When you watch Malik Monk play for the Los Angeles Lakers, there is a fairly obvious comparison that comes to mind whenever he takes the floor.
Monk is a score-first gunner and a flashy player most useful as a high-volume offensive threat in the second unit. Although he isn’t exactly much of a passer or defender, his ability to heat up fast as a scorer makes it worth dealing with his inefficiencies and inconsistencies.
It feels awfully similar to how many would describe former Lakers wing, Nick Young, who is perhaps more famously known by his nickname, Swaggy P. As it turns out, Monk told reporters that he actually was inspired by Young.
Monk, however, didn’t mention anything about their similar playing styles.
Malik Monk said he was 17 when he heard Nick Young said he only got tattoos on his left arm because his right arm, featuring his shooting hand, was “strictly for buckets,” and so Monk started doing the same thing. He almost has a full sleeve on his L arm but his R is off limits
The 23-year-old, who is already in his fifth season in the league, explained to reporters that he was actually inspired by Young’s tattoos.
During his time in the NBA, Young said that he only had tattoos on his left arm because his right arm was “strictly for buckets” and that resonated with Monk. The former Kentucky standout has tattoos covering his left arm but he doesn’t have any on his right arm.
Back in 2017, my colleague Andrew Joseph wrote an excellent feature on Monk. Here is what he said about Monk’s ink and body art:
Malik initially planned on getting one tattoo. He didn’t like the pain, but those plans quickly changed because, as Marcus insisted, “They’re addictive.” His tattoos tell the story of the people and place that made him who he is – his family and Lepanto. That is where Marcus, who is 12 years older than Malik, grew up before becoming a star wide receiver at Arkansas and a two-sport professional athlete.
Monk has scored at least 18 points in four of the last five games for the Lakers. He has started just six games for Los Angeles so far this season, however, his team has won four of those games.
Who knows whether his success has anything to do with the fact that his right arm is too sacred for ink? However, he’s playing well of late, and that alone is reason enough for fans of the Lakers to get excited.
Former NBA star Nick Young weighed in on the awful disparity between the women’s and men’s teams in Indianapolis at their respective NCAA tournaments, with athletes showing the stark differences between weight rooms and food offerings on social media.
Per multiple tweets screengrabbing from an ESPN Instagram post, his @swaggyp1 account replied, “Man y’all not bringing in the big bucks y’all the JV team and it’s cool.”
That’s, of course, horribly sexist and very, very wrong.
Young then appeared to address the comments on his Twitter account, claiming he was hacked and that “I love women I would never !”
The NBA will allow teams to sign a replacement player if there’s an injury, a positive COVID-19 test or a player who chooses to sit out.
As the NBA prepares to resume the 2019-20 season in July, more details about the league’s plan are coming to light. In the event of an injury or a positive COVID-19 test during training camp or the regular season, teams will be able to sign replacement players from the free-agent pool.
The NBA will allow each team to bring 17 players (including their two-way guys) to Disney’s Wide World of Sports. There won’t be a limit on how many replacement players a team can sign, according to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski. Once the playoffs start on August 17, teams won’t be able to add any replacement players.
Every night, players will be tested for COVID-19; if a player tests positive, they must self-quarantine for 10-14 days while their team continues playing.
Not only will replacement players be necessary in the event of positive tests, they also could be called upon if a player is injured. Most teams will arrive in Orlando healthier than usual at this point in the season thanks to the four-month break, but a number of trainers and players have expressed concern that there could be more injuries than usual when the season resumes. After all, players have been working out on their own since mid-March and it’s hard to mimic game movements and intensity while training alone. Ramping back up slowly with a training camp (and potentially two or three exhibition games) should help, but there’s still increased injury risk.
Because this is an unprecedented situation, people around the NBA have no idea how teams will approach this transaction window and how many replacement players will be signed.
