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Trade Rumors App For iOS/Android

December 21st, 2016 at 11:14am CST by Luke Adams

If you enjoy Hoops Rumors on your smartphone or tablet, be sure to check out our free Trade Rumors app!

Trade Rumors, available for iOS and Android, is the best way to consume our content on a mobile device. Here’s what it delivers, all for free:

  • All the articles from Hoops Rumors, MLB Trade Rumors, Pro Football Rumors, and Pro Hockey Rumors in an easy-to-navigate, eye-catching format. Swipe through stories to quickly consume all the news and rumors from our four sites. Not into all four sports? No problem – any sport can be easily removed.
  • Customize what you see. You can create feeds for any team or player across any of our sites.
  • Notifications! For any team or player, you can set up push notifications to ensure you always get breaking news instantly. Notifications can also be set up at the sport level.
  • Commenting! You can now read and contribute comments on the app seamlessly.
  • Customer service! If you find a bug, we’ll fix it. If you have a feature request, we’ll consider it. The app is continually evolving and improving.
  • Did we mention Trade Rumors is a free app? What do you have to lose? Download it now!
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Fantasy Hoops: Rockets, Harris, Dedmon

December 20th, 2016 at 10:45pm CST by ChrisCrouse

The 2016/17 campaign is entering its ninth week and Hoops Rumors is examining the fantasy basketball landscape in order to help you dominate the competition. Check back weekly for more fantasy basketball analysis.

Opportunity Awaits In Houston

The Rockets will be without Clint Capela for at least the next four weeks as he recovers from a fracture in his left fibula. The third-year center was having a nice fantasy season prior to being ruled out. He was grabbing 8.0 rebounds (the 13th most among centers) and blocking 1.57 shots (10th most) per game while knocking down 64.0% of his shots (third best).

His excellent production is partly due to his elevated role and his progression as a player, but he’s also a product of Mike D’Antoni‘s pick-and-roll system. The Rockets play fast, ranking in the top 10 in pace this season, and they shoot 38.9 3-pointers per game, by far the most in the league. With so many long-range shooters surrounding Capela, opposing defenses couldn’t crowd the paint, making it easier for the big man to roll to the basket. Whoever takes over the big man’s role during his absence will be in good position to become a fantasy producer.

Houston is reportedly sniffing the market for a big man and should the team acquire another center, it would be an intriguing addition from a fantasy perspective. Nerlens Noel, whom Luke Adams of Hoops Rumors profiled as a trade candidate, would be a fascinating fit in this system. His defensive ability, coupled with his potential role in the Rockets’ high-paced offense, would produce a monster fantasy asset.

If the team doesn’t make a deal, look for Montrezl Harrell, Nene, and Ryan Anderson all to see increased roles. Nene, who’s the best pick-and-roll big man among the team’s healthy options, started at center for the Rockets in tonight’s loss against the Spurs, but Harrell relieved him after just five minutes of action. Harrell, who has a much higher fantasy ceiling than Nene, saw four more minutes than the Brazilian center did over the course of the game. Anderson spent time at the center position as well, squaring up against LaMarcus Aldridge when the Spurs put the 31-year-old on the floor as their five. Anderson was on the court for 37 minutes tonight, which is about 6.5 more minutes than his season average. The forward had a ho-hum game, scoring only seven points on eight shot attempts and he brought in just six boards. The lack of production was likely due to the bad match-up, as San Antonio has allowed the fifth fewest points, third fewest rebounds and sixth worst field percentage to opposing forwards this season, so expect better numbers going forward.

If the Rockets continue to utilize Anderson this way, he becomes more valuable over the next several weeks, while Harrell and Nene become useful in the right match-ups.

Here’s more fantasy analysis and notes from around the league:

  • Gary Harris is a player worth adding. He’s back in the starting lineup, averaging 19.3 points and 1.7 steals per contest over his last three games. The Nuggets rank sixth in the league in pace and Harris is taking advantage of the extra possessions.
  • The Blazers, a team rumored to have interest in trading for Noel, have really struggled defensively this season, particularly against the center position lately. Portland has allowed the third most points and the fourth best field goal percentage to opposing centers over the last 10 games.
  • Dewayne Dedmon could be a nice streaming option over the next two weeks. On Thursday, the Spurs will take on the Clippers, which is not a plus match-up, but after that tilt, their schedule gets softer. Over their ensuing five games, San Antonio will take on the Blazers twice, in addition to the Suns (allowing the second most points and third best field goal percentage to opposing centers over their last 10 games), Hawks (allowing the fifth best field goal percentage), and Bulls (allowing seventh most rebounds).
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Community Shootaround: Nuggets’ Frontcourt Logjam

December 20th, 2016 at 1:09pm CST by Luke Adams

The Sixers’ logjam at center has been the most publicized frontcourt depth chart issue in the NBA in recent days, and it’s not hard to see why. In Joel Embiid, Jahlil Okafor, and Nerlens Noel, the team has three top-six draft picks vying for playing time, one of those three players (Noel) is publicly griping about his role, and it’s all happening in a major market.

