Mavs Eye Salah Mejri
The Mavericks are interested in Tunisian free agent center Salah Mejri, sources tell Sportando’s Orazio Cauchi. Sources told Sportando colleague Emiliano Carchia earlier today that Mejri has an offer from an NBA team, and Cauchi hears the 7’1″ 29-year-old is leaning toward playing in the NBA. The Cavs were reportedly interested as of this past spring, though it’s unclear if they remain so.
Real Madrid of Spain informed Mejri of his release a few days ago, as David Pick of Eurobasket.com reported. The Arn Tellem client didn’t see much playing time for the Spanish club this past season, having averaged only 4.3 points and 2.1 rebounds in 9.2 minutes per game, fewer minutes than he saw for Real Madrid in 2013/14.
Multiple reports from last week indicated that the Mavs have held interest in free agents Ryan Hollins, Elton Brand, JaVale McGee, Samuel Dalembert, Kevin Seraphin and Tyrus Thomas as they seek to complement trade acquisition Zaza Pachulia and fill the void left when DeAndre Jordan broke his deal to sign with the team. Thus, Mejri appears to be one of many options for Dallas, which has cap space still to burn.
Atlantic Notes: Love, Thornton, Roberts, Nets
Kevin Love was never close to becoming a Celtic, and his preference since joining the Cavs has been to remain with the team, but if somehow it had fallen apart for him in Cleveland, his second choice would have been Boston, as a non-Celtics source who spoke with Steve Bulpett of the Boston Herald believes. Love enjoyed his much-publicized offseason trip to Boston last year, the source said to Bulpett, but the power forward is now locked in long-term with the Cavs, having signed a new five-year contract this month.
- Marcus Thornton appeared to be a reach when the Celtics picked him 45th overall, but he assured them before the draft that he was willing to play overseas, a priority for the team, which wouldn’t consider others who refused to make the same promise, Bulpett tweets. Thornton signed this week to play for the Sydney Kings in Australia, in a league that would allow him enough time to return stateside and join Boston’s D-League team or even the NBA roster near the end of the season, writes Chris Forsberg of ESPNBoston.com.
- The Raptors inked Ronald Roberts this week, and at least one sign points to the team having more than the D-League in mind for the former Sixers power forward. The Warriors own his D-League rights, so Toronto’s new D-League affiliate would have to trade for them if Roberts were to remain in the Raptors system should Toronto waive him at the end of training camp, notes Josh Lewenberg of TSN.ca (Twitter links).
- The Nets made a number of changes to their coaching and basketball operations staff this week, and they serve to further signal the franchise’s belt-tightening, as Mike Mazzeo of ESPNNewYork.com examines.
Pistons Sign Stanley Johnson
The Pistons have signed No. 8 overall pick Stanley Johnson, the team announced via press release. His contract will give him nearly $2.842MM this season and a total of $12.85MM over four years, assuming he signed for the standard 120% of the rookie scale. Detroit held off on signing him while it used its cap space, as today’s move lifts Johnson’s cap hold by about $500K, but now the team appears finished with major free agent signings.
Johnson, a small forward from the University of Arizona, seemed a curious selection with small forward Justise Winslow still on the board, but coach/executive Stan Van Gundy said Johnson’s confidence stood out. Johnson attributed the choice to the toughness he displays on the court. The 19-year-old was by no means a stretch at No. 8, as Jonathan Givony of DraftExpress ranked him the eighth-best prospect in the draft. Chad Ford of ESPN.com ranked him 12th. Our Eddie Scarito had the Pistons taking Johnson with the eighth pick in the final version of the 2015 Hoops Rumors Mock Draft, though Winslow, who in real life slipped to the Heat at No. 10, had already been drafted in Eddie’s scenario.
Defense is Johnson’s strength, as Eddie noted in his prospect profile, though he displayed 37.1% three-point shooting this past season while averaging 13.8 points and 6.5 rebounds in 28.4 minutes per game. He shared a crowded frontcourt with fellow small forward Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, the No. 23 overall pick.
Do you think the Pistons made the right move to take Johnson over Winslow? Leave a comment to let us know.
Eastern Notes: Mejri, Dudley, Jackson, Ennis
Tunisian center Salah Mejri, in whom the Cavaliers were reportedly interested this spring, has an offer from an NBA team, sources tell Sportando’s Emiliano Carchia (Twitter link). Real Madrid, his Spanish club, informed Mejri a few days ago that he would be released, as David Pick of Eurobasket.com reported (Twitter link). Mejri went undrafted in 2008, so no NBA team holds his rights, unlike center Sasha Kaun, Cleveland’s own draft-and-stash prospect who’s reportedly been in talks recently with GM David Griffin. Here’s more from around the Eastern Conference:
- Jared Dudley will miss approximately three or four months after undergoing surgery Tuesday to fix a herniated disk in his lower back, the Wizards announced. The team was aware that he was playing in pain last season before acquiring him via trade from the Bucks this month, according to Jorge Castillo of The Washington Post. The timetable means he stands to miss nearly a month of the regular season, though it also indicates he could return before opening night.
