- John Reid of The Times-Picayune: "With a directive from ownership to fill the team’s basketball operations staff with the best people in the business, New Orleans Hornets president Hugh Weber hired San Antonio Spurs Vice President of Basketball Operations Dell Demps on Wednesday to become the team’s general manager. Demps, who will be formally introduced next week, emerged as the front-runner for the Hornets’ job last week after interviewing with Weber and Coach Monty Williams twice in Las Vegas. Demps was pursued by the Phoenix Suns for the same position but turned down the Suns’ offer Tuesday night after going through a lengthy interview in Arizona on Monday. 'From the moment I spoke to Hugh and Monty about this opportunity, I could tell something special was building within the organization,' Demps said in a release. 'I am excited for this opportunity because the Hornets are a great organization with a lot of positive pieces. I would like to thank (co-owners) George (Shinn), Gary (Chouest), and Hugh for their faith in me and am truly looking forward to also working with Monty.'"
- Marcus Thompson II of The Oakland Tribune: "Wednesday afternoon, rookie guard Jeremy Lin signed his two-year deal with the Warriors. The moment the ink touched the contract, he became perhaps the most popular player on the roster. 'I don't think I've ever been a part of something like this before,' Lin, a Palo Alto native, said from the players' lounge at the Warriors downtown facility in Oakland. 'This is unbelievable. Words can't really express my feelings right now and how happy I am and how grateful I am. This is crazy.' ... Lin-sanity has hit the Bay Area since word of Lin's intention to sign with the Warriors broke Tuesday. That the undrafted rookie out of Palo Alto High and Harvard with a partially guaranteed contract had an introductory news conference is odd enough. But Lin drew more media than the draft and the news conference introducing the No. 6 overall pick, Ekpe Udoh, illustrating Lin's pull in the Bay Area. But that wasn't the only reason Lin signed with the Warriors. According to multiple sources, he got offers from the Dallas Mavericks and the Los Angeles Lakers. He even got a counteroffer that possibly topped the Warriors' deal. In the end, Lin couldn't pass up the chance to play for his favorite team growing up. Plus, he's been assured he'll have a chance to compete for playing time."
- Jeff McDonald of the San Antonio Express-News: "The Spurs announced Richard Jefferson’s
return in a spartan news conference Wednesday on a vacant concourse of the AT&T Center. The man of the hour didn’t even attend. Even without the hoopla of a year earlier, general manager R.C. Buford considered it a bottom-line banner day for the Spurs. 'We wouldn’t have been as good a team had Richard decided to play someplace else,' Buford said. 'That’s the benefit to us.' If nothing else, Jefferson’s second season with the Spurs should come without the sticker shock of his first, when he was the team’s fifth-leading scorer at a salary second only to Tim Duncan’s. Jefferson’s new four-year, $38.9-million deal is good for his own pocketbook in the long-term, and good for the Spurs’ 2010-11 payroll in the short. All along, Jefferson’s agent, Todd Eley, said his client chose to enter free agency in order to secure a multi-year contract in lieu of hitting the market next summer, when the NBA’s collective bargaining agreement expires and salary rules will be reshuffled. 'I think we were able to accommodate what we were looking to do and meet his goals as well,' Buford said. In the end, the Spurs needed Jefferson as much as Jefferson needed the Spurs." - Kerry Eggers of The Portland Tribune: "Trail Blazer executives Chad Buchanan and Joe Cronin were sitting in a hotel room in Las Vegas last week, going over details of the offer sheet that will pay Wesley Matthews $32.6 million over the next five years. Pen in hand, the 23-year-old swing man paused, looking at Buchanan and Cronin. 'I want you guys to know this is not going to change me,' Matthews said. 'It’s not going to change my work ethic, it’s not going to change my passion, it’s not going to change what I can do to help your team win games. I want to make sure you guys to know that before I sign. This is not what I’m about. I’m about basketball.' 'It gave me the chills,' says Buchanan, Portland’s director of college scouting. 'It solidified our feelings. We knew we liked him, but that was like, ‘This guy is us. He is what we’re about.’ ' "
- Jonathan Feigen of the Houston Chronicle: "Rockets general manager Daryl Morey, having spent consecutive afternoons at news conferences to discuss his roster moves, did not leave Toyota Center on Wednesday for a spot on a beach somewhere. That trip might come eventually, but for now he said he will still work the phones and will still seek deals, largely because that is what owner Leslie Alexander pays him to do. If, however, he is indeed done and the roster is set, Morey insisted he is happy with the Rockets as now reassembled. With Luis Scola and Kyle Lowry officially signed Wednesday, a day after Morey introduced free-agent addition Brad Miller, the Rockets have 15 players signed to guaranteed contracts, including every player who finished last season with the team. That was enough for Morey to say he was happy, if not necessarily satisfied, with the Rockets' roster in place. 'I think we're a quality team with a lot of depth, great veterans, good youth, guys who can improve,' Morey said. 'We feel good about where the team is at. Obviously, we're always trying to keep improving, but the next step, to improve on the guys we have, is harder. We get lots of trade opportunities and frankly most of the guys we get offered wouldn't play in our rotation.' "
