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And-Ones: Durant, Cap, Beasley, Agents

February 23rd, 2016 at 12:20pm CST by Chuck Myron

Some within the Warriors brass aren’t entirely sold on the idea of making significant changes to bring aboard Kevin Durant this summer, reports Zach Lowe of ESPN.com. The team’s primary scenario would involve sign-and-trades that send Harrison Barnes out and Durant in, but that’s a long shot because of all the variables involved, Lowe writes. Signing Durant outright would come at the cost of Barnes and at least two of Andre Iguodala, Shaun Livingston, Andrew Bogut and Festus Ezeli in cap-clearing moves, Lowe surmises, adding that the team worries it might have to give up as many as two first-round picks to entice other teams to take salary off their hands. The Warriors are reportedly well out in front as Durant’s top choice should he leave the Thunder, but he’s offered few hints about what he’ll do in free agency. He and Russell Westbrook have minor disagreements about who gets the ball, but no personal tension exists between then, Lowe hears. See more from around the NBA:

  • The league’s official cap projection for next season has grown to $90MM, up slightly from $89MM, sources tell Lowe for the same piece. Some apparently see it creeping into the $92-$95MM range.
  • Former No. 2 overall pick Michael Beasley is drawing the eye of multiple NBA teams, reports Marc Stein of ESPN.com (ESPN Now link). Beasley can return stateside now that Shandong, the Chinese team he signed with this past summer, is out of the Chinese Basketball Association playoffs. The combo forward averaged 31.9 points in 36.5 minutes per game with 37.1% 3-point shooting against relatively weak competition this season.
  • The players union’s executive committee unanimously approved stiffer enforcement of a rule banning agents from representing both coaches and players, a practice that’s been commonplace in spite of regulations against it, reports Ken Berger of CBSSports.com. A grace period runs through August 22nd before the new policy kicks in, and violators face fines up to $100K after that, Berger notes. Agencies, but not individual agents, are still allowed to work with both coaches and players, as long as they make those relationships known to the players they represent, according to Berger.
  • The union also passed other rules for agents, including increased dues and requirements that agents pass a written test on the collective bargaining agreement and maintain at least one NBA client over a period of five years, as Berger rounds up in the same piece.
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And-Ones: Horford, Anderson, Rondo

February 16th, 2016 at 11:24pm CST by Eddie Scarito

Many teams are estimating the salary cap will rise to $92MM next season, above the league’s $89MM projection, according to Zach Lowe of ESPN.com. Some around the league can envision the cap going as high as $95MM, reports Tim Bontemps of The Washington Post (Twitter link), echoing an October dispatch from Sean Deveney of The Sporting News, who heard from many league executives and agents who believed the cap would surge to that $95MM figure. A $95MM cap would produce maximum salaries worth approximately $22.3MM for players with six or fewer years of experience, $26.8M for players with between seven and nine years of experience, and $31.3M for veterans of 10 or more seasons, notes Amin Elhassan of ESPN.com (Twitter link). Those figures would be $21.6MM, $25.9MM and $30.3MM on a $92MM cap, Elhassan also tweets.

Here’s more from around the league:

  • Hawks GM Wes Wilcox is asking teams to “wow” him with their offers for Al Horford, sources also tell Lowe. People close to the Hawks big man tell Lowe that the ability of the team with his Bird rights in free agency to give him a fifth year in a new contract this summer will be more important to him than just about any other facet in negotiations. That would appear to mean the Hawks, who have those Bird rights, are in a strong position to retain him. Horford will nonetheless look around at other teams, and he likes the idea of playing in a larger market with more people who are from the Dominican Republic, as he is, several sources tell Lowe. However, he treasures the continuity of the Hawks, Lowe writes.
  • The Pelicans have been pushing to trade Ryan Anderson because the team doesn’t think it will be able to re-sign him this summer, Adrian Wojnarowski of The Vertical on Yahoo Sports relays. Teams trading for Anderson believe that he’ll command a starting salary of $16MM-$18MM per season on his next deal, Wojnarowski adds. New Orleans has been struggling trying to get equal value in return for the stretch-four and has spoken with the Wizards and the Pistons about the forward, though the conversations with Detroit occurred prior to the team landing Tobias Harris from the Magic, the Vertical scribe notes. Detroit had discussed a larger three-team trade involving the Pelicans and Magic that would have sent Anderson to Detroit and Harris to New Orleans, but Orlando was reluctant to part with Evan Fournier, Wojnarowski adds.
  • The Wizards are asking around in search of a reserve big man, league sources tell Lowe for the same piece.
  • It’s a “lock” that either Terrence Jones or Donatas Motiejunas will leave the Rockets as restricted free agents this summer, according to Lowe.
  • Rajon Rondo intends to keep an open mind about signing with the Knicks when he’s a free agent this coming summer, a league source tells Marc Berman of the New York Post. Recently fired coach Derek Fisher had some pointed comments after Rondo criticized the triangle offense, and Berman wonders if Fisher wasn’t aware of team president Phil Jackson‘s respect for Rondo’s game. Sources who spoke with Berman indicated that Fisher and Jackson didn’t talk as much during the coach’s time with the Knicks as Jackson thought they would.

