Harrison Barnes Rumors | Hoops Rumors

Harrison Barnes Changes Agents

September 18th, 2015 at 3:03pm CST by Chuck Myron

FRIDAY, 3:03pm: Barnes has hired Jeff Schwartz of Excel Sports Management, a source tells Marc J. Spears of Yahoo Sports (Twitter link). Schwartz, who recently picked up LaMarcus Aldridge and Joe Johnson as new clients, also represents Warriors Shaun Livingston and Leandro Barbosa.

THURSDAY, 9:47am: Harrison Barnes has parted ways with agent Jeff Wechsler of 24/7 Sports Management, reports Chris Haynes of the Northeast Ohio Media Group and the Cleveland Plain Dealer (Twitter link). The rookie scale extension deadline of November 2nd looms just a month and a half away, and Golden State has been reportedly been seeking a deal with him and fellow extension-eligible Festus Ezeli.

Wechsler negotiated a five-year max extension for Kyrie Irving, his only other current NBA client, in July 2014. Barnes has reportedly shared interest with the Warriors in reaching a deal on an extension of his own, though it would be difficult for him to score the max, since he averaged just 10.1 points per game last season. Grantland’s Zach Lowe recently estimated that Barnes would end up with a deal between the four years and $58MM that DeMarre Carroll landed from the Raptors this summer and the projected $20.4MM max for players with Barnes’ level of experience. Tim Kawakami of the Bay Area News Group suggested salaries of $14MM a year, though he and TNT’s David Aldridge figured that Wechsler would start negotiations with an asking price of at least $15MM annually. I reasoned that salaries of $16-18MM would make sense for both sides when I looked in-depth at the extension candidacy of the former seventh overall pick.

New coach Steve Kerr reinserted Barnes into the starting lineup last season, a move that helped spark a 16-win improvement and a run to the franchise’s first NBA title in 40 years. The Warriors have reached extensions with Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Andrew Bogut in recent years, so precedent exists for them to do the same with Barnes. The timing of his change of representation is odd, though it’s unclear what the impetus for the decision is. It’s also not immediately clear whom Barnes will hire to represent him going forward. He nonetheless made it clear in July that he envisions staying with the Warriors for the long haul, as Diamond Leung of the Bay Area News Group reported at the time.

“I mean, we just won a championship,” Barnes said. “Of course I’d love to keep this group together for many years to come, you know what I’m saying? So that’s obvious.”

Warriors To Consider Extension For Festus Ezeli

August 28th, 2015 at 1:59pm CST by Chuck Myron

AUGUST 28TH, 1:59pm: Myers furthered his earlier comments, making it clear in an appearance on KNBR radio that the Warriors want extensions with both Ezeli and Barnes and plan to keep them a long time, as Diamond Leung of the Bay Area News Group transcribes (Twitter links).

“We’re focused and motivated,” Myers said. “Hopefully we can get something done.”

AUGUST 14TH, 1:08pm: Warriors GM Bob Myers recently said that he’d address the matter of a rookie scale extension for Festus Ezeli before the deadline this fall, and he expressed that he’d like a long-term partnership with Ezeli and Harrison Barnes, who’s also eligible for a rookie scale extension, reports Monte Poole of CSNBayArea.com. The Warriors and Barnes have mutual interest in an extension, as Marcus Thompson of the Bay Area News Group reported in June and as I examined in depth last week.

“We love them and we’re going to try to keep them as long as we can,” Myers said of Barnes and Ezeli. “Thankfully, like with Draymond [Green], they would be restricted free agents [next summer]. But hopefully we can figure something out like we have with a lot of our players. They’re a key part of what we do. Without them, we don’t win a championship.”

