- Restricted free agent guard Trevor Keels is looking to show the Knicks with his Summer League play that he deserves to be part of the team’s plans going forward, writes Zach Braziller of The New York Post. He’s off to a shaky start, scoring just 10 points on 4-of-13 shooting during his first two games in Las Vegas — New York has been outscored by 52 points during his 33 minutes on the floor, per Braziller.
Patrick Beverley played with James Harden in Houston for five seasons from 2012-17 and is hoping to get the opportunity to reunite with his old backcourt mate in Philadelphia. Acknowledging that the decision on how to handle Harden’s trade request is “above my pay grade,” Beverley said during his introductory press conference on Monday that he’d love it if Harden is still with the Sixers when the season begins.
“One of my decisions coming here was because James Harden was here,” Beverley said, per Keith Pompey of The Philadelphia Inquirer. “So I hope he stays. Hope that everybody can kind of work something out and put that behind us and kind of move forward. I think it’s important.
“… I love him. James, I love you, bro. Stay. … I’m very familiar with James. And I’m excited. I’m excited to get it going. He knows I’m here. So we’ll see.”
Beverley officially signed his one-year, minimum-salary contract with the Sixers over the weekend. Harden’s future – or lack thereof – in Philadelphia will be one of the factors that determines what Beverley’s role looks like in 2023/24.
Here’s more from around the Atlantic:
- Extension discussions between Jaylen Brown and the Celtics have progressed as expected so far, and the two sides appear to be moving closer to an agreement, potentially within the next week, writes Jared Weiss of The Athletic. Weiss adds that the three teams involved in the Grant Williams sign-and-trade – Boston, Dallas, and San Antonio – are still finalizing the details on all the draft picks involved in that complex deal, which should become official soon.
- Although he didn’t receive a qualifying offer from the Nets in June, David Duke has been playing for their Summer League team and remains hopeful about returning to Brooklyn, per Brian Lewis of The New York Post. Duke, who finished the season on a standard contract with the Nets after being promoted from his two-way deal, admitted that he was a little surprised not to be given a QO. “You know, things don’t always happen as you really expect it. So yeah, I can say that I was expecting (a qualifying offer),” he said. “But my whole career I feel like there’s been things that have kind of been thrown at me that I didn’t expect, so it’s not really something that shook me or anything like that. … I think if I take care of the stuff on the court, everything will fall into place.”
- In a story for The Athletic, Fred Katz examines the impact Donte DiVincenzo could have on the Knicks‘ defense, outlines the unlikely incentives in DiVincenzo’s new contract, and weighs the value of the second-round picks the team got back in the Obi Toppin trade with Indiana.
- Knicks officials were at a private workout for free agents Alize Johnson and Ben McLemore, according to Ian Begley of SNY.tv (Twitter link). Johnson played four games for the Spurs last season before being waived in December, while McLemore most recently played in China.
Obi Toppin is happy that he can wipe the slate clean with another franchise, Stefan Bondy of the New York Daily News writes.
Toppin was traded by the Knicks to the Pacers after being limited to 15 starts in 201 games through three seasons. He only averaged 14.7 minutes per game after being the eighth overall pick of the 2020 draft.
“I didn’t get the minutes I wanted. But now it’s a fresh start. I’m here in Indy,” he said. “I got to work for everything I want. And I’m super excited to start.”
The Knicks received two future second-rounders in the deal.
We have more from the Central Division:
- Tacko Fall is on the Bucks’ Summer League roster, hoping to get another shot to play in the league during the regular season. The 7’6” Fall spent last seasons in China. “When you know what you’re capable of, you’ve just got to keep going until you hit it, and that’s pretty much what I’m doing right now,” he told Steve Bulpett of Heavy.com. Fall has appeared in a total of 37 NBA games with Boston and Cleveland.
- Dalen Terry, the No. 18 pick of the 2022 draft, blanketed Toronto rookie Gradey Dick during the Bulls’ Summer League opener on Friday. It’s exactly the type of growth Chicago’s staff wants to see from Terry, Darnell Mayberry of The Athletic writes. “I love that type of energy and effort and accountability to want to be great defensively,” Summer League coach John Bryant said. “Let’s see how it continues. I think he’s a great defender. I think he has the ability to be a great, consistent defender.”
