Grizzlies Pick Up Jarell Martin’s 2018/19 Option
1:38pm: The Grizzlies have officially exercised their fourth-year option on Martin, the club confirmed today in a press release.
9:01am: The Grizzlies will exercise their 2018/19 team option on Jarell Martin‘s rookie contract in advance of Tuesday’s deadline, league sources tell Michael Scotto of Basketball Insiders (Twitter link). It’s a fourth-year option for the young power forward.
It’s an impressive turn of events for Martin, who appeared on the verge of being waived earlier this month. Entering training camp, Memphis was carrying more than 15 players on guaranteed contracts, and Martin appeared to be the odd man out. However, the club gave him the opportunity to make an impression during the preseason and he did just that, earning a roster spot over youngsters Wade Baldwin and Rade Zagorac, who were both waived.
In the early going this season, Martin has been the Grizzlies’ starting power forward, averaging a career-high 23.9 minutes per game. He’s contributing a modest 7.1 PPG and 4.6 RPG.
Now that Martin has earned his place on the roster for the 2017/18 season, it makes sense for the Grizzlies to pick up his 2018/19 option, which has a small cap charge of approximately $2.42MM. Even if the team decides next summer that Martin isn’t part of the plans for the ’18/19 season, it likely wouldn’t be hard to find a taker for a player on an expiring contract with such a minimal cap hit.
Martin will now be extension-eligible during the 2018 offseason, so that could be an option for the Grizzlies if they really like what they see from the 23-year-old this year. If he doesn’t get an extension, the former 25th overall pick will become eligible for restricted free agency in the summer of 2019.
Kings Exercise 2018/19 Options On Five Players
The Kings have picked up 2018/19 rookie scale options on five players, the team announced today in a press release. The moves will add about $14MM in guaranteed salary to Sacramento’s books for the ’18/19 season. Here are the options exercised by the club in advance of today’s deadline:
- Willie Cauley-Stein (fourth year, $4,696,875)
- Buddy Hield (third year, $3,833,760)
- Georgios Papagiannis (third year, $2,400,480)
- Malachi Richardson (third year, $1,569,360)
- Skal Labissiere (third year, $1,544,951)
None of these decisions comes as a real surprise. With the exception of Hield – who was the centerpiece in the trade that sent DeMarcus Cousins to New Orleans – all of these players were drafted by Vlade Divac and the current Kings management group.
Cauley-Stein, the only player of the bunch whose 2018/19 option is on the fourth year of his rookie contract, will be eligible for a contract extension during the ’18 offseason, and will reach restricted free agency in the summer of ’19 if he’s not extended next year. The other four players are on track to be RFAs in 2020 if their fourth-year options are picked up next offseason.
All of this year’s rookie scale team option decisions can be tracked right here.
2017 NBA Offseason In Review Series
Over the last month and a half, Hoops Rumors has been examining the 2017 offseason moves for all 30 NBA teams, revisiting the summer’s free agent signings, trades, draft picks, departures, and other key news and transactions. Our Offseason in Review pieces for each of the league’s 30 teams are linked below, sorted by conference and division.
EASTERN CONFERENCE
Atlantic Division
Central Division
Southeast Division
WESTERN CONFERENCE
Northwest Division
Pacific Division
Southwest Division
Magic, Kings Discussed Mario Hezonja Trade
The Magic are exploring the trade market for Mario Hezonja with the deadline looming on his 2018/19 option, reports Michael Scotto of Basketball Insiders (Twitter link). Orlando will have to decide today whether or not to exercise Hezonja’s fourth-year option for next season, which has a cap charge of about $5.17MM.
According to Scotto (via Twitter), the Kings were one club that spoke to the Magic about Hezonja. The two teams discussed the possibility of a deal that would send Hezonja to Sacramento in exchange for Malachi Richardson and a second-round pick. However, those trade talks recently stalled, Scotto reports.
Like Hezonja, Richardson has yet to make much of an impact in the NBA, but Sacramento’s second-year shooting guard is a little younger and cheaper than Orlando’s third-year sharpshooter. The Kings have already decided to pick up Richardson’s 2018/19 option, according to Tony Jones of The Salt Lake City Tribune (Twitter link). That option will count against the cap for just $1.57MM.
At $5.17MM, Hezonja’s 2018/19 option is a tougher call. The Croatian forward was the fifth overall pick in 2015, but has failed to develop as the Magic hoped, and is playing a career-low 13.0 MPG in the early part of this season. Orlando’s new management group, led by Jeff Weltman and John Hammond, didn’t draft Hezonja, so they may be less willing to roll the dice on him for one more year than the old regime would have been.
