Kentavious Caldwell-Pope was one of the biggest free acquisitions this summer, as the Magic signed him for three years and $66MM. Orlando coach Jamahl Mosley says KCP will have a major impact on both ends of the floor, Jason Beede of the Orlando Sentinel tweets.
“It’s the fact that he just knows where to be on the floor,” Mosley said. “It goes back to the fact he’s played with some of the game’s best players, so he understands the spacing, the time to cut and the time to move to find the open window that they can pass him the basketball. Defensively, he’s always in the right position.”
We have more from the Southeast Division:
- The Hawks added former Spurs forward Dominick Barlow on a two-way deal this summer. Barlow believes he can force his way into the rotation by doing the “little things,” Lauren Williams of the Atlanta Journal Constitution writes. “Screening, hard, rolling hard, being able to hit that shot in the corner and then just guarding, I think will be my way to get on the court, for sure,” he said.
- The Hawks acquired Larry Nance Jr. in the Dejounte Murray deal with the Pelicans. The veteran forward has quickly emerged as a vocal leader during the early days of training camp, Williams writes in a separate story. “He’s done a great job,” Barlow said. “He’s a new guy, but he’s been in a bunch of different situations throughout his career, so he kind of understands, how this works. And I think he’s kind of stepped in and taken that role.”
- Wizards third-year guard Johnny Davis resents being called a bust at this stage of his career. Davis was the 10th pick of the 2022 draft but hasn’t performed like a lottery pick in his first two NBA seasons. “It’s a word that’s thrown around a lot, and I feel like it’s not fair to anybody,” Davis told Candace Buckner of the Washington Post. “I just want to show that I belong here. People can say what they want about Tommy Sheppard, the GM at the time when I got drafted here, but I don’t think people randomly get drafted top-10 for nothing.”
- Jordan Poole expects his second season with the Wizards to go much smoother than his first year with the organization. He went from a perennial contender in Golden State to a rebuilding team. “I’m just a competitive person,” he said, per Josh Robbins of The Athletic. “It was new for me to go just through the losing process, honestly. Obviously, we’re in a rebuilding phase, but it was a transition year. There was a lot of movement, a lot of new things, a lot of new pieces on both sides. But now coming into Year 2, we have a little bit more clarity in what we want to do, a little bit more direction in what we want to do. So that not only helps me but it helps other guys know what they can focus on, where they can put their energy to. And that’s all you really need: a little bit of direction.”
Barlow, 21, spent most of the past two seasons on two-way contracts with the Spurs, earning a promotion to San Antonio’s standard roster in early March. The Spurs signed Barlow to a rest-of-season contract that expired this summer and then didn’t issue him a qualifying offer in June, so he became an unrestricted free agent.