- Chris Vivlamore of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution provides injury updates on a trio of Hawks bigs, most notably tweeting that Omari Spellman looks like a long shot to return before the ennd of the 2018/19 season. Vivlamore also tweets that Alex Poythress is in a walking boot and will be out for “a while” after spraining his ankle, and adds (via Twitter) that Miles Plumlee has begun to take contact in his one-on-one work.
MARCH 8: The signing is official, the Hawks announced in an email.
MARCH 7: The Hawks have reached an agreement with Tyler Zeller and will sign the free agent center to a 10-day contract, league sources tell ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski (Twitter link). According to Wojnarowski, the deal is expected to be finalized on Friday.
Zeller, 29, spent six seasons in the NBA after being drafted 17th overall in 2012, but was waived by the Bucks in October and had yet to catch on with a new team. In 66 total games last season for Brooklyn and Milwaukee, the veteran seven-footer recorded 6.7 PPG and 4.6 RPG with a career-high .560 FG% in 16.8 minutes per contest.
Zeller will provide the Hawks with some added frontcourt depth at a time when the team is dealing with a handful of injuries to its big men. Omari Spellman has been ruled out for most or all of March with an ankle injury, Miles Plumlee hasn’t played since December due to a knee issue, and Dewayne Dedmon (knee) and Alex Poythress (ankle) are also dealing with nagging health problems.
The Hawks have been using their last two roster spots recently to audition players on 10-day deals. Jordan Sibert was signed to a single 10-day contract and hasn’t been brought back, while B.J. Johnson is currently on a 10-day pact of his own that runs through Sunday. With Zeller and Johnson under contract, Atlanta will have a full roster, but the team could open up two spots when those deals expire.
Zeller’s 10-day contract will carry a cap hit of approximately $85K for the Hawks.
Hawks veteran Vince Carter plans to return next season as a player with hopes of extending his career to 22 NBA seasons, he said Thursday night on ESPN’s Pardon The Interruption.
Carter, who turned 42 in January, will formally evaluate the situation in the summer but made it clear he wants to return for the 2019/20 season.
“I think I could stretch it out one more [year],” Carter said. “At the end of the year, I usually assess from top to bottom to see how I’m feeling. And, obviously, opportunity — when the phone call rings and teams show interest, that’s a good thing.”
Carter, widely considered to be one of the game’s all-time great dunkers, has averaged 7.1 points, 2.5 rebounds and 16.6 minutes per game, shooting 44% from the floor and a career-high 41% from 3-point range on the season. He’s appeared in 61 of Atlanta’s 66 games.
Carter was selected with the No. 5 pick in the 1998 draft and has made stops with Toronto, New Jersey, Orlando, Phoenix, Dallas, Memphis, Sacramento and Atlanta across his two-decade journey. For comparison’s sake, future Hall-of-Famer Dwyane Wade — drafted five years after Carter with a long, storied career of his own — is set to retire at season’s end. The same could be said for veteran Channing Frye, who was drafted seven years after Carter.
For the Hawks, Carter will reach free agency on July 1. He signed a deal to join the team last summer, using his veteran leadership and experience to help their young group throughout the season.
“Me, personally, I think I could give it another year, so why not?” Carter said. “We’ll see what happens.”
No matter how well Trae Young performs in his career, he will always be compared to Luka Doncic after the Hawks dealt the Slovenian wing to the Mavs in exchange for Young and a future first-rounder. Young embraces the comparisons, as he tells Marc Stein of The New York Times in the scribe’s latest newsletter.
“I know it’s a part of my life now,” Young said. “I tell everybody that hopefully we’re both 15-plus years down the line and we’re still playing and it’s a competition that’s been going since draft night…I think it’s going to go on forever, so might as well just accept it and take it on as a challenge.”
The Hawks are excited about the 20-year-old point guard in part because of his wise perspective at such a young age, Stein writes. Of course, Atlanta is also thrilled with Young’s game on the court. The University of Oklahoma product got off to a slow start to the season, but said the game “is really starting to slow down” for him. Young has averaged 21.5 points and 8.3 assists while making 39.2% of his looks from downtown since the start of the 2019 calendar year.
Here’s more from Atlanta:
- The Hawks have the right pieces in place as they close out year-one of their rebuild, Michael Cunningham of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution contends. In addition to their young core, which includes Young, John Collins, and Kevin Huerter, Atlanta will likely receive the Mavs’ 2019 first-rounder, which is top-5 protected. Dallas currently has the eighth-worst record, as our Reverse Standings show.
- Young said Kevin Durant reached out to him, lending the rookie advice on how to deal with criticism, as Vincent Goodwill of Yahoo Sports passes along. “[Durant] said remain [yourself], keep going, things are gonna turn and go the right way for you,” Young said. “Just to keep my head straight. I’ve known KD a long time, and he’s given me a lot of advice growing up.”
- Young has the green light to shoot from anywhere on the court, though coach Lloyd Pierce emphasizes that the point guard isn’t the only player without restrictions, as Goodwill relays in the same piece. “The freedom is for everybody. There’s no restrictions on who’s taking the shots or who’s making the plays. It starts with Trae,” Pierce said. “There’s a time and place, what’s a good or bad shot, a quick shot. I probably yell at guys more for passing up shots than for taking shots. Brian Shaw said something years ago at a camp, ‘Don’t pass up good [expletive] for bulls–t.’ So I don’t care if it’s further back. If it’s an open shot and you’re in rhythm, take it.”
While Jaylen Brown has been fairly productive off the bench for the Celtics in recent weeks, logging some of his better performances of the season, he said this week that he’s “not feeling good at all” about the team’s overall play, writes Gary Washburn of The Boston Globe. According to Brown, the environment around the team needs to change.