Chuck Myron contributed to this post.

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Northwest Notes: Hayward, Durant, Plumlee, Davis

January 26th, 2016 at 9:47am CST by Chuck Myron

The Jazz are “poking around” the market for a point guard, several league sources tell Zach Lowe of ESPN.com. It’s not entirely clear if such efforts are related to the team’s reported 10-day deal with Erick Green, though it would seem given the timing of that agreement, so soon after Raul Neto suffered a concussion Monday, that the team had already been looking. The Heat reportedly rebuffed Utah when it tried to engage them in Mario Chalmers trade talks over the offseason, but the Jazz’s interest in Chalmers was minimal, according to Lowe. The ESPN scribe speculates about other options, including Jrue Holiday, whose leg issues leave teams “petrified” and whom the Pelicans are reluctant to deal, anyway, Lowe reports. Lowe also believes Jeff Teague would be a fit for Utah, but reports that the Hawks have had “major trust issues” with backup Dennis Schröder and are focused on contending this season. In any case, the Jazz appear reluctant to pilfer from their store of future picks, which includes the Warriors unprotected 2017 first-rounder as the relative cost of rookie scale contracts becomes cheaper amid the rapid salary cap escalation, Lowe writes.

“Picks are that much more valuable,” GM Dennis Lindsey said to Lowe.

See more from Utah:

  • The impending financial realities threaten the core of the Jazz, as Lowe details in the same piece, and Gordon Hayward, who can opt out after next season, acknowledged to Lowe that they cast a shadow on his future. “I’m constantly thinking about that,” Hayward said. “Contracts are so short now. A lot of our guys are on their rookie deals, and they’ll come up for extensions. It all might determine whether or not I stay in Utah.”
  • The Oklahoman’s Anthony Slater examines the surprising lack of legitimate rumors about Kevin Durant‘s impending free agency, writing that the idea of the Thunder star signing a deal that would allow him to opt out after just one season “has gained traction.” It’s not clear whether that idea is growing on Durant himself or if more people are simply realizing that it would likely represent the most lucrative path for the former MVP. That would allow him to take advantage of a projected $108MM cap for the summer of 2017 and a higher maximum-salary tier, since he’d be a 10-year veteran.
  • The playmaking ability of Trail Blazers offseason acquisitions Mason Plumlee and Ed Davis has helped alleviate the pressure from incumbent guards Damian Lillard and C.J. McCollum, as Mike Richman of The Oregonian examines. Plumlee will be eligible for a rookie scale extension in the offseason.
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Atlantic Notes: Colangelo, Okafor, Lee, Ross

December 10th, 2015 at 10:01am CST by Chuck Myron

The Sixers decided to hire Jerry Colangelo because they felt GM Sam Hinkie mishandled negative publicity surrounding Joel Embiid and Jahlil Okafor in recent months, Bleacher Report’s Ric Bucher says in a video. Owners with minority stakes in the Sixers pressured primary owner Josh Harris to make the move, Bucher adds. It’s inaccurate to say that the hiring came about in part because of pressure from owners who complained to the league about the Sixers’ rebuilding and its negative financial ripple effects, league sources told Keith Pompey of the Philadelphia Inquirer, who writes at the bottom of a larger piece. Still, commissioner Adam Silver was indeed involved in the move, Pompey adds. See more from the Atlantic Division:

  • The NBA continues to investigate the recent incidents involving Okafor and it hasn’t decided whether it will mete out punishment on top of the two-game suspension the Sixers issued last week, league officials told TMZ Sports. Colangelo has a strong relationship with agent Bill Duffy, who represents Okafor, as Bucher points out in his video. “Based on what we currently know, we support the 76ers’ approach in this matter,” an NBA spokesperson said to TMZ Sports. “The league office is continuing to investigate the events of that night.”
  • David Lee doesn’t regret the trade that brought him to the Celtics and ended his time with the Warriors, even as Golden State has embarked on a 23-0 start, as Diamond Leung of the Bay Area News Group relays. Lee’s representatives reportedly cooperated with the Warriors as they sought a new home for him this summer. “This is a business, and because of the salary cap and things like that, it was time for me to move on, and that’s what I did,” Lee said. “It couldn’t have ended any better.” 
  • Terrence Ross is much the same player he was a few weeks after the Rudy Gay trade two years ago, and that’s perhaps the glaring issue for the swingman who signed a three-year, $31MM extension with the Raptors last month, writes Josh Lewenberg of TSN.ca. His game grew more in the immediate wake of the trade than it has since, and inconsistency has plagued him, Lewenberg asserts.
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And-Ones: Carlisle, Cap, Rosters, Tskitishvili

October 27th, 2015 at 1:11pm CST by Chuck Myron

A growing sentiment around the league held that Rick Carlisle might leave the Mavericks, given the team’s uncertain future as a playoff contender and the distinct possibility that several attractive coaching jobs will come open next summer, according to Chris Mannix of SI.com. It nonetheless appears he’d like to stay put, as Carlisle and the Mavs are reportedly deep in negotiations toward an extension. Mavs owner Mark Cuban essentially confirmed in a radio appearance on ESPN Radio 103.3 in Dallas today that the sides are working toward a deal, as Tim MacMahon of ESPNDallas.com relays (Twitter link).

“When you’ve got a great coach, you want to keep him around, so we’re working on making that happen,” Cuban said.

See more from around the NBA:

  • Many league executives and agents believe the salary cap will escalate to $95MM for 2016/17, a higher figure than the league’s last projection of $89MM, reports Sean Deveney of The Sporting News. One GM who spoke to Deveney expressed worry that all the money on the line will lead to players looking out for themselves and pointed to this summer’s increase in long-term deals as evidence that teams were looking to avoid that.
  • NBA opening night rosters feature 100 players from outside the United States, one off last year’s record total of 101, the NBA announced. The University of Kentucky boasts more former players on the rosters than any other school, with 21, followed by Kansas, with 19, as Adam Zagoria of SNY.tv points out.
  • Nikoloz Tskitishvili, the former No. 5 overall pick who briefly attempted an NBA comeback with the Clippers this fall, is engaged in a dispute with his Chinese team and close to signing with Champville in Lebanon instead, as Sportando’s Emiliano Carchia details. Tskitishvili signed earlier this month with Fujian, international journalist David Pick reported.
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Central Notes: Bucks, Jackson, Turner

September 18th, 2015 at 8:59am CST by Chuck Myron

The Bucks signed Greg Monroe to a max contract this summer, but he’s probably not the best player on Milwaukee’s roster, Shaun Powell of NBA.com posits as he examines the team’s offseason. Still, bringing him aboard did much to enhance the franchise’s image, and while the Bucks don’t have a realistic shot at Kevin Durant next summer, their standing with top free agents around the league has improved, Powell believes. It worked out well enough for GM John Hammond to receive an extension this week, so while we wait to see if Milwaukee can keep it up, see more from the Central Division:

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Northwest Notes: Nuggets, Papanikolaou, Jazz

August 1st, 2015 at 8:02pm CST by ChrisCrouse

Denver will drop to about $7MM below the salary cap once they officially waive Kostas Papanikolaou, former Nets exec Bobby Marks notes on Twitter. Marks adds that Milwaukee, Minnesota, Cleveland and Golden State have trade exceptions while Philadelphia and Portland have the cap space to claim the forward’s salary, which is worth slightly less than $4.8MM.

