Lakers Sought Yi Jianlian
The Lakers made a recent run at former No. 6 overall pick Yi Jianlian, who’s been playing in his native China, a source tells international journalist David Pick (Twitter link). Pick’s tweet indicates that the Lakers were unsuccessful in luring Yi from the Guangdong Southern Tigers, with whom he reportedly signed a five-year, $16.1MM extension in June. The Lakers wouldn’t have been able to sign him at that point, since NBA teams can’t ink outside free agents between the end of the regular season at the start of July.
It’s unclear what level of interest the Lakers had in the 27-year-old who hasn’t appeared in the NBA since the 2011/12 season. He’s been putting up impressive numbers for Guangdong, having averaged 27.7 points and 10.9 rebounds in 37.2 minutes per game this past season. Still, the level of competition in China isn’t particularly high. Yi’s best NBA season came in 2009/10, when he put up 12.0 PPG and 7.2 RPG in 31.8 MPG for the Nets. The Bucks originally selected him in the 2007 draft but traded him to the Nets a year later. He also appeared in the league with the Wizards and Mavs.
It doesn’t appear as though the Lakers still have any plan to go after Yi, but if they did, they could offer him only the $2.814MM room exception, which limits the team to giving out no more than a two-year deal worth $5,754,630. The composition of the team’s regular season roster is still murky, with only 12 players possessing fully guaranteed deals.
Do you think we’ll ever see Yi Jianlian in the NBA again? Comment to let us know.
Central Notes: Thompson, Landry, Kukoc
Negotiations between the Cavaliers and Tristan Thompson aren’t as contentious as they may seem, as Steve Kyler of Basketball Insiders writes in his NBA AM piece. It simply comes down to Thompson’s desire for a deal approaching the max and the Cavs’ desire to curb their tax bill, as Kyler explains. Indeed, the sides aren’t as far apart financially as it seems, a league source said to Chris Sheridan of SheridanHoops last week, as Michael Scotto of SheridanHoops relays. Thompson doesn’t appear eager to take the team’s qualifying offer and push the possibility of a larger payday back to next year, but insurance policies are available that Thompson could buy if he fears he wouldn’t get the kind of deal he’d be seeking in 2016, Kyler points out. See more from around the Central Division:
- Marcus Landry‘s new contract with the Bucks is for one year at the minimum salary and is non-guaranteed, reports Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders (Twitter link). It has limited injury protection, Pincus adds, so that would indicate that it’s an Exhibit 9 contract that would hold Milwaukee responsible for no more than $6K should Landry get hurt while playing for the team. “It’s not impossible to make [the regular season roster],’’ Landry told Gery Woelfel of The Journal Times. “Guys get traded, teams make moves. I just have to hold up my end of the deal. I’m what they like to call a gym rat and I’m going to try to be in their gym as much as I can though training camp. I’m excited for this opportunity, very excited.’’
- Playing for the Bucks is a “dream come true” for Landry, as the Milwaukee native also told Woelfel for the same piece. Landry made it clear to agent Keith Kreiter that he he wanted to play for his hometown team, and Kreiter worked with the Bucks over several weeks to engineer a deal, Woelfel writes.
- The Bulls have hired Toni Kukoc as a special adviser to president and COO Michael Reinsdorf, the team announced. Kukoc’s duties will be wide-ranging and include “relating to the international players on our team.” The native of Croatia joins former teammate Scottie Pippen, who holds the same title for the organization.
Nuggets Waive Joey Dorsey In Buyout Deal
1:12pm: Denver has waived Dorsey, the team announced via press release. He’s giving up $200K of his salary in the buyout, according to Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders (Twitter links), who also indicates that the Nuggets waived their set-off rights as part of the arrangement. That means the Nuggets will have to pay Dorsey $815,241 if he clears waivers, regardless of the money he makes playing elsewhere the rest of this season.
10:49am: The Nuggets and Joey Dorsey have agreed to a buyout deal that will facilitate his departure for Turkey’s Galatasaray, reports Christopher Dempsey of The Denver Post (Twitter link). Dorsey, whom Denver will waive as part of the arrangement, has already signed a deal worth more than $650K with Galatasaray, as international journalist David Pick reported earlier this morning. The Nuggets had been set to pay him a guaranteed salary of more than $1.015MM for this season. It’s unclear how much of that Dorsey has agreed to forfeit.