“Right now it’s not good. It’s toxic,” Brown said. “I can’t really point out one thing. I don’t have all the answers. I’m just going to try to be part of the change. I’m going to try to do my best. That’s all I’ve got to say.”
Brown is just the latest in a string of Celtics players to express frustration with the situation in Boston. Kyrie Irving has done so multiple times this season, Marcus Morris spoke last month about the club not having any “fun,” and Marcus Smart said last week that the team is “just not together.” Like those other players, Brown doesn’t know exactly what the solution is, but still believes the C’s are capable of turning things around.
“I still believe,” he said, per Washburn. “I think we’ve got time to get it together. I’m very optimistic and very positive and think that we will . . . We keep talking about it. I’m just going to try to do it with my play, come out and play hard and try to change the atmosphere and this environment.”
Let’s round up a few more Celtics-related items…
- Chris Forsberg of NBC Sports Boston revisits several of the defining moments of the Celtics’ 2018/19 season, tracing the evolution of the club from Eastern Conference frontrunner to vulnerable, middle-of-the-pack playoff team.
- In an illuminating story for ESPN.com, Jackie MacMullan talks to Gordon Hayward and some people around him about the veteran forward’s long, challenging quest to regain his All-Star form. Hayward has been assisted by a mental health counselor during the process, as MacMullan details.
- According to data compiled by Eric Pincus at Basketball Insiders, the Celtics sent $2,055,910 to the Hawks in last month’s Jabari Bird salary dump. That amount was more than enough to cover the remaining portion of Bird’s $1,349,383 salary for 2019/20, so Atlanta easily came out ahead. So did Boston though — Bird’s cap hit would have cost the team about $2.27MM in projected tax penalties.
A left ankle injury will sideline the Hawks‘ Omari Spellman for at least four weeks, writes Chris Vivlamore of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The rookie forward had an MRI on Saturday that revealed a low grade high ankle sprain with associated soft tissue injury, the Hawks announced. He suffered the injury in Friday’s game against the Bulls.
The team plans to re-evaluate Spellman’s condition in four weeks, which would force him to miss 14 of Atlanta’s remaining 19 games. If he requires additional recovery time, there’s a chance we won’t see him again this season.
Spellman is averaging 5.9 points and 4.2 rebounds in 46 games this season.
MARCH 1: The signing is official, the Hawks announced in an email.
FEBRUARY 26: The Hawks will fill the final opening on their 15-man roster by signing G League shooting guard B.J. Johnson to a 10-day contract, reports Chris Vivlamore of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. According to Vivlamore, the club will make the move official later in the week.
Johnson, who went undrafted out of La Salle in 2018, joined the Magic for training camp and the preseason last fall, and then was waived by Orlando before the regular season began. He subsequently headed to the G League and has spent the 2018/19 campaign playing for the Lakeland Magic, Orlando’s affiliate.
In 37 games (30 starts) for Lakeland, Johnson has recorded 14.8 PPG, 5.1 RPG, and 1.4 SPG with a shooting line of .464/.426/.837.
Although the Hawks are carrying 14 players for now, Jordan Sibert‘s 10-day contract will expire this Friday night, so the club could open up a roster spot even after signing Johnson. Re-signing Sibert and officially adding Johnson would keep the 15-man squad full for the time being.
The Hawks won’t re-sign Jordan Sibert after his 10-day contract expires today, tweets Chris Vivlamore of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Sibert appeared in a single game during his time with Atlanta, playing four minutes against the Timberwolves on Wednesday. The 26-year-old went undrafted out of Dayton in 2015 and spent time playing in Greece and Germany.
The move will leave the Hawks with 13 players under contract, but they’ll get back up to 14 when they officially sign B.J. Johnson, whose deal was reported earlier this week.
Here are Thursday’s assignments and recalls from across the NBA G League:
- The Nets assigned Spencer Dinwiddie and Jared Dudley to their G League team in Long Island, Brian Lewis of the New York Post tweets. Dinwiddie (thumb) is expected to return tomorrow against the Hornets.
- The Hornets have assigned guard Dwayne Bacon to the Greensboro Swarm, general manager Mitch Kupchak announced. Bacon has appeared in 25 games with Charlotte this season, holding per-game averages of 4.4 points, 1.6 rebounds and 10.6 minutes.
- The Grizzlies assigned Jevon Carter to the Memphis Hustle, G League affiliate of the team, according to a tweet from the club’s PR department. Carter was drafted by Memphis with the No. 32 pick last June.
- The Hawks assigned guard Jordan Sibert to the Erie Bayhawks, the team announced in a press release. Sibert, 26, has yet to appear in a game with Atlanta this season.
- The Jazz have assigned center Tony Bradley to the Salt Lake Stars, announcing the news in a press release today. Bradley has seen action in 17 games with the Stars this season, scoring 13.6 points per contest.
Despite having a focus on their long-term future, the Hawks plan to be aggressive with top-tier free agents during the 2019 offseason, Sam Amick of The Athletic writes.
Atlanta currently sports a young core headlined by Trae Young and John Collins, a pairing that could intrigue star free agents. Players such as Kevin Durant, Kawhi Leonard, Jimmy Butler, Klay Thompson, Khris Middleton and DeMarcus Cousins are set to reach free agency on July 1, with each name a potential target for the youthful Hawks.
Atlanta holds the fourth-worst record in the Eastern Conference at 21-41, but the team will have roughly $41MM in cap space to work with this summer. As Amick notes, the franchise is armed with a promising young nucleus, a new head coach (Lloyd Pierce), and an upgraded arena and practice facility as it seeks meetings with some of the top available names on the market.
The Hawks have Dewayne Dedmon, Vince Carter and Justin Anderson as players who will become free agents this summer. Forward Kent Bazemore holds a player option for the 2019/20 season worth $19.2MM.