Seriously. It’s only the preseason.
Things got heated during a preseason game between the Chicago Bulls and Washington Wizards. A Hall of Fame forward with a chip on his shoulder and an award-winning center whose relentless energy has been known to frustrate many an opponent nearly came to blows.
Before the games even begin to matter.
Wizards forward Paul Pierce and Bulls center Joakim Noah exchanged a poke to the head and nearly engaged in a fistfight.
Nene Hilario nearly entered an MMA match with Jimmy Butler, while Pierce and Noah almost opted for the stand-up fisticuffs.
Aside from the fact that it’s early October and the game being played meant absolutely nothing, this shows you how Chicago and Washington feel about one another. The Wizards sent the Bulls home in the 2014 NBA Playoffs, and it appears as though the intensity of that series never died down.
In case you forgot what happened before:
To think, Pierce wasn’t even on the Wizards when this happened.
Chicago and Washington meet four times during the 2014-15 regular season. The first showdown will be on Tuesday, December 23 at the Verizon Center in Washington, D.C.
Mark that one down on your calendar.
Denver Extends Kenneth Faried
The 2014 FIBA World Cup played host to the most intriguing breakout performances of the summer. International players put themselves on NBA radars, Team USA stars improved their reputation and, collectively, promising athletes created the potential for a major payday.
Kenneth Faried of the Denver Nuggets just got his.
Fresh off of a stellar performance in Spain, Faried has been rewarded for being a star of one of the Western Conference’s steadiest teams. As the Nuggets prepare for another run at the playoffs, locking up their pending free agent forward was a vital course of action.
According to Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports, Denver signed Faried to a lucrative extension.
Denver Nuggets forward Kenneth Faried has reached agreement on a five-year, $60 million contract extension, league sources told Yahoo Sports.
Faried is part of the 2011 NBA draft class eligible for extensions until Oct. 31.
The deal includes a partial guarantee in the fifth year that assures Faried he will make no less than $52 million over the life of the contract, sources said.
Denver general manager Tim Connelly and Faried’s agent, Thad Foucher of Wasserman Media Group, started to seriously exchange proposals in the past week and ultimately came to terms on a deal Sunday night, sources told Yahoo Sports.
Faried has earned it.
His season averages of 13.7 points and 8.6 rebounds don’t scream $12 million per season, but those numbers are misleading. In 31 games after the 2014 All-Star Break, Faried erupted for 18.8 points and 10.1 rebounds per contest.
He did so while maintaining a field goal percentage above 54 percent.
The icing on the cake was a remarkable run with Team USA at the FIBA World Cup.
In an era in which building through free agency seems to trump utilizing the draft, small-market teams need to be ahead of the curve. Faried isn’t the biggest name in basketball, but he was set to become a restricted free agent during the summer of 2015.
At 24 years old, Faried’s combination of monstrous athleticism and tantalizing upside all but guarantees that he would’ve had suitors. Denver would’ve owened his restricted rights with the extension of a qualifying offer, but this extension tackles the issue before it arrives.
There are two more seasons left on point guard Ty Lawson’s contract, but other decisions loom. Extending Faried assures that Denver has its strongest assets locked up as it enters contract negotiations with its other potentially expensive players.
There’s always risk in deals like this, but Faried has earned the faith Denver has placed in him.
Around The League: NBA’s New Television Deal
- According to a press release via the NBA, the league has extended its television deal with the Walt Disney Company and Turner Broadcasting System through the 2024-25 season. The deal begins in 2016-17 and is worth more than $2.6 billion per season.
- Starting in 2016-17, “A least 20 NBA Development League games and NBA Summer League games will be seen on the ESPN television networks,” per the previously alluded to release.
- Per Marc Stein of ESPN, NBA teams are expected to make approximately $35 million per season in the final two years of the current contract. Stein goes on to report that the updated figures would see teams making $70 million and $100 million per season.
One of the most vocal players on the new national television deal, as well as the $2 billion selling price of the Los Angeles Clippers, was four-time NBA MVP LeBron James. James, who surprised some by signing a two-year contract with the Cleveland Cavaliers instead of a long-term deal, acknowledged that this agreement played a major factor in his decision.
Per Joe Vardon of The Plain Dealer:
“I haven’t even begun to think about what I’m doing going forward,” James said, though he acknowledged the NBA’s TV deal was what he had in mind when he structured his contract with the Cavaliers.
James has stated his desire to finish his career in Cleveland and that the short-term deal was for “business.”
James continued:
“There will come a point in time where I will sit back with my team and some of the guys and from a players’ perspective, from a players’ association perspective, talk about how we go about this with this new deal,” he said.
“We gave a lot,” James said of the 2011 collective bargaining dispute between the league’s owners and players that resulted in a lockout and shortened 2011-12 season. “The whole thing that went on with the last negotiation process was the owners are losing money. There’s no way they can sit in front of us and tell us that right now.”
As we continue to see teams selling for billions of dollars, being purchased for $200 million, selling for $550 million, $750 million, and now $2 billion … so that will not fly with us this time.”
Contrary to reports, James denied that he and NBA Player’s Association president Chris Paul are seeking to eliminate maximum contracts. Due to the fact that they limit what a player can earn, however, there is a goal goal to increase the limit.
There are few who would oppose that course of action, especially with this increase in revenue from the television deal. That statement will likely be proven wrong in the near future.
Politics.
James wasn’t the only big name to take a stance on this massive development. Brooklyn Nets point guard and union representative Deron Williams was just as vocal.
Per Stefan Bondy of The New York Daily News, Williams even took a dig at Billy Hunter.
“I think it’s going in pretty much the same direction as it was last time (lockout of 2011),” said Deron Williams, who is Brooklyn’s union rep. “So I feel like we made a lot of concessions last time, and it’s going to be hard for us to do that again. With the new leadership we have and (former NBAPA president Billy Hunter) finally being out of the picture, which is a great thing, hopefully things will go better for us.”
“I hope guys are preparing (for a work stoppage),” said Williams, who played overseas during the 2011 lockout — a stoppage into December that cut 16 games off the NBA season. “When I first got in the league (in 2005), it’s when the old collective bargaining agreement was just kicking in. And as soon as I got in the league, they were already telling us to prepare for the next lockout. And it was ingrained in my mind. And I was prepared for that. I didn’t know that everybody did.
“We’ll be better prepared this time, we’ll be more ready to take different actions if need be.”
Michele Roberts replaced Hunter as NBPA executive director.
Regardless of how you feel about this news, the new national television deal will send shockwaves throughout the NBA. It will impact everything from the salary cap and max contracts to whether or not we’ll have a lockout once the current CBA runs out.
This was a monumental day in NBA history.