Sixers Cutting Furkan Aldemir
The Sixers are waiving Furkan Aldemir, league sources tell Shams Charania of Yahoo Sports (Twitter link). Charania indicates the move has already taken place, though the team has yet to make an official announcement. Philadelphia will eat his fully guaranteed salary of nearly $2.837MM for this season unless he clears waivers. Aldemir’s release is part of a series of moves the Sixers are making today, but they still must cut one more player to get to the 15-man regular season roster limit.
Aldemir dealt with a case of plantar fasciitis in his right foot, slowing him during the preseason. He nonetheless averaged 4.8 points and 5.8 rebounds in 18.4 minutes per game across six preseason appearances. At 6’10”, he also showed proficiency on the boards in 41 games during the regular season last year after he signed with the Sixers in December.
The now 24-year-old was a draft-and-stash signee who played for Galatasaray in his native Turkey before coming stateside. The Sixers acquired his draft rights from the Rockets, who in turn had picked them up from the Clippers, the team that drafted him 53rd overall in 2012.
Pistons Waive Danny Granger
The Pistons have waived Danny Granger, the team announced. The move has been widely expected for weeks as Granger didn’t join the Pistons during the preseason, instead rehabbing on his own in Arizona. Granger has a fully guaranteed salary of $2,170,465 for this season that Detroit will be responsible for, barring a highly unlikely waiver claim from another team. The move takes the Pistons to 15 players, the regular season roster limit. Granger has experienced knee trouble in recent years, but it’s plantar fasciitis that has been the issue of late, as Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo Sports details. He’ll need about a month more to return to health, Wojnarowski hears.
Pistons coach/executive Stan Van Gundy conceded over the past few days that the team was “probably sort of at the end of the road with” the 32-year-old Granger and that it’s all but inevitable the team would waive him. Detroit acquired the former high scorer via trade with Phoenix this summer in a move that also brought in Marcus Morris, who was the centerpiece of the deal for the Pistons, and Reggie Bullock. Indications surfaced even at the time of the trade that the Pistons would waive Granger, as Vince Ellis of the Detroit Free Press recently explained to Hoops Rumors. Granger signed a two-year deal with the Heat in 2014 that included a player option, but his health never allowed him to live up to the contract. He picked up his player option in June a few months after Miami traded him to Phoenix in the Goran Dragic deal.
The Pistons spent much of the offseason with 17 fully guaranteed contracts on their books, but they essentially removed any remaining question over who would go when they waived Cartier Martin’s fully guaranteed pact on Friday. That confirmed a regular season roster spot for Bullock, whose strong preseason prompted the team to pick up his option for 2016/17, too.
Do you think we’ll see Granger play in the NBA again? Leave a comment to share your thoughts.
76ers To Cut Scottie Wilbekin, Keep Christian Wood
The Sixers will waive Scottie Wilbekin and have told Christian Wood that he’s made the opening night roster, reports Shams Charania of Yahoo Sports (Twitter link). Wilbekin has a partial guarantee of $200K, while Wood’s partial guarantee is worth only $50K. The move takes the Sixers closer to the regular season roster limit of 15, though with Wilbekin, J.P. Tokoto and Pierre Jackson the reported cuts today, the team still must part ways with at least two more players.
Wilbekin, 22, displayed a scoring touch in the preseason, averaging 10.0 points in 17.6 minutes per game across five appearances. Still, it wasn’t enough for the undrafted shooting guard from the University of Florida.
Wood, another undrafted rookie, joined the Sixers after a deal with the Rockets fell through. The 20-year-old power forward from UNLV posted 6.2 points and 4.8 rebounds in 12.6 minutes per game over five preseason contests with Philadelphia.
Lakers To Waive Jabari Brown, Retain World Peace
12:52pm: The release of Brown is official, the team announced. The Lakers didn’t mention World Peace in its statement, but presumably he’s sticking around.
12:24pm: The Lakers will waive Jabari Brown and keep Metta World Peace for the opening night roster, reports Shams Charania of Yahoo Sports (Twitter link). One of them had to go, since the Lakers have been carrying 16 players, one over the regular season limit, and the deadline to cut to 15 is today. Neither have any guaranteed money on their contracts, but since the Lakers failed to make their final cut by Saturday’s deadline to waive non-guaranteed players without them counting against the cap, they’ll be stuck with two days’ worth of salary to Brown, assuming he clears waivers. That’s minus $8K in training camp compensation that Brown already earned, as former Nets executive Bobby Marks notes (All Twitter links), so the Lakers are poised to be out a mere $1,972 because they waited an extra two days.