“I’m not sure if teams will rush to sign guys,” an agent said. “NBA rosters are already the biggest of any major sport in terms of the ratio of players on the roster to players on the court/field,” the agent explained. “In the NBA, it’s 15:5 (or 3:1) whereas it’s 25:9 (or 2.8:1) in MLB and 53:22 (or 2.4:1) in the NFL. And that doesn’t even include two-way players. I’m sure every team is aware of all the available G League guys and free agents. But in the playoffs, most rotations shrink to nine or 10 guys anyway. So, if you have 15 players, you should have five extra guys.”
“I’m curious to see if teams will sign free agents,” one Western Conference executive added. “I have no idea what will happen. At the end of the day, we’re just talking about a 15th man most likely, right?”
One Eastern Conference general manager pointed out that some teams may not consider signing replacement players at all, even if there is an injury or a positive COVID-19 test. Since a replacement player would have to quarantine for 10-14 days before playing, the team’s injured or sick player may be close to returning by the time the replacement player is finally able to take the court.
“I think as long as a team doesn’t have multiple players who get sick at the same time, they won’t sign anyone,” the general manager said. “I think most teams will just wait for their sick player to return.”
Some NBA teams with an open roster spot may decide to sign a free agent prior to arriving in Orlando rather than waiting until an injury or positive test occurs to address their depth. Technically, this player wouldn’t be a “replacement player,” but he’d be stashed on their roster in case of emergency. This would allow the player to go through training camp with the team as well as the initial quarantine period in Orlando. Then, if there is an injury or positive test, he would be able to play right away rather than having to quarantine for 10-14 days upon arrival like a replacement player would have to do.
Recently, there’s been a lot of discussion about how some players may choose not to play when the season resumes in Orlando. In recent weeks, a number of executives brought up this possibility and openly wondered what would happen if their players sit out because they didn’t want to be in the bubble for months and risk their health. Now, some players are also concerned that resuming play would shift the public’s focus away from the Black Lives Matter movement.
While it’s possible that enough NBA players speaking up would force the NBPA to back out of the plan to resume play, it seems more likely that the NBA will just allow each player to make their own decision when it comes to participating. If a player chooses to sit out, their team will resume play without them. These players wouldn’t face any consequences (aside from not being paid) and NBA teams would be allowed to sign a replacement player to take their place, according to a recent article by Wojnarowski.
There’s also some concern that players on fringe playoff teams will opt to play, but then want to leave the bubble or sit out as soon as their team is mathematically eliminated from the postseason. Players won’t want to put their health at risk and stay in the bubble if they aren’t playing for something. Some players (such as Damian Lillard) have already said that they wouldn’t risk their health to participate in meaningless games, and who could blame them?
“I feel like the eighth seed and the ninth seed could partially be determined by whose schedule sets them up against teams who are ‘tanking’ at the end,” said one Western Conference executive.
DeMarcus Cousins is one of the free agents who’s eligible to be signed. (Steve Mitchell-USA TODAY Sports)
Interestingly, not all free agents are eligible to be signed as replacement players.
In order to be eligible, a player had to be on an NBA or G League roster this season or last season. Players who were overseas as of March 11, 2020 (when the NBA season was suspended) are not eligible to be signed, which rules out some notable free agents such as Lance Stephenson, Donatas Motiejunas, Greg Monroe and Miles Plumlee. If a player started the season overseas but got a FIBA clearance before March 11, they are eligible to be signed as long as they were on an NBA or G League roster in 2019-20 or 2018-19 (like Willie Reed, for example, who was in Greece to start the season but then got his FIBA clearance and signed with a G League team).
