2016 March | Hoops Rumors

Prospect Profile: Kris Dunn (Part Two)

March 28th, 2016 at 8:46pm CST by Dana Gauruder

PROJECTED DRAFT RANGE: Kris Dunn is firmly in the top 10 in the major rankings and could even be one of the first five names called on draft night. Jonathan Givony of DraftExpress currently pegs Dunn at No. 5, a notch ahead of the other highly rated point guard in the draft, Kentucky freshman Jamal Murray. ESPN.com’s Chad Ford isn’t quite as optimistic, ranking Dunn at No. 7, three slots below Murray on his Big Board.

RISE/FALL: Dunn was so productive in his last two college seasons, and that coupled with the fact that quality floor leaders are such valuable commodities makes it tough to see him dropping out of the top 10. He brings size, athleticism, wingspan, court vision and quickness to the table and his weaknesses are things he can work on with professional coaching. His 8-for-10 performance from beyond the arc during this year’s NCAA Tournament alleviated some concerns about his jumper, though front office executives and scouts will keep close tabs on how he looks from the NBA 3-point line. He’ll need to show a greater willingness to play through contact and finish his drives. He’ll also have to display an improved handle and do a better job of protecting the ball when tested by other point guards in predraft workouts.

FIT: Several lottery teams could be in the market for a point guard. Start with the Sixers, who need help everywhere and were disappointed when the Lakers took D’Angelo Russell ahead of them during last June’s draft. The Kings will need one if free agent Rajon Rondo bolts. A Dunn-Devin Booker backcourt pairing could be a juicy prospect for the Suns, while the Timberwolves could deal Ricky Rubio if they feel Dunn is a better long-term answer. The Bucks like what they’ve seen with their Giannis Antetokounmpo experiment at the point but they could go with a more conventional look and have Dunn share ballhandling responsibilities with the 6’11” Antetokounmpo. It’s also fair to wonder if the Magic have soured on Elfrid Payton, given that coach Scott Skiles has used Brandon Jennings as a starter in recent games. There are plenty of other teams who may covet Dunn — the Knicks, Nets and Rockets would love to upgrade that spot — but they would have to find a way to get into that area of the lottery to make it happen.

FINAL TAKE: Dunn has been a special player in college and his talents should translate very well to the pros. As a 22-year-old, he’ll be more mature than most point guard prodigies (Russell, Emmanuel Mudiay, Payton, etc.) in recent drafts and consequently more prepared to take over the most demanding position on the floor. Dunn made progress by staying in school an extra season, as he told Jeff Goodman of ESPN.com when he declared for the draft. “I felt like I improved my outside shot, even though it still needs work, cut down on my turnovers and became a better leader,” he said. Expect Dunn to start immediately for the team that drafts him.

(For Part One of Kris Dunn’s prospect profile, click here.)

Prospect Profile: Kris Dunn (Part One)

March 28th, 2016 at 7:37pm CST by Dana Gauruder

Geoff Burke / USA Today Sports Images

OVERVIEW: Kris Dunn put Providence back on the national map over the past two seasons by emerging as one of the nation’s top point guards. His college career got off to a slow start, as he endured two shoulder surgeries in a span of 18 months. Once he was finally healthy during his redshirt sophomore season, he quickly established himself as a premier floor leader. He averaged 15.6 points, 5.5 rebounds and a 7.5 assists in his breakout year and followed that up with a 16.4/5.3/6.2 slash line in his junior year. The 6’4” Dunn finished his college career with a 29-point outburst against North Carolina in the second round of the NCAA Tournament.

STRENGTHS: In a league that increasingly values quickness and ability to get to the rim, Dunn seems like a prototypical point guard. He should be an outstanding pick-and-roll initiator with his ability to blow past defenders as well as hit outside shots and create opportunities for himself and others. He should have a size and strength advantage over many of his peers that will make him difficult to guard in one-on-one matchups. As Jonathan Givony of DraftExpress points out, he has the ability to operate at different speeds, making him dangerous in half-court sets as well as in transition. He doesn’t shoot a lot of 3-pointers, but he makes an acceptable percentage, hitting at a 37.2% clip. Dunn can also be a major factor defensively. He has excellent length with a 6’8” wingspan and uses it to his advantage. The two-time Big East Player of the Year led the conference in steals each of the past two seasons. His quickness allows him to stay in front of his man, while his size gives him the ability to seamlessly switch defensive assignments between point and shooting guards.

