In an interesting, in-depth profile of Willie Cauley-Stein for The San Francisco Chronicle, Connor Letourneau notes that the Hornets presented the free agent big man with a $9MM offer during the summer before he opted to sign a minimum-salary contract with the Warriors.
The Timberwolves are fuming over how the NBA handled the discipline for Joel Embiid and Karl-Anthony Towns, which stems from a mid-game scuffle between the two superstars last week, according to Jon Krawczynski of The Athletic.
Minnesota has expressed disapproval of the league’s decision to suspend both Embiid and Towns two games for multiple reasons, as noted by Krawczynski.
Firstly, team officials believe Embiid was the instigator of the scuffle, leading to Towns’ involvement. The franchise also touched on Embiid’s decision to leave the game with a bang upon his ejection, shadow-boxing and firing up the Philadelphia crowd while Towns exited the floor quietly.
And the last issue, one discussed heavily by fans across the league, relates to the league’s decision not to penalize Ben Simmons for his involvement in the altercation. Simmons was seen with his arms wrapped around the neck of Towns, causing many to believe he was attempting a rear-naked choke. The league ultimately viewed Simmons as a peacemaker.
“While we are disappointed in the league’s decision, we understand the magnitude of this unfortunate incident,” Wolves president of basketball operations Gersson Rosas said, according to Krawczynski. “The NBA is highly competitive and last night was a reflection of that. We support Karl and will move forward together as a group.”
Here are some other odds and ends from around the basketball world:
- The shaky starts from both the Nets and Warriors show Kevin Durant‘s tremendous on-court value even more, as detailed by Frank Isola of The Athletic. Golden State lost Durant in free agency this summer, with the 10-time All-Star choosing to take his talents to Brooklyn on a multi-year deal. Durant is expected to miss the rest of the 2019/20 season as he rehabs from a torn Achilles’ tendon, with the Nets currently struggling at 2-4.
- Free agent guard Dwight Buycks has agreed to a new deal with the Shenzhen Leopards in China, according to Emiliano Carchia of Sportando. Buycks averaged 20.5 points with the team last season.
- Jonathon Givony and Mike Schmitz of ESPN.com discuss the early contenders for the 2020 NBA Draft, including which prospects have the best chances of being selected in the lottery. ESPN revealed its early mock draft for the event last week, with 7-foot-1 center James Wiseman currently projected as the No. 1 overall pick.
- Warriors rookie Eric Paschall is beginning to look like a second-round steal, Anthony Slater writes for The Athletic. Paschall, who was drafted by Golden State with the No. 41 overall pick in June, has received more playing time in the wake of several injuries to key players. Paschall has made the most of his opportunity, scoring 13.8 points per game on 61% shooting in six contests.
The Clippers are getting encouraging signs that Paul George might be ready for action soon, according to Andrew Greif of The Los Angeles Times. George participated in a full-court, three-on-three scrimmage Saturday that lasted about 20 minutes, his most strenuous workout since having offseason surgery on both shoulders.
The team still isn’t offering a timetable for his season debut, and coach Doc Rivers didn’t provide any new information. Rivers speculated last month that George would miss the first 10 games, which would keep him sidelined for at least four more.
“At some point, someone’s going to tell me who can play,” Rivers said yesterday. “I’ve never really gotten involved in it.”
There’s more from the Pacific Division:
- De’Aaron Fox hasn’t lost faith in new Kings coach Luke Walton despite a rough start, relays Jason Jones of The Athletic. Walton wants Fox to assume more control over the team as the season wears on, and the confidence seems to be reciprocated. “We’re going to ride with him,” Fox said of Walton. “He’s been great since the day that he stepped in. I think we feel like we trust him and he trusts us.”
- Deandre Ayton has served five games of his 25-game suspension, giving the Suns an opportunity to add another player to the roster, tweets Bobby Marks of ESPN. Ayton is now on the suspended list, where he will remain until December 17 unless his appeal is successful. Phoenix already has 15 players with guaranteed contracts, and there has been no indication on whether the team plans to make a roster move.
- A broken hand hasn’t affected Stephen Curry‘s desire to play in the 2020 Olympics, his father tells Marc J. Spears of ESPN. Former NBA star Dell Curry said his son is still looking forward to his first Olympic experience. “That was definitely a goal coming into this year,” he said. “He wants to play in the Olympics. This is a little setback, but hopefully it’s a goal he can strive for through his rehab.” Curry added that Stephen is “doing the best he can” after having surgery this week.
The Warriors‘ incredible misfortune with injuries provides the organization with an opportunity to work out some important issues before next season, writes Connor Letourneau of The San Francisco Chronicle. At the top of the list is determining whether D’Angelo Russell is a long-term fit in the Golden State backcourt.
Russell was the Warriors’ top acquisition of the summer and the player they reached out to when they learned that Kevin Durant was headed to the Nets. He came at a high price, as a complicated sign-and-trade with Brooklyn imposed a hard cap and left the team with little maneuverability once injuries started to hit.
