- Rockets guard Austin Rivers is likely to opt out of his $2.4MM salary for next season and test free agency, states Danny Leroux of The Athletic, who previews Houston’s offseason along with Kelly Iko. The Rockets hold Early Bird rights on Rivers and can start his new contract at nearly $10MM per season without having to use their mid-level exception.
- As Kelly Iko of The Athletic details, the Rockets only played 14 games after trading away Clint Capela before this year’s trade deadline. That small sample size could be problematic, especially if the season doesn’t resume, since the Rockets will have to make offseason decisions based on whether or not they feel the center-less lineup is a viable approach going forward.
- In a conversation with Michael Lee of The Athletic, former Rockets coach Rudy Tomjanovich revisited some of the highlights – and lowlights – of his career and expressed gratitude at being elected into the Basketball Hall of Fame earlier this month. “I had been through the phone calls several times and got the, ‘Sorry, not this year.’ And it was so good to hear them say, ‘Rudy, you’re in,'” Tomjanovich said. “Still getting use to it. Still bouncing on a cloud. I feel really good about it.”
The Nuggets‘ acquired a first-round pick from the Rockets in the four-team, 12-player deal that sent Malik Beasley to the Wolves. That pick is currently slated to be the No. 21 overall selection and Mike Singer of the Denver Post examines five prospects the team could take at that spot in the first round.
Florida State guard Devin Vassell and Villanova forward Saddiq Bey are among the more intriguing options, in Singer’s view. Both players have range and could provide the Nuggets with depth, something that might be needed if Paul Millsap or Jerami Grant (player option) departs in free agency.
Here’s more on the upcoming draft:
- Nevada guard Jalen Harris has declared for the 2020 draft, Jonathan Givony of ESPN tweets. Harris, who averaged 21.7 PPG and 6.5 RPG in 30 games as a junior, is the No. 93 overall prospect on ESPN.com‘s big board.
- The Hawks could go a number of different directions with their first-round pick, which is expected to fall in the top five, Mark Schanowski of NBC Sports Chicago writes. Depending on where the pick lands, the team could look for a new backcourt partner for Trae Young (Anthony Edwards or perhaps LaMelo Ball) or simply go with the best player available.
- Some NBA teams want to delay the draft until at least August 1. Check out the latest on that, as well as some of the restrictions that teams are facing as they virtually evaluate prospects.
While Vince Carter will be remembered for many accomplishments, his tenure in Dallas may be his most impressive stint, as I detailed on the Basketball Behind The Scenes podcast. Carter joined the Mavericks prior to the lockout-shortened 2011/12 season as the franchise was looking for another player capable of scoring on his own to pair with Dirk Nowitzki.
The former UNC Tar Heel altered his game during his three years in Dallas, shifting away from the ball-dominant ways of the 2000s scorer. Carter made the three-ball a larger part of his shot portfolio and embraced a willingness to be a contributor off the bench, something that was not as glorified then as it is today. Without the shift in his game, Carter may not have had the opportunity to play a record 22 seasons in the league.
Here are more basketball notes from the state of Texas:
- Nowitzki said that he would have probably turned down the opportunity to compete in ESPN’s H-O-R-S-E competition if he had been asked, as Callie Caplan of The Dallas Morning News tweets. The Mavericks‘ legend said he only touched a basketball a few times since retiring and once was for a commercial.
- Acknowledging that an early playoff exit might raise some eyebrows, Kelly Iko of The Athletic writes in a mailbag that Rockets GM Daryl Morey‘s aggressive roster moves in the last year suggest he still has ownership’s trust. Morey has gone in some unconventional directions – such as going completely centerless – that an executive without as much standing in an organization may not have attempted.
- The Rockets have a few contracts that could be difficult to move in the coming years, including Eric Gordon‘s deal, as John Hollinger tells Iko in a separate piece for The Athletic. The shooting guard inked a four-year, $73MM extension prior to the 2019/20 season.
Former NBA stars Kobe Bryant, Tim Duncan, and Kevin Garnett will be inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, reports Shams Charania of The Athletic (via Twitter).
This year’s Hall of Fame induction ceremony figures to be an emotional affair, with Bryant headlining the 2020 class just months after his tragic passing. The Lakers‘ legend was an 18-time All-Star and five-time NBA champion, winning the MVP award in 2008 to go along with a pair of Finals MVPs. He is fourth on the league’s all-time scoring list and won scoring titles in 2006 and 2007.
Bryant will be joined by a pair of fellow NBA champions, including Duncan, who won three Finals MVPs and five titles in total. Like Bryant, he was named to an All-NBA team 15 times over the course of his career. The longtime Spurs‘ big man was one of the best players of his era, ranking sixth on the NBA’s all-time rebounding list and fifth in blocked shots.