Brown, 22, is a holdover from last season, when the Lakers signed him to multiyear deal after a pair of 10-day contracts ran to term. The shooting guard averaged 6.0 points in 14.3 minutes per game across six preseason appearances this fall, and while World Peace put up only 3.7 points in 14.1 minutes per contest in the same number of preseason games, the 35-year-old’s mentorship ability loomed large. The move isn’t a shock, as Mike Bresnahan of the Los Angeles Times suggested last week that World Peace had a slight edge over Brown in the competition for the final regular season roster spot.
The Lakers also cut Brown at the end of the preseason a year ago, and they claimed his D-League rights, making him an affiliate player. The team still has those rights, and the Lakers would like to have him with their D-League affiliate again this year, according to Bresnahan (Twitter link). However, if he clears waivers and doesn’t have another NBA offer, the Lakers would have to convince him to sign with the D-League rather than overseas, where he would probably make more money. Brown’s priority is to sign overseas, reports Mark Medina of the Los Angeles Daily News.
World Peace isn’t assured of much beyond opening night, since his contract wouldn’t become guaranteed until the leaguewide guarantee date in January. Still, it’s an intriguing comeback story for the veteran combo forward who spent last season playing overseas and whom the Lakers waived via the amnesty provision in 2013.
Did the Lakers make the right choice in keeping Metta World Peace over Brown? Leave a comment to share your thoughts.
Sixers To Waive Pierre Jackson
12:36pm: Brown confirmed the team is waiving Jackson, Cooney tweets.
11:06am: The Sixers will waive Pierre Jackson today, the last day teams have to cut down to 15 players, reports Keith Pompey of the Philadelphia Inquirer (Twitter link). Bob Cooney of the Philadelphia Daily News spotted Jackson leaving the team’s practice facility this morning while the rest of the team was practicing inside (Twitter link). Philly is letting go of Jackson even though he has a fully guaranteed salary of $750K for this this season. He’s one of 20 Sixers still under contract, so the team has at least four more cuts to make today.
The subtraction of Jackson would leave only 11 Sixers with full guarantees for this season. T.J. McConnell, Scottie Wilbekin and Christian Wood have partial guarantees, while Robert Covington, Jordan McRae, JaKarr Sampson, Hollis Thompson and J.P. Tokoto are without guaranteed money. Covington and Thompson are candidates to start, but while their places on the roster appear relatively safe, the same can’t be said for the others. Philadelphia is also reportedly thinking about claiming Ish Smith off waivers from the Wizards today.
It appears that it will be the second straight year that Philadelphia has signed and waived Jackson prior to the start of the regular season, as the team gave him a $400K partial guarantee last season before cutting him even though he’d already torn his Achilles tendon. The 24-year-old dealt with groin issues this year, and he wasn’t 100% during the preseason even as he made it onto the court, as coach Brett Brown said last week, according to Brian Seltzer of Sixers.com.
Jackson, who took part in a wide-open preseason competition for Sixers point guard duties, averaged 2.0 points, 2.3 assists and 1.7 turnovers in 14.3 minutes per game during three appearances this month. The Sixers signed Jackson to a four-year deal in July, but only this season’s salary was guaranteed. His D-League rights belong to the affiliate of the Jazz, so the Sixers can’t make him an affiliate player, notes Adam Johnson of D-League Digest (Twitter link).
Who else do you think the Sixers will end up cutting? Leave a comment to let us know.
Sixers Cutting J.P. Tokoto
The Sixers are waiving J.P. Tokoto, reports Keith Pompey of the Philadelphia Inquirer (on Twitter). Coach Brett Brown confirmed the move, tweets Bob Cooney of the Philadelphia Daily News. Tokoto, this year’s 58th overall pick, signed the required tender of a one-year, non-guaranteed minimum salary deal that the Sixers had to make to retain his draft rights. Philadelphia is also releasing Pierre Jackson, as Pompey reported earlier, but the team still has to make three more cuts to reduce its roster to 15 by the deadline to do so at the close of business today.
Philadelphia will have a cap hit of about $6,178 for Tokoto, provided he clears waivers, though the team has ostensibly already paid him $8K in training camp compensation, which doesn’t count against the cap, as former Nets executive Bobby Marks explains (All Twitter links). That amount negates the $6,178, so all Tokoto cost the Sixers was $8K.
Tokoto, a 22-year-old shooting guard, averaged 3.2 points in 10.4 minutes per game over five appearances during the preseason. Philadelphia can make him an affiliate player for its D-League affiliate if he clears waivers, but the Sixers no longer have any NBA rights to the prospect from the University of North Carolina.
