Steve Nash Rumors | Hoops Rumors

Latest On Steve Nash, Lakers

October 24th, 2014 at 8:27pm CST by Eddie Scarito

The basketball world may have seen the last of Steve Nash on the hardwood, as he is set to miss the entire 2014/15 campaign with recurring nerve damage in his back. Nash was most likely going to retire after this season anyway, and now it seems that the Lakers April 8, 2014 loss to the Rockets, when he notched three points and five assists, was the last stat line of a surefire Hall-of-Fame career. Here’s the latest chatter around the league regarding Nash and the Lakers…

Nash’s contract may still hold value for the Lakers as a trade chip, J.A. Adande of ESPN.com writes. Los Angeles could look to deal Nash’s expiring $9.7MM contract, but if they do so they will most likely have to take back a player with more than one season remaining on his deal, something the team might be reluctant to do as they look ahead to clearing as much cap room as possible heading into the summer of 2016, Adande notes.
Despite missing most of last season with injury woes, Nash still enjoyed the time he was able to make it onto the court, Bruce Arthur of The Star writes.
It was reported earlier that Los Angeles intends to apply for a disabled player exception for Nash, but that isn’t their only financial option regarding the player and his contract. Eric Pincus of The Los Angeles Times (subscription required) runs down five different possibilities, including trading him; Nash retiring; simply keeping him on the roster for the season; or a possible buyout of his contract.
The Lakers are deferring to Nash as to whether or not he will stay around the team to rehab, recover at home, or simply retire, Mark Medina of The Los Angeles Daily News reports.
Former Raptors and Suns GM Bryan Colangelo reflected on his decision to draft Nash back in 1996, writes Sean Fitz-Gerald of The National Post. Colangelo said, “At the 15th position in the first round, a lot of people said, ‘who’s this kid from Santa Clara who doesn’t really look or feel like an NBA player?’ Nobody knew that he was going to go on to have a storied career like he has, and be considered one of the greats who’s played the position of point guard. But lo and behold, this guy is so dedicated to his craft and dedicated to the physical fitness side of it and being prepared and being ready, he just has done some incredible things. I just feel fortunate to play a small part in what is such a storied career.”

Lakers To Apply For Disabled Player Exception

October 24th, 2014 at 4:50pm CST by Eddie Scarito

The Lakers intend to apply to the league office for a disabled player exception for injured guard Steve Nash, Bill Oram of The Orange County Register reports (Twitter link). If granted, the exception would be worth nearly $4.851MM, or half of his $9.701MM salary for this season.

It was announced yesterday that Nash would miss the entire 2014/15 season due to recurring nerve damage in his back. The Lakers could waive Nash and apply for a salary exclusion if it is determined that he suffered a career-ending injury. The catch is that they would have to wait to apply for that until the one-year anniversary of his last game played, which was on April 8th of last season. The issue with going this route is that it would only give the league a little less than a week before the regular season ended to grant the exclusion. If it was granted it would erase Nash’s salary from the team’s cap, but Los Angeles would still be on the hook for his salary.

It’s unclear if the Lakers intend to use the exception, if granted, to sign a player immediately, or rather to keep it in reserve for a move later on in the season. There aren’t many free agents of consequence who come available midseason. The DPE could also be utilized for salary-matching purposes in a trade, and that route would likely net the team a better player, though the Lakers don’t have much in the way of tradeable assets they would be willing to part with. Plus, they’d only be able to acquire a player who’s on an expiring contract and whose salary is no more than $100K greater than the value of the exception.

Steve Nash To Miss Entire Season

October 23rd, 2014 at 7:21pm CST by Chuck Myron

7:21pm: The Lakers have confirmed that Nash will miss the season, the team announced. He still hasn’t decided whether he’ll retire in the wake of the news, USA Today’s Sam Amick tweets.

6:58pm: Nerve issues will keep Steve Nash from playing this season, reports Kevin Ding of Bleacher Report. Sources tell Ding that the Lakers are expected to rule the 40-year-old point guard out for all of 2014/15 because of recurring nerve damage in his back. Mike Bresnahan of the Los Angeles Times confirms that Nash will not play this year (Twitter link). The Lakers can apply for a Disabled Player Exception worth nearly $4.851MM, or half of his $9.701MM salary for this season, but they can’t take Nash’s contract, which expires at season’s end, off the books.