That would fit with the narrative that the Warriors have expressed about Ezeli in the past, as members of the organization, from co-owner Joe Lacob to coach Steve Kerr and his staff, have consistently spoken of their faith in Ezeli’s future, Poole notes. Ezeli told Poole that he’d leave the matter up to agent Bill Duffy. The deadline for an extension this year is November 2nd, since the traditional October 31st rookie scale extension deadline falls on a Saturday, as Larry Coon’s Salary Cap FAQ indicates.

Ezeli’s much-pilloried ability to catch passes from teammates has improved, as Poole details, and the three-year veteran was more productive on offense this past season, averaging 4.4 points in 11.0 minutes per game compared to 2.4 PPG in 14.4 MPG when he was a rookie. He missed all of his second season with a right knee injury.

Poole cites speculation that Ezeli might end up with $10MM salaries on an extension, though that seems too high, even with the surging salary cap at play, for a backup who was on the fringe of the team’s rotation last season. Golden State already has nearly $75MM committed for 2016/17 against a projected $89MM salary cap, and even though the tax line is projected all the way up at $108MM, the Warriors have reason to remain financially flexible with leaguewide target Kevin Durant set to hit free agency next summer.

What do you think a reasonable extension for Ezeli would look like? Leave a comment to weigh in.

Pacific Notes: Jordan, World Peace, Barnes

August 26th, 2015 at 10:24am CST by Chuck Myron

The violation of NBA rules against third-party endorsement offers in a pitch the Clippers made to DeAndre Jordan this summer was unintentional, owner Steve Ballmer wrote in an internal memo he sent to members of the Clippers organization that Dan Woike of the Orange County Register obtained. The league fined the Clippers $250K, reportedly for offering Jordan a endorsement deal with Lexus that would pay the center $200K annually.

“As I shared with everyone on day one of purchasing the Team, being part of the Clippers family means operating with the highest integrity,” Ballmer wrote in part. “We believed we were doing this the right way, and any circumvention was inadvertent. In our effort to support our players in every way possible, we as an organization must be diligent in complying with the CBA.”

See more from around the Pacific Division:

Metta World Peace told TMZ Sports that he’s unaware if the Lakers are thinking about signing him, as reports indicate. The 15-year NBA veteran who turns 36 in November nonetheless expressed interest in joining the team.
The four-year, $52MM extension deal Michael Kidd-Gilchrist reportedly has with the Hornets will affect extension negotiations between the Warriors and Harrison Barnes, opines Tim Kawakami of the Bay Area News Group. Kidd-Gilchrist has a decent chance to prove more valuable than Barnes in the long run, but the playoff success and durability of Barnes leads Kawakami to second the belief of TNT’s David Aldridge that Barnes and agent Jeff Wechsler will target salaries of at least $15MM (Twitter link). Kawakami suggests $14MM a year as a settling point but believes the threat of a $17-18MM offer sheet from another team looms if the Warriors let him enter restricted free agency next summer.
Kawakami suggests in the same piece that market price for Festus Ezeli would be between $9-11MM. GM Bob Myers recently told Monte Poole of CSNBayArea.com that the Warriors would consider the idea of an extension for the backup center, and the team would indeed sign Ezeli to an extension if he’s willing to do so at an agreeable price, as Steve Kyler of Basketball Insiders reported this week.

Extension Candidate: Harrison Barnes

August 6th, 2015 at 9:58am CST by Chuck Myron

NBA: Golden State Warriors at Phoenix Suns

Courtesy of USA Today Sports Images

The championship that the Warriors won this past season was in a way like a fancy dinner out. The meal could scarcely have been better, but now it’s time to pay the check. Golden State will still get off much more cheaply than it could have for this coming season and next, with MVP Stephen Curry tied to a discount contract through 2016/17. However, the fun of winning a title with starting forwards who combined to make less than $4MM is over. Draymond Green will cost $82MM over the next five years, and an extension during this offseason’s eligibility window for Harrison Barnes stands to be even pricier. Grantland’s Zach Lowe estimates that the Warriors and Barnes will negotiate within the space between DeMarre Carroll‘s new four-year, $58MM deal with the Raptors, an average annual value of $14.5MM, and the maximum, which for Barnes is projected to hit $20.4MM.

