Markieff Morris remains a member of the Suns, but he doesn’t seem happy about it. At only 26 years old, Phoenix doesn’t seem overly eager to move him, and it’s not hard to understand why. Morris is signed through 2019 on a very team-friendly contract of $8 million/year, and that’s an absolute bargain these days for his production. After all, Morris started all 82 games at power forward in the bruising West and averaged 15.3 points and 6.2 rebounds in 31 minutes. But since
Boston guard Isaiah Thomas is a relatively-tiny 5-foot-9, while Houston small forward Trevor Ariza is 6-foot-8 and one of the league’s premier defenders. So if Ariza were to take the ball hard to the rim, you wouldn’t expect Thomas to reject him. But that’s exactly what happened in a recent Seattle Pro-Am game: Ariza, to his credit, had an appropriate emoji response about the incident when asked on Twitter: ???????? https://t.co/M9W9TND8Zr — trevorariza (@TrevorAriza) August 29, 2015 Thomas, a Pacific Northwest native, didn’t directly comment on
The Warriors and Rockets were the two top teams in the Western Conference last season, led by the league’s top two MVP candidates in Stephen Curry and James Harden. Both sides seemed on a collision course all year for the Western Conference Finals. Ultimately, the Warriors prevailed on their way to an NBA title, and Curry (media) and Harden (players) essentially split the MVP hardware. Given all those high-profile meetings, it’s only natural for some animosity to develop along the way. It
The silence following Jonas Valanciunas’ contract extension was deafening. When the Toronto Raptors gave a reported $64 million over four years to Valanciunas, there were no proclamations from pundits that the NBA’s financial sky was falling. Owners didn’t start forming plans of collusion. No one drew comparisons to Jim McIlvaine. On the other side, there have been no whispers that Raptors GM Masai Ujiri engineered another steal. Virtually no one has suggested that Valanciunas got fleeced. Agent Leon Rose – who days
As I said recently on NBC Sports Radio and in my previous free agent rankings — there are still bargains to be had on the free agent market. Just ask the New York Knicks, who landed Kevin Seraphin on a one-year, $2.8 million deal. Seraphin was No. 1 on our previous free agency rankings. Seraphin turned down several significant offers for a better chance at playing time with the prospect of cashing when the salary cap spikes next summer. [Read more…]
No division in the NBA was more competitive last season than the Southwest. Every team made the playoffs, and the division champion was not decided until the final night of the season. Now, with the summer signing season all but complete, the division appears as though it will be as competitive in the upcoming season as it was in 2014-15. The San Antonio Spurs have added LaMarcus Aldridge and David West, the Houston Rockets have added Ty Lawson, the New Orleans Pelicans
Free agency shopping at the end of July is similar to waiting all month for the giant coupon booklet from your neighborhood grocery store. With that in mind, which players will be this year’s bargains on the clearance shelf? Can you find a scoring guard and a big man off the bench with a $2.8 million mid-level exception? Yes, that is somewhat akin to a two-for-one deal on soon-to-expire potato chips at your favorite grocery store. Some of the unrestricted free agents in
Has Daryl Morey finally landed his third big fish? After his well-chronicled search for the “third-best player on a championship team” led to narrow misses on the likes of Chris Bosh and LaMarcus Aldridge, the GM of the Houston Rockets finally made a big splash this summer with his trade for Ty Lawson, the talented-but-troubled point guard formerly of the Denver Nuggets. [Read more…]