- Despite his excellent knowledge of the game, veteran point guard Andre Miller says that he has no interest in coaching once his playing career comes to an end, Jabari Young of The San Antonio Express News relays (via Twitter). The 40-year-old appeared in 13 contests for the Spurs this season and he averaged 4.3 points and 2.2 assists in 13.9 minutes per outing.
1:49pm: Newton has the option to remain with the organization in a role that would put him under Thibodeau and Layden, reports Jerry Zgoda of the Star Tribune.
12:22pm: The Wolves and Thibodeau are now finalizing that deal, league sources tell Wojnarowski (Twitter link).
12:21pm: Thibodeau and the Wolves are close to a deal that would give him about $10MM a year as coach and president of basketball operations, sources tell Marc Stein of ESPN.com (Twitter link). It’s conceivable Thibodeau will end up with an $11MM salary, USA Today’s Jeff Zillgitt hears (Twitter link), which would mean Minnesota would be going up from the earlier-reported $11MM figure for both Thibodeau and Layden.
11:56am: The Timberwolves and Tom Thibodeau are having serious talks toward a deal that would make him the team’s coach and president of basketball operations, sources tell Adrian Wojnarowski of The Vertical (Twitter links). Spurs assistant GM Scott Layden would become Minnesota’s GM in that scenario, Wojnarowski adds. Layden has spoken with the Wolves within the past few days about assuming the role of GM in a Thibodeau-led front office, according to Wojnarowski.
The Wolves are negotiating around a figure of $11MM in combined annual salaries for Thibodeau and Layden, as Darren Wolfson of 1500 ESPN Twin Cities hears (Twitter link). Still, several moving parts exist as the discussions continue, tweets Jon Krawczynski of The Associated Press, suggesting the talks could drag on for a while. A previous report from Wojnarowski and Vertical colleague Chris Mannix suggests the Wolves were willing to go as high as $7MM annually for Thibodeau.
Minnesota has also reportedly interviewed Jeff Van Gundy for the coach/executive gig that Thibodeau is gunning for, and Mark Jackson apparently interviewed for the coaching job Tuesday. Thibodeau has nonetheless been the leading candidate throughout the team’s search and people around the league believe it’s inevitable that the Wolves will hire him, according to Krawczynski (Twitter links). Gery Woelfel of The Journal Times reported earlier this week that people around the league were convinced Thibodeau would end up in Minnesota, where he still feels a comfort from his time as an assistant coach there from 1989-91, according to Marc Berman of the New York Post.
Korn Ferry, the search firm that Wolves owner Glen Taylor has used in the process, turned up Layden and Grizzlies executive VP of player personnel Ed Stefanski as possible candidates for the GM job, as Wojnarowski and Mannix reported earlier. Layden has previously served as the primary basketball executive of the Jazz, from 1992-99, before moving on to the Knicks from 1999-2003. He returned to the Jazz and spent several years as an assistant coach before the Spurs hired him in September 2012.
Question remains over what becomes of GM Milt Newton, who has been in control of Minnesota’s front office since former coach/executive Flip Saunders took a leave of absence in September to deal with complications from cancer treatment that proved to be fatal. Newton held the GM title under Saunders, who was president of basketball operations, the same title Thibodeau will apparently have, but the presence of Layden would appear to marginalize Newton.
The Timberwolves and Thibodeau engaged in “cursory contact” months ago, according to Brian Windhorst of ESPN.com, and Thibodeau has been a rumored candidate for just about every opening that’s emerged since the Bulls fired him last year. Taylor has been eyeing him for months, Stein hears (Twitter link), and armed with an intriguing young roster and the willingness to bestow the personnel power Thibodeau has reportedly sought, Minnesota appears to have landed the prime target on the coaching market.
- The Hawks have assigned Lamar Patterson to the D-League affiliate of the Spurs, Atlanta announced. The D-League Spurs are set to play tonight as they resume a postseason game that had been suspended Sunday when condensation formed on the court. Atlanta’s next playoff game is Tuesday. The Hawks are without their own affiliate but have sent players, including Patterson, to the Austin Spurs on many occasions.
For the second consecutive season, the Spurs’ Kawhi Leonard has been named the NBA Defensive Player of the Year, the league announced via press release. Leonard, a 6’7″ small forward, becomes the first noncenter to earn the honor in back-to-back seasons since Dennis Rodman did so in 1989/90 and 1990/91. The 24-year-old Leonard received 84 first-place votes and 547 total points from a panel of 130 sportswriters and broadcasters. He beat out the Warriors’ Draymond Green, who notched 44 first-place votes and 421 points to finish as runner-up for the second season in a row. The Heat’s Hassan Whiteside came in third with 83 points, garnering two first-place votes. Players were awarded five points for each first-place vote, three points for each second-place vote and one point for each third-place vote, according to the release.
