Eric Bledsoe Rumors | Hoops Rumors

Pacific Notes: O’Neal, Suns, Rondo, Kings

December 23rd, 2014 at 1:02pm CST by Chuck Myron

Family concerns will matter more than the relationships Jermaine O’Neal has with any city or team when the 36-year-old center decides whether to return to the NBA, and if so, which club he’ll play for, as O’Neal detailed today on his verified Twitter account (links here). O’Neal lives in Dallas and has reportedly long wanted to play close to home, and the Mavs are the apparent favorites to land him. The Warriors, for whom O’Neal played last, as well as the Clippers and Cavs are also said to be interested in the 18-year veteran. Of those teams, Golden State is the only one for which O’Neal has played previously, so it would seem that his remarks today are a harbinger that he won’t be returning to the Bay Area, though that’s just my interpretation. Here’s more news related to Pacific Division teams:

People around the league sense that the Suns would be more willing to deal Isaiah Thomas than Eric Bledsoe or Goran Dragic, Grantland’s Zach Lowe writes. Rival executives have picked up the impression that Dragic is the one among those three point guards whom Phoenix would most like to keep, as Ken Berger of CBSSports.com reported this weekend.
The Mavs are “extremely confident” that Rajon Rondo will re-sign with the team, but the Lakers, among others, would love for the point guard to hit free agency, as Sam Amick of USA Today says in a video report. The Lakers were involved in trade talks with the Celtics about Rondo, and Chris Mannix of SI.com indicated last month that the Lakers are likely to pursue him in free agency.
Kings GM Pete D’Alessandro and former Kings coach Michael Malone weren’t on speaking terms during the months leading up to Malone’s dismissal, according to Ailene Voisin of The Sacramento Bee. Tyrone Corbin knows he’s only a short-term solution, according to Voisin, though Chris Broussard of ESPN.com hears that Corbin will have a legitimate opportunity to coach the team (Twitter link), as D’Alessandro has publicly insisted. In any case, Voisin implores the team to hire George Karl.
Miroslav Raduljica and Shandong of the Chinese Basketball Association have agreed to a buyout in which the center gave up $300K of his $1.5MM deal, reports Nick Bedard of Basketballbuddha.com. The Clippers, in a series of money-saving moves this summer, acquired Raduljica from the Bucks and quickly waived him via the stretch provision.

Western Notes: Dragic, Pelicans, Nuggets

December 21st, 2014 at 12:45pm CST by ChrisCrouse

Multiple teams are inquiring as to what it would take to pry Goran Dragic, Eric Bledsoe or Isaiah Thomas away from the Suns, according to Ken Berger of CBSSports.com. Berger notes that rival executives have gotten the impression that Dragic is the player whom Phoenix would most like to keep out of the three. Dragic is set to become an unrestricted free agent after this season and will likely warrant a raise on his current $7.5MM per year salary, although that is just my speculation.

Here’s more from the Western Conference:

Although Damian Lillard was drafted before the Pelicans had a chance to acquire him with the 10th pick in the 2012 draft, the team would have been ecstatic to pair the point guard with first overall pick Anthony Davis, writes Jimmy Smith of The Times-Picayune. “I loved him,” coach Monty Williams said. “And I didn’t even see him play a lot. I just had a meeting with him, watched a little bit [of film] on him but after I talked to him face-to-face, I jammed him up on a few questions that he didn’t buckle. He didn’t get it right but he didn’t clam up. He just looked me in the eye and he got it wrong, but he stayed right there.” New Orleans ended up drafting Austin Rivers with the 10th overall pick in the draft.
The next few weeks could be key in determining what roster moves the Nuggets will make, opines Christopher Dempsey of the Denver Post. Denver came into the season with playoff aspirations but currently owns a record of 12-15. If the team continues to win at this pace, Dempsey believes the Nuggets should begin to trade some of their veteran players for prospects or draft picks.
Andre Roberson could play a key role for the Thunder this season and his defense is being noticed around the league , writes Anthony Slater of The Oklahoman. In the win against the Lakers on Friday night, Roberson guarded Kobe Bryant and held him to just nine points while allowing him to shoot only 21.4% from the field.

