Los Angeles Lakers Rumors | Hoops Rumors

Lakers Notes: Clarkson, Henry, Price, Ellington

November 15th, 2014 at 6:54pm CST by ChrisCrouse

Despite Kobe Bryant‘s insistence on playing through fatigue and injuries, head coach Byron Scott has not had a difficult time with Bryant due to his experience coaching elite players with such stubborn mindsets, writes Jovan Buha of ESPNLosAngeles.com. “I’ve had the privilege and the honor of coaching a few guys that I think are probably Hall of Famers in Jason Kidd and Chris Paul,” Scott said. “I haven’t had the opportunity to coach anybody at this magnitude — as great as Kobe is — but I have had that opportunity. It hasn’t really been an adjustment for me.” Scott expects Bryant, who was experiencing flu-like symptoms in Friday’s loss to the Spurs, to play against the Warriors on Sunday. “You’d probably have to amputate his leg for him not to play tomorrow,” Scott said at practice on Saturday.

Here’s more from Los Angeles:

The Lakers assigned Jordan Clarkson and Xavier Henry to their D-League affliate, the D-Fenders, according to the team’s Twitter feed. To date, Clarkson has averaged 4.3 PPG in 11.4 MPG during eight games played in his rookie season. Henry, who will again become a free agent after the 2014/15 season, has averaged only 1.3 PPG in 8.9 MPG during seven contests.
The Lakers will guarantee portions of their non-guaranteed contracts with Ronnie Price and Wayne Ellington, assuming they aren’t placed on waivers today. Price’s deal is set to become guaranteed for about $329K while Wayne Ellington is in line for a nearly $316K guarantee, as shown on our Schedule of Contract Guarantee Dates and as originally reported by Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders. Ellington is on an indefinite leave from the team as he mourns the murder of his father.
The team had hoped Steve Nash would serve as a mentor and de facto coach for the young players on the Lakers, but Nash’s lack of presence at the team’s facilities has dampened that scenario, writes Bill Oram of the Orange County Register. Oram adds that Scott can’t even get Nash to return a phone call. “If my coach would have called me,” Scott said, “I definitely would have called him back.” Scott later clarified that he is not upset with Nash. “I’ll try him again when I get some more free time tomorrow or Monday or something like that,” Scott said. “I know he’s probably going through a tough time as far as trying to adjust to life without basketball at this particular point.” Nash was ruled out for the 2014/15 season and while many believe he has already played his last game in the NBA, he is technically not retired.

Chuck Myron contributed to this post.

Western Notes: Lakers, Suns, Thomas

November 14th, 2014 at 8:32pm CST by Eddie Scarito

The Lakers will keep their first-round pick only if it falls within the top five selections, but GM Mitch Kupchak says his team will never attempt to engineer a poorer record, as he tells Baxter Holmes of ESPNLosAngeles.com. “It’s a lottery,” Kupchak said. “It doesn’t mean anything. I mean, last year, we got the seventh pick in the draft, and to me, it felt like we lost every game. I don’t know how you lose more games to try to get a better pick. I just don’t know how you do it.”

Here’s more from out west:

With three starting-caliber point guards on the Suns’ roster, head coach Jeff Hornacek is forced to juggle rotations on a nightly basis, Tim Bontemps of The New York Post writes. “It hasn’t been tricky to navigate the [who is] playing part of it, because the guys that are playing well, we just keep them in,” Hornacek said. “Sometimes guys want to have their guaranteed minutes, and sometimes you can do that, but that’s where the tricky part comes.” One thing making it easier on the team is Eric Bledsoe‘s contract situation being sorted out, notes Bontemps. Now that Bledsoe is signed long-term Hornacek doesn’t need to worry about giving him extra minutes as an incentive to stay in Phoenix, Bontemps adds.
With the Lakers off to a 1-7 start it looks increasingly likely the franchise will get to keep its 2015 first-rounder. Kevin Pelton of ESPN.com (Insider subscription required) analyzes the Lakers’ chances of not having to relinquish their much-needed draft pick to Phoenix.
The Thunder have unearthed a gem in the form of Lance Thomas, who made Oklahoma City’s regular season roster despite incredibly long odds, Darnell Mayberry of The Oklahoman writes. With all of the early season injuries the team has faced, Thomas’ versatility and work ethic have been invaluable, Mayberry adds.

Chuck Myron contributed to this post.

Grizzlies, Lakers Audition Tyrus Thomas

November 14th, 2014 at 5:06pm CST by Eddie Scarito

The Grizzlies have brought in Tyrus Thomas for a workout, Alex Kennedy of Basketball Insiders reports (Twitter link). Thomas apparently left Memphis without an reaching an agreement with the team because he’s scheduled to let the Lakers take a look at his wares next, Kennedy adds, though the date of the Los Angeles workout was not relayed in Kennedy’s tweet.

