Hood not ruling out planting some roots in Cleveland area
Rodney INDEPENDENCE —
Hood would like to re-introduce himself to Cleveland.
Why? Because he plans on staying here a while.
Hood accepted the Cavs’ one-year, $3.4 million qualifying offer Sept. 9, following a summer of not getting the money he wanted in a contract from either Cleveland or the eight teams he said expressed interest.
All of that followed a disastrous 2018 playoff run for Hood personally, who plummeted from coach Tyronn Lue’s starting lineup to out of the rotation all together while the Cavs made it to the Finals — which probably did damage to Hood’s market value.
Hood’s gained clarity and muscle mass since (he’s added seven pounds of it and now weighs more than 220 pounds). He understands the Cavs’ chances to surprise the NBA and hang on as a playoff team without LeBron James hinges in no small part on whether Hood is the player the Cavs thought they traded for Feb. 8, or the one whose plus-minus was the worst of any player in the playoffs.
So Hood took the Cavs’ oneyear deal with the full intention of earning a much more lucrative contract from them next summer when he’ll be an unrestricted free agent.
“I believe strongly in myself that after this year I’ll be able to make Cleveland my home and we’ll get a better deal next summer,” Hood told The Plain Dealer in a wide-ranging interview.
As a Cavs fan, there are all kinds of things you remember about Hood.
Maybe you didn’t know, or had forgotten, that Hood is only 25. He’s 6 feet 8 and left-handed (OK, you knew that), with career averages of 13 points and three rebounds over four seasons. The Jazz drafted him 23rd overall out of Duke in 2014. He played one season for the Blue Devils, after transferring from Mississippi State following his freshman year.
Hood is the youngest of three children from a basketball-crazy family in Meridian, Miss., a small community on the Alabama border.
Hood’s parents (Rick and Vicky) played college basketball at Mississippi State. His brother Rick Jr. and sister Whitney played at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga. Rick Jr. runs an AAU program (ages 10-18) in Mississippi that’s funded by Rodney (to the tune of about $160,000 per season).
And of course there’s, Hood’s wife, Richa Jackson, who played four seasons at Duke, while Hood was there. Like Hood’s parents at Mississippi State, Hood and Jackson met on Duke’s campus as college hoopsters.
Hood’s father is chief executive officer for Boys & Girls Club of East Mississippi. To that end, Hood, Rick Jr., and Hood’s agent Travis King are in Cleveland this week looking for an inner city high school basketball program to adopt, and for a Boys & Girls Club to partner with for holiday charities like turkey and clothing drops.
They’d like to make it an annual thing.
“Just because he signed the qualifying offer, he’s not on the first train out of here,” King said. “He plans to stay in Cleveland.”