There are plenty of of notable free agents and former G League players who are eligible to be signed including DeMarcus Cousins, Isaiah Thomas, Darren Collison, Jamal Crawford, Iman Shumpert, JR Smith, Nik Stauskas, Kenneth Faried, Tyler Zeller, Jerian Grant, Corey Brewer, Tyler Johnson, Jodie Meeks, Michael Beasley, Nick Young, Trey Burke, Allen Crabbe, Jordan Bell, Justin Anderson, Tim Frazier, Tyrone Wallace, Ivan Rabb, Jarrod Uthoff, Amile Jefferson, Jonah Bolden, Tyler Ennis, Josh Magette, JP Macura, Ryan Broekhoff and Yante Maten among others.
While it’ll be interesting to see how the 22 NBA teams in the bubble utilize the replacement players, the eight teams who aren’t resuming play will be allowed to sign players during this transaction window too. Don’t be surprised if some of these teams take advantage of this opportunity to add a free agent and acquire their Bird rights.
“I would be on the lookout for a smart non-bubble team to add someone during the transaction window,” one NBA agent said. “Any team can sign guys from that same pool of talent and, I assume, pay guys the same pro-rated amount.”
In Wojnarowski’s article about replacement players, he confirmed that “the eight teams left out of the Orlando resumption are allowed to waive or sign players during the transaction window,” although “they cannot sign a player to a two-way contract.”
It’s worth noting that a lot of these details are still being worked out and nothing is official as of yet. Several agents and executives pointed out that they’re receiving these updates through social media, just like the rest of us, and awaiting further instruction from the league or NBPA.
HoopsHype’s new series gives an inside look at shoe deals, with part two focusing on the negotiations and incentives in sneaker contracts.
This is part two of a four-part series that gives readers a behind-the-scenes look at shoe deals and the sneaker free agency process, with insight from various NBA agents, sneaker executives and industry experts. You can read Part 1 here.
When an NBA executive and an agent are negotiating an NBA contract, they are restricted by the salary cap and they must follow all of the rules outlined in the Collective Bargaining Agreement. When a sneaker-company executive and an agent are negotiating a shoe deal, there are no such restrictions, which allows both sides to be very creative during the talks.
Nowhere is this creativity more evident than in the incentives that are included in shoe deals. When sneaker deals leak, we often hear that the player will earn “up to” a certain amount. That’s because there are a ton of performance-based bonuses included in most deals, so it’s difficult to project exactly how much money the player will actually take home.
There are individual incentives for averaging certain stats, leading the NBA in scoring, playing a certain number of games, winning an end-of-season award (such as MVP), making an All-Star team, All-NBA team or All-Rookie team and so on. There are also team-based bonuses for winning a certain number of games, making the playoffs, advancing in the postseason, making it to the NBA Finals, winning a championship (and playing a certain number of minutes), etc.
According to ESPN’s Nick DePaula, players sometimes earn $300,000 for being selected as an All-Star, $250,000 for winning the dunk contest and $25,000-to-$50,000 for participating in an All-Star Saturday contest. When players are snubbed from the All-Star Game and other honors, part of the reason why they’re often upset is because they are missing out on a lucrative bonus.
There are also reductions that are negotiated into these deals. For example, it’s common for contracts to have a games-played threshold where the player will actually lose money if they don’t play in a certain number of contests (and 60 games is commonly used). Also, one brand does a threshold bonus where a player can earn a $250,000 bonus if their points per game and rebounds per game add up to 26 or higher, according to DePaula. But if their point average and rebound average add up to fewer than 16, there’s a $250,000 reduction.
Shaquille O’Neal (Photo by Lisa Lake/Getty Images for Reebok)
Interestingly, some companies include a small-market reduction as well. Just as brands give players a bonus for being in a large market (such as Los Angeles or New York), they’ll significantly dock their pay if they land in certain small markets. Players are essentially being fined for ending up in a small-market city, even if it’s not the player’s choice.
“I’ve seen some brands include a 20-percent reduction for landing in certain small markets,” DePaula said. “I know for a fact that one brand had Sacramento and Orlando among others on that list of markets.”
