Wednesday Bolts – 7.20.16

Kevin Pelton of ESPN Insider on best available free agents: “Waiters made progress

toward being a useful NBA role player last season. Let’s not overstate the case, though. Waiters still posted a sub-.500 true shooting percentage during the regular season, and even in the playoffs his true shooting (.520) was still worse than league average. As a 3-and-D role player, Waiters is only OK in both categories. He’s a career 33.4 percent 3-point shooter and, though he has become more diligent as an individual defender, Waiters’ focus tends to wander off the ball. Still, he’s capable of improving at 24, and there’s a place for Waiters in the league somewhere.”

Erik Horne: “Westbrook’s salary for the upcoming season is currently $17.8 million. A re-negotiation of Westbrook’s final season would bump him up to a maximum salary of $26.5 million. The idea around league circles was that with the salary cap rising again in 2017 to $102 million, waiting for free agency would net Westbrook more money. Should he go to free agency, however, he’d miss out on his raise this season: $8.7 million. It would rate out to a $7.4 million loss should Westbrook sign elsewhere over four years. A Westbrook re-negotiation wouldn’t be the Thunder’s first. OKC pulled it off with Nick Collison in 2010.”

Enes Kanter has been receiving death threats.

Draymond Green on his friendship with KD:  “Me and KD are friends. People making it seem like I texted him every day like, ‘Yo, we want you to come to the Warriors!’ I text him, he texts me, like, ‘What’s up? How you doing?’ A lot of times, people forget we’re human. We go through a lot of the same stuff when it comes to dealing with everything, so sometimes, it’s just good to hear from a brother who is going through some stuff, like, ‘How are you doing with this? How are you dealing with that?’ It’s refreshing. So I think, more than anything … people are like, ‘He’s calling KD during the season, they’re recruiting him.’ For what? No need to do that. We’re friends! I never thought it was a problem being someone’s friend. But that’s what people are making it out to be. At this point, it don’t even matter anymore … obviously.”

Talking about the day basketball in Seattle basically died.

Kevin Durant had sads: “For a few days after, I didn’t leave my bed, because I was like, ‘If I walk outside somebody might just hit me with their car, or say anything negative to me.’ Like I said, I never had this reputation, and so many people who don’t even watch basketball are telling me congratulations and good luck going forward. It’s crazy how big I got and how big this got … I mean, I’ve been somewhere for so long, and then to make a change like that, [which] nobody knew was coming, that nobody didn’t think I would do, of course I didn’t know how it would be received afterward. But at some point, I just said, ‘Look, man, life goes on. Life moves on, and I can’t hide forever,’ so I just had to face it.”