Here are Sunday’s assignments and recalls from around the NBA G League:
The Wizards are shooting more three-pointers than ever before, as I recently detailed on NBAMath. In fact, every Wizards’ rotation player is experiencing a career-high in three-pointers shot per game.
Washington is currently 1-4 on the year but the team’s offensive efficiency ranks sixth in the league. That’s an improvement on last season, when the Wizards were league average in the stat. The offseason of change in the nation’s capital has led to improvement on at least one side of the ball. Now, the defense is a story for another day.
Here’s more from Washington:
Avery Bradley only played 14 games with the Grizzlies, but he tells David Cobb of The Commercial Appeal that short stretch in Memphis helped him revitalize his career. Bradley re-emerged as a scorer after the Clippers shipped him to the Grizzlies at February’s trade deadline. He increased his average from 8.2 PPG in L.A. to 16.1 in Memphis and credits the freedom offered by then-coach J.B. Bickerstaff.
“J.B. gave me an opportunity to go out there and play my game,” Bradley said. “I’m thankful for that, I’m thankful for the city of Memphis. It’s home for me. My family is from Memphis and Mississippi. I’m going to miss it. It’s going to be nice when I come back and we play them there.”
“Things were just unfortunate,” Bradley said of the end of his stay in Memphis. “There were a lot of changes. My time there was special.”
There’s more from Memphis:
Here are Friday’s assignments and recalls from around the NBA G League:
Over the course of the 2019/20 NBA season, up until February’s trade deadline, we’re keeping an eye on potential trade candidates from around the NBA, monitoring their value and exploring the likelihood that they’ll be moved. Each of these looks at possible trade candidates focuses on a specific division, as we zero in on three players from that division.
Friday is just the 11th day of the 2019/20 regular season, so trade talks around the NBA haven’t started to heat up yet. In fact, the trade market has been pretty quiet for months — no deal has been completed since the Thunder and Rockets finalized their Russell Westbrook/Chris Paul swap way back on July 16.
Still, based on contract situations and early-season rotations, some potential trade candidates may begin to emerge sooner rather than later. Here’s a look at three Southeast players who could fit that bill…
Dion Waiters, SG
Miami Heat
$12.1MM cap hit; $12.65MM guaranteed salary in 2020/21
Waiters was said to be unhappy with his playing time during the preseason and was suspended for the Heat‘s first game of the season after expressing his displeasure on the sidelines during the club’s final exhibition contest. Since then, he has remained inactive as he works toward meeting Miami’s conditioning requirements.
According to Barry Jackson of The Miami Herald (Twitter link), Waiters was “contrite” when he met with Heat officials this week, so perhaps he’ll eventually return to action, accept a reduced role, and play out the rest of his contract with the team without incident. Still, this feels a little like the situation Miami previously encountered with Hassan Whiteside, who griped about his declining role multiple times and eventually got traded.
With two years still left on his contract, Waiters doesn’t have positive trade value at this point, and the Heat’s hard cap will make it tricky for them to pull off certain deals. A trade may have to wait until 2020/21. But if the team explores the market in search of a major deal in the coming months, Waiters is a good candidate to be included to match salaries and get him a change of scenery.
Willy Hernangomez, C
Charlotte Hornets
$1.68MM cap hit; UFA in 2020
The Hornets almost certainly wouldn’t mind moving big expiring contracts belonging to Bismack Biyombo, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, and Marvin Williams. But it’s hard to imagine the team getting quality assets for any of those players.
As Rick Bonnell of The Charlotte Observer pointed out in a recent mailbag, a trade involving Hernangomez might be more realistic, since his expiring salary is just $1.68MM. If a team is willing to give up a second-round pick for Hernangomez, Charlotte would probably listen, Bonnell writes.
Still, it’s not clear if there will be a team willing to pay even that modest price for Hernangomez, whose stock has dipped in the years since a promising 2016/17 rookie season. He has played in just two of the Hornets’ five games so far, and his trade value will be limited by the fact that he’ll be an unrestricted – rather than restricted – free agent at season’s end.
C.J. Miles, G/F
Washington Wizards
$8.73MM cap hit; UFA in 2020
Miles has already been traded twice in 2019, from Toronto to Memphis in February and then to Washington in July. With the Wizards in retooling mode and not expected to contend this season, there’s no reason to think the team wouldn’t move him once more before the deadline if he can rebuild his value.
Although he’s still recovering from offseason foot surgery, Miles is reportedly inching closer to making his Wizards debut. The veteran swingman should fit right in on a squad that has been letting it fly from beyond the arc so far — Washington has attempted the sixth-most three-pointers in the NBA (38.0 3PG) and ranks fourth in three-point percentage (38.2%).