Still, Philadelphia isn’t the only city in which a crowded frontcourt is creating problems for an NBA team. As Jonathan Tjarks of The Ringer details, there are handful of other teams around the league experiencing similar issues.

Perhaps the most interesting case is in Denver, with Tjarks referring to the Nuggets’ big man logjam as “a less high-profile version of what’s happening with the 76ers.” After starting 25 games for the team to open the 2016/17 season, former first-rounder Jusuf Nurkic has fallen out of Denver’s rotation within the last week.

After playing just five minutes last Thursday and eight minutes on Saturday, Nurkic picked up a DNP-CD on Monday night. Like the Sixers, the Nuggets have shortened their big man rotation, with Nikola Jokic and Kenneth Faried seeing the majority of the minutes up front – and thriving – while Nurkic is the odd man out.

It’s a difficult situation for Nurkic, who had been playing pretty well early on this season, averaging career highs in PPG (9.3), RPG (6.9), FG% (.524), and a few other categories. Although the 22-year-old would have plenty of value on the trade market, the Nuggets probably won’t want to sell low on him.

Faried has long been viewed as the most likely trade candidate in the Denver frontcourt, but the Jokic/Nurkic pairing struggled in the early going this year, as the two bigs got on each other’s way and had problems with spacing, Tjarks notes. The current rotation, with Jokic starting alongside Danilo Gallinari and Wilson Chandler, and Faried serving as the primary frontcourt backup, has been very effective lately, so the Nuggets may have to reconsider which of their players they can afford to give up.

What do you think? Is there a trade out there that makes sense for the Nuggets? Which of their bigs should be considered a long-term piece, and which ones might be more expendable? Jump into the comments section below to weigh in with your thoughts!

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Community Shootaround: Detroit Pistons

December 19th, 2016 at 10:11pm CST by Austin Kent

It’s no secret that things have gone south for the Pistons, and that concerning trend continued Monday night. Having just recently fallen below .500 on the heels of a rough week, the team has acknowledged that things needs to change. In fact, head coach Stan Van Gundy couldn’t have been more clear that something needs to give.

In a post-game scrum after Monday’s blowout loss at the hands of the Bulls, Van Gundy told reporters that he “guarantees he won’t be trotting out the same starting five” the next time out.

This isn’t the first time the Detroit bench boss has been critical of the team in the media, and the players themselves even held a private meeting to try to inspire some sort of positive development. As Dana Garauder wrote in an article last night, the Pistons have multiple options to try and help turn things around.

Should the team consider moving Reggie Jackson to the bench and starting Ish Smith in his place? It’s worth noting that Pistons.com editor Keith Langlois says Jon Leuer, not Smith, is the most likely player to join the starting lineup, though there’s nothing stopping Van Gundy from making more than one change to try to light a fire under his faltering club.

After making the playoffs in 2015/16, the Pistons were regarded as one of the up-and-coming contenders of the Eastern Conference. Fast forward to today and a much-needed players-only meeting has resulted in the team’s staring point guard refusing to put up a field goal attempt in the first quarter, an approach Van Gundy said wasn’t part of the game plan. That’s not a good sign.

“Team meeting my ass,” Van Gundy would go on to add Monday night. “I have nothing to say. [The game] was a disgusting performance. Unprofessional, humiliating, embarrassing.”

Do you think Van Gundy is in the right here? How would you handle the team’s downward spiral?

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Hoops Rumors Originals: 12/11/16 – 12/17/16

December 17th, 2016 at 10:19am CST by Austin Kent

An awful lot went down in the NBA this week. Here’s a look back at all of the original content and analysis published by the Hoops Rumors staff:

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Community Shootaround: Resting Healthy Players

December 16th, 2016 at 7:05pm CST by Luke Adams

The NBA’s new Collective Bargaining Agreement is expected to reduce the number of preseason games played by teams, adding a little extra time to the regular season and reducing the number of back-to-back games teams need to play throughout the season. While that will help cut back on players’ workloads, many coaches will still look for opportunities to keep their top players rested and healthy by making them healthy scratches in certain situations.

It’s a practice that was first popularized by Gregg Popovich, who often rested Tim Duncan and other key Spurs players during one half of back-to-backs, occasionally drawing the ire of the NBA if Duncan and co. happened to be scratched for a nationally televised game. Popovich and the Spurs once received a significant fine from the league for sending their stars home early, but since then, even as more teams have adopted the strategy, the NBA hasn’t responded by attempting to put a halt to it.

