And-Ones: PEDs, Cavs, Hawks, D-League, Cuban

Appearing in London this week, NBA commissioner Adam Silver was asked to respond to comments former NBA head coach George Karl made in his book about the use of performance-enhancing drugs in the NBA. Although Karl put forth no proof that PED use is common in the NBA, he wrote that “it’s obvious some of our players are doping.” Silver acknowledged that the league will treat any allegations seriously, but responded to Karl’s comments with some skepticism (link via USA Today).

“I’ll just say our testing is state of the art,” Silver said. “I have no reason to believe whatsoever that we have an issue, either as the result of testing or as the result of other information that comes to the league office. … I’d say that in most sports where there are issues, even when players do not test positive, usually there is some chatter that there is something going on. Other than what George Karl wrote in his book, there is no chatter whatsoever in the league.”

Here are a few more odds and ends from around the NBA:

• The Cavaliers are sending $750K in cash to the Hawks as part of the Kyle Korver trade, tweets Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders. As our Salary Cap Snapshot for the Cavs shows, the team has now sent out cash in three separate trades during the 2016/17 league year. Cleveland is eligible to send out another $750K.
• The full details of the two-way NBA/D-League contracts introduced by the new Collective Bargaining Agreement aren’t yet known. However, Adam Johnson of D-League Digest (Twitter link) hears from a source that those two-way deals are expected to worth up to approximately $275K in 2017/18.
• The National Basketball Referees Association is “aggressively asserting” that the NBA is turning a blind eye on misconduct by Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, reports Adrian Wojnarowski of The Vertical. According to the referees’ union, the league has cowed to Cuban, allowing him to pursue a competitive advantage for his club “via threats and intimidation” and to wield “inappropriate influence” over referee employment decisions. Wojnarowski passes along several comments from the NBRA and from Cuban himself, and also provides several memos and other correspondence between the league and its referees’ union.