Beck’s Latest: Kings, Knicks, Suns, Nets, Rockets

December 15th, 2014 at 2:57pm CST by Chuck Myron

There will be chatter aplenty between now and the February 19th trade deadline, but not all of it will truly constitute trade rumors, as Bleacher Report’s Howard Beck cautions. However, when multiple voices speak in unison, there’s usually a grain of truth involved, and Beck has plenty of tidbits he’s heard from a variety of sources around the league. We already passed along the news that the Pistons are putting Josh Smith and Brandon Jennings on the block, but that’s not the only item of note. We’ll pass along the rest of the highlights here and encourage you to read Beck’s full piece for more:

The Kings head coaching job is George Karl‘s if he wants it, as both Beck and Jason Jones of The Sacramento Bee hear (Twitter links). Alvin Gentry and Mark Jackson are also “prime candidates,” according to Beck, though it’s not clear if the Kings are targeting either of them. Karl said to Tom Byrne of SiriusXM NBA Radio today that, “If they’re interested in me, I’m interested in them (Twitter link). Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports first identified Karl as the front-runner for the job, which Tyrone Corbin is expected to assume on an interim basis.
Executives around the league tell Beck that the Knicks are making all of their players except for Carmelo Anthony available, as Beck writes in his piece. A similar scenario is in place for New Orleans, where the Pelicans are open to trading everyone outside of Anthony Davis, Jrue Holiday, Omer Asik and Ryan Anderson, Beck hears.
Many executives expect the Suns to trade one of Eric Bledsoe, Goran Dragic and Isaiah Thomas, according to Beck.
The Nets would probably only move one or two of Deron Williams, Brook Lopez and Joe Johnson, team sources tell Beck. The Rockets asked Brooklyn about Andrei Kirilenko before the Nets traded him to the Sixers last week, Beck also hears.
There’s conflicting intel on the Nuggets, whom many executives view as top candidates to become sellers, while one Western Conference exec tells Beck that the Nuggets like their team and aren’t inclined to move anybody. In any case, there’s plenty of interest in Wilson Chandler and Timofey Mozgov, executives have said to Beck.
Many executives and scouts identified Thaddeus Young, Mo Williams and David Lee among likely trade candidates, Beck writes.

Pacific Notes: Bledsoe, Draymond Green, Gay

November 18th, 2014 at 1:07pm CST by Chuck Myron

Eric Bledsoe went as far as to put pen to paper on his qualifying offer from the Suns over the offseason, as he tells A. Sherrod Blakely of CSNNE.com, but he never submitted it to the team, leaving open the possibility of the five-year $70MM deal that came to fruition in late September. That’s was a game-changer for the Suns, who still have room to grow with a pair of traded first-round picks coming their way and a handful of recent first-rounders in their nascent stages of development, as SB Nation’s Paul Flannery points out. Phoenix isn’t panicking after a mediocre 6-5 start, Flannery notes, and there’s more on Bledsoe amid the latest from the Pacific Division:

The negotiations between Bledsoe and the Suns appeared contentious, but GM Ryan McDonough insisted to Blakely, who writes in the same piece, that he had “constant communication” with the Rich Paul client’s camp throughout the process. That’s in spite of owner Robert Sarver having said over the summer that the team had gone months without speaking to Bledsoe directly.
Draymond Green understands that the prospect of a significant raise looms in restricted free agency this coming summer, as he tells Bleacher Report’s Ric Bucher. Still, he’s confident that the Warriors, already with about $77.5MM in commitments for 2015/16, can keep him. “It’d be a lie to say I don’t think about it,” he said. “But I don’t try to do anything different. If I did, everything is going to go wrong because I would be focusing on the wrong thing. I’d be stressed all year. Stress equals bad performances, which then would equal no contract. I really love it here. It’s all I know about this league. As far as the money working out, if they want me to stay here, I know there’s a way to keep me here.”
Hoops Rumors readers overwhelmingly gave the Kings a thumbs-up for agreeing to the Rudy Gay extension, and Darren Collison echoes that sentiment, notes James Ham of Cowbell Kingdom. “I’m extremely excited,” Collison said. “This is a good step in the right direction. You think about how far this organization has come and to have players of Rudy’s caliber and his talent, DeMarcus [Cousins] is stepping up and becoming a household name [and] myself included, wanting to sign here, it just speaks a lot about this organization and what they’re trying to do. And it speaks about our future.”

