veteran players,” Kupchak said. “But we didn’t.” Jim Buss has seemingly tried to soften the parameters of his pledge that he’d step down if the Lakers aren’t contending by the end of the 2016/17 season.
The GM sees D’Angelo Russell, Jordan Clarkson and Julius Randle as starters for the future, and he also expressed high hopes for Roy Hibbert, who’s on an expiring contract, as Eric Pincus of the Los Angeles Times relays. “Hibbert is young enough to be included,” Kupchak said. “If Roy has a good to great year, and we can bring him back at 28 years old, I don’t know why he can’t be part of that core.”
Lakers players are impressed with what they’ve seen from Brazilian rookie Marcelo Huertas during voluntary team workouts, and the point guard has a legitimate chance to make the opening night roster, tweets Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo Sports. Huertas signed a contract with no guaranteed money, and while the Lakers have plenty of flexibility with only 12 fully guaranteed deals, the team is open to offloading one of those full guarantees if someone on a non-guaranteed pact proves a better player, Kupchak said, as Pincus notes in his piece.
Former Lakers coach Phil Jackson thinks it’s possible Kobe Bryant will play for a team other than the Lakers in 2016/17, as we detailed earlier.

Hawks To Sign Earl Barron For Camp

September 25th, 2015 at 10:37am CST by Chuck Myron

The Hawks will sign Earl Barron to a training camp deal to replace the retiring Jason Richardson, a source tells Marc J. Spears of Yahoo Sports (Twitter link). The nine-year veteran finished last season with the Suns. He’s the 20th player with whom the Hawks have either a signed contract or a verbal agreement, putting them at the preseason roster limit, though they’ll ostensibly release Richardson soon.

The 34-year-old Barron hadn’t drawn much interest in free agency this summer, as our rumors page for him indicates, but he’s shown a knack for making his way onto NBA rosters despite limited playing time. Last season’s 16 games with the Suns were the most Barron had played in an NBA season since 2010/11, when he totaled 21 appearances split among three teams. The center’s best season was 2007/08, when he appeared in 46 contests, and 15 of them as a member of the starting lineup, for the Heat.

Atlanta offers him a decent chance at a regular season roster spot, since the team only has 13 fully guaranteed contracts. Mike Muscala has half of his two-year veteran’s minimum salary guaranteed, ostensibly giving him the inside track on spot No. 14. The four players aside from Barron who are in the mix for the 15th spot, assuming the Hawks carry that many guys on opening night, have a combined one year of NBA experience, so Barron is by far the best option if coach/executive Mike Budenholzer prefers a veteran.

Do you think Barron could help the Hawks this season? Leave a comment to weigh in.

Atlantic Notes: Jackson, Kobe, Lopez, Jerebko

September 25th, 2015 at 10:24am CST by Chuck Myron

It sounds like Phil Jackson and Derek Fisher would like to have former Lakers colleague Kobe Bryant join the Knicks next season, as Tim Bontemps of the New York Post observes based on Jackson’s comment today (Twitter link). Jackson said that he doesn’t think Bryant will retire at season’s end but added that it might be his final year with the Lakers, notes Chris Herring of The Wall Street Journal (on Twitter). Ian Begley of ESPNNewYork.com wonders if Jackson was just making a subtle joke (Twitter link), as he is wont to do, and though Bryant’s contract with the Lakers expires this coming summer, Marc Stein of ESPN.com can’t see him playing for any NBA team other than the purple-and-gold (All Twitter links). If Bryant does suit up for a team aside from the Lakers, it would be an overseas team, Stein believes.

