Nikola Vucevic Rumors | Hoops Rumors

Kyler’s Latest: Expansion, Faried, Suns, Vucevic

October 18th, 2016 at 3:58pm CST by Luke Adams

In his latest piece for Basketball Insiders, Steve Kyler addresses a few rumors and reports that have popped up around the NBA recently, providing some perspective and some additional information. Let’s dive in and round up the highlights…

While a recent report from Kevin Nesgoda of SonicsRising.com suggested that the NBA may be considering the possibility of expansion, Kyler was told by an NBA owner that the idea of expansion has been a “non-starter” at Board of Governors meetings. As Kyler writes, there are certain non-NBA markets with interest in bringing in a team, and some sources may view expansion as inevitable down the road, but it’s not in the short-term plans for the league’s Board of Governors.
With Kenneth Faried at risk of losing his starting job, league sources tell Kyler that the big man may not be thrilled with a move to the bench, which could prompt the Nuggets to ramp up efforts to trade him this season. The Nuggets will be a team to watch when most offseason signees around the NBA become trade-eligible on December 15, particularly if they get off to a slow start.
There’s a “growing belief” that Brandon Knight would draw a bigger trade return for the Suns than Eric Bledsoe, given Bledsoe’s injury history, writes Kyler. ESPN’s Zach Lowe recently indicated that Knight would be a more likely trade candidate than Bledsoe for the club. Still, sources tell Kyler that the Suns like the “vibe” and culture in Phoenix right now, and are in no rush to clear their backcourt logjam.
Magic sources continue to “flatly deny” having any interest in trading Nikola Vucevic. However, Kyler wonders if that stance may become a little more flexible if Orlando’s other bigs are playing well, and the right swingman is available in a potential deal.

Lowe’s Latest: Magic, Vucevic, Oladipo, Sixers

July 26th, 2016 at 11:00pm CST by Luke Adams

In Zach Lowe’s latest column for ESPN.com, he examines the Magic‘s offseason moves, attempting to make sense of some of the club’s unusual decisions. After investing huge money into Bismack Biyombo and sending a significant trade package to the Thunder for Serge Ibaka, Orlando has a roster that appears a little heavy on frontcourt talent, and one that lacks offensive playmakers.

As Lowe details, the Magic may attempt to roll out a lineup that features Biyombo at center, Ibaka at power forward, and Aaron Gordon at the three in a Paul George-type role, per new head coach Frank Vogel. That would give the team impressive length, athleticism, and rim protection in the frontcourt, but it remains to be seen whether it would be effective against NBA teams that are increasingly reliant on three-pointers and perimeter talent.

Lowe’s piece also includes a handful of interesting tidbits of information he has gleaned from league sources, so let’s round those up…

Despite the logjam up front, the Magic are in no rush to trade Nikola Vucevic, writes Lowe. Given the team’s lack of pure scorers, but Orlando might want to keep Vucevic around to take advantage of his offensive prowess and his ability to pass in the post.
Vucevic believes he should be the starting center, but hasn’t been promised anything yet, and acknowledges that the newly-signed Biyombo is making a few million dollars more per year than him. “Do I wish I were a free agent now?” Vucevic said, referring to new contracts signed by Biyombo and others. “Yes. But I can’t do anything about it. I’m happy guys are getting paid, and in the normal world, it’s still a lot of money. I mean, I’ll never spend all that money.”
Victor Oladipo, traded by Orlando to the Thunder in the Ibaka deal, is seeking a maximum-salary contract extension for now, sources tell Lowe. That asking price likely played a role in the Magic‘s decision to move him, if the club was unwilling to go that high to lock him up.
Before signing Biyombo, the Magic were “sniffing around” the possibility of signing Joakim Noah at around the same price, according to Lowe. The two veteran bigs ultimately received similar deals, and will both count for $17MM against the cap in year one.
As an aside in his story on the Magic, Lowe also provides an update on the Sixers, reporting that most of Sam Hinkie‘s old regime – including his “handpicked analytics crew” – is expected to be gone from Philadelphia by the end of August.

