Warriors Seek DPE After Klay Thompson’s Injury
The Warriors have applied for a disabled player exception after losing Klay Thompson for the season, tweets Shams Charania of The Athletic. If granted, the DPE would be worth $9.3MM, the value of the non-taxpayer mid-level exception.
The DPE allows a team to add a player without using cap space. It can be used to sign a free agent, to claim a player off waivers, or to acquire a player in a trade, but it can only be used on one player. Additionally, it can only be used to sign a player to a one-year contract, or to claim or trade for a player in the final year of his deal.
Thompson suffered a season-ending Achilles tear in his right leg during a workout on Wednesday. He hasn’t played since tearing his left ACL during Game 6 of the 2019 NBA Finals, but was reportedly fully recovered and ready for the start of training camp.
Cameron Reynolds Signs Exhibit 10 Deal With Spurs
NOVEMBER 29: The Spurs have officially signed Reynolds, according to RealGM’s transactions log.
NOVEMBER 21: The Spurs will sign shooting guard Cameron Reynolds to an Exhibit 10 contract, tweets Tim MacMahon of ESPN.
Reynolds, 25, played 19 games for the Timberwolves during the 2018/19 season. He signed a two-way contract with the Bucks in July of 2019, but didn’t appear in any NBA games for Milwaukee. He averaged 14.4 points and 5.1 rebounds per game for the G League’s Wisconsin Herd.
Reynolds will be in training camp with San Antonio and can receive a guarantee of up to $50K if he’s waived and joins the organization’s G League affiliate.
Pacers To Sign Amida Brimah
Former Connecticut center Amida Brimah will sign with the Pacers, tweets Chris Haynes of Yahoo Sports.
Brimah, 26, was in Indiana’s training camp last season on an Exhibit 10 contract and was expected to join the team’s G League affiliate, but he suffered a torn right ACL that required surgery.
Brimah’s previous NBA experience includes an Exhibit 10 deal with the Spurs in 2018 and a Summer League stint with the Bulls in 2017. He played two G League seasons with the Austin Spurs and spent one season in Belgrade.
Free Agent Rumors: Bogdanovic, Hawks, Batum, Lin, Hernangomez
Sources remain confident that the Hawks are in a strong position to sign Bogdan Bogdanovic, according to Chris Kirschner of The Athletic. Kirschner says he has heard that a deal for Bogdanovic could be in the four-year, $72MM range, which is the same ballpark identified by Brian Windhorst of ESPN earlier this week.
The Hawks are believed to still have about $20MM in cap room available, so they have the flexibility necessary to make a move for Bogdanovic. However, he remains a restricted free agent, so if they sign him to an offer sheet that would tie up their cap space for multiple days, they’ll want to be pretty confident that the Kings won’t match it.
Here are a few more free agency updates:
- Veteran combo forward Nicolas Batum has already received interest from multiple teams, Chris Haynes of Yahoo Sports tweets. The Hornets chose to waive-and-stretch the final year of Batum’s contract in order to sign free agent forward Gordon Hayward.
- Point guard Jeremy Lin wants to return to the NBA and several contenders are interested, Alex Kennedy of Basketball News tweets. Lin spent last season in China, averaging 22.3 PPG, 5.7 RPG and 5.6 APG. Lin was recently spotted working out with Nets players, according to Kennedy, though it’s not certain whether Brooklyn is one of the teams showing interest. He played for the Hawks and Raptors during the 2018/19 season.
- While Malik Beasley got a deal with the Timberwolves done quickly, the team appears willing to be more patient with its other restricted free agent. According to Jon Krawczynski of The Athletic (Twitter link), Minnesota is letting the market play out for Juan Hernangomez to establish the parameters of his potential deal.
Luke Adams contributed to this post.
Wizards To Sign Yoeli Childs
BYU power forward Yoeli Childs will sign with the Wizards, tweets Jake Hatch of Zone Sports Net. Tony Jones of The Athletic confirms the report (Twitter link).
Childs had offers from more than five NBA teams, according to Hatch.
Childs turned in a stellar season for the Cougars as a senior, averaging 22.2 points and 9.0 rebounds and being nominated for the Karl Malone Award, which honors the top power forward in college basketball.
Isaac Okoro, Cole Anthony Sign Rookie Contracts
The Cavaliers and Magic have both signed their first-round picks, the teams announced today.
Cleveland came to terms with Auburn forward Isaac Okoro, who was the fifth overall selection. Orlando reached a deal with North Carolina guard Cole Anthony, who was taken with the 15th pick.
Neither team announced the terms of the deals, but both players are eligible to receive up to 120% of the rookie scale. That would be $6,400,920 for Okoro and $3,285,120 for Anthony.