While we wait to see how the latest Kobe storyline develops, see more from the Atlantic Division:

Jackson said that he’ll be more involved with Fisher this year, at Fisher’s request, observes Ohm Youngmisuk of ESPNNewYork.com (Twitter link). It’ll mean more frequent observations from the Zen Master and perhaps more time that Jackson and Fisher will spend watching film together, as Herring relays (via Twitter).
Robin Lopez will fit better with the Knicks than Greg Monroe would have because of his superior defense, Jackson once more insisted, in comments that Bontemps and Herring relay (Twitter links).
The Nets have little reason not to try to win as much as they can this season, since they owe their 2016 first-round pick to the Celtics without protection, and coach Lionel Hollins confirmed Thursday that the team will remain focused on wins and losses this year, as Roderick Boone of Newsday details. Hollins said veterans would get the first chance at minutes. “Nobody’s said, ‘Wait until next summer,'” Hollins said. “We’re going out and trying to win. Whether we can or not remains to be seen. But it’s not my mindset. And the players’ mindset is not going out there [thinking], ‘We don’t have to try to win this year because it’s a gap year, and the expectations have changed because we broke this group up versus that group up.'”
Danny Ainge doesn’t foresee a major shakeup before the start of the season, meaning competition for minutes figures to be fierce among the Celtics, writes Chris Forsberg of ESPNBoston.com. Jonas Jerebko, who re-signed with the team this summer, welcomes the challenge, Forsberg also notes. “Competition just makes everyone better,” Jerebko said. “You are supposed to have competition on the team. We have a lot of guys that can play multiple positions so that’s just a plus for us. We can mix it up and have a great coach to mix it up with, so I’m looking forward to it.”

Celtics Officially Sign Four For Camp

September 25th, 2015 at 9:39am CST by Chuck Myron

The Celtics confirmed the signings of Coty Clarke, Malcolm Miller, Levi Randolph and Corey Walden in an announcement today. All four had already put pen to paper, according to reports, but Boston had yet to acknowledge the deals. Each player has a partial guarantee of $25K on a rookie minimum salary, except for Clarke, whose contract is non-guaranteed, as Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders reported. Walden, who signed a two-year deal, is the only one of the quartet with more than a one-year pact, according to Pincus.

Clarke, 23, went undrafted out of Arkansas in 2014 and spent this past season playing for Hapoel Kazrin in Israel. Sportando’s Emiliano Carchia first reported the 6’7″ combo forward would join Celtics camp.

Miller is familiar with Boston, having gone undrafted out of Holy Cross this year, and he played on the Celtics summer league team. Kevin O’Connor of SB Nation’s CelticsBlog broke the story that the 22-year-old small forward would sign with the Celtics.

Multiple overseas teams came calling for Randolph, but he instead spurned them for the Celtics, according to Carchia, with Matt Zenitz of AL.com reporting the Boston deal. Randolph, a shooting guard who went undrafted out of Alabama this year, will have his 23rd birthday next month.

Teams also passed on Walden in the draft this year after he came out of Eastern Kentucky. The 23-year-old is 6’2″ and undersized as a shooting guard, but the Celtics were nonetheless interested in bringing him to camp on a deal that A. Sherrod Blakely of CSNNE.com reported.

Boston already has 16 others on fully guaranteed contracts, one more than the 15-man regular season roster limit, so Clarke, Miller, Randolph and Walden face especially long odds to stick for opening night. It’s more likely they’ll end up with the Celtics D-League affiliate. Boston can retain the D-League rights to as many as four players it cuts.

Which Celtics camp signee has the most potential? Leave a comment to share your thoughts.

Southwest Notes: Parsons, Jordan, Leonard, Wright

September 25th, 2015 at 8:59am CST by Chuck Myron

Chandler Parsons was headed to Las Vegas for his girlfriend’s birthday and not to Houston to recruit DeAndre Jordan when he touched off the infamous Twitter iconography battle that served as a sideshow to Jordan’s free agency flip–flop, as Parsons said on The Ben & Skin show on KRLD-FM 105.3 in Dallas (transcription via the Dallas Morning News).

“At that point, it was already over and he was going back to the Clippers, so might as well make light of it,” Parsons said in part.