Suns GM: No Timetable For Eric Bledsoe Trade
With the Suns in Brooklyn to face the Nets tonight, Eric Bledsoe will miss his fourth straight game, and he may end up sitting out many more. According to Scott Bordow of The Arizona Republic, Suns GM Ryan McDonough said this week that there’s no timetable for a Bledsoe trade, suggesting the team isn’t rushing to get anything done.
“We are open to doing a deal whenever the best offer presents itself,” McDonough said. “Any other comments or thoughts from me would be pure speculation at this point.”
The 2017/18 regular season is only two weeks old, so there are unlikely to be any teams desperate enough to improve their existing offers for Bledsoe at this point. Additionally, as Bordow notes, some potential trade partners may be able to make more competitive offers when trade restrictions lift on certain players on December 15.
Of course, the two teams most frequently mentioned as potential landing spots for Bledsoe are Denver and Milwaukee, and neither the Nuggets nor the Bucks were very active in free agency over the offseason, so they’re not limited by many trade restrictions at this point.
In any case, since the Suns have no real playoff aspirations this season, there’s not much downside in being patient and hoping that the offers for Bledsoe improve. Phoenix will have to continue paying its disgruntled point guard while he remains away from the club, but team salary is currently below the required floor anyway, so paying Bledsoe isn’t having a real impact on the Suns’ bottom line.
Sixers Pick Up Four Options; Okafor In Limbo
The Sixers have exercised their 2018/19 rookie scale team options on four players, according to RealGM’s log of official NBA transactions. Philadelphia has picked up third-year options for Ben Simmons, Dario Saric, and Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot, along with the fourth-year option for Justin Anderson.
[RELATED: Decisions On 2018/19 Rookie Scale Team Options]
That leaves Jahlil Okafor as the only player with a 2018/19 team option that has yet to be exercised. The Sixers could still pick up Okafor’s fourth-year option – which has a cap hit of about $6.3MM – at some point today. However, the club continues to explore potential trades involving the former third overall pick, and those trade talks could determine whether or not Okafor’s option gets exercised, tweets Derek Bodner of The Athletic.
Outside of Simmons’ option, which will count for about $6.4MM against the 76ers’ cap, the 2018/19 options picked up by the team so far are modest. Saric and and Anderson will have cap charges of about $2.5MM apiece, while Luwawu-Cabarrot’s will be a little over $1.5MM.
The decisions lock all four players in for the ’18/19 season, and Anderson will be eligible for restricted free agency in 2019, assuming he’s not extended during the 2018 offseason. Philadelphia will face fourth-year option decisions on Simmons, Saric, and Luwawu-Cabarrot a year from now.
Western Rumors: Len, Ball, Mavs, Benson
Suns center Alex Len didn’t receive an offer sheet as a restricted free agent this summer but he’s pumping up his value during the early going, according to Scott Bordow of The Arizona Republic. Len is averaging 10.2 PPG and 8.4 RPG and one scout told Bordow that Len could receive a four-year deal worth up to $15MM per season if he continues his strong play. Len signed his qualifying offer of $4.2MM in late September after his unsuccessful foray into restricted free agency.
In other news around the Western Conference:
- Lakers rookie point guard Lonzo Ball told reporters that as a floor leader he prefers “to take the blame when we lose,” Ohm Youngmisuk of ESPN relays. Ball committed five turnovers in a loss to the Jazz on Saturday. Ball also believes he needs to push the ball more efficiently, Youngmisuk adds. “More pace, run on makes — I feel like we are kind of walking up the ball too much,” Ball said. “And that is obviously my fault because I am the point guard so just got to push the pace a little better.”
- Mavs coach Rick Carlisle is considering lineup changes after his team got off to a 1-6 start, Eddie Sefko of the Dallas Morning News reports. “We’re looking at things all the time,” Carlisle told Sefko and other reporters.“If you’re asking about a change to the starting lineup or rotation, any and everything is in play at this point.”
- Pelicans and Saints owner Tom Benson was hospitalized Sunday night but is expected to return to his office by the end of the week, according to a statement released by a Saints spokesman. Benson felt weakness while attending the Saints game on Sunday, Jeff Duncan of the New Orleans Times-Picayune reports.
- Tyson Chandler shrugs off the rumors that the Suns are trying to deal him, Bordow reports. The team is reportedly trying to package him in any deal involving disgruntled point man Eric Bledsoe. “Just like everybody else, I hear the rumblings,” he said. “I hear my name being involved in things and trade rumors but I’m at the point where I couldn’t care less.”
Warriors Won’t Pick Up Looney’s Option
The Warriors will not pick up their fourth-year option on forward Kevon Looney, Chris Haynes of ESPN tweets.
