Sacramento Kings Rumors | Hoops Rumors

Southwest Notes: Morey, Williams, McGee, Gentry

November 23rd, 2015 at 3:31pm CST by Chuck Myron

It’s up to the players to pull the Rockets out of the malaise that cost former coach Kevin McHale his job, according to GM Daryl Morey, but Morey acknowledges to TNT’s David Aldridge that some of the fault lies at his own desk, as Aldridge relays in his Morning Tip column for NBA.com.

“Except for Dwight Howard, there really isn’t anybody on the roster playing well, and those are all my decisions,” Morey said. “I can’t hide from that.”

The Rockets won their first game after switching from McHale to interim coach J.B. Bickerstaff but lost both of their games since, and they’re tied with the Kings at 5-9 for 12th place in the Western Conference. See more from the Southwest Division:

Chandler Parsons doesn’t understand why Deron Williams has a reputation as a negative locker room force, citing evidence of the opposite to Jake Fischer of SI.com. Wesley Matthews observes a positive attitude from Williams in the face of challenges, like the erosion of his game, a change Williams acknowledges, as Fischer adds. “My days of scoring 20 and 10 are over. I know that,” said Williams, who gave up nearly $16MM to buy his way off the Nets before signing with the Mavericks for $11MM over two years.
The return of JaVale McGee puts the squeeze on the minutes of early-season revelation Dwight Powell, notes Eddie Sefko of the Dallas Morning News. The Mavs have until January 7th to decide whether to pay McGee his full salary of $1.27MM or waive him and pay only his $750K partial guarantee.
Pelicans coach Alvin Gentry was satisfied as the lead assistant for the Warriors last season and didn’t think he’d end up with another head coaching job until New Orleans came calling, observes Paul Coro of the Arizona Republic. “I was not going to take a job just to have a job as a head coach unless it was a situation that I thought was going to give you an opportunity to win and win big and compete for a championship,” Gentry said. “I really didn’t have any desire just to take another NBA job.”

Pacific Notes: Rivers, Butler, Russell, Randle

November 23rd, 2015 at 10:59am CST by Chuck Myron

Doc Rivers said the slow start for the Clippers is “on me” and insisted that the team doesn’t have chemistry problems in spite of heated conversation in the locker room after Sunday’s loss, which dropped the team to 6-7, notes Jovan Buha of Fox Sports (All Twitter links). Rivers’ coaching took some criticism from Hoops Rumors readers in Sunday’s Community Shootaround, as did the roster he assembled as the team’s president of basketball operations. Still, it’s early, and the Clippers have had the poor luck of running into the still-unbeaten Warriors twice so far this season. See more from around the Pacific Division:

Caron Butler credits the team meeting the Kings had amid the tumult and rumors after they started 1-7 for sparking the club to a 4-2 record since, reports Eric Pincus of the Los Angeles Times. “Behind closed doors we addressed some things and we came together. Because of that, we’re playing great basketball right now,” Butler said. “It’s about camaraderie; when things go bad, you figure it out. Whatever it is, you figure it out and you move forward, and that’s what we did.”
Butler has been a free agent four times, but he hasn’t returned to the Lakers since the team traded him away in 2005. Still, he considers Kobe Bryant a “brother for life” and remains in contact with his long-ago Lakers teammate, as he details to Pincus for the same piece. “Being up under the wing of Kobe Bryant and the relationship that we built over that time, I learned a lot about the game of basketball,” Butler said. “I took the things that I learned from him, and that’s why I had the success that I had in my career.”
Lakers coach Byron Scott is urging patience with top-10 picks D’Angelo Russell and Julius Randle, pointing to the end of next season, notes Janis Carr of the Orange County Register. The Lakers are under pressure to win in the near future, as Jeanie Buss is holding brother Jim Buss to three-year timeline for a return to contention. “With D’Angelo, it might be sometime toward the end of next season where he says, ‘Man, I’m starting to get it.’ Same thing with Julius. We’re going to just be patient and keep working them the way we’ve been working them and try to bring them along,” Scott said.

Erick Green Joins Kings D-League Team

November 21st, 2015 at 1:51pm CST by Eddie Scarito

Former Nuggets point guard Erick Green has signed with the NBA D-League and has been claimed via the league’s waiver process by the Reno Bighorns, the Kings’ D-League affiliate, Chris Reichert of Upside & Motor reports (Twitter link). Green will still be free to sign with any interested NBA team if offered a deal.

