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Northwest Notes: Jazz, Mudiay, Blazers

July 25th, 2015 at 4:00pm CST by Will Joseph

The Jazz have a logjam at point guard behind Dante Exum that they must sort out prior to next season’s opener, Randy Hollis of the Deseret News reports. The trio of Trey Burke, Bryce Cotton and Raul Neto could be fighting it out for two roster spots during training camp, though GM Dennis Lindsey indicated that it’s possible the team could carry four point guards into next season, Hollis continues. Cotton’s quickness and entertaining style make him a candidate to be the second-stringer and displace Burke, a lottery pick whose shooting issues have pushed him to the bench, Hollis adds. The logjam could be broken by trading Burke, who is rumored to be on the block and doesn’t seem to fit coach Quin Snyder’s system, Hollis concludes.

In other news around the Northwest Division:

The Nuggets’ lottery pick Emmanuel Mudiay will be the starter at point guard, Christopher Dempsey of the Denver Post opines. While Denver has a safety net in veteran Jameer Nelson, it’s clear that the Nuggets are committed to making Mudiay their floor leader in his rookie season, Dempsey adds. The only concerns are monitoring his workload and allowing him to work through his mistakes, something Nuggets GM Tim Connelly addressed with Dempsey. “We don’t want to put too much pressure on him,” Connelly said. “He’s a 19-year-old kid. We saw some good in summer league and we also saw some bad. I thought that he struggled shooting the ball. We’ve got to improve his free throw line percentage. But I think you see things like positional size, natural playmaking ability, and kind of the will and the approach to be great that excites us.”
Blazers coach Terry Stotts spent a sizable portion of the summer league evaluating five players under contract with the team — Allen Crabbe, Noah Vonleh, Luis Montero, Pat Connaughton and Tim Frazier — and was particularly pleased with Crabbe and Vonleh, Mike Richman of The Oregonian writes. The Blazers added nine new players and are entering a transition season after LaMarcus Aldridge‘s departure. Portland does have some young and athletic talent, however, which has Stotts optimistic, Richman adds.

Dana Gauruder contributed to this post.

Northwest Notes: Lawson, Contract Details, Exum

July 22nd, 2015 at 9:31pm CST by Eddie Scarito

Nuggets team president Josh Kroenke told Marc J. Spears of Yahoo! Sports that the team had been privately trying to help Ty Lawson with his drinking issues for the past couple of years and that there had been problems for a long time. Kroenke indicated that he had repeated conversations with Lawson about his struggles, and noted that Lawson often said he would attempt to fix his issues but he could never fully shake them, Spears adds. Lawson was recently traded to the Rockets.

“He always had an affinity for burning the candle at both ends,” Kroenke said. “We want to give our players freedom to be young guys as well. We’re not going to be drill sergeants. But we want our guys to be able to handle their personal lives on their own. Ty … there were times when he was better than others. But the problems have been there for several years, going back to when we were having a lot of on-court success. I don’t want to go back too far. There were just a lot of times where you were at practice and you just know. You could smell it. You know there is probably deeper issues than he would probably let on.”

Here’s more out of the Northwest Division:

GM Tim Connelly said it was a difficult choice for the Nuggets to trade Lawson, Christopher Dempsey of The Denver Post writes. “It was a tough day,” said Connelly. “Ty was a huge part of our success here. He’s certainly one of the really talented lead guards. Sometimes a change of scenery is best for both parties. Where we were, it made sense to make the move.“
Raul Neto‘s three-year pact with the Jazz will see him earn $900K for the 2015/16 season, $937,800 the following season, and $1,014,746 during the 2017/18 campaign, Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders tweets. Joe Ingles‘ two-year deal with Utah will pay him $2.150MM for each season, Pincus adds.
Al-Farouq Aminu‘s contract with the Blazers will pay him $8,042,995 this season, $7,680,956 in 2016/17, $7,319,035 the following year, and $6,957,105 in 2018/19, Pincus relays (on Twitter). Ed Davis‘ three-year deal will pay him $6,980,802, $6,666,667, and $6,352,531 respectively, notes Pincus.
Jazz point guard Dante Exum knows that he needs to improve his outside shooting if he hopes to emerge as a star in the NBA, Moke Hamilton of Basketball Insiders writes. “I think just the consistency of it, being straight, being on target, even if I’m not making them—as long as it’s still a good looking shot and it feels good,” Exum said regarding the progress that he has made over the summer. “I think that’s the most important thing. … Once it gets into the game and I start playing one-on-one and five-on-five that I get that carryover.”

