Denver Nuggets Rumors | Hoops Rumors

Nuggets Waive Matt Janning

October 15th, 2015 at 12:27pm CST by Chuck Myron

12:27pm: The Nuggets have released Janning, the team announced via press release.

12:11pm: Janning has signed with Hapoel Jerusalem, the Israeli Winner League says via Twitter (hat tip to Sportando’s Orazio Cauchi). It’s a one-year deal with an option for a second, Pick tweets. The Nuggets haven’t announced anything about releasing Janning yet, and he’d have to clear waivers before any overseas deal could become official.

8:34am: The Nuggets will waive Matt Janning and his non-guaranteed deal, and the 27-year-old swingman is already in talks with Israel’s Hapoel Jerusalem, reports international journalist David Pick (Twitter link). Janning scored two points in about nine minutes of preseason action spread over a pair of games this month. The move will bring the Nuggets down to 18 players, including 15 with fully guaranteed pacts, as our roster count shows.

Janning’s contract with Denver is his first formal NBA deal since the 2010/11 season, when he was briefly on the Suns roster but didn’t manage to make it into a regular season game. He’s nonetheless been a frequent summer league participant, appearing on squads for the Suns, Celtics, Grizzlies, Pacers, Bulls, Nets and Timberwolves, though he didn’t play in an NBA summer league this year. Much of his career has taken place overseas, and he played for Anadolu Efes of Turkey last season.

He was a long shot to stick with the Nuggets for opening night, given the presence of those 15 guaranteed deals plus Erick Green, a holdover from last season who has a $100K partial guarantee. Christopher Dempsey of The Denver Post opined recently that Green, and not Nick Johnson, who has a fully guaranteed one-year veteran’s minimum salary, is in the lead for the final regular season roster spot. Oleksiy Pecherov is also in Nuggets camp on a non-guaranteed contract as he attempts an NBA comeback, and Denver has summer-leaguer Devin Sweetney on a non-guaranteed deal, too.

Who do you think will end up on the Nuggets regular season roster? Leave a comment to give your thoughts.

Northwest Notes: Mitchell, Mensah-Bonsu, Neto

October 14th, 2015 at 8:30pm CST by Eddie Scarito

Raptors coach Dwane Casey believes that Timberwolves interim head man Sam Mitchell will be an improved leader now that he is getting another head coaching opportunity, Jerry Zgoda of The Star Tribune writes. “Huge,” Casey said of the difference between the first and second times around as a coach. “You learn so much from your mistakes, more from your mistakes than the success you have. So I’m sure Sam has learned. I don’t know a coach who has been fired who felt like he should have been fired. I didn’t feel like I should have been fired in Minnesota. We were in the playoff hunt. You never feel that way. I made mistakes in Minnesota. Everybody does. But you learn from them, you grow from them. I’m sure Sam has. He’ll tell you that.”

Mitchell agrees with Casey’s assessment, and said that he is a better coach now because of his past failures, Zgoda notes. “You just try to get better,” Mitchell said. “You try to have more patience. You understand Rome wasn’t built in a day and you’re not going to win a championship in a day. You understand the process, the ups and downs a little bit better. You understand how difficult the league is. Everybody wants to win right now, but it just doesn’t work. You put in your time and you keep your players focused, understanding it’s a process.”

Here’s the latest from the Northwest Division:

Former NBA player Pops Mensah-Bonsu has officially retired from the game, Mark Woods of MVP247.com relays. The 32-year-old was in training camp with the Nuggets last year, but left the team due to personal reasons. Mensah-Bonsu appeared in 61 combined games over the course of his career and owns averages of 3.0 points and 3.0 rebounds to accompany a shooting line of .410/.000/.589.
Rookie Jazz point guard Raul Neto, who will be counted on in Utah’s rotation with Dante Exum expected to miss the season, is becoming more comfortable with the team’s system as well as life in the U.S., Mike Sorensen of The Deseret News writes. “Each game I’m getting more comfortable with the team and with the plays, with everything, so I’m feeling great,’’ Neto told Sorensen. “You always have somebody close to you, helping you. I really like it here.’’
With the departure of LaMarcus Aldridge via free agency this summer, Damian Lillard is poised to have big season, according to teammate C.J. McCollum, Jesse Blancarte of Basketball Insiders relays. “I just expect him to continue to do a lot of the things he has done in the past: being a good leader, orchestrating the offense, being aggressive like he has been and just being a killer,” McCollum said of Lillard. “I always joke with him and tell him this is just like when he was at Weber State only he’s got more help. He’s going to take on the bulk load of attention from an in-game standpoint and a media standpoint so a lot of pressure is going to be on him, but I think he’s ready for it. Offensively, he has all the tools to be an All-Star again….”