Green was cut loose by Denver earlier this month in order to clear a roster slot so that the team could re-sign Kostas Papanikolaou, whose services were sorely needed after injuries had sidelined Wilson Chandler, Jusuf Nurkic, Joffrey Lauvergne and Nikola Jokic. The Nuggets were high on Green’s potential, with GM Tim Connelly saying of the point guard, “He lives in the gym, everyone in this building has a positive impression of Erick, not just him as a player but him as a person. He’s a fantastic person, and he’s going to be back in the NBA, ASAP. He’s a guy we’ll keep close tabs on. You never close the door, especially for a guy who has done as much as Erick and worked as hard as he has.”

The 24-year-old was the No. 46 overall pick in the 2013 NBA Draft. He has appeared in a total of 46 contests over two seasons with Denver, averaging 3.2 points, 0.7 rebounds and 0.9 assists. Green’s career NBA slash line is .374/.292/.833.

Western Notes: Rondo, D-League, Bledsoe

November 21st, 2015 at 11:31am CST by Eddie Scarito

The one-year, $9.5MM deal that the Kings inked Rajon Rondo to this past offseason looks like a bargain based on the point guard’s early season play, James Ham of CSNBayArea.com writes. Rondo gives much of the credit for his hot start to embattled coach George Karl, Ham notes. “Coach, it has to do with coach, it has to do with team, it has to do with freedom,” Rondo said. “They all play a role. I worked my butt off this summer and I’m continuing to get better.” Despite leading the NBA in triple-doubles, Rondo believes he can get better , the CSN scribe relays. “Now, I still have room to improve,” Rondo said. “I want to improve my shooting, my free-throw shooting, keeping my turnovers down. I still have a lot of room to grow. Like I said, it starts with your coach. If your coach doesn’t believe in you, then as you see, it can happen to anybody.”

Here’s more from the Western Conference:

The Mavericks assigned swingman Justin Anderson and center Salah Mejri to the Texas Legends, their D-League affiliate, the team announced via a press release. These are the first D-League assignments of the season for Dallas.
The Suns‘ backcourt tandem of Eric Bledsoe and Brandon Knight is beginning to show promise, with Bledsoe playing some of the best basketball of his career, something the front office credits to his offseason work ethic, writes Dan Bickley of The Arizona Republic. “None of us were happy with the way last season ended, losing 10 of 11 games,” GM Ryan McDonough said. “But Eric was in the gym five days a week, showing up at eight in the morning during the dog days of summer. He told us, ‘Just let me know what you need me to work on.’ It’s something Eric really took seriously.”
Bledsoe’s maturation as a player has silenced a number of his critics, and McDonough believes the young point guard’s struggles of a season ago were directly related to the unsettled roster and personnel changes, Bickley notes in the same piece. “It’s important to remember last year was his first full season as a starter,” McDonough said. “I think he was just trying to figure it out. There was also a lot of turmoil with our team internally. Some players didn’t accept their roles as well as they should’ve and were shipped out at the trade deadline. So we put a lot on Eric’s shoulders. And I thought he handled it well. Eric kept his mouth shut and played hard, giving great effort defensively.“

Pacific Notes: Green, Kobe, Scott, Malone

November 20th, 2015 at 2:45pm CST by Chuck Myron

There was no way of knowing Draymond Green would develop into a player making in excess of $16MM a year on his new five-year, $82MM deal, Warriors GM Bob Myers remarked recently, and Green admits he didn’t know how valuable he would become, either, observes Ethan Sherwood Strauss of ESPN.com. Green was the 35th overall pick in 2012 and made the minimum salary last season.

“Yeah, I was thinking, like, maybe $7, $8MM,” Green said, according to Strauss. “Who saw this coming?”

The free agent market is never quite predictable, but the Warriors seem to have a handle on it even amid the rapid cost escalation for Green, as I examined earlier this week. See more from the Pacific Division:

Kobe Bryant said this summer that he could envision himself playing overseas after his NBA career, but that’s not in his plans for now, as he told Marc Stein of ESPN.com within the past week. The Lakers star also said this week that he doesn’t see himself playing beyond the season, barring a change.
The demanding nature of coach Byron Scott makes for a challenging adjustment, Nick Young posited as he talked about the struggles of offseason signee Lou Williams. Bill Oram of the Orange County Register has the details.
Michael Malone cited the trouble the Kings have faced after his firing in response to a question about Houston’s dismissal of Kevin McHale this week, notes Jason Jones of The Sacramento Bee. “I can only speak to my experience [in Sacramento],” Malone said. “It was loud and clear that I didn’t lose the locker room. Once I got fired, the organization lost the team in a weird way.”

Kings Would Make Lieberman Interim Coach?

November 20th, 2015 at 1:36pm CST by Chuck Myron

1:36pm: There’s “no way” the Kings would replace Karl with Lieberman, tweets Chris Mannix of SI.com. The team isn’t going after Calipari, either, a league source insists to Sean Cunningham of KXTV-TV in Sacramento (Twitter link).