If the Lakers waive Nash, they could apply for a salary exclusion if he’s deemed to have suffered a career-ending injury. However, they’d have to wait to apply for that on the one-year anniversary of his last game, which took place on April 8th last season. That would give the NBA only about a week before the end of the regular season to grant the exclusion, which would wipe Nash’s salary from the team’s cap figure, though the Lakers would still have to pay the former MVP his salary. Still, that’s unlikely to change the equation much for the Lakers, as few, if any, free agents of impact are available at that point in the season, and it wouldn’t affect the team’s cap room for next summer, since Nash’s contract expires at season’s end one way or another.

The league has an insurance policy that covers teams for a portion of the salary for around 150 players in case they are injured, but the insurance company may choose as many as 14 players to exempt from that policy each year. It’s not clear whether Nash is one of those exempt players, but if the insurance covered Nash when he first signed his deal in 2012, at which point he was still fully healthy, he’d still be covered now. The insurance nonetheless has no bearing on Nash’s cap figure.

In any case, the prospect of Nash returning to the court for 2015/16 or beyond seems remote, so there’s a strong chance his career is at an end. The 15th overall pick in the 1996 draft didn’t show his true potential until a trade sent him to the Mavs after his second NBA season. He blossomed into an All-Star alongside Dirk Nowitzki, and when Nash left as a free agent in 2004 for Phoenix, where he teamed with coach Mike D’Antoni, he reached new levels, winning back-to-back MVP awards his first two seasons with the Suns. He remained productive for many years, averaging 10.7 assists during the 2011/12 season, when he turned 38, prompting the Lakers to sign-and-trade for him in the summer of 2012. He joined Dwight Howard, Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol to form a star-studded Lakers team that was a chic pick to win the championship, which would have been a first for Nash, but the team fell well short of expectations and lost in the first round of the playoffs.

A broken leg that Nash suffered in just his second regular season game with the Lakers helped limit him to 50 games in 2012/13 and touched off the nerve trouble that was largely responsible for him appearing in just 15 games last season. He never lived up to his contract, worth more than $27.9MM over three years, and he admitted this spring that he wasn’t going to retire because he wanted to collect his salary for this season. Still, Lakers GM Mitch Kupchak has said he doesn’t regret doing the deal.

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.

And-Ones: Kobe, Lottery, Bosh, Hawks

October 20th, 2014 at 4:03pm CST by Chuck Myron

Henry Abbott of ESPN The Magazine hears from agents and team sources who say Kobe Bryant‘s rough-edged personality is driving free agents away from the Lakers. The Buss family receives more income from the team’s local TV deal if ratings are better, and that helped persuade the team to sign Bryant to his lucrative two-year extension 12 months ago and to eschew an aggressive rebuilding project, Abbott hears. Bryant’s popularity with powerful front-row celebrities also played a role, and co-owner Jim Buss is just “waiting for [Bryant] to leave,” a source tells Abbott, fearful of engaging in a public spat with the superstar. Steve Nash nearly decided against approving his sign-and-trade to the Lakers and Paul George signed his extension with the Pacers in part because of Bryant, sources tell Abbott. Chris Bosh was one of the Lakers’ missed free agent targets this summer, and there’s more on him amid the latest from around the league:

The Thunder will join the Sixers in voting against the changes to the lottery, tweets Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports, but Wojnarowski seconds Lowe’s report (below) that the measure still has enough support to pass.

Earlier updates:

Bosh spoke of a desire to be paid at his full market rate as he explained his decision to turn down a four-year max deal from the Rockets for five years at the max from the Heat to Ira Winderman of the Sun Sentinel. “It’s always business,” Bosh said. “Nothing is ever personal. I think 100% of those dudes would have taken the deal I took.”
Another NBA team has joined the Sixers in opposition to the league’s lottery reform proposal as the Board of Governors meet today, but the measure is still expected to receive approval, Grantland’s Zach Lowe reports (Twitter links).
Players union secretary-treasurer James Jones is an opponent of shortening games and believes, as teammate LeBron James does, that players would instead like to see fewer games on the schedule, as Jones tells Chris Haynes of the Northeast Ohio Media Group.
Former Hawks All-Star Dikembe Mutombo has met with a group of investors about joining their effort to buy the team, reports Chris Vivlamore of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Western Notes: Nash, Burke, Parsons

October 12th, 2014 at 8:56pm CST by Zachary Links

With Thunder star Kevin Durant out, we’re about to be treated to the full Russell Westbrook experience, writes Ken Berger of CBSSports.com. OKC managed to get by without Westbrook at the start of the 2013/14 season – they were 22-8 over the first three and a half months – but it remains to be seen how they’ll do sans KD. More out of the West..

