Los Angeles Lakers Rumors | Hoops Rumors

Pacific Notes: Hewitt, Lakers, Gay

September 4th, 2016 at 11:34am CST by ChrisCrouse

The Clippers have hired Paul Hewitt as a scout, sources tell Adrian Wojnarowski of The Vertical (Twitter link). Hewitt previously was a head coach in the collegiate ranks, manning the sidelines at Siena, Georgia Tech and George Mason.

Here’s more from the Pacific Division:

The Lakers are embarking on a rebuild, something the franchise doesn’t undergo often, and if the team’s young talent can take steps in the right direction, it will likely help Los Angeles draw big time free agents next summer, Shaun Powell of NBA.com writes in a piece that previews the team’s 2016/17 season. Powell adds that the Lakers brought in veterans, like Luol Deng, in part to mentor their young talent.
Rudy Gay will likely leave the Kings either via trade this season or in free agency next year, Steve Kyler of Basketball Insiders writes. Gay holds a player option worth slightly more than $14.26MM for the 2017/18 campaign and Kyler believes the forward turns it down in search of a long-term deal.

Russell Praises Relationship With Walton

September 3rd, 2016 at 12:00pm CST by Eddie Scarito

Lakers point guard D’Angelo Russell and former coach Byron Scott did not have a good relationship last season, but the second year player has nothing but raves for new head coach Luke Walton, as he told Serena Winters of LakersNation. “He’s one of the best people I know, as far as off the court,” Russell said of Walton. “We communicate on and off the court as much as possible. I feel like I can call him anytime. He’s not like a head coach that will sit back and just watch his other coaches and colleagues just train other players, he’s always involved. He’ll get out there and play with you if he wants. It’s just great to have a young coach like him in the building.”

The Rockets, Spurs, Lakers and Pacers are among the teams who are interested in Carl Landry, who was waived by the Sixers this week, Darren Wolfson of 1500 ESPN tweets.

Lakers Sign Julian Jacobs, Travis Wear

September 1st, 2016 at 2:06pm CST by Luke Adams

The Lakers issued a press release today announcing that they’ve officially added two more players to their offseason roster. In addition to confirming their previously-reported deal with Travis Wear, the Lakers also revealed that they’ve inked undrafted free agent guard Julian Jacobs to a contract.

Jacobs, a point guard who played his college ball at USC, left the Trojans after his junior year to declare for his NBA draft. In his final year at USC, he averaged 11.6 PPG and 5.4 APG in 31 contests, shooting 47.1% from the field.

Wear, a small forward, was out of the NBA last season after playing 61 games for the Knicks in 2014/15. The 25-year-old has a total of 51 NBA contests under his belt, all with New York, and has career averages of 3.9 points, 2.1 rebounds and 0.8 assists in 13.2 minutes per night. His career NBA shooting line is .402/.367/.769.

Neither Jacobs nor Wear seems like a great bet to earn a regular-season roster spot for the Lakers, who now have 18 players under contract. The team has 14 fully guaranteed contracts on its books, plus Yi Jianlian‘s partially-guaranteed deal. If Nick Young is traded or released, a 15-man spot would open up, but Zach Auguste, who got a $60K guarantee from L.A., per Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders (Twitter link), would be vying for that opening as well.

Randle Out Two Weeks With Hand Injury

August 30th, 2016 at 5:31pm CST by Eddie Scarito

Lakers forward Julius Randle will be out of action for at least 14 days after suffering a laceration to his right hand during practice that required seven stitches, the team announced.

Lakers To Sign Travis Wear

August 29th, 2016 at 6:08pm CST by Eddie Scarito

The Lakers have reached an agreement with unrestricted free agent Travis Wear, Adrian Wojnarowski of The Vertical reports (via Twitter). The scribe refers to it as a training camp deal, so it’s likely a minimum salary pact that includes little or no guaranteed money.

Wear, a small forward, was out of the NBA last season after playing 61 games for the Knicks in 2014/15. He instead played overseas for the Spanish club RETAbet.es GBC, appearing in 26 games and averaging 7.5 points, 4.2 rebounds and 0.7 steals in 20.5 minutes per outing. His shooting line was .448/.353/.737.

The 25-year-old has a total of 51 NBA contests under his belt, all with New York, and has career averages of 3.9 points, 2.1 rebounds and 0.8 assists in 13.2 minutes per night. His career NBA slash line is .402/.367/.769.

Lakers Sign Zach Auguste

August 29th, 2016 at 5:30pm CST by Arthur Hill

AUGUST 29th: The signing is official, the team announced.

AUGUST 21st: The Lakers have reached an agreement with former Notre Dame power forward Zach Auguste, tweets Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders. Auguste played for the Lakers’ summer league team in Las Vegas, averaging 5.0 points and 4.3 rebounds per game. Terms of the deal were not available.

When Auguste signs, he will be the 16th player on the roster, and Pincus speculates that he could either be ticketed for the D-League or L.A. is planning to open a roster spot by getting rid of Nick Young (Twitter link).

The 6’10”, 240-pound Auguste was a double-double machine with the Irish, averaging 14.0 points and 10.8 rebounds during his senior season. He was rated as the 76th best prospect by DraftExpress and was not selected on draft night.

