Los Angeles Lakers Rumors | Hoops Rumors

Lakers Sign Michael Frazier

August 25th, 2015 at 1:22pm CST by Arthur Hill

AUGUST 25TH, 1:22pm: The deal is official, the team announced.

AUGUST 16TH, 4:33pm: The Lakers have reached a contract agreement with Florida’s Michael Frazier, agent Matt Ramker told Adam Silverstein of OnlyGators.com. Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders is hearing it is a two-year, minimum-salary deal with a partial guarantee for $50K (Twitter link).

Frazier weighed his options with the Jazz and Sixers before deciding on the deal with the Lakers, Alex Kennedy of Basketball Insiders tweets.

The team signed Jonathan Holmes to a similar deal on Thursday. In addition, Tarik Black, Jabari Brown and Robert Upshaw are expected to battle for two to three open roster spots, tweets former Nets executive Bobby Marks.

The 6’4″ Frazier, who left school as a junior, was not selected in June’s draft. As a sophomore, he set a school record with 118 3-pointers in a season as the Gators reached the Final Four, but missed part of his junior season with a high ankle sprain.

Hoops Rumors Community Shootaround 8/24/15

August 24th, 2015 at 11:00pm CST by Dana Gauruder

The Los Angeles Lakers and New York Knicks have been among the NBA’s most glamorous franchises for decades. They play in two of the country’s biggest cities with large media followings and passionate fan bases.

The Lakers have also been the league’s most successful franchise outside of the Celtics, collecting 11 championships since moving from Minneapolis in 1961. Knicks fans have been thirsting for a title since New York beat the Lakers in the Finals twice in the early ’70s, though they made two trips to the Finals in the ’90s.

It’s hard to believe that a franchise with a winning tradition like the Lakers and a team with the advantage of playing in storied Madison Square Garden like the Knicks could fall on such hard times the past two seasons. Los Angeles won 27 games in 2013/14 and, thanks to Kobe Bryant’s torn rotator cuff, plunged even further into the abyss with a 21-61 mark last season. The Knicks also went from bad to worse, finishing eight games under .500 two seasons ago and then winning just 17 games in last season’s painful campaign marred by Carmelo Anthony’s knee issues, which limited him to a career-low 40 games.

Things appear to be looking up on both Coasts, thanks to trips to the lottery, trades, free agent signings and improving health. The Lakers drafted D’Angelo Russell to be their floor leader, signed free agents Brandon Bass and Louis Williams and traded for center Roy Hibbert. They’ll also have last year’s lottery selection, Julius Randle, back in action after a season-long injury and Bryant on the comeback trail.

The Knicks drafted European big man Kristaps Porzingis, signed free agents Arron Afflalo and Robin Lopez to fill starting roles and retooled their bench. They’ll also have Anthony back to lead the offensive attack while playing in a division that had just one team finish above .500.

Neither club is expected to make the postseason but with the upgrades, they should be much more competitive or, at the very least, watchable. So our question of the day is as follows: Which team will win more games this season, the Lakers or the Knicks?

Take to the comments section below to sound off with your thoughts and opinions. We look forward to what you have to say.

Note: Since these Shootarounds are meant to be guided by you the reader, we certainly welcome your input on the topics we present. If there is something you’d like to see pop up here for a discussion, shoot us a message at hoopsrumorsmailbag@gmail.com.

Hawks, Pelicans To Work Out Sean Kilpatrick

August 24th, 2015 at 2:30pm CST by Chuck Myron

Former Timberwolves shooting guard Sean Kilpatrick will be a participant in workouts that the Hawks and Pelicans are set to conduct soon, reports Darren Wolfson of 1500 ESPN Twin Cities (Twitter link). The Lakers and Spurs previously worked him out, as Wolfson notes. The 25-year-old averaged 5.5 points in 17.9 minutes per game across four appearances while on a 10-day contract with Minnesota this past season.

Geography had a significant influence in on Minnesota’s decision to sign the former University of Cincinnati standout, since he was close to New York, where the Wolves were set to play the Knicks without the minimum eight healthy players. Still, he saw plenty of playing time during the 10-day stint and seems to be attracting no shortage of attention from other NBA clubs now. He was on the Bucks summer league squad last month and spent time with the D-League affiliates of the Warriors and Sixers this past season.

The Lakers and Hawks have the $2.814MM room exception to spend, while the Pelicans have their $2.139MM biannual exception and the Spurs are limited to paying no more than the minimum. An all-out bidding war for Kilpatrick seems unlikely, though it wouldn’t be surprising if the interest from multiple teams results in a guaranteed deal of some kind, though that’s just my speculation.

