- The Warriors earned the No. 1 spot on David Aldridge’s list of offseason rankings, as he details in a piece for NBA.com. Aldridge’s list is based on each team’s summer roster moves, rather than its overall roster strength, so the Kings and Lakers rank in his top 10 as well.
A number rookies appear poised to outperform their draft slot, Mike Schmitz of ESPN Insider writes, including one Dennis Smith Jr. whose impressive summer league performance and prime situation with the Mavs have already been discussed ad nauseam.
The scribe makes compelling cases for five other breakout candidates, however, ranging from Jazz lottery pick Donovan Mitchell to the Lakers‘ Kyle Kuzma, selected 27th overall. Schmitz cites Mitchell’s length and defensive ability, arguing that the wing will work his way into Utah’s still-relevant rotation.
Schmitz also speculates that Justin Jackson will thrive with the Kings considering that he’s a poised perimeter option that doesn’t need the ball in his hands on offense.
Although the profiles are hidden behind Insider’s paywall, they discuss the upside and various situation’s that these first-year players find themselves. In addition to the abovementioned, John Collins of the Hawks and Nets big man Jarrett Allen are also featured.
There’s more from throughout the NBA:
- In a comprehensive account of Darko Milicic‘s life after basketball, ESPN’s Sam Borden revealed that Milicic had made up his mind about never playing in the NBA again when he left the Celtics. It was said, at the time, that he was returning to be with his ailing mother.
- It may be early to speculate about the 2018 NBA All-Star Game but that didn’t stop A. Sherrod Blakely of CSN New England from stringing together a potential squad. Familiar faces make up the starting lineup but new additions Jimmy Butler and Paul George make the case for qualifying as a reserve ever more difficult for the players in the conference.
- With a new season comes new opportunity and David Yapkowitz of Basketball Insiders has pieced together a summary of Pacific Division players that he thinks may be able to take the next step in 2017/18.
Improved coaching is the next step for Africa to produce more NBA players, writes Shaun Powell of NBA.com. The league held its annual Africa Game on Saturday, which brought several NBA coaches to the continent for a week of teaching. Powell notes that most of the players who represented Team Africa in the contest learned their skills while growing up in other places.
“The coaches here are getting involved in coaching clinics, teaching techniques and fundamentals like never before,” said Pelicans coach Alvin Gentry, who was part of the event. “Some of the high school coaches are very interested in learning more and understanding how to teach. I think it’s all progressing. The league saw the issue at hand and addressed it and I’ll be shocked if this is not the place where the next wave of NBA players come from.”
There’s more news from around the basketball world:
- Commissioner Adam Silver has privately voiced his concerns to some owners and team officials over the idea of coaches serving as executives, relays Adrian Wojnarowksi of ESPN. The Clippers became the latest team to abandon that approach on Friday when they made Doc Rivers a full-time coach and promoted Lawrence Frank to president of basketball operations. Gregg Popovich, Stan Van Gundy and Tom Thibodeau are the only remaining coaches who serve both roles.
- Byron Scott tells TMZ that he’s through with coaching and has no desire to return to the NBA. Scott, 56, was fired by the Lakers at the end of the 2015/16 season after two years with the team. He compiled a 38–126 record for a .232 winning percentage that is the worst of any coach in franchise history. He also frequently clashed with the team’s younger players. Scott served as head coach of the Nets, Hornets and Cavaliers before coming to L.A.
- The G League is hoping to eliminate a buyout loophole by requiring anyone who gets waived to remain in the player pool for 14 days before being released from their contract, writes Adam Johnson of 2 Ways & 10 Days. In the past, overseas teams have been able to avoid $40K or $50K buyouts as teams would release players as a gesture of goodwill when they received offers. Johnson says the new rule amounts to a no-compete clause, which is illegal in some states.
The 2017 NBA Draft was loaded with talented point guards, including first overall pick Markelle Fultz, No. 2 selection Lonzo Ball, and fellow lottery picks De’Aaron Fox, Frank Ntilikina, and Dennis Smith Jr.
Fultz showed flashes of brilliance in the NBA Summer League amid overall inconsistent play before he ultimately injured his ankle in his Las Vegas debut. The 76ers guard was promptly shut down for the remainder of Summer League. This season, the rookie figures to be a regular fixture in the Philadelphia backcourt.
After dominating his freshman season at UCLA, Ball won Las Vegas Summer League MVP honors, racking up assists (9.3 APG) and steals (2.5 SPG), as well as points and rebounds. Although it is not clear whether Ball will start for the Lakers right out of the gate, he will certainly be the beneficiary of a hearty amount of playing time.