That’s a fairly wide range, and it epitomizes the back-and-forth career that Barnes has had. He was the top recruit coming out of high school in the 2010 Recruiting Services Consensus Index, but he slipped to the No. 7 overall pick after two years at North Carolina. He started as a rookie, but when the Warriors acquired Andre Iguodala the following summer, Barnes became a reserve, and his game stagnated. He was the subject of trade rumors in the middle of his second season, and his name surfaced in Golden State’s Kevin Love talks last summer, when it appeared that the Timberwolves weren’t as high on Barnes as the Warriors were. Enter new coach Steve Kerr, who made the tricky decision to start Barnes over Iguodala this past season. The gamble paid off and then some, with Barnes showing improved play and Iguodala performing so well as a sixth man that he became just the second bench player ever to win Finals MVP.

Of course, it’s not as if Barnes became a 20-point scorer or the sort of all-court force that traditionally commands eye-popping salaries. He barely managed to become a double-figure scorer for the first time in his career, averaging 10.1 points per game, and though he became more efficient, his 13.4 PER is still below the 15.0 mark of an average player. However, at age 22 for most of this past season, he was a plus defender, registering a positive Basketball-Reference Defensive Box Plus Minus, a victory for any wing player. The 6’7″ specimen with a 6’11” wingspan came in 12th among small forwards in ESPN’s Defensive Real Plus Minus, and he would have been ranked more highly if Green, rated No. 1, were listed as a power forward.

Kerr’s offense featured different shot selection for Barnes, giving him fewer mid-range looks and more from behind the three-point line and at the basket, as Basketball-Reference shows. The modernized distribution resulted in a sizable year-over-year leap in shooting percentage, from 39.9% to 48.2%. His 40.5% three-point shooting was the league’s 12th-most accurate mark in that category.

The Warriors, in a vacuum, would surely prefer to see if Barnes can keep it up rather than tethering themselves to a deal that would make him the latest Warrior to make more than Curry. Golden State does have the power to control the small forward’s destination beyond this coming season, but restricted free agency can be unpredictable, particularly if the Warriors have interest in limiting his cost. The prospect of unleashing Barnes into a market that yielded Carroll’s deal and $70MM over five years for Khris Middleton must surely be intriguing for agent Jeff Wechsler, particularly given the relative dearth of star free agents in next year’s class outside of Kevin Durant, Mike Conley, Al Horford and Joakim Noah.

Rookie scale extensions, particularly those that aren’t agreed upon in early July, tend to involve team-friendly terms and fall short of the max. So, even though the Warriors haven’t given out their Designated Player title to anyone yet, allowing them to sign Barnes to an extension of five years instead of four, it’s unlikely that weapon comes into play, since five-year extensions have to start at the maximum salary.

Golden State, under reigning Executive of the Year Bob Myers, has shown a preference for signing extensions rather than allowing key players to hit free agency, making preemptive strikes with Curry, Klay Thompson and Andrew Bogut. The Warriors used the timing of the extension to their advantage with Thompson, convincing him to agree to take a starting salary that was his projected maximum salary at the time, but no more. It was, in essence, a plausible max extension, but the max turned out to be about $900K greater than the October projection, a savings of more than $4MM over the life of the deal for Golden State.

The Warriors seem unlikely to dance so closely with the max for Barnes, but what happened with Thompson demonstrates the team’s willingness to get creative to forge a deal. Barnes has motivation to come to a deal while his improvements and contribution to a championship are still fresh in the team’s mind, and to hedge against any regression, be it in his own game or the team’s performance. He’d be betting against himself if he did so, of course.