It’s easy to see both side of the argument. On one hand, the NBA’s top teams want to keep their best players fresh for the postseason, and don’t want to risk pushing them hard on a random week in the winter if it could jeopardize their availability at all for the spring. Those Spurs teams, led by Popovich, were often at their best in the postseason, and based on what we’ve seen from San Antonio and other clubs, it’s easy to make the case that the strategy is an effective one in the long term.

On the other hand, the NBA pays its bills in large part due to the money its fans are willing to pay to watch games in person and on television. Fans are less likely to tune in to a Cavaliers game if LeBron James, Kyrie Irving, and Kevin Love are all sitting, as they were earlier this week against Memphis. And many fans who paid big money for tickets in the hopes of seeing those stars in person weren’t thrilled to see the JV team instead.

There’s no simple solution. While the NBA doesn’t want to alienate its fans, imposing any penalties on teams who rest healthy players may simply inspire those clubs to invent a short-term injury. Encouraging teams to rest players during home games instead of on the road is a possibility, but that won’t make everyone happy — some fans only get a chance to see their home team once or twice a year, and could still miss out on the opportunity to see their team’s stars.

What do you think? Is this an issue the NBA needs to address at all, or does it make more sense to simply let coaches manage their teams as they please, even if it leads to some grumbling from fans?

Jump into the comments section below to share your thoughts!

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Submit Your Questions For Hoops Rumors Mailbag

December 16th, 2016 at 4:57pm CST by Eddie Scarito

We at Hoops Rumors love interacting with our readers. This is why we provide an opportunity for you to hit us up with your questions in our weekly mailbag feature, which is posted each Sunday.

Have a question regarding player movement, free agent rumors, the salary cap, the NBA draft, or the top storylines of the week? You can e-mail them here: hoopsrumorsmailbag@gmail.com. Feel free to send emails throughout the week, but please be mindful that we may receive a sizable number of questions and likely won’t get to all of them.

If you missed out on any past mailbags and would like to catch up, you can view the full archives here.

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Community Shootaround: Craig Sager

December 15th, 2016 at 5:31pm CST by Dana Gauruder

The NBA world has been deeply affected by the news of the passing of longtime TNT sideline reporter Craig Sager. His brave and prolonged battle with cancer made him an inspiration to many people, whether or not they were fans of the NBA.

Sager went through great lengths to continue his broadcast duties, even driving long distances or flying across the country after undergoing chemotherapy treatments. His speech at the ESPYs this summer, which was as powerful as the 1993 speech made by cancer-stricken former college basketball coach Jim Valvano, will never be forgotten.

Sager had a long and distinguished career as a television and radio reporter. He was the young reporter running onto the field in 1974 after Hank Aaron hit his historic long ball and became the all-time home run king. Sager covered a wide variety of sports during his long and distinguished career but he’ll be remembered the most for his work on NBA broadcasts.

He always took his job seriously, though his attire was often comical. He never seemed to wear the same outfit or sports coat twice, and every one seemed wilder and more outrageous than the previous one.

His in-game interviews with Spurs coach Gregg Popovich were remembered for Popovich’s brief, and often terse, responses. But no one was more supportive of Sager than Pops when Sager’s illness was revealed.

Players, coaches and fans showed their love and support the last few years when they saw Sager. Unfortunately, we’ll never again have the pleasure of seeing Sager doing an interview or giving us an update on an injury or in-game strategy.

This leads us to our question of the day: What will you remember most about Craig Sager?

Jump into the comments section below and share you memories of one of the NBA’s best all-time reporters.

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More Than 120 Players Become Trade-Eligible

December 15th, 2016 at 9:01am CST by Luke Adams

December 15 was a key date this year on the NBA calendar for two reasons. It represented the deadline for either the NBA and the players’ union to opt out of the current Collective Bargaining Agreement, but that date was ultimately pushed back after the two sides reached a tentative agreement on a new CBA on Wednesday night. The league and the NBPA will now have until January 13 to ratify the new CBA.

Today is still important for a second reason though — it represents the date that more than a quarter of the players in the NBA become eligible to be traded by their respective teams. By our count, 124 players who signed contracts during the offseason fall into this group. Cap expert Albert Nahmad (Twitter link) has the same figure, while The Vertical’s cap guru Bobby Marks (Twitter link) says there are 125. Either way, a significant chunk of the NBA’s players can now be dealt.

The NBA’s rules call for recently-signed players to become trade-eligible three months after they finalized their deals, or on December 15, whichever comes later. That means that players who signed their contracts after September 15 still can’t be traded. There are also certain rules that restrict some players who meet specific criteria from being dealt in January 15. For the most part though, December 15 is the date on which NBA trade season unofficially opens.