Magic Notes: Vogel On Strategy, Team

May 21st, 2016 at 7:22pm CST by ChrisCrouse

Frank Vogel believes he can turn the Magic into a top-10 defensive team and he will implement “an analytically based offensive approach,” in which the team employs small-ball lineups and emphasizes the 3-pointer, as the coach tells Josh Robbins of the Orlando Sentinel. The team only attempted 22.2 3-pointers per game last year, which was the ninth fewest in the league. The Magic shot 35.0% from behind the arc last season, which was tied with Atlanta for 15th in the league, so they could afford to take a few more shots from downtown.

Here’s more from Orlando:

Vogel envisions Nikola Vucevic as the Magic’s defensive enforcer, Robbins writes in the same piece. “It’s really mostly about body position in today’s NBA,” Vogel said. “I feel like I can work with him to improve him. But anybody that’s going to be caught in that center position has got to be the anchor of your defense. We work diligently on teaching the angles, teaching the anticipation, teaching the coverages for when there’s help.”
Scott Skiles may have quit on the Magic, but that doesn’t phase Vogel, and he insists Orlando is the right place for him, as he tells Mike Bianchi of the Orlando Sentinel. “I’m not worried about the situation of how [Skiles] left,” Vogel said. “This organization checked off all the boxes. This is the place I felt my family and I would be happy.”
Vogel sees similarities between this Magic team and the young Pacers team of a few seasons ago, Robbins writes in a separate piece. “The team really reminds me of the team I took over here in Indianapolis, with the young Paul George, Lance Stephenson and Roy Hibbert,” Vogel said. “Those guys hadn’t really seen success at the NBA level, and we were able to just bring a positive energy-and-enthusiasm type of approach to the young talent that they had and we watched them grow. It was really special. I see a lot of similarities with the depth of the young talent that we have on this roster.”
Robbins details the Magic’s rapid hiring process of Vogel in that same piece. Vogel and GM Rob Hennigan had a two-hour phone conversation on Sunday. That was followed by face-to-face interviews with Hennigan and CEO Alex Martins, as well as a meeting with the DeVos family, the team’s owners, on Monday. On Friday afternoon, eight days after Skiles resigned, the Magic named Vogel their new head coach.

And-Ones: Temple, Powell, Vucevic

April 3rd, 2015 at 10:28pm CST by Eddie Scarito

Unlike Orlando’s past star big men such as Shaquille O’Neal and Dwight Howard, Nikola Vucevic is determined to be a member of the Magic for his entire career, Brian Schmitz of The Orlando Sentinel writes. “Yeah. I’m here for the long haul,” Vucevic said. “I love it here. I really love the city. I’ve improved a lot as a player. I’d love to stay here for a long time and make something special happen. If it takes years, it takes years. I ain’t going anywhere.” The big man will have a few years before his loyalty to Orlando will be tested since his current deal runs through the 2018/19 season.

Here’s more from around the league:

Wizards swingman Garrett Temple began running and participating in drills this week and said he is at 80% strength, Jorge Castillo of The Washington Post notes. Temple, who strained his right hamstring back on March 9th, was projected to be out approximately four to six weeks, putting his return date within the original prediction.
The Mavericks have re-assigned center Dwight Powell to the Texas Legends, their D-League affiliate, Earl K. Sneed of Mavs.com tweets. This will be Powell’s 13th trek of the season to the D-League.
The 2015 NCAA tournament is winding down and only four teams remain standing. Chris Mannix of SI.com looks at the draft prospects who have the most to gain from standout performances in the Final Four and beyond. Mannix’s list includes Justise Winslow (Duke), Willie Cauley-Stein (Kentucky), Frank Kaminsky (Wisconsin), and Devin Booker (Kentucky).