- Sidney Dobner confidently stated her case to new Bucks head coach Adrian Griffin and that helped her become the franchise’s first female assistant coach, according to Ben Steele of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. She was Milwaukee’s first female video coordinator last season. “I reached out to Coach Griff and shot my shot a little bit,” she said. “The NBA moves fast and sometimes you just got to take hold of your opportunity. Just presented the idea to him and it sounded like he was really on board, and next thing you know I was being announced as an assistant coach.”
Dillon Brooks will receive even more money from the Rockets, thanks to their complex five-team sign-and-trade, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski tweets.
Brooks’ four-year, front-loaded contract agreement with Houston was originally reported to be worth $80MM. He’ll now receive at least $86MM through the life of the contract and can reach $90MM if he reaches certain incentives.
The sign-and-trade involving Memphis, Houston, and three other teams was finalized on Saturday.
The four guaranteed years are spread out in this fashion: $22.6MM next season; $22.3MM on 2024/25; $21.1MM in 2025/26; and $20MM in 2026/27, ESPN’s Bobby Marks tweets.
We have more contract-related news:
- The five-year rookie scale extension that the Grizzlies gave Desmond Bane isn’t quite a max contract because it includes some incentives. Bane will receive $197.2MM in guaranteed money and can make an additional $8.7MM if he reaches certain incentives, Tim MacMahon of ESPN tweets.
- Unlike Brooks, Donte DiVincenzo‘s four-year contract with the Knicks includes typical raises. He’ll receive $10.9MM next season; $11.4MM in 2024-25; $12MM in 2025-26; and $12.5MM in 2026/27, Fred Katz of The Athletic tweets. The contract, which is guaranteed for $47MM, also includes $750K per year in unlikely bonuses, including Defensive Player of the Year, Most Valuable Player, Most Improved Player, Sixth Man of the Year and All-NBA.
- LaMelo Ball‘s five-year max designated rookie extension with the Hornets doesn’t include a player option, Michael Scotto of HoopsHype tweets. The pact does, however, feature a 15% trade kicker.
- Jordan Clarkson renegotiation and extension deal with the Jazz begins with a salary of $23.5MM for next season, MacMahon tweets. It drops down to $14.1MM in 2024/25 and inches up to $14.3MM for the 2025/26 season. The contract also has $1.1MM in incentives.
JULY 8: The DiVincenzo signing is officially, the Knicks announced (via Twitter). “We are excited to add Donte to the Knicks family and view him as a perfect fit to the culture we continue to establish,” said team president Leon Rose. “Winning is in his DNA and he will provide us with versatility, three-point shooting and defensive tenacity.”
JULY 1: Donte DiVincenzo is headed to New York, according to Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN (Twitter link), who hears from agent Jason Glushon that DiVincenzo has agreed to sign a four-year, $50MM contract with the Knicks. The deal won’t include any options, per Fred Katz of The Athletic (Twitter link).
The Knicks are over the cap, so they’ll sign DiVincenzo using the mid-level exception. The deal will reunite the former Villanova Wildcat with his college teammates Jalen Brunson and Josh Hart.
DiVincenzo became a free agent this week after deciding not to pick up a $4.7MM player option to remain in Golden State. The Warriors didn’t have the ability to make a competitive offer for him due to CBA restrictions, so he became one of the most popular mid-level targets on the open market.
The 26-year-old appeared in a career-high 72 games, including 36 starts, in 2022/23 after signing with the Warriors. He averaged 9.4 points, 4.5 rebounds, 3.5 assists and 1.3 steals in 26.3 minutes per game. The 6’4″ guard, who made a career-best 39.7% of his 3-point attempts, also played in 13 postseason games this spring.
DiVincenzo will be another option on the wing for head coach Tom Thibodeau and the Knicks, who are finalizing a deal to trade Obi Toppin to Indiana. That move will help open up additional room below the luxury tax, allowing New York to give more of its mid-level to DiVincenzo.
According to Bobby Marks of ESPN (Twitter link), after accounting for DiVincenzo, New York’s team salary projects to be about $4MM below the tax line with 14 players under contract. As a result of using the non-taxpayer mid-level exception, the Knicks will be hard-capped at the $172.3MM tax apron in 2023/24.
DiVincenzo was the No. 20 player on our list of 2023’s top 50 free agents.
The NBA has announced the five-team groups that will used for the league’s first-ever in-season tournament, writes Tim Bontemps of ESPN. The unveiling took place Saturday during a special episode of ESPN’s “NBA Today” held at “NBA Con” in Las Vegas.