Russell was an All-Star last season, but didn’t get off to a strong start with his new team, Letourneau adds. He wasn’t comfortable in the Warriors’ motion offense and had the worst offensive rating through the first four games among 11 players who saw regular minutes. However, now that Curry is out for at least three months with a broken hand, Russell can run the high pick-and-rolls that he is more familiar with.
Russell’s greatest long-term value to the organization may be as a trade chip. If the front office decides he won’t fit in with Curry and Klay Thompson, Russell could be moved either at the deadline or next summer. He would likely bring back a collection of talent that could help a healthier Warriors team return to title contention in 2020/21.
There’s more Warriors news to pass along:
- Eric Paschall has been one of the few bright spots in a dismal start, Letourneau states in the same piece. The rookie big man out of Villanova has shown an ability to contribute on both ends of the court and may have an expanded role while Draymond Green is sidelined with a torn ligament in his finger. Letourneau notes that the Warriors have so much money invested in four players that they need to find second-round steals like Paschall to fill out the roster.
- The Russell trade was doubly costly because the Warriors were forced to part with Andre Iguodala to open enough cap room to make the deal work, points out Douglas Farmer of Basketball Insiders. Iguodala could have helped stabilize a defense that has been among the league’s worst.
- The Warriors could take a lesson in how to survive their decline from the Heat, suggests Ira Winderman of The Sun-Sentinel. Miami had a four-year run of dominance, but fell on similar hard times after LeBron James left in 2014. “You’ve got to have the right veterans to kind of fill in the gaps and patch up the holes and keep guys together,” Udonis Haslem said. “It’s not necessarily always going to be on the court. Sometimes, you’ve got to control the locker room.”
Avery Bradley only played 14 games with the Grizzlies, but he tells David Cobb of The Commercial Appeal that short stretch in Memphis helped him revitalize his career. Bradley re-emerged as a scorer after the Clippers shipped him to the Grizzlies at February’s trade deadline. He increased his average from 8.2 PPG in L.A. to 16.1 in Memphis and credits the freedom offered by then-coach J.B. Bickerstaff.
“J.B. gave me an opportunity to go out there and play my game,” Bradley said. “I’m thankful for that, I’m thankful for the city of Memphis. It’s home for me. My family is from Memphis and Mississippi. I’m going to miss it. It’s going to be nice when I come back and we play them there.”
The Grizzlies parted with Bradley in a cost-cutting move, waiving him in July and paying a $2MM guarantee instead of his $12.96MM salary. He signed with the Lakers a few days later for $4.8MM.
“Things were just unfortunate,” Bradley said of the end of his stay in Memphis. “There were a lot of changes. My time there was special.”
There’s more from Memphis:
- Confusion shut down the Grizzlies’ attempts to trade for Kelly Oubre last season, and the roster would look much different now if that deal had gone through, Cobb notes in a mailbag column. Memphis believed it was parting with Wayne Selden and MarShon Brooks, while the Wizards were expecting to receive Dillon Brooks. Washington wound up moving Oubre to Phoenix, where he has played well. But Cobb notes that if the Grizzlies had taken on his $15MM salary, they probably couldn’t have made room for Andre Iguodala in a deal that landed them a future first-round pick from the Warriors.
- The Grizzlies are thrilled with the start by first-round pick Ja Morant, whose 70 points are the most in four games by any rookie in team history, writes Duane Rankin of The Arizona Republic. In addition to his obvious athleticism, Morant has impressed coaches with how quickly he has adapted to the NBA game. “He’s got great chemistry with his teammates,” head coach Taylor Jenkins said. “His IQ is kind of helping him navigate day in and day out, game after game after game and the sky’s the limit for the guy.”
- De’Anthony Melton considers his rookie year with the Suns to be a “learning experience” about life in the NBA (video link from The Arizona Republic). After playing 50 games and starting 31 in his first season, Melton was sent to Memphis in July in a four-player deal. It marked the second time he had been traded, after being dealt from Houston to Phoenix before playing his first game. “I’m not worried about one year; I’m worried about 10 years, 15 years,” Melton said. “People have had crazier stories.”
Warriors coach Steve Kerr told reporters today that the injury to Draymond Green‘s left index finger has been diagnosed as a torn ligament, tweets Logan Murdock of NBC Sports. Kerr said Green will be sidelined for “the next few games.”
Green hurt the finger during Friday’s loss to the Spurs and had his hand wrapped after the game. Kerr talked about limiting Green’s minutes for the rest of the season even before the diagnosis, which turned out to be severe enough to keep him out of action for a while.
The news continues a terrible run of injury luck for Golden State, which started the season without Klay Thompson and lost Stephen Curry for at least three months with a broken left hand. Also ailing are Kevon Looney, who is consulting with a specialist for a neuropathic condition, and offseason addition D’Angelo Russell, who sprained his right ankle last night in the midst of a 30-point outing, his best game since joining the Warriors.
Tim Kawakami of The Athletic notes that none of the 15 players who took the court for Golden State in last season’s playoffs will be available for tonight’s game (Twitter link).
The Warriors‘ nightmare season continued on Friday night as mainstay Draymond Green suffered a sprained left index finger. Green’s hand was wrapped following the 127-110 loss to the Spurs as he revealed his immediate future is uncertain.