Hoops Rumors Glossary: Renegotiations

July 22nd, 2015 at 10:29am CST by Chuck Myron

Fans often wonder if NBA Team X can renegotiate its contract with Player Y, as is common practice in the National Football League. The answer is almost always no, and it’s a firm no if the follow-up question is whether the sides can renegotiate the value of the contract downward. But, renegotiations are allowed to make the contract more lucrative, and they can happen as long as a specific set of circumstances are in place, as the Nuggets have proven this month.

Denver renegotiated its contract with Wilson Chandler as part of their deal on an extension. The move lifted Chandler’s salary for this coming season from close to $7.172MM to more than $10.449MM. Danilo Gallinari is reportedly set for a similar renegotiation simultaneous to an extension, taking his salary for 2015/16 from more than $11.559MM to about $14MM. Chandler was the first player to renegotiate his contract since the existing collective bargaining agreement went into place in 2011, and Gallinari is poised to become the second. It might be a while before we see the third. No player aside from Gallinari is eligible for a renegotiation, as former Nets executive Bobby Marks points out (Twitter link), and that speaks to just how stringent the restrictions on them are.

Only contracts that cover four or more seasons can be renegotiated, and rookie scale contracts, which run four seasons, can’t be renegotiated, either. Renegotiations can only occur after the third anniversary of a contract signing, extension or previous renegotiation, if the previous renegotiation lifted the salary in any season by 4.5% or more. Teams can’t renegotiate any contracts if they’re over the cap, and they can only increase the salary in the current season by the amount of cap room that they have. Renegotiations can’t happen as part of a trade, and if a player waives a portion of his trade kicker to facilitate a trade, as Roy Hibbert did earlier this month, he’s ineligible to renegotiate his contract for the next six months. Teams can renegotiate contracts once the July Moratorium ends, but not after the end of February.

A further set of rules restrict just how much can change in a renegotiation. The raises for any seasons that follow the first renegotiated season in a contract are limited to 7.5%. That’s also true of salary decreases, though if a renegotiation happens simultaneous to an extension, as was the case with Chandler and will likely be the case with Gallinari, the player’s salary can drop by as much as 40% from the last season of the existing contract to the first season of the extension. That won’t happen for either Chandler or Gallinari, each of whom is set to see more money in 2016/17 than in 2015/16. Also, only renegotiations that happen in conjunction with an extension may contain signing bonuses.

All of this helps make renegotiations as rare as they are. However, with the salary cap projected to surge beginning next season, and surge again for 2017/18, more teams will have cap room, one of the necessary elements for amending contracts. Conceivably, that’ll open more doors for renegotiations, as well as veteran extensions, which are also rare under the current collective bargaining agreement. Teams can entice players they want to keep with added salary this way, and prevent them from hitting the open market. The rules are subject to change if the union, the owners or both exercise their mutual option to end the labor agreement in 2017, but in the meantime, the power to renegotiate will continue as an obscure but sometimes useful tool for roster building.

Note: This is a Hoops Rumors Glossary entry. Our glossary posts will explain specific rules relating to trades, free agency, or other aspects of the NBA’s Collective Bargaining Agreement. Larry Coon’s Salary Cap FAQ was used in the creation of this post.

