After being waived by the Rockets this week, French point guard Theo Maledon isn’t eager to head back to Europe to resume his playing career, according to a Eurohoops report. He played for ASVEL in France from 2017-20 before being selected 34th overall in the 2020 NBA draft.
Maledon is still just 21 years old and showed some promise during his two seasons in Oklahoma City, so he looks like a good candidate to get another NBA opportunity. He’ll clear waivers on Thursday, assuming he goes unclaimed.
Here are a few more odds and ends from around the basketball world:
- There are no indications that the NBA’s one-and-done rule for draft prospects will be scrapped anytime soon, writes Jonathan Givony of ESPN (Insider-only link). While commissioner Adam Silver would like to eliminate the rule, the players’ union would want “major financial concessions” from team owners in order to agree, according to Givony, who adds that some teams believe allowing younger prospects to enter the NBA would water down the league’s talent level.
- In a separate Insider-only article for ESPN.com, Givony breaks down last week’s Victor Wembanyama vs. Scoot Henderson showdowns, writing that Wembanyama is the best NBA prospect he’s seen since LeBron James. Givony also explains why Wembanyama is in a great developmental situation with the Metropolitans 92 in France and says the NBA’s G League Ignite program looks like it’s here to stay.
- Former NBA wing Wayne Selden has left his Italian team, Tezenis Verona, his agency told Ennio Terrasi Borghesan of Sportando. Verona put out a statement announcing that the club intended to take legal action in response to Seldon’s departure, prompting agent Charles Misuraca to accuse the team of breaching Selden’s contract agreement by not paying him.
- Just how valuable is it to acquire the swap rights to a future first-round draft pick? Zach Kram of The Ringer explores that question, ultimately concluding that it’s pretty rare for a team to jump up significantly in the draft and the result of a pick swap.
Totally agree that pick swaps aren’t as valuable as they get made out to be. I fully expect the future pick swaps that the Hawks owe the Spurs (bc of the Dejounte trade) to end up as nothing or close to nothing
It depends on the team. If a team like Philly wants to do pick swaps for 3+ years down the road … Count me in! Philly with Embiid on the back half of his career are pick swaps I will take my chances on.
The Ringer, as usual, provides a good laugh. Pelton’s value chart? Is that a joke? Trade value is about 2.5 times what his chart indicates. Even that understates it, though, because 99% of the time, teams don’t trade down at the top of the draft, period. So, not just a small sample size, but a contaminated one as well.
Fact is that pick swaps not only have little history in the NBA draft, the history it does have involves only a handful remote picks (in drafts years more than 2 years in the future). The few times a team “gambled” in this manner (NYK 1984-1987 and BKN 2014-2017 being the most notable), the negative impact had been very high.
Bottom line is that all but a handful of remote pick swaps given in NBA history were given in the past 4 years and relate to drafts that haven’t yet occurred. So, we’ll see. But history suggests the opposite of what the Ringer article suggests.