JULY 17TH, 4:21pm: The Suns have officially announced the signing. “We have followed Mirza Teletovic’s career for a long time and we are excited to have him wear a Suns uniform,” said GM Ryan McDonough. “Mirza is one of the best shooting big men in the world and we think his skill set will be a great fit for our style of play.”
JULY 9TH, 5:42pm: The Suns will sign Mirza Teletovic to a one-year deal for $5.5MM, TNT’s David Aldridge reports (Twitter link). The move comes shortly after the Nets pulled their qualifying offer to the forward earlier today, making him an unrestricted free agent. Phoenix is likely using cap space to accommodate the transaction.
The client of Jeff Schwartz and Mike Lindeman ends up with a deal that’s about $1.3MM more lucrative than he’d have had if he’d simply signed the more than $4.21MM qualifyer while it was on the table. The agreement with Phoenix comes as somewhat of a surprise, as aside from a vague link to the Spurs, it didn’t seem as though any NBA team other than the Nets had much interest. Nets GM Billy King said this morning that the Nets and Teletovic were in talks and that he was hopeful of re-signing the three-year veteran, but Brooklyn never made Teletovic a priority this offseason, according to Mike Mazzeo of ESPN.com (Twitter link).
Teletovic, who turns 30 in September, was to have missed the rest of the season when doctors diagnosed him with blood clots in his lungs after a game in January, but he came back for the playoffs and appeared in three games during Brooklyn’s first-round series loss to the Hawks. He was a significant part of Brooklyn’s rotation prior to the ailment, averaging 22.3 minutes per game this past season.