Steve Nash was widely criticized for his admission earlier this year that he wouldn’t retire because he wanted the money left on his contract, but the Lakers guard isn’t interested in making a phony apology, writes Bill Oram of The Orange County Register. “It was an inflammatory statement in a way,” Nash said. “But I was being extremely truthful. That’s an important part of the business and we are businessmen. I’m not going to just give that money away.”
The early returns are promising on Jazz point guard Trey Burke, writes Tony Jones of The Salt Lake Tribune. Burke won’t turn 22 until next month, but he’s showing the poise of a much older point guard.
Mavs coach Rick Carlisle apologized to Chandler Parsons for publicly criticizing the team’s prized free-agent addition’s weight and conditioning after Friday night’s preseason game. “I have apologized to him and the entire team for this error in judgment. Not only is Chandler Parsons one of our best players, he is also one of our hardest working players and the kind of high character person we strive to bring to our city and franchise,” Carlisle wrote in a statement, according to Tim MacMahon of ESPNDallas.com.

California Notes: Warriors, Crawford, Nash

September 2nd, 2014 at 7:31pm CST by Cray Allred

The NBA landscape in California has undergone quite the transformation in recent years. In the past, there have been long stretches with the Kings near the top of the division, while the Warriors and Clippers have often scraped the bottom. Currently, Golden State and the formerly hapless Los Angeles franchise have established themselves as perennial playoff teams, while Sacramento underwhelms at the bottom of the division. The Lakers’ decline might turn out to be the most startling development, especially if the purple and gold don’t emerge from their downturn in the next couple seasons. Here’s a rundown of California rumblings this evening:

Rusty Simmons of the San Francisco Chronicle confirms that the contracts of Warriors camp invites James McAdoo and Mitchell Watt are partially guaranteed.
Agent Andy Miller has already signaled Jamal Crawford‘s interest in signing an extension when he becomes eligible next summer, and it sounds like the reigning Sixth Man of the Year will have a friendly face on the other side of the negotiating table. Crawford has a longstanding relationship with Clippers owner Steve Ballmer based on their Seattle connections, as Crawford details to Jeff Caplan of NBA.com. “We’ve done a lot of [charity] events together in Seattle, so I’ve known him before he was actually the owner,” Crawford said. “We were texting throughout the year and emailing each other and staying in contact and continuing to work together with charities around Seattle. It’s exciting. I don’t know how many people have actually known their owner before they actually played for the team they were on. So it’s pretty cool.”
Despite some thought given by the Lakers to use the stretch provision on Steve Nash, the deadline to execute the maneuver came and went without Los Angeles doing so. Eric Pincus of the Los Angeles Times reports that the team was still considering stretching Nash’s deal before its top free agent targets of LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, and Chris Bosh decided to sign elsewhere, eliminating the team’s need to gain cap flexibility from such a move.

Chuck Myron contributed to this post.

Western Notes: Rubio, Nash, Thompson

July 28th, 2014 at 8:47pm CST by Eddie Scarito

The Wolves are willing to give Ricky Rubio an extension similar to the four-year, $44MM extension Stephen Curry signed with the Warriors two years ago, tweets Darren Wolfson of 1500 ESPN Twin Cities. Rubio and agent Dan Fegan are asking for the max over five seasons. We took a look at Rubio and other extension candidates earlier today.

Raptors CEO On Carter, Nash, Title Aspirations

July 8th, 2014 at 2:36pm CST by Chuck Myron

Tim Leiweke, CEO of the Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment group that owns the Raptors, believes the franchise is poised for a “growth spurt” with the unique advantage of having an entire country behind it, as he tells USA Today’s Jeff Zillgitt. Leiweke points to the team’s willingness to spend, the acumen of GM Masai Ujiri, and the organization’s commitment to competing for championships as selling points for free agents. He also speaks about the effect that former Raptors star Vince Carter had on Canadian basketball, remarks made all the more interesting by Carter’s status as a free agent and reports indicating that the team is in the mix to sign him. Zillgitt’s entire piece is a must read for Raptors fans, but we’ll share a few particularly relevant snippets here:

On Vince Carter and his influence on back-to-back No. 1 overall picks Anthony Bennett and Andrew Wiggins, both of whom are Canadians:

“That is Vince Carter. I give him an enormous amount of credit. That [Raptors] team and that era is the era that is beginning to produce the Wigginses, the Bennetts. He inspired those kids to play basketball at the highest level. Now we get a chance to do that with our era, but we won’t see the results of that for another 10 years.”