[RELATED: Players who become trade-eligible on January 15]

[RELATED: Other players who can’t be traded until specific dates]

Of course, just because teams have more options for trades now, that doesn’t mean we’ll see a flurry of moves right away. As Marks writes at The Vertical, clubs typically know that an offer on the table now will still be available to them in a month or two. And many teams aren’t ready to shake things up.

Still, in the past couple years, teams have been somewhat active in the days following December 15. In 2014 and 2015, four total trades were consummated between December 15 and Christmas Day, including the Mavericks acquiring Rajon Rondo from the Celtics on December 18, 2014. In each season, only one in-season trade has been finalized prior to December 15.

[RELATED: 2014/15 NBA Trades]

[RELATED: 2015/16 NBA Trades]

Not every team will be impacted significantly by today’s newly trade-eligible group. The Thunder, for instance, have no players affected, since none of their offseason free agent signees remain with the club. On the other hand, a team like Miami will see more than half of its players become eligible to be dealt, substantially increasing the club’s trade opportunities.

We’ve previously broken down the full list of players who will become eligible today, but we’ll pass along those names once more, right here:

Atlanta Hawks

Boston Celtics

Read more

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Fantasy Hoops: Grizzlies, Wolves, Hawks

December 13th, 2016 at 11:01pm CST by ChrisCrouse

The 2016/17 campaign is entering its eighth week and Hoops Rumors is examining the fantasy basketball landscape in order to help you dominate the competition.  Check back weekly for more fantasy basketball analysis.

The Grizzlies Keep Grinding

Memphis underwent drastic changes during the offseason with an eye on playing faster. The team brought in several athletic wings and moved Zach Randolph to the bench. David Fizdale‘s arrival in Memphis was supposedly going to change the basketball culture, transitioning the team to a style of play that fits in with the modern NBA.

The Grizzlies are again winning games this season, but it’s not because of a change in style of play. It’s because the team is reverting to its old identity. One of the keys to the Grizzlies’ success is their suffocating defense, as they showcased in their blowout win over the Warriors on Saturday night. Memphis leads the league in defensive efficiency and entering Tuesday’s contests, the team was tied for the league lead in opponent field goal percentage, allowing just 43.1 % of opposing shots to hit the bottom of the net.

The team’s slow, methodical style of play helps the defense arrive at these outstanding metrics. Entering Tuesday, Memphis’ pace factor is 95.7, which is identical to its factor last season. As a result, opposing teams are seeing less offensive opportunity against the Grizzlies than they are against most other teams.

Opposing centers are having a particularly hard time against the team this season, something that comes at no surprise given Marc Gasol‘s defensive ability. Memphis is allowing just 14.1 points to opposing centers, a figure which leads the league, according to Rotowire. Opposing centers are only making 45.4% of their shots, which ranks second in the league, and Memphis is causing opposing centers to turn the ball over 3.7 times per contest (only the Rockets and Suns cause more turnovers to the position).

With a different version of their grit and grind team, the Grizzlies are thriving yet again this season. Despite all the injuries, the team remains a defensive force; one to avoid in fantasy basketball match-ups.

Here’s more fantasy analysis from around the league:

  • The Grizzlies are utilizing Gasol more than ever this season, as his career high 26.9 usage rate indicates. He’s averaging career highs in points (19.9) and assists (4.1) per game and he’s added the 3-ball to his arsenal, knocking down 1.6 shots per game from behind the arc. Those are great numbers, but his play while Conley has been out has been even more remarkable. Over his last six games (contests in which Conley has been sidelined), he took control of the offense, averaging 25.5 points and 5.3 assists per game, while shooting 50.9% from the field. He’ll likely maintain this role while Conley misses games, so he’ll be even more valuable to fantasy owners over the next several weeks.
  • Ricky Rubio, whom Dana Gauruder of Hoops Rumors profiled as a trade candidate, remains a plus defender, per ESPN’s Real Plus/Minus, but he hasn’t been as effective on that end of the floor as he’s been in the past. In fact, the Wolves haven’t defended opposing point guards very well lately. Minnesota has allowed the most points to the position over the last ten games and opposing point guards are shooting 49.8% from the field during that span, a figure that ranks fourth worst in the league.
  • The Hawks are having their own issues guarding opposing point guards. Over the last ten games, Atlanta has been an excellent match-up, allowing the most rebounds, the second-most points, and the seventh-most assists per game to the position.
  • Last week, we discussed Jeremy Lin‘s potential fantasy impact. On Monday, Lin returned to the court and had a solid game, notching 10 points and seven assists in 20 minutes of action. He’ll likely remain on a minute count, but it won’t be long until he regains the Nets’ starting point guard spot. He’s still available in over 40% of ESPN leagues; Pick him up if he’s available in yours.
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