Around the NBA Notes: Summer League, Free-Agent Signings, Irving’s Injury

The NBA regular season will get back on track Thursday after an extended break for All-Star festivities. The Portland Trail Blazers, among other teams, are preparing for a late-season push to sneak into the NBA Playoffs. Here’s the latest news around the league before play picks up again:

• The 2020 NBA Summer League in Las Vegas has an official date: July 10-20. This is slightly later than usual, a change made on purpose to avoid July 4 weekend (a hotspot for free-agency signings and deals), according to Tim Reynolds of the Associated Press.
• The Houston Rockets are signing forwards Jeff Green and DeMarre Carroll (the latter of whom recently agreed to a contract buyout with the Spurs); Green will first be on a 10-day contract to test his fit before signing a contract for the rest of the season, per ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski.
• The LA Clippers are gaining guard depth by adding Reggie Jackson, according to Wojnarowski. Jackson recently agreed to a buyout with the Pistons.
• After missing 26 games with a shoulder injury, Nets guard Kyrie Irving has seemingly reaggravated the injury and will see a specialist. He received a cortisone shot in late December to help him get back on the court and avoid surgery, as ESPN’s Malika Andrews writes:

“A cortisone shot lasts as long as it can,” Irving said in December. “You either continue to get cortisone shots, which is obviously detrimental to your health and your muscles, or you go get arthroscopic surgery. For me, it’s just about being able to go back out there after the right amount of rehab, the right amount of rest and recovery and see what we can do for the rest of the season and then re- evaluate after a few months.”

• Cleveland Cavaliers head coach John Beilein has agreed to step down from his role after signing a five-year contract with the team this past summer. As Shams Charania, Jason Lloyd and Joe Vardon of The Athletic detail, the situation in Cleveland started to sour in preseason and continued to decline:

Beilein’s tone toward the players became an issue, sources have told The Athletic, with him allegedly overly harping his voice in film sessions, nitpicking fundamentals and showing an inability to adapt to the NBA’s offensive and defensive structures. As a 67-year-old coach of a blend of veterans and young players, Beilein is said to have shown no consistency in relating to players or in building lasting relationships with them.

“He was a dictator — not a coach suited for today’s NBA,” one source said.

The Portland Trail Blazers are back in action on Friday when they host the New Orleans Pelicans.