And-Ones: Borrego, Smart, Draft

February 5th, 2015 at 11:01pm CST by Eddie Scarito

Magic interim coach James Borrego has played a major role in developing Nikola Vucevic into a dangerous low-post player, John Denton of NBA.com writes. “J.B. is my guy and that’s who I have worked with on a daily basis, watched the film with and talked about games with,’’ Vucevic said. “He’s a guy that I have a great relationship with and he’s a great guy. He always stays positive and brings energy to practice to pump us up. I know this will be tough for him because he was close with Jacque [Vaughn], but it’s on us as players to support [Borrego] and help him the best that we can.’’

Here’s more from around the league:

Rookie Marcus Smart is beginning to earn the trust of the Celtics‘ coaching staff, and the team has shown improvement since Smart took over as the starting point guard after Rajon Rondo was dealt to Dallas, Julian Edlow of WEEI 93.7 FM writes.
While the prospects for the 2015 NBA draft aren’t getting the hype that last year’s class did, there are still a number of intriguing players heading into the league. Scott Howard-Cooper of NBA.com ran down the top 30 prospects according to the league insiders he has spoken with. The top three players available in the 2015 draft according to Howard-Cooper are Jahlil Okafor, Emmanuel Mudiay, and Karl-Anthony Towns.
Amid Syracuse’s subpar season, senior Rakeem Christmas has worked his way from relative obscurity to being a potential first round draft pick this June, Adam Zagoria of SNY.tv writes. “He wasn’t on the board before,” one veteran NBA scout told Zagoria. “He’s averaging 18 points and 9 rebounds, he shoots over 72% from the free-throw line. There aren’t a lot of big guys who do that. He’s an example of a guy staying four years made all the difference. He would’ve made a mistake if he came out; he wasn’t going to the NBA. But you stay in all four years and work it…It’s interesting. I think he’s a bubble guy now, end of the first, beginning of the second [round].”

Magic Sign Nikola Vucevic To Extension

October 23rd, 2014 at 3:43pm CST by Alex Lee

THURSDAY, 3:43pm: Vucevic has signed the extension and the deal is official, the team has announced.

7:11pm: The base salary of the deal is for $48MM with incentives that could push it to $53MM, according to Jeff Zillgitt of USA Today (via Twitter).

TUESDAY, 6:21pm: The Magic are finalizing a four-year, $53MM contract extension with Nikola Vucevic, reports Josh Robbins of the Orlando Sentinel. The year-by-year salary breakdown is the only detail still up in the air, according to Robbins (via Twitter). The pact does not include any opt out clauses and will thus keep him in Orlando through the 2018/19 season. The 23-year-old Montenegrin is a former first round pick entering his fourth season in the NBA, which gave the Magic until October 31 to come to an agreement that would prevent him from becoming a restricted free agent next summer. Vucevic is scheduled to make $2.751MM this season in the final year of his rookie deal.

Vucevic exploded in 2012/13 after coming over from Philadelphia in the Dwight Howard blockbuster. He averaged 13.1 points and 11.9 rebounds per game in his sophomore season, making him the league’s second leading rebounder behind Howard. While Vucevic was again excellent last season, his overall numbers seemed to plateau more than an improving young player’s should in his third year, as our Chuck Myron pointed out in Vucevic’s entry in our Extension Candidate series. Chuck also predicted a four-year, $48MM pact for the center in our 2014 Rookie Scale Extension Primer.

We heard in July that the Magic would prioritize extending Vucevic and teammate Tobias Harris, also entering his fourth season, once the season approached. Those rumors proved true even before tonight’s news broke, as there was neutral interest reported last month and just last week there was word that Vucevic and the Magic were in talks.