Nuggets Withdraw QO For Torrey Craig, Making Him UFA
The Nuggets have withdrawn their $2.5MM qualifying offer for swingman Torrey Craig, reports ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski (via Twitter). As a result of the move, he’ll become an unrestricted free agent.
Craig, who will turn 30 next month, averaged 5.4 PPG and 3.3 RPG in 58 games (27 starts) for Denver in 2019/20, providing the team with solid perimeter defense. However, he became a victim of a roster crunch in Denver.
According to Wojnarowski, the Nuggets valued Craig, but are simply running out of roster spots with which to comfortably bring him back on a guaranteed deal.
Even having lost Mason Plumlee and Jerami Grant, Denver added Zeke Nnaji and RJ Hampton in this week’s draft, is retaining Paul Millsap on a new deal, and is bringing in JaMychal Green and Facundo Campazzo in free agency. The club also reportedly plans on promoting two-way player Bol Bol to its standard roster.
The Nuggets are also emerging as the frontrunners to sign forward Greg Whittington to their roster, as our JD Shaw reports (via Twitter).
Knicks To Re-Sign Elfrid Payton
NOVEMBER 29: The Knicks’ deal with Payton is now official, Marc Berman of the New York Post tweets.
NOVEMBER 27: Shortly after clearing waivers this afternoon, Elfrid Payton has reached a deal to return to the Knicks, his agents at CAA tell ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski (Twitter link).
New York waived Payton on Thursday and paid a $1MM partial guarantee on his previous contract rather than giving him the full amount of $8MM. Payton will receive $5MM for one season on his new pact, per Wojnarowski.
Given the reported price of Payton’s new deal, it’s possible the Knicks will look to fit him into their room exception ($4.77MM). In that scenario, the team would still have approximately $29MM in cap room to use, without Payton cutting into it. If he gets any amount over $4.77MM, he’ll have to be re-signed using some of that cap space.
Payton got the most use of New York’s point guard options last season, starting 36 of the 45 games he played. He averaged 10.0 points and 7.2 assists per game, but shot just 43.9% from the field and 20.3% from three-point range.
If they don’t make any more moves at the position, the Knicks will have the same three players at point guard as they did a year ago, with Payton battling Frank Ntilikina and Dennis Smith Jr. for playing time, and it will be up to new coach Tom Thibodeau to sort them out.
Trail Blazers Sign Carmelo Anthony To One-Year Contract
NOVEMBER 22, 8:32pm: The signing is official, according to a team press release.
NOVEMBER 21, 4:15pm: Carmelo Anthony is returning to Portland, according to Shams Charania of The Athletic, who reports (via Twitter) that the veteran forward is finalizing a new deal with the Trail Blazers. It’ll be for one year, Charania adds (via Twitter). It’ll be another minimum-salary contract, per Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN (Twitter link).
The Knicks were among the teams believed to have interest in signing Anthony in free agency this fall. However, as Charania explains (via Twitter), Anthony wanted to show loyalty to the Blazers after they gave him an opportunity to return to the NBA last season, and he knows what sort of role to expect in Portland.
Anthony, who signed with the Blazers almost exactly a year ago, averaged 15.4 PPG and 6.3 RPG on .430/.385/.845 in 58 games (all starts) for the club in 2019/20.
It has been an active offseason so far for the Blazers, who agreed to re-sign Rodney Hood, struck a deal with free agent wing Derrick Jones, and reached trade agreements to acquire Robert Covington and Enes Kanter.
Although the Blazers barely squeaked into the Western Conference playoff picture this year, injuries played a major part in the club’s season-long struggles, and Portland looked like a different team during the restart when Jusuf Nurkic and Zach Collins returned. The Blazers will be looking to re-establish themselves as one of the West’s top teams in 2020/21.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
Rockets Claim Kenny Wooten Off Waivers
Kenny Wooten has been claimed off waivers by the Rockets, two days after being let go by the Knicks, tweets Shams Charania of The Athletic.
The 22-year-old forward had a two-way contract in New York running through the 2020-21 season that Houston will inherit, although the Rockets can change it to a standard NBA deal or negotiate a longer agreement. Houston filled one of its two-way slots earlier this week by signing Mason Jones.
Wooten signed with the Knicks last fall after going undrafted out of Oregon, but didn’t get into any NBA games. A shot-blocking specialist, he averaged 3.6 rejections per game, along with 7.7 points and 6.1 rebounds, for the Westchester Knicks in the G League.
Wooten could be a cheap source of talent for the Rockets, who are hard-capped after a sign-and-trade deal for Christian Wood and will rely mostly on minimum-salaried players to fill out their roster.