Rhetoric concerning Jordan’s turnabout has escalated again this past week, a sure sign that one of the offseason’s most significant storylines isn’t about to vanish into memory even as the season is about to get underway. See more on Jordan, the Mavs and the rest of the Southwest Division:

Jordan was unlikely to become the sort of offensive presence the Mavs sold him on becoming, opines Shaun Powell of NBA.com. Still, his change of heart casts the team into a transition phase, further reducing the chances that Dallas wins a title before Dirk Nowitzki retires, and the Mavs did well to retain cap flexibility for future seasons and maintain a strong position for trades, Powell believes.
Kawhi Leonard staggered to the finish line in the playoffs last season, and while that would have been acceptable in previous years, that’s no longer so for the 24-year-old, whom the Spurs are counting on now, writes Dan McCarney of the San Antonio Express-News. Leonard re-signed on a five-year max contract in July.
Free agent signee Brandan Wright, and not trade acquisition Matt Barnes, was the best offseason addition for the Grizzlies, argues Ben Dowsett of Basketball Insiders, citing Wright’s versatility, among other traits. Dowsett sees Wright as an upgrade over Kosta Koufos, who left in free agency for the Kings.

Hoops Rumors Community Shootaround 9/24/15

September 24th, 2015 at 11:00pm CST by Eddie Scarito

In a recent Q&A with Akis Yerocostas, editor of SB Nation’s Sactown Royalty, as part of our ongoing Top Bloggers series, he opined that the Kings were better off not having signed Wesley Matthews or Monta Ellis, whom they were reportedly targeting, and instead splitting their cap space between Rajon Rondo, Kosta Koufos and Marco Belinelli.

Yerocostas’ full response to our query was, “I’m actually a bit happier that the Kings missed out on those two bigger names. While I would have loved to have a player of Matthews’ caliber on the team, the fact that he’s coming off of a major injury makes me a little squeamish about offering him what would have been the second biggest contract on the team. Ellis would have been a smaller financial commitment, but I’ve never been a fan of his fit on a team that already features two heavy usage scorers in DeMarcus Cousins and Rudy Gay. The Kings were instead able to use that money to acquire some solid depth at key positions. Rajon Rondo might not be the Rondo of old anymore, but he’s still a top-tier playmaker and is only locked down for one year (meaning the Kings can cut ties pretty easily if things don’t work out). Koufos was probably one of the best bench bigs in the league last season and will bring a real defensive presence in the middle, and Belinelli brings the kind of shooting the Kings have been lacking for years. I don’t know if the Kings would have been able to add as much depth if they had signed Matthews or Ellis.”

This brings me to the question/topic of the day: Would the Kings have been better served to land either Wesley Matthews or Monta Ellis this summer, or was adding more depth across the board a better move for the team in the long run?

Take to the comments section below to share your thoughts and opinions on the matter. We look forward to what you have to say.

Southeast Notes: Richardson, Heat, Napier

September 24th, 2015 at 10:19pm CST by Eddie Scarito

It was concerns regarding his long-term health that led Jason Richardson to call it a career and retire, Marc J. Spears of Yahoo Sports writes. “I didn’t want to limp the rest of my life,” Richardson told Spears. “I still have my whole life in front of me, God willing. I sat alone at a park in Atlanta thinking and no one said anything to me because they didn’t recognize me since I just got there. I talked to my wife for an hour on the phone and then I sat for five hours thinking while listening to music before deciding that retiring was the right thing to do.” The 34-year-old had signed a one-year, non-guaranteed deal with the Hawks for the league minimum back in August. “I worked hard and had love and passion for the game,” Richardson added. “But I didn’t want to be that guy who was just there collecting a paycheck.”