Here’s more from the Northwest Division:

  • If claimed, the 24-year-old’s contract will become guaranteed should he remain on the roster past October 4th. Any team that claims Papanikolaou off waivers cannot trade him until the 30th day of the regular season, as Marks notes on Twitter. With the season set to kick-off on October 27th, claiming the forward will not provide a potential suitor with the same type of valuable trade chip that the Nuggets previously possessed.
  • The Jazz didn’t sign any outside free agents because they didn’t want to block any of their young players’ development, Jonathan Tjarks of RealGM writes. Tjarks argues that most year-to-year improvements come from internal development rather than transactions in the offseason and the Jazz could end up being the team that improved the most due to their up-and-coming, young core.
  • Utah knew Enes Kanter was probably not going to be worth the mammoth contract he was set to receive this offseason and with the number of young players on the roster set to earn raises over the next few seasons, the team could not afford to add an ill-advised contract, Tjarks adds in the same piece.
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And-Ones: Labor, Moratorium, Max Salaries

July 15th, 2015 at 10:16am CST by Chuck Myron

Commissioner Adam Silver struck an optimistic tone about labor negotiations with a December 15th, 2016 deadline looming for owners and players to opt out of the collective bargaining agreement, writes Sam Amick of USA Today.

“You know, I’m not sure if the players association is going to opt out,” Silver said as he addressed media Tuesday. “[Union executive director] Michele [Roberts] made some early remarks suggesting maybe they were leaning that direction, but she hasn’t told me that she plans to opt out. And I know that in discussions that she and I have had and I’ve had with players association representatives, it’s clear the goal on both sides is to avoid any sort of work stoppage whatsoever and maybe even to avoid the opt out.”

Still, Silver claims a “significant number of teams” are losing money, Amick notes. The commissioner said the league projects that it’ll need to issue a $500MM check to the players after the 2016/17 season because total salaries aren’t expected to add up to the required 50-51% of basketball related income, even as the salary cap surges, as Ken Berger of CBSSports.com observes. Berger sees a strong chance that the owners opt out, in spite of Silver’s seeming confidence that such can be avoided. Here’s more from around the league:

  • Owners discussed the idea of changing the July Moratorium to avoid sagas like the one that surrounded DeAndre Jordan as he decommitted to the Mavs to return to the Clippers, but none of the owners could come up with an appealing solution, Silver said, according to Berger.
  • The projected maximum salaries for next season are $20.4MM for players with fewer than seven years of experience, $24.9MM for those with seven to nine years in the league, and $29.3MM for veterans of 10 or more years, tweets former Nets executive Bobby Marks. See this year’s max salaries right here.
  • The union continues to consider a get-tough stance on agencies that represent both players and coaches, but the most likely outcome is a continuance of the same policies, despite the conflict of interest, Grantland’s Zach Lowe reports. Agencies are allowed to represent both as long as they create separate divisions, with separate agents, to handle player and management clients, as Lowe explains. Still, not all are pleased with arrangement, and when the Bucks, who have close ties to Excel, drafted Excel client Rashad Vaughn last month, some people around the league found it untoward, Lowe writes.
  • The Nets once more led luxury taxpayers for this past season, though it wasn’t the record amount of some $90MM from a year ago. This time, they paid $19.98MM, followed by the Cavs with $6.96MM, the Clippers at $4.8MM, and the Thunder at $2.79MM, salary cap expert Larry Coon tweets. Teams that didn’t pay the tax saw $830K each as a result.
  • The second-round pick that the Celtics are sending to the Thunder as part of the Perry Jones III trade is Boston’s own 2018 second-rounder, but if it falls within the top 55 picks that year, the Celtics’ debt to Oklahoma City is extinguished, according to RealGM.
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Salary Cap Higher Than Expected For 2015/16

July 8th, 2015 at 7:18pm CST by Chuck Myron

The NBA’s salary cap for 2015/16 will be $70MM, an 11% increase from this past season, and the luxury tax line will be $84.74MM, as sources tell Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo Sports (Twitter links) and as the NBA confirms (hat tip to Sam Amico of Amico Hoops). The last cap projection from the league had been $67.1MM, and while Ken Berger of CBSSports.com reported last month that the cap might end up higher than that by $1-2MM, it appears the cap wound up surpassing even the most optimistic of expectations. The projection for the tax had been $81.6MM.