WEAKNESSES: The two biggest knocks on Dunn, according to ESPN Insider Chad Ford, are his tendency to take questionable shots and his turnover rate. Dunn’s field-goal percentage fell from 47.4% as a sophomore to 44.8% this season, despite his improvement from long range. Givony notes that Dunn shows average touch around the rim when forced to finish over length and tends to avoid contact at all costs, perhaps because of his prior shoulder problems. That could become an even bigger issue at the NBA level, where he’ll encounter better closeouts and shot blockers. Dunn can also get careless with the ball. He improved somewhat over the past year, bringing his turnovers down from a whopping 4.2 per game to 3.5. That’s still a high number, as only three NBA point guards are currently averaging more than 3.5 per game and that same trio — Rajon Rondo, John Wall and Russell Westbrook — are also the only players averaging double-digit assists. As Givony describes it, Dunn can make some eye-catching moves with the ball, but he can also get very sloppy with his handle.

(For Part Two of Kris Dunn’s prospect profile, click here.)

And-Ones: Hinrich, Rubio, Leuer, Draft

March 28th, 2016 at 4:59pm CST by Chuck Myron

Kirk Hinrich says he’s enjoying his time with the Hawks, but the trade that sent him to Atlanta from the Bulls last month took him from his family, and they’ll be a consideration as the 35-year-old decides whether to retire this summer, observes K.C. Johnson of the Chicago Tribune. Hinrich’s contract expires at season’s end. “I would love to keep playing if the situation was ideal,” Hinrich said. “At this point, I have to think about my family as well.” The 13th-year veteran’s chances of an extended stay in Atlanta don’t appear too strong, as he’s a third-stringer and has appeared in only seven games since the February 18th trade.

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Ricky Rubio acknowledged that the Timberwolves had trade talks about him last month, but he’s confident the team isn’t going to ship him out, as he said in an appearance on the “Tot Gira” show on Catalunya Radio in Spain (transcription via Gigantes del Basket; translation via HoopsHype). Rubio, under contract through the 2018/19 season, was linked in trade deadline rumors to the Bucks and, less prominently, the Knicks.
Jon Leuer‘s playing time on the Suns this season has been wildly inconsistent, but he’s put up the best numbers of his career, and interim coach Earl Watson is pushing the soon-to-be free agent to fulfill the potential he sees in him, as Paul Coro of the Arizona Republic details. “I’m tough on Jon because I think the world of him.” Watson said. “His skill is unique. Our biggest challenge with Jon, and it was direct, was we need to be tougher, more aggressive in the paint, more aggressive rebounding. Go out in the post and just lose yourself to changing the game defensively.
South Florida freshman point guard Jahmal McMurray will test the draft waters, the school announced, indicating that he won’t immediately hire an agent. Thus, he’ll retain his college eligibility in case he decides to withdraw before the May 25th deadline to do so. McMurray is a long-shot prospect, falling outside the rankings that both Chad Ford of ESPN.com and Jonathan Givony of DraftExpress compile.

Atlantic Notes: Colangelo, Rambis, Galloway, Clarke

March 28th, 2016 at 3:59pm CST by Chuck Myron

Sixers chairman of basketball operations Jerry Colangelo has an in with plenty of NBA stars as managing director of USA Basketball, but it’s off-base to suggest marquee players will flock to the Sixers anytime soon because of that, contends Derek Bodner of Philadelphia magazine. The Sixers are too far from contention to become the rare NBA team capable of convincing top-flight free agents to take discounts to sign with them, Bodner argues, suggesting the onus instead is on Colangelo and the rest of the Philly front office to make wise choices without any inherent advantage. The year ahead is critical for Colangelo and the Sixers, as Liberty Ballers managing editor Jake Pavorsky detailed Friday in the latest edition of our Top Bloggers series.