While Garnett’s résumé isn’t quite as decorated as that of Bryant and Duncan, he earned 15 All-Star nods, an MVP award (in 2004), a Defensive Player of the Year award (2008), and a title in 2008 with the Celtics. Garnett, who began his career with the Timberwolves, ranks in the NBA’s top 20 in career points, rebounds, blocks, and steals.
Bryant, Duncan, and Garnett may be this year’s headliners, but they aren’t the only ones being inducted into the Hall of Fame. According to Mark Berman of FOX 26 Houston (Twitter link), former Rockets head coach Rudy Tomjanovich has also been elected.
Tomjanovich is one of just three coaches to win both an NBA championship and an Olympic gold medal. He coached Houston to a pair of championships in the mid-1990s and had an impressive career as a Rockets player prior to his coaching days, earning five NBA All-Star nods in his 11-year career.
Tamika Catchings, Kim Mulkey, Eddie Sutton, and Barbara Stevens were announced as Hall of Fame finalists in February — it’s unclear if anyone from that group will be inducted into the 2020 class alongside Bryant, Duncan, Garnett, and Tomjanovich. The official announcement will happen on Saturday.
It remains to be seen what form this year’s induction ceremony will take. It’s scheduled to happen on August 29 in Springfield, Massachusetts, but there’s no guarantee that the coronavirus situation will have improved enough by then to hold large-scale gatherings.
Rockets general manager Daryl Morey is hopeful that the NBA will be able to resume its 2019/20 season, since he feels as if his club is in a good spot to make some noise in the playoffs. Speaking to Jonathan Feigen of The Houston Chronicle, Morey said he was pleased by the way Russell Westbrook and James Harden had meshed in recent months.
“I think we’re as well positioned as we’ve ever been with our current situation,” Morey said. “Maybe we’re not the ’96 Bulls, but I think we’re a team that can win the title in any given year, including this one.”
Morey declined to comment on whether he believes the season can be salvaged, but said he’s “confident in general” about the NBA’s outlook: “I’m optimistic in a lot of ways that we’ll come out of this crisis and that basketball will come out of it as well.”
Feigen’s Q&A with Morey included several other interesting tidbits, as the Rockets’ GM discussed his draft preparations, Mike D’Antoni‘s future, the club’s ability to spend, and more. Let’s round up some of the highlights…
On preparing for the draft despite not having a first- or second-round pick:
“We have a long history of buying (draft picks), which I think has a reasonable chance of happening. We also might have a trade to trade (into the draft.) Actually, having no pick ends up harder than having a pick. You normally don’t want to roster more than one to three rookies in a given year. We generally like to roster at least one because I think it is smart to always have a developmental pipeline going.
“You’re preparing for a much wider list. You have to be ready to trade into the first round. You have to be ready to buy a pick. You have to be ready for the crush as teams chase undrafted players. We’re going to prepare everything now because we just don’t know how much time there’s going to be between things like we normally know.”
On the Rockets’ roster going forward:
“Our (trade) deadline really set us up well. Not only did we shoot for a better structure of our core players, that they fit together better, but also allowed us to be more flexible going forward to add players that we think overall as we allocate our player spending. We were over-weighted at the five spot. This opens up ability to spend at other spots.”
On whether the Rockets want to retain D’Antoni and his staff beyond this season:
“Coach D’Antoni is one of the best all-time coaches, in my opinion. To me, he’s like one of those players in the past that hadn’t quite won the title yet. I’m hoping this is the year for him. He’s one of the all-time great innovators and a great partner. I’d love for it to keep going. It takes two to tango, but we’re going to figure that out in the offseason.”
On how he’d respond to criticism of moves that appeared designed to cut costs and avoid the tax:
“Judge us by results on the floor. I honestly don’t get the focus on what owners around the league are spending. Pretty much every owner is spending … right around the luxury tax line. That’s where we’ve been literally my whole career. Nothing’s changed. That’s how every team operates.”
- Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta has been “absolutely devastated” financially over the last several months, ESPN’s Brian Windhorst said on a Hoop Collective podcast. As Windhorst explains, Fertitta is believed to have lost “tens of millions” of dollars in Chinese sponsorships as a result of the Daryl Morey controversy in the fall, and his hotel and casino businesses have been shut down as a result of the coronavirus. Windhorst notes that it’ll be interesting to see how the Rockets handle their payroll going forward, considering they’ve already been tax-averse since Fertitta’s arrival.
Tilman Fertitta, the sole owner of the Rockets, won’t consider minority partners “as a matter of pride,” tweets ESPN’s Tim MacMahon.
