- Wizards forward Rui Hachimura scored 14 fourth-quarter points to defeat the Nets on Thursday, reminding the team of his upside, Chase Hughes of NBC Sports Washington writes. Hachimura finished with 20 points in 27 minutes off the bench, shooting 8-of-15 from the floor. “Rui, he’s just got the joy back… I can see that smile again, I can see that laugh, I can see that joy,” teammate Ish Smith said. “Rui’s a special player. He’s been a special player the first two years I was here with him and now you guys are seeing him just continue to grow and get better.”
- Though Bradley Beal is sidelined, the Wizards have been playing better since the trade deadline, Chase Hughes of NBC Sports Washington notes. Kyle Kuzma believes players are settling into roles now that the fear of getting traded has passed. “I think we’re great chemistry-wise,” he said. “I think we’ve got a pretty good understanding of roles right now on the team. Everybody’s gelling, fitting in. Everybody’s just doing what they’re supposed to do.”
- Kristaps Porzingis‘ Wizards debut is likely to happen next Friday (February 25) against San Antonio, Hughes tweets. “I anticipate he will, but once again we’ll just have to see,” coach Wes Unseld Jr. said of Porzingis, who was acquired from Dallas at the trade deadline.
The Mavericks decided to trade Kristaps Porzingis to the Wizards last week because they determined he couldn’t be an effective second star with Luka Doncic, Tim Cato of The Athletic states in a discussion of the deal. Porzingis was in his third season in Dallas, and all three had been disrupted by injuries, leading to concerns about whether he would ever be reliable to stay on the court. The Mavs are 13-9 in the games he has missed this season, so the front office felt it was safe to move on from his contract.
Cato is skeptical about Dallas’ return in the deal, although he says Spencer Dinwiddie will be a welcome addition for a team that has trouble driving to the basket and the Mavericks believe Davis Bertans is a better defender than his reputation would suggest. They plan to use him in larger lineups where his lack of rebounding will be less important.
There’s more NBA news from Texas:
- The Spurs are focused on making the play-in tournament and reaching the playoffs, even though their 22-36 record indicates that they might be better off maximizing their first-round draft pick, writes Tom Orsborn of The San Antonio Express News. Dejounte Murray and Devin Vassell both talked last weekend about the importance of getting to the postseason, and coach Gregg Popovich repeated that message on Monday. “If you put yourself in the situation, more as a coach than any other position in the organization, besides players, you can’t go to your team and ask them to lose,” Popovich said. “You can’t do that. It’s an impossibility for all of the logical reasons you can think of on your own. So, you go play your best, you keep teaching, you keep doing what you do. And if you lose and wind up with a high draft pick, well, you accept it and you are glad you got a high draft pick. But it can’t be because you didn’t push them or teach them or demand from them.”
- Goran Dragic gave up $819,835 in his buyout agreement with the Spurs, tweets Keith Smith of Spotrac. The amount is equal to a 54-day minimum-salary contract for Dragic, so he’ll make up roughly all that money once he signs with a new team.
- The Rockets used part of their mid-level exception to sign rookie guard Daishen Nix to a four-year contract, according to Smith (Twitter link). Nix will make $612K for the rest of this season and $1,563,518 in 2022/23. The final two years of the deal are non-guaranteed at $1,836,096 and $1,988,598, and the last season is also a team option.
Whether the Wizards push hard for a play-in spot down the stretch or resign themselves to a lottery berth and vie for draft positioning, developing their young players will be a top priority the rest of the way, writes Chase Hughes of NBC Sports Washington.
As Hughes outlines, if youngsters like Deni Avdija, Rui Hachimura, Corey Kispert, and Daniel Gafford thrive in the second half of the season, that will give the Wizards more options in the offseason — they could decide to build around those players or could try to trade one or more of them for a more established player.
Avdija, who is averaging 7.5 PPG on the season, has looked good as of late, scoring double-digit points in all three games since the trade deadline and grabbing a career-high 15 rebounds in Monday’s win over Detroit. However, Hachimura’s developmental process may have hit another temporary snag during Monday’s victory.
As Hughes writes in a separate NBC Sports Washington story, Hachimura left the game in the first half due to a right ankle sprain. Head coach Wes Unseld Jr. said after the game that he’s hopeful the sprain isn’t too severe, but it still might make sense for Washington to hold out the third-year forward until at least after the All-Star break.
Here’s more on the Wizards:
- Unseld said on Monday that there’s hope Kristaps Porzingis will be able to make his Wizards debut before the All-Star break (Twitter link via Hughes). Washington plays in Indiana on Wednesday and Brooklyn on Thursday, so we’ll see if Porzingis – who is day-to-day with a right knee bone bruise – is available for either of those games.
