- The Hornets‘ effort to fix their shooting problems through offseason moves has been successful, writes Mike Prada of SB Nation. Charlotte was last in 3-point percentage a year ago, but has improved with the additions of Spencer Hawes, Frank Kaminsky, Jeremy Lin and Nicolas Batum.
Gerald Henderson has enjoyed his first season in Portland and wouldn’t mind seeing it turn into a long-term relationship, writes Joe Freeman of The Oregonian. Henderson quickly assumed a leadership role with the Blazers after being traded there from Charlotte last offseason. Even though he’s had to accept a reserve spot, Henderson says he’s happy being a “big-minute player.” He will be among at least six Portland free agents this summer, so a return isn’t certain despite apparent interest on both sides. “If they want me back and we can come up with a contract that makes sense, then I’d love to come back here,” Henderson said. “This has been a great year. I was just telling the guys; this has probably been one of the most fun teams I’ve been on. This has been one of my most fun years. Because we’ve really worked for this. We’ve really earned this. It’s a tight group, a great group of guys.”
There’s more out of the Pacific Northwest:
- Meyers Leonard is also hoping to stay in Portland, Freeman writes in a separate story. The Blazers’ back-up big man is out for the season with a torn labrum in his left shoulder. He will have surgery soon and faces a six- to eight-month rehab process. Leonard will be a restricted free agent this summer after turning down a contract extension in October, and the injury could limit the offers he gets from other teams. He hopes to be ready in time for training camp. “I believe that I can be a key piece of the future,” Leonard said. “Obviously, [I was] drafted with Damian Lillard. Been here with [coach] Terry [Stotts]. And I think that [GM] Neil [Olshey], the guys, coaches, understand what I bring.”
- Also headed for free agency is small forward Moe Harkless, who moved into the starting lineup in the wake of Leonard’s injury, relates Mike Richman of The Oregonian. Harkless, who is averaging 13 points and 5.8 rebounds per game since the change was made, was acquired from Orlando in an offseason deal. “I just got to be ready to be out there,” Harkless said of his new role. “Before I was just not really being out [on the floor] at crucial times in the game, but now I just got to stay ready and be ready to go.” He is making nearly $2.9MM in the final year of his contract.
Bradley Beal‘s harsh comments toward his teammates after Wednesday’s loss in Sacramento are a sign of underlying problems on the Wizards, contends J. Michael of CSN Mid-Atlantic. Beal, who is headed toward restricted free agency this summer, said the team isn’t “hungry enough” and seemed to give up in the closing moments of the game. “We bark too much,” Beal said. “We say what we need to do. We scream at one another. We can even try to blame [coach Randy Wittman] if we want to, but at the end of the day we still the ones playing. … We just do dumb mental lapses that just mess up the game and end up hurting us in the long run.” Michael thinks Beal and John Wall need to get together as team leaders and work out whatever personal differences they have with each other before their relationship is too far gone.
There’s more from the Southeast Division:
- Nicolas Batum figures to be the most sought after among a large group of Hornets free agents, writes Rick Bonnell of The Charlotte Observer. Contracts for Marvin Williams, Courtney Lee and Al Jefferson will also expire at the end of the season and Jeremy Lin has the choice to opt out, but Batum has risen above the crowd with his versatile play. “I’ve been around teams where people think about their contract and their personal situation. I can’t understand that,” Batum said. “With this team, we know if we do great as a team, if we all do our jobs, everything will work out.”
- If the Heat were giving any thought to trading point guard Goran Dragic and pursuing Grizzlies free agent Mike Conley, Barry Jackson of The Miami Herald says Dragic has changed their minds with his recent performance. “We love Goran,” said team president Pat Riley. “Now he’s playing like The Dragon. His game has opened up. I’m very happy that we have this point guard.”
- The Hawks plan to keep Lamar Patterson and Edy Tavares with the Austin Spurs through the D-League team’s playoff run, according to Chris Vivlamore of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Both rookies have spent extensive time in the D-League this season. Tavares, a 7’3″ center, has played in 27 games for the affiliates of the Spurs, Suns and Cavs, while Patterson has been in 17 games with San Antonio’s and Cleveland’s D-League teams.
- One of the positives that came out of Al Jefferson missing six weeks due to a knee injury this season was that it proved to the Hornets that Cody Zeller is a legitimate NBA center, writes Rick Bonnell of The Charlotte Observer. The 23-year-old is averaging 9.0 points and 6.3 rebounds in 24.7 minutes per game and could provide Charlotte with a fallback if Jefferson were to depart as an unrestricted free agent this summer.
