While discussing the new Batman video game, a friend and I came to the conclusion that if Batman were real, Mark Cuban would be the most likely Bruce Wayne. Think about it. The pool of billionaires under 60 who are in good physical shape limits the candidates enough. My first thought was Floyd Mayweather, but then I looked up his net worth and it’s less than a twelfth of Cuban’s if the internet is to be believed.
In more strictly basketball news, the season is about to start. On a Tuesday, for some reason. I guess a lot of people will be home and watching TV, and there’s no Walking Dead to compete with, but still, Tuesday? Couldn’t it at least be Monday? No? Tuesday? Okay. It’s soon is all that matters.
Now let’s get to the latest from around the NBA:
Ramona Shelburne of ESPN.com reports that Kobe will stay a Laker, and probably won’t retire after this season either: “Los Angeles Lakers executive vice president of basketball operations Jim Buss said Friday that the team has started talks with Bryant’s representative on a contract extension for the five-time NBA champion and fully expects a new deal to be completed before the star guard can become a free agent July 1. “I want to put an end to any speculation that we would allow Kobe to become a free agent,” Buss told ESPNLosAngeles.com on Friday night. “That’s not going to happen. Kobe is a top priority for us. He’s a Laker legend and always will be. I don’t think we’re done winning championships with him yet. “[Lakers general manager] Mitch Kupchak and [Bryant’s agent] Rob Pelinka have been talking, but with him being hurt, it has slowed the process some. I don’t know when it’ll get done, but I have faith in Rob and Mitch to work things out.” “- It’s that super fun time where teams pick up options on players’ rookie contracts. Here’s what the Magic did, via Josh Robbins of the Orlando Sentinel: “The Orlando Magic on Saturday will exercise their 2014-15 team options on Maurice Harkless, Tobias Harris, Andrew Nicholson and Nik Vucevic, the Orlando Sentinel has learned. Under NBA rules regarding former first-round draft picks, a team has until Oct. 31 before a player’s second season to pick up its third-year option. A team also has until Oct. 31 before a player’s third season to exercise its fourth-year option. Harkless and Nicholson are about to begin their second NBA seasons. Harris and Vucevic are about to begin their third seasons.”
One lottery pick looks to be on the way out, reports Michael Lee of the Washington Post: “The Wizards have decided to decline the fourth-year options for forwards Jan Vesely and Chris Singleton, according to people with knowledge of the situation. Vesely and Singleton, the Wizards’ first-round picks in 2011, will now both be unrestricted free agents following this season. Washington has until Thursday to make those decisions official. Vesely, the sixth overall pick, has had a disappointing stint in Washington, posting career averages of 3.6 points and 3.4 rebounds per game. His option for the 2014-15 season was worth $4.2 million. He entered training camp with decent odds of securing a spot beyond this season after a decent showing at summer league in Las Vegas and an even better performance at the European championships in Slovenia. Coach Randy Wittman gave Vesely the starting nod alongside Nene in the first two preseason games but the 7-foot big man from the Czech Republic continued to slide deeper into the rotation and only received garbage time minutes in the preseason finale. He averaged 2.7 points and 6.1 rebounds in the seven games.”- Frank Isola of the New York Daily News thinks the Knicks’ decision to keep Chris Smith around signals bad things about the franchise: “The Knicks, give or take a few wins, are either the fourth- or fifth-best team in the Eastern Conference. And since LeBron James isn’t going anywhere, the Knicks might be lucky to advance out of the first round. Everything about them says they are going to take a step back, including the decision to give Chris Smith a roster spot that Woodson all but admitted came down to Smith being the younger brother of J.R. The worst-kept secret in the NBA is that J.R. Smith re-signed with the Knicks last July with the understanding that Chris would make the team. The younger Smith would have made the roster last year but a major knee injury knocked him out for all of 2012-13. The Knicks view him as a project and Smith will probably spend most of the season in D-League, which will help his development. The fact that he’s a good kid is also a plus.”
- Gordon Hayward might not work out an extension with the Jazz (though nothing is certain), writes Sam Amick of USA Today: “As the Thursday deadline for an extension nears, Utah Jazz small forward Gordon Hayward has a lot to think about. He’s in talks with the Jazz about a new deal, and it’s paramount that they secure his services considering he’s the anchor of this young core that also includes recently-extended forward Derrick Favors (he agreed to a four-year, $49 million deal on Oct. 18). But as Hayward continues to showcase his under-appreciated skills during the preseason, and as it seems more apparent that his fanbase extends beyond the Jazz and to the league at large, the chance remains that he may not agree to an extension and will instead choose to be a highly sought-after restricted free agent next summer. A person with knowledge of the talks said the two sides were not close to a deal as of Saturday afternoon, though that doesn’t mean one may not eventually get done.”
Even though I’m not a big fan of math, I absolutely eat up stories about new analytics. Rick Maese of the Washington Post has a great one: “Similar to what foreign soccer leagues have been doing for several years, the NBA and STATS, the data firm that services every NBA team, will use the cameras to quantify and analyze every movement of every game throughout the entire season. Recording from the rafters, the six cameras will document everything, capturing speed, distance, player separation, sets, plays, passes — areas that have never before appeared in the standard box score. “It’s going to have a big impact,” said John Hollinger, vice president of basketball operations for the Memphis Grizzlies, “and the scary thing is, we don’t know how. It’s too early. I just hope I figure it out before everybody else does.” Last season, 15 teams, including the Washington Wizards, independently paid for cameras stationed above the court to track their players’ movements. Because not all games were being recorded, the data was incomplete and limited. In the offseason, the league took the lead and made the push to outfit all 30 NBA arenas with SportVU technology.”
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