- With a full and healthy roster for the first time all season, Raptors head coach Nick Nurse will have plenty of lineup options available to him when play resumes, writes Michael Grange of Sportsnet.ca. As Blake Murphy of The Athletic relays, Nurse is interested in experimenting with some five-man groups that are heavy on bigs. “It seems to me we started really dominant on the defensive end with the jumbo lineup,” he said.
Although the last playoff spot in the Eastern Conference will still be up for grabs when the NBA’s eight “seeding” games begin on July 30, that race has lost much of its luster as a result of the injuries, COVID-19 cases, and opt-outs that have decimated the Nets‘ and Wizards‘ rosters.
Technically, the Magic (30-35) are the No. 8 seed at the moment, but they’re just a half-game back of Brooklyn (30-34) for the No. 7 spot and seem likely to pass a Nets team that will be without at least seven players, including Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving, Spencer Dinwiddie, and DeAndre Jordan.
That would leave the Nets to hang onto the No. 8 seed by holding off the Wizards (24-40), who will be missing Bradley Beal, Davis Bertans, and John Wall, but could force a play-in tournament if they finish within four games of Orlando or Brooklyn. Washington is also currently without Thomas Bryant (coronavirus), Gary Payton II (coronavirus), and Garrison Mathews (personal), though some or all of those players may eventually rejoin the team.
While that race for the seventh and eighth seeds may not be quite as dramatic as the NBA would like, there could still be some interesting jockeying for position further up the standings in the East.
The 53-12 Bucks have a 6.5-game cushion over the 46-18 Raptors, so Milwaukee will likely clinch the top seed even if they’re on cruise control during the seeding games. But Toronto’s lead on the third-seeded Celtics (43-21) is just three games, and Boston’s eight-game schedule looks less daunting than the Raptors’ slate.
Five of the Celtics’ eight games are against the Nets, Wizards, Magic, Grizzlies, and Trail Blazers, all of whom are at or near the bottom of the playoff race. The Raptors, meanwhile, will face Orlando and Memphis, but also have games against the Lakers, Heat, Nuggets, Sixers, and Bucks. The Celtics and Raptors face each other as well, in a game that will have important tiebreaker implications.
That No. 2 seed isn’t as important as it once was, given the lack of home court advantage available, but it could mean facing the Magic instead of the Pacers, which should be a more favorable matchup even with Victor Oladipo sidelined.
Speaking of the Pacers, they’re currently tied at 39-26 with the Sixers, with the No. 5 seed up for grabs. Clinching that fifth seed would likely mean securing a first-round matchup with the fourth-seeded Heat instead of the Celtics or Raptors.
The Heat, meanwhile, are 41-24, putting them two games behind Boston and two games ahead of the Sixers and Pacers. They seem like a relatively safe bet to hold their position in the No. 4 vs. 5 matchup, but a hot or cold streak in Orlando could affect their spot in the standings, especially with games vs. Boston, Toronto, and Indiana (twice) on tap.
What do you think? What do you expect the top eight spots in the Eastern Conference to look like by the time the playoffs begin? Will they look relatively similar to the current standings, or will there be some shuffling that results in some unexpected first-round matchups?
Head to the comment section below to weigh in with your thoughts!
- Raptors rookie Dewan Hernandez, who had been sidelined since December due to a severe ankle sprain, is with the team in Orlando and will be healthy enough to play this summer, tweets Austin Kent of SLAM. Hernandez is unlikely to play meaningful minutes, but will provide added frontcourt depth.
Raptors big man Serge Ibaka is confident his team will be ready for the NBA’s resumed season in Orlando later this month, telling reporters in a conference call that his teammates are in great shape and are ready to push for a repeat.
“I saw just how everyone is in great shape,” Ibaka said, as relayed by Tim Bontemps of ESPN. “They came here in great shape and as soon as we got here everyone was starting to put in work.
“I’ve been in the league for 11 years. You can see when people’s locked in and they are ready mentally, and when they are not. … So I can tell you right now, mentally, everybody is ready. Everybody is ready.”
Toronto won the 2019 NBA championship with a core of Ibaka, Kawhi Leonard, Pascal Siakam, Fred VanVleet, Kyle Lowry, and others. Although Leonard and Danny Green have since moved on, the team remains at the forefront of contention in the Eastern Conference.