The groups were determined in a draw similar to what is used in soccer’s World Cup. There are six groups — three each from the Eastern Conference and Western Conference — and each conference was split into five pots based on last season’s standings. One team was randomly selected from each of the pots to determine the opening-round matchups.
The results are:
- Group 1: Sixers, Cavaliers, Hawks, Pacers and Pistons.
- Group 2: Bucks, Knicks, Heat, Wizards and Hornets.
- Group 3: Celtics, Nets, Raptors, Bulls and Magic.
- Group 4: Grizzlies, Suns, Lakers, Jazz and Trail Blazers.
- Group 5: Nuggets, Clippers, Pelicans, Mavericks and Rockets.
- Group 6: Kings, Warriors, Timberwolves, Thunder and Spurs.
The tournament will start with group play, which will match each team with the other four in its grouping. Those games will take place on Nov. 3, 10, 14, 17, 21, 24 and 28.
The winner of each group will advance to a knockout round, joined by the team with the best record in each conference among those who didn’t win a group. Quarterfinal games will be played Dec. 4 and 5, hosted by the higher-seeded teams. The four winners in that round will move on to T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas for the Dec. 7 semifinals and the Dec. 9 championship game.
Bontemps points out that all teams will play within their conference until the last game, which guarantees an East vs. West matchup, just like the NBA Finals.
“Everybody’s not going to buy in right away,” admitted Joe Dumars, the NBA’s executive vice president of basketball operations. “So that can’t be the goal that everybody’s going to buy in from day one. These things take time. And I think, as time goes on, I think you can build this up and people can really get into it.”
The championship trophy will be called the NBA Cup, and players will receive $500K each for winning it. Other prize money includes $200K for second place, $100K for losing in the semifinals and $50K for losing in the quarterfinals. The league opted not to provide other incentives, such as a guaranteed playoff spot, for the tournament winner.
We passed along more details on the in-season tournament right here.
Bruce Brown revealed this week that the Knicks were the only other team he met with before deciding to sign with the Pacers, writes Stefan Bondy of The New York Daily News. Brown was one of the most sought-after free agents on the market after helping the Nuggets win the NBA title. Several teams, including New York, were hoping to land him with their mid-level exception, but Indiana blew away its competitors with a two-year, $45MM offer.
“The Knicks were the first (meeting). I think we had others lined up, but we didn’t make it there,” said Brown, who added that he was heavily recruited by Pacers star Tyrese Haliburton.
Bondy notes that Indiana is also the destination for Obi Toppin, who was acquired from New York in exchange for a pair of future second-round picks. Toppin was stuck behind Julius Randle with the Knicks and his defense wasn’t up to coach Tom Thibodeau’s standards, but Indiana views him as a perfect fit for its up-tempo style.
The trade leaves New York with an unbalanced roster that’s heavy on guards and doesn’t have an obvious replacement for Toppin, Bondy adds. The current options are either too small to play power forward or too inexperienced to be counted on for regular minutes.
There’s more on the Knicks:
- With a potential hole in their rotation and plenty of assets available to make an impact trade, the Knicks can’t be done with their offseason, says Peter Botte of The New York Post (subscriber link), arguing that the team still needs to take a big swing if it wants to have a legitimate chance to contend in the East next season.
- Jaylen Martin, who signed a two-way contract with New York after going undrafted, was one of Overtime Elite’s most talented players, his coach told Ian Begley of SNY.tv. Tim Fanning said a hamstring injury that forced Martin to miss two months of the season kept him from getting the same notice as the Thompson twins, who were both lottery picks. “He just ticks a lot of boxes in terms of what you want from a basketball player, especially on the wing,” Fanning said. “He was shooting the ball at a great clip from three. His defense and rebounding – his floor game – was spectacular. His transition, (attacking the) close out, also was on another level from the rest of the competition outside of the Thompsons in that first month of the season.”
- Mikal Bridges, now a cornerstone player for the cross-town Nets, said recently on the Tidal League podcast that he thought he’d be drafted by the Knicks back in 2018 (Twitter video link). “I thought I was going to go to New York at 9,” Bridges said (hat tip to Jeremy Layton of The New York Post). “I was excited though because I wanted to go to the Knicks, I wanted to be in New York, I’m like, ‘That’s lit.’ Like, still close to home, but a little further out – and I love MSG, all my best games in college were there.” New York ended up drafting Kevin Knox with the No. 9 pick, with Bridges going one spot later to Phoenix (via Philadelphia).