- Gary D. Howard of the Journal Sentinel: "John Salmons. Drew Gooden. Corey Maggette. Chris Douglas-Roberts. Keyon Dooling. Larry Sanders. These are the names of the new players added to the Milwaukee Bucks' roster by the blossoming John Hammond, a former coach who is proving that he is well-deserving of his tailored suits and his top-of-the-franchise office. Quite simply, these are pure upgrades, moves that will help the Bucks take that giant leap from a 46-win regular season to a 50-plus victory year and a deeper run in the NBA postseason. What they really mean, however, is that we have seen the last of Michael Redd at the Bradley Center, the only remaining player with ties to the Bucks' crew that came within one game of the NBA Finals in 2001. And you know what? This is a good thing. ... For the team, the franchise and the fans. ... With a humongous $18.3 million salary for next season and no spot in the lineup, Redd doesn't have to rush back to training camp after tearing up his knee a second time last year in Los Angeles against the Lakers. The Bucks, for their part, don't want him to come back early for a couple of reasons. One, if he's injured again, he and whatever is left of his trade value would be a lost cause. Second, you never want to handicap your coach on this level, and forcing Redd into the lineup would ruffle team chemistry, something the Bucks can't afford this upcoming season."
- Doug Tifft of The Orange County Register: "Grunting as he rounds a solid pick from a gray garbage can, Landry Fields accepts a hard chest pass and rises up for the last of his more than 500 jump shots on a dreary Tuesday morning. It is a routine he has gone through on clandestine courts for more than a decade now, breaking into his high school gym at Los Alamitos to get up jumpers before school, outlasting All-Americans Brook and Robin Lopez in the practice gym at Stanford and now here in a creaky, humid, dimly lit gym days after receiving his college diploma. The only difference is Fields now wears a badge of pride in the Vanguard University gym to show that his devotion to outwork his peers has paid off: a gray New York Knicks T-shirt, turned dark with soaking sweat. 'He is one of the hardest working guys I know,' said Fields' trainer Walt Simon, who produced a gym rat of his own in former Mater Dei and Arizona star Miles Simon. 'Landry just outworks, outconditions and outhustles guys. The draft scouts might not have seen that and that's why they got it wrong with him.' "
- Keith Langlois of Pistons.com: "There’s a notion the summer is slipping away from the Pistons. No mystery why that notion has taken root. Teams with cap space grabbed all the early headlines as LeBron James, Chris Bosh, Dwyane Wade, Amare Stoudemire and Carlos Boozer cast their lots. Teams affected by those traumatic departures reacted by moving swiftly to fill gaping holes. For all the noise generated so far this summer, it’s been concentrated among a relatively small pool of NBA teams. None of that activity has involved the Pistons, which makes fans of a team coming off a 27-win season anxious, angry or discouraged. But pick through the details and a clear impression emerges: Many teams still have much more work to do in order to field a team that doesn’t have obvious flaws. That goes for teams from all strata – title hopefuls to fringe playoff teams to lottery tenants. And that goes double for the East, where the Pistons are one of the very few teams who could line up today and not have depth issues or worse at any position. Translation: There is still plenty of time and many possibilities out there for Joe Dumars to find a trade partner who has something intriguing to offer."
- Myron P. Medcalf of the Star Tribune: "Local basketball fans generally have two questions about Khalid El-Amin's career. The first is why he ended up at UConn after originally giving a verbal commitment to the Gophers. 'I get asked that a lot,' El-Amin said. 'But my reasoning for not coming to the University of Minnesota was plainly based on I wanted to win a national championship.' ... The other question is why El-Amin hasn't received another shot in the NBA. The Chicago Bulls picked him up in the second round of the 2000 NBA draft. El-Amin scored 18 points in the league's All-Star weekend rookie game that season. But within a year, he was out of the league. 'The Timberwolves never even gave Khalid a chance to come here,' said Rene Pulley, founder of the Howard Pulley league. 'And they needed point guards.' El-Amin, however, said he doesn't have any regrets about his brief NBA tenure. 'It just taught me how to be a professional,' he said. 'Coming in from college, I was the main guy on the team, one of the stars on the team, but in the NBA I wasn't. So it just really humbled me in a way. Humbled my game. But I understand if I was going to make it, I was going to have to work hard.' "
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