Another NBA team could claim Dorsey off waivers and foil his plan to go overseas once the Nuggets release him, but that’s an unlikely outcome, since his salary is fully guaranteed. Dorsey, whom the Nuggets acquired from the Rockets in the Ty Lawson trade, averaged a career-high 12.4 minutes per game and made 17 starts, also a career best, for Houston last season, though injuries to Dwight Howard and others helped him to his place in the rotation. The Rockets were reportedly ready to trade him in December to free up a roster spot for Josh Smith, but Houston found no takers and released Tarik Black instead, a move that paved the way for Dorsey’s starts, all of which came after Smith replaced Black. The 31-year-old Dorsey was out of the mix by the playoffs, when he saw just 13 total postseason minutes.
Denver will have 14 fully guaranteed contracts once it formally sheds Dorsey. Erick Green has a $100K partial guarantee on his minimum salary, and conflicting reports shroud the future of Kostas Papanikolaou and his non-guaranteed salary of nearly $4.798MM. The Nuggets are limited to paying no more than the minimum salary to outside free agents after using the room exception to re-sign Darrell Arthur.
Grizzlies Sign Michael Holyfield For Camp
The Grizzlies have signed summer league center Michael Holyfield to a non-guaranteed contract, reports Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders (Twitter link). Memphis hasn’t made a formal announcement, but it appears the move has indeed taken place. Pincus indicates that it’s a one-year, minimum salary arrangement that constitutes an Exhibit 9 contract, a deal that would provide Holyfield with only $6K if he were to get hurt while playing for the Grizzlies and the team were to waive him. Most contracts require teams to keep paying players while they recover from injuries.
Holyfield, who went undrafted out of Sam Houston State in June, split his time in summer league last month between the Grizzlies and Celtics, averaging 5.7 points and 3.7 rebounds in 12.6 minutes per game across six appearances total. The 6’11” 22-year-old, who turns 23 in November, put up 8.5 PPG and 8.1 RPG in just 17.9 MPG in college as a senior this past season, a stat line that highlights his efficient work on the boards.
Memphis had been carrying 14 fully guaranteed deals, plus JaMychal Green, whose minimum salary is partially guaranteed for $150K. Thus, Holyfield stands an outside chance to stick for the regular season, when the roster must shrink to no more than 15 players, but it seems more likely that he’ll end up with the Iowa Energy, the Grizzlies’ one-to-one D-League affiliate. NBA teams can retain the D-League rights to as many as four of the players they cut at the end of the preseason.
Knicks Interested In Jamal Crawford
12:54pm: Isola clarifies that the Knicks would have to be creative in constructing a deal for Crawford, suggesting the involvement of a third team would be a possibility (Twitter link).
11:51am: The Knicks have expressed interest in Clippers sixth man Jamal Crawford, a source tells Frank Isola of the New York Daily News (Twitter link). The veteran guard is under contract with the Clippers but has emerged as a trade candidate, with the Clips reportedly having explored Crawford trades around draft time and the Cavs and Heat apparently having been suitors last month. The 35-year-old who spent more than four seasons with the Knicks between 2004 and 2008 is a favorite of Knicks owner James Dolan, GM Steve Mills, assistant GM Allan Houston and Isiah Thomas, a Dolan confidant and WNBA New York Liberty executive who was president of the Knicks during Crawford’s time there, Isola adds (Twitter link). Current team president Phil Jackson would presumably have the final say about a deal that would return Crawford to New York.
The Clippers haven’t been anxious to trade the two-time Sixth Man of the Year award winner, but the trade rumors from earlier this summer, his exclusion from the team’s recruitment of DeAndre Jordan, and new players at his position cloud Crawford’s future, as Dan Woike of the Orange County Register wrote a few weeks ago. Crawford has also signaled his concern via social media, as Woike noted. Still, trade acquisition Lance Stephenson, one of L.A.’s additions on the wing, expressed enthusiasm about the idea of playing with Crawford, as Ben Bolch relayed late Monday (Twitter links).
New York has spent its cap room and doesn’t have a trade exception, so it would have to relinquish salary for a Crawford trade to work. The Clippers would no doubt want a player who can help them make a push for the title this year if they were to relinquish Crawford, though that’s just my speculation. Crawford is due to make $5.675MM this coming season, so salary matching would be based on that figure. Tax considerations may well come into play, since the Clips are about $11MM above the $84.74MM tax line. Conversely. the Knicks are roughly the same distance under the tax line.
Players who signed new contracts are off-limits for a trade until at least December 15th, so the only Knicks eligible for inclusion in a deal for now are Carmelo Anthony, Jose Calderon, Langston Galloway and Cleanthony Early. Anthony, who has a no-trade clause, almost certainly wouldn’t be included. First-round picks Kristaps Porzingis and Jerian Grant become trade-eligible later this month, and the Knicks are allowed to trade draft-and-stash signee Thanasis Antetokounmpo as soon as early September.
Given the constraints, do you see a workable deal that could land Jamal Crawford with the Knicks? Leave a comment to share your ideas.
