NBA Rumors Round-Up
NBA Rumors: Cavs Preparing for Another Big Move?
Jeff Hawkins is an award-winning sportswriter with more than four decades in the industry (print and digital media). A freelance writer/stay-at-home dad since 2008, Hawkins started his career with newspaper stints in Michigan, North Carolina, Florida, Upstate New York and Illinois, where he earned the 2004 APSE first-place award for column writing (under 40,000 circulation). As a beat writer, he covered NASCAR Winston Cup events at NHIS (1999-2003), the NHL's Chicago Blackhawks (2003-06) and the NFL's Carolina Panthers (2011-12). Hawkins penned four youth sports books, including a Michael Jordan biography. Hawkins' main hobbies include mountain bike riding, 5k trail runs at the Whitewater Center in Charlotte, N.C., and live music.
All posts by Jeff HawkinsUpdated16 Oct 2023
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The Boston Celtics announced today that they have traded guard Keith Bogans and two future conditional Sacramento second round picks to the Cleveland Cavaliers in exchange for forwards Dwight Powell, Erik Murphy and Malcolm Thomas, guard John Lucas III, 2016 and 2017 second round picks from Cleveland and a trade exception.
This offseason, the Cavaliers were able to flip some of their non-guaranteed contracts (Alonzo Gee and Scotty Hopson) in exchange for Brendan Haywood and Dwight Powell – the latter of which was just traded in the package for Boston’s Keith Bogans. Hopson was signed to a large non-guaranteed deal at the end of last season for the sole purpose of trading him this summer, and Cleveland was essentially able to turn his $1.45 million non-guaranteed deal into Haywood and Bogans.
The interesting thing about the Cavaliers-Celtics trade is that it positions Cleveland to do the exact same thing next summer, since after this season Haywood’s deal is non-guaranteed at $10,522,500 and Bogans’ deal is non-guaranteed at $5,513,435. That means that Hopson (and several other small pieces) allowed the Cavaliers to acquire over $16 million in attractive non-guaranteed deals for next summer.
By stockpiling these non-guaranteed deals, Cleveland could trade for a star-level player and the team parting ways with the star wouldn’t have to take back a single dollar. Throw in some draft picks and maybe a young asset, and suddenly Cleveland has a very interesting package to offer as they try to further improve their star-studded core of LeBron James, Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love.
David Griffin has done a fantastic job as Cleveland’s general manager since landing the job, and this is just another example of his excellent work.
Thunder general manager Sam Presti said Thursday he hasn’t considered trading guard Reggie Jackson if no contract extension is reached before the Oct. 31 deadline.
“We don’t look at [Jackson] as anything other than a core member,” Presti said. “We want to invest in Reggie. There’s not a lack of clarity in that regard. Figuring out how best we do that is my job. And I’m going to do everything I can because I believe that he’s a great example of a lot of things that we try to do here. He was drafted, he’s been developed by our coaches and our support staff and the next step is to keep him with us for a long time.”
“That’s just not something we’ve considered,” Presti said about the possibility of [trading] Jackson. “I think with him in particular he’s a guy we see being here for a long time. It may not be something we get solved in October, but the system is set up to try and give you an early opportunity to do that and we’ll try to take advantage of that. We want to get things done in advance if possible, but if not, we’ll pick it up next season and do it in earnest again.”
“We’re going to give it our maximum, best chance to make it happen, knowing that if it doesn’t, we come back at it next summer and pick it up again,” Presti said. “If it doesn’t happen, all it means is it hasn’t happened yet, and we’re looking to continue to progress in those conversations.”
Sam Presti is saying all of the right things when it comes to extension talks with Reggie Jackson. The two sides have until Oct. 31 to reach an agreement on an extension, otherwise Jackson will become a restricted free agent next summer.
Presti said that the team hasn’t even considered trading Jackson if they aren’t able to extend him, which is a question that had to be asked since they traded James Harden to the Houston Rockets under similar circumstances earlier in his career.
Earlier this month, Jackson told The Oklahoman that he hopes to start for the Thunder this year, adding that he “never envisioned coming off the bench.”
Presti said that he was fine with these comments since it shows Jackson is confident in himself and believes he can be an important piece of the team going forward.
The Warriors won’t look to re-sign center Jermaine O’Neal to fill their open roster spot, according to general manager Bob Myers, who two days earlier had left the door open to such a move.
“He’s not going to come to (training) camp,” Myers, who is O’Neal’s former agent, said Thursday. “We’re going to go with our guys, our three centers we have — (Andrew) Bogut, (Festus) Ezeli, (Ognjen) Kuzmic.
“I think he’s still processing what he wants to do, still in the process of figuring it out. But for our purposes, he’s not going to be with us…He probably won’t be with us next year. The reason is nothing detrimental in regards to him, but we just have three guys that we have at the position, so he’d (have been) the fourth center, so that’s more why. Nothing negative. He was fantastic for us last year.”
via Diamond Leung of the Bay Area News Group
Jermaine O’Neal played well over the last two seasons, first with the Phoenix Suns and most recently with the Golden State Warriors.
The 35-year-old averaged 7.9 points and 5.5 rebounds in 44 games for Golden State last season and was a strong locker room presence for the team. However, Myers made it pretty clear that he won’t be back with Golden State this season. This could always change if the Warriors had an injury (and with Andrew Bogut, that’s always possible), but these comments were pretty clear cut.
O’Neal is considering retirement, according to Leung.