The decision doesn’t come as a surprise, since Looney isn’t part of the rotation and the Warriors need to watch their spending. As Bobby Marks of ESPN points out, Golden State already has $127MM in contract guarantees for next season. By allowing Looney to become an unrestricted free agent after the season, the Warriors will clear $2.3MM off their books.
By declining the option, the Warriors can only offer him a first-year salary of $2.3MM or less in free agency. Golden State had to decide by the end of this month whether to pick up his option.
Looney, 21, has only appeared in two games this season. The 6’9” Looney has averaged 2.6 PPG and 2.4 RPG in 8.1 MPG over 60 career games, including 53 last season.
Looney was the team’s first-round pick and the 30th overall player chosen in the 2015 draft. Looney, who is making approximately $1.23MM this season, had two hip procedures during his rookie year and only appeared in five games.
Hawks Fully Embrace Total Rebuild
Hawks majority owner Tony Ressler is convinced the franchise had no choice but to go into full rebuild mode, as he told NBA.com’s David Aldridge in an extensive piece on the team’s direction. New GM Travis Schlenk helped convince Ressler that the franchise was spinning its wheels and needed to stockpile draft picks while developing a young core, Aldridge continues.
“Truly, there are three options in the NBA, I would argue: being a contender, being a competitive team, and being young and fun,” Ressler told Adridge. “At least that would be my opinion. And we didn’t have the option of being a contender. So we could be competitive, or more competitive, and maybe, shall we say, with a whole bunch of higher-priced vets that made us older and made our payroll less flexible, and made our future more cloudy.”
Instead, Ressler selected the “young and fun” option, despite knowing the losses would pile up this season. The team has five first-round picks during the next two drafts, including one from the Clippers that they acquired this offseason by getting involved in a three-way deal that included the Nuggets. The Hawks also traded away center Dwight Howard and opted not to pursue their top free agent, power forward Paul Millsap.
Aldridge also offered these nuggets in the story:
- The team is building around point guard Dennis Schroder, second-year wings Taurean Prince and DeAndre’ Bembry, and rookie big man John Collins.
- Schlenk feels pressure to produce on the draft picks: “It’s my job to, hopefully, get four of those right,” he said.
- Ressler told coach Mike Budenholzer that he didn’t think anyone could be an effective head coach and run the organization at the same time. Budenholzer relinquished his duties as president of basketball operations. “I tried to convince him and I think he realized fully that being the GM is a full-time job,” Ressler said. “So why does anyone on earth think they can do two extraordinarily difficult jobs? And I believe Bud saw that very clearly.”
- Budenholzer lobbied Schlenk to make an offer to Millsap even after the decision to rebuild was made.
Central Notes: Mirotic, Cavs, Rose, Tolliver
Bulls power forward Nikola Mirotic will not have surgery on the facial fractures he suffered when teammate Bobby Portis punched him, team vice president of basketball operations John Paxson told George Ofman of WBBMNewsradio (Twitter link). Mirotic will have a light workout at the team’s practice facility on Tuesday, Ofman adds.
Mirotic was expected to miss 4-6 weeks in the aftermath of the altercation, but this development suggests a four-week absence is more likely. There has been speculation that the Bulls’ power forward would be willing to waive his no-trade clause to escape the tense situation but he cannot be traded until January 15.
In other news around the Central Division:
- Cavaliers coach Tyronn Lue believes some of his players are too timid because of LeBron James‘ presence, Joe Vardon of Cleveland.com relays. Lue expressed those feelings after an embarrassing loss to the Knicks on Sunday. “Guys have got to understand that LeBron, he’s a giving person, he’s a giving player,” Lue said. “You’ve got to come in and play your game and we’ll adjust. I think a lot of times we defer to LeBron or guys are scared to be aggressive because of that.” Vardon speculates that Lue was referring mainly to former Celtics forward Jae Crowder, who’s averaging 7.3 PPG on 6.6 shots per game.
- Lue said that re-inserting Derrick Rose into the starting lineup was an easy one, as he expressed to Vardon and other media members. Rose scored 15 points on Sunday in his return from an ankle injury that cost him four games. “I thought those first two games we were really playing well, and especially defensively,” Lue said. “After that it’s been tough trying to maneuver guys in and out of the point guard position.”
- Reserve power forward Anthony Tolliver has carved out a defensive role in the Pistons’ rotation, Rod Beard of the Detroit News notes. Though coach Stan Van Gundy has said publicly that second-year forward Henry Ellenson deserves steady playing time, Van Gundy has turned to Tolliver to guard the Knicks’ Kristaps Porzingis and the Clippers’ Blake Griffin in recent games, Beard adds. Tolliver is in his second stint with the team after signing a one-year, $3.3MM free agent contract during the summer.