“Yes, that’s definitely a clause that exists in contracts,” one shoe-company executive confirmed on the condition of anonymity. “There are bonuses or reductions based on the player’s market. If the player goes to a major market like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago or Miami, the brand is going to get more exposure. They’ll be playing in more nationally televised games and get more media coverage.”
Keep in mind, this is all up for negotiation, so an agent can push back against a small-market reduction if they don’t want it in the contract.
“It’s a give-and-take,” one NBA agent said. “If you’re going to allow a reduction like that to be put in place, what are you getting in return that makes it worth it to include that? The main reduction incentives that you see in sneaker contracts (and all endorsement contracts) are related to injuries. If a guy isn’t playing, there are opportunities for brands to roll back their pay. There are also moral clauses, where the player’s contract could be affected if the player does something of moral turpitude.”
Sneaker companies often prefer giving a player an incentive-laden deal rather than a large guaranteed salary.
“Now, a lot of brands don’t want to pay big base salaries,” said AND1’s head of sports marketing Dexter Gordon. “If you sign a guy to a deal with a big base salary and he has a bad season, you’re locked into paying that base salary and you’re like, ‘Ugh.’ If it’s an incentive-laden deal, it’s safer. If the player does well, they’ll make more money and everyone from the brand is happy too.”
Even if a player signs an incentive-laden deal, they’ll still have a base salary of some sort and that must be negotiated as well. While NBA salaries are available to the public, it’s tougher to find out contract details when it comes to endorsement deals. So, how do agents come up with an asking price and ensure that their client is getting a fair deal?
“You try to find what the market is and while it’s not definitive like it is when you’re negotiating an NBA contract, you hear rumors and dig for information to find out what other players were paid,” said a top NBA agent. “You also have to talk to every company. By having conversations with every company as opposed to just one or two, you get a valuation and understand what the market will bear for that particular client.”
“Larger agencies have a clear-cut advantage when determining market values for players,” former NBA agent Matt Babcock said. “They will naturally have a better grip on the marketplace, as they engage in more negotiations with each shoe company due to representing more clients.”
Sometimes, an agent has to think outside the box when trying to sell a brand on their client.
“If your guy isn’t a star, it’s your job to drum up interest by finding your player’s niche and focusing on that,” one NBA agent said. “Maybe your player is in a market that Nike wants to be in because they don’t have any players on that team. There are also certain guys who fall into a streetwear or cultural-ambassador category, where it’s more about off-court appeal than anything. With those kinds of guys – like PJ Tucker and Nick Young – you approach the negotiations differently. You need to figure out an angle or niche to be able to sell your guy to brands.”
PJ Tucker of the Houston Rockets (Photo by Bob Levey/Getty Images
In addition to incentives and base salary, agents also negotiate what the player’s product allowance will be, whether they’ll have a signature shoe (and, if so, the royalties associated with that), the company’s charitable support (as some players seek support for their AAU team or camps) and so on. There are other details that need to be ironed out too. Will the player be making any appearances? Will he be in any commercials or activations? Will the player go on an offseason tour to promote the brand (and, if so, will he be going overseas)?
Every agent mentioned that their client’s position and style of play have a significant impact on negotiations and how the player is perceived by the shoe companies. Many big men around the NBA are on merch deals. By now, you’ve probably heard the adage: “Big men can’t sell shoes.”
“I think that’s how a lot of companies think,” AND1’s Gordon said. “When you’re trying to sell to consumers, especially kids, they identify more with guards. Not many kids are going to grow up to be Shaquille O’Neal. But if you have a guy like Stephen Curry or, our guy, Fred VanVleet, a kid can say, ‘Hey, if I work hard, I can become that.’ I mean, Steph Curry looks like a high school kid! (laughs) The consumers we’re targeting can identify more with guards. Also, guards are exciting! A lot of kids don’t see back-to-the-basket bigs as exciting.”