Lakers Contract Notes: Yi Jianlian, Tarik Black

August 26th, 2016 at 2:58pm CST by Luke Adams

The Lakers‘ contract with Yi Jianlian is very team-friendly in its structure, and could make the Chinese big man a solid trade chip this season, writes Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders. Although he has already provided a few details on Yi’s unorthodox contract, Pincus gets a little more specific in his latest piece, writing that the new Laker will earn $2.3MM incentive bonuses when he reaches 20 games played, 40 games, and 59 games.

Because those incentives are considered “likely,” Yi currently counts for $8MM against the salary cap, but he won’t receive his full salary unless he remains on an NBA roster beyond January 10, 2017, and appears in at least 59 games. If the former lottery pick fails to make an impact early on with the Lakers, he could be traded after December 15 and before his salary becomes guaranteed in January, since his cap hit would significantly outweigh the money owed to him, and he could easily be waived.

Tarik Black‘s new two-year deal with the Lakers is worth about $12.85MM in total, but the second year is fully non-guaranteed, tweets Pincus. Los Angeles will have to make a decision on Black’s 2017/18 salary by July 4 or three days before the end of the July moratorium, whichever happens later.

Jason Terry Talks Free Agency Process

August 25th, 2016 at 8:57am CST by Luke Adams

Veteran guard Jason Terry recently inked a one-year contract with the Bucks, and while it’s only a minimum-salary deal, it’s fully guaranteed, which is something of a rarity at this point in the NBA offseason. In an interview on SiriusXM NBA Radio (SoundCloud link), Terry admitted that the free agency process can be tough at this late stage in his career (he’ll turn 39 next month). He also identified several of the teams he considered before landing in Milwaukee.

“I had a couple contenders that I was really seriously looking at. Two of them were in the Finals, so that tells you right there who they were,” Terry said, referring to the Cavaliers and Warriors. “I made a call to [Gregg Popovich]. San Antonio’s another one. They were my arch-enemy for eight years when I was in Dallas, but that’s another phone call — if they call, you pick up, there’s just no question about it. … I always thought about going back and trying to finish off where I started in Atlanta. I like what they did. And then I seriously considered Boston, though we did not have a conversation.”

Based on Terry’s comments, it’s not clear how many of those teams he reached out to, and how many reached out to him, so it’s possible that interest wasn’t mutual in all those scenarios. Terry also admitted that while he had some interest in the Lakers, that interest wasn’t reciprocated, since Los Angeles already had a good idea of what its 15-man roster would look like.

“I called my good friend Luke [Walton],” Terry said. “I told him if he needed any help — veteran leadership, in that capacity, with an ability to coach at the end of my deal, then that was something I would be looking forward to. He utterly declined, and I respect him for that.”

Although he’s not the scorer he was early in his career, Terry was still a solid contributor in Houston over the last two seasons, averaging 19.5 MPG in 149 regular-season contests, and averaging 6.5 PPG, 1.7 APG, and 0.8 SPG while shooting 37.5% on three-pointers. In both of his seasons with the Rockets, Terry received a bump in playing time during the postseason.

Lakers Re-Sign Tarik Black

August 24th, 2016 at 2:58pm CST by Luke Adams

AUGUST 24: More than a month and a half after agreeing to terms with Black, the Lakers have officially re-signed him, the team announced today in a press release. The delay was a result of the Lakers using all their cap room before going over the cap to sign Black using the Early Bird exception.

“Tarik is a player whose strengths are well-suited for the style of play we envision for our team going forward,” Lakers GM Mitch Kupchak said in a statement. “He plays the game with a mix of athleticism, energy, and physicality that make him a valuable frontcourt contributor in today’s NBA.”

JULY 4: The Lakers have reached an agreement on a new deal for restricted free agent center Tarik Black, reports Shams Charania of The Vertical (via Twitter). According to Charania, the two sides agreed to a two-year, $12.85MM pact. Within his full report on the agreement, Charania writes that Black’s new deal will feature a trade kicker and won’t be fully guaranteed in the second year.

A former undrafted free agent, Black made his NBA debut with the Rockets during the 2014/15 season, appearing in 25 games (12 starts) for Houston before being cut. The Lakers nabbed Black off waivers, and he played well for Los Angeles in 2014/15, starting 27 of his 38 games with the team and averaging 7.2 PPG and 6.3 RPG, with a .589 FG%, in just 21.1 minutes per contest.

Black was used exclusively in a reserve role in 2015/16 for the Lakers, and saw his minutes reduced to just 12.7 per game, but the team apparently still liked what it saw from him enough to lock him up to a multiyear deal.

As Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders tweets, based on the numbers, it looks like it will be an Early Bird signing, which means that the Lakers won’t have to allocate any extra cap space for Black. Currently, his cap hold is worth $1,180,431, which is the amount of his qualifying offer. The Lakers will be able to keep that number on the books until they run out of cap room (if they do so), at which point they can exceed the cap to finalize Black’s new deal.

More Yi Jianlian Contract Details

August 24th, 2016 at 8:59am CST by Luke Adams

We passed along the general details of Yi Jianlian‘s unusual contract with the Lakers on Tuesday, but in a series of tweets, Pincus goes into more detail as he attempts to figure out exactly how the deal will work. Jianlian has nearly $7MM in likely incentives on his one-year deal, and Pincus believes those incentives will be tied to how many games the Chinese big man plays, with multiple checkpoints along the way.