- Although general manager Tommy Sheppard insisted a few weeks before the trade deadline that the team felt no need to move Spencer Dinwiddie, it was obvious something was “dramatically off-kilter,” writes Josh Robbins of The Athletic. Dinwiddie, who struggled to produce alongside Bradley Beal, never seemed comfortable with his role on the team, Robbins adds, noting that the point guard was “oddly passive” and probably didn’t have the ball in his hands enough.
- Within that same story at The Athletic, Tim Cato considers what Porzingis can bring to the Wizards, suggesting the big man has reemerged as a strong defender when healthy this season and is no longer an obvious target for switches. However, Porzingis hasn’t been a reliable outside shooter in 2021/22, and his frequent injury-related absences resulted in some awkward readjustment periods when he’d return to the lineup after missing several games, says Cato.
Several NBA teams typically end up with newly-opened roster spots following the trade deadline. This happens for a variety of reasons. Some teams make two-for-one or three-for-one trades; some acquire players in cap-related deals and immediately cut them; others buy out or release players they weren’t able to move at the deadline.
Whatever the reason may be, there are plenty of available roster spots around the NBA, and it’s a good bet that most of them will be filled before the end of the regular season. Contending teams will want to fortify their depth for the playoffs, while lottery-bound clubs will take fliers on prospects willing to accept multiyear deals that aren’t fully guaranteed beyond this season.
Here, with the help of our roster counts page, is a look at the teams that have open roster spots as of February 14:
Teams with open 15-man roster spots:
- Atlanta Hawks
- Boston Celtics (3)
- Charlotte Hornets
- Denver Nuggets *
- Detroit Pistons
- Houston Rockets
- Miami Heat (2)
- Milwaukee Bucks (3) *
- Minnesota Timberwolves
- New Orleans Pelicans
- Orlando Magic
- Philadelphia 76ers
- Toronto Raptors
- Utah Jazz
- Washington Wizards
* The Nuggets (DeMarcus Cousins) and Bucks (Greg Monroe) each have a player on a 10-day contract. We’re counting those roster spots as “open” because Cousins’ and Monroe’s deals will expire this week.
If we count the Nuggets, exactly half of the NBA’s 30 teams have at least one 15-man roster spot available. Twelve of those clubs have a single open roster spot, while the Celtics, Heat, and Bucks have multiple openings.
Since teams are only permitted to dip below 14 players on standard contracts for up to two weeks at a time, Boston, Miami, and Milwaukee will all have to get back to that league-mandated minimum before the end of the month.
The other teams on this list aren’t under immediate pressure to add a 15th man, and some may hold off for a little while for financial reasons — or just to wait to see who else becomes available on the buyout market in the next couple weeks.
Some of these clubs – including the Heat with Caleb Martin, the Pelicans with Jose Alvarado, and the Raptors with Justin Champagnie – might use their open roster spot to promote a player on a two-way contract who has earned regular minutes.
Teams with open two-way spots:
- Boston Celtics
- Dallas Mavericks
- Oklahoma City Thunder
- Phoenix Suns
- Utah Jazz
The Celtics (Sam Hauser) and Thunder (Aaron Wiggins) have each promoted a two-way player to the 15-man roster since the trade deadline. The other three teams on this list released a two-way player in January, creating an opening.
In the past, teams haven’t been able to sign players to two-way contracts after January 15, but that restriction doesn’t exist this season, so I expect we’ll see some – if not all – of these teams fill their open two-way slots sooner or later.
Wizards center Daniel Gafford won’t be available for Monday’s game against Detroit, but he’s listed as out due to return to competition reconditioning, meaning he has exited the NBA’s health and safety protocols, tweets Chase Hughes of NBC Sports Washington.
That news is notable because Gafford had been the lone player remaining in the league’s COVID-19 protocols after Pelicans big man Willy Hernangomez was cleared last week. Now that Gafford has been cleared too, none of the 30 teams have a single player in the protocols.
It’s a stark contrast to where the league was at just six weeks ago. At the end of December and the start of January, there were well over 100 players in the health and safety protocols. Most teams needed to sign multiple replacements to 10-day contracts to withstand COVID-19 outbreaks, and even then, several games had to be postponed.
Of course, just because there are no players in the protocols right now doesn’t mean there won’t be more players affected going forward. It’s safe to assume individuals will continue to enter the protocols here and there, and there’s no guarantee there won’t be more team-wide outbreaks before the end of the season. But we’re hopeful that the worst of those outbreaks are behind us for the 2021/22 campaign.
