2018 February | Hoops Rumors

Nerlens Noel Set To Return On Wednesday

February 27th, 2018 at 1:26pm CST by Luke Adams

Mavericks big man Nerlens Noel, who has been sidelined since November with a hand injury, is on track to return to the court on Wednesday, head coach Rick Carlisle told reporters today (video link via Eddie Sefko of The Dallas Morning News). According to Carlisle, Noel will be available for Dallas’ game tomorrow against Oklahoma City, barring a last-minute setback.

The final month and a half of the 2017/18 season could be crucial for Noel, who will be eligible for unrestricted free agency this summer. Having bet on himself last summer by signing his one-year qualifying offer after turning down a lucrative multiyear deal, the former sixth overall pick hasn’t seen that bet pay off so far, as it’s been a disappointing year in Dallas.

Even before undergoing surgery to repair a torn ligament in his thumb, Noel was averaging a career-low 12.5 minutes per contest in 18 games for the Mavs. In limited action, the 23-year-old recorded 4.0 PPG, 4.1 RPG, and a .528 FG%.

With the Mavs out of playoff contention, Noel has said that he hopes to see a larger role when he returns to action. A strong showing down the stretch could help the young center rebuild his value before he reaches the open market in July.

Trevor Booker Acknowledges Buyout Possibility

February 27th, 2018 at 12:25pm CST by Luke Adams

Ersan Ilyasova won’t clear waivers until Wednesday, but Trevor Booker is already bracing for the possibility that the Sixers’ agreement with Ilyasova could bring his time in Philadelphia to an end. Booker said today that he has “heard from a couple different people” that he could be bought out, writes Keith Pompey of The Philadelphia Inquirer.

“I’ve talked to my agent,” Booker said. “It’s a possibility. But I’m not worried about anything. … At the end of the day, everything is going to work out the best for me.”

While Pompey refers to the possibility of a buyout, Booker is more likely to be released outright by the Sixers, who don’t have much leverage to ask for money back. Having already reached a tentative agreement with Ilyasova, who was bought out by the Hawks on Monday, the Sixers have a full 15-man roster and will need to waive a player to make room for their new power forward.

Booker, acquired earlier this season in a trade that sent a second-round pick and Jahlil Okafor to the Nets, has been solid since arriving in Philadelphia. In 33 games (15.0 MPG), the veteran has averaged 4.7 PPG and 3.7 RPG with a career-high .560 FG%. However, as Derek Bodner of The Athletic detailed on Monday, Booker’s contract and his positional overlap with Ilyasova make him the player most likely to be waived, if only by the process of elimination.

If the Sixers cut Booker, he shouldn’t have trouble finding a new NBA home, tweets Alex Kennedy of HoopsHype. The 30-year-old forward agreed with that assessment, as Pompey writes. “If I do get waived or bought out, whatever it is, I have a lot of teams interested in me,” Booker said on Tuesday. If he’s released on Wednesday or Thursday, Booker would retain his eligibility for the playoffs.

Jarrett Jack To Consider Requesting Release?

February 27th, 2018 at 12:02pm CST by Luke Adams

Since the All-Star break, Knicks point guard Jarrett Jack has seen his role effectively eliminated. Eligible for unrestricted free agency at season’s end, Jack probably isn’t part of New York’s future plans, so the team’s youth movement may prompt him to consider asking to be released, writes Stefan Bondy of The New York Daily News.

“I’ve never done it before to jump from one team in the middle of the season to a playoff squad. I know that’s what other guys have done. To be honest, I don’t really know,” Jack said. “Maybe I do need to sit down and look at a list of what my best possible options are. But as of today I’m with the Knicks and want to help in any capacity I can.“

Jack, who started 56 of the Knicks’ first 59 games at point guard, held his own during that stretch, averaging 7.6 PPG, 5.8 APG, and 3.1 RPG in 25.9 minutes per contest. However, the lottery-bound Knicks want to get Emmanuel Mudiay, Frank Ntilikina, and Trey Burke more playing time down the stretch, leaving no minutes for the veteran — Jack hasn’t played at all since the All-Star break, though he doesn’t seem upset with the team about its decision.

“Obviously I’d like to be on the court, but I think they’re allowing some of these younger guys to get some opportunities to show where they’re at amongst the other guys in this league and it’s coach’s decision,” Jack said. “We were in Orlando (for a game last week) and he said we’ll move in that direction. It’s not for me to have an opinion on it.”