And-Ones: Labor Negotiations, NBPA, Lawson

July 21st, 2015 at 10:39pm CST by Eddie Scarito

Many agents don’t see reason for the union to opt out of the collective bargaining agreement in 2017, in part because of the influx of billions of dollars in new revenue and in part because the league would try to negotiate a deal worse for players than the one they’d be opting out of, Bleacher Report’s Howard Beck details. Some sources indicate to Beck that as many as a dozen teams are losing money. Both the owners and the union have the right to opt out of the agreement, but an increasing number of people on both sides believe a pitched battle over labor issues won’t take place, Beck hears. The league projects that the average salary by 2016/17 will be $7.5MM, a 44% increase from 2010/11, Beck writes in the same story.

Here’s more from around the league:

The National Basketball Players Association is studying ways to use the $57,298,826 shortfall coming their way from the owners as a result of the failure of 2014/15 salaries to add up to the required percentage of basketball related income, reports Ken Berger of CBSSports.com. The union will discuss using part of it to fund health care costs for retired players and decide how to divvy up the rest among active players, as Berger details.
The union will distribute among affected players a $5.3MM settlement in a lawsuit against the state of Tennessee over its “jock tax” that requires players on visiting teams going against the Grizzlies to fork over sums to the state, Berger adds in the same piece. The tax, which ends after this season, had perhaps its most profound effect on players who signed 10-day contracts, and the Tennessee legislature used data from our 10-Day Contract Tracker as it considered the tax’s eventual repeal.
Nuggets team president Josh Kroenke discussed Ty Lawson in the wake of the point guard being dealt to the Rockets, Marc J. Spears of Yahoo! Sports relays. “We did our best to try to help Ty. I’m excited to see he is embracing the first step of the process to get better,” Kroenke said. “I hope this is a good thing for Ty the person. There is no guarantees. Sometimes you need to hear it from a different person. With Jameer Nelson and Emmanuel Mudiay we’re excited about the future. We’re excited to turn the page and move on even if the [trade] value wasn’t equal,” Kroenke continued. “There wasn’t a lot of teams [interested]. Houston was in a position where it could put them over the top. We’re fully aware of that.“
The two guaranteed years in No. 33 pick Jordan Mickey‘s four-year, $5MM contract with the Celtics are worth a combined $2.4MM, reports Steve Bulpett of the Boston Herald.

Chuck Myron contributed to this post.

Nuggets Still Interested In Sergio Rodriguez?

July 21st, 2015 at 2:40pm CST by Chuck Myron

2:40pm: There’s no truth to the latest report linking Rodriguez to the Nuggets, David Pick of Eurobasket.com tells Hoops Rumors.

8:33am: The Nuggets have been trying for weeks to lure four-year NBA veteran Sergio Rodriguez back from overseas, reports Javier Maestro of Encestando (translation via HoopsHype). Jesus Perez Ramos of Mundo Deportivo reported a month ago that Denver was one of three NBA teams eyeing the point guard who last played in the league during the 2009/10 season. Rodriguez confirmed soon after that report that he was considering an NBA comeback, but David Pick of Eurobasket.com wrote just last week that Rodriguez was staying in Spain despite talks with an NBA Western Conference team, as Real Madrid fought to keep him.

The buyout clause in Rodriguez’s deal with Real Madrid reportedly requires 2 million euros, or about $2.178MM in today’s dollars. It’s an amount that Rodridguez late last month referred to as reasonable, though the Nuggets or any other NBA team could effectively only pay $625K toward it. That jibes with a report in June from Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports, who wrote that the buyout was not expected to be an obstacle.

NBA teams see Rodriguez as an elite backup point guard, Wojnarowski wrote then. The Nuggets officially traded Ty Lawson to the Rockets on Monday, but they still have the newly re-signed Jameer Nelson, No. 7 overall pick Emmanuel Mudiay and Erick Green to play at the point. Green’s salary is non-guaranteed through August 1st. Denver can open up about $11MM in cap space if it waives Kostas Papanikolaou‘s non-guaranteed salary, too.

Rodriguez, the 27th overall pick in 2006, spent his first three seasons playing for the Blazers before finishing up with the Kings and Knicks. He averaged 4.3 points, 2.9 assists and 1.3 turnovers in 13.2 minutes per game over his NBA career.

