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Stephen Curry To Miss Another Month, May Return In March

February 1st, 2020 at 5:13pm CST by Arthur Hill

Warriors star Stephen Curry will miss all 11 games in February and will be re-evaluated in four weeks, tweets Anthony Slater of The Athletic. Curry is making steady progress in his return from a broken hand, and the team is “hopeful” he can return in March. Curry has increased the intensity of his shooting routines without any issues, Slater adds.

Sources tell Connor Letourneau of The San Francisco Chronicle that Curry will meet with team doctors on February 29. He is targeting a return to the court sometime in early to mid-March, with the March 1 game against the Wizards a possibility depending on how his hand responds to continued treatment.

The Warriors insist that the potential of taking the league’s worst record into the lottery won’t factor into any decisions on Curry. At 10-39, they hold the top spot in our current Reverse Standings, three games ahead of the Knicks, Cavaliers and Hawks.

“We’re going to try to win every game that we can,” head coach Steve Kerr said recently. “I don’t think there’s a whole lot of value in doing anything else other than that.”

Golden State entered the season with hopes for the playoffs, but those were dashed when Curry broke his hand in an October 30 game. They are 9-36 since the injury, which puts them on pace to tie the worst record in franchise history, Letourneau notes.
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Kevon Looney Probable To Return For Warriors Tonight

February 1st, 2020 at 3:58pm CST by Alex Kirschenbaum

Warriors center Kevon Looney, who has missed 18 games with an abdominal strain, is set to return to the lineup tonight in a tilt against the Cavaliers, according to Connor Letourneau of the San Francisco Chronicle.

Slater reports that Looney will be coming off the bench in his return, and will be restricted to a 20-minute limit. The UCLA alum has averaged 2.6 PPG and 2.9 RPG in just 10.5 minutes over 10 games.

Looney has not appeared in a game for Golden State since a December 23 win against the Timberwolves. The 6’9″ big man signed a three-year, $15MM contract with the Warriors this past summer after having a career-best season in 2018/19. He averaged 6.3 PPG, 5.2 RPG, 1.5 APG and 0.7 BPG in just 18.5 minutes per contest for the Warriors en route to the team’s fifth consecutive Finals appearance (and Looney’s fourth).

The Warriors could use all the help they can get; they currently have the worst record in the NBA, a paltry 10-39.

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Doncic, Young, Zion Headline Rising Stars Rosters

January 31st, 2020 at 11:16am CST by Luke Adams

The NBA has officially announced the 20 rookies and sophomores who have been named to the league’s Rising Stars game for All-Star weekend. Those 20 players, selected by assistant coaches from around the league, will be divided into a U.S. Team and a World Team, as follows:

U.S. Team:

World Team:

Williamson’s inclusion is notable since he has appeared in just four games due to injuries. It’s not surprising that the NBA found a way to get him into the game, since he’s one of the most exciting prospects to enter the league in years, but it’s a tough break for youngsters who have been on the court since the fall for contenders, such as Sixers wing Matisse Thybulle. or Nuggets forward Michael Porter Jr.

Snubbed players like Thybulle, Porter, and others could eventually make their way into the Rising Stars game if players have to pull out due to injuries, or if All-Stars like Doncic and Young opt not to play in both events.

The Rising Stars game will take place in Chicago on Friday, February 14.

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NBA Revises Cap, Tax Projections For 2020/21

January 30th, 2020 at 3:15pm CST by Luke Adams

3:15pm: The NBA’s new projection is a $115MM salary cap and $139MM tax line, according to Wojnarowski (Twitter links). That’s not as significant a drop from the previous projection as some front offices feared, so it shouldn’t have a noticeable impact on teams’ plans at the deadline.

3:07pm: The NBA has informed teams that new projections for 2020/21’s salary cap and luxury tax threshold are on the way, according to Adrian Wojnarowski and Bobby Marks of ESPN. Those new numbers haven’t been revealed yet, but teams are expected to receive that info shortly in order to ensure they’re as informed as possible as they consider deadline trades.

When the NBA last updated its projection in September, it called for a $116MM cap and a $141MM tax line in 2020/21. Each of those numbers would represent a substantial jump up from the figures for 2019/20, which are $109.14MM (cap) and $132.627MM (tax).

However, those estimates were issued before Rockets general manager Daryl Morey published a tweet supporting protestors in Hong Kong. That tweet instigated a controversy between the NBA and China that cost the league sponsors and television partners. The ordeal is believed to have cost the NBA approximately $150-200MM, league sources told ESPN.

Although the cap is still expected to increase beyond this year’s figure, front office executives are preparing for a more modest jump, according to Wojnarowski and Marks, who hear that some teams believe the new projection could dip as far as $113MM. Tim MacMahon of ESPN tweets that some team executives have referred to the expected drop as the “Daryl Deduction.”