Which team do you think would make the most sense for Kilpatrick? Leave a comment to tell us.

And-Ones: Lakers, Celtics, Lee

August 23rd, 2015 at 10:30pm CST by Will Joseph

The Lakers have promoted Ryan West to director of player personnel, Eric Pincus of the Los Angeles Times reports. West was formerly the team’s assistant director of scouting. West is the son of Lakers legend Jerry West. An official announcement won’t be made until September, according to Pincus.

Here’s more from around the league:

The Celtics have been hesitant to make long-term investments to secure cap space, but Gary Washburn of the Boston Globe speculates that the team might look to extend Tyler Zeller. The team could agree to what Washburn writes would be a modest extension. The center averaged 10.2 points per game and 5.7 rebounds per game last season. A. Sherrod Blakely of CSNNE.com, in a recent report, wrote that Zeller has a better chance than Celtics teammates Jared Sullinger and Perry Jones III to receive a contract extension before the start of the regular season.
David Lee is in a good situation now that he is with the Celtics, Joel Brigham of Basketball Insiders writes. While Boston likely won’t make as deep a playoff run as the Warriors, the Celtics should be a pretty good young team and Lee should find himself in a starting role, Brigham adds. The Celtics acquired Lee in a deal with the Warriors in July.

Pacific Notes: Weems, Bryant, Griffin

August 23rd, 2015 at 8:59am CST by ChrisCrouse

Matt Petersen of NBA.com chronicles Sonny Weems’ path back to the NBA after playing in the D-League and overseas. Weems was traded to the Nuggets during the 2008 draft and ending up playing most of his minutes in the D-League. In less than a year, the guard was traded twice. Once he received meaningful minutes for Toronto, he showed he belonged in the NBA. Then the lockout happened. Like quite a few NBA players, he signed overseas, but his contract was the only one not to contain an “out” clause. Once his contract expired, he signed a two-year contract with CSKA, but this time he made sure to secure an “out” clause. The Arkansas product was shooting better than 40% from behind the arc and he knew he would generate enough interest to use it.

The Suns signed Weems this offseason to help aid their bench unit and the 29-year-old couldn’t be happier. “Every basketball player growing up, their dream is to play in the NBA,” Weems said. “Now I’m back.”

Here’s more from the Pacific Division:

Kobe Bryant is back on the court practicing shooting drills for the first time since tearing the rotator cuff in his right shoulder, Eric Pincus of The Los Angeles Times writes. Bryant is in the last year of his current deal, which will pay him $25MM.
The Clippers were able to improve their bench unit this summer with the additions of Lance Stephenson, Wesley Johnson and Josh Smith. The new arrivals should allow the team’s starters to get more rest during the regular season, which is something Blake Griffin sees as a huge advantage in the long run, Rowan Kavner of NBA.com writes. “It’ll help a lot,” Griffin said. “My third season in the league when we had that unbelievable bench, I think I dropped to like 32 minutes a game in the regular season…You definitely feel fresher toward the end, but you have to find that right balance of not holding back too much, being able to give everything. Having an elite bench is going to help us tremendously, especially come playoff time.”

And-Ones: Williams, Thomas, Nunnally

August 22nd, 2015 at 10:52pm CST by Arthur Hill

Alan Williams, who starred at UC Santa Barbara and made an impact during summer league, was surprised that no NBA team was willing to give him a guaranteed contract, according to Paul Coro of The Arizona Republic. Instead, Williams signed with the Double Star Eagles in Qingdao, China, grabbing an overseas spot that usually isn’t available once NBA training camps end in October. “It gave me financial stability, which is something a lot of people don’t get in their first year,” Williams said. “It gives me an opportunity to go out there and develop my game more and play for a pretty good team. Culturally, I get to go to a whole different continent and see how they play.” Williams thought he might get more interest from NBA teams after an impressive performance with the Rockets‘ summer league squad. He averaged 20.5 points and 11.8 rebounds in four games and was named to the all-NBA Summer League second team. Williams is hoping for another shot at the NBA once his CBA season ends in February or March.