Jimmy Butler is the archetype for a defensive-minded wing player who turned down an extension, blossomed as an offensive player in his fourth year, and wound up with handsome rewards. Golden State will have to be aggressive in its offer, but I suspect the team will be. I don’t think the Warriors want to approach $20MM a year, but a proposal of between $16-18MM per season that would make Barnes the highest-paid member of his team would probably be enough to convince him to jump on it. Such a number would also be far enough from the projected max to give the Warriors hope that they’ll once more see a bargain when they look back on the deal and take comfort in knowing the youngest starter from a 67-win championship team is committed for the long term.

How do you see extension talks between the Warriors and Barnes playing out? Leave a comment to share your thoughts.

Pacific Notes: Prigioni, Dukan, Lieberman

August 4th, 2015 at 10:33pm CST by Eddie Scarito

Pablo Prigioni, who inked a one year deal with the Clippers this offseason, said that Los Angeles was his preferred destination all along, writes Rowan Kavner of NBA.com. “I didn’t even consider to choose another team or to go back to Europe,” Prigioni said. “’I said, I want to go there [to Los Angeles].’ This is a perfect team. This is a team that has a group of guys that are playing together the last four or five years. Now, same coach, add a couple of new guys. This is a perfect team to go to and try to give my best and help with whatever they need to do.”

Here’s more from the NBA’s Pacific Division:

Grantland’s Zach Lowe figures the range of salaries on a would-be extension for the Warriors‘ Harrison Barnes would fall between those on DeMarre Carroll‘s four-year, $58MM deal with the Raptors and the 2016/17 maximum salary for players with Barnes’ years of experience, projected to come in at $20.4MM.
Duje Dukan‘s deal with the Kings will see him earn $525,093, which is fully guaranteed, for the 2015/16 campaign, Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders tweets. The forward is scheduled to make $874,636 in the second year of the pact, $200k of which becomes guaranteed on August 1st, 2016, Pincus adds.
New Kings assistant coach Nancy Lieberman, in a Q&A with David Aldridge of NBA.com, said one of her biggest challenges will be in knowing when to chime in with her opinions, since all of her previous experience was as a head coach. “Summer League was really important for me. Summer League helped validate that I’m not a pushy broad,” Lieberman said. “I have been a head coach my whole life. I’ve never been an assistant, to be honest. I’m the one that has to do some of the growing here. I have got to learn when to speak, when my voice is required, and quite frankly, when to just shut the heck up. So that part is new for me. That will be new for me. But George [Karl] is a pretty easy guy to be around.”
The Los Angeles D-Fenders, the Lakers‘ D-League affiliate, have hired Casey Owens as head coach, Pincus reports (via Twitter).

Chuck Myron contributed to this post.

Pacific Notes: Chandler, Young, Barnes

July 24th, 2015 at 12:51pm CST by Chuck Myron

Most teams chasing top-tier centers thought it better to go after the likes of LaMarcus Aldridge, DeAndre Jordan and Greg Monroe before circling back to Tyson Chandler as something of a fallback option, but the Suns found it wise to chase Chandler before pursuing Aldridge, as Rob Mahoney of SI.com examines. Chandler quickly committed to Phoenix, and he helped them become a finalist in the Aldridge sweepstakes.

“I think when you have a guy like that that you target, you go aggressively after him. And that’s what we decided to do with Tyson,” GM Ryan McDonough said to Mahoney. “It did help us that there were so many free agent big men on the market, especially high-level players — guys who have been All-Stars, All-NBA, and all that stuff. I think a few teams wanted to kind of talk to each of the guys and get a feel for them. Some of the players wanted to do visits with multiple teams, and be wined and dined a bit. Tyson really didn’t want any of that.”