Memphis looks to be in the market for a reserve big man with the team having brought in veteran forward Kenyon Martin earlier this week, though the reports were conflicting as to whether or not Martin was being looked at as a player or a coach. The Grizzlies have only 14 players on their roster after waiving Kalin Lucas this past weekend, so the team has the flexibility to take on Martin without needing to let anyone else go.

With Memphis less than $1MM shy of the luxury tax line, any deal would likely be a non-guaranteed, minimum-salary arrangement so as not to hamstring the franchise for any further moves later on in the season. But with Thomas looking to make a comeback after being out of the NBA since the Hornets placed him on amnesty waivers back in July of 2013, that would likely be in line with what the player and his new agent, Roger Montgomery of the Montgomery Sports Group, would expect.

As for the Lakers, the team has the league-maximum 15 players currently on its roster, so a corresponding move would be needed to accommodate Thomas if the team chose to sign him. The NBA recently granted Los Angeles a disabled player exception worth $1,498,680 as a result of the season-ending injury to Julius Randle, but it’s unlikely that the team would spend any more than the minimum salary to ink Thomas, though that is just my speculation.

Thomas’ career averages through 400 contests are 7.7 PPG, 4.8 RPG, 0.9 APG, and 1.3 BPG. His career slash line is .438/.235/.732.

Lakers Work Out Ater Majok

November 14th, 2014 at 2:11pm CST by Charlie Adams

FRIDAY, 2:11pm: The team is conducting Majok’s workouts with its D-League affiliate in mind, and not the NBA roster, Bleacher Report’s Kevin Ding tweets.

TUESDAY, 11:02pm: The Lakers are bringing in Ater Majok for a series of workouts, according to Shams Charania of RealGM. The 6’11” Majok was selected 58th overall by Los Angeles in the 2011 draft and appeared on the Lakers’ summer league team in 2012 but is yet to see any regular season NBA action since being drafted. Los Angeles is also reportedly eyeing Quincy Miller, who is similarly slated to work out for the club this week. However, Charania cautions that the pair of players’ auditions for the team are unrelated, suggesting that there’s a shot both of them end up signing deals.

The Lakers’ roster currently sits at a league-maximum 15 players, but the non-guaranteed contracts of Ronnie Price and Wayne Ellington could be waived to make room for one or both of Majok and Miller. Price and Ellington’s pacts are set to become partially guaranteed if kept on the books past November 15th, and the latter of the duo has just been provided an indefinite leave of absence to mourn the loss of his father.

The NBA granted the Lakers a disabled player exception worth $1,498,680 as a result of the season-ending injury to rookie Julius Randle, but there’s been no indication that the team would spend any more than the minimum salary to bring in Majok, who has spent time in Slovakian, Belarusian, German and Korean leagues since being drafted in 2011. At 27-years-old, Majok would be older than a typical rookie, but his experience might benefit a young Lakers’ roster that’s lacked depth in the season’s early going.

Kevin Love Continues To Eye Lakers?

November 14th, 2014 at 11:16am CST by Chuck Myron

FRIDAY, 11:16am: Love threw cold water on Smith’s report in response to a question from Chris Haynes of the Northeast Ohio Media Group (Twitter link). In his apparent denial, the power forward referenced a recent controversy over a hand gesture that he and Kyrie Irving made in a game recently that some thought was a reference to marijuana use. “Whatever we were doing with our hands is about as true as me going to the Lakers next year,” Love said to Haynes.

MONDAY, 12:14pm: Kevin Love made it clear that he wanted to play with LeBron James and the Cavs this past offseason before the trade that sent him to Cleveland, but “indications are” that he’ll consider opting out and that he still has interest in playing for the Lakers, according to Sam Smith of Bulls.com. Love possesses a $16.744MM player option for next season, but he’d stand to make significantly more on a new maximum-salary deal if he were to opt out.

Reports last season previously connected Love to the Lakers, who seemed the front-runners to land him one way or another as of the February trade deadline, though Love downplayed such talk. Still, Love played collegiately at UCLA, as Smith points out, and the Lakers, like many teams, have had interest in the sharpshooting power forward for quite some time.

The Cavs will have Love’s Bird rights come next summer, and while the Lakers couldn’t give him a fifth year or 7.5% raises the way Cleveland could, the purple-and-gold are still poised to have enough cap room to give Love a four-year max deal with 4.5% raises. The fifth year wouldn’t necessarily be attractive to the Jeff Schwartz client, since a short-term contract would allow him to re-enter free agency after the salary cap and maximum salaries jump because of the league’s new $24 billion TV deal, set to kick in for 2016/17.

