- Derrick Favors‘ MRI confirmed a bone contusion on his left knee and he won’t play for the Jazz in Thursday’s game, according to the team’s website. Utah didn’t provide a concrete timetable for Favors’ return.
The Heat are moving to Plan B after a 2-6 start, with greater roles for Josh McRoberts and Derrick Williams, writes Ira Winderman of The Sun-Sentinel. McRoberts hadn’t played at all before Saturday, and Williams, one of the team’s many offseason additions, had seen just three minutes of action. Luke Babbitt, who has started every game, was benched early along with Dion Waiters. It’s likely that coach Erik Spoelstra will keep tinkering, as Miami fell to Utah even with the changes. “I really like these guys in the locker room we have, and we’re a hard-working group,” McRoberts said. “We’ll continue to figure it out. But it’s really hard to win an NBA game and we can’t forget that as we come together here early. I know it’s tough. I’m the last guy that wants to say that. I want to win every game. But I think we just have to continue to keep working and keep fighting together.”
There’s more news out of Miami:
- Spurs coach Gregg Popovich, whose team faces the Heat Monday night, offered some advice on how to rebuild after the losses of Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, Winderman relays in a separate story. San Antonio was in the same situation with an aging roster, but was able to stay competitive by trading for Kawhi Leonard and signing LaMarcus Aldridge. “We’ve had to do that over the years with Manu [Ginobili] and Tony [Parker], and then making the trade for Kawhi before LaMarcus, because we knew we had to have more size at that three position,” Popovich said. “So we were able to get that done. And then obviously LaMarcus and now Pau [Gasol]. It’s as much about the pieces that go around those guys as anything.”
- Jazz swingman Joe Johnson, who finished last season in Miami, told Manny Navarro of The Miami Herald that he would have been interested in staying if the organization hadn’t opted for a youth movement. “There was [interest on my part to come back], but nobody who was 30 and up was coming back,” Johnson said. “I saw that early in free agency. So, for me, there was nothing to talk about [with the Heat in free agency]. My stint here was very brief. I appreciated it, but I knew where they were trying to go once free agency started.”
- Free agent addition Wayne Ellington is getting closer to making his Heat debut, Navarro writes in the same piece. The shooting guard has been out of action since suffering a severe right bruise on his left quad in the team’s last preseason game. There’s still no timetable for him to come back, but he has started running in a pool and may be cleared to run on the court this week. “Everybody I talked to said it was the worst contusion they’ve ever seen,” Ellington said. “That came from a few doctors. I knew it was bad, and I knew it was going to take some time to get right. But they’re also telling me they’re surprised how fast I’m healing from it.”
As we discussed earlier this year when we identified the veteran players eligible for contract extensions, the limits imposed on veteran extensions by the NBA’s Collective Bargaining Agreement make such deals rare. Teams are afforded plenty of cap flexibility to finalize rookie-scale extensions for fourth-year players, but that same flexibility doesn’t exist for veteran extensions.
While the league’s new CBA is expected to reduce this figure, players currently have to wait for three full years after signing their contract to renegotiate and/or extend it. Most veteran NBA contracts don’t run for more than three years to begin with, which means the pool of players eligible to extend their deals are small.
Additionally, even players who are eligible for a veteran extension often choose to wait until free agency, since there is little incentive to complete an extension early. Over-the-cap teams can extend veteran contracts, but can’t accommodate significantly renegotiated salaries for the current season — a club must have the cap room necessary to give a player a big raise in 2016/17. Plus, veteran extensions can cover no more than three new seasons (four total).
So, for a player like Blake Griffin, who is extension-eligible in the final year of his contract, it doesn’t make sense for him to re-up now with the over-the-cap Clippers. Even if he wants to re-sign with Los Angeles, he would be eligible for more years and larger salaries if he waits until next July to work something out with the team.
In other words, for a player to be a realistic candidate for a veteran contract extension before next summer, he must meet one of the following criteria, in addition to having signed his current deal at least three years ago:
- His team has sufficient cap room to give him an immediate raise. This applies to guys like Russell Westbrook and James Harden, who added an extra year or two to their deals earlier this summer in exchange for getting a big pay bump in 2016/17.
- He won’t receive a major raise in free agency anyway. Given the rising salary cap, this doesn’t apply to many players in their prime, but guys nearing the tail end of their careers could be happy to settle for a small raise rather than rolling the dice on a bigger payday in free agency.