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Kristaps Porzingis has broken out of his slump, as Fred Kerber of the New York Post examines, and the numbers show he’s putting up essentially the same sort of production under Knicks interim coach Kurt Rambis as he did under the fired Derek Fisher, notes Ian Begley of ESPNNewYork.com. That dismisses one of the arguments against the team removing the interim tag from Rambis’ title, Begley suggests.
The Knicks have reportedly given up on the idea of Langston Galloway as a point guard, but Rambis insists the team is still high on the soon-to-be free agent, Newsday’s Al Iannazzone relays. New York can make him a restricted free agent with a qualifying offer of about $1.18MM. “We like his defense, we like his ability to organize and execute our offense,” Rambis said. “We just continue to challenge him to broaden his game . . . He’s just not playing at his best right now.”
A versatile forward is what the Celtics probably want if they’re to fill their roster vacancy, coach Brad Stevens said today, according to Adam Himmelsbach of The Boston Globe (Twitter link). Coty Clarke, whom the team has elected not to re-sign following the expiration of his second 10-day contract, would ostensibly fit that bill, but Boston prefers the flexibility of an open roster spot over another deal for him, wary of the possibility that an injury will create a need at another position, Himmelsbach wrote this weekend. Any new deal for Clarke would have to cover the rest of the season and the playoffs.

DeAndre’ Bembry Enters Draft

March 28th, 2016 at 2:51pm CST by Chuck Myron

St. Joseph’s junior small forward DeAndre’ Bembry has declared for the draft and hired an agent, as he said in a statement to Dick Jerardi of the Philadelphia Daily News. It’s unclear which representative the 21-year-old has chosen, but signing with any agent disqualifies him from returning to college ball. Bembry is a strong NBA prospect, coming in 23rd in Chad Ford’s ESPN Insider rankings and 35th with Jonathan Givony of DraftExpress.

Bembry had a decorated career at St. Joseph’s, as Jerardi details, coming away with Atlantic 10 Player of the Year honors this season. He scored a season-high 30 points in the A-10 championship game and had 16 points and 12 rebounds in a five-point loss to West Region top seed Oregon in the second round of the NCAA Tournament.

Ford praises his defense and passing in addition to his scoring, but his outside shooting raises a red flag. He nailed just 26.6% of his 3-point looks this season, a disconcerting black mark in a year in which he averaged 17.4 points, 7.8 rebounds and 4.5 assists per game. The 6’6″ Bembry also shot just 65.7% from the free-throw line. He nonetheless improved his stock markedly while at St. Joe’s, as he wasn’t among the top 100 in the Recruiting Services Consensus Index coming out of high school in 2013.

Suns Want To Sign Bogdan Bogdanovic This Summer

March 28th, 2016 at 2:13pm CST by Chuck Myron

The Suns are serious about signing draft-and-stash prospect Bogdan Bogdanovic for next season, reports international journalist David Pick (Twitter link). This summer will be the last that NBA’s rookie scale would apply to the shooting guard whom the Suns picked 27th overall in 2014. Delaying a signing until the summer of 2017 or later would give the sides more latitude to work out mutually acceptable terms, but it could be more costly for Phoenix, so it’s no surprise to see the team intent on making a deal happen this year.

The 23-year-old native of Serbia has averaged 10.7 points in 27.3 minutes per game for Turkey’s Fenerbahce Ulker in Euroleague action this season, with 14.8 points in 26.3 minutes per contest in domestic league play. Most encouragingly, he’s hit 45.2% of his 3-point attempts for Fenerbahce overall.

Phoenix already has the sharpshooting Devin Booker in its backcourt along with Eric Bledsoe and Brandon Knight, but the Suns are just 20-53, in part because of injuries, and they could use an injection of talent in just about any form. The Suns are poised to enter the draft lottery in the third position, as our reverse standings show, giving them a 15.6% shot at the No. 1 pick.

A rookie scale contract for Bogdanovic would pay $1,196,040 next season if the Suns signed him for the standard 120% of scale. However, the buyout in his pact with Fenerbahce is reportedly 1 million euros, the equivalent of about $1.12MM. Phoenix can pay only $650K without the buyout affecting his NBA contract, so the sides will have to get creative. The Suns can structure their deal with Bogdanovic so he gets only $797,360, equal to 80% of scale, and add as much as that same amount on top of the $650K they’re otherwise permitted to pay toward the buyout.