Hornets owner Michael Jordan has become a powerful player in the NBA’s ongoing labor talks, according to Adrian Wojnarowski of The Vertical on Yahoo Sports. Jordan is a member of the owners’ labor-relations committee and has been leading the fight for small-market teams. His place on that powerful committee has been kept secret until now, and it’s a sign of his rising status among NBA owners. Other signs are the Hornets’ newfound success on the court and the upcoming All-Star Game in Charlotte next season. Wojnarowski says some players and agents complain that the Hornets cut expenses unnecessarily, but the organization’s reputation is improving in that area. The NBA and the union have divided into groups to discuss aspects of the collective bargaining agreement after weeks of covert negotiations between the sides, Wojnarowski reports. Either side can opt out of the current 10-year deal in 2017 and create a potential work stoppage.
The impact that Nicolas Batum has had on the Hornets this season has him in line to land a major payday when he becomes an unrestricted free agent this offseason, Rick Bonnell of The Charlotte Observer writes. The swingman is likely to seek a maximum salary contract this summer, and while it’s debatable whether Batum is worthy of that amount even with the salary cap set to increase drastically for 2016/17, Charlotte’s inability to lure top-tier free agents may make investing in him for the long-term a wise move, Bonnell adds. While Batum is not a star in the traditional sense, he does make his teammates around him better as well as provide coach Steve Clifford a well-rounded set of skills to utilize, Bonnell writes. Batum is averaging 14.8 points, 6.3 rebounds and 5.7 assists in 35.6 minutes per outing on the campaign.
Executive Director of the NBPA Michele Roberts is working to shift the perception that players make too much money, something that will likely be expressed once negotiations begin with team owners over their respective stakes in the league’s basketball related income, as she tells Adrian Wojnarowski of The Vertical on Yahoo Sports on his podcast (h/t RealGM Wiretap). Roberts believes the amount of money owners make is not being discussed enough.
“We read just recently that the value of these teams, thank you Donald Sterling, we know what a team can make on the open market,” Roberts said. ” If the reality is that as the game is growing financial, owners are holding onto those teams for a reason. There is a great deal of value. And there’s a long line of folks that would love to buy a basketball team.”
Here’s more from around the league:
- Jeremy Lin has thrived with the Hornets in his role off the bench, but if he declines his player option for next season, which is worth $2.1MM, it may be difficult for Charlotte to bring him back, Bobby Marks of the Vertical on Yahoo Sports writes. Lin is one of many players with looming contract decisions, as Chuck Myron of Hoops Rumors details.
- The Erie BayHawks of the D-League have waived Magic camp invitee Melvin Ejim, Chris Reichert of Upside Motor tweets. Ejim will sign with Reyer Venezia in Italy, according to Emiliano Carchia of Sportando.
- The Clippers have recalled C.J. Wilcox from the Canton Charge, according to the Clippers website.
The trade deadline underwhelmed this season, but a robust buyout market followed, and the effects of the changes linger. Hoops Rumors has taken a team-by-team look at the financial ramifications of all the movement. We examined the Southwest, Pacific, Central, Northwest and Atlantic divisions earlier, and we’ll conclude with the Southeast Division:
Hawks
Atlanta didn’t make the sort of landmark trade involving Jeff Teague, Al Horford of Dennis Schröder that reports suggested the Hawks might, but they made a swap that saved a bit for this season and next and later put the savings toward a buyout market signing of Kris Humphries. The Hawks shed a combined $384,601 in money against the cap when they sent out Justin Holiday and Shelvin Mack for Kirk Hinrich, and even though Chicago took responsibility for Hinrich’s $141,068 trade bonus, Atlanta’s real savings came to less than that $384,601 figure, since the players involved had already received the majority of their paychecks from the teams that had them before the deadline. The swap was more about moving off Holiday’s $1,015,696 guaranteed salary for next season. That gives the Hawks slightly more cap flexibility, reducing their commitments to about $51.7MM for 2016/17, but it also provided funding for Humphries’ $1MM salary, an above-minimum amount that came via a prorated portion of the room exception.