Western Notes: Rondo, West, Nuggets

October 14th, 2015 at 10:00am CST by Chuck Myron

It’s been barely two weeks since the start of training camp, but Kings coach George Karl has already had some run-ins with Rajon Rondo, the point guard said in a Q&A with Manny Vieites of Cowbell Kingdom (video link; scroll to 1:00 mark). Karl said this summer that he expected them to butt heads to some degree, notes Kurt Helin of ProBasketballTalk.

“It’s not been going too well,” Rondo said to Vieites. “We got into a couple of arguments the last couple of days, but hopefully we continue to talk and get better.”

It’s unclear what Rondo’s remark means for the Kings, but it’s not ideal, Grantland’s Zach Lowe observes (on Twitter). Rondo is signed for just one season, with a salary of $9.5MM. See more from the Western Conference:

The Spurs have a “mythological lure,” as David West put it in an interview with USA Today’s Sam Amick as he explained his decision to sign with San Antonio for the minimum salary. “I’ve been a Spurs fan my whole life, and having an opportunity and wanting to learn from [Tim] Duncan and Manu [Ginobili] and Tony [Parker] and obviously Coach [Gregg] Popovich and all his knowledge, I just felt like it was a good environment, and it was the best environment,” West said.
Erick Green appears to have shown enough during the offseason and training camp to convince the Nuggets to keep him, posits Christopher Dempsey of The Denver Post as he takes a crack at predicting the Nuggets lineups. Denver has 15 fully guaranteed pacts while Green has just a $100K partial guarantee. Nick Johnson, who came via the Ty Lawson trade and who possesses the smallest full guarantee at just more than $845K, isn’t in Dempsey’s lineup predictions, so ostensibly he’d be the one to go.
Turmoil seems to stalk the Kings, and the moves they made this summer don’t bode well for the long term, but Sacramento still has as much of a chance at the last playoff spot in the Western Conference as any of their competitors, opines Tim Bontemps of the New York Post.

And-Ones: Malone, Draft, D-League, Amerileague

October 13th, 2015 at 3:29pm CST by Chuck Myron

Michael Malone was an assistant coach on teams that featured LeBron James, Stephen Curry and Chris Paul, so he’s using that experience to draw the attention of rookie Emmanuel Mudiay, as Malone explains to Rusty Simmons of the San Francisco Chronicle. The new Nuggets head coach is getting a second chance to lead a team after the Kings fired him this past December, and Malone reiterated his feeling that the turmoil Sacramento endured after his dismissal served to validate the work that he and his staff had done.

“By the end of it, I looked like John Wooden,” Malone said to Simmons.

Malone will seek to right a franchise that had its share of upheaval last season. See more from around NBA circles:

UNLV is the latest school to organize a preseason showcase for NBA scouts, joining Kentucky and LSU, reports Jeff Borzello of ESPN.com (ESPN Now link). A handful of UNLV players are drawing looks from NBA personnel, Borzello says, but only Stephen Zimmerman, a 7’0″ freshman center, appears in the top 100 prospects for 2016 that Jonathan Givony compiles for DraftExpress or on Chad Ford’s ESPN.com Big Board.
The Timberwolves will speak with organizers in Omaha who say they’ve secured a commitment for a D-League franchise there at some point, but the Wolves would prefer their eventual one-to-one D-League affiliate be closer to Minneapolis, tweets Darren Wolfson of 1500 ESPN Twin Cities. The Wolves are less likely to end up with a D-League affiliate in the near future than any team except the Bulls, opines Adam Johnson of D-League Digest. Johnson identifies the Hornets as the team most likely to have its own D-League team soon, probably by the 2016/17 season.
The Amerileague, a startup domestic minor league with six teams, is handing out contracts worth as much as $50K per month, notes international journalist David Pick (Twitter link). That’s about twice as much as D-Leaguers in the top salary tier make for an entire season.

Northwest Notes: Gallinari, Kaman, Timberwolves

October 12th, 2015 at 9:35pm CST by Dana Gauruder

Danilo Gallinari will often move from small forward to power forward this season to take advantage of offensive skills, Pat Graham of the Associated Press reports. Gallinari played a lot of power forward for Italy at the EuroBasket tournament, where he averaged nearly 18 points a game, and new Nuggets coach Michael Malone plans to use the same tactic, Graham continues. “He’s 6’10”. He can handle the ball. He can play pick-and-roll. He can stretch the floor and shoot the 3,” Malone said in the story. “There’s not a lot he can’t do offensively.” Gallinari is eager to step into the role as a go-to guy, Graham adds. “I’ve always been trying to do that, since I came to Denver,” Gallinari told Graham. “That’s what I like to do. I feel good filling those shoes.”