With those criteria in mind, let’s take a look at five players who are viable candidates for veteran extensions in 2016/17…
Derrick Favors (Jazz)
Contract: $11,050,000 salary in 2016/17; UFA in 2018
Favors is perhaps the most obvious extension candidate on our list. The Jazz are still below the salary floor, meaning the team has more than enough cap room to give him a raise all the way up to the maximum. Favors is also still two years away from free agency, so the opportunity to get significant pay increases for the next two years should make him very willing to add a couple more years of team control for Utah.
Still, this is no lock to happen. The Jazz won’t be overly motivated to simply hand Favors a maximum salary when there’s no pressure to do so quite yet, so he’d probably have to take a little less for the team to pull the trigger. If he wants a short-term raise, it makes sense to go for it. If he wants to wait another year, he’d be eligible for a higher max in 2017/18, and the Jazz might feel a little more pressure to get something done at that point, since it’d be a contract year for the big man.
George Hill (Jazz)
Contract: $8,000,000 salary in 2016/17; UFA in 2017
Of course, the Jazz’s talks with Favors are also complicated by the fact that the club has another strong candidate on its roster for a renegotiation and extension. Hill hasn’t been with the team for very long, but he’s made a great early impression. If Utah isn’t confident in handing the reins to Dante Exum next fall, reaching a new agreement with Hill would make a lot of sense.
As is the case with Favors, the Jazz have more than enough cap flexibility to offer Hill a big raise right away. However, the team’s current cap room (about $14MM) won’t be enough to accommodate significant renegotiations for both players. If each of them have interest in getting something done during the season, Utah would have a choice to make, and I imagine the team would lean toward Favors.
Paul George (Pacers)
Contract: $18,314,532 salary in 2016/17; Can opt out in 2018
I took a more extensive look at George’s situation back in September, so I won’t spend long re-hashing those points. As I explained at that time, the Pacers would be happy to get a max deal done sooner rather than later, but there are pros and cons for George, so it will come down to what he wants.
It certainly wouldn’t be a bad choice for George to sign a deal immediately if he wants to secure an immediate raise – which the Pacers have the cap room to give him – and shut down any speculation about a possible departure from Indiana. But there are reasons why it makes sense to wait too, and with the team off to a sluggish start, it seems that’s what he’ll do for now.
Derrick Rose (Knicks)
Contract: $21,323,252 salary in 2016/17; UFA in 2017
Rose is the first player on our list whose team is over the cap, meaning he wouldn’t get a raise this season if he were to work out a new deal with the Knicks. Still, he’s already on a maximum-salary contract, and even though he’ll be eligible for a much higher max next season (approximately $29MM based on current cap projections), there’s certainly no guarantee he’ll get those kind of offers on the open market.
The Knicks haven’t had a reliable, long-term starter at point guard for quite some time, so if things go well with Rose this year, they could make an effort to lock him up before he reaches free agency. The team could offer up to three additional years, with a 2017/18 starting salary worth up to nearly $23MM.
Ersan Ilyasova (Sixers)
Contract: $8,400,000 salary in 2016/17; UFA in 2017
It’s absolutely premature to consider Ilyasova an extension candidate in Philadelphia. The veteran power forward has been traded four times since signing his current contract, suggesting teams are more likely to move on from him than to want to lock him up.
Still, indications out of Philadelphia when the Sixers acquired Ilyasova last week were that they like how he fits on their roster, providing some much needed outside shooting and helping the club stretch the floor. In his first four games with the Sixers, he has averaged 12.8 PPG and shot 42.1% from three-point range — the sample size is minuscule, but those would be his best averages since 2012/13.
If Ilyasova continues to play well as a Sixer, a contract like the three-year, $30MM deal signed by Mirza Teletovic this summer looks like a reasonable goal for him, and Philadelphia could certainly afford something like that. It’s more likely that they’ll let him reach free agency, but if they like what they see this season from Ilyasova, the 76ers could at least explore what sort of deal it would take to keep him off the market.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
George Hill was involved in one of the offseason’s biggest trades, a three-way deal that sent him to the Jazz in exchange for the 12th overall pick. So far, he’s thrived in what he describes as a great situation in Utah, telling Michael Scotto of Basketball Insiders that he has the ball in his hands much more than he did in Indiana.