The figures mean the maximum salaries for this coming season are also higher than estimated, so LaMarcus Aldridge, Marc Gasol, Kawhi Leonard and others who’ve agreed to max contracts this month will see more than they thought. Leonard, among those eligible for the max reserved for players with fewer than seven years of experience, will see $16,407,500 as a starting salary on his deal, tweets Jeff Zillgitt of USA Today. The maximum starting salary for players with seven to nine years of experience, like Aldridge and Gasol, is $19,689,000, according to Zillgitt. No player with 10 or more years of experience has agreed to a max contract yet, but LeBron James almost certainly will. The maximum starting salary for those in his bracket is $22,970,500, as Zillgitt reveals in his tweet.

The higher cap will likely have a significant effect on the structure of the trade agreement that is to send Roy Hibbert to the Lakers, as Jake Fischer of SI Now tweets. It had been unclear whether the Lakers would have enough cap room to accommodate Hibbert’s salary of more than $15.5MM, so it was possible that L.A. would have to send players to Indiana as part of the deal, or ship players elsewhere. The Lakers were reportedly exploring trades that wound send out Robert Sacre, Ryan Kelly and Nick Young.

Other teams will benefit from the higher cap, and the higher tax line means less of a burden for the Bulls, Heat, Nets, Cavs, Warriors, and Thunder, all of whom are already in tax territory or are expected to get there. That’s especially so for Brooklyn and Miami, as both would pay repeat-offender tax penalties if they finished the regular season above that $84.74MM threshold. Teams that trigger a hard cap this year will have greater flexibility, since they can spend up to $88.74MM, $4MM above the tax line.

The league also tabulated final payrolls for each team from last season, revealing that players collectively made less than the 50.39% of basketball-related income that the collective bargaining agreement holds that they’re entitled to. Thus, the league will pay out the $57,298,826 shortfall to the union, which will distribute that amongst the players, as Zillgitt relays (Twitter link). Also, both the Magic and Nuggets fell shy of the $56.759MM minimum team salary. Orlando was $1.92MM short, so the players who finished the season on the Magic’s roster will split a $1.92MM payment from the team, salary cap expert Larry Coon tweets. Those on the Nuggets roster will share $773K, Coon adds. This year’s salary floor, locked in at 90% of the cap, will be $63MM, the NBA announced.

Today’s news doesn’t affect the amounts for exceptions, like the mid-level and biannual, and player minimum salaries, as the league and the players set them in stone when they negotiated the collective bargaining agreement in 2011. Thus, those figures have progressively less relative value as the cap rises from year to year.

This year’s cap increase, unlike those projected for years to come, isn’t a direct result of the league’s $24 billion TV deal, which doesn’t kick in until next July. Instead, it appears to be a function of higher than expected revenue during the 2014/15 season. The Warriors collected record gate receipts on their run to the Finals, as Grantland’s Zach Lowe reported, and it would seem likely that the NBA saw unforeseen money from other avenues, too.

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Salary Cap Projection Leaps $1-2MM

June 30th, 2015 at 10:17pm CST by Chuck Myron

The salary cap will be at least $1MM and as much as $2MM higher than the most recently projected figure of $67.1MM, as the union revealed at a recent agents summit, two sources told Ken Berger of CBSSports.com. The tax line, which had been projected at $81.6MM, is also now expected to be significantly higher, Berger hears. The league will set the official numbers on July 8th, the final day of the July Moratorium, Berger notes.

Teams like the Lakers, Spurs, Mavericks, Pistons, Suns, Rockets, Bucks stand to benefit from the increased cap, Berger posits, mentioning the Nets, Bulls and Thunder as teams that the higher tax line figures to help. I’d speculate that the Hawks, who may well have to use cap space to re-sign Paul Millsap and DeMarre Carroll, and the Warriors, who already have more than $81.6MM in guaranteed salary, stand to benefit as much as any teams. Of course, the maximum salaries are tied to the salary cap, so as the cap goes up, so do they.

The NBA sets the cap based on basketball related income, so it appears the league collected more money than it thought it would. The higher figures for 2015/16 won’t necessarily affect the projected spikes for 2016/17 and beyond, Berger writes.

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