Heat
Perhaps no team had a wilder financial ride through the deadline and buyout season than the Heat did, ducking the tax line with three salary–shedding trades, going back over to sign Joe Johnson, and finally slipping back beneath the tax threshold when they worked a buyout with the injured Beno Udrih, an arrangement that raised eyebrows. Miami began $5,627,059 above the tax threshold as deadline week got underway. Two days before the deadline, the Heat artfully constructed a three-team deal that allowed them to exchange Chris Andersen‘s $5MM salary for Brian Roberts‘ $2,854,940 pay without having Memphis or Charlotte take back too much incoming salary for matching purposes. That still left them millions into the tax, so they pulled off the Jarnell Stokes deal with the Pelicans on the day of the deadline, sending out one of the vestiges of the early-season Mario Chalmers trade along with $721,300 cash for a phantom second-round pick. That cash was essentially the fee that New Orleans charged for agreeing to pay Stokes’ remaining salary, and it represented all the money the Heat had left to trade, by rule. Miami had already spent the rest of its $3.4MM allotment in the Zoran Dragic and Shabazz Napier deals, meaning the Heat had to find another way to pull off their second deadline-day trade.
Fortunately for them, the Trail Blazers valued Roberts as someone worth having on their roster, and his contract helps them toward the salary floor. So, they were willing to give up $75K for Roberts, an amount of cash less than the financial benefit of absorbing his contract for salary-floor purposes, and the Heat kicked in their 2021 second-rounder. That left Miami $218K below the tax, and it seemed the Heat could declare victory after a season-long effort to avoid repeat-offender penalties. All they had to do was wait until March 6th to sign anyone, and they’d be OK.
Miami was not content to sit out the buyout market, however. The Heat scored the prize of buyout season on February 27th, signing Joe Johnson that day to a prorated minimum salary contract and sending themselves back over the tax by $136,106. Thus, it was time for team president Pat Riley to once more work his magic.
It remains unclear what convinced Udrih to forfeit $90K of his salary in a buyout deal when the right foot injury expected to sideline him until late May made it unlikely he’d recoup that money through signing with another team. It’s conceivable that Riley made Udrih promises about a new contract later on, though that would be against the rules, and it’s likely the reason why teams around the league scrutinized the Udrih buyout. Still, the Heat didn’t get all that they might have wanted, since the failure of the Sixers or Blazers to claim Udrih off waivers, a move that would have helped them toward the salary floor, left Miami just $46,106 under the tax. That’s not enough to sign anyone until next month, short-circuiting the apparent mutual interest between the Heat and Marcus Thornton, who went to the Wizards instead, as we touch on below.
Hornets
Somewhat remarkably, all of the four players involved in the three-team trade that brought Courtney Lee to Charlotte are on expiring contracts. The Hornets simply absorbed an extra $1,618,620 in cap hits for this season, the equivalent of the difference between Lee’s salary and the combined salaries of Brian Roberts and P.J. Hairston, and the $542,714 cash Charlotte received in the deal essentially wipes out the real monetary cost, since Memphis already gave Lee most of his paychecks. Charlotte has since poured a little more money into this season, signing Jorge Gutierrez to a pair of 10-day contracts and a subsequent contract that Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders confirms is a prorated minimum-salary deal for just the rest of this season. The total expenditure on Gutierrez, with his 10-day contracts and rest-of-season deal put together, is a paltry $300,899, a figure that, like the trade, doesn’t touch the team’s cap flexibility for the summer ahead.
Magic
The primary asset Orlando scored at the deadline was cap flexibility for this summer, sloughing off $23,793,029 from next season’s guaranteed salary commitments, a chunk almost large enough to represent a middle-tier max slot by itself. Less widely noted was the team’s creation of a $8,193,029 trade exception for Channing Frye‘s salary, the league’s second largest such exception behind only Cleveland’s newly created $9,638,554 Anderson Varejao trade exception. It would disappear should the Magic officially open cap room this summer, as expected, but it remains a valuable tool that Orlando can use to accommodate trades around the draft. It appears the Magic already used a small portion of it to claim Chris Copeland‘s $1.15MM salary off waivers last month in a move that helped them reach the salary floor.
Wizards
Markieff Morris could ultimately prove a bargain, given a contract that’s below the market value his production from previous seasons would suggest, but this season was a disaster for him in Phoenix, and Washington paid dearly to trade for him, adding salary for both the present and the future while also relinquishing a protected first-round pick. The $1.37MM difference between the salary for Morris and the combined salaries of DeJuan Blair and Kris Humphries doesn’t matter much because all three already received most of their pay from the teams they were with before the trade. The greater concern is the $24MM over the next three years that’s coming Morris’ way, and particularly the $7.4MM he’ll see next season, when the Wizards would love to have Kevin Durant playing alongside him. The salary Morris makes for next season is not enough to knock Washington out of the projected cap flexibility necessary to afford a max contract for Durant, even with Bradley Beal‘s cap hold, but the trade is still a long-term bet on a player who regressed disconcertingly this year amid constant trade rumors.