11:55pm: Kings owner Vivek Ranadive would like to make assistant coach Nancy Lieberman the interim head coach if the team elects to fire George Karl during the season, sources tell Bleacher Report’s Ric Bucher for a video report. Such a move would make Lieberman the first woman ever to serve as head coach of an NBA team. Vice president of basketball operations Vlade Divac would lean instead toward Corliss Williamson, another current Kings assistant, in the event of a Karl firing, Bucher adds, though Divac said last week that Karl would remain the coach throughout the season. Ranadive continues to eye John Calipari as a would-be long-term successor to Karl and plans to make the Kentucky coach an “offer that Calipari simply cannot refuse,” according to Bucher.

Lieberman became just the second female ever to hold a full-time assistant coaching position in the NBA when the Kings hired her over the summer. She previously served as head coach of the Mavs D-League affiliate, leading the Texas Legends to the D-League playoffs in 2010/11, the only time the team has ever made the postseason. She also served as a head coach and GM in the WNBA after a decorated playing career.

Williamson is a former Kings player and teammate of Divac who rejoined the franchise as an assistant in the summer of 2013, a few months after Ranadive bought the team. Williamson served as a head coach at the University of Central Arkansas prior to joining Sacramento’s staff.

Ranadive’s interest in Calipari has grown stronger in recent months, as Jason McIntyre of The Big Lead reported last week. The Kings denied a report this summer that they reached out to Calipari, and while the one-time Nets coach has insisted time and again that he doesn’t want to leave Kentucky, rumors that he wants back into the NBA have been persistent.

Does Lieberman deserve a shot as an NBA head coach? Leave a comment to share your thoughts.

2015/16 Salary Cap: Sacramento Kings

November 19th, 2015 at 9:00pm CST by Eddie Scarito

The NBA’s salary cap for 2015/16 has been set at $70MM, which is an 11% increase from this past season, and the luxury tax line will be $84.74MM. The last cap projection from the league had been $67.1MM, and the projection for the tax line had been $81.6MM.

With the October 26th cutoff date to set regular season rosters now past, we at Hoops Rumors are in the process of running down the current salary cap commitments for each NBA franchise for the 2015/16 campaign. Here’s the cap breakdown for the Sacramento Kings, whose regular season roster can be viewed here:

2015/16 Salary Cap= $70,000,000
2015/16 Luxury Tax Line= $84,740,000
Fully Guaranteed Salary Commitments= $71,771,237*
Partially Guaranteed Salary Commitments= $255,000
Non-Guaranteed Salary Commitments= $645,059
Total Salary Cap Commitments= $72,671,296
Remaining Cap Room= -$2,671,296
Amount Below Luxury Tax Line= $11,544,304

*Note: This figure includes the $882,630 due Wayne Ellington, who was waived via the stretch provision, plus the $25,000 owed to Marshall Henderson, and the $30,000 due Vince Hunter, both of whom were waived.

Cap Exceptions Available:

Room Exception= $2,814,000

Cash Available to Send Out In Trades= $3,400,000

Cash Available to Receive Via Trade= $3,400,000

Last update: 11/19/15 @ 9:00pm

The Basketball Insiders salary pages were used in the creation of this post.

Pacific Rumors: Kings, Bryant, Bogut

November 16th, 2015 at 9:46pm CST by Dana Gauruder

DeMarcus Cousins doesn’t trust coach George Karl, and they simply don’t get along, writes TNT’s David Aldridge in his Morning Tip column for NBA.com. The relationship is beyond repair, Aldridge believes, and while he thinks Cousins is the best center in the game, the Kings should trade him anyway, he posits, offering a suggestion for a deal he thinks would help Sacramento and send a message that GM Vlade Divac and Karl will be around for the long term. The criticism of Karl’s energy level is unfair, and the Kings should empower one of the best coaches ever, Aldridge opines.

In other news around the Pacific Division:

Numerous league executives doubt that Kobe Bryant will last the season, Sam Amico of SamAmicoBasketball.com reports. One unnamed GM told Amico that Bryant’s body can no longer hold up to the rigors of an 82-game NBA season. “I hope I’m wrong, because who doesn’t admire an old warrior — but he has nowhere to go but down at this stage of his playing career,” the GM said. “The body doesn’t want to be argued with, and it’s telling him it’s time to go.” Bryant played 36 minutes on Sunday, an indication that Lakers have two priorities regarding their aging superstar: allowing him to do what he wants, and winning during a supposed rebuilding season, Baxter Holmes of ESPN.com argues. By leaving Bryant on the court that long, coach Byron Scott showed that he will let Bryant play as much as he wants when he’s in uniform, Holmes continues. Bryant’s power over the Lakers organization is greater than ever and Scott, being one of his biggest supporters, will let him dictate the terms of his farewell tour, Holmes adds.
Andrew Bogut was surprised when interim Warriors coach Luke Walton told the media he would return to the starting lineup as soon as Tuesday, Diamond Leung of the Bay Area News Group reports. The undefeated Warriors have utilized Festus Ezeli as the starting center while Bogut recovered from a concussion and Bogut has no problem with keeping things status quo, Leung continues. “Like I’ve said from the start, I’ve been starting my whole career, but I understand I missed [six] games there, and we won all of them,” Bogut told Leung. “Maybe the starters are used to having Festus there the first six, seven minutes and get their rhythm that way.”

Atlantic Notes: Cousins, Sullinger, Brown, Harper

November 16th, 2015 at 5:14pm CST by Chuck Myron

The price that the Kings have asked of other teams seeking to trade for DeMarcus Cousins has dissuaded the Celtics from so much as inquiring thus far, multiple sources tell Steve Bulpett of the Boston Herald, who suggests that Cousins’ maturity has made the Celtics wary, given the high cost. A Western Conference GM confirmed to Bulpett that the Kings sought Julius Randle and No. 2 pick from the Lakers prior to this year’s draft, and Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo Sports reported at the time that Sacramento asked for Jordan Clarkson and other draft assets from the Lakers, too. The Kings also wanted to attach Carl Landry, since traded to the Sixers, to any Cousins deal, Wojnarowski wrote. See more on Boston talks — or lack thereof — amid our look at the Atlantic Division:

Celtics president of basketball operations Danny Ainge said over the offseason that the team was engaged in extension talks with Jared Sullinger, later saying he would continue that discussion. Agent David Falk, speaking to Steve Bulpett of the Boston Herald last week, painted a different picture. “We didn’t spend one second discussing an extension for him,” Falk said. “Danny wasn’t in a position to give the max, so there was really nothing to talk about. I’ve never done a contract extension for a rookie who didn’t make the max since 1996. You have to understand I’m not a rookie in this league. The GMs all know.” Falk doesn’t necessarily see Sullinger as a max player and simply doesn’t believe in agreeing to terms for a young player before he’s had a chance to hit the market, Bulpett explains. He’s nonetheless optimistic about Sullinger’s prospects, especially given the relative dearth of quality 2016 free agents beyond the top few names.
Gregg Popovich wouldn’t want to coach this Sixers roster but says Brett Brown, his former Spurs assistant, is fully engaged, as Bob Cooney of the Philadelphia Daily News relays. Brown, in third year of a four-year contract, is, “the most positive person that I know,” Popovich said. “I honestly don’t know who else could be in Philadelphia doing what he’s doing,” Popovich added. “I couldn’t do it. I’d last a month. Two years ago, I mean. A month. Not in the third year.”
Nets preseason cut Justin Harper is joining the D-League affiliate of the Lakers, the minor league team announced. The power forward was the 32nd overall pick in 2011.

Western Notes: Chandler, Kings, Spurs

November 15th, 2015 at 7:15pm CST by Will Joseph

Wilson Chandler, who is out for the season because of a labral tear, is not thinking about retirement despite hip problems that have been a recurring issue for the Nuggets small forward, Christopher Dempsey of the Denver Post relays. Chandler, 28, signed a four-year, $46.5MM extension with Denver in July. Chandler told Dempsey that he knew he had a labral tear prior to the Nuggets’ season opener at Houston, but hoped that rest and an anti-inflammatory injection would help him be able to play. Counting this season, according to Dempsey, hip injuries will have cost Chandler 133 games since 2011.

Here’s more from the Western Conference:

It’s been an interesting start to the season for Ben McLemore, whom the Kings exercised their $4,008,882 team option on in October. He lost his role as the team’s starting shooting guard and then reportedly voiced frustration about Kings coach George Karl. Now, however, Karl has shown more trust in McLemore and has twice let the third-year player start the second half, Jason Jones of the Sacramento Bee details.
The Thunder have recalled Josh Huestis from the D-League, the team announced in an emailed press release (and on Twitter). The small forward has not appeared in a game for the Thunder this season.
The Spurs‘ decision to trade reserve guard George Hill to the Pacers for a package centering around Kawhi Leonard in 2011 was not a popular move among San Antonio’s players at first, Spurs GM R.C. Buford told Dan McCarney of the San Antonio Express-News. McCarney examines the trade in an interesting look back. George Felton, the Spurs’ director of college scouting, was high on Leonard, who, McCarney writes, was viewed as “a prototypical Spur.”