Memphis Grizzlies Rumors | Hoops Rumors

Western Notes: Grizz, Pleiss, Clark, Kings

August 1st, 2014 at 7:56pm CST by Alex Lee

Grizzlies owner Robert Pera indicated that the decision to keep Chris Wallace in charge of the team’s basketball operations had to do with more than just on-court matters, as Pera said today before assembled media, including The Associated Press.

“When you are looking at this team in Memphis, I think you’ve for to look at the general manager in two respects,” Pera said. “One is the basketball performance. The other I’ve learned with Memphis the past couple of years is this idea of community involvement. And everybody loves Chris in Memphis. He is a special person for the Memphis community.”

Here is what else is going on out West:

The Thunder made an attempt this summer to bring seven foot German Tibor Pleiss, a 2010 draft-and-stash selection, to the NBA this season but the price of the buyout was ultimately prohibitive, reports Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports. Oklahoma City will again try to bring the 31st selection of the 2010 draft to the states for the 2015/16 season, a possibility Woj calls “likely”, but the big man will play for FC Barcelona this year. (Twitter links)
Making his weekly radio appearance, Jazz GM Dennis Lindsey said that the team has a few things to take care of before deciding on the contract of shooting guard Ian Clark, tweets Jody Genessy of the Deseret News. Clark played 23 games in Utah as a rookie last season after signing a two-year deal with the Jazz last July. His salary for the upcoming season is not guaranteed.
After years of frustration, construction finally began Friday on the Kings new arena in Sacramento, writes Dale Kasler of the Sacramento Bee. The agreement on the arena site, facilitated by new owner Vivek Ranadive, was a critical factor in the NBA rejecting the franchise’s relocation to Seattle. The $477MM structure is scheduled to be ready for the 2016/17 season.
Back in Sacramento this week, Suns guard Isaiah Thomas provided plenty of juicy quotes to Blake Ellington of Sactown Royalty, indicating that he knew he probably wouldn’t be returning to the Kings when he saw his former team had inked fellow point guard Darren Collison. “When they did that, I knew I wasn’t coming back,” Thomas said. “If you bring in somebody, a draft pick or somebody that’s just not better than me I feel like it is disrespectful. When they picked Darren Collison, I felt like it was time for me to move on.”

Chuck Myron contributed to this post.

Western Rumors: Jokic, Grizzlies, Jazz, Kings

July 31st, 2014 at 9:44pm CST by Cray Allred

It doesn’t sound like the Nuggets intend to sign 41st overall pick Nikola Jokic this year, as Chris Dempsey of The Denver Post writes amid his mailbag column that the center from Serbia won’t be on the roster come fall. Here’s a rundown of the Western Conference, including some more notes out of Denver:

In another response, Dempsey predicts that the Nuggets will make the playoffs this season, but speculates that a failure to do so will result in a “gut-job” on the roster from the front office.
The Denver Post scribe would expect JaVale McGee to be on the trading block for 2015/16, when he will be on an expiring contract, if the Nuggets center doesn’t stay healthy and play well this year.
The Grizzlies have retooled their coaching and development staff with a group of promotions and hires, installing Jeff Bzdelik, Jason March, Drew Graham and John Townsend as assistant coach, assistant coach/advanced scout, head trainer, and director of player development, respectively, according to a team release.
Aaron Falk of The Salt Lake Tribune looks at the plethora of rookie extension decisions facing the Jazz, who have six lottery picks on their roster, in the coming years.
The Kings final court victory regarding their new arena will be appealed, but a team spokeswoman tells Dale Kasler of The Sacramento Bee that Sacramento will move forward with construction.

Chuck Myron contributed to this post.

Grizzlies Hire Ed Stefanski For Front Office

July 29th, 2014 at 3:19pm CST by Chuck Myron

3:19pm: The hiring is official, the team announced via press release.

9:25am: The Grizzlies have identified the front office addition they’ll make to assist GM Chris Wallace, reaching agreement with former Nets and Sixers GM Ed Stefanski to become the executive vice president of player personnel in Memphis, reports Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports. The selection is a surprise, since Stefanski wasn’t among the several executives linked to the Grizzlies in the past few months. A report just three days ago indicated the team’s progress toward a hire had stalled.

Memphis had reportedly been looking for someone to serve as a “GM-in-waiting” of sorts who would train under Wallace until he was ready to assume Wallace’s duties as the team’s top basketball executive. Stefanski, already having served as GM for two NBA franchises, probably wouldn’t need much training if the team envisions him as its future front office leader, but he’ll at least start off beneath Wallace on the organizational chart, as Wojnarowski indicates. Grizzlies owner Robert Pera said recently that he might promote Wallace to president of basketball operations.