Washington wasn’t done spending, scoring J.J. Hickson in the buyout market on a prorated minimum-salary deal and later doing the same with Marcus Thornton, who serves as an injury replacement for the waived Gary Neal. That’s an extra $473,638 for this season. Still, the Wizards elected not to spend their disabled player exception left over from Martell Webster‘s injury, allowing it to expire last week. That’s no surprise, since the Wizards are only $448,438 shy of the tax line after their recent spree.
The Basketball Insiders salary pages were used in the creation of this post.
Kings center DeMarcus Cousins took another verbal swipe at coach George Karl, tweets Marc J. Spears of Yahoo Sports. After being suspended for Friday’s game following a tirade directed at Karl, Cousins remained combative following tonight’s loss to the Jazz. “That wasn’t a suspension from the organization,” Cousins said. “That was a suspension from the head coach.” Their ongoing battle has led many to speculate that neither will be in Sacramento next season.
There’s more tonight from around the basketball world:
- Veteran guard Kirk Hinrich is probably looking at a short stay with the Hawks, tweets Chris Vivlamore of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Coach Mike Budenholzer said Dennis Schröder will be the backup point guard, and it’s not in the “plans” to use Hinrich in that role any more. The 35-year-old soon-to-be free agent to be has appeared in just three games since coming to Atlanta from the Bulls in a deadline-day trade.
- Josh Richardson is shaping up as a major bargain for the Heat, writes Ethan Skolnick of The Miami Herald. He has settled into Miami’s rotation and now trails only the Sixers‘ Richaun Holmes in minutes played among 2015 second-round picks. Richardson is signed through 2017/18 and will make a little less than $875K next season.
- Anderson Varejao is still adjusting to the idea of not being with the Cavaliers, writes Jason Lloyd of The Akron Beacon-Journal. After 12 years in Cleveland, Varejao was shipped to the Blazers in a deadline-day trade, and he signed with the Warriors after Portland released him. “If you told me at the start of the season I’d be here, I never would’ve believed it,” he said. “With my contract, how could anyone have predicted this?”
- The Warriors were honored as the“Best Analytics Organization” at this year’s MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. The Chicago Blackhawks, Houston Astros and FC Midtjylland, a Danish soccer team, were the other finalists for the award.
- The Hornets have assigned rookie guard Aaron Harrison to Erie of the D-League. Harrison is averaging just 4.3 minutes in 16 games with Charlotte, along with 0.8 points and 0.6 rebounds.
FRIDAY, 8:18am: The signing is official, the team announced.
THURSDAY, 12:28pm: The Hornets will sign Jorge Gutierrez to a contract that covers the rest of the season, a source tells Rick Bonnell of the Charlotte Observer (Twitter link). The signing will take place Friday, according to Bonnell, after Gutierrez’s second 10-day contract expires tonight. Most signings that take place this time of the year are for the prorated minimum salary, which would give Gutierrez about $190K, though Charlotte still has its prorated mid-level exception worth about $3.5MM.
Regardless of the terms, the 27-year-old point guard is apparently set to become the 15th Hornets player signed through at least the end of the season, closing off the team’s roster flexibility. That’s even though he’s totaled only 14 minutes across three games so far and hasn’t appeared in Charlotte’s last three contests. He performed well in his sharply limited playing time, making every shot he took as he racked up nine points, three assists and two turnovers. Hornets coach Steve Clifford has frequently praised him, a signal that Gutierrez was likely to stick, Bonnell observed Wednesday (Twitter link).
Once the signing becomes official, it’ll be the third year in a row that Gutierrez will have followed two 10-day contracts with a deal for the rest of the season, as our 10-Day Contract Tracker shows. The contracts he signed for the rest of the 2013/14 season with the Nets and the rest of the 2014/15 season with the Bucks were multiyear arrangements, but both teams ultimately waived him before those deals ran to term. It’s not immediately clear whether Gutierrez will have multiple seasons on his latest pact with the Hornets. Charlotte faces uncertainty after this season, with Nicolas Batum and Al Jefferson headed to free agency and $46MM in guaranteed salary already committed against a salary cap expected to fall between $90MM and $95MM.