Leonard, a first-time NBA All-Star this season, anchored a Spurs defense that led the NBA in points allowed (92.9 ppg) and defensive rating (96.6 points per 100 possessions). The Spurs, who were a franchise-record 67-15 this season, were significantly tougher on defense with Leonard in the game. According to NBA.com, they had a defensive rating of 94.9 when the five-year veteran was on the court and 99.2 when he wasn’t — a difference of 4.3 points per 100 possessions. Leonard also averaged 1.78 steals, which was good for 12th in the NBA, 5.5 defensive rebounds and a career-high 0.99 blocks to go with career highs of 21.2 points and 2.6 assists on the offensive end.
The final voting results for 2015/16 NBA Defensive Player of the Year:
- Kawhi Leonard (Spurs)
- Draymond Green (Warriors)
- Hassan Whiteside (Heat)
- DeAndre Jordan (Clippers)
- Paul Millsap (Hawks)
- Avery Bradley (Celtics)
- Rudy Gobert (Jazz)
- Tony Allen (Grizzlies)
- Anthony Davis (Pelicans)
- Andre Drummond (Pistons)
- Jimmy Butler (Bulls)
- LeBron James (Cavaliers)
- Trevor Ariza (Rockets)
- Jae Crowder (Celtics)
- Al Horford (Hawks)
- Kyle Lowry (Raptors)
- Chris Paul (Clippers)
To see each voter’s ballot, click here.
Kobe Bryant claimed the spotlight with his season-long retirement tour, but Tim Duncan could be wrapping up his career more quietly, suggests Jeff McDonald of The San Antonio-Express News. Duncan will turn 40 on April 25th, a day after Game 4 of the Spurs‘ first-round series with Memphis. He has a player option worth $5.5MM for next season, so it’s possible his career will end with the playoffs. “He’s going to wake up one day and say, ‘I’m done,’” said Manu Ginobili, “and you’re never going to see him again.” Ginobili is 38 and has a $2.94MM player option of his own, meaning two members of San Antonio’s historic Big Three may not return next season.
- The Spurs became a better defensive team after trading Tiago Splitter and signing LaMarcus Aldridge, according to Matthew Tynan of RealGM. Splitter is considered the better defender, but Aldridge has more range and mobility, Tynan notes, which gives Tim Duncan the more natural role of rim protector.
10:59am: Sources tell NetsDaily they believe Udoka is the leading candidate. It appears the team is poised to formally cut ties with Tony Brown and his assistant coaches as well as several long-time staffers as Marks plans to hire as many as 10 new staff members, NetsDaily also hears (All Twitter links).
8:25am: Brett Brown, who reportedly isn’t assured of keeping his job with the Sixers, along with Luke Walton, Mark Jackson, Vinny Del Negro and Bucks assistant Sean Sweeney are also in the mix for the Nets job, according to Brian Lewis of the New York Post. The prospect of Brown having the interim tag removed and staying in the head coaching job is no more than a long shot, Lewis adds. Lewis also suggests the Nets still have Mike Conley atop their list of free agent targets.
4:01pm: Hawks assistant Kenny Atkinson has been mentioned as a possibility for the Nets’ coaching vacancy, and he and Marks share the same agent, Mazzeo tweets.
3:00pm: The increasing belief in coaching circles is that neither Tom Thibodeau nor David Blatt will be a candidate for the job, but the search is only just beginning, writes Mike Mazzeo of ESPN.com.
12:47pm: The Nets have interest in NBA coaching veteran Jeff Van Gundy and Spurs assistants Ettore Messina and Ime Udoka for their head coaching job, sources tell Marc Stein of ESPN.com (Twitter links). Tony Brown is Brooklyn’s head coach on an interim basis, though it’s unclear whether he’ll have a legitimate shot to remain in the position for next season.
Van Gundy’s name frequently comes up in connection to NBA coaching jobs even though he hasn’t coached an NBA team since the 2006/07 season, his last with the Rockets. Frank Isola of the New York Daily News speculated shortly before the team hired GM Sean Marks in February that Messina would become a candidate if the team indeed brought aboard Marks, who was then serving as a Spurs executive. Marks’ tie to the Spurs also explains the interest in Udoka, who was key to the recruitment of former teammate LaMarcus Aldridge this past summer. Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov has often talked about attracting stars to Brooklyn, and the team has no shortage of cap flexibility for the summer ahead.
Many New York fans still have fond memories of Van Gundy from his time as coach of the crosstown Knicks from 1996-2001, and he’s maintained a high profile as a broadcaster for ABC and ESPN. He reportedly interviewed for the Pelicans head coaching vacancy last year.