Do you think Rodriguez belongs in the NBA? Leave a comment to let us know.

Nuggets Expected To Re-Sign Darrell Arthur

July 21st, 2015 at 1:04pm CST by Chuck Myron

The Nuggets are expected to re-sign Darrell Arthur, NBA sources tell Christopher Dempsey of The Denver Post. The team and the Jerry Hicks client reportedly engaged in productive talks at the start of free agency, but the Clippers later emerged as a team with which Arthur apparently shared mutual interest. The Pistons and Wizards were interested, too, as Dempsey reported at the beginning of the month.

Denver renounced its Bird rights to Arthur, but Dempsey indicates that the Nuggets are set to use some of the cap flexibility they reaped in the Ty Lawson trade to facilitate a deal with the power forward. The Nuggets can open about $11MM in room if they waive the non-guaranteed contracts of Kostas Papanikolaou and Erick Green and refrain from formally signing Emmanuel Mudiay and from making their reported deal with Will Barton official, so that their cap holds remain low. They won’t need all of that space for Arthur, but the Nuggets are expected to sign Danilo Gallinari to an extension this week, as Dempsey also reports, and if that’s a renegotiation and extension in mold of Denver’s new Wilson Chandler pact, it would take up some of that cap flexibility.

A new deal with Arthur would leave the Nuggets poised to have 15 guaranteed contracts on the books once the Barton and Mudiay signings take place. Arthur has been consistent in his two seasons with Denver, averaging 6.2 points and 3.0 rebounds in 17.1 minutes per game over that time.

Is keeping Arthur the right choice for the Nuggets, or should they seek out another free agent power forward? Let us know in the comments.

Nuggets Waive Pablo Prigioni

July 20th, 2015 at 4:26pm CST by Eddie Scarito

JULY 20TH, 4:26pm: The Nuggets have waived Prigioni, ESPN.com’s Marc Stein tweets. Denver confirmed the move in its press release on the Lawson trade.

JULY 19TH, 9:13pm: The Nuggets intend to waive newly acquired point guard Pablo Prigioni, TNT’s David Aldridge reports (Twitter link). Prigioni is being sent to Denver as part of the Ty Lawson deal. The Nuggets appear to be committing to turning the team over to 2015 first-rounder Emmanuel Mudiay with today’s moves.

Prigioni’s salary of $1,734,572 is set to become fully guaranteed if he remains on the roster past Monday, as is shown by our schedule of contract guarantee dates. Denver would only be on the hook for $440K, the amount of Prigioni’s partial guarantee, by waiving him.

What’s next for the 38-year-old from Argentina is unclear. He’ll likely draw offers from overseas, and the Cavaliers, who were reportedly trying to acquire Prigioni at last season’s trade deadline, could potentially look to him as an alternative to Matthew Dellavedova, who is still unsigned, though that is merely my speculation.

In three NBA seasons Prigioni has averaged 3.8 points, 1.9 rebounds, and 3.0 assists to go with a slash line of .437/.398/.872.

Rockets Acquire Ty Lawson

July 20th, 2015 at 4:25pm CST by Chuck Myron

Courtesy of USA Today Sports Images

JULY 20TH, 4:25pm: The Nuggets have waived Prigioni, and the deal is official, Denver announced in a press release. In a condition of the trade, Lawson has agreed to make the 2016/17 season, the final year of his contract, non-guaranteed, sources tell Grantland’s Zach Lowe (Twitter link). As part of the deal, the Nuggets receive cash considerations, Mark Berman of Fox 26 Houston tweets. The press release from the Rockets notes that it’s their own lottery-protected 2016 pick going to Denver.