There’s more from Phoenix amid our latest look around the Pacific Division:

The Suns seemingly made their three-player trade with the Pistons in an effort to clear cap room for Aldridge, but McDonough told Mahoney that the deal that sent out Marcus Morris, Reggie Bullock and Danny Granger is one the team would have done regardless, citing a desire for more roster balance and future flexibility.
Nick Young feels more confident that he’ll begin the coming season with the Lakers after a recent meeting with GM Mitch Kupchak, reports Mark Medina of the Los Angeles Daily News. That jibes with a dispatch last week from Bill Oram of the Orange County Register, who heard that the Lakers had stopped looking for trade partners who’d take Young.
Harrison Barnes confirmed Thursday that he wants a long-term future with the Warriors, as Diamond Leung of the Bay Area News Group details. He and the team reportedly share a mutual interest in a rookie scale extension. “I mean, we just won a championship,” Barnes said. “Of course I’d love to keep this group together for many years to come, you know what I’m saying? So that’s obvious.”

Western Rumors: Lakers, Russell, Warriors

June 25th, 2015 at 1:13pm CST by Zachary Links

League sources tell Jake Fischer of SI (on Twitter) that the Lakers were always going to select whoever was available between Karl Towns and Jahlil Okafor at No. 2. The guards they worked out, like D’Angelo Russell, were only brought in as a smokescreen, according to those sources. However, with so much talk about Russell being the pick at No. 2 today, it’s hard to say what their intentions are. Here’s more from the West on one of the NBA calendar’s craziest days..

Marcus Thompson of the Bay Area News Group (on Twitter) heard that one team’s asking price to take David Lee‘s contract off the Warriors‘ hands was Harrison Barnes and the No. 30 pick. As Thompson writes, Warriors management probably laughed that offer off.
At this stage, the Warriors are not working to move Lee’s contract, Jake Fischer of SI tweets. At this point, their looking to move up in the first round, though it’s not clear who their target is. The Warriors own the No. 30 pick in the draft.
Lakers GM Mitch Kupchak will have the final say on what the team does with the pick, assuming they keep it, according to Mike Bresnahan of the Los Angeles Times, who spoke with a person familiar with the situation. The GM will receive input from team executive Jim Buss, Lakers scouting director Jesse Buss, and other scouts, but the last call will be his.
The Timberwolves are looking to acquire an additional first-round pick, according to Alex Kennedy of Basketball Insiders (on Twitter).
The Rockets have had trade discussions with the Timberwolves, Darren Wolfson of 1500 ESPN tweets. Houston likes Ricky Rubio, but Wolfson says that it’s hard to see a match there. However, if the Wolves do move to No. 18, Tyus Jones is probably atop their target list (link). Meanwhile, there have been no talks yet between the Wolves and Mavs, who own the No. 21 pick (link).
The Blazers have internally discussed options to grab Kristaps Porzingis since his ASM pro day, Jake Fischer of SI tweets.

Warriors, Barnes Share Interest In Extension

June 6th, 2015 at 9:44pm CST by Arthur Hill

Extending Harrison Barnes‘ contract should be high among the Warriors’ offseason priorities, writes Marcus Thompson of The Bay Area News Group. Citing multiple sources, Thompson reports that Barnes will be seeking an extension this summer and the Warriors would like to give him one. He will be eligible for an extension from July 1st to October 31st.

The only question is money, as a new deal is likely to net Barnes $10MM to $12MM annually, Thompson estimates. The columnist contends that Golden State can afford those terms because the extension wouldn’t take effect until 2016/17, when David Lee‘s $15MM salary will no longer be on the books. If the salary cap for 2016/17 is about $90MM and the luxury tax kicks in at around $108MM, as Commissioner Adam Silver estimated Thursday, the Warriors could have their core of Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green, Andrew Bogut, Andre Iguodala and Shaun Livingston signed for about $72MM total. That leaves plenty of room for Barnes and four projected draft picks over the next two years.

If the Warriors don’t extend Barnes, Thompson notes, he will become a restricted free agent next summer and Golden State will have to worry about matching a large offer from elsewhere. He mentions the Hornets, Grizzlies and Clippers as teams that would have different reasons for pursuing Barnes, while the Blazers, Pelicans, Heat and Bulls are all playoff contenders with a need for a player of his type.