Hoops Rumors Glossary: Affiliate Players
NBA teams are creating ever closer relationships with their D-League affiliates. All 19 D-League teams have one-to-one NBA affiliates for the 2015/16 season, and more one-to-one partnerships are on the way. NBA teams that have D-League affiliates can use a roster-building tool that often comes into play at the start of the season. These NBA franchises can select “affiliate players” and funnel them to their D-League teams.
An affiliate player is someone who was under contract with an NBA team, was released and cleared waivers, and whose NBA team unilaterally claimed his D-League rights. The last part is key. NBA teams can retain the D-League rights to as many as four players they release, thus keeping them out of the D-League draft (the 2015 D-League draft is scheduled for October 31st) or the waiver system that the D-League uses during the season to determine which of its teams get newly signed players. An NBA team can designate an affiliate player during the season, but usually, teams identify those players at the end of the preseason.
Players released from NBA teams are under no obligation to play in the D-League, regardless of whether their former teams want them to, and affiliate players can sign with any NBA team at any point even if they accept the affiliate player designation. When teams select affiliate players, they’re merely controlling which D-League team they’d play for if they consent to play in the D-League. That’s a limited power, but one that allows franchises to develop players using their own offensive and defensive systems and terminology and under the watchful eye of team-controlled coaches and staff.
The practice requires some patience. Only four of the 46 affiliate players designated at the start of the 2014/15 season are, as the 2015/16 regular season is set to begin, under NBA contract with the franchise that gave them the affiliate player tag. Langston Galloway is probably the most rousing success among them, having started 41 games for New York in 2014/15 after spending the first two months of the season as an affiliate player with the Westchester Knicks. Tyler Johnson of the Heat and James Michael McAdoo of the Warriors are safely on their respective NBA rosters after joining midway through last season, but Jabari Brown is sweating it out today as the Lakers decide whether he or Metta World Peace will be the team’s final preseason cut.
The Lakers wouldn’t have to apply the affiliate player tag to Brown if they cut him, since D-League teams can retain the rights to players who played for them any time within the past two years. That rule looms large. If an NBA team brings five players to training camp and one of them was an affiliate player for the same team the year before, the franchise can tag the four other camp cuts as affiliate players, keep the D-League returning player rights to the fifth guy, and have all of them play for its D-League affiliate. That rarely happens, however. More often, NBA teams bring a player or two to camp whose D-League rights are already owned by another team’s affiliate through that same returning player rule. For instance, the Hawks brought Earl Barron to camp in September and waived him Saturday. They can’t make him an affiliate player because the Suns beat them to it by a year. Phoenix had Barron in camp last fall and designated him as an affiliate player, and the Suns later signed him to the NBA roster on two 10-day contracts and a deal for the rest of the 2014/15 season.
NBA teams are also not allowed to designate anyone who spent less than half the preseason with them as an affiliate player if they also spent time in an NBA camp with a different team, except in one circumstance, as Adam Johnson of D-League Digest points out. Ryan Boatright spent the lion’s share of the preseason with the Nets, who waived him last week. The Pistons signed him shortly after he cleared waivers, then released him two days later. It’s just the sort of last-minute move that the NBA and the D-League had in mind when they stipulated that teams couldn’t sign players just for a few days solely to grab their D-League rights. However, the Pistons are allowed to name Boatright an affiliate player, as they’re reportedly poised to do, because the Nets don’t have a D-League affiliate of their own. Thus, some last-minute “catch-and-release” signings in late October do indeed take place because of the D-League.
Teams without one-to-one affiliates were still allowed to designate affiliate players under the shared affiliate system. That’s how the Pacers tagged C.J. Fair as an affiliate player last season. He spent the year with the Fort Wayne Mad Ants, who were the shared affiliate of 13 NBA teams for the 2014/15 season. The Pacers signed Fair for camp and released him again this year, but since the Mad Ants are now the one-to-one affiliate of the Pacers, Indiana already has his D-League rights.
Note: This is a Hoops Rumors Glossary entry. Our glossary posts will explain specific rules relating to trades, free agency, or other aspects of the NBA’s Collective Bargaining Agreement. Larry Coon’s Salary Cap FAQ and Chris Reichert’s D-League FAQ for Upside & Motor were used in the creation of this post.
