Morning Shootaround

NEWS OF THE MORNING

Report: Warriors offer Barnes $64 million extension | Wall, Wizards get jump start on training camp | Video analyst provided boost for Spain at EuroBasket

No. 1: Report: Warriors offer Barnes $64 million extension — The Golden State Warriors don’t want Harrison Barnes in the free agent pool next summer. They’ve offered Barnes a $64 million extension, according to Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports, to make sure another member of the core group of their championship roster remains in the fold. More from Yahoo!:

The $16 million annual offer wasn’t accepted, but appears to be a starting point in talks that could last until the Oct. 31 deadline for rookie extensions.

The Warriors are trying to prevent Barnes from reaching restricted free agency in July 2016, when a rising salary cap and scores of teams with financial flexibility will couple with Barnes’ burgeoning talent and potential to make him a significant target on the market.

As a member of the 2012 NBA draft class, Barnes is eligible for his rookie contract extension. Without an agreement by Oct. 31, Barnes would become a restricted free agent next summer. Golden State would be able to match any offer sheet for Barnes and re-sign him.

The offer of $16 million per year annually – comparable to teammate Draymond Green‘s five-year, $82.5 million extension this summer – had been negotiated by Barnes’ former agent, Jeff Wechsler. After that initial offer, Wechsler countered with a figure north of $16 million annually before he and Barnes parted ways, league sources said. Jeff Schwartz of Excel Sports is representing Barnes now.

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No. 2: Wall, Wizards get jump start on training camp — LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers aren’t the only ones using their time prior to training camp to get a jump start on the process. The Washington Wizards, a team poised to continue their rise up the Eastern Conference food chain, are conducting their own version of those unofficial, pre-training camp workouts. Ben Standig of CSNmidatlantic.com explains:

The Washington Wizards don’t begin training camp until later this month, but many of the players are already working out together.

Bradley Beal and Otto Porter were part of the group getting their conditioning game on. Roster mainstay Garrett Temple, rookie Kelly Oubre Jr., newcomers Gary Neal and Alan Anderson were on hand. Also part of the 10 or so players, training camp invitees Toure Murry and Josh Harrellson.

John Wall wasn’t in view for the start of this session, but we know the All-Star point guard is in town. Last month Wall told CSNmidatlantic.com that he encouraged teammates to show up two weeks early. Entering his sixth season, Wall also flashed his leadership skills by organizing a player mini-camp in Los Angeles in August.

“Now is my time,” Wall explained to CSNmidatlantic.com. “I’m setting up all these things. Making sure guys are getting to training camp two weeks early. Make sure we’re playing pickup, getting into shape, doing those types of things. That’s what I’m willing to do and have some fun with it.”

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No. 3: Video analyst provided boost for Spain at EuroBasket — It certainly helps to have Pau Gasol playing at his very best, but there were other significant factors that led to Spain’s triumphant run to the 2015 EuroBasket title. A year after falling short on their home soil in the FIBA World Cup, Spain scrapped their way to the top in France with a huge boost from Marcos Fernandez. Never heard of him? The great Mark Woods explains in this feature for ESPN.com:

The team’s assist leader, according to head coach Sergio Scariolo? A guy who wasn’t on the floor, nor even on the bench. Marcos Fernandez, the team’s director of inspiration and the cultivator of dreams.

With curtains drawn, it was 50 days ago in a meeting room in Madrid that Scariolo pressed play on a film that set the tone for the remarkable and unexpected journey ahead, a compilation tape designed to remind his players of what their country had accomplished and what still might be within reach.

Fernandez, the team’s video analyst, was given a clear script from his producer and asked to bring it to life on the screen at the very outset of an international campaign when Spain — without so many of its established stars — was predicted to regress into the realms of the forgotten rather than forging a campaign that will be remembered for a long time.

“We put together team basketball, some important plays, not amazing highlights but ones that won us games or got us to a podium,” Scariolo said. “European Championships. The Olympic Games in London. And also we put some film of these guys when they were kids.

“Because my message was that: ‘The past few years, we’ve had this status; we must do this, we must do that’. I wanted us to go back to when they were starting out. Playing in junior tournaments at the beginning of their career, when they were enjoying basketball. Back to where it was so hard to accomplish things.”

They had to fight. To scrap. To endure the heart-stopping tension in the closing seconds of the first round in Berlin when Germany’s point guard Dennis Schroder went to the foul line with three attempts to force overtime, only to fall short. It was do or die, but they survived. “We had three finals: Germany, which was so important,” recounted Nikola Mirotic. Then elimination games, one after another. “Greece. France. All the team was growing every single time which was amazing.”

Fernandez’s services were in demand. Sometimes, the opinion of the odds makers differed but Spain was not favored, at the start, even near the finish. No Marc Gasol. No Jose Calderon. No Ricky Rubio. No hope. Hence, more nights at the movie theater.

“Four days ago, ahead of playing France, I played the scene in ‘The Pursuit of Happyness’ where Will Smith‘s character is talking to his kid and saying: ‘Don’t let anybody say you can’t do something,'” Scariolo said. “Yesterday, I played a scene from ‘The Million Dollar Baby.’ I was concerned they were thinking: ‘We have to win’. I wanted them to remember what it takes to win.”

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