Warriors Co-Owner On Green, Lee, Luxury Tax

March 16th, 2015 at 2:30pm CST by Chuck Myron

Warriors co-owner Joe Lacob takes an aggressive approach to running his team, and it’s paid off, with Golden State a half-game in front of the Hawks for the league’s best record. His bold approach extends even to his plans for a new arena in San Francisco, though he told Tim Kawakami of the Bay Area News Group that he now finds a 2017 opening date for that building unlikely and is instead focused on 2018. Lacob had plenty more to say, including a remark in which he expressed his hope that Stephen Curry is “a Warrior for life,” in a podcast taped Friday with Kawakami, who transcribes 20 of Lacob’s responses in a full story. The entire interview is worth your time, particularly if you’re a Warriors fan, but we’ll share three of Lacob’s remarks here:

On Draymond Green, set for restricted free agency this summer:

“I obviously have to choose my words carefully here — we’re not trying to make any claims or anything like that. He will go through the restricted free agency process; I’m sure he’ll get offers from other teams. And he’ll have an offer from us, obviously. Look, he’s very much a part of the core here. That’s the way we view him. He just turned 25 years old and along with Steph and Klay [Thompson] and Harrison [Barnes] we have our sort of core young four, if you will, along with a lot of other really good players. All I can say is we’re going to do everything we can to convince him to stay and be a Warrior for a long time. Of course we have the ultimate [choice] in all that — we can match any deal he gets.”

On the possibility of trading David Lee:

“This is really for [GM] Bob [Myers] to figure out and our basketball ops team. We’re going to figure out how to put together the team for next year. And let’s wait to see how the season ends, first. … You don’t know what’s going to happen. … Sometimes you change your view by the end of the year. Look, if that’s the way it works out, he’s an expiring contact and if it’s better for him to move on somewhere else, maybe that might happen. But it might not. I think we have to wait until the end of the year and assess everything when the season’s over.”

On paying the luxury tax:

“No one should be comfortable with that because the penalties are obviously quite severe. We’d always prefer not to. I can’t sit here and lie and say that I would love to pay the luxury tax. No one would love to pay the luxury tax. But we always have known that there could be a time when it’s required, when the team is at such a point, to keep it together, maybe it’s just that point where we have overlapping contacts that add up … where we have to pay the luxury tax to do that, to keep our long-term plan intact. So the answer, without going on and on, is that we are prepared to pay the luxury tax, yes, if we have to. That’s just a part of the business. It’s not something we want to do. And we’ll all see what happens. A lot depends on what other teams do and how free agency goes and so on. There’s really quite a few factors.”

Warriors Pick Up Barnes Option, Decline Nedovic

October 30th, 2014 at 6:39pm CST by Eddie Scarito

The Warriors have exercised their fourth-year team option for Harrison Barnes, the team has announced in a press release. The team also intends to decline their third-year option for Nemanja Nedovic, the press release noted. With Golden State also picking up their team option for Festus Ezeli earlier today, the Warriors now have an estimated $62MM in guaranteed salary commitments for the 2015/16 season. That figure doesn’t include Klay Thompson, who is currently in talks with the team regarding a contract extension.

The 22-year-old Barnes has appeared in 160 games, including 106 as a starter, in his three seasons in Golden State. He has averaged 9.3 PPG, 4.1 RPG, and 1.3 APG, and his career slash line is .418/.349/.737. Barnes, who was selected with the seventh overall pick in the first round of the 2012 NBA Draft, was a First Team All-Rookie selection in 2012/13.

Nedovic, 23, appeared in 24 games with the Warriors last season as a rookie, averaging 1.1 points in 5.9 minutes per contest. It’s not a surprise that Golden State would decline their option on Nedovic, seeing as he is currently buried on the depth chart as the fourth point guard.