Northwest Notes: Saunders, Waiters, Gobert, Atkins
Flip Saunders was in a coma for nearly six weeks before his death at age 60, writes Sid Hartman of the Star Tribune. He had one more treatment left for Hodgkin’s lymphoma when he came down with pneumonia, went into the hospital, and failed to recover, sources told Hartman. Saunders was optimistic in the months leading up to his death, about his own prognosis — saying that he thought he’d return to the team shortly after the New Year — and about the Timberwolves, as Hartman details. The coach/executive predicted a title for the team within three years, though close friends speculated that by that time, he hoped that he could turn over head coaching duties to son Ryan, a Wolves assistant coach, according to Hartman. Saunders was by far the winningest coach in Timberwolves history, going 427-392 over his two tenures in the job, and was the only coach ever to take the team to the playoffs, the Star Tribune’s Jerry Zgoda writes in an obituary. As the NBA mourns, see more from the Northwest Division:
- The issue of whether or not the Thunder sign Dion Waiters to an extension could signal whether the team is committed to significant spending for years to come or if the Thunder’s recent high payrolls represent a temporary strategy, writes Keith P. Smith of RealGM. Oklahoma City is reportedly actively exploring an extension for the former No. 4 overall pick in advance of the November 2nd deadline.
- Rudy Gobert credits the arrival of Jazz coach Quin Snyder last season with a renewed focus on defense and increased cohesion, as Gobert, optimistic about the season ahead, details to Alex Kennedy of Basketball Insiders.
- The deal that point guard Eric Atkins signed Sunday with the Jazz is non-guaranteed and for one year at the minimum salary, as Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders reveals (Twitter link).
Magic Pick Up Options On Napier, Three Others
SUNDAY, 1:58pm: The team announced it has exercised the options on each of the players, Robbins tweets.
TUESDAY, 11:24am: Shabazz Napier‘s strong preseason performance has won over the Magic, who plan to pick up their $1,350,120 team option for 2016/17 on his rookie scale contract, reports Josh Robbins of the Orlando Sentinel. The team is also planning to exercise its rookie scale options on Aaron Gordon, Victor Oladipo and Elfrid Payton, according to Robbins, but unlike those three, the team wasn’t quite convinced about the option for Napier heading into camp, Robbins indicates.
The deadline for all four options is Monday, November 2nd, and Orlando is expected to make the moves official soon after its last preseason game on Friday, Robbins writes. The options add up to precisely $14.868MM, lifting the Magic’s payroll for 2016/17 to more than $60.5MM against a projected $89MM cap.
Napier, 24, is fifth on the team in preseason points per game, with 10.2, and is putting up that number in just 17.0 minutes per contest. The point guard whom the Magic acquired for virtually nothing in a trade with the Heat this summer has posted 2.2 assists and 1.2 turnovers per game in his five preseason appearances. That’s slightly better than the 2.2-to-1.6 assists-to-turnover ratio he put up in his rookie season with Miami last year, and he’s scoring at about double the rate he did with the Heat.
The 2014 Final Four Most Outstanding Player went 24th overall in the 2014 draft on the same night the Magic came away with Gordon and Payton, who were top-10 picks. Payton finished fourth in Rookie of the Year voting while injury limited Gordon’s impact. Oladipo was the second pick in the 2013 draft and finished second in Rookie of the Year voting in 2014.
I regarded the option pickup for Napier as generally likely, while the same move for Gordon, Payton and Oladipo seemed highly likely. The options for Napier, Gordon and Payton are for the third seasons of their respective rookie scale contracts, which cover four years. The option for Oladipo is for his fourth season, and he’ll be eligible for a rookie scale extension next summer.
Do you agree with the Magic’s plan to pick up Napier’s option? Leave a comment to let us know.
Heat Keep James Ennis For Opener, Rework Deal
SUNDAY, 12:21pm: The restructuring leaves Ennis with precisely 37% of his salary guaranteed for this season, according to Winderman (Twitter link).
4:50pm: Ennis will have 40% of this season’s salary guaranteed, Jackson clarifies (Twitter link).
4:12pm: The sides are still finalizing the changes to the contract, tweets Ira Winderman of the Sun Sentinel.
SATURDAY 4:04pm: The Heat are keeping James Ennis for the start of the regular season after Ennis agreed to yet another change to the guarantee structure on his contract, reports Barry Jackson of the Miami Herald. Ennis was to have received a full guarantee on his $845,059 salary if he stuck on the roster for opening night under the terms of the modifications he and the Heat made to his deal over the summer. Instead, his salary will be partially guaranteed for about half its full value, according to Jackson. It’s unclear if the sides agreed to a date on which the full salary would kick in or if that would take place on the leaguewide guarantee date January 10th.
Ennis, who spent the preseason on a non-guaranteed deal, initially was to have received 50% of his salary for this season if he remained on the roster through August 1st, but the sides did away with that trigger this summer. The 25-year-old swingman struggled in summer league but bounced back somewhat during the preseason. He carries potential, having been the 50th overall pick in 2013.
The latest change to Miami’s deal with Ennis also moves up the date by which his salary for 2016/17 would become fully guaranteed. The new guarantee date for that season will come before July 1st, Jackson reports. It had previously been slated for August 1st.
The Heat have 15 players, including Ennis. That’s the regular season roster limit.