Basketball Insiders Week in Review 1/18

Celtics Proactively Rebuilding

Doc Rivers looked on with a smirk. Satisfied and relieved, he exhaled as David Stern congratulated the Los Angeles Lakers on a well-played season.

As the tears streamed back in their locker room and Kobe Bryant plotted his revenge, Stern stood before the better than 17,500 fans in attendance and essentially serenaded them.

“…But there can only be one champion,” he said.

And that champion was, of course, the Boston Celtics.

As the seventh anniversary of that June 17 night approaches, the hope in Boston is that it will not take another seven years to experience that satisfaction again.

In all likelihood, it will not.

Click Here For More

Nikola Vucevic: An All-Star in the Coaches’ Eyes

On the heels of a career-best 34 points and 16 rebounds against the Portland Trail Blazers, Orlando Magic center Nikola Vucevic’s case to be an All-Star has never been stronger. He isn’t getting much love in the fan voting for the starters, receiving just over 68,000 total votes based off of last week’s most recent returns, but the head coaches from around the Eastern Conference who will be voting for the reserves are definitely taking note of his production.

“He’s a heck of a player,” Miami HEAT head coach Erik Spoelstra said. “You can’t just say he’s a good, young player anymore. He’s a very good NBA basketball player who is multi-skilled and a big target. There’s not a whole lot that he can’t do from the center position. He’s shooting the ball great and he’s a good passer and obviously he’s a very efficient post-up player.’’

“Vucevic has been a guy that you hear from multiple coaches around the league about how advanced he is,” Boston Celtics head coach Brad Stevens added. “He may very well be an All-Star center in the East at some point soon.”

Vucevic is leading the Eastern Conference in double-doubles, putting up 18.4 points and 11.1 rebounds a night. He’s doing so while shooting a career-high 52 percent from the field, and handling the increased burden of being a primary offensive option for the Magic exceptionally well.

Click Here For More

It’s All About Contract Options

By Steve Kyler

As the NBA trade season kicks into full gear, not only are NBA teams concerned about would-be free agents, they are also concerned about those players with contract options.

There are 33 players with either player options or early termination options, but they both achieve the same thing: allowing a player to become a free agent. What they do is slightly different.

A player option is a notification to continue the agreement, meaning the player must submit a document stating they wish to stay longer. Where as an early termination option requires the player to submit a document announcing they are choosing to leave.

Click Here For More

Fantasy: Using Game Counts to Win Your League

Fantasy basketball (the head-to-head kind, at least) is kind of weird in that it doesn’t always matter who the best players are; it matters which of the best players are playing the most games in a given week. If Andre Drummond plays five games in a week where Anthony Davis only plays three, Drummond probably is going to be the more valuable fantasy asset during that particular matchup.

Knowing that, it’s important to be aware how weekly game counts will play out the rest of the season for certain players and teams. Any trade you make from here on out should take this information into consideration, as there are some teams with great fantasy schedules down the stretch and some that aren’t quite so good.

More importantly, there are some teams with schedule issues during the most important part of the season: the playoffs.

Here’s a look at how game counts could come into play the rest of the fantasy season:

Click Here For More

The Journey of an Undrafted Rookie

By Alex Kennedy

Every kid who has picked up a basketball and taken the sport even semi-seriously has imagined being drafted. “With the first pick in the 2014 NBA Draft, the [insert your favorite team] select [insert your name] from [insert your favorite college].” The fans in attendance are ecstatic. Your friends and family scream and celebrate. This one sentence from the NBA Commissioner’s mouth changes your life forever.

It’s all symbolic, of course, but it means you finally made it. It means all of your hard work paid off. It means you have joined an exclusive fraternity that millions can only dream about entering. It’s a moment often described as unforgettable – on par with getting married or holding your newborn child for the first time. It’s winning the lottery and realizing a lifelong dream all at once. It’s a fact that follows you for the rest of your life, whether it’s sitting proudly atop your biography or constantly coming up in conversations.

Click Here For More

Free Agent Head Coaches

By Cody Taylor

As the NBA season reaches its halfway point, teams out of the playoff race will begin to think about next season. With the trade deadline just over a month away, teams will begin trading off players for long-term assets and financial flexibility. In that same light, front offices will begin evaluating their coaching staff to determine if there is a better candidate out there that could lead them in the right direction. The process of bringing in a new head coach often takes place during the offseason when the coach can bring in his own staff and start looking for players that best suits his system. While head coaching positions could open up during the season, teams rarely bring in their long-term head coach mid-season and instead opt to promote an assistant until the end of the season.

This list looks at some of the best candidates currently not coaching. While we’re just focused on coaches who are unemployed, it’s worth noting that assistant coaches like Alvin Gentry, Nate McMillan and Lawrence Frank could be mentioned as possible candidates down the road too.