Pacers vice president of basketball operations Peter Dinwiddie and former Raptors and Knicks GM Glen Grunwald were the leading candidates that Wojnarowski identified two weeks ago. Chris Makris, the GM of the Grizzlies’ D-League affiliate, also appeared to be in the mix, at least to a degree. Memphis reportedly interviewed Dinwiddie, Grunwald, Nets assistant GM Bobby Marks, and Knicks director of pro personnel Mark Hughes. The team made Thunder assistant GM Michael Winger an early target before he turned them down. Knicks director of player personnel Mark Warkentien was also an apparent candidate.

Stefanski most recently worked under Bryan Colangelo in the Raptors front office from 2011-13. Stefanski helped build two NBA Finals teams while serving as Nets director of scouting from 1999 until his appointment as the team’s GM in 2004.

Western Notes: Clippers, Henry, Grizzlies

July 29th, 2014 at 12:52pm CST by Chuck Myron

Attorneys for Donald Sterling plan to ask an appellate court for permission to appeal Monday’s probate court decision, even though the ruling doesn’t allow Sterling to seek a court order stopping the sale of the Clippers as he appeals, according to Brian Melley of The Associated Press. Dan Woike of the Orange County Register details three ways that Sterling can still prevent wife Shelly Sterling from completing the $2 billion sale of the Clippers to former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. Monday’s ruling left Donald Sterling unbowed, as his attorney Bobby Samini said to reporters, including Woike.

“His reaction was very calm,” Samini said. “He didn’t see this as the final battleground. This is one stage of a long war. This is one battle. We had hoped for a different result, but this is not the end.”

There’s more on the Sterling saga amid the latest from around the Western Conference:

Judge Michael Levanas accepted the contention of Shelly Sterling’s lawyers that it was unlikely that anyone would match Ballmer’s $2 billion bid for the Clippers, as Melley notes in his piece. “Ballmer paid an amazing price that cannot be explained by the market,” Levanas said.
Xavier Henry‘s one-year contract with the Lakers isn’t a minimum-salary arrangement, as first believed, and is instead worth the $1.082MM leftover portion of the team’s room exception, reports Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders (Twitter link). The other part of the room exception went to Ryan Kelly.
Joe Abadi, a lawyer for Grizzlies owner Robert Pera, conducted the team’s interviews with candidates for the front office job that Ed Stefanski will fill, sources tell Marc Stein of ESPN.com. Abadi has taken on a larger role in the organization while Pera has marginalized minority owners Stephen Kaplan and Daniel E. Straus, as Stein details.

Grizzlies Sign Chris Wallace To Extension

July 29th, 2014 at 12:30pm CST by Chuck Myron

12:30pm: It’s a three-year deal with a team option on the final season, according to Marc Stein of ESPN.com. It appears as though the terms kick in for this coming season, though that’s not entirely clear.

11:16am: The Grizzlies have signed Chris Wallace to a multiyear extension and dropped the interim tag from his GM job, the team announced via press release. The team had applied the interim tag to Wallace’s GM title earlier this offseason when it parted ways with former CEO Jason Levien, although it represented a return to power for Wallace, who had retained the title of GM even during virtual exile from the organization.

“We are very pleased to announce Chris Wallace as our general manager,” owner Robert Pera said in the team’s statement. “Chris has been at the forefront and a stable presence throughout some of the Grizzlies’ greatest successes. His strong bonds and experience, not only within the organization and NBA but also within the Memphis and Mid-South communities, make him the ideal fit to lead our basketball operations. We believe Chris’ skills and expertise to be vital in our continued success of our franchise.”

A report late Monday indicated that Memphis had reached agreement with Ed Stefanski to serve as the team’s executive vice president of player personnel, a role that would make him an assistant to Wallace. The extension seems to confirm that Wallace will remain in charge of the team’s front office, even though the Grizzlies had apparently been seeking a “GM-in-waiting” to eventually take over for him.

Wallace first became the GM of the Grizzlies in 2007, but even though he didn’t lose his job when Levien came aboard with the sale of the team to Pera in 2012, Wallace went nearly a year without stepping foot in Grizzlies offices. Pera nonetheless emerged as an apparent fan of Wallace’s, saying shortly after Levien’s departure that he wanted to retain Wallace in some form or fashion even if he wouldn’t return to his role as head of the club’s basketball department. More recently, Pera said that he might promote Wallace to president of basketball operations, but it appears as though that job will remain vacant and Wallace will head the front office with his familiar job title of GM.