Stein’s Latest: Parsons, Cavs, Mavs, Rockets

October 7th, 2014 at 12:08pm CST by Chuck Myron

Rockets GM Daryl Morey and Mavs owner Mark Cuban downplay the intensity of their personal rivalry in interviews with Marc Stein of ESPN.com, even though both have made some incendiary statements about the other. Their teams have been involved in a tug-of-war over high-powered free agents in the past few summers, and the case of Chandler Parsons brought the rivalry into focus. Stein’s piece sheds light on many unreported aspects of Parsons’ free agency, and the entire piece is worth a read, particularly for Mavs and Rockets fans. We’ll share the most newsworthy tidbits here:

The Cavs were the most fervent suitor of Parsons early in free agency this summer, viewing him as a plan B if LeBron James didn’t return, and Kyrie Irving, a friend of Parsons’, tried to recruit him to Cleveland, as Stein chronicles. The Mavs weren’t willing to wait on a definitive “no” from either LeBron or Carmelo Anthony before swooping in with their offer sheet, one that Parsons agreed to rather than sign a two-year max deal that the Rockets offered, Stein also reports.
Parsons told Stein he would have re-signed with the Rockets for less early in free agency, and Stein hears he sought a four-year, $48MM deal from Houston, which was instead engaged in a pursuit of more established stars.
Cuban was honest with Parsons about the risk that he was taking, as he explains to Stein. “I told Chandler from the start [of free agency]: ‘Do you want me to be brutally honest with you?'” Cuban said. “And he said yes. So I told him with as much granularity as I could that I think it’s a 10% chance at best that we could get ‘Melo, but we had to try. Then, we started hearing our percentage was getting higher, and I told Chandler that, too. But then, when we weren’t hearing a whole lot from the Melo camp, we knew we were pretty much out. So I told Chandler [on July 9th]: ‘I could end up being the dumbest idiot in NBA history, but even if LeBron comes back to us and says he’s choosing us, I’m committing to you.'”
The Mavs were also high on Gordon Hayward and Eric Bledsoe, but they found Parsons the most obtainable of the three restricted free agents they wanted most, Stein writes.
Morey pursued Kyle Lowry early in free agency, but cooled on him and turned his attention to Chris Bosh instead, as Stein explains. Bosh seemed on his way to the Rockets before he inked a five-year max deal with the Heat, and even Morey thought that he had Bosh within his clutches, as he admits to Stein. “Given our understanding of where things were,” Morey said, “we felt like we were 95 percent-plus to potentially having the best team in the league. There was nothing promised, but I did believe [Bosh] was coming in almost every scenario except the one that happened at the last minute [Miami trumping Houston’s offer with a five-year max].”
The Rockets agreed to trade Jeremy Lin to the Lakers before receiving a commitment from Bosh because the Lakers refused to wait any longer and because a trade proposal from the Sixers instead would have cost multiple first-rounders instead of just one.
The Rockets, like many teams, are turning their eyes to 2016, and they plan to let James Harden act as the primary recruiter for former teammate Kevin Durant, who can hit free agency that summer, Stein writes.
Agent Dan Fegan proposed the structure of the three-year offer sheet that Parsons signed with the Mavs, and the three-year length, in particular, drew raves from Grizzlies GM Chris Wallace, who noted its contrast with the typical four-year offer sheet, as Stein passed along. Cavs GM David Griffin also expressed admiration for the deal, as he tells Stein. “The contract structure was extremely creative,” Griffin said. “I think it will be a significant moment in the way restricted free agency discussions are handled in the future.”

Suns Rumors: Morrises, Bledsoe, Zoran Dragic

September 29th, 2014 at 1:38pm CST by Chuck Myron

Suns president of basketball operations Lon Babby negotiated a total figure for Markieff Morris and Marcus Morris with agent Leon Rose, letting the twins decide how to split what turned out to be a $52MM pot, as Paul Coro of the Arizona Republic chronicles.

“They’re very close and we didn’t want to suggest anything that would be a disconnect to what they thought their value was,” Babby said. “I didn’t delegate the whole project to them but I did ask, ‘How would you divide it up?’ They’re so close and in it together that it was better to negotiate the total amount and then go to them for how to divide it. They desperately wanted to be together and they play better together. They motivate each other and it’s been fun for me to watch their maturation.”

There’s more from Coro’s piece amid the latest from the Valley of the Sun:

It would have been harder for the Morris brothers to stay together if they had hit restricted free agency next summer, GM Ryan McDonough said today, according to Coro, who writes in the same piece. That suggests the team pressured the twins to sign their extensions rather than let the October 31st deadline pass.
There are no option clauses or trade kickers in the deals for the Morrises, whose salaries will escalate each year, Coro adds.
Bledsoe largely repeated to reporters, including Coro, his assertion from the team’s statement on his new deal that he preferred to return to the Suns all summer, in spite of tense public negotiations (Twitter link).
Zoran Dragic was just a part-timer starter for his Spanish team the past two seasons, but McDonough is confident the new Suns signee’s game is on the upswing, as the exec tells Matt Petersen of Suns.com. “Guys mature and develop at different rates,” McDonough said. “Zoran is a bit of a late-bloomer, but I’ve seen rapid improvement lately. He was better when I saw him last year in Slovenia than what I’d ever seen before. He took another step and was even better this year in Spain than what I’d seen before.”
Suns owner Robert Sarver is calling for a new arena to replace the existing building, which opened in 1992, as Coro relays in a separate piece.