In other news around the Northwest Division:

Veteran center Chris Kaman is unlikely to get much playing time this season, but he still believes he can serve a valuable role with the Trail Blazers, according to Mike Richman of The Oregonian. Kaman is behind Meyers Leonard, Mason Plumlee, Ed Davis and Noah Vonleh at the power forward and center spots, and Al-Farouq Aminu is also likely to get minutes at power forward, Richman continues. But Kaman feels like he can contribute in other ways, as he told Richman. “I still feel like I can provide a lot on or off the court for this team,” he said. “If my role is to be the guy that’s helping guys off the bench and I get a little bit of minutes here and there, I’m going to play as hard as I can.”
Nuggets point guard Jameer Nelson wants to go into coaching but he has no plans to retire at the moment, Christopher Dempsey of the Denver Post reports. He has already made an immediate impression on Malone with his mentoring skills. “I have the utmost confidence in Jameer Nelson as a leader,” Malone said to Dempsey. Nelson held a summertime team bonding session at his Philadelphia-area home and has been instructing rookie point guard Emmanuel Mudiay in camp, Dempsey adds.
Anthony Bennett decided to explore a buyout with the Timberwolves after he met with his agent, Jeff Schwartz, following his stint with Team Canada this summer, according to Jerry Zgoda of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Schwartz recommended the change of scenery since the Timberwolves had a logjam at power forward, the story continues. Bennett had other options, including the Trail Blazers, after he cleared waivers before signing with the Raptors.

Cavs Lead With 16 Free Agent Signings

October 12th, 2015 at 5:01pm CST by Chuck Myron

The Cavaliers have drawn plenty of attention the past few months for a free agent they haven’t signed, but even though Tristan Thompson lingers in free agency, Cleveland has taken care of more free agent business than any other team in the league during the 2015 offseason. They signed 16 free agents, three more than the Spurs, the team that recorded the next most free agent signings. The Cavs just made their latest signing this weekend, replacing Michael Dunigan with Dionte Christmas on the camp roster.

It might be easy to presume a direct correlation between free agent activity and success, given the teams at the very top and bottom of the list below. The Cavs and Spurs are strong bets to win their respective conferences this season, while the Jazz, Timberwolves and Sixers are nowhere near the title picture. The presence of the Warriors and Thunder on the bottom half of the list and the Kings and Nets close to the top debunk that theory, however. It has more to do with the fact that the Cavs had only four players signed for 2015/16 when they ended last season, while the Jazz had 13. Cleveland simply had more jobs to hand out.

Still, other factors are at play, since free agent signings don’t encompass draft picks, draft-and-stash signings, trades or waiver claims. The Trail Blazers made significant changes to their roster, but they did much of their work via trade instead of free agency. The Rockets had 10 players under contract on July 1st, but they still wound up making 11 free agent signings.

Here’s a look at the number of free agent signings for each team. Click the team’s name to see the names of each of their signees via our 2015 Free Agent Tracker.

Nuggets Pick Up Options on Harris, Nurkic

October 11th, 2015 at 12:49pm CST by Arthur Hill

The Nuggets have picked up third-year team options on Gary Harris and Jusuf Nurkic for the 2016/17 season, the team announced today in a press release. Both players were acquired in a draft-night trade with Chicago in 2014.

Both moves were likely, as our rookie scale option page indicates. Nurkic’s option is for $1,921,320 while Harris’ is for $1,655,880.

Harris, the 19th pick of the 2014 draft, averaged 3.4 points and 1.2 rebounds per game last season in 13.1 minutes of playing time. He has averaged 11.3 points while making five of 10 three-pointers in the Nuggets’ first three preseason games.

Nurkic, the 16th overall pick in 2014, made the NBA’s All-Rookie Second Team, averaging 6.9 points, 6.2 rebounds and 1.1 blocks. He started 27 games at center for the Nuggets last season.

And-Ones: Hood, Tskitishvili, Sterling, Rookies

October 11th, 2015 at 11:04am CST by Arthur Hill

Utah’s Rodney Hood impressed his coach with the way he reacted to a dose of NBA trash talking from the Lakers‘ Kobe Bryant, writes Jody Genessy of The Deseret News. In an exhibition game last week, Bryant reminded the second-year player that he was going up against one of the league’s all-time greats, listing a resume that includes 17 All-Star games and five NBA titles. Hood, on the other hand, is trying to carve out a role with the Jazz after averaging 8.7 points in 50 games during his rookie season, mostly as a backup. “I think Rodney just played like he was playing against another really, really good player,” said Quin Snyder. “The challenge that I like that I saw in that was that Kobe was really physical and that’s something that if you’ve haven’t (experienced), particularly in your second year, if you haven’t played against that toughness and that intensity, that it’s new.”