We set up a tracker in December to keep tabs on which players were entering and exiting the health and safety protocols, and we’ve updated it daily since then. However, we’re putting that tracker on ice for now and will only resume updating it if the number of players affected starts climbing rapidly again at some point in the coming days, weeks, or months.
Davis Bertans, who was traded to the Mavericks this week along with Spencer Dinwiddie, offered some insight into the dysfunctional situation he left behind with the Wizards, writes Jack Maloney of CBS Sports. During his introductory news conference Saturday in Dallas, Bertans described an atmosphere where each player seemed to have his own agenda.
“It’s tough to have team chemistry when every single day, the team is basically fighting with each other about ‘I want to get more minutes’ and ‘I want a bigger role.'” Bertans said. “That was probably the biggest part of struggles for most guys during the season. That kinda early on doesn’t show up because everybody’s trying to figure out what’s going on. Once it starts going downhill, it’s really hard to turn around and start going up again.”
Bertans’ comments seem to confirm a recent statement from Kentavious Caldwell-Pope that “egos and agendas” sank the Wizards’ season after a 10-3 start. Last weekend, Montrezl Harrell, who has since been traded to Charlotte, lamented the mood in the locker room, and he and Caldwell-Pope reportedly got into a physical altercation during halftime of a game this season.
There’s more from Washington, D.C.:
- When Thomas Bryant and Rui Hachimura returned from injuries, it created a logjam of minutes that made it impossible to keep everyone happy, notes Andrew Gillis of NBC Sports Washington. General manager Tommy Sheppard admits that factored into his decisions this week, but he believes a COVID-19 outbreak contributed to the team’s decline as well. “I do know we were 15-11 and COVID hit this team, and we really have been struggling ever since then to get our legs back under us,” Sheppard said. “Just when we thought it was behind us, then [center Daniel Gafford] gets hit the other day. That’s not an excuse, but those are facts. We’ve missed a lot of players during that time.”
- Kristaps Porzingis, who missed Saturday’s game with a bone bruise in his right knee, hopes his long battle with injuries will end now that he’s with the Wizards, per Chase Hughes of NBC Sports Washington. “One is staying on the floor consistently. Now that I’m healthy and I’m moving well, that’s the thing I have to prove,” Porzingis said in his first session with the D.C. media. “I truly believe that my luck hasn’t been the best luck in terms of injuries. A lot of them, if not all of them have been contact injuries. Those you can’t really avoid, 100 percent. I do my part with being in the weight room, making sure my body is right to stay healthy. But you have to have a little bit of luck.”
- The 2022 second-round pick that the Wizards received from Dallas in the Porzingis trade is top-45 protected, according to Real GM. Washington won’t receive the pick if it doesn’t convey this year.
The Timberwolves wanted to add size to their front line, but the closest they came to making a trade at the deadline was a proposed swap with the Wizards involving Montrezl Harrell, according to Jon Krawczynski of The Athletic. Harrell could have helped a Minnesota team that has been near the bottom of the league in defensive rebounding all season, but Krawczynski states that there was internal debate about how he would have fit in. He’s only 6’7″ and isn’t a good outside shooter or an outstanding defender, so the Wolves passed on the deal and Harrell wound up in Charlotte.
Minnesota talked to the Celtics about acquiring Marcus Smart, but never made much traction, Krawczynski adds. Boston offered Josh Richardson and Romeo Langford in exchange for Malik Beasley, but the Wolves turned it down, feeling that Beasley’s outside shooting is too valuable to part with.
There’s more from Minnesota:
- Executive vice president of basketball operations Sachin Gupta had plenty of incentive to make a huge trade by the deadline, but he didn’t feel like the right offer was available, Krawczynski writes in the same piece. Gupta, who took over his position when Gersson Rosas was fired before the start of training camp, could have felt pressure to shake up the roster before the new ownership group decides on his future with the organization. “I could imagine the perception that I would want to put my stamp on things and make a move just for the sake of it. But that’s just not how I operate,” Gupta said. “I’m going to operate from a position of what is best for this franchise, not for me.”
- The Timberwolves had been mentioned frequently as Ben Simmons suitors since last summer, but the package the Nets got from the Sixers on Thursday is far better than anything Minnesota could have offered, contends Michael Rand of The Star Tribune. The Wolves didn’t have the star that Philadelphia president of basketball operations Daryl Morey was seeking, and they weren’t able to convince a third team to get involved. Rand also suggests that Minnesota may have benefited from keeping its young core together, rather than breaking it up for a shot at Simmons.