Eastern Notes: Pierce, Vucevic, Stephenson

October 22nd, 2014 at 12:37pm CST by Chuck Myron

Paul Pierce figures coach Jason Kidd‘s departure from the Nets helped dampen the team’s enthusiasm to re-sign the forward to a new deal this summer, as Pierce tells reporters, including Andy Vasquez of The Record. Pierce cites Kidd as one of the primary reasons he encouraged the Celtics to trade him to Brooklyn in 2013, as Vasquez notes. There’s more on key figures who changed places as well as one who’s committed to stay where he is among the news from around the Eastern Conference:

Nikola Vucevic is careful to point out that he hasn’t put pen to paper on an extension with the Magic, but he nonetheless made it clear that he’s ecstatic about the agreement that agent Rade Filipovich and the team have reached, as Josh Robbins of the Orlando Sentinel details.
Representatives for Lance Stephenson urged the Pacers to offload other players to find room for the shooting guard under the tax line this summer, with the names of Luis Scola and Donald Sloan arising in the talks, but Indiana held firm against doing so, reports Shams Charania of RealGM. The Alberto Ebanks client has said he cried when he told the Pacers he was signing with the Hornets instead, but Stephenson tells Charania that he hasn’t spoken to Pacers president of basketball operations Larry Bird since he made up his mind to join Charlotte.
Charania also hears from a source who confirms that Jason Maxiell is the leading contender for a regular season roster spot among the Hornets camp invitees, as the RealGM scribe writes in the same piece. Coach Steve Clifford seems in favor of keeping Maxiell, writes Rick Bonnell of the Charlotte Observer.
Christian Watford will play for the Celtics‘ D-League affiliate assuming he clears NBA waivers, reports David Pick of Eurobasket.com (Twitter link). That means the C’s are following through on their plan to keep Watford’s D-League rights, though Pick hears that the power forward turned down many offers from European teams to instead go to the D-League.
Phil Jackson shared his scouting report on every Knicks player with Charley Rosen, writing for ESPN.com. The coach-turned-executive admits camp invitees Langston Galloway and Travis Wear are destined for the D-League.

And-Ones: Roberts, Spurs, Vucevic, Rubio

October 21st, 2014 at 9:45pm CST by Alex Lee

After his sit down with Michele Roberts, Tim Bontemps of the New York Post doesn’t get the feeling that the new NBPA head is on board with the idea of a gradual increase in the salary cap starting in 2016 (Twitter links). The alternative is to allow the cap to jump up after the 2015/16 season — Bontemps estimates a spike to over $90MM — due to the injection of the money from the league’s new TV deal. That increase, of course, could coincide with the free agency of superstar Kevin Durant.

Let’s take a look at what else is going on around the league on Tuesday:

It would be shocking if any of Bryce Cotton, Josh Davis or JaMychal Green were to end up on the Spurs’ final roster, writes Jeff McDonald of the San Antonio Express-News. Cotton, Davis and Green all have partially guaranteed deals, but as our Expanded Roster Counts show, the Spurs already have 15 fully guaranteed contracts on the books.
A strong showing in 2014/15 would have likely netted Nikola Vucevic a more lucrative deal next summer than the one he agreed to earlier tonight, according to Grantland’s Zach Lowe. However, Lowe believes Vucevic’s shortcomings on the defensive end add risk for the Magic while also conceding the deal should be a fair one considering the rising cap (Twitter links).
Ben Golliver of Sports Illustrated, also pointing to the increasing salary cap, writes that Vucevic’s extension compares favorably to the four-year, $48MM deal Utah’s Derrick Favors inked last October. Golliver adds that the pact eliminates any chance of a bidding war over Vucevic for the Magic next summer which could have resulted in an overpay.
Darren Wolfson of 1500 ESPN Twin Cities expects Timberwolves owner Glen Taylor to soon become more involved in extension talks for point guard Ricky Rubio (via Twitter). The Wolves reportedly upped their offer to four years, $48MM shortly after we heard that Rubio and Taylor had spoken several times on the phone. Wolfson, who speculates that a total offer of $52-54MM might do it, adds that Taylor’s loyalty to Rubio could “change the dynamic” of the talks (Twitter links here).