Love indicated his intention to remain with Cleveland long-term shortly after the August trade that brought him from the Wolves. He said that a desire to win motivated him to push for the swap, and the Lakers, who won their first game of the season Sunday night, appear a ways from contention. He emphasized to reporters during the preseason that playing for a winner means more to him than performing in a large market.

And-Ones: Silver, Harris, Bryant, Celtics

November 13th, 2014 at 10:12pm CST by Eddie Scarito

Commissioner Adam Silver fired back at union executive director Michele Roberts, who held up players as the linchpins of the league while calling the salary cap “incredibly un-American.” The NBA sent remarks from Silver to media, including John Schuhmann of NBA.com, just hours after Roberts made her comments, “We couldn’t disagree more with these statements,” Silver said. “The NBA’s success is based on the collective efforts and investments of all of the team owners, the thousands of employees at our teams and arenas, and our extraordinarily talented players. No single group could accomplish this on its own. Nor is there anything unusual or ‘un-American’ in a unionized industry to have a collective system for paying employees – in fact, that’s the norm.”

Here’s more from around the league:

Tobias Harris says his first choice would be to remain with the Magic in restricted free agency this summer, according to John Denton of Magic.com. A report Wednesday indicated that Harris has strong interest in signing with the Knicks, so perhaps New York is Plan B.
Kobe Bryant has the same amount of championship rings as Tim Duncan (five), but that doesn’t stop the Lakers star from being envious of how the Spurs have kept their core together for so many years, Dan McCarney of The San Antonio Express-News writes. Bryant told Mike Bresnahan of the Los Angeles Times, “I’m extremely jealous of that. I don’t know if I can express to you how jealous I am of the fact that Tim [Duncan], Tony [Parker], Manu [Ginobili] and Pop [Gregg Popovich] have been together for all those years. Like, I can’t even. It would be like if me, Pau [Gasol], L.O. [Lamar Odom] and Phil [ Jackson], if we were all here still. It’s crazy.”
The Celtics were one of the teams reportedly interested in acquiring Kevin Love this past summer, but Boston wasn’t able to entice the Wolves into making a deal. Chris Forsberg of ESPNBoston.com believes that with the way the franchise’s young core is performing it may end up being a blessing that no trade came to pass. Forsberg does add that the team still needs another star player to pair alongside Rajon Rondo, and Love would have certainly fit that bill.

Chuck Myron contributed to this post.

Western Notes: Brooks, Warren, Livingston

November 13th, 2014 at 8:28pm CST by Eddie Scarito

Former Lakers guard MarShon Brooks‘ time with Olimpia Milano of Italy may be coming to an end, David Pick of Eurobasket reports (Twitter link). It is unclear if this means Brooks will be waived by the Italian team or if a buyout arrangement is being discussed. The 25-year-old shooting guard was pursued by the Pacers, Kings and an unnamed “title-contending team” from the east prior to Brooks inking his overseas deal this summer, and with the rash of early season injuries Brooks could have a number of NBA opportunities if he returns stateside.

Here’s more from out west:

The Suns assigned T.J. Warren to the D-League earlier today but his stint shouldn’t be a long one, Rick Bonnell of The Charlotte Observer writes. “T.J. is going to be a great player,” head coach Jeff Hornacek asserted. “This team has a lot of guys at his spot right now, but he’s going to be around. He’s going to be a factor. He’s got great hands. He knows how to score, but the transition [defensively] has been pretty good, too.” The first-rounder out of North Carolina State has only seen one minute of NBA action thus far this season.
Shaun Livingston will face off against the Nets tonight, his former team, and he discussed why he chose to sign with the Warriors this summer, Stefan Bondy of The New York Daily News writes. “It was about putting myself in the best position to win, and also to get the value as a player. Your market value,” Livingston said. “That was my case. I was hoping to [finally get a big offer] and ideally that was the thought process going into free agency, but, man, I’ve been in a couple of situations where I thought I was going to get paid and I was going to come back and it just didn’t work out. I mean, my injury [in 2007], that year I was supposed to get an extension and I didn’t. I had a good a year with the Wizards [in 2009/10] and then they end up getting John Wall with the first pick.”
With his excellent numbers filling in for the injured Russell Westbrook, the Thunder‘s Reggie Jackson is generating a market value that will test the team’s willingness to match any offer sheets he is likely to receive this summer, Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports opines. It’s not clear exactly how much Jackson will command on his next contract but Wojnarowski suggests that the annual salary could be in the $13MM-$14MM range.