Bogdanovic is not to be confused with Bojan Bogdanovic of the Nets, a 26-year-old from Herzegovina who’s in his second NBA season.

Wade Baldwin To Enter Draft

March 28th, 2016 at 12:51pm CST by Chuck Myron

First-round prospect Wade Baldwin will enter this year’s draft and hire an agent, sources told Jon Rothstein of CBSSports.com (Twitter link). The sophomore point guard from Vanderbilt will be ineligible to return to college ball once he signs with an agent, though it’s not surprising that he would commit to this year’s field. Baldwin is the 16th-best prospect on Jonathan Givony’s DraftExpress list and No. 22 with Chad Ford of ESPN.com.

Ford suggests Baldwin could also play two-guard in the NBA, but he’s only 6’3″. He defends well, Ford adds, and that will help offset somewhat underwhelming offensive numbers. He notched 14.1 points, 5.2 assists and 2.8 turnovers this past season for a talented Vanderbilt team that didn’t quite live up to expectations. The Commodores won just 19 games and lost in an NCAA First Four play-in game to Wichita State on a night when Baldwin scored only nine points.

Still, Baldwin had his moments, including a 19-point, nine-assist, six-rebound game against Mississippi on February 6th. He’s a strong 3-point shooter, nailing 40.6% of his looks from behind the arc this season and 42.2% for his college career. He turns 20 on Tuesday, and his two years at Vanderbilt have been beneficial for his stock, since he wasn’t in the Recruiting Services Consensus Index top 100 coming out of high school.

Cheick Diallo To Test Draft Waters

March 28th, 2016 at 12:44pm CST by Chuck Myron

Kansas freshman forward/center Cheick Diallo will declare for this year’s NBA draft but hold off on hiring an agent, a source told Jon Rothstein of CBSSports.com (Twitter link). He’ll be able to withdraw until May 25th as long as he doesn’t have an agent. The 6’9″ Diallo was a lottery prospect at the beginning of the season but is an early second-round candidate at this point, coming in 36th in Chad Ford’s ESPN Insider rankings and 39th with Jonathan Givony of DraftExpress. Still, some NBA executives believe he has a shot to go in the first-round, according to Shams Charania of The Vertical.

Diallo didn’t play until December thanks to an eligibility battle with the NCAA, and his minutes were sparing once he did suit up. He posted 3.0 points and 2.5 rebounds in just 7.5 minutes per game across 27 appearances, never topping the 13 points he scored in his debut against Loyola of Maryland. The 19-year-old played in only one of the Jayhawks’ four NCAA Tournament games, though he was productive in the seven minutes he saw against Austin Peay in the first round, scoring nine points on 4 of 5 shooting.

The native of Mali intrigues with his length, athleticism, defense and rebounding, but his offensive game needs work, as Ford writes in his profile. NBA teams will no doubt relish the chance to work up close with him during predraft workouts and the combine, given the lack of exposure he got at Kansas. Diallo is not entirely an unknown, however. He was the MVP of the McDonald’s All-American Game last year and was sixth in the Recruiting Services Consensus Index. He attended high school in New York.

Timeline: Injuries Force Grizzlies Roster Turmoil

March 28th, 2016 at 12:20pm CST by Chuck Myron

March Madness usually applies to college basketball, but it’s also fitting for the Grizzlies this year. Injuries have prompted a whirlwind of changes, and the number of players on the team has fluctuated from 14 to a whopping 18, three above the normal regular season limit. Perhaps most eye-catching among the team’s many moves was the March 10th decision to cut ties with Mario Chalmers, who had torn his Achilles tendon the night before. Chalmers was on an expiring contract and obviously isn’t going to play again this season, so the only net effect is that Memphis forfeited its Bird rights with the point guard. Still, the Chalmers release speaks to the depth of the problems the Grizzlies have faced as they’ve scrambled to tread water without Marc Gasol, Mike Conley and many others.