Messina has worked for Prokhorov before, when Prokhorov was the owner of CSKA Moscow and Messina was leading the team to two Euroleague championships as head coach. The Spurs hired Messina as an assistant two years ago, and he also served as a coaching consultant for the Lakers in 2011/12, but much of his reputation comes from overseas, where he was one of the most successful coaches in Euroleague history. The Thunder reportedly made him a candidate for their head coaching job a year ago.
Udoka is a veteran of eight NBA seasons as a player, and his last playing contract was with the Nets, who signed him in the 2011 preseason and cut him before opening night. The Spurs hired him as an assistant coach the following summer.
3:54pm: The signing has formally taken place, the team announced (Twitter link). Holland will see $9,266 this season, not including his playoff share, and a non-guaranteed $874,636 next season, provided he signed for the minimum, as is standard for midseason signees.
1:37pm: The deal would cover the rest of 2015/16 plus next season, and next season’s salary would be non-guaranteed, league sources tell Charania (Twitter link).
1:00pm: The Celtics plan to sign former Boston University swingman John Holland into their open roster spot, reports Shams Charania of The Vertical (Twitter link). The deal is contingent upon him passing a physical, notes Adam Himmelsbach of the Boston Globe (on Twitter). The 27-year-old was with the Spurs in the 2014 preseason and has been playing with the D-League affiliate of the Cavaliers this season.
The contract would cover the playoffs, and the Celtics had a desire to carry a full 15-man roster in the postseason in case of injury, Himmelsbach tweets. Coach Brad Stevens said recently the team would prefer a versatile forward, seemingly a hint that former 10-day signee Coty Clarke might return, but instead the team is going with Holland, who is 6’5″ and can play two-guard and small forward but would be significantly undersized at power forward.
Holland averaged 16.0 points in 30.2 minutes per game with 36.9% shooting in 37 regular season appearances with the D-League Canton Charge this season, and he turned it up in two playoff games last week, making 10 of 17 total 3-point attempts and averaging 28.5 points.
It’s unclear whether the deal would carry into next season. Either way, he’d likely receive a prorated rookie minimum salary this season plus a share of the team’s playoff earnings.
- David West turned some heads last summer when he decided to turn down his $12.6MM player option with the Pacers to ink a minimum salary deal with the Spurs, but the veteran said that solid financial planning early in his career afforded him the opportunity to chase a ring in San Antonio this season, Jeff McDonald of The San Antonio Express-News relays. “My financial security was something we focused on very, very early in my career so we could make basketball decisions at the end,” said West, whose career earnings before this season topped $87.6MM, McDonald notes. “As opposed to just making them solely on needing to get more money and squeeze the orange, so to speak.”
The 13-page resignation letter than GM Sam Hinkie sent to Sixers owners, which Marc Stein of ESPN obtained, lays bare the philosophy of an executive whose tenure was marked by public silence as much as it was by lost games. It was nonetheless a common example of the sort of communication he privately had with the owners, according to Sam Amick of USA Today (Twitter link). In his latest dispatch, Hinkie cites everyone from Abraham Lincoln to Warren Buffett to Bill Belichick, among less notorious figures, as Tom Haberstroh of ESPN.com notes (Twitter link). The ex-GM defends the moves he made, along with the general ideas of taking the long view and going against the grain.
“To develop truly contrarian views will require a never-ending thirst for better, more diverse inputs,” Hinkie writes. “What player do you think is most undervalued? Get him for your team. What basketball axiom is most likely to be untrue? Take it on and do the opposite. What is the biggest, least valuable time sink for the organization? Stop doing it. Otherwise, it’s a big game of pitty pat, and you’re stuck just hoping for good things to happen, rather than developing a strategy for how to make them happen.”
We’ll hit the highlights of the more than 7,000-word opus here:
- Robert Covington is with the Sixers now, but he was originally with the Rockets, a sore point for Hinkie, who says he wanted him immediately after he went undrafted in 2013 but instead returned from his postdraft press conference to discover Covington was off the market. Hinkie writes that he stewed over that for more than a year until signing him in November 2014, a few weeks after Houston waived him.
- Hinkie claims that the Sixers set an all-time NBA record in acquiring the rights or swap rights to more than 26 draft picks in his first 26 months as GM.
- Celtics president of basketball operations Danny Ainge received Hinkie’s Executive of the Year vote in 2014 after the Celtics acquired a first-round pick and a second-round pick along with Joel Anthony in a January trade that year. Hinkie had worked to acquire the same package, he writes.
- Hinkie points to a recent quote from Peter Holt, the former primary owner of the Spurs, who said the free agent signing of LaMarcus Aldridge was years in the making. Buck Harvey of the San Antonio Express-News originally had the story. “Give R.C. Buford credit,” Holt said. “[Gregg Popovich] is a great coach, but R.C. came to us with this plan three years ago, four years ago — seriously. And we’ve worked at it ever since. He, by far, was the general. We wouldn’t be where we are, in this position, if it hadn’t have been for R.C. Buford.”