For many years, sneaker companies primarily went after guards. In recent years, unicorns like Giannis Antetokounmpo and Kevin Durant have emerged, so now brands target “perimeter players.” However, with Joel Embiid getting his first signature shoe later this year and Zion Williamson just signing the richest rookie deal since LeBron James, could this be the year that big men prove that they can sell shoes and force companies to update their approach?
“Joel Embiid’s signature sneaker is going to be a really interesting case study because there’s no current center that has a signature shoe, so we’ll see how that does,” DePaula added. “What Joel brings is his ability to go viral on social media whenever he wants. I think there’s some validity to the phrase, ‘Big men can’t sell shoes.’ It is fairly true. We’ll see if Joel can break the mold because, historically, it’s been challenging for them.”
Be sure to check back later this week for part three of this series, which looks at what happens during the sneaker-free-agency-process, how brands recruit players and more.
For both basketball and contractual reasons, the Houston Rockets may need to make a decision this week about Ben McLemore’s future.
Last week, the Houston Rockets waived Ryan Anderson just days before his salary was set to pass his partial guarantee of $500,000.
In addition to freeing up a roster spot, the transaction limited the amount of future money and potential luxury tax payments that might have had to be made for a player who did not figure into the team’s longer-term plans. Payments up to the $500,000 guarantee were essentially a sunk cost once Anderson made the opening-day roster, but anything beyond that total needed to make sense on the merits of his on-court play.
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By Sunday, they could have a similar decision to make with regards to 26-year-old swingman Ben McLemore, who is poised to exceed the $500,000 partial guarantee in his contract on Dec. 1, 2019.
Dates after which Rockets players will out-earn their partial guarantees by still being on the roster (for luxury tax purposes):
It’s certainly not as easy of a decision with McLemore as it was with Anderson. After all, the veteran forward never cracked the team’s rotation and only played in two games this season.
McLemore, on the other hand, has played in all 17 games for the Rockets (11-6) this season, and his minutes per game jumped from 7.3 in October to 24.2 in November. He even started four games at small forward when usual starter Danuel House Jr. was out due to injury. Both head coach Mike D’Antoni and superstar guard James Harden have praised McLemore at various points this season.
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The issue for McLemore, however, is that his primary role — at least in theory — is a fairly replaceable one. In effect, he’s supposed to be the bench shooter for Houston in place of Gerald Green, who is lost for the 2019-20 season with a broken foot.
But despite getting numerous open looks off the attention drawn by Harden and Russell Westbrook, McLemore is shooting just 29.6% from three-point range on the season on 5.8 three-pointers per game. With 98 total attempts, that’s not an insignificant sample size, and it’s hard to justify significant minutes at that level for a team as dependent on three-pointers as D’Antoni’s Rockets. In his last four games, McLemore has had two games of 0-of-5 and 0-of-6 from three-point range.
That's not an overly complex role. They had success signing Gerald Green midway through the 2017-18 season and immediately plugging him in, and there are accomplished vets (J.R. Smith, Nick Young, Jamal Crawford) who are available right now.
By contrast, Green connected on 36.0% of his three-pointers over the last two seasons with the Rockets.
Internally, D’Antoni could consider giving some of McLemore’s time to young prospects Chris Clemons or Gary Clark — though neither would be a drop-in replacement for McLemore’s usual wing minutes. At 5-foot-9, Clemons is a half-foot shorter, while the 6-foot-6 Clark has primarily played in the NBA at power forward and even as a stretch center.
The simplest change could be an external signing, where several proven veteran wings are available. Keep in mind, there is precedent for D’Antoni’s Rockets to make such a change on the fly, given the in-season signings of Green two years ago and House and Austin Rivers last season.
After last Friday’s loss in Los Angeles, The Athletic‘s Kelly Iko wrote that the Rockets were not yet considering such a move.