Western Notes: Spurs, Centers, Suns, Jazz

November 13th, 2014 at 3:00pm CST by Chuck Myron

Kobe Bryant hasn’t been nearly as willing to sacrifice money for the betterment of his team the way Tim Duncan has. Still, with the Lakers raking in $100.1MM in basketball-related revenue last season, an amount that far outstrips any other team in the league, USA Today’s Sam Amick argues that Bryant is simply more valuable to his team, in a financial sense, than Duncan is to the Spurs. San Antonio netted $26.1MM from their basketball operations last season, a source tells Amick. Here’s more from around the Western Conference:

Big men still command attention on the market even in an era of small-ball, and next summer’s free agent class figures to see plenty of centers garner top dollar, as Amin Elhassan of ESPN.com examines in an Insider-only piece. The majority of the bigs he spotlights are on Western Conference teams, including Marc Gasol, Omer Asik, Robin Lopez and Tyson Chandler.
The Suns have assigned 2014 first-round picks Tyler Ennis and T.J. Warren to the D-League, the team announced (on Twitter). Suns coach Jeff Hornacek indicated that the rookies won’t stay with the Bakersfield Jam for long, and it’s likely they return to the big club in time for an East Coast road trip that begins Monday in Boston, according to Paul Coro of The Arizona Republic (Twitter links).
Toure’ Murry is headed on D-League assignment from the Jazz, the team announced. Murry has yet to appear in a game for Utah after signing as a free agent this past summer. We’ll be keeping track of D-League assignments and recalls throughout this season in this post.

And-Ones: Griffin, Lakers, Draft, Harris

November 12th, 2014 at 7:45pm CST by Alex Lee

Clippers star forward Blake Griffin was officially charged with a misdemeanor count of battery today stemming from an October incident at a Las Vegas night club, reports Ben Bolch of the Los Angeles Times. We’re sure to hear more on this in the very near future. For now, though, let’s take a look at what else is happening around the league:

Eric Pincus of the Los Angeles Times provides some additional detail around the disabled player exception the Lakers were granted for Julius Randle on Monday, including a list of players that the team could pursue within the guidelines of the exception. In addition to the 15 players they could target via trade, Pincus also mentions Ray Allen, Emeka Okafor and Quincy Miller as free agents worth considering. Meanwhile, though it’s not Laker-specific, Alex Kennedy of Basketball Insiders has compiled his own list of notable players that are still unsigned.
The crop of freshman talent in the 2015 draft class pales in comparison to last year’s group, as Marc J. Spears of Yahoo! Sports hears. Utilizing opinions collected from various NBA scouts, Spears compiles his own top 10 prospect list which is topped by Duke’s Jahlil Okafor, Kentucky’s Karl Towns and Texas’ Myles Turner.
Orlando forward Tobias Harris reiterated his commitment to the Magic tonight when asked about the New York Post report from earlier today that indicated he’d have interest in joining the Knicks this offseason, reports John Denton of OrlandoMagic.com (via Twitter). Harris will be a restricted free agent next summer.

And-Ones: Howard, Waiters, Johnson, Pacers

November 12th, 2014 at 4:22pm CST by Chuck Myron

Dwight Howard makes several candid comments in an EPIX.com documentary about his departure from the Magic, his year with the Lakers, and the 2013 back injury that one of his surgeons believes had a decent chance to end his career, notes Marc Stein of ESPN.com. Howard also delved into his relationship with Kobe Bryant.

“Before I got to the Lakers, I would talk to him [and] he would really help me out on the [down] low about how to become everything that I said I wanted to be. And I looked up to him and I looked up to everything he, as a basketball player, stood for,” Howard said, as Stein transcribes. “… [By the end of that season] I just felt so hurt and disappointed in the fact that the guy that I was expecting to be somebody who was gonna pass the torch, somebody to say, ‘Dwight, I’ll take you under my wing and I’ll show you how to get it done’ … it was none of that.”

Howard remains a fascinating figure even as his long-term deal with the Rockets has quieted the rumors that surrounded him. Here’s more from around the league:

The Cavs shopped Dion Waiters this past August but found no takers, according to Bradford Doolittle of ESPN.com, who writes in an Insider-only piece. That conflicts with a report from early August that indicated the Cavs weren’t trying to trade the shooting guard.
Ivan Johnson has drawn offers from NBA teams and clubs overseas, a source tells HoopsHype’s David Alarcón (Twitter link and translation). He plans to make a decision about whom to sign with in the next couple of weeks, Alarcón adds.
Frank Vogel believes Lance Stephenson would have chosen to re-sign with the Pacers if he’d known Paul George would suffer his broken leg, as Vogel tells Ian Thomsen of NBA.com. “I think he probably — and we probably — would have approached it differently,” Vogel said. “The money would have to have been right, and we would’ve had to figure that out. But he would have had much more incentive to stay.”