“I have the coach’s green light to be aggressive and take shots,” said the Jazz’s starting point guard. “Not saying I didn’t have the green light in Indy, so no disrespect to the coach there, but it’s a little different. When I have the ball in my hands a lot more, I’m not in the corner a lot, just taking advantage of the opportunity that’s given to me.”
Hill is eligible for an extension this season, and for unrestricted free agency in 2017, but even with his stock seemingly on the rise, he tells Scotto that he’s not thinking about his next contract right now: “I’m going to let [Jazz GM] Dennis Lindsey and the front office handle that and my agents. My focus is just to play basketball and try to get us to the playoffs.”
- Former Jazz point guard Marcus Paige, who is one of just three 2016 draft picks who was waived by the team that selected them, admits that he wasn’t surprised about landing in the D-League and discusses his goals for his time with the Salt Lake City Stars (Twitter link via Aaron Falk of The Salt Lake Tribune).
Wizards guard Trey Burke is not only happy to be out of Utah, he is accusing the Jazz of trying to ruin his NBA career. In an interview posted on the Fox Sports Radio 1340 website, Burke makes some strong charges against his former team.
“They couldn’t break me,” Burke said. “That’s what they tried to do. .. They gave me DNPs. Everybody asked me ‘What’s going on? Why are you not playing?’ There’s a reason why everybody is asking me that. I just kept my head up. I was a great team guy. Everybody can vouch for that over there. I never really complained. I worked hard every day. I waited for my opportunity.”
Burke was traded to Washington in July at a bargain price, with the Wizards giving up just a 2021 second-round pick in return. There was mutual frustration in Utah, with the Jazz expecting more from a player who was taken at No. 9 in the 2013 draft, and Burke feeling like he never got the opportunity he deserved.
Many people expected Burke to be Utah’s starting point guard last season, especially with Dante Exum sidelined for the year with a torn ACL. Instead, the Jazz gave the job to Raul Neto and traded for Shelvin Mack at the deadline, keeping Burke as a reserve. He got into 64 games, all off the bench, averaging 10.6 points and 2.3 rebounds per night.
Burke now hopes to revive his career in Washington and is grateful for the fresh start. “I feel like I’m in a much better situation,” he said. “I’m on a team that can definitely compete for the playoffs. … As far as the transition, it was great. It was a great move. I feel like Washington is definitely a better fit for me.”
According to Bobby Marks of The Vertical, there are 33 players around the NBA who can potentially earn incentive bonuses this season based on their own durability or performance, or based on how their team performs. Although Marks doesn’t identify all 33 players who have incentives included in their 2016/17 contracts, he discusses over half of them, passing along a number of interesting tidbits about those potential bonuses. Here are some of the highlights:
Minutes/games played bonuses:
NBA bonuses are deemed either “likely” or “unlikely,” using the previous season’s statistics as a benchmark, so if a player didn’t appear in many games during the previous year, a team can include a games-played benchmark and call it an unlikely incentive. For instance, John Henson‘s contract with the Bucks features incentives if he plays 60 games or 75 games this season. He appeared in just 57 contests in 2015/16, so neither of those marks is viewed as likely.
Miles Plumlee (Bucks), Luis Scola (Nets), Greivis Vasquez (Nets), and Deron Williams (Mavericks) are among the other players who have incentives in their deals for games played or started.
Individual statistic bonuses:
The Trail Blazers got creative with Maurice Harkless‘ new contract this summer, including an incentive bonus in the deal that can be triggered based if he keeps his three-point percentage above a certain level. Jeremy Lin, meanwhile, not only has a three-point percentage incentive, but also has bonuses linked to assists, turnovers, and threes and free throws attempted per 36 minutes.
Individual achievement bonuses:
Players like Bismack Biyombo (Magic), Evan Fournier (Magic), and Will Barton (Nuggets) have incentives related to their individual performances as well, but they’re related to awards and honors, rather than raw statistics. Biyombo gets a bonus if he makes the NBA’s All-Defensive team, Fournier gets some extra money for an All-Star appearance, and Barton would get $250K if he wins the Sixth Man of the Year award.
Of course, some of these incentives are more realistic than others. For instance, Thaddeus Young (Pacers) probably shouldn’t be counting on the $500K incentive bonus that he’d earn if he wins the league’s MVP award.
Team performance bonuses:
Several players, including Fournier, Jon Leuer (Pistons), and Joe Ingles (Jazz) have bonuses related to their teams making the playoffs. Many of those postseason incentives are tied to another condition. For example, for Taj Gibson to earn his bonus from the Bulls, he must appear in at least 60 games, play in at least 75% of Chicago’s playoff games, and average 25 or more minutes per game during the regular season.