Fox is also expected to see his fair share of action this season, but averaged just 21.3 minutes per game in four Las Vegas Summer League games. Like Fultz and Ball, Fox exhibited tantalizing athleticism. The Kentucky product averaged a solid 11.8 points per contest and 3.0 assists. Fox’s 2.3 SPG were extremely impressive.
The Knicks drafted Ntilikina eighth overall because of his speed and agility. Last season, the point guard averaged just 15.5 minutes per game for Strasbourg in France but displayed tremendous promise and improved noticeably as a shooter. With D. Rose out of town, it appears as if the keys to Madison Square Garden are about to be Frank’s.
In six games in Las Vegas, Smith averaged 17.3 PPG, 4.8 RPG, and 4.2 APG, shooting 45.7% from the floor and electrifying with the occasional powerful dunk. The Mavericks prospect also tallied 2.2 SPG.
This brings us to today’s poll: Which of these point guards will have the best rookie season in 2017/18?
After Friday’s announcement that Doc Rivers will surrender his front office role to solely focus on coaching, it was the crescendo to a tumultuous dual role for the NBA champion coach, Bill Oram of The Orange County Register writes.
Rivers, for four seasons, was tasked with both assembling a quality roster and then leading it to success on the court. As Oram writes, despite winning 50+ games each year with Rivers at the helm, the Clippers failed to advance past the first round of the playoffs. So, while Rivers is often viewed as one of the NBA’s elite head coaches, his career in the front office is “spotty,” Oram adds.
“Given final say on personnel moves, something Rivers coveted and chased all the way across the country to L.A., the career coach struggled annually to find the right mix of role players,” Oram writes about the man who led the 2007/08 Celtics to the NBA championship.
Despite the controversy that came with it, Rivers’ acquisition of his son, Austin Rivers, was a good move that yielded a quality role player for a team filled with superstar talent. Besides that, the obvious turmoil within the team became obvious, highlight by notable departures of J.J. Redick and Chris Paul this offseason. While Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan remain with the team, the direction of the Clippers with Lawrence Frank assuming Rivers’ former role and it will take a while before a prognosis on that move is available.
Read more about news surrounding the Los Angeles teams:
- Despite his role with the organization being restructured, Rivers will still make every penny of the five-year, $50MM deal he signed with the team in 2014, tweets Sam Amick of USA Today.
- Los Angeles Times’ Brad Turner tweets that the Clippers interviewed Mark Hughes and Shareef Abdur-Rahim for front office roles last week.
- In a separate tweet, Turner reports that Corey Maggette, Lester Conner, and Mo Peterson interviewed for the role of director of player development and special assistant to Magic Johnson and Rob Pelinka. Maggette, however, has withdrawn his name from consideration, per Turner (via Twitter).
AUGUST 4: The Lakers have officially signed Blue, the team announced today in a press release.
JULY 29: The Lakers have reached an agreement with combo guard Vander Blue on a partially guaranteed contract, sources told Shams Charania of The Vertical (Twitter link). The guarantee is $50K, Chris Reichert of The Step Back tweets.
Blue, 25, played eight games for Los Angeles’ summer-league team in Las Vegas and made a strong impression, averaging 15.0 PPG, 3.8 RPG and 3.0 APG in 27.4 MPG. The 6’4” Blue also made half of his field-goal attempts.
Blue did not play in the NBA the past two seasons but lit up the G League last season, earning MVP honors. He played 47 games for the Lakers’ affiliate, the D-Fenders, and averaged 24.8 PPG, 5.1 RPG, 3.0 APG and 1.6 SPG in 34.8 MPG.
Blue, a Marquette product, has a limited NBA resume. He appeared in three games with the Celtics during the 2013/14 season and two games with the Lakers the following season. Mainly a shooting guard, Blue joins a backcourt that includes rookies Lonzo Ball and Josh Hart, Jordan Clarkson, Tyler Ennis and free agent signee Kentavious Caldwell-Pope.
While not all the contract details have been revealed, it’s safe to assume there are no guarantees beyond this season. The Lakers want to have as much salary-cap space as possible next summer in order to make runs at top free agents.
Virtually every one of the Lakers’ 2017 offseason moves was made with an eye toward 2018. Timofey Mozgov was dealt in order to create future cap flexibility, and L.A. only committed a single year to a promising young free agent like Kentavious Caldwell-Pope in order to preserve space for 2018, when the club plans to pursue a max free agent or two.