- Top free agents don’t often choose to go to Detroit, so the Pistons had little choice than to pay top dollar to retain restricted free agent Reggie Jackson, argues Terry Foster of The Detroit News. Jackson’s five-year, $80MM deal is receiving widespread criticism, but coach/executive Stan Van Gundy thinks the conventional wisdom will change, as Vince Ellis of the Detroit Free Press relays. “We’re excited about that and I think that also … that as we get two years down the road and look at what’s going on in this league and where the numbers are gonna go and the way we know that Reggie’s gonna play, we know this is going to be a bargain in this league,” Van Gundy said.
- James Ennis struggled mightily in summer league, and the Heat would be on the hook for at least 50% of his salary this season if he remains on the roster through August 1st. However, the team has given him positive feedback and is paying for him to take part in a skill development camp in California, according to Barry Jackson of the Miami Herald. Jackson suggests that’s a sign that the Heat will retain Ennis through the looming guarantee date. The Herald scribe speculates that Henry Walker, who’d earn a $100K partial guarantee if he sticks through that same August 1st date, is at greater risk to be let go, since the Heat held him out of summer league.
Hoops Rumors Glossary: Renegotiations
Fans often wonder if NBA Team X can renegotiate its contract with Player Y, as is common practice in the National Football League. The answer is almost always no, and it’s a firm no if the follow-up question is whether the sides can renegotiate the value of the contract downward. But, renegotiations are allowed to make the contract more lucrative, and they can happen as long as a specific set of circumstances are in place, as the Nuggets have proven this month.
Denver renegotiated its contract with Wilson Chandler as part of their deal on an extension. The move lifted Chandler’s salary for this coming season from close to $7.172MM to more than $10.449MM. Danilo Gallinari is reportedly set for a similar renegotiation simultaneous to an extension, taking his salary for 2015/16 from more than $11.559MM to about $14MM. Chandler was the first player to renegotiate his contract since the existing collective bargaining agreement went into place in 2011, and Gallinari is poised to become the second. It might be a while before we see the third. No player aside from Gallinari is eligible for a renegotiation, as former Nets executive Bobby Marks points out (Twitter link), and that speaks to just how stringent the restrictions on them are.
Only contracts that cover four or more seasons can be renegotiated, and rookie scale contracts, which run four seasons, can’t be renegotiated, either. Renegotiations can only occur after the third anniversary of a contract signing, extension or previous renegotiation, if the previous renegotiation lifted the salary in any season by 4.5% or more. Teams can’t renegotiate any contracts if they’re over the cap, and they can only increase the salary in the current season by the amount of cap room that they have. Renegotiations can’t happen as part of a trade, and if a player waives a portion of his trade kicker to facilitate a trade, as Roy Hibbert did earlier this month, he’s ineligible to renegotiate his contract for the next six months. Teams can renegotiate contracts once the July Moratorium ends, but not after the end of February.
A further set of rules restrict just how much can change in a renegotiation. The raises for any seasons that follow the first renegotiated season in a contract are limited to 7.5%. That’s also true of salary decreases, though if a renegotiation happens simultaneous to an extension, as was the case with Chandler and will likely be the case with Gallinari, the player’s salary can drop by as much as 40% from the last season of the existing contract to the first season of the extension. That won’t happen for either Chandler or Gallinari, each of whom is set to see more money in 2016/17 than in 2015/16. Also, only renegotiations that happen in conjunction with an extension may contain signing bonuses.
All of this helps make renegotiations as rare as they are. However, with the salary cap projected to surge beginning next season, and surge again for 2017/18, more teams will have cap room, one of the necessary elements for amending contracts. Conceivably, that’ll open more doors for renegotiations, as well as veteran extensions, which are also rare under the current collective bargaining agreement. Teams can entice players they want to keep with added salary this way, and prevent them from hitting the open market. The rules are subject to change if the union, the owners or both exercise their mutual option to end the labor agreement in 2017, but in the meantime, the power to renegotiate will continue as an obscure but sometimes useful tool for roster building.
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 was used in the creation of this post.
Western Notes: Hammon, Terry, Teletovic, Jazz
Former Nets executive Bobby Marks says he would call Spurs assistant Becky Hammon first if he were running a team and looking for a head coach (Twitter link). Hammon has been a full-time NBA assistant for only one season, but she guided the Spurs to the Las Vegas Summer League title as the first female summer league head coach and commanded the attention of her players, as Sean Deveney of The Sporting News details.
“She’s just a good coach,” said Kyle Anderson, San Antonio’s 2014 first-round pick. “Everybody listens to her like they would anyone else. I mean, she’s the coach.”
The arrival of the first female head coach for regular season play still seems a long way off, but, as Dan McCarney of the San Antonio Express-News points out, the Spurs have once more proven they’re not afraid of innovation. Here’s more from around the Western Conference:
- Jason Terry confirmed Monday that he’s close to a deal with the Rockets, but Houston has renounced his Bird rights, according to the RealGM transactions log. That means the team is limited to paying him a deal with a starting salary of no more than the roughly $2MM slice of the mid-level exception left over from the K.J. McDaniels signing, which also took up a portion of the mid-level.
- Upheaval has surrounded the Suns during GM Ryan McDonough‘s first two seasons on the job, but this week he signaled that he’s settled on his main players, as Paul Coro of the Arizona Republic documents. “It took a little while to get to a core we liked but we think we finally have that and have the ability to be successful this year and then hopefully build on that and add to it a year from now when the cap spikes up and we have cap space to bring in guys that help