Click Here For More

What Should the Celtics Do With All Their Draft Picks?

Asset (noun): a valuable person or thing; something that is owned by a person, company, etc.

Front office executives stay tight-lipped on a lot of business matters. But Boston Celtics president of basketball operations Danny Ainge doesn’t hide his feelings when it comes to one issue: the value of accumulating draft picks.

“Draft picks are always tradable, players are not,” he replied when asked if there is such a thing as too many picks on Monday. “Draft picks are always assets until sometimes they’re drafted, until they become players, or until they become paid.”

The Celtics have stockpiled an arsenal of future picks into next five years. Some are their own, others are owed, and a handful are conditional. Regardless of where they end up falling in the draft order, the Celtics view them as movable pieces that have value far beyond the players they are eventually used to select.

Click Here For More

How to Reform NBA Contract Extensions

In the 2011 Collective Bargaining Agreement, a priority for the owners was allowing teams to retain their own free agents in the wake of the Big Three convergence in Miami. They instituted a number of key reforms to encourage this, such as limiting sign-and-trades and increasing the amount the prior team could offer in raises relative to a new team. But, as noted in this piece, they almost completely undermined their efforts by limiting extensions in an effort to save them from themselves.

Under the previous CBA, teams gave out ludicrous eight-figure per year extensions to veteran players like Richard Hamilton and Stephen Jackson long before they were due to become free agents. In an effort to curb this, the new CBA limited any extensions for veterans (i.e., players not coming off rookie contracts) to four years, including the current season. Because the “current season” in this instance continues until June 30, the longest extension that can ever be given before a player becomes a free agent is three years.

Click Here For More

No Retirement Plans For Andre Miller

By Lang Greene

The NBA game continues to evolve. Gone are the days of dominant centers roaming the lane. Those guys have been replaced with stretch big men who can play a variety of roles and positions. But while the game on the floor continues to change one aspect of the league still holds true: The NBA is a young man’s league and even the greatest of athletes ultimately fall victim to Father Time.

Wizards point guard Andre Miller,  in his 16th NBA season, has been able to defy time and still remains highly effective in a young man’s game. The 38 year old floor general, in the final year of his current deal worth $4.6 million will be an unrestricted free agent this summer.

Click Here For More

Let’s Trade Jose Calderon

Yesterday, Marc Stein and Ian Begley of ESPN reported that the New York Knicks are looking to trade Jose Calderon and Andrea Bargnani as they continue to clear out their roster.

Calderon was acquired by the Knicks last offseason in the deal that sent Tyson Chandler back to the Dallas Mavericks. Calderon, age 33, has had a disappointing season so far in New York. However, as Stein and Begley pointed out, many teams around the league still value Calderon, who is a great shooter, good distributor and brings veteran experience (including international experience with the Spanish National team).

Calderon may have a limited market, however, considering his age and the fact that he is set to make an average of $7,250,000 per season through 2016-17. The remaining two years on Calderon’s deal limits his value, especially in a league where it seems like every team is set at point guard. Another issue is that any team trading for Calderon cannot send any contracts that go beyond this season back to the Knicks as they are looking to shed salary for the upcoming offseason.

Click Here For More

Cap 101 – The Stretch Provision and Offset

On December 22, the Detroit Pistons waived forward Josh Smith, despite owing him a total of $40.5 million for the 2014-15 season all the way through 2016-17.

Surprisingly, the Pistons have since gone on a tear, climbing to 11th in the Eastern Conference at 14-25, just two games behind the eighth-place Brooklyn Nets after a dreadful start to the season.

Smith hooked up with the Houston Rockets, on a one-year deal via their $2.077 million Bi-Annual Exception.  The Pistons used the Collective Bargaining Agreement’s stretch provision on Smith’s salary.

Click Here For More

Taking the Phoenix Suns to the Next Level

With significantly higher expectations this season following Coach Hornacek’s surprisingly successful initial campaign as a head coach, the Phoenix Suns find themselves in a battle to remain within the playoff picture in an ever-so-tough Western Conference. At 23-18 and currently in what would be the eighth seed, the Suns have relied heavily upon a high-energy and fast-paced, but balanced attack that has been strong enough to at least compete with opponents on most nights.

The million-dollar question around the Valley of the Sun is whether they will use some of their backcourt and swingman depth in order to at least attempt to not only place more distance between themselves and other teams in pursuit of what will eventually be the final playoff spot (the Nuggets are 3.5 games back, but the New Orleans Pelicans trail Phoenix by just one game in the loss column and the Oklahoma City Thunder are lurking close by as well), but also propel this scrappy bunch into a realistic discussion with some of the West’s stronger competition? It’s one thing to beat or compete with a team that’s in the midst of three games in four nights in January, but an entirely different proposition when evaluating whether the Suns are strong enough to beat some of the West’s ‘elite’ in a seven-game series.

Click Here For More