A smaller cap increase than expected may not have a massive impact in free agency, since most teams are expected to be over the cap anyway. Still, every dollar counts when it comes to creating cap flexibility and avoiding the tax. Wojnarowski and Marks point to the Celtics, Nets, Warriors, Rockets, and Sixers as teams that could be taxpayers in 2020/21 and would be on the hook for a larger bill if the tax threshold is a few million dollars lower than anticipated.

Players who have signed maximum-salary contract extensions that take effect for the 2020/21 season will also take note of the league’s new cap estimates, since it will have an impact on their projected earnings.

Sixers guard Ben Simmons and Nuggets guard Jamal Murray, for instance, signed maximum-salary extensions that will start at 25% of the cap next season, assuming neither player earns an All-NBA spot in 2019/20. When they signed those deals in July, the league was projecting a $117MM cap, which would have made them worth $169.65MM over five years. A $113MM cap would reduce their projected value to $163.85MM apiece.

Several other figures – including the rookie scale, mid-level exceptions, minimum salaries, and cash available in trades – are also linked to the percentage the salary cap increases from year to year and would be affected by an adjusted 2020/21 projection.

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GRIII Enjoying Career Year; WCS Trade Creates Opportunities For Spellman, Chriss

January 28th, 2020 at 8:55am CST by Luke Adams

The 2019/20 Warriors haven’t been the contender that Glenn Robinson III may have thought he was joining when he signed with the franchise last summer. However, the injuries that have derailed the team’s season have cleared a path to a major role for Robinson, who has started 44 games and averaged 31.8 minutes per game this season — both are easily career highs. The veteran tells Scott Agness of The Athletic that he’s appreciative of the opportunity he has received in Golden State.

“That 25- to 30-minute range a night, to be able to show what I can do and to showcase my skills and to do it with an organization as great as the Warriors, I think it’s everything I wanted in free agency,” Robinson said.

Robinson, whose 12.4 PPG, 4.8 RPG, .470 FG%, and 1.3 3PG are also career bests, signed a one-year, minimum-salary contract with the Warriors during the 2019 offseason. That modest deal makes him a candidate to be moved at the trade deadline, but even if he remains in Golden State this season, he’ll have the opportunity to consider offers from other teams this July. As he tells Agness, he wouldn’t mind sticking around beyond this season.

“Hopefully, it can be another great free agency for me and I would love to be back here,” the Warriors’ swingman said. “So we’ll see what happens.”

  • After trading Willie Cauley-Stein to Dallas, the Warriors have a chance to take an extended look at Omari Spellman and Marquese Chriss up front, writes Logan Murdock of NBC Sports Bay Area. Neither player is really a natural center, but they’re embracing the challenge of handling minutes at the five. “I’ve tried making a role off playing hard and doing the dirty work,” Chriss said. “I’m not the guy who is going to shoot 20 shots and get you 40 points. I’m gonna try and be that guy that is down low and banging, getting rebounds and setting screens.”
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NBA G League Assignments/Recalls: 1/27/20

January 27th, 2020 at 7:47pm CST by Dana Gauruder

Here are Monday’s G League assignments and recalls from around the league:

  • The Clippers recalled rookie forward Mfiondu Kabengele from their Agua Caliente affiliate, the team’s PR department tweets. Kabengele has averaged 19.2 PPG, 9.3 RPG and 1.9 BPG in 19 G League starts.
  • The Nets assigned Theo Pinson and Dzanan Musa to their Long Island affiliate, according to the G League transactions log. Pinson, a second-year guard, has appeared in 27 games with Brooklyn this season, averaging 4.4 PPG in 12.3 MPG. Musa, a second-year swingman, is averaging 4.3 PPG and 12.2 MPG as 32 appearances with the NBA club.
  • The Warriors recalled guard Jacob Evans III from their affiliate in Santa Cruz, according to a team press release. Evans has played two G League games this season. In 22 games with Golden State, he is averaging 4.4 PPG in 15.0 MPG.
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Mavs Acquire Willie Cauley-Stein From Warriors

January 25th, 2020 at 12:05pm CST by Dana Gauruder

JANUARY 25: The trade for Cauley-Stein is official, according to the Mavericks’ PR account (Twitter link). As expected, the team has waived Patton to open up the roster spot necessary to complete the deal.

JANUARY 24: The Mavericks are finalizing a deal to acquire center Willie Cauley-Stein from the Warriors, Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN tweets.

Golden State will receive a 2020 second-rounder from the Jazz, which Utah owed to Dallas, in return for the big man, according to The Athletic’s Shams Charania. The Warriors don’t own their own second-rounders from 2020-26 except for the 2022 draft, so this gives them another asset, Anthony Slater of The Athletic tweets.