The Grizzlies are still strong bets for the playoffs because of the work they did before the injuries hit. Memphis has a six-game lead for a playoff spot with nine games to play, and the team is up four games in the loss column on the Trail Blazers for fifth place in the Western Conference. The Grizzlies have seen 27 different players appear in a game for them this season, tying the record set by the 1996/97 Mavericks, as Marc Stein of ESPN.com points out (Twitter links). Memphis is also poised to become the first playoff team in the history of NBA to have fielded more than two dozen players.

Gasol, Conley, Matt Barnes, Zach Randolph, Tony Allen, Vince Carter, Lance Stephenson, P.J. Hairston, Brandan Wright, Chris Andersen and Jordan Adams have all missed games for the Grizzlies in March, forcing GM Chris Wallace and Dave Joerger to work overtime. Here’s a timeline of the team’s roster moves:

March 2nd — Waived James Ennis. Signed Ryan Hollins to a minimum-salary contract for the rest of the season. Roster at 15.
March 10th — Waived Mario Chalmers. Roster at 14.
March 11th — Signed Briante Weber to a 10-day contract. Roster at 15. (Conflicting information raised debate about whether the team signed Weber on March 9th or March 11th, but he played in the team’s game on March 19th, which would have been impossible if he had signed March 9th, since he didn’t sign a second 10-day contract. RealGM, which initially showed the transaction happening on March 9th, now shows it as having taken place on March 11th.
March 12th — Signed Ray McCallum to a 10-day contract. Signed Alex Stepheson to a 10-day contract. Both moves came via the hardship provision, which allows the team to exceed the 15-man roster limit. Roster at 17.
March 16th — Signed Xavier Munford to a 10-day contract via hardship. Roster at 18.
March 20th — Last day for Weber’s 10-day contract. Roster at 17 at day’s end.
March 21st — Signed Jordan Farmar to a 10-day contract via hardship. Last day on the 10-day contracts for McCallum and Stepheson. Roster at 16 at day’s end.
March 22nd — Signed McCallum to a second 10-day contract via hardship. Roster at 17.
March 25th — Last day for Munford’s 10-day contract. Roster at 16 at day’s end.
March 27th — Signed Munford to a second 10-day contract via hardship. Roster at 17.

Southwest Notes: Lee, Dwight, Dirk, Davis

March 28th, 2016 at 10:51am CST by Chuck Myron

David Lee admits he thought about what it would be like to return to the Warriors, but NBA rules prevent him from going back to Golden State this season, and he’s content with the Mavericks, as Marcus Thompson II of the Bay Area News Group details. Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders recently cleared up some confusion regarding Lee’s contract with Dallas, which runs only until season’s end instead of covering next season with non-guaranteed salary. “In my opinion, I’m playing as good a ball as I’ve played in a number of years,” Lee said. “After really getting back into shape, I feel great out there. I think I have three, four years left, one more deal, then we’ll see from there.” Lee could return to the Warriors this summer if he wants to and Golden State is willing, though the same is true of Lee and the Mavs. See more from around the Southwest Division:

No teams see Dwight Howard as a plan A for free agency this summer, according to Bleacher Report’s Ric Bucher (video link). Howard would prefer to re-sign with the Rockets, but he finds the prospect of a return to the Magic intriguing, as Bucher reported last week.
Dirk Nowitzki reiterated that the idea of playing 20 seasons in the NBA appeals to him in an appearance Sunday on ESPN Radio’s “NBA Insiders” show, echoing comments he made in December, as Marc Stein of ESPN.com relays. The 37-year-old who’s in his 18th season in the league addressed his future as it relates to the Mavericks last week.
The premature end of Anthony Davis‘ season and his lack of progress this year serve as reminders that it’s still uncertain whether he’ll fulfill his potential as a superstar, argues Moke Hamilton of Basketball Insiders. A five-year extension with the Pelicans will kick in for Davis next year, so questions about Davis inexorably become questions about New Orleans. Still, Davis said he’s played with a torn labrum in his shoulder for the past three seasons, so it’s fair to wonder if he’ll improve markedly when fully healthy.

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