Given the other shooters on their rosters, the Wizards won’t need to lean on Miles to space the floor, but it will be interesting to see whether they give him regular minutes to showcase him for a potential trade. That $8.73MM expiring deal won’t be easy to move, and a buyout may ultimately be more likely, but if Miles looks healthy and is knocking down 40% of his threes, maybe a playoff team in need of shooting help gets desperate.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
Isaiah Thomas recorded his first double-double since he was back with the Celtics, scoring 17 points and dishing out 10 assists in the Wizards‘ 159-158 loss to the Rockets last night. Thomas, who signed a one-year deal with Washington this offseason, believes the team gives him the right opportunity to succeed again in the league, as he told the media on Wednesday, including Hoops Rumors.
“It’s been one injury. That’s all it’s been. Like I always said, if I get the opportunity like I did in Boston, I’d do the same thing,” Thomas said. “The trades I’ve been in, I haven’t had this same opportunity. That’s the only reason that you haven’t seen me play well. I’m just going to continue to work hard, continue to do what I can to win games here. The Wizards are giving me a great opportunity and I can’t thank them enough.”
Thomas was dealt to Cleveland during the summer of 2017 in the Kyrie Irving deal, while he was still recovering from a hip injury. The LeBron James-led Cavaliers shipped him to Los Angeles later that season as part of the package that landed Larry Nance Jr. Thomas left Los Angeles during the 2018 offseason as LBJ joined the Lakers, and found a new home in Denver on a Nuggets team with a deep rotation and not much of need for Thomas’ scoring skills.
Thomas missed the first two games of this season with the Wizards because of a thumb injury, and the team is being cautious with his workload, limiting him to 44 minutes over the past two contests. However, the franchise is impressed with what the 30-year-old brings to the table.
“He was playing well before he got hurt six weeks ago,” coach Scott Brooks said. “I wasn’t expecting it after he missed six weeks, no. It’s hard to do. It’s almost nearly impossible. Especially playing that position, but you know he’s always had the heart of a champion and that’s never going to go away. He plays through injuries, he plays through a lot of difficult things that he’s been through but he comes down and plays hard every night.
“You know I expect him to play well all the time. That’s why we brought him in. Not only to play well, [but] to just be a good leader and a good teammate to all of our younger players.”
Troy Brown Jr. will make his season debut for the Wizards on Wednesday against the Rockets, as Candace Buckner of the Washington Post relays (Twitter link).
“I’m just happy to be back,” Brown said. “It’s just a good feeling, especially sitting out all that time and just being able to see how well we’ve been playing and just enjoying that mix of how good we’re doing right now.”
It’s unclear if Brown will start the Wizards’ home opener but it would be surprising if the second-year wing doesn’t eventually earn the nod. Here’s more from Washington:
Every night during the NBA G League season, Hoops Rumors provides the assignments and recalls by each team. With training camps now open, here are Tuesday’s assignments and recalls from around the G League:
A disabled player exception can be granted when an NBA team has a player go down with an injury deemed to be season-ending. The exception gives the club some additional spending flexibility, functioning almost as a cross between a traded player exception and a mid-level exception.
We go into more detail on who qualifies for disabled player exceptions and how exactly they work in our glossary entry on the subject. But essentially, a DPE gives a team the opportunity to add an injury replacement by either signing a player to a one-year contract, trading for a player in the final year of his contract, or placing a waiver claim on a player in the final year of his contract.
Because the rules related to disable player exceptions are somewhat restrictive and the exceptions themselves often aren’t worth a lot, they often simply expire without being used. Still, it’s worth keeping an eye on which disabled player exceptions have been granted, just in case.
We’ll use this space to break down the teams with DPEs available for the 2019/20 league year, updating it as the season progresses. Teams have until January 15 to apply for a disabled player exception and until March 10 to actually use them.
Many of the teams that have been granted disabled player exceptions have full 15-man rosters, so they would have to open up a roster spot in order to use their DPEs.
So far, only the Lakers and Wizards have used their disabled player exceptions. Now that the trade deadline has passed, the remaining exceptions are less likely to be used, since teams like the Pistons, Magic, Pelicans, Trail Blazers, Cavaliers, and Nets are unlikely to be in the market for free agents who require more than minimum-salary investments.
The Wizards applied for a disabled player exception for Wall during the first week of the 2019/20 league year. Word that the NBA had denied that request didn’t surface until October, but the league’s decision makes sense. After all, Wall underwent Achilles surgery all the way back in February.
In order for a DPE to be approved, the injured player must be considered substantially more likely than not to be sidelined through June 15 of that league year. Recovery from Achilles surgery is generally viewed as an 11-15 month process, whereas June 15 would’ve been more than 16 months since Wall underwent that procedure.
The Magic are in the same boat with Isaac. His knee injury apparently isn’t serious enough that the NBA is willing to count on him being sidelined through June 15, so Orlando’s DPE request was denied.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.