Wolves, Ricky Rubio Progress Toward Extension

September 27th, 2014 at 9:11pm CST by Chuck Myron

Ricky Rubio and Wolves owner Glen Taylor had several phone conversations in the past week, and each has expressed intention to get a deal done on a rookie scale extension, reports Charley Walters of the St. Paul Pioneer Press. Any such pact is expected to be for four years, Walters writes, which suggests that a five-year deal that would make Rubio the team’s Designated Player is unlikely. Agent Dan Fegan has reportedly asked for a five-year max deal, but the Wolves are willing to wait until next summer, when Rubio would be a restricted free agent, if his camp won’t accept four years, according to Walters. The sides have until October 31st to ink an extension.

The Wolves didn’t have serious interest in Eric Bledsoe, Walters also hears, which conflicts with rumors from earlier this month suggesting that the team made a max offer to the Suns point guard while he lingered in restricted free agency. The necessity for a deal with Bledsoe to take place as part of a sign-and-trade made it too complicated for the Wolves to pursue, as Walters writes, adding that Bledsoe nonetheless had interest in Minnesota depending on what happened with Rubio.

Walters says an extension for Rubio “could” be worth $11MM annually, which would line up with the figures the team is seeking in such a deal. The Wolves nonetheless have the capacity, if not the willingness, to go much higher than that in a four-year offer, with salaries likely starting at around $15MM, though the precise maximum won’t be set until next July.

It’s debatable whether Rubio is worth max money, as Charlie Adams of Hoops Rumors wrote when he examined Rubio as an extension candidate earlier in the offseason, but perhaps the ultimate stumbling block will come down to the length of the deal, just as it did with Kevin Love. Former Wolves GM David Kahn balked at a five-year deal for Love in 2012 so that the team could go to that length with Rubio. However, it’s conceivable that current president of basketball operations Flip Saunders wants to reserve the Designated Player bullet for the newly acquired Andrew Wiggins, who’ll become extension-eligible three years from now. If the Wolves signed Rubio to a five-year extension, they couldn’t do so with anyone else they have on a rookie scale contract until Rubio’s would-be extension expired, or until they traded Rubio.

Reaction To/Fallout From Eric Bledsoe Deal

September 25th, 2014 at 9:59pm CST by Eddie Scarito

Eric Bledsoe‘s contract situation was finally resolved yesterday when the Suns and the point guard agreed to a five-year, $70MM contract extension. The reactions from around the league are still pouring in and here is the latest news:

One of the major concerns about Bledsoe would be how he would recover from his meniscus injury, but GM Ryan McDonough didn’t seem all that concerned, writes Paul Coro of The Arizona Republic. McDonough said, “We would not have made this commitment in terms of years or money if we had significant concerns about Eric’s health. Nobody knows Eric’s medical history or where he’s at better than us.“
In the same article McDonough notes the process took longer than they had hoped, but added, “He [Bledsoe] said all the right things to Lon [Babby], Robert [Sarver] and I about how he wanted to be here and take the next step as a leader and be a part of the community.”
Bledsoe chimed in on the deal in the team’s official statement, saying, “Lon, Ryan and the Suns have shown confidence in me, and I am looking to take that responsibility and help our team get better from last year and position ourselves to win an NBA championship. It’s why I came back to Phoenix. All summer, I knew that I really would be most comfortable coming back to Phoenix because of the great fans, my Suns teammates and our coaches. I am very happy it was able to work out this way.”
Bledsoe’s deal is an “emphatic win” for him and also a boon for extension-eligible point guards Reggie Jackson, Ricky Rubio and Kemba Walker, but it’s a gamble worth taking for Phoenix, Grantland’s Zach Lowe believes.
With the market seemingly barren for Bledsoe this late in the summer, Phoenix blinked first during the negotiations, writes Tom Ziller of SB Nation.
The Suns scored a big victory in locking up Bledsoe for the next five seasons, Dan Bickley of the Arizona Republic writes.

Chuck Myron contributed to this post.

Eric Bledsoe Re-Signs With Suns

September 24th, 2014 at 10:48pm CST by Eddie Scarito

10:48pm: The deal is official, the team has announced.

10:45pm: Bledsoe’s first-year salary starts at $13MM and the deal has annual raises of $500K, Paul Coro of the Arizona Republic tweets. Coro also adds that the agreement contains no trade kickers or early termination options, and confirms the earlier information that there are no player or team options.