Some players also have incentives linked to their teams’ win total, and once again, some are more attainable than others. For example, Nikola Mirotic could earn an extra $800K, but he’d need the Bulls to win 65+ games, so there’s a good chance his shot at that bonus will disappear about halfway through the season.
Be sure to check out the full breakdown from Marks for many more details on players who could earn incentive bonuses in 2016/17.
Gordon Hayward put up 28 points today in his first game of the season after breaking a finger in early October, writes Jody Genessy of The Deseret News. Hayward, who wore a splint on his left ring finger, shot just 6 of 17 from the field as the Jazz won at New York. He was relieved to be back on the court. “I think naturally you lose a little bit. It’s what happens when you can’t play for a month,” Hayward said. “You can do all of the drills you want, all of the working out you want, but there’s nothing like five-on-five. There’s nothing like game atmosphere. … That’s why I did so much work, so I’d try not to lose so much of it.”
Four weeks after fracturing his left ring finger in practice, Gordon Hayward is expected to make his season debut Sunday, reports ESPN’s Tim MacMahon. Hayward was originally given a six-weeks prognosis after the Oct. 7 injury, but he will make it back in a little less than a month. The 6’8″ small forward, who can opt out of his current deal next summer, led the Jazz in scoring last season with 19.7 points per game.
There’s more news out of Utah:
- Boris Diaw is expected to miss about two weeks with a contusion on his right leg, MacMahon posts on ESPN Now. With Derrick Favors still on a minutes restriction, that should mean more playing time for second-year forward Trey Lyles.
- With Rudy Gobert‘s extension now out of the way, Utah can turn its attention to locking up the rest of its core, writes Tony Jones of The Salt Lake Tribune. Hayward will be the priority, and the Jazz are expecting him to earn at least $25MM in his next deal, a hefty raise from this year’s salary of $16,736,710. They would also like to get something done with Favors, who is eligible for a renegotiation and extension through March. Utah’s front office believes he would receive a max contract on the open market and would prefer to reach an extension agreement before that happens. The Jazz may also need to find money for point guard George Hill, who is in the final year of his contract after being acquired from the Pacers in a three-team trade. At age 30, Hill wants a long-term deal and a raise from his current $8MM salary, but he would prefer not to change teams again.
- Dante Exum seems fully recovered from the ACL tear in his left knee that forced him to miss all of last season, notes Nathan Harker of The Deseret News. Exum played a season-high 29 minutes in Friday’s loss to the Spurs, collecting seven points and seven rebounds. “I feel good. I feel like I’ve put a lot of work into where I am now,” Exum said. “It’s just about continuing to get better, playing those 28-plus minutes where I’m playing those late minutes trying to get the win.”
Here are Friday’s D-League assignments and recalls from around the league:
10:30pm:
- The Celtics announced via press release that Kelly Olynyk and Demetrius Jackson were assigned to the Maine Red Claws for practice purposes earlier today and later recalled to Boston by the team. Jackson has yet to see any regular season action in his rookie campaign, while Olynyk is still making his way back from offseason shoulder surgery.
11:32am:
- That was fast. After announcing this morning that they had assigned former first-round pick Bruno Caboclo to the D-League, the Raptors confirmed a few hours later that Caboclo has been recalled (Twitter links). The 21-year-old was briefly sent to the Raptors 905 to participate in today’s practice.
- A day after assigning him to the Salt Lake City Stars, the Jazz have recalled rookie forward Joel Bolomboy for their game tonight against the Spurs, the team announced in a press release.
Here are today’s D-League assignments and recalls from across the NBA:
- The first D-League assignment of Dejounte Murray‘s young career was a brief one. The Spurs announced today that they’ve recalled Murray, just one day after assigning him to Austin, so the 2016 first-rounder will join the team on its road trip to Utah.
- The Suns have sent rookie forward Derrick Jones to their newly-relocated D-League affiliate, the Northern Arizona Suns, the team announced today in a press release. Jones has yet to see the floor for Phoenix during the regular season, so it makes sense to send him to Northern Arizona to get him some action.
- The Jazz have assigned 2016 second-rounder Joel Bolomboy to the Salt Lake City Stars, according to a team release. Bolomboy has played briefly in two games for Utah so far this season.