With most of the top free agents off the board by mid-July, September generally consists of minimum-salary signings with little or no guaranteed money. That's certainly the case for most of the contracts mentioned below, but since we at Hoops Rumors are interested in the minutiae of teams' cap moves, we'll pass along these updates nonetheless. Courtesy of Eric Pincus of HoopsWorld, here are a few notes on recent signings:
- Fab Melo actually signed a two-year contract with the Mavericks, albeit one that's entirely non-guaranteed, says Pincus (via Sulia). Dallas still has 15 players on fully guaranteed deals, so it'll be an uphill battle for Melo to earn a spot on the roster, but if he does, the Mavs will have him under team control for two seasons at the minimum salary.
- After I devoted a post yesterday to explaining how and why the Sixers have stayed above the cap and could continue to do so this offseason, Pincus renders my points moot (via Sulia), writing that the team has dipped below the threshold and started using cap room.
- It's interesting that the Sixers would choose this point to claim its cap space — unless the team was caught off guard by Royal Ivey and Damien Wilkins signing with the Hawks and coming off Philadelphia's books, it seems the Sixers could've stayed above the cap line, since they recently finalized their deals with Rodney Williams and Darius Morris. Of course, I'm not privy to what's going on behind the scenes in Philadelphia, so perhaps it wasn't possible or the club felt it was no longer worthwhile.
- In any case, getting back to Pincus' notes: He passes along the specifics on Williams' and Morris' deals with the Sixers, noting that both players signed four-year pacts. For Williams, it's a minimum-salary contract with a $35K guarantee in year one. Years two and three are fully non-guaranteed, while year four is a team option.
- Morris' deal is worth slightly more than the minimum, and will pay him exactly $4.2MM if he plays out his full contract without being released. The first season is guaranteed for $200K, and the remainder is structured in the same way as Williams' — two non-guaranteed seasons plus a fourth-year team option.