4:49pm: The Suns and Eric Bledsoe have come to terms on a five-year, $70MM deal, Brian Windhorst of ESPN.com reports (Twitter link). The deal is fully-guaranteed and contains no options, Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports notes. The max that the Suns could have given Bledsoe over five seasons is $84,789,500, so it appears he’s taking significantly less than that, given the reported $70MM figure. Still, it’s more total money than the $62,965,420 over four years that Bledsoe could have received in an offer sheet from another team, so Bledsoe can claim that victory.

This will conclude a Summer-long impasse that began when Bledsoe balked at Phoenix’s initial four-year, $48MM offer, and relayed his unwillingness to re-sign for anything less than superstar money. The former first-rounder out of Kentucky had expressed a willingness to sign the Suns’ $3.7MM qualifying offer rather than settle on a contract below the max. This would have been a dangerous gamble by the Rich Paul client given that he is coming off of a serious knee injury that limited him to 43 games last season.

Bledsoe reportedly hasn’t been in Phoenix since the season ended in April, and team management had relayed that there had not been much direct communication between the player and the team since then. There were concerns that the relationship between the two parties had fractured and the point guard’s departure after this season would be almost assured. This signing puts those concerns to bed, but now Bledsoe has to live up to the figures he will be paid.

The 24-year old was enjoying a breakout season before injuring his meniscus, averaging 17.7 PPG, 4.7 RPG, and 5.5 APG. His slash line was .477/.357/.772. But this was such a small sample size that it’s difficult to predict what Phoenix can expect out of Bledsoe the next five years seeing as his previous best was 8.5 PPG for the Clippers during the 2012/13 season when he was Chris Paul‘s backup.

Teams were reluctant to sign Bledsoe to an offer sheet, especially at max money. As the Summer wore on and most teams had used most if not all of their available cap space, the player’s options seemed extremely limited, which makes this signing a coup for Bledsoe’s camp. The Timberwolves were the only team to go on record as being willing to offer Bledsoe max money in a sign-and-trade deal, though Phoenix indicated they had no interest in letting Bledsoe go for anything less than a star player. With Kevin Love already departed for Cleveland, this left the Wolves with little to offer the Suns outside newly acquired Andrew Wiggins, who wouldn’t have made much sense for Minnesota to deal after their marketing campaign for the upcoming season centered around the No. 1 overall pick’s presence on the roster.

The hope in Phoenix is that Bledsoe’s performance wasn’t a contract-year fluke, and that he will regain his pre-injury form that made the starting backcourt of he and Goran Dragic so explosive. Phoenix is stacked in the backcourt with Bledsoe, Dragic, the recently signed Isaiah Thomas, and first-round draftee Tyler Ennis, so Bledsoe’s minutes and production may decline as a result.

Western Notes: Thunder, Clippers, Bledsoe

September 24th, 2014 at 8:31pm CST by Eddie Scarito

The Thunder revealed that the name for their new D-League team will be the Oklahoma City Blue in a press release they issued earlier today. As for why that name was chosen, Brian Byrnes, the Thunder’s senior vice president of Sales and Marketing said, “Blue is one of our primary Thunder colors, but it has become more than just a color for us. It has come to represent the passion, loyalty and unity of our fans and our community in their support for our team. Our players wear it proudly on their uniforms, our fans sport Thunder blue shirts, Thunder blue flags fly across Oklahoma and our statewide Blue Alliance fan groups show their connection to our team and what it stands for.”

Here’s more from out west:

Clippers president and head coach Doc Rivers praised the offseason addition of Spencer Hawes, and said the center turned down larger offers to come to Los Angeles, Dan Woike of the Orange County Register writes. Rivers said, “I thought he was a great fit. Because of salary and where we’re at, I didn’t think we could get him.” The coach also noted in the article that the franchise getting to the point where players will take less money to play there is a positive sign.
Clippers owner Steve Ballmer hopes to have a team president who will handle day-to-day operations of the team in place soon, Ben Bolch of the Los Angeles Times reports (Twitter link).
Ballmer also announced that Eric Miller, former owner Donald Sterling’s son-in-law, has left his position as director of basketball administration, Dan Woike of the Orange County Register tweets.
The Suns are reportedly set to re-sign Eric Bledsoe to a five-year, $70MM extension, and Steve Kyler and Alex Kennedy of Basketball Insiders debate whether it was a mistake on Phoenix’s part.
Shareef Abdur-Rahim is no longer with the Kings, Jason Jones of the Sacramento Bee reports. Abdur-Rahim was the director of player personnel and GM of of the Reno Bighorns, the Kings’ NBA D-League team.