There’s more news tonight from around the basketball world:

Tyrus Thomas, the fourth pick in the 2006 draft, still dreams of returning to the NBA, writes Alex Kennedy of Basketball Insiders. Thomas missed the entire 2013/14 season after undergoing an anterior cervical discectomy and fusion for an arachnoid cyst. He signed a 10-day contract with the Grizzlies in January, but only appeared in two games. At 29, he is training for another shot at the league and hopes to be in someone’s camp next month.
James Nunnally has signed with Sidigas Avellino of the Italian Serie A, according to Emiliano Carchia of Sportando. Nunnally, another UC Santa Barbara product, appeared in a combined 13 games with the Hawks and Sixers during the 2013/14 season. He spent last season with teams in Spain and Israel, and played for the Pacers‘ entry in this year’s summer league.
Several teams took risks this summer, and Lang Greene of Basketball Insiders evaluates the best and worst of them, including the Lakers‘ and Knicks‘ draft picks, the Rockets‘ deal for Ty Lawson, the Raptors giving big money to DeMarre Carroll and Cory Joseph and the Kings‘ gamble on Rajon Rondo.

Latest On Carlos Boozer

August 21st, 2015 at 12:26am CST by Chuck Myron

7:54am: The Shandong Lions, another Chinese team, are also going after Boozer, as Sportando’s Emiliano Carchia indicates via Twitter.

12:26am: The Sichuan Blue Whales and other Chinese teams are expressing interest in Carlos Boozer, and while the Rob Pelinka client is intrigued, he’s still pursuing NBA deals, reports Marc Stein of ESPN.com (Twitter links). News regarding the 33-year-old has been scarce since a late-July report indicated that the Knicks, Rockets and Mavericks were eyeing him. The 33-year-old has lingered in free agency since July, when the lucrative five-year deal he signed with the Bulls expired. He made $16.8MM last season as a member of the Lakers, though Chicago paid all but the $3.251MM figure the Lakers bid when they claimed him via amnesty waivers.

Few NBA teams have more than the $2.814MM room exception to spend at this point. The Mavs have that amount available, though they already have deals with 20 players, the offseason maximum. The Knicks spent the room exception on Kevin Seraphin and have only the minimum to offer. The Rockets have about $2.274MM worth of their mid-level that they could spend, though doing so would leave the team hard-capped and without the means to give No. 32 pick Montrezl Harrell a market-value contract. Boozer and the Clippers reportedly had mutual interest in July, but they only have the minimum to spend, and while the Spurs, Raptors, Pelicans, Nuggets, Nets, Lakers and Heat have all apparently had interest over the course of the summer, it’s unclear if that’s the case now. Thus, I’d speculate that Boozer is only receiving minimum-salary offers from NBA teams at this point.

Andray Blatche signed a three-year, $7.5MM deal with China’s Xinjiang Flying Tigers this past spring, and a few weeks ago Shavlik Randolph inked a contract for at least $4.5MM over three years, numbers that suggest that Boozer, if he went to China, stands a decent chance to top the $1,499,187 he’d see on an NBA minimum deal. Still, Metta World Peace wound up with less than that in his deal with Sichuan last summer. A Chinese team would nonetheless offer Boozer a chance to double-dip, since the Chinese Basketball Association ends well in advance of the NBA season, giving players an opportunity to latch on with NBA teams at prorated salaries for the stretch run.

Will Joseph of Hoops Rumors examined Boozer’s free agent stock in depth earlier this month.

Where do you think Boozer ends up? Comment to tell us.

And-Ones: Morris, Richardson, Draft

August 19th, 2015 at 9:33pm CST by Eddie Scarito

Darius Morris, who was waived by the Nets at the end of June, has received contract offers from NBA teams and clubs overseas, but thanks to a foot injury suffered during training, he’ll be out of action for a few months, Morris’ agent, Brian Dyke, told international journalist David Pick (Twitter link). The 24-year-old made 38 appearances for Brooklyn during the 2014/15 campaign, logging averages of 2.2 points, 0.7 rebounds, and 1.3 assists in 7.9 minutes per contest.

Here’s more from around the league:

Joel Brigham of Basketball Insiders tabs new L.A. arrivals Roy Hibbert and Lance Stephenson as two of six players who appear likely to benefit from having changed teams this summer.
Jason Richardson‘s deal with the Hawks is a one-year minimum-salary arrangement and is without any guaranteed money, reports Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders (Twitter link). It has limited injury protection, Pincus also says, so it appears to be an Exhibit 9 contract. Richardson will see $1,499,187 if he sticks for the entire season, but since the deal only covers one season, it would cost the Hawks no more than $947,276, the equivalent of the two-year veteran’s minimum. The league picks up the rest of the tab.
Jonathan Givony of DraftExpress peered into his crystal ball and released his first mock draft for 2017’s big event. The current top three players on Givony’s draft board are forwards Harry Giles and Jayson Tatum, with point guard Dennis Smith rounding out the top-ranked trio.