Most Within Kings Want DeMarcus Cousins Traded?
5:44pm: Cousins, Divac and Ranadive all took to Twitter in an apparent effort to debunk the latest rumors, with Cousins posting “Blah blah blah…” and Divac chiming in with “I agree…#family.” Ranadive followed with the hashtag #WeAreFamily (hat tip to Marc Stein of ESPN.com).
2:04pm: The vast majority of the people in the Kings organization would prefer to see the team trade DeMarcus Cousins, as Bleacher Report’s Howard Beck says he’s been told (video link). Owner Vivek Ranadive has said publicly since the spring that he has no desire to trade the All-Star center, and while Beck believes that the owner is steadfast against a move, it appears others in the team’s power structure feel differently. Beck adds that coach George Karl would still like to see the team move on from Cousins, even though Karl has said otherwise.
It’s the latest twist in an ongoing saga involving the Kings and Cousins that comes on the heels of weeks of apparent peacemaking. Cousins said last week that he and Karl were on the same page after a meeting that they’d had along with vice president of basketball operations Vlade Divac and assistant GM Mike Bratz. That meeting came after a brief encounter between Cousins and the coach at summer league that was reportedly their first interaction for a period of months. Cousins notoriously tweeted snake and grass emojis shortly after a report surfaced indicating that Karl had actively attempted to have him traded. A person familiar with Karl’s thinking told Beck all the way back in February that the Kings weren’t ruling out trading Cousins at the deadline this past February, and Karl advanced that notion in April when he said that he’d never coached a player who was off-limits for a trade.
Karl’s apparent efforts to trade Cousins reportedly upset Ranadive to the point that he considered firing the coach, and a conflicting narrative exists about whether the Kings reached out to John Calipari as a potential replacement. Indeed, the line of Cousins rumors has been rife with denials and nuance, dating back to concerns over Cousins’ reaction to the pair of coaching changes that Sacramento made this past season. His contract still has three full seasons left, valued at an average of nearly $16.958MM a year, so it doesn’t present an urgency to make a deal.
The Lakers emerged as a strong suitor for Cousins around draft time. The Dan Fegan client reportedly wanted to play with them, and Ranadive apparently gave Fegan permission to see if he could find a workable trade that would take Cousins out of Sacramento. However, no deal materialized as Divac, who has echoed Ranadive in saying publicly many times that he wants to keep Cousins, sought a reconciliation between Cousins and Karl. It had seemed, before today’s news, that the coach and his star player had patched up their relationship, but apparently that effort still has a ways to go.
What do you think of the latest development in the DeMarcus Cousins saga? Leave a comment to tell us.
Southeast Notes: Webster, Beal, Kalinoski
Martell Webster‘s partial guarantee of $2.5MM for 2016/17 becomes a full guarantee of more than $5.845MM if he plays in 70 games this coming season, and the Wizards forward has embraced a new commitment to his fitness this summer, as he explains to Ben Mehic of Fansided’s Wiz of Awes blog. Webster also made it clear that he wants to continue to play past the expiration of the contract, backtracking from comments he made this past fall that indicated he would most likely retire in 2017.
“I feel amazing,” Webster said to Mehic. “I transformed by body, I dropped 20 pounds and I’m probably going to drop 10 more, so that I’m about 206 — anywhere from 206 to 210 this next year, that’s what I want to play at. I feel amazing, a lot of pressure has been taken off my back and off of my joints and I feel great.”
See more from Washington and elsewhere around the Southeast Division here:
- The Wizards are hesitant to commit to the four-year, maximum-salary extension that Bradley Beal wants unless it contains some non-guaranteed salary, given his history of injuries, writes J. Michael of CSNWashington.com. That jibes with what Michael heard late last month, when he wrote that the Wizards wanted an escape hatch in any long-term deal while Beal’s camp was insistent upon a player option if he were to take less than the max. Ken Berger of CBSSports.com reported in May that the Wizards were committed to giving him the max, but Michael says the club’s thinking has shifted slightly since last fall, when Washington seemed ready to move full speed ahead with extension plans despite Beal’s broken wrist.
- The Heat and Hornets had expressed interest in signing undrafted Davidson guard Tyler Kalinoski to a deal for training camp, but he signed with Elan Chalon of France instead on a contract that included an NBA out, writes Ian Thomsen of NBA.com. That escape clause has expired, but the NBA dream is not dead for the Kenny Grant client, as Thomsen chronicles in a piece that examines the path of those on the fringe between the NBA and Europe. “A guy with his skill-set is intriguing,” said Dan Craig, who coached Kalinoski on the Heat’s summer league team. “I think he is right there on the brink of being a 14th or 15th guy on an NBA roster. In the right system, under the right coaching, he could possibly come in and give you impact minutes.”