While Jack is saying the right things, his comment about sitting down and considering his options suggests that he wouldn’t necessarily be opposed to being cut by the Knicks within the next three days. As long as he’s waived on or before March 1, he would retain his postseason eligibility for a new team, which is why I identified him on Monday as a candidate to be cut this week.

Jack sounds unlikely to force his way onto a new team, or to cause problems if he remains a Knick through Thursday, but if his agent lines up another opportunity for him, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see the 34-year-old released in the coming days.

Community Shootaround: Draft Lottery, Tanking

February 27th, 2018 at 11:16am CST by Luke Adams

NBA scouts expect the 2018 draft class to feature about five to seven elite prospects, and ’18 will also be the last year that the NBA’s current lottery format will be in effect. As a result, we could be subjected to one of the most widespread late-season tanking efforts in league history, multiple league executives tell Tim MacMahon and Brian Windhorst of ESPN.

While most of the teams vying for lottery positioning at the bottom of the NBA standings won’t publicly acknowledge they’d prefer to lose, prioritizing the development of young players is one obvious way to tank in a politically correct manner. Resting veterans and being extra-cautious with minor injuries are other passive tanking strategies.

According to MacMahon and Windhorst, executives around the NBA also believe some teams are engaging in a more “active” form of tanking, which involves “reverse analytics.” Rather than relying on data to determine optimal lineups for winning games, teams may be doing just the opposite, providing coaches with lineups that would perform poorly in certain matchups.

In any form, tanking is a bad look for the NBA, and the fact that so many teams have begun doing so in earnest this early in the 2017/18 season is worrisome.

It’s possible that the minor tweaks the league made to the lottery system will help matters — starting in 2019, the top four spots in the draft will be up for grabs in the lottery, rather than just the top three, and the very worst teams will have a reduced chance of landing one of those top picks.

For instance, under the current format, the worst club in the NBA has a 25% chance to land the No. 1 pick and a 64% chance to get a top-three pick. That team also won’t fall further than No. 4. In the new system, that same team would have a 14% chance at No. 1, a 40% chance at a top-three pick, and could fall all the way to No. 5.

The new system may discourage tanking to some extent, but Moke Hamilton of Basketball Insiders believes that modest lottery reform of that nature isn’t enough — the league needs to overhaul the lottery system entirely, Hamilton argues.

What do you think? What can the NBA do to discourage the widespread tanking efforts we’re seeing in 2017/18? Will the new format solve the problem, or is it merely a band-aid solution for an issue that requires a more significant overhaul?

Jump into the comment section below to share your thoughts!

New York Notes: Noah, Ntilikina, Okafor, Nets

February 27th, 2018 at 10:06am CST by Luke Adams

Although March 1 isn’t an official deadline for the Knicks to make a decision on Joakim Noah, the team will have to waive him on or before that day if he wants to retain his postseason eligibility. That makes it a date worth watching, and according to Marc Berman of The New York Post, the National Basketball Players Association will have an eye on the situation.

Berman hears from sources that the NBPA will “intensify its interest” in the Noah situation if he remains on the Knicks’ roster – but not with the team – beyond March 1. If the veteran center wants to return to the Knicks at that point and the club wants him to remain in exile, things “could get ugly,” per Berman.

Sources tell Berman that the Knicks were within their right to suspend Noah for insubordination after he cursed out head coach Jeff Hornacek last month, but chose not to do so — Noah continues to receive his full salary during his absence. If the big man isn’t released this week, one potential scenario, Berman suggests, would see the Knicks brass telling him to sit tight and prepare for the 2018/19 season, when Hornacek may no longer be the club’s head coach.

While we wait to see what happens with Noah, let’s round up a few more items from out of New York City…

In a separate article for The New York Post, Berman examines the upcoming summer for Frank Ntilikina. The rookie point guard has suggested he’ll spend much of his offseason in his home country of France, but the Knicks will likely want him to play for their Summer League team in July.
Jahlil Okafor hasn’t seen any action for the Nets since February 12, but still believes he’s capable of fitting in with Brooklyn’s fast-paced style of play, writes Fred Kerber of The New York Post. “I wish we’d had him since training camp,” head coach Kenny Atkinson said of Okafor. “It makes it easier. We’re scrambling here trying to find a lineup so he’s a little bit of a victim of that.”
Speaking of the Nets‘ lineup, it got a boost on Monday, as both Caris LeVert and Rondae Hollis-Jefferson returned from injuries. Tom Dowd has the details at the club’s official site.