Here’s more out of the Southeast Division:

Heat coach Erik Spoelstra is excited about the team’s offseason additions of Amar’e Stoudemire and Gerald Green, Barry Jackson of The Miami Herald relays. “If you had told me a year ago we would have an opportunity to sign both those players, I would have said that’s not realistic,” Spoelstra said. “We recruited Amar’e in 2010 and were fans of his game back then. His game has evolved and he has found a niche and a role the last couple of years we definitely can take advantage of. Gerald Green is an explosive player. Those type of game changing players are tough to find in this league. He has been very committed to get to know us and also be in a great shape. To be part of a championship culture and a team with high expectations. I told him you put on this jersey, there are different expectations. He loves the challenge of that.”
Point guard Shabazz Napier, whom the Magic acquired from Miami back in July, is expected to be the team’s third point guard behind Elfrid Payton and C.J. Watson, but the hope is that he can be developed into a future asset, Brian Schmitz of The Orlando Sentinel writes.
The Magic are pleased with the progress they have seen from Payton, who is entering his second season in the league, Josh Robbins of The Orlando Sentinel relays. When asked about the young guard’s outside shooting, coach Scott Skiles said, “It’s better. He’s put in a lot of time. He’s dedicated himself to it. Obviously, it doesn’t stop just because the season starts. Elfrid’s a talented guy. He’s still a young player. It’s a tough position to learn. Generally, guys aren’t totally polished at that in their second year in the NBA. But as I said before, ‘progress, not perfection.’ We just want him to continue to make progress, and we’re really high on him.“

Western Notes: Rivers, Grizzlies, Rush

September 24th, 2015 at 9:00pm CST by Eddie Scarito

Clippers coach/executive Doc Rivers told Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo Sports that almost losing DeAndre Jordan to the Mavericks made him realize how fragile a franchise’s window of contention can be, and it pushed him to improve the team as a whole this summer. “Losing him would’ve always gnawed at me,” Rivers said. “But it wouldn’t have stopped me. I would’ve said, [expletive] that, we’re going to figure out a way to get this right.’ But it also triggered something else for me. It might have been my front-office wake-up call. I was not a pleasant guy to me, or my staff, after I thought we lost him – and even after we got him back. We had a lot of ‘come-to-Jesus’ meetings.”

“And we rolled up our sleeves, and we got better,” Rivers continued. “Listen, maybe it’s because when we got here, the team was pretty good and we didn’t think we had to get that much better. I don’t know why. At end of the day, even the way D.J. did it, it turned out to be a blessing for our franchise. For me, it made me understand fully. We’ve got to do this [expletive] right, and build this team. It’s our responsibility.”

Here’s more from out West:

It remains to be seen if the Grizzlies can manufacture enough offense from the outside to take the next step toward a title, and while the team has improved in this area over the summer, Memphis may be lucky just to escape the first round of the playoffs, Tim Bontemps of New York Post (Facebook link) opines in his season preview.
After a 2014/15 campaign that saw him shoot an abysmal 11.1% from beyond the arc, Brandon Rush hopes to emerge as a viable sixth man candidate for the Warriors this season, Monte Poole of CSNBayArea.com writes. “It was a bad year for me, an awful year,” Rush told Poole. “It was one of the worst years I’ve ever had, individually. I’ve shot in the mid-40s [from three-point range] for most of my career. To be able to go out there last year and not be able to make a shot, not be able to play . . . it made me hungry to get into the gym and go hard this summer.”

Poll: 2015/16 Team Power Rankings (No. 25)

September 24th, 2015 at 7:36pm CST by Eddie Scarito

The start of NBA training camps is less than a week away, and teams are in the process of finalizing their preseason rosters. Every new season brings with it the hope for each franchise that it will conclude with the hoisting of the Larry O’Brien Championship Trophy. But for the more jaded fans — or practical, depending on your outlook — not every team has a realistic shot at making the playoffs, much less at being the last team standing when all is said and done and the playoffs have concluded.

We at Hoops Rumors want to know what you, the reader, think about each team’s chances this coming campaign. To help facilitate that, we’ll be posting a series of polls asking you to vote on where in the standings each franchise is likely to end the season. So please cast your vote below for the franchise you expect to end the season with the fifth worst overall record, or at No. 25 overall. But don’t end your involvement with the simple click of a button. Take to the comments section below to share your thoughts and opinions on why you voted the way that you did. We look forward to what you have to say.

Previous Selections:

No. 30: 76ers
No. 29: Knicks
No. 28: Nuggets
No. 27: Lakers
No. 26: Nets

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