And-Ones: Heat, Wolves, Stokes, Mudiay

July 28th, 2014 at 10:19pm CST by Eddie Scarito

Heat owner Micky Arison addressed the team’s fans today to assure them that despite losing LeBron James, the franchise would contend in the east, writes Ira Winderman of the Sun Sentinel. Arison said, “We are laser-focused on the present and the task at hand of defending our Eastern Conference championship with the East being described as ‘wide open,’ while also positioning ourselves for maximum flexibility and maneuverability in the future.“

Here’s more from around the league:

The Grizzlies may have found a diamond in the rough on draft night with their selection of Jarnell Stokes, writes Alex Kennedy of Basketball Insiders. Stokes was projected by some experts as a potential late first-round pick, but slipped to Memphis who selected him 35th overall.
Top 2015 prospect Emmanuel Mudiay said he is skipping SMU for financial reasons, not because of any academic issues at his former prep school, tweets Adam Zagoria of SNY. Mudiay reportedly signed for $1.2MM in China.
The Wolves signing of Mo Williams earlier today will give the team the a player who can create his own shot, which is something the team was lacking, opines Jerry Zgoda of the Star Tribune (Twitter link).
The signing of Williams could potentially affect a number of players’ roster spots on the team, writes Michael Rand of the Star Tribune.
When discussing the rumors about any potential trade that would bring Kevin Love to the Bulls, Derrick Rose said, “That’s up to the front office. I’m riding with whatever decision they make. My job right now is to prepare,” tweets Sam Smith of Bulls.com.

Zach Links contributed to this post.

And-Ones: Villanueva, Grizzlies, Clippers

July 26th, 2014 at 2:31pm CST by Charlie Adams

The NBA is looking to extend the All-Star break into a seven day hiatus from regular season play, reports Ira Winderman of the Sun Sentinel. The longer break will likely be in effect for the 2014/15 campaign, says Winderman, who adds that the increased time off at midseason will mean an extra set or two of back-to-back games for clubs around the league. Let’s look at a few more miscellaneous notes from around the NBA..

Free agent Charlie Villanueva remains unsigned after working out for multiple teams, but is excited about chronicling the process in his own web series despite the uncertainty, as he tells Vince Ellis of The Detroit Free Press. “It’s been five years with the Pistons and that road has come to an end, but I have a couple things lined up,” Villanueva said. “One of the things obviously is working out for some teams, but at the same time capturing every moment of free agency and what I’m going through.”
After recently narrowing the field of candidates, the Grizzlies search for a GM-in-waiting has stalled, according to Grantland’s Zach Lowe (on Twitter). Lowe’s sources say that it’s now possible Memphis doesn’t hire anyone as the successor in waiting for current GM Chris Wallace. The Grantland scribe suggests the team could promote from within the organization, citing in-house counsel Joe Abadi as a hot name.
Gary Washburn of the Boston Globe clues readers in about Natalie Nakase, an assistant video coordinator for the Clippers with ambitions of becoming the first female head coach in NBA history.

Cray Allred contributed to this post.

Grizzlies Sign Patrick Christopher For Camp

July 25th, 2014 at 11:07am CST by Chuck Myron

SEPTEMBER 25TH: The deal is official, the team announced.

JULY 25TH: Free agent shooting guard Patrick Christopher has agreed to a non-guaranteed deal with the Grizzlies, reports Marc Stein of ESPN.com (Twitter link). It appears it’ll be a summer contract that will allow the former University of California standout to go to training camp in October with a chance of making the opening night roster.

Christopher had a similar arrangement with the Bulls last year, but he was one of the team’s first cuts, in early October, and he didn’t appear in a preseason game. He wound up joining the D-League’s Iowa Energy, averaging 13.6 points in 33.4 minutes per contest and swishing 44.6% of his three-point attempts.

The 26-year-old will join a fairly crowded roster in Memphis, which has 14 players on guaranteed contracts. That doesn’t include Jarnell Stokes, this year’s 35th overall pick, who remains unsigned. Memphis can carry up to 20 players into camp, but it appears there’s just one spot up for grabs on the team’s regular season roster, which can have no more than 15 players.

Teams With Hard Caps For 2014/15

July 24th, 2014 at 2:29pm CST by Chuck Myron

The NBA’s salary cap is really a misnomer of sorts, since it doesn’t truly cap salaries. Look no further than last year’s Nets for confirmation of that. They doled out nearly $103MM in salaries, incurring more than $90.57MM in luxury taxes and smashing the record for the greatest expenditure on a single roster in NBA history.