Dorell Wright To Play In China
4:34pm: Wright confirmed the deal via text message to Young (Twitter link).
4:32pm: The arrangement is for one year with no NBA escape clause, tweets Marc J. Spears of Yahoo! Sports. Still, the Chinese Basketball Association season ends long before the NBA season does, so the deal would appear to give Wright the chance to return to the NBA for the stretch run in 2015/16.
4:01pm: Dorell Wright has a deal with China’s Chongqing Dragons, international journalist David Pick reports (Twitter link). Pick, who indicates that the sides have already put pen to paper, reported earlier today that the free agent forward was considering a Chinese team as talks with the Heat had failed to produce an offer.
Wright, who spent last season with the Trail Blazers, made it clear more than a month ago that he had interest in signing with the Heat, as Barry Jackson of the Miami Herald reported, and the Los Angeles native also had interest in the Clippers and the Lakers, according to Jabari Young of CSNNW.com. However, an NBA deal didn’t materialize with those teams, nor did one spring up with the Raptors, who signed No. 20 overall pick Delon Wright, Dorell’s brother.
Dorell may end up in Beijing, since the Dragons are thinking about relocating there, Pick tweets. Wright told Young that he’s excited about expanding his brand, but the Wasserman client will nonetheless return to his quest for an NBA deal after the Chinese season, as Alex Kennedy of Basketball Insiders hears (Twitter links).
Do you think Dorell Wright will end up on an NBA roster after the Chinese season? Comment to let us know.
Bucks Sign Marcus Landry
3:27pm: The signing is official, the team announced.
3:17pm: The Bucks have decided to sign former University of Wisconsin power forward Marcus Landry, sources tell Michael Scotto of SheridanHoops (Twitter link). The move had been expected, according to Gery Woelfel of The Journal Times, who reported this morning that the one-year NBA veteran was set to work out for Milwaukee today. That audition apparently went well, as Scotto indicates that Landry has put pen to paper, though the team has yet to make a formal announcement. It’s unclear just what sort of terms are involved in the pact, though with the Bucks already carrying 15 guaranteed deals, it’s likely a minimum salary deal with a partial guarantee, at best.
It’ll be the fifth time an NBA team will have brought Landry to training camp, though he only made the regular season roster once, on his first try in 2009. The Knicks had him that year and he appeared in 17 games, averaging 2.6 points in 6.4 minutes per contest, but they shipped him to the Celtics at the deadline in a trade involving Nate Robinson. The C’s released Landry after he made just one appearance for them, and while he’s signed with the Kings, Suns and Lakers since then, he’s yet to see another opening night.
The Milwaukee native has made his mark in Spain and in the D-League as a three-point sharpshooter, and that’s a skill that the Bucks could use. Damien Inglis and Johnny O’Bryant have less than $1MM coming their way this year despite fully guaranteed salaries, so perhaps they’d be the most vulnerable to be cut if Landry proves worthy of sticking for the regular season, though that’s just my speculation based on the costs involved. The addition of Landry seemingly makes it tougher to envision Jorge Gutierrez remaining with the team after camp, since his deal is non-guaranteed.
If they keep Landry, which of the Bucks do you think should go? Leave a comment to tell us.
Jazz Sign Treveon Graham
The Jazz have signed former VCU shooting guard Treveon Graham, the team announced. Graham played with the Spurs in summer league last month after going undrafted in June. He joins 17 others who have deals with Utah, though only 13 have any guaranteed salary. The terms of Graham’s deal aren’t immediately clear, but it seems likely that he has a minimum-salary arrangement with a partial guarantee, at best.
Graham, who turns 22 in October, averaged 16.2 points in 29.4 minutes per game with 38.1% three-point shooting as a senior this past season, though his 7.1 rebounds per game were perhaps more impressive, given his 6’6″ height. His performance on the boards wasn’t quite as strong in his 10 summer league appearances, when he put up a line of 7.8 PPG and 2.9 RPG in 16.0 MPG, and he knocked down just 30.8% of his three-pointers.
It’s not surprising to see the Jazz pluck someone off the Spurs summer league team, given that Jazz GM Dennis Lindsey is a Spurs disciple who has brought aboard former San Antonio players in the past, including Bryce Cotton, one of four members of the Jazz with non-guaranteed deals. Graham will ostensibly compete with Cotton, Chris Johnson, Jack Cooley and Elijah Millsap for the chance to stick with the team for opening night.
Do you think Graham has a realistic chance to beat out the existing Jazz players without guaranteed deals to make the regular season roster? Leave a comment to let us know.