- The Wolves have an open roster spot, but they won’t address it right away, at least not on a permanent basis, tweets Chris Hine of The Star Tribune. Gupta said the team doesn’t expect to fill that spot with more than a 10-day contract until at least March due to luxury tax concerns.
Wizards guard Bradley Beal is out for the rest of the 2021/22 season after undergoing wrist surgery and can opt out of his contract this summer. However, president of basketball operations Tommy Sheppard remains confident that Beal hasn’t played his last game with the franchise.
“I believe Bradley is going to be here moving forward,” Sheppard told reporters on Friday (Twitter link via Chase Hughes of NBC Sports Washington). “… Certainly we plan on him being here in the future. If he feels otherwise, he will let us know.”
Multiple reports in recent weeks, both before and after Beal’s injury, have stated that the Wizards remain committed to offering the star guard a five-year contract if he turns down his player option in the offseason.
Here are a few more Wizards notes:
- The Wizards’ point guard depth took a hit on Thursday when the team traded away Spencer Dinwiddie and Aaron Holiday just six months after acquiring them. Ish Smith and Raul Neto are handling point guard duties in the short term, but Sheppard said today that upgrading the position will be a priority for the club heading into 2022/23. “That’s our focus for sure in the offseason,” Sheppard said (Twitter link via Hughes).
- The Wizards’ acquisition of Kristaps Porzingis was the “ultimate high-risk, high-reward move,” Josh Robbins writes for The Athletic. Discussing the move today, Sheppard said, “You can’t be afraid to take big swings” (Twitter link via Robbins).
- Porzingis missed the Mavericks’ last five games due to a right knee bone bruise, but Sheppard expects the big man to be available soon, tweets Hughes. It’s possible Porzingis could make his Wizards debut as soon as Saturday.
- Wizards assistant coach Mike Batiste was suspended two games without pay by the NBA for entering the stands in an attempt to confront a fan, the NBA announced on Thursday (via Twitter). The incident took place near the end of the team’s loss to Miami on Monday (video link). Batiste served the first game of his suspension on Thursday vs. Brooklyn and will serve the second on Saturday vs. Sacramento.
With Brook Lopez sidelined indefinitely, the Bucks and center Marc Gasol, who is currently playing for Girona in Spain, had discussed the possibility of a possible late-season deal, according to Zach Lowe of ESPN (Insider link). However, Lowe suggests that a union “does not appear to be in the cards” now that Milwaukee has acquired Serge Ibaka.
It’s worth noting that the Bucks have three open spots on their 15-man roster following the trade deadline, so there still could be room for Gasol down the road, and it’s not like he and Ibaka haven’t had success teaming up in the past — the two vets played key roles for the 2019 champion Raptors. Still, Milwaukee may be looking to address other positions with those open roster spots, and there’s no guarantee Gasol will look to return to the NBA when his season is over in Spain.
Here are a few more highlights from Lowe’s post-deadline roundup:
- Sources confirmed to Lowe that the Suns and Pacers had brief discussions about Deandre Ayton and Domantas Sabonis, which was first reported by Jake Fischer of Bleacher Report. Fischer suggested the two teams might be exploring the idea of an offseason sign-and-trade involving Ayton, and Lowe agrees that the talks seem to have been just exploratory and informal, possibly aimed at the future rather than present. Indiana subsequently traded Sabonis to Sacramento, which could eliminate the possibility of any future deal with Phoenix for Ayton, but Lowe points out that the Suns’ willingness to consider shaking up their roster – even in the offseason – is noteworthy.
- Before acquiring Sabonis, the Kings approached the Hawks about John Collins, but they didn’t discuss Tyrese Haliburton or De’Aaron Fox in that context, says Lowe.
- Lowe expects the Sixers to explore the buyout market for a backup center, since there’s no guarantee that Paul Millsap will bounce back in Philadelphia and Charles Bassey is unproven.
- The Spurs explored ways to move up in last year’s draft, according to Lowe, who notes that San Antonio has since gained more draft ammo to potentially revisit that idea going forward.
- Lowe contends that Kristaps Porzingis should take his trade to the Wizards “as a huge slap in the face,” given the modest return the Mavericks received. As Lowe writes, Dallas appeared to be trying to gain more flexibility for future moves by taking back two (relatively) smaller contracts for Porzingis’ max deal, which could pay off down the road. But it “seems to be selling unthinkably low” on Porzingis, Lowe says.