SUNDAY, 8:16pm: The Rockets have reached a deal with the Nuggets that will send Ty Lawson to Houston, reports Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports (Twitter link). Marc Stein of ESPN.com had tweeted just moments earlier that the sides were deep in talks. Kostas Papanikolaou, Pablo Prigioni, Joey Dorsey, Nick Johnson and a protected 2016 first-round pick go to Denver, Wojnarowski adds (All Twitter links). Houston will receive a 2017 second-round pick in addition to Lawson, as Wojnarowski also reports (on Twitter). The first-rounder going to Denver is lottery-protected, and the second-rounder headed to Houston is unprotected, tweets Jonathan Feigen of the Houston Chronicle. The move, when it becomes official, will bring an end to Lawson’s tenure with the Nuggets even though GM Tim Connelly and coach Michael Malone both expressed their support for the troubled point guard in recent days.

Chris Mannix of SI.com last week identified the Rockets as a team with interest in the point guard even in the wake of his latest DUI-related arrest, which came Tuesday morning in Los Angeles. It was his second such arrest in six months. Lawson entered a 30-day residential treatment program on Saturday.

Houston made more sense as a Lawson suitor than the Pistons or the Lakers, the two other teams Mannix identified in his report from last week, since both Detroit and L.A. made major investments in point guards this summer. The Pistons agreed to re-sign Reggie Jackson for $80MM and the Lakers drafted D’Angelo Russell No. 2 overall. The Lakers indeed made a determined push, but the Nuggets preferred what Houston offered, Stein reports (on Twitter). Rockets re-signed Patrick Beverley, but only for $23MM over four years. Beverley and Lawson now figure to compete for minutes.

The Kings and Nuggets reportedly spoke about Lawson prior to the draft, but Sacramento apparently wasn’t willing to give up the No. 6 pick in exchange for him in large measure because of the 27-year-old’s off-court issues. By contrast, Lawson’s talent appears to have convinced Houston it’s worth taking a shot on him, as he’s coming off a career-high 9.6 assists per game.

The trade nonetheless carries financial consequences for the Rockets. Lawson’s contract calls for him make more than $12.404MM this season and in excess of $13.213MM in 2016/17, and the exchange as reported so far will push Houston over the $84.74MM luxury tax threshold by about $500K, according to former Nets executive Bobby Marks (Twitter link). The Rockets have until the end of the regular season to go under that line and avoid paying the tax. Houston faces a hard cap of $4MM above the tax line if it signs No. 32 pick Montrezl Harrell to a contract that covers more than two seasons at the minimum salary, as Marks also points out (on Twitter). The swap also means the Rockets aren’t in line to open cap space next summer, Marks adds (Twitter link).

The Nuggets meanwhile go under the cap with the deal and are set to open an estimated $46MM in cap space next summer, Marks tweets. Papanikolaou’s salary of nearly $4.798MM for this coming season is non-guaranteed, and Prigioni’s salary of almost $1.735MM carries only a $440K partial guarantee. Dorsey’s pay of about $1.015MM and Johnson’s approximately $845K salary are fully guaranteed, but they don’t make much of a dent in the Nuggets payroll.

The most significant on-court effect for Denver is that No. 7 overall pick Emmanuel Mudiay, also a point guard, has a clear shot to lead the team. The Nuggets re-signed Jameer Nelson, who seems to have a decent shot to begin the coming season as a starter, but Mudiay is clearly the team’s future at the position, and Malone had no shortage of enthusiasm about his play during summer league, tweets Marc J. Spears of Yahoo! Sports.

Did the Nuggets get a fair return for Lawson, considering the circumstances? Leave a comment to have your say.

Fallout From/Reaction To Ty Lawson Deal

July 20th, 2015 at 1:47pm CST by Chuck Myron

Ty Lawson‘s drinking habit had concerned teams even when he entered the NBA, according to Grantland’s Zach Lowe, who hears from several sources who say that it helped dissuade the Celtics from trading for him while they were in talks with the Nuggets before the February deadline. The video that depicts him smoking from a hookah and predicting that the Nuggets would trade him to the Kings as he watched Denver select Emmanuel Mudiay in the draft was a turn-off for potential suitors, too, Lowe writes. Lowe and others have more on the trade agreement, as we’ll pass along here:

The Lakers were the only team other than the Rockets to express interest in Lawson shortly before the deal, according to Lowe, though Chris Mannix of SI.com heard the Pistons also did.
Nick Johnson, one of the players heading to the Nuggets, didn’t get along with the coaching staff at the Rockets D-League affiliate while on assignment last season, several league sources told Lowe.
The Nuggets face a scramble to complete the trade before the close of business today so that they can waive Pablo Prigioni, as they reportedly intend to do, before his partial guarantee of $440K becomes a full guarantee of nearly $1.735MM, as former Nets executive Bobby Marks details. Teams can waive physicals and the requirement that the players report, but it would be up to the Rockets to do so with Lawson, Marks notes. Also, players in the final year of their respective contracts must certify a trade before it goes final, so Denver has to get in contact with Prigioni, Kostas Papanikolaou and Joey Dorsey, Marks explains (All four Twitter links).
Lawson is on board with the trade, agent Happy Walters told Mark Berman of Fox 26 Houston. “He’s excited,” Walters said. “I spoke to him once about it. He’s close with James [Harden], tight with Corey [Brewer], knows Trevor [Ariza] and Dwight [Howard] and is real excited. It’s an opportunity for him. He’s been deep in the playoffs before, but this is something he feels really good about.”
Houston’s new point guard has his baggage, but the Rockets didn’t relinquish much in the deal, making it a risk that the rigors of the Western Conference demand that they take, opines Tim Bontemps of the New York Post.
Lawson might not be the third star the Rockets have been seeking to complement Harden and Howard, but Michael Lee of The Washington Post points out that he’s the sort of facilitator that Harden has said he’d welcome.
What’s your reaction to the deal? Leave a comment to let us know.

And-Ones: Gallinari, Belinelli, Jazz, Harrellson

July 20th, 2015 at 10:35am CST by Chuck Myron

Danilo Gallinari confirmed to Italian media that he and the Nuggets are discussing an extension, as Dario Vismara of Rivista Ufficiale NBA tweets (translation via Sportando’s Orazio Cauchi). Christopher Dempsey of The Denver Post reported last week that the team intended to begin talks. The Nuggets can open about $6MM in cap room if they waive both Pablo Prigioni and Kostas Papanikolaou, whom they’re reportedly about to acquire in the deal for Ty Lawson, as former Nets executive Bobby Marks points out (on Twitter). They could use the cap room to give Gallinari a renegotiation and extension, as they did with Wilson Chandler, a maneuver that would be more lucrative for Gallinari than a simple extension. While we wait to see if that’s the route the Nuggets take, here’s more from around the NBA:

The Pelicans, Knicks, Clippers, Lakers, Spurs and Warriors all made offers to Marco Belinelli, who instead signed with the Kings, as he said at the same gathering of Italian media, Vismara notes (Twitter link).
The salary cap is set to surge next summer, but the 2016 free agent class doesn’t have much depth beyond Kevin Durant and LeBron James, leaving many teams with a conundrum as they face the prospect of a salary floor of some $81MM, as Marks examines for HoopsHype.
A work stoppage in 2017 is a “virtual certainty,” an executive from a team recently told Kevin Arnovitz of ESPN.com, in spite of commissioner Adam Silver’s suggestion to the contrary. Teams are worried that the new TV revenue somehow won’t allow them to keep up with surging payrolls, and clubs that have traditionally relied on revenue sharing figure to take a hit with fewer teams in line to pay into the luxury tax in seasons to come, as Arnovitz details.
The Jazz are drawing raves from coaches and GM around the league for their home-grown approach to rebuilding and hesitance to sign mid-tier free agents who’d only help the team make incremental gains, Arnovitz writes in the same piece.
Tim Reynolds of The Associated Press tells the story of a handful of summer leaguers who carry divergent credentials, including three-year NBA veteran Josh Harrellson, who’s willing to be flexible as he tries to make it back to the NBA now that he’s recovered from a career-threatening back injury. “I think I’ll get a camp invite,” Harrellson said. “My main goal is to get a contract out of this. Even if it’s a partial [guarantee], just something.”