NBA Rumors: Latest on Michael Beasley, Drew Gooden and More
The first seven days of the NBA free-agency period got the offseason off to an exciting start, featuring several players making surprising team changes and altering the league’s power structure.
A lot of the remaining moves to be made will be smaller ones. That doesn’t mean, however, they’ll be irrelevant to what will happen next season or in the ones to follow.
Today, we’ll focus our attention on three relatively low-profile players who have been featured in recent rumors.
Michael Beasley
After spending the majority of last season away from the NBA with the Shandong Golden Stars in the Chinese Basketball Association, Michael Beasley returned with a flourish in March. The 27-year-old forward appeared in 20 games for the Houston Rockets, setting career highs in points (25.3), rebounds per 36 minutes (9.7) and field-goal percentage (52.2), per Basketball-Reference.com.
According to Jonathan Feigen of the Houston Chronicle, it looks like the Rockets want to keep him around for at least another season:
The decision should be a no-brainer for Houston. Beasley is in line to make approximately $1.4 million in 2016-17, and he was arguably the team’s third-best player once he arrived. The Rockets’ second-best player from last year, Dwight Howard, has joined the Atlanta Hawks, which is all the more reason for Beasley to stay.
It’s likely the former No. 2 overall pick will reprise his role as the designated bench scorer, where he seemed to thrive in Houston at the end of the year. Beasley will never live up to the superstar expectations people had for him, but it’s not too late for him to salvage a respectable NBA career.
Drew Gooden
Even at the ripe old age of 34 years old, Drew Gooden is garnering some attention from NBA teams. Though the Washington Wizards are planning to forgo his team option for next season, per ESPN.com’s Marc Stein, The Undefeated's Marc J. Spears reported a variety of squads are interested in acquiring Gooden:
The center is not good enough to be a rotation player anymore, though. He struggled with calf injuries throughout the 2015-16 season, but he shot a miserable 32.0 percent from the field in the 30 games he played. His 10.0 rebounds per 36 minutes, per Basketball-Reference.com, were respectable but not when combined with his porous, slow-footed defense.
The team that acquires him will undoubtedly be looking for him to be a positive locker-room influence on young players and a quality morale-booster for the team. In that case, the Los Angeles Lakers might be the best fit as long as he wouldn't take meaningful minutes away from any of the team’s youngsters.
Of course, there’s also the chance he rediscovers the three-point stroke he was starting to develop in the 2015 playoffs (he averaged 1.2 long-distance makes per game in that postseason). In that case, don’t be surprised if he earns 10 to 15 minutes per game for a Lakers team that could use some spacing.
Boban Marjanovic
One of the most productive rookies in the 2015-16 season wasn't drafted, and he wasn’t a name many diehard NBA fans even knew about until the San Antonio Spurs signed him last summer.
Boban Marjanovic burst onto the scene as a fan favorite in San Antonio with his prodigious size (7’3”, 290 lbs), massive hands and serious game (21.0 points, 13.7 rebounds and 1.6 blocks per 36 minutes, according to Basketball-Reference.com). While his lack of versatility and quickness make him an awkward fit in the modern NBA, there’s still a place for him.
That place will likely be with the Detroit Pistons. Per Stein, Detroit will sign Marjanovic to a three-year, $21 million offer sheet.
He is a restricted free agent, so the Spurs would have three days to match the offer. But Stein noted we shouldn’t count on that happening:
This seems like the best move for both parties. San Antonio needs more athleticism in its frontcourt, and it agreed to sign a cheaper option in Dewayne Dedmon on Thursday, according to The Vertical’s Shams Charania.
Meanwhile, Marjanovic will have more of an opportunity to succeed in a thinner Pistons frontcourt than he would've in San Antonio, which already has two big-minute guys in LaMarcus Aldridge and Pau Gasol.