Prior to the season being suspended on March 11, Toronto held a 46-18 record, good for second-best in the East and third-best in the league. COVID-19 will force every team in the league to adjust for the planned resumption, and the Raptors are no exception.
“Honestly it’s really concerning,” Ibaka said of the virus. “Hopefully everybody has to follow the rules, every player, when we get in the bubble in Orlando, we can respect all the notes that they’re going to give us. But I have my daughter who lives here in Orlando, and it’s kind of scary a little bit. It’s something where you have to make sure you look at it.”
There’s more from the Atlantic Division tonight:
- A. Sherrod Blakely of NBC Sports Boston explores the three-year Boston tenure of Gordon Hayward, who originally signing a deal to join the Celtics in July of 2017. “I can’t believe it’s been three years already, to be honest,” Hayward told reporters in a conference call. “A lot has happened for me, for my family.”
- The Nets are exploring potential replacements that can offer frontcourt help behind center Jarrett Allen, Brian Lewis of the New York Post writes. Brooklyn has kicked the tires on multiple free agent centers in recent days, with DeAndre Jordan and Nicolas Claxton both not playing in Orlando this summer. “We have to definitely think about that,” Nets interim head coach Jacque Vaughn said. “Sean (Marks) and I talked this morning on a call and we talked about addressing our size and not putting extra demand on Jarrett. So that could definitely be a route we take for sure. It definitely will be a little bit of a stress test for us. Whether that’s the amount of minutes that we play Jarrett Allen at 5, whether it’s being creative at the backup position, it changes rotations.”
- Vaughn has continued to build bonds with Nets stars Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving, working to keep a consistent system throughout the franchise, Lewis writes in a separate article for the New York Post. “My conversations with those guys are generally based around me checking in to see how they’re doing,” Vaughn said. “Some of those conversations lead into basketball, some of those conversations lead into life conversations, some of those conversations might lead into, ‘I have a podcast for you to listen to.’ So it ranges. For me, it’s more of the connection knowing that I’m thinking about them.”
The league won’t prevent older coaches and staff members from working at the Orlando campus, Tim MacMahon of ESPN tweets. “We’ve been assured by the league that no one will be red-flagged by the league from going to Orlando based on age alone,” according to Mavericks coach and NBA Coaches Association president Rick Carlisle. All coaches and staffers will go through a medical screening process, MacMahon adds.
We have more news related to the NBA’s restart:
- National Basketball Players Association executive director Michele Roberts is unconcerned about losing some fans due to the players’ desire to make social justice messages during the resumption of play, she told The Athletic’s Michael Lee. Among other things, the league will paint “Black Lives Matter” on the Orlando courts. “Anybody that says, ‘I’m done with the NBA,’ see ya,” she said. “I can’t even abide someone that says that because we are saying killing Black people is something we need to talk about. If they don’t want to hear that, I don’t really think they have a place in our game.”
- After perusing each team’s eight “seeding” games prior to the playoffs, The Athletic’s Zach Harper places the Bucks and Lakers in the top two spots in his latest Power Rankings. Harper previously had the Lakers on top. The Clippers and Raptors remained in the third and fourth spots, respectively, with the Heat moving up two notches to No. 5.
- While NBA teams will be subject to rigorous testing, Disney World employees won’t have similar restrictions, Rich Greenfield of LightShed tweets. There will be no COVID-19 testing of employees at Disney parks before they return to work next week. Instead, they will only be administered temperature checks.
The Raptors, who traveled to Florida a week ago and are staying and training in the Fort Myers area, are essentially experiencing a “test run” of the environment the NBA will look to create at Walt Disney World next month, writes Tim Bontemps of ESPN.
As Bontemps details, the Raptors are staying in a hotel that is otherwise unoccupied, are eating meals in a large ballroom with spaced-out tables or in their own hotel rooms, and are being directly shuttled to and from Florida Gulf Coast University for workouts.
If the Raptors make a deep playoff run, their early start in Florida could mean that they end up being away from home longer than any other team. However, head coach Nick Nurse doesn’t think his players or staffers are thinking about that yet, as Bontemps relays.
“Right now, we’re not,” Nurse said on Saturday. “Maybe at some point on the back end of it, or midway through it, we might. But I just don’t know. We’re, what, five days in? They’ve been a snap of a finger. They’ve blown by. So it doesn’t feel like a burden or overwhelming. It just feels like we’re all starting and getting ready to go.”