“I hurt my finger. Ligament action. But it is what it is. … I don’t know [about Saturday]; we’ll see,” Green said (via ESPN’s Nick Friedell) It’s pretty sore. I couldn’t grip the ball the whole entire [game], probably since the second quarter. Which is why I was making a lot of one-handed, right-handed passes and dribbling left with my right hand…”
While it remains to be seen how limited Green will be, losing another key part of their core has stymied the Warriors’ playoff aspirations. Golden State lost two-time NBA MVP Stephen Curry for at least three months due to a broken left hand. Fellow All-Star Klay Thompson is expected to miss the entire 2019/20 campaign due to a torn ACL.
When Green signed a lucrative four-year extension with the Warriors earlier this summer, it was hard to envision a dreadful 1-4 start, even with Thompson’s absence and Kevin Durant‘s departure. However, now the focus may shift toward the future — head coach Steve Kerr has already indicated that Green’s playing time will be scaled back.
“The one thing we won’t do is run [Green] into the ground,” Kerr said. “We have to maintain a good schedule with Draymond minutes-wise and games-wise. If he’s banged up, we should make sure we take care of him.”
Green played 34 minutes on Friday night, and Kerr suggested he’d prefer not to have his star big man exceed that number, as Friedell relays.
“Not more than that,” Kerr said. “I definitely don’t want to drive him up to the 40-minute mark. That’s too much. We got a back-to-back; we play again tomorrow. We’ll just sort of take it game by game and see how he’s doing.”
The Warriors are expected to be without two-time MVP Stephen Curry for at least three months, according to Marc Stein of The New York Times, who reports (via Twitter) that Curry underwent successful surgery on his broken left hand on Friday.
The Warriors have issued a press release confirming Stein’s report, announcing that there will be an update on Curry’s status in three months. Based on that timeline, the earliest we should expect to see the star guard back on the court is on February 1, which means he’ll miss at least the next 45 games.
It’s a crushing blow for the Warriors, who lost Kevin Durant, Andre Iguodala, and Shaun Livingston in the offseason and will be without Klay Thompson (ACL) until at least the All-Star break. Golden State was off to a bad start this season even with Curry in its lineup, having been blown out in three of the team’s first four games.
Now, the Warriors will have to try to get by for the foreseeable future without either Splash Brother, and without the sort of veteran depth the club had during its run of five straight NBA Finals appearances. The Dubs have one of the NBA’s youngest rosters, as we noted earlier today.
The Warriors’ cap situation will make things even more difficult moving forward. The team is right up against a hard cap and can’t add a 15th man to its roster, let alone apply for a hardship exception for a 16th.
As ESPN’s Bobby Marks observed earlier this week (via Twitter), Golden State still has more than eight healthy players on its roster, meeting the league’s minimum requirements, so the club is handcuffed for now. Even if that number were to dip below eight at some point, the Warriors’ hard cap means they’d have to petition the NBA to add a player, per Marks (via Twitter).
In the wake of Curry’s injury on Wednesday night, Warriors owner Joe Lacob dismissed the idea that his team would consider going into tanking mode, suggesting that tanking is “against every single thing I and we stand for.”
However, without Curry and Thompson, the Warriors have limited upside and will likely be lottery-bound, so it won’t be a surprise if they lean more into the idea of developing their young players over the course of the season.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
The Suns currently have the NBA’s youngest roster, according to the NBA’s official roster survey. The league’s data shows that the average age of a Suns player this season is just 24.49 years. On the other end of the spectrum, the Rockets have the league’s oldest roster, with an average age of 30.24.
[RELATED: Oldest, Youngest Players On NBA Rosters For 2019/20]
Houston also has the NBA’s oldest roster in terms of years of experience — the average Rocket has played in the NBA for 8.93 seasons. The Celtics beat out Phoenix for the league’s least experienced roster, at an average of 2.73 seasons per player.
The NBA’s full roster survey, which includes every player on a standard contract (ie. not two-way players), is packed with interesting data, including the official heights and weights for every player, as well as each player sorted by jersey number and by home country. It’s worth checking out in full, but here are the rest of the league’s findings on the youngest and oldest NBA rosters:
Youngest rosters by average age:
- Phoenix Suns (24.49)
- Chicago Bulls (24.83)
- Golden State Warriors (24.87)
- Minnesota Timberwolves (24.91)
- New York Knicks (24.98)
Least experienced rosters by average seasons of NBA experience:
- Boston Celtics (2.73)
- Phoenix Suns (2.80)
- Chicago Bulls (3.07)
- Minnesota Timberwolves (3.40)
- Indiana Pacers (3.53)
Oldest rosters by average age:
- Houston Rockets (30.24)
- Los Angeles Lakers (29.07)
- Milwaukee Bucks (28.73)
- Dallas Mavericks (27.40)
- Utah Jazz (27.08)
Most experienced rosters by average seasons of NBA experience:
- Houston Rockets (8.93)
- Los Angeles Lakers (8.07)
- Milwaukee Bucks (7.07)
- San Antonio Spurs (5.67)
- Portland Trail Blazers (5.57)