Tag: Backup point guard

Don’t tell rookie Denmon the odds

LAS VEGAS — Even before he arrived at Summer League, Spurs guard Marcus Denmon knew what he was up against.

The team already has 14 players under contract for the 2012-13 season. The league maximum is 15.

A general studies major at Missouri, Denmon is a good enough mathematician to realize the odds of making the Spurs’ final roster are not in his favor.

“Every time you go out and compete, you’re playing for a job,” said Denmon, the lone member of the Spurs’ 2012 draft class, selected 59th overall.

A scoring star at Missouri, where his 17.7 points per game as a senior ranked second in the Big 12, Denmon hasn’t had much of a chance to make an impression so far in Las Vegas.

In three games, he has averaged 5.7 points and 2.3 assists while shooting 37.5 percent, including 1 of 6 from 3-point range.

Seeing time at his college position (shooting guard) and the position most 6-foot-3 players occupy in the NBA (point guard), Denmon’s focus has been on absorbing the reams of new information coming at him in waves.

It’s a learning process he hopes to continue when the Spurs resume Summer League play tonight against Miami.

“I’m a pretty quick learner,” Denmon said. “I think as you continue to play and learn under a system, your play will continue to elevate.”

Backing up Cory Joseph and James Anderson, two players the Spurs want to force-feed minutes while in Vegas, has limited both Denmon’s time and touches.

Spurs assistant Jacque Vaughn, coach of the summer league squad, has been impressed by Denmon’s willingness to fit into a smaller role than he had in college.

“He hasn’t tried to do too much, but has done enough,” Vaughn said. “Which is a lot harder for guys to understand, especially when you’re fighting for a job.

“The best part is he competes,” Vaughn added. “That’s what I want to see in an individual.”

Based on sheer numbers, the most likely destination for Denmon is overseas, or the Development League.

Holding fast to his NBA dream, however, Denmon refuses to be deterred by math.

“The Spurs drafted me because of the talent they feel I have,” Denmon said. “My job is to hold up my end and just come out and play hard.”

Switch for Green: For the first time in his career, Danny Green came to Summer League as a spectator, and not a player.

Still, even after signing a three-year, $12 million contract to return to the Spurs last week, Green could recall his days as a fledgling Cleveland Cavaliers summer-leaguer hoping to play well enough to impress the right people.

“I know what it’s like to be in these guys’ positions, trying to get a job and make a team,” Green said while watching the Spurs’ loss to the Los Angeles Clippers late Wednesday night. “It’s a lot more comfortable, a lot less stressful, being a spectator.”

Green called his contract, the first guaranteed deal of his NBA career, “a stress-reliever.”

Green is one of three starters the Spurs re-signed in hopes of keeping together a roster that advanced to the Western Conference finals before losing to Oklahoma City.

Power forward Tim Duncan and center Boris Diaw are the others. The Spurs also re-upped with backup point guard Patrick Mills.

“It shows the organization had a great deal of confidence in us,” Green said. “We had a really good team.”

jmcdonald@express-news.net

Twitter: @JMcDonald_SAEN

Spurs’ summer schedule

The Spurs’ summer league team has two games remaining in Las Vegas:

Today: vs. Heat, Cox Pavilion, 7 p.m.

Saturday: vs. Mavericks, Cox Pavilion, 5 p.m.

Payday coming for free agent Green

Eleven months ago, Spurs guard Danny Green was on a flight to Slovenia, staring out the window across a vast ocean and toward an unknown future.

He had agreed to spend the NBA lockout overseas, playing for a modest paycheck and some much-needed experience. He did not know if there would be a job waiting for him when he returned stateside.

“It was kind of a difficult situation,” Green said.

Green couldn’t help but flash back to that flight this week, in the early hours of free agency.

After establishing himself as a bona fide NBA player in 2011-12, starting 38 games at shooting guard for a Spurs team that made the Western Conference finals, the 25-year-old Green has earned a pay raise — in San Antonio or elsewhere.

The Spurs have extended Green a $2.7 million qualifying offer, more than triple the pro-rated $854,389 he earned last season, giving the team the right to match any offer sheet he signs on or after July 11.

For the first time in his four NBA offseasons, however, Green can exert a modicum of control over his future.

“It’s the exact opposite position from where I was a year ago,” said Green, who was waived three times in two seasons after becoming Cleveland’s second-round pick in 2009.

“Instead of my agent calling teams, trying to get them interested, teams are calling me. It’s a better position to be in.”

Utah is one team that expressed interest Sunday, the first full day of free agency. Green expects there will be others.