Luke Adams contributed to this post.
Longtime NBA center Dwight Howard was out of the league during the 2022/23 season, which he spent in Taiwan. However, he still believes he can be a productive player in an NBA rotation, he said during a wide-ranging interview with Zion Olojede of Complex.com.
“I know that there’s at least 15 to 20 teams that I could play for,” Howard said. “And I know there’s teams that got great starting centers, but I know I could be a great backup center. I know I can provide a team with 25 minutes of dominant basketball. And that’s not even scoring, that’s just playing defense, locking people up, protecting the paint, rebounding, and finishing around the basket. I’ve had my fun in the game. I just want to go out like a champ like I’m supposed to.”
Referencing a June interview in which Howard said he’d love to join the Kings, Olojede asked the three-time Defensive Player of the Year which five teams he believes would be good matches for him.
“Okay, you got Miami Heat. You got obviously, the Lakers. The Warriors,” Howard said. “The Kings. But the Kings, I would say the Kings got a couple centers so they probably wouldn’t. But the Kings. The Hawks. I’m from Atlanta, go back home with the Hawks.”
Here are more odds and ends from around the basketball world:
- Discussing his roster for the upcoming FIBA World Cup for the first time on Friday, Team USA head coach Steve Kerr said he plans to lean heavily on Knicks guard Jalen Brunson and Nets forward Mikal Bridges. As Joe Vardon of The Athletic writes, Kerr envisions Brunson having “a pretty big role” and intends to rely on Bridges defensively to match up against opponents’ high-scoring wings.
- Veteran NBA guard Frank Jackson, who had a brief stint with the Jazz this past season, will continue his career overseas, having signed a deal with French team ASVEL, per a press release. Jackson had appeared in 214 career regular season NBA games since being drafted in 2017.
- Rocco Zikarsky, a 7’3″ Australian big man, has decided to forgo a move to the NCAA in favor of joining the Brisbane Bullets as part of the National Basketball League’s Next Stars program, he tells Jonathan Givony of ESPN. Zikarsky, who will turn 17 next week, won’t be draft-eligible until at least 2025, but is considered one of the world’s best basketball prospects, per Givony.
- John Hollinger of The Athletic doesn’t want to go so far as to call them the “losers” of free agency, but has questions about the offseason moves made so far by the Raptors, Pelicans, Kings, Trail Blazers, and Nuggets.
JULY 7: The trade is official, the Knicks announced today in a press release (Twitter link). Toppin has been traded into the Pacers’ cap room in exchange for the two second-round picks described below.
JULY 6: The Knicks will receive either the Suns’ or Pacers’ 2028 second-round pick (whichever is least favorable) and either the Pacers’ or Wizards’ 2029 second-round pick (whichever is least favorable) for Toppin, reports Dustin Dopirak of The Indianapolis Star (Twitter link).
JULY 1: The Knicks and Pacers are finalizing a trade that will send forward Obi Toppin to Indiana, reports Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN (Twitter link).
According to Wojnarowski, the Knicks will acquire a pair of second-round picks in exchange for Toppin, who was the eighth overall pick in the 2020 draft.
Marc Stein and Ian Begley of SNY.tv reported prior to free agency that the Pacers were talking to the Knicks about Toppin and had emerged as the leading candidate to land him. It’s a logical fit, since Indiana has the cap room necessary to acquire the 25-year-old’s $6.8MM expiring contract without sending out any salary and has been in the market for another power forward.
While lottery pick Jarace Walker figures to see minutes for the Pacers as a rookie, Toppin should have an opportunity to play a bigger role in Indiana than he did in New York, where he spent the majority of his first three NBA seasons backing up Julius Randle.
In 139 games for the Knicks since the start of 2021/22, Toppin has averaged 8.2 PPG and 3.3 RPG on .491/.329/.772 shooting in 139 games (16.4 MPG). He’ll be eligible for a rookie scale extension this offseason, or restricted free agency in 2024 if he doesn’t sign a new deal before then.
It’s a somewhat disappointing outcome for the Knicks, whose lottery pick from three years ago will now turn into a pair of second-rounders. However, the move will help create some additional spending flexibility below the tax apron for the club, potentially opening up the full mid-level exception. It’ll also generate a $6.8MM trade exception and contribute a couple more draft assets to New York’s ever-growing stash.