Here’s more on the NBA’s restart:
- NBA teams have been informed that they’ll have the ability to replace staff members who test positive for COVID-19 on the Orlando campus and are unable to work, league sources tell ESPN’s Tim Bontemps (Twitter link).
- The National Basketball Referees Association announced today that it has ratified a letter of agreement with the NBA addressing issues related to the resumed season.
- Nick Friedell and Tim MacMahon of ESPN make their picks for the 12 most important “seeding games” on the summer schedule, including Lakers vs. Clippers, Grizzlies vs. Pelicans, Bucks vs. Raptors, and more.
- Jabari Young of CNBC explores some of the creative ways the NBA will look to make money and engage fans when play resumes in Orlando this summer.
- Marc Berman of The New York Post spoke to Dr. Stephen Gonzalez, an executive board member for the Association for Applied Sport Psychology, about the mental health challenges that NBA players will face on the Orlando campus this summer.
The Pelicans and rookie star Zion Williamson will face the Jazz on July 30 at 6:30 p.m. ET in the first game of the NBA’s restart, the league announced on Friday.
There will be 88 “seeding” games from July 30 to August 14 prior to the postseason.
The Clippers will square off against the Lakers in the second game on July 30 at 9 p.m. ET. The first two games will be broadcast by TNT.
It will get very busy the next day with six games scheduled, highlighted by Celtics vs. Bucks and Rockets vs. Mavericks. There will be a maximum of seven games per day, with start times ranging from 12-9 p.m.
At the conclusion of the seeding games, the seven teams in each conference with the highest combined winning percentages across regular-season games and seeding games will be the first through seventh seeds for the conference playoffs. If the team with the eighth-best combined winning percentage (regular-season games and seeding games) in a conference is more than four games ahead of the team with the ninth-best combined winning percentage in the same conference, then the team with the eighth-best winning percentage would be the No. 8 seed.
If the team with the eighth-best combined winning percentage in a conference is four games or fewer ahead of the team with the ninth-best combined winning percentage in the same conference, then those two teams would compete in a play-in tournament to determine the No. 8 playoff seed in the conference. The play-in tournament will be double elimination for the eighth-place team and single elimination for the ninth-place team.
Much of the intrigue regarding the seeding games concerns the final Western Conference spot. The Grizzlies, currently eighth, hold a 3 1/2-game lead over the Trail Blazers, Pelicans and Kings, a four-game lead over the Spurs and a six-game advantage on the Suns.
Memphis will face the Blazers, Spurs, Pelicans, Jazz, Thunder, Raptors, Celtics and Bucks during the seeding round. Among the Grizzlies’ pursuers, the Pelicans appear to have the weakest schedule. After opening against the Jazz, they’ll face the Clippers, Grizzlies, Kings (twice), Wizards, Spurs and Magic.
The Nets and Magic need only to hold off the Wizards in the East to claim the final two spots in their conference. Washington trails Brooklyn by six games and Orlando by 5 1/2 games.
The breakdown of each team’s seeding schedule can be found here. The day-by-day schedule and national TV schedule can be found here.
Most veterans who have player options in their contracts for the 2020/21 season will have an October 17 deadline to either exercise or decline that option. That Saturday represents the second-last day of the 2019/20 league year under the NBA’s new calendar, meaning it would coincide in a normal year with June 29, the usual player option decision deadline.
However, according to ESPN’s Bobby Marks, some of the players who have to make option decisions for 2020/21 have slightly earlier deadlines. For instance, if the Spurs don’t make the postseason, DeMar DeRozan will be required to make his decision within seven days of the team’s last game, per Marks.
The full list of player options for ’20/21 can be found on our free agents page, but here are the options which must be exercised or declined before October 17, according to Marks:
- October 6
- Nicolas Batum, Hornets ($27,130,434)
- October 9
- Mike Conley, Jazz ($34,502,132)
- October 11
- Stanley Johnson, Raptors ($3,804,150)
- Tony Snell, Pistons ($12,178,571)
- October 13
- DeMar DeRozan, Spurs ($27,739,975)
- Note: This deadline would be moved to seven days after the Spurs’ last game if they don’t make the playoffs.