Dirk Nowitzki, Harrison Barnes Weigh In On Tanking

February 27th, 2018 at 8:46am CST by Luke Adams

The Mavericks snapped their four-game losing streak on Monday, picking up their first win since owner Mark Cuban was fined $600K by the NBA for his comments about losing being in the team’s best interest. Following Dallas’ win over Indiana on Monday, veterans Dirk Nowitzki and Harrison Barnes weighed in on the subject of tanking, disputing Cuban’s idea that a series of late-season losses are best the franchise.

[RELATED: 2017/18 NBA Reverse Standings]

“You don’t really want a culture here that’s just giving up and quitting and not playing hard,” Nowitzki said, per Tim MacMahon of ESPN. “I think it just sets the wrong tone for the future. … I think it’s important for our young guys to learn how to compete and to compete all the time, play hard. You play your minutes hard. That’s the only way to get better. That’s the only way to play in this league, and whatever happens after the season, we’ll just go from there. But for now, you play your minutes hard and you play to win.”

As MacMahon details, Mavs head coach Rick Carlisle – who spoke before the All-Star break about focusing on “player development” over the season’s final two months – has reversed course to some extent in the Mavs’ last couple games. Carlisle got his veterans plenty of playing time, particularly in the fourth quarter, during Saturday’s loss to the Jazz and Monday’s win over the Pacers.

Carlisle’s approach is endorsed by Barnes, who acknowledged that the tanking issue is one that’s hard to avoid, but suggested that the team should still be doing what it can to win games. Like Nowitzki, Barnes said that the act of tanking can lead to bad habits that become hard to shake.

“Any time you don’t play to win or you’re just kind of going through the motions, that can become contagious,” Barnes told MacMahon. “That can become a habit, and that can become your culture. ‘Oh, it’s OK for us to do this. Oh, it’s OK for us to not give full effort.’ Then next season rolls around, and you can’t flip that switch. It’s still that malaise that you had from the year before.

Cavs Notes: James, Nets Pick, Hood, Defense

February 26th, 2018 at 10:53pm CST by Dana Gauruder

LeBron James wasn’t expecting the Cavaliers to make any major deals prior to the deadline, sources told David Aldridge of NBA.com. James anticipated a minor trade or two but found out a night prior to the deadline that a major roster makeover was possible, Aldridge continues. James had already decided he needed to do more to get the team headed in the right direction, as he told Aldridge. “Even before the deadline happened and before the trades happened, I had to refocus myself and understand that I’m the leader of this team, and I have to be mentally sharp and mentally strong throughout anything,” he said.

In other nuggets involving the Cavaliers:

The team’s scouting staff has been energized by the acquisition of the Nets’ first-round pick that the Celtics forwarded in the Kyrie Irving trade, Joe Vardon of the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports. There’s a level of excitement in evaluating players who will go in the lottery, knowing the franchise will draft one of them. “With a high pick, you go to a game and you watch a guy and you think ‘there’s a legit chance that maybe we get him, and he becomes a core piece of our franchise moving forward,'” Cavs assistant GM Mike Gansey told Vardon.
Rodney Hood should be used extensively as the ballhandler on pick-and-rolls, according to Bryan Kalbrosky of Hoops Hype. Kalbrosky notes that Hood was a superior scorer on pick-and-roll plays with the Jazz. By trading away Isaiah Thomas and Dwyane Wade, the Cavs need Hood to fill the void in those situations, Kalbrosky adds.
The additions made at the trade deadline have improved the Cavs’ defense but it’s still not at the level of other title contenders, Chris Fedor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer argues. The roster is now younger and more athletic but none of the newcomers are All-NBA defenders, Fedor adds.

Pacific Notes: Chandler, Kings, Ballmer, Pachulia

February 26th, 2018 at 9:10pm CST by Dana Gauruder

Suns center Tyson Chandler is unsure when he’ll be able to play again because of a neck injury, Scott Bordow of the Arizona Republic reports. Chandler has missed five of the last six games due to swelling in a neck joint. That swelling has caused his neck to spasm and even lock up, Chandler told Bordow. “Coming back from the All-Star break I was looking forward to playing really well down the stretch,” Chandler said. “So it’s disappointing coming back having to deal with this.” The Suns miss Chandler’s leadership when he’s out, Bordow writes in a separate piece, noting the Suns are 5-25 when either he or Devin Booker doesn’t play.