The NBA’s salary cap is commonly referred to as a “soft cap,” but there are still ways that teams can impose a “hard cap” upon themselves and set a finite limit to their spending. If a team’s salary exceeds the luxury tax threshold ($76,829,000) by more than $4MM, that team is not permitted to acquire a player via sign-and-trade, or to use the non-taxpayer’s mid-level or biannual exceptions. The only exceptions available to such a team are the taxpayer’s mid-level of $3,278,000, the minimum-salary exception, and whatever form of Bird rights they have on their own free agents. As soon as a team completes a sign-and-trade deal, uses its BAE, or uses more than $3,278,000 of its MLE to sign a player, that club becomes hard-capped at $80,829,000 for the 2014/15 season. In other words, team salary can’t exceed that amount at any point between now and June 30th, 2015.

For some clubs, that hard cap isn’t a major concern. For instance, the Suns still have about $18MM in breathing room below the hard cap, so they have plenty of flexibility to re-sign restricted free agent Eric Bledsoe to a max contract if need be. On the other hand, the Clippers are only about $1MM below the hard cap, so any trades or signings they make for the rest of the season will have to be constructed to ensure their team salary doesn’t surpass that $80.829MM cutoff.

More clubs may trigger hard caps as the offseason wears on, but here are the teams that are now locked into a hard cap for the 2014/15 season, along with an estimation (via Basketball Insiders) of their current team salaries and the reason(s) why the hard cap was created:

Hawks
Hard cap created: Acquired Thabo Sefolosha via sign-and-trade
Estimated team salary: $60,975,564

Rockets
Hard cap created: Acquired Trevor Ariza via sign-and-trade
Estimated team salary: $68,125,942

Wizards
Hard cap created: Acquired Kris Humphries via sign-and-trade; acquired DeJuan Blair via sign-and-trade; signed Paul Pierce via non-taxpayer MLE
Estimated team salary: $76,646,603

Suns
Hard cap created: Acquired Isaiah Thomas via sign-and-trade
Estimated team salary: $51,805,537

Warriors
Hard cap created: Signed Shaun Livingston via non-taxpayer MLE
Estimated team salary: $72,232,245

Pacers
Hard cap created: Signed C.J. Miles and Damjan Rudez via non-taxpayer MLE
Estimated team salary: $74,798,942

Clippers
Hard cap created: Signed Spencer Hawes via non-taxpayer MLE; signed Jordan Farmar via biannual exception
Estimated team salary: $79,679,772

Grizzlies
Hard cap created: Signed Vince Carter via non-taxpayer MLE; signed Beno Udrih via biannual exception
Estimated team salary: $75,529,943

Trail Blazers
Hard cap created: Signed Chris Kaman via non-taxpayer MLE; signed Steve Blake via biannual exception
Estimated team salary: $69,322,824

Kings
Hard cap created: Signed Darren Collison via non-taxpayer MLE
Estimated team salary: $75,852,705

Contract Details: LeBron, Deng, Carter, Gasol

July 24th, 2014 at 10:04am CST by Chuck Myron

The idea that the Cavs would trade LeBron James sometime during his two-year contract is outlandish, but just in case it happens, the deal includes a 15% trade kicker, according to Mark Deeks of ShamSports. Deeks has updated his salary database with plenty of new information on deals signed within the past few weeks, so we’ll pass along some of his noteworthy findings. All links to go the relevant salary page at ShamSports.

Luol Deng, LeBron’s replacement with the Heat, also has a 15% trade kicker, as do new Grizzlies swingman Vince Carter and Knicks signee Jason Smith.
The last year of Pau Gasol‘s three-year deal with the Bulls is a player option.
The final season of the contract Joe Harris signed with the Cavs is non-guaranteed.
Eric Griffin‘s three-year, minimum-salary contract with the Mavs is non-guaranteed, with the exception of a $150K partial guarantee for this coming season.
Jodie Meeks‘ deal with the Pistons was originally reported to be more than $19MM, but it actually checks in at $18.81MM.
Damjan Rudez will make $3.449MM over the life of his three-year deal with the Pacers, which includes a team option for the final season. Shayne Whittington‘s partial guarantee with the team this year is worth $25K.
Russ Smith‘s deal with the Pelicans runs three years at the minimum salary, but only the first season is fully guaranteed. Fellow Pelicans rookie Patric Young‘s two-year deal is non-guaranteed, save for a $55K partial guarantee this year.