For the Spurs, who ended with the best record in the Western Conference last season at 50-16, the crux of this offseason is to bring back as many pieces as possible, rather than recruit major reinforcements from outside.

Tim Duncan, the Spurs’ 36-year-old pace-setting power forward, is the team’s first free-agent priority.

A notch below are Green, forward Boris Diaw and backup point guard Patrick Mills.

After spending his first two seasons bouncing between Cleveland, San Antonio and the Development League, and beginning 2011-12 as a non-guaranteed training camp invitee, the light went on for Green last season.

He is set to cash in after averaging 9.1 points and 3.5 rebounds and shooting 43.6 percent from 3-point range during his first season as an NBA regular.

Green was the only Spurs player to appear in all 66 games during the regular season and averaged 10.3 points in the first two rounds of the playoffs against Utah and the L.A. Clippers.

The Spurs have shown interest in bringing Green back, despite an 8-for-31 shooting slump against Oklahoma City in the conference finals.

Green says more is at stake for him than just the number of figures on his next paycheck.

“A lot of young guys are just looking for the money,” said Green, who won a national championship at North Carolina in 2009. “For me, it’s a balance of the money, the team, the fit. I’ve been in a winning organization my whole life. I want to continue to be on a winning team.”

Though Green is determined to explore other options during the free-agency process, he says he would like to return to the Spurs.

“I really do like San Antonio,” Green said. “Hopefully, they have faith in me and will do what they need to do to bring me back.”

The Spurs have made an offer. Green’s future, for the first time, is in his own hands.

jmcdonald@express-news.net

Twitter: @JMcDonald_SAEN

Spurs notebook: Bonner’s offseason looks ‘normal’ this time

A week and a half into an offseason that began a few weeks earlier than expected, Spurs forward Matt Bonner has seen his summertime agenda already become sardine-packed.

He’s headed home to New Hampshire this week to spend time with his family, conduct his annual basketball clinic and hike the White Mountains.

In August, he and his wife Nadia are expecting their second child.

And yet, it’s already guaranteed to be a less hectic offseason than last year, when Bonner was part of the negotiating committee charged with finding a peaceable solution to the NBA lockout.

“Last year, going into the offseason was really stressful,” the 32-year-old Bonner said Monday, after a visit to a Spurs youth camp at the University of the Incarnate Word. “Not knowing what was going to happen with the future of the league and if we were even going to play this year.”

With labor peace assured at least for the next six years, Bonner — an executive vice president of the National Basketball Players Association — is looking forward to an offseason heavy on RR and light on discussions of BRI (basketball-related income).

“I don’t have to go to New York twice a week every week at random times for negotiation meetings,” Bonner said.

Bonner’s stint as an all-too-frequent flier lasted from July 1, when the owners locked out players upon the expiration of the league’s collective bargaining agreement, until just after Thanksgiving, when the two sides agreed in principle on a new deal.

Looking back on the compressed 66-game season, which gave way to an NBA Finals between Oklahoma City and Miami that is among the most-watched in league history, Bonner said he takes pride in being a part of the labor solution.

Still, he’s glad he will never have to go through anything like it again.

“There’s a ton of little things that will make this offseason a little more normal,” Bonner said.

Mills considers free agency: Backup point guard Patrick Mills told an Australian website he might opt out of the second year of his contract with the Spurs and test free agency July 1.

“I feel like I need to do my due diligence and really go see what there is to make sure I explore every option,” Mills told TheAge.com.

Signed just after the trade deadline in March, Mills is due $885,120 next season — the veteran minimum — but can become an unrestricted free agent if he chooses to opt out.

The 23-year-old, who next month will play in the London Olympics with the Australian team coached by Spurs assistant Brett Brown, appeared in 16 games this season and averaged 10.3 points and 2.4 assists in 16.3 minutes per game.

“I really enjoy being in San Antonio and being part of that program,” Mills said in the online interview. “I definitely want it done soon … so that I can get it out of the way and go to London with a clear head.”

Spurs’ connections in front-office chatter: According to a Yahoo! Sports report, the Orlando Magic are expected to name a new general manager before the end of the week.

Spurs assistant general manager Dennis Lindsey is one of three announced finalists, along with former New Orleans GM Jeff Bower and Rob Hennigan, Sam Presti’s assistant general manager in Oklahoma City and a former member of the Spurs’ front-office staff.

According to the Philadelphia Daily News, Lindsey is also expected to interview for the president of basketball operations position with the 76ers.

Danny Ferry, the Spurs’ vice president of basketball operations, has also been mentioned as a candidate for the job in Philadelphia.

jmcdonald@express-news.net

Twitter: @JMcDonald_SAEN