There’s more from around the basketball world:

Nikoloz Tskitishvili has signed a deal to play in China, tweets international journalist David Pick. Tskitishvili, who was waived by the Clippers last week, scored 13 points in his audition for the Fujian team. He signed a 48-hour deal, but both sides share an option to extend it (Twitter link). At age 32, Tskitishvili had been hoping to return to the NBA after being out of the league since 2006.
Former Clippers owner Donald Sterling has filed an appeal of the probate court decision that gave his wife, Shelly, control of the family trust as well as the authority to sell the team, tweets Ramona Shelburne of ESPNLosAngeles.com. A hearing has been set for October 28th after Sterling’s legal team asked the court to expedite his appeal of the probate case (Twitter link).
This season should feature a wide-open race for the Rookie of the Year trophy, writes Scott Howard-Cooper of NBA.com. The columnist names the Pistons‘ Stanley Johnson, the Nuggets‘ Emmanuel Mudiay and the Sixers‘ Jahlil Okafor as the early favorites, but says several other contenders could emerge.

And-Ones: Giannakis, Jennings, Nelson

October 10th, 2015 at 10:57pm CST by ChrisCrouse

Vaunted European coach Panagiotis Giannakis is looking for an NBA bench opportunity. He visited Bucks camp and has plans to visit the camps of the Pistons and Pacers, international journalist David Pick reports for Basketball Insiders. Giannakis coached the national team of Greece to a second place finish at the 2006 FIBA World Championship, which included a win over Team USA.

Here’s more from around the league:

Brandon Jennings will be a free agent at the end of the season, but Lang Greene of Basketball Insiders believes he could change teams before his current deal expires. The Pistons have talked up the Reggie Jackson and Jennings pairing, but Greene doubts the duo can coexist long-term. He argues that it comes down to the money. Detroit just invested $80MM in Jackson and it might not be feasible to retain Jennings at market value next offseason, which is why the team may opt to get something in return for the point guard rather than losing him for nothing.
Jameer Nelson‘s impact on the Nuggets goes beyond his play on the court, Christopher Dempsey of The Denver Post writes. Nelson has taken on the responsibility of leading the team and he is embracing his role. “To be a leader you have to be uncomfortable,” Nelson said. “You have to get extra shots up, you have to be early to be on time. You gotta hold yourself accountable, so then when you hold somebody else accountable they’re not looking at you with a side eye. [Instead] they’re like, ‘He’s doing it, he’s showing us.’ ” Nelson re-signed with the Nuggets for $13.5MM over three years this offseason.

Western Notes: Kroenke, Lillard, D-League

October 7th, 2015 at 10:28pm CST by Eddie Scarito

The National Football League gave its OK to Stan Kroenke’s plan to transfer ownership of the Nuggets to his wife, Ann Walton Kroenke, satisfying an NFL rule barring its owners from also owning another pro sports team in an NFL city, report Nathan Fenno and Sam Farmer of the Los Angeles Times. Kroenke’s son Josh, who already serves as Nuggets team president and is the team’s representative on the board of governors, will continue to run the Nuggets and the National Hockey League’s Colorado Avalanche, Fenno and Farmer add. Stan Kroenke owns the NFL’s St. Louis Rams.

Here’s more from the West:

Damian Lillard, with input from C.J. McCollum, organized a team getaway to San Diego for the Trail Blazers in an effort to draw together all the newcomers from an offseason of upheaval in Portland, writes Anne M. Peterson of The Associated Press. It furthers the notion that Lillard, who signed a five-year max extension this summer, has replaced LaMarcus Aldridge as the team’s central figure, Peterson writes. “It’s still going to take us time to get to know each other. It’s going to take more than a week in San Diego, or getting here early before camp,” Lillard said. “It’s going to take more than that. Being out together in the preseason, we’ll learn more about each other. … I think it’s about the growth, the process.”
The Spurs announced via a press release that Patrick Mutombo and A.J. Diggs have been hired as assistant coaches for their D-League affiliate, the Austin Spurs. “The additions of Patrick and AJ bring a wealth of NBA and player development experience to our team that will serve our group well moving forward,” said coach Ken McDonald. “We are fortunate to continue to attract strong candidates to join our coaching staff.”
The Mavericks‘ rotation at center is unsettled and while it’s not ideal, the team is counting on veteran big man Samuel Dalembert to contribute this season, Tim MacMahon of ESPNDallas.com writes. “Dalembert’s having a solid camp,” coach Rick Carlisle said after Tuesday night’s preseason contest against the Nuggets. “He came in a little bit out of shape. He’s working really hard to get himself where he needs to be. I thought his minutes tonight were positive.”

Chuck Myron contributed to this post.