MacMahon’s note on the Rockets owner comes at a time when Fertitta’s companies have furloughed approximately 70% of their employees, according to Davide Scigliuzzo of Bloomberg. Fertitta, who owns a series of casinos, hotels, and restaurants, said he has had to temporarily lay off approximately 40,000 employees as a result of coronavirus-related shutdowns.
Indicating that he wants to “hire every employee back,” Fertitta expressed confidence that his businesses will survive and even talked about possibly buying back some of the Golden Nugget’s debts when things turn around, per Bloomberg’s report.
Fertitta, who is hoping that restaurants and casinos will soon be permitted to operate at least at partial capacity, said he has been talking to banks about raising as much as $200MM in additional liquidity “as a little bit of insurance,” Scigliuzzo writes.
Selling off part of the Rockets to one or more minority stakeholders at any time since he assumed control of the team in 2017 would have helped provide Fertitta with additional liquidity, but he has long been averse to the idea. In October 2017, shortly after he took the reins in Houston, he indicated he might make an exception for pop star Beyoncé, who had previously considered an investment in the franchise. Otherwise though, he said, “I prefer to own 100 percent.”
Fertitta, who has appeared reluctant to pay the luxury tax since taking over as the Rockets’ owner, figures to be hit particularly hard by the NBA’s loss of revenue this season. Houston was believed to be the team with the most partnerships in China prior to Daryl Morey‘s tweet in support of protestors in Hong Kong, which reportedly cost the team many of those business ties.
Earlier today, we explored what the lottery odds for the 2020 NBA draft would look like if the regular season doesn’t resume. We’re now applying that hypothetical to another aspect of the draft and examining which traded 2020 picks would and wouldn’t change hands based on the current standings.
Our projections below assume that the NBA will sort its standings by winning percentage in scenarios where teams haven’t played the same number of games this season. Again, this is just a hypothetical exercise — if the season resumes, the order below would likely change.
With that in mind and with the help of our reverse standings, let’s take a closer look at where this year’s traded draft picks would land if the NBA has played its last regular season game of 2019/20.
First round:
- Minnesota Timberwolves (from Nets)
- Boston Celtics (from Grizzlies)
- Brooklyn Nets (from Sixers)
- Note: Could be No. 20 depending on random tiebreaker.
- Milwaukee Bucks (from Pacers)
- Note: Could be No. 19 depending on random tiebreaker.
- Philadelphia 76ers (from Thunder)
- Note: Could be No. 22 depending on random tiebreaker.
- Denver Nuggets (from Rockets)
- Note: Could be No. 21 depending on random tiebreaker.
- Oklahoma City Thunder (from Nuggets)
- New York Knicks (from Clippers)
- Boston Celtics (from Bucks)
Protected picks:
- Golden State Warriors (to Nets; top-20 protected)
- Cleveland Cavaliers (to Pelicans; top-20 protected)
- Utah Jazz (to Grizzlies; top-7 and 15-30 protected)
Notes:
- The Thunder pick would be the one worth watching closest if the season does resume. It’s top-20 protected, so OKC would keep it if it were to move up a spot or two, sending the Sixers second-round picks in 2022 and 2023 instead.
Second round:
- Dallas Mavericks (from Warriors)
- Charlotte Hornets (from Cavaliers)
- Philadelphia 76ers (from Hawks)
- Sacramento Kings (from Pistons)
- Philadelphia 76ers (from Knicks)
- Washington Wizards (from Bulls)
- New York Knicks (from Hornets)
- New Orleans Pelicans (from Wizards)
- Memphis Grizzlies (from Suns)
- Boston Celtics (from Nets)
- Chicago Bulls (from Grizzlies)
- Golden State Warriors (from Mavericks)
- Atlanta Hawks (from Rockets)
- Note: Could be No. 51 depending on random tiebreaker.
- Sacramento Kings (from Heat)
- Golden State Warriors (from Jazz)
- Brooklyn Nets (from Nuggets)
- Charlotte Hornets (from Celtics)
- Philadelphia 76ers (from Lakers)
- New Orleans Pelicans (from Bucks)
Protected picks:
- Indiana Pacers (to Nets; 45-60 protected)
- Portland Trail Blazers (to Nets; top-55 protected)
Notes:
- The Hawks will receive the more favorable of Houston’s and Miami’s second-round picks, while the Kings will receive the less favorable of those two picks. Those two picks could end up right next to one another, since the Rockets (40-24) and Heat (41-24) have nearly identical records.
- The Celtics’ pick looks like it will be one of the rare second-rounders with heavy protection that will actually change hands. Boston would have kept it if it had fallen in the top 53.