The Mavericks will open up a roster spot once they complete a trade agreed upon with the Thunder in which they’ll receive center Justin Patton for forward Isaiah Roby and then waive Patton.

Dallas is using its $11.7MM trade exception to acquire Cauley-Stein acquired in the Harrison Barnes deal with the Kings last season. It’s needed since Cauley-Stein was signed with part of the non-tax mid-level exception, according to Marks (Twitter link). Golden State will get a $2.17MM trade exception out of the deal.

Dallas was seeking a rotation player to replace Dwight Powell, who suffered a season-ending Achilles injury. Cauley-Stein, who is making $2.18MM this season and holds a $2.29MM option on his contract for next season, fits that role at a modest cost. He’s averaging 7.9 PPG, 6.2 RPG and 1.2 BPG in 23.0 MPG for the Warriors.

The Warriors have plenty of monetary reasons to make this deal. The deal will save them $5.66MM on their luxury-tax bill, dropping it to $9.3MM, according to Bobby Marks of ESPN (Twitter link). Golden State, which will have two roster openings once the deal is completed, will also drop $2.57MM below the hard cap. The team will have two weeks to get back up to the league-mandated minimum of 14 players.

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NBA G League Assignments/Recalls: 1/23/20

January 23rd, 2020 at 9:22pm CST by ChrisCrouse

Here are today’s G League assignments and recalls from around the NBA:

  • The Warriors have assigned Jacob Evans to the Santa Cruz Warriors, the team announced on Twitter. Evans has appeared in 22 NBA contests this season.
  • The Jazz have recalled Juwan Morgan from the Salt Lake City Stars, per the G League’s assignment log. Morgan signed with Utah in late November and is not eligible to be traded before the deadline, as I mentioned in the franchise’s Trade Deadline Primer for SLAM Magazine Newswire.
  • Keldon Johnson has been recalled by the Spurs. Johnson was selected with the No. 29 overall pick in this year’s draft.
  • The Heat have sent Chris Silva to the G League, the team announced on its website. He’s expected to be back with the NBA club before Miami’s contest against Orlando on January 27.
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Burks Has Plenty Of Trade Value

January 22nd, 2020 at 9:46pm CST by Dana Gauruder
  • Alec Burks is the Warriors’ most valuable trade chip and the team is likely to make at least one deal before February’s deadline, Monte Poole of NBC Sports Bay Area relays. The versatile wing, who scored 33 points on Monday, is making just $2.32MM this season. Several teams in recent weeks have expressed interest in Burks, according to Poole.
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Checking In On NBA’s Projected Taxpayers For 2019/20

January 21st, 2020 at 12:12pm CST by Luke Adams

Following their cost-cutting trade with the Kings, the Trail Blazers no longer project to have the NBA’s highest tax bill for the 2019/20 season. That honor instead belongs to the Warriors, one of a small handful of teams that will be subject to the league’s more punitive repeater penalties if they’re in the tax at season’s end.

These numbers are fluid and will almost certainly change in the coming months, but here are the current projected luxury tax bills for teams this season, via ESPN’s Bobby Marks (Twitter link):

  • Golden State Warriors: $14.99MM
  • Portland Trail Blazers: $9.65MM
  • Miami Heat: $6.65MM
  • Oklahoma City Thunder: $2.3MM
  • Houston Rockets: $372K

As Marks point out, the projected payouts for non-taxpaying teams are lower than usual — based on the current figures, non-taxpayers would receive approximately $680K apiece (50% of the total tax payments, split among 25 teams). By contrast, non-taxpayers received about $3.1MM each in 2018/19.

This season looks like it could end up looking more like the 2016/17 campaign, which featured the lowest tax payouts of the decade due to the infamous ’16 cap spike. That cap spike left the Cavaliers and Clippers as the NBA’s only clubs in the tax for that year, resulting in payouts of about $507K apiece for the 28 non-taxpayers.

[RELATED: Recent History of NBA Taxpaying Teams]

The end-of-season payouts for non-taxpayers this season will actually probably end up being even lower than $680K. None of the five projected taxpayers listed above are more than about $6.2MM above the luxury tax threshold, so many of them have a path to potentially getting out of tax territory altogether.

The Thunder and Rockets, in particular, look like candidates to sneak below the tax threshold by moving low-cost trade chips like Justin Patton and Nene. The Blazers could theoretically get there too with a bigger deal involving a player like Hassan Whiteside. It’ll be more of a challenge for the hard-capped Warriors and Heat, but not impossible.

For every team that gets out of the tax, the amount of the league-wide tax payments at season’s end will decrease and the number of non-taxpaying clubs will increase, resulting in a smaller pot to be split among a greater number of franchises. In other words, no non-taxpaying NBA team should be counting on a major windfall from taxpayers at the end of the ’19/20 campaign.

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