Extension Rumors: Leonard, Thompson, Cole

October 17th, 2014 at 11:24am CST by Chuck Myron

The deadline for teams to sign rookie scale extensions with their eligible players is two weeks from today, and while only six players came to deals last time around, that number has the potential to be much larger this year, notes Marc Stein of ESPN.com. Stein has more on many of those extension hopefuls that adds to the storylines we’ve been following throughout the offseason:

Kawhi Leonard, Tristan Thompson, and Norris Cole are among the players who are in active negotiations with their respective teams about rookie scale extensions, Stein reports. Klay Thompson, Ricky Rubio, Kemba Walker, Jimmy Butler, Reggie Jackson, Brandon Knight, Nikola Vucevic, Tobias Harris, Enes Kanter and Alec Burks are also in active extension talks, according to Stein, who advances earlier reports that all of them had engaged in talks.
Iman Shumpert and the Knicks are also discussing an extension, Stein writes, countering a report from a few weeks ago that indicated that the sides hadn’t engaged in talks and that New York was content to let the swingman hit restricted free agency next summer.
Klay Thompson’s camp is considering the idea of going after an offer sheet similar to the one the Mavs gave Chandler Parsons if Thompson and the Warriors don’t come to an extension this month, Stein hears. Parsons’ near-max deal runs three years and includes a player option and a 15% trade kicker. Rival GMs have expressed admiration for its structure and Rockets GM Daryl Morey pointed to the difficulty that trading such a contract would entail shortly after he decided against matching it. The player option would allow Thompson to hit unrestricted free agency in the summer of 2017, which is when Stephen Curry‘s deal is set to end, as Stein points out.
The Lakers have attempted to trade for Thompson in the past, Stein notes, though he doesn’t make any suggestion that they’re planning an aggressive push for the shooting guard if he becomes a restricted free agent next summer.

Magic Push For Extensions With Vucevic, Harris

September 29th, 2014 at 5:06pm CST by Chuck Myron

MONDAY, 5:06pm: Vucevic and Harris today expressed their desire to strike deals on extensions, too, as Josh Robbins of the Orlando Sentinel writes.

“Obviously, I want to be here,” Harris said. “But I think I’ll just go out there and play basketball. I’ll let my agent handle all that. I know they’ve been having some talks, but I don’t really get too involved in it. I don’t want to use that as something to lose my focus. I’m about my team and about winning games this year and helping my team win games.”

FRIDAY, 12:45pm: The Magic have until October 31st to sign Nikola Vucevic and Tobias Harris to extensions that would keep them out of restricted free agency next summer, and Magic GM Rob Hennigan said the team wants to do so with both of them, as he told Josh Robbins of the Orlando Sentinel. Each are entering the final season of their respective rookie scale contracts.

“We’ve been in discussions with both Tobias’ and Nik’s representatives,” Hennigan said. “We’ll continue to be in discussions with them. We’re motivated to try to get something done if it makes sense for everybody, and our hope and intention is to do so.”

Hennigan and Vucevic last season expressed mutual interest in a long-term future together, but this is the strongest indication to date that the Magic envision the same commitment with Harris. Orlando acquired both via trade, obtaining Vucevic in the Dwight Howard blockbuster before the 2012/13 season and coming away with Harris in the J.J. Redick swap at the 2013 trade deadline, and both have thrived with increased playing time since joining the Magic. Still, the development of both appeared to plateau last season, as the Magic once more finished near the bottom of the standings, and Hennigan made it clear to Robbins that he believes it important that the team’s rebuilding effort start showing more progress this season.

Still, the Magic don’t have the benefit of seeing how Vucevic and Harris play in the regular season if they want to sign them to extensions, given next month’s deadline. When I profiled Vucevic as an extension candidate, I surmised that the BDA Sports Management client would come away with a four-year, $48MM extension similar to the one the Jazz gave fellow big man Derrick Favors last year. I didn’t think the team would be as enthusiastic about Harris when I examined his case, predicting that the Magic and the Henry Thomas client would pass on an extension for the combo forward, in part because of the other options the team has at the positions he plays.

Still, that’s just my speculation, and it’s unclear just what sort of money the team and the players have in mind. The Magic have only about $15MM in commitments for next season, not counting about $13MM in rookie scale team options for other players, so they have plenty of flexibility to accommodate deals for both, particularly with the salary cap projected to rise sharply in the coming years.