- DeMar DeRozan, Spurs ($27,739,975)
- October 14
- Anthony Davis, Lakers ($28,751,774)
- Robin Lopez, Bucks ($5,005,350)
- Wesley Matthews, Bucks ($2,692,991)
- Evan Fournier, Magic ($17,150,000)
- October 15
- Gordon Hayward, Celtics ($34,187,085)
- Note: According to Marks, this deadline can also be three days after the last game of the season.
- Mario Hezonja, Trail Blazers ($1,907,011)
- Rodney Hood, Trail Blazers ($6,003,90)
- Jabari Parker, Kings ($6,500,000)
- Gordon Hayward, Celtics ($34,187,085)
The rest of this season’s player option decisions must be made by October 17, a deadline that applies to nearly every team option for 2020/21 as well. The only team options with earlier decision dates are minimum-salary ones for Deonte Burton (Thunder) and Sviatoslav Mykhailiuk (Pistons), which are due by October 15, per Marks.
Veteran NBA forward Vince Carter has officially announced his retirement from basketball, confirming and discussing the decision on the latest episode of his Winging It podcast with Annie Finberg.
“I’m officially done playing basketball professionally,” Carter said.
Carter’s career came to a slightly earlier-than-expected end when the NBA was forced to suspend its season on March 11 due to the coronavirus pandemic. The Hawks still had 15 games left at that point, but they won’t be part of the resumption of the season in Orlando this summer.
Atlanta’s last game of 2019/20 against the Knicks was still in progress when the NBA announced the suspension of the season. Recognizing that it might be the Hawks’ – and Carter’s – last game, head coach Lloyd Pierce had the 43-year-old check in with just 19 seconds left in overtime — he knocked down a three-pointer on the last shot of his career before time expired.
The fifth overall pick in the 1998 draft, Carter spent his first six-and-half NBA seasons in Toronto, emerging as a star and helping lead the Raptors to the first three playoff appearances in franchise history, including their first postseason series win in 2001. He earned the nickname “Air Canada” during those years and played a large role in growing basketball’s popularity in the country, contributing in part to the influx of Canadian players we’ve seen enter the NBA in recent years.
Carter played his next four-and-a-half seasons in New Jersey with the Nets, then began bouncing around the league with a little more frequency, spending time with the Magic, Suns, Mavericks, Grizzlies, Kings, and Hawks before retiring this year following his record-setting 22nd NBA season.
For his career, the former UNC standout averaged 16.7 PPG, 4.3 RPG, and 3.1 APG in 1,541 regular season games (30.1 MPG). He also appeared in another 88 postseason contests, averaging 18.1 PPG.
A two-time All-NBA selection and an eight-time All-Star, the veteran swingman also won the NBA’s Rookie of the Year award in 1999 and the Slam Dunk Contests in 2000. He earned a gold medal with Team USA at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, memorably dunking over French center Frederic Weis during those games.
Carter never won a championship, but didn’t prioritize chasing a ring during his final few NBA seasons, opting instead to join young teams like the Kings and Hawks, where he could play regular minutes and impart veteran wisdom upon those clubs’ up-and-coming prospects.
The Hawks issued a statement today congratulating Carter on his retirement and thanking him for the time he spent with the organization, calling it an “honor” to the franchise that “he completed his Hall-of-Fame career wearing Atlanta across his chest and representing our city.”
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
JUNE 23: The signing is official, according to the team’s Twitter feed.
JUNE 22: The Grizzlies and forward Anthony Tolliver have reached a verbal agreement on a deal that can be officially completed once the NBA’s transaction window opens on Tuesday, league sources tell Marc Stein of The New York Times (Twitter link).
Stein first reported over the weekend that Tolliver was drawing interest from a handful of teams, but appeared likely to rejoin the Grizzlies. According to Darren Wolfson of 5 Eyewitness News (Twitter link), the veteran free agent ended up deciding between the Grizzlies and Raptors, opting to return to Memphis.
Tolliver, 35, appeared in 33 games for the Trail Blazers this season and another nine with Sacramento before he was bought out by the Kings. In five games on his initial 10-day contract with the Grizzlies, he averaged 5.4 PPG and 2.4 RPG on .381/.412/1.000 shooting in 19.2 minutes per contest.
Tolliver’s last 10-day deal, signed on March 2, had been set to expire on March 11, the night the NBA officially suspended its season. So even if the league had carried over active 10-day pacts once the season resumes, Tolliver would have needed to sign a new contract. He figures to get a rest-of-season deal that will put him on track to reach unrestricted free agency in the fall.