Chuck Myron contributed to this post.

Lakers Sought Yi Jianlian

August 18th, 2015 at 3:07pm CST by Chuck Myron

The Lakers made a recent run at former No. 6 overall pick Yi Jianlian, who’s been playing in his native China, a source tells international journalist David Pick (Twitter link). Pick’s tweet indicates that the Lakers were unsuccessful in luring Yi from the Guangdong Southern Tigers, with whom he reportedly signed a five-year, $16.1MM extension in June. The Lakers wouldn’t have been able to sign him at that point, since NBA teams can’t ink outside free agents between the end of the regular season at the start of July.

It’s unclear what level of interest the Lakers had in the 27-year-old who hasn’t appeared in the NBA since the 2011/12 season. He’s been putting up impressive numbers for Guangdong, having averaged 27.7 points and 10.9 rebounds in 37.2 minutes per game this past season. Still, the level of competition in China isn’t particularly high. Yi’s best NBA season came in 2009/10, when he put up 12.0 PPG and 7.2 RPG in 31.8 MPG for the Nets. The Bucks originally selected him in the 2007 draft but traded him to the Nets a year later. He also appeared in the league with the Wizards and Mavs.

It doesn’t appear as though the Lakers still have any plan to go after Yi, but if they did, they could offer him only the $2.814MM room exception, which limits the team to giving out no more than a two-year deal worth $5,754,630. The composition of the team’s regular season roster is still murky, with only 12 players possessing fully guaranteed deals.

Do you think we’ll ever see Yi Jianlian in the NBA again? Comment to let us know.

Most Within Kings Want DeMarcus Cousins Traded?

August 17th, 2015 at 5:44pm CST by Chuck Myron

5:44pm: Cousins, Divac and Ranadive all took to Twitter in an apparent effort to debunk the latest rumors, with Cousins posting “Blah blah blah…” and Divac chiming in with “I agree…#family.” Ranadive followed with the hashtag #WeAreFamily (hat tip to Marc Stein of ESPN.com).

2:04pm: The vast majority of the people in the Kings organization would prefer to see the team trade DeMarcus Cousins, as Bleacher Report’s Howard Beck says he’s been told (video link). Owner Vivek Ranadive has said publicly since the spring that he has no desire to trade the All-Star center, and while Beck believes that the owner is steadfast against a move, it appears others in the team’s power structure feel differently. Beck adds that coach George Karl would still like to see the team move on from Cousins, even though Karl has said otherwise.

It’s the latest twist in an ongoing saga involving the Kings and Cousins that comes on the heels of weeks of apparent peacemaking. Cousins said last week that he and Karl were on the same page after a meeting that they’d had along with vice president of basketball operations Vlade Divac and assistant GM Mike Bratz. That meeting came after a brief encounter between Cousins and the coach at summer league that was reportedly their first interaction for a period of months. Cousins notoriously tweeted snake and grass emojis shortly after a report surfaced indicating that Karl had actively attempted to have him traded. A person familiar with Karl’s thinking told Beck all the way back in February that the Kings weren’t ruling out trading Cousins at the deadline this past February, and Karl advanced that notion in April when he said that he’d never coached a player who was off-limits for a trade.

Karl’s apparent efforts to trade Cousins reportedly upset Ranadive to the point that he considered firing the coach, and a conflicting narrative exists about whether the Kings reached out to John Calipari as a potential replacement. Indeed, the line of Cousins rumors has been rife with denials and nuance, dating back to concerns over Cousins’ reaction to the pair of coaching changes that Sacramento made this past season. His contract still has three full seasons left, valued at an average of nearly $16.958MM a year, so it doesn’t present an urgency to make a deal.

The Lakers emerged as a strong suitor for Cousins around draft time. The Dan Fegan client reportedly wanted to play with them, and Ranadive apparently gave Fegan permission to see if he could find a workable trade that would take Cousins out of Sacramento. However, no deal materialized as Divac, who has echoed Ranadive in saying publicly many times that he wants to keep Cousins, sought a reconciliation between Cousins and Karl. It had seemed, before today’s news, that the coach and his star player had patched up their relationship, but apparently that effort still has a ways to go.

What do you think of the latest development in the DeMarcus Cousins saga? Leave a comment to tell us.