In other news around the Pacific Division:

The fact that Kings coach Dave Joerger has agreed to a 10- or 11-man rotation shows that he has a good working relationship with GM Vlade Divac, Jason Jones of the Sacramento Bee writes in a mailbag column. Joerger had been asked to expand the rotation to get more minutes for his younger players, even though he’d probably prefer a shorter rotation, Jones continues. Divac also consults with Joerger on when to send players to the G League, Jones adds.
Clippers owner Steve Ballmer doesn’t believe in tanking despite the team trading away Blake Griffin to the Pistons late last month. Ballmer made the statement at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference and the quotes were relayed by ESPN’s Kevin Arnovitz. “I think bottoming out is a dangerous game,” Ballmer said. “If you have to play it, maybe you have to play it. Then again, superstars don’t want to go to teams that look like absolute losers. … In a way you’re being dismissive of your fans by taking that big a step back.”
Warriors center Zaza Pachulia was not disciplined by the league for falling onto Thunder All-Star Russell Westbrook on Saturday, Tim Bontemps of the Washington Post tweets. Westbrook called Pachulia a dirty player after the incident.

Central Rumors: Griffin, Pistons, Giannis, Terry

February 26th, 2018 at 7:38pm CST by Dana Gauruder

The Pistons lost five of their last six games entering Monday’s contest against the Raptors but Hornets coach Steve Clifford endorses Detroit’s Blake Griffin gamble, as Keith Langlois of Pistons.com reports. Griffin is the type of player who can make a difference in the postseason, according to Clifford. “The NBA is about winning in the playoffs, right? When you’re a coach, you look at it like this. Tie score in a Game 7, there’s 12 seconds on the clock, Blake Griffin’s one of the … I don’t know, 12 to 15 guys in the league that you can’t guard one on one,” Clifford said. “The guys they gave up are terrific, OK, but they’re not go-to, Game-7-of-a-series guys that are going to dictate a double team. That’s the number one thing you have to have to win big and that’s what they picked up.”

In other news around the Central Division:

The Pistons’ bench has been outscored by its counterparts by an average of 21.1 points over the last six games. Coach Stan Van Gundy has tried a number of different combinations but nothing has worked. Detroit’s reserve unit has struggled since point guard Ish Smith was forced into the starting lineup after Reggie Jackson suffered a severe ankle sprain in late December. “The biggest problem is it’s become a lower-energy lineup,” Van Gundy told Hoops Rumors.
The Bucks have locked up Giannis Antetokounmpo through the 2020/21 season but he has no desire to go to a big city like Los Angeles anyway, as Matt Velazquez of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel relays. Antetokounmpo prefers the less hectic pace of a city like Milwaukee. “I love Milwaukee — it’s low-key,” he told Velazquez. “I can walk down the road, down the streets without anybody bugging me — nobody interrupts my conversation or anything. I love how quiet and calm Milwaukee is.”
Bucks reserve guard Jason Terry wants to play at least one more year in the league, which would allow him to reach another milestone in his long career, Genaro Armas of the Associated Press writes. “For sure, 100 percent, my goal is to play 20 seasons,” Terry said. “The organization understands that and I think the league is on notice.” Terry, 40, is averaging 2.6 PPG in 11.9 MPG. He’ll be an unrestricted free agent this summer.

Pelicans Sign Emeka Okafor For Rest Of Season

February 26th, 2018 at 6:30pm CST by Luke Adams

6:30pm: The Pelicans have officially signed Okafor to a rest-of-season deal, the team announced today in a press release.

8:31am: After his second 10-day deal with the Pelicans expired, Emeka Okafor will re-sign with the team, earning a rest-of-season contract, reports Shams Charania of Yahoo Sports (Twitter link).

Okafor, 35, entered this season having played his last NBA game during the 2012/13 campaign. However, after a solid G League showing with the Delaware 87ers, the former second overall pick was called up by the Pelicans earlier this month.

With DeMarcus Cousins sidelined due to a torn Achilles, Okafor has assumed the role of starting center in New Orleans. The big man hasn’t contributed much on offense, posting 3.7 PPG and a .346 FG% in six games (16.2 MPG). However, he remains a difference-maker on the defensive end, chipping in 6.3 RPG and 2.0 BPG. The Pelicans have won all four games he has started.

Once Okafor officially re-signs, he’ll become the second Pelicans player to parlay a pair of 10-day contracts into a rest-of-season deal — DeAndre Liggins also did so, as our 10-day tracker shows. New Orleans currently has 13 players on rest-of-season or multiyear NBA contracts, with Okafor poised to become the 14th. The 15th roster spot is occupied by Walter Lemon Jr., who is on a 10-day deal.

Assuming Okafor signs his new contract on Monday and it’s worth the minimum salary, it will count for approximately $374K on the Pelicans’ cap.

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