On Steve Nash:

“There are probably few people who admire and like Steve Nash like I do. I had the privilege of getting to know him when he came to the Lakers. I love Steve Nash. I hope whenever his career ends, and I hope it’s not today, I hope a great player like that gets to go out on a high. That said, I definitely would hope there’s day in time where Steve Nash is playing a role here somehow.”

On the team’s Atlantic Division title this season, which it celebrated with the hanging of a banner:

“Personally, I wouldn’t have done the banner. They didn’t ask me, but if they did I would’ve told them that doesn’t mean anything. I don’t go in the locker room and congratulate the guys because we haven’t done anything yet. Our guys know that. It’s not that I don’t love our guys and I won’t fight for them. But we haven’t done anything yet. I don’t understand why everyone’s happy. We have work to do here. For me, are we on the right path? Yes. Do we have a chance to do something great? Yes. Talk to me when we do it. I’m not happy. Masai’s not happy.”

Cavs, Hawks, Lakers Eye LeBron-‘Melo Pairing

June 24th, 2014 at 11:47am CST by Chuck Myron

The Hawks, Cavs and Lakers are considering clearing the cap space necessary to double up on marquee free agent signings this summer and ink both LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony, report Brian Windhorst and Marc Stein of ESPN.com. James’ decision to opt out of his contract and hit free agency has spurred the thinking of the Hawks and Cavs, while the Lakers have been considering this scenario for a while, according to the ESPN scribes.

James timed his opt-out nearly a week ahead of his June 30th deadline to do so to give potential suitors a better chance to make the necessary cap-clearing moves, sources tell Windhorst and Stein. He also plotted the timing to give the Heat a chance to make moves of their own, Windhorst and Stein add. The Heat have given at least some thought to recruiting Anthony to join James in Miami.

The Lakers probably possess the easiest path to the requisite cap space with about $34MM in commitments for next season and Nick Young‘s player option, which he appears likely to decline. They’ve been linked to trades in which they’d give up Steve Nash and the No. 7 overall pick, and they’ve entered those discussions with clearing cap space in mind, as Stein and ESPN.com colleague Ramona Shelburne wrote earlier today.

The Cavs don’t have much more in guaranteed salary, with just about $36MM, and they believe they can clear about $30MM in space under the projected $63.2MM cap without giving up Kyrie Irving or the No. 1 overall pick. The Hawks have a little more than $47MM tied up for next year, and they’re reluctant to tear apart their roster, according to Windhorst and Stein, in spite of a report earlier this morning that they were pondering a run at Anthony.

In any case, Cleveland, Atlanta and the Lakers all face a tight squeeze if they hope to accommodate both James and Anthony, who can command combined maximum salaries of roughly $42.5MM. Still, there’s been talk that each would be willing to take a discount, and, as Windhorst and Stein note, James and Anthony will likely communicate during free agency.

Hawks Ponder Run At Carmelo Anthony

June 24th, 2014 at 9:05am CST by Chuck Myron

The Hawks are thinking about launching a run at Carmelo Anthony, according to Ramona Shelburne and Marc Stein of ESPN.com, who deem Atlanta a “sleeper” team in the race for the star forward. A run at ‘Melo reminiscent of last year’s darkhorse pitch to Dwight Howard is one of many options that Hawks GM Danny Ferry is considering, though it would require that the team clear a significant amount of cap space.

Atlanta and the Heat are on the fringes of an Anthony sweepstakes that more prominently features the Rockets, Mavs and Lakers, as well as the Bulls, who appear to have taken the lead, as Shelburne and Stein write. The Knicks are in the running, too, as they bid to keep Anthony from leaving New York.

The Knicks can re-sign him using Bird rights, but the Lakers have the most cap flexibility among the teams in the race. Still, Anthony wants the Lakers to upgrade their roster before he would consider them, according to Shelburne and Stein. That’s why rumors involving No. 7 pick and Steve Nash have cropped up, as Lakers look to part with them in search of improvements, as the ESPN scribes explain. Sources tell Chris Broussard of ESPN.com that ‘Melo met recently with Kobe Bryant in Europe, and while Bryant denies that any meeting took place, he said a meeting with Anthony is indeed on his agenda (Twitter link).

Ferry would have to make a few trades of his own just to open up room for a competitive contract offer. The Hawks have slightly more than $47MM in commitments to eight players next season, not counting their first-round pick at No. 15 overall. If the Hawks renounced all of their free agents, roster charges would bring Atlanta’s cap hits to about $49MM, leaving only about $14.2MM under the $63.2MM projected salary cap to bid for Anthony, who can make a starting salary of nearly $22.5MM.