Concerning the injuries to Houston’s snipers, Rockets fans have pointed to the free-agent pool of shooters like J.R. Smith, Jamal Crawford, and Nick Young — names I brought up in conversation — but there’s no sense of desperation to go that route. Internally, they believe the contributions of Ben McLemore and even calling up players like Gary Clark can hold them above water while Eric Gordon and Danuel House return to the fold.
On a late-game collapse, coaching controversy, heavy whistle, a bevy of Harden traps and double-teams, and questionable decision-making, Rockets-Clippers should be interesting moving forward. https://t.co/9HJ2ZbnbYD
But things can change quickly in the NBA. McLemore went 0-for-6 from long range in Sunday’s loss to the Mavs, which puts the Rockets on their longest losing streak of the year at three games.
Since Gordon isn’t expected back until late December, there could be a sense of urgency to do something sooner. With Harden on a historic scoring binge, teams are double-teaming him more frequently than ever, which makes it imperative that other players on the court with him take advantage of the resulting open shots and four-on-three situations.
McLemore and Rivers combined to shoot 0-9 from 3. All the looks were really good.
That just isn't gonna stop the double teams. 108 ORTG is fine, but that rating would've been much better if these 2 guys just hit their shots.
The Rockets just have 0 shooters off the bench RN.
Moreover, from a logistics perspective, this week could be an ideal opportunity to consider changes. In addition to Sunday being a key inflection point with McLemore’s contract, the Rockets are in Houston all week and have just one game (Wednesday versus Miami) between Sunday’s loss to Dallas and Saturday’s game versus Atlanta.
That means ample practice time for the Rockets, and an opportunity for D’Antoni to tweak his rotation, should he and the team deem it necessary.
To be clear, the Rockets wouldn’t have to release McLemore to change their rotation. They already have an open roster spot after waiving Anderson, and there’s also the option of replacing his minutes internally with the likes of Clemons or Clark. But if Houston deems McLemore unworthy of rotation minutes, it may not be not worth having him occupy a roster spot and the potential luxury-tax payments on it down the line.
After all, the Rockets already have the NBA’s third-highest payroll for the 2019-20 season, and owner Tilman Fertitta hasn’t yet shown a willingness in his tenure to spend deep into the luxury tax.
The one exception could be if the Rockets felt they needed McLemore as salary filler for a potential in-season trade, since any new signing — unlike McLemore, who was signed in the offseason — could not be aggregated for trade purposes for 60 days.
Just thinking about these contract guarantee dates – its entirely possible that they instead revise the guarantee amount and date, and use as flexible trade salary.
There’s also the option, of course, that they continue using McLemore in the same role they have for weeks. It’s not as if there isn’t a case for it. Even with the losing streak, Houston’s current stretch of eight wins in 11 games would be good for a 60-win pace over a full season. In that run, McLemore has averaged nearly 25 minutes per game.
Despite his shooting struggles and occasional defensive issues — at 6-foot-3, he’s quite undersized relative to most small forwards — McLemore still grades out favorably by many metrics. For example, though he shot 0-of-6 in Sunday’s loss, his +4 in the plus/minus category during his 21 minutes was the only positive of any player in D’Antoni’s rotation.
For the season as a whole, McLemore’s defensive rating of 103.9 and overall net rating of 10.9 are both the best of any Rockets rotation player. However, those numbers would appear to fly in the face of both the percentages and the eye test. That’s the dilemma for D’Antoni and GM Daryl Morey as they try and assess his true value to the team.
Looking at the #Rockets bench troika of (injured) Eric Gordon, Austin Rivers and Ben McLemore at the bottom left. The eye test from the Rockets/Mavs game confirms this graph, alright. https://t.co/PbRdlRLx9b
As of Monday, it’s unclear what the final verdict will be. But the Rockets are home in Houston all week, with a stretch of four off days in five days. There’s a clear sense of urgency to turn things around after three straight losses, and they’re well aware that Sunday is a critical inflection point, as it pertains to McLemore’s contract. That makes this subject one to monitor closely as the week progresses.