In his latest piece for Bleacher Report, Eric Pincus takes a deep dive into the math behind the Lakers’ summer of 2018, exploring whether it would be possible to create room for two maximum salaries. While the Lakers don’t currently project to have that sort of space, the club is confident it could trade Jordan Clarkson if necessary in order to clear more salary from its books, a source within the organization tells Pincus.
Of course, as the Mozgov deal proved, any contract is movable in the right deal, but Pincus’ report suggests the Lakers believe they wouldn’t necessarily have to attach another asset of value to Clarkson in order to deal him, like they did with Mozgov. The 25-year-old guard, who averaged 14.7 PPG and 2.6 APG off the bench for L.A. last season, is under contract for three more years at a rate of $12.5MM annually.
Even if the Lakers move Clarkson without taking any salary back, the team would only be up near about $60MM in projected 2018 room, not quite enough for two max players, according to Pincus, who suggests trading or waiving Luol Deng‘s sizable contract would likely be necessary as well.
The summer of 2018 is still a long way off, and it remains to be seen if the Lakers will be able to lure one or two top free agents out west, but the ’18 class currently projects to be a star-studded one — LeBron James, Russell Westbrook, and Paul George are among the players currently on expiring contracts who have been linked to Los Angeles at some point during their respective careers.
For now, this all merely amounts to speculation. Clarkson’s 2017/18 performance will affect his trade value, and the free agent landscape could look much different for the Lakers by next July than it does now. Still, it’s worth noting that new president Magic Johnson and GM Rob Pelinka are putting plenty of thought into what the team’s roster will look like a year from now.
- Contrary to what was previously reported, the second year of Tyler Ennis‘ two-year deal with the Lakers will not feature a team option for 2018/19. Instead, Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders tweets, it will come with a non-guaranteed second season.
July 30: The Lakers announced that they have officially signed Bryant in a press release on their official website.
July 27: The Lakers have reached an agreement with second-round pick Thomas Bryant, according to Shams Charania of The Vertical. The pact will be for two seasons and it will be guaranteed for the 2017/18 season. It will contain a team option for the 2018/19 campaign.
Bryant spent two seasons at Indiana, where he scored 12.2 points and grabbed 6.6 rebounds per game. Los Angeles selected the big man with the No. 42 overall pick in the 2017 draft and he shined for the organization’s Summer League team, helping it to win a championship in the Las Vegas league.
The Lakers no longer had the cap room necessary to offer Bryant more than a two-year contract, but the two-year limit may not be a major concern for L.A. The structure of Bryant’s new deal will allow the Lakers to part ways with him after one season if the team needs to create as much cap room as possible in 2018 for a maximum-salary player or two.
Before he even suits up for a regular season game with the Lakers, Lonzo Ball has already made an impact on the team, J.A. Adande of ESPN writes. The scribe notes that the Lakers just sold the rest of its season ticket inventory and a recent season ticket viewing open house — which only yielded 175 sales last season — sold over 600 available seats for next season.
Ball certainly made an impression in the Las Vegas Summer League, taking home Most Valuable Player honors and generating headlines by simply wearing different brands of sneakers. Also, Adande notes that five summer league contests that generated the highest ratings were Lakers games. Despite being just 19 years old, Ball has become a polarizing figure and, in the early stages, living up to the hype generated by his outspoken father, LaVar Ball.
It will not be an easy feat to secure Rookie of the Year honors, or speak his father’s words of bringing the Lakers to the playoffs in 2017/18 into existence. However, playing a city and for a team that prides itself on Showtime, Ball has given the organization and its fans something to get excited about.
Here are additional notes from around the Pacific Division:
- Julius Randle is entering his fourth NBA season and coming off a season where he averaged 13.2 PPG and 8.6 RPG in 74 contests. Mark Medina of the Los Angeles Daily News writes that Randle is hoping to find improvement next season after altering his conditioning program and trimming down his body weight.
- The Clippers signed Willie Reed to a team-friendly one-year, $1.5MM deal and he’s happy to be with the team, Basketball Insiders’ Cody Taylor writes. Blake Griffin and Patrick Beverley were among the teammates to welcome Reed to L.A. and he’s excited to begin playing with the club.
- Alan Williams has parlayed a lack of college interest, international play, and shoddy NBA workouts into a three-year, $17MM deal with the Suns. As Scott Bordow of Arizona Central Sports writes, Williams is grateful to have both cashed in with the deal and remained with the team he rooted for as a kid.
- Speaking of Williams, the Suns’ cap space after the signing is $6.3MM though the team also owns a $12.1MM hold on 24-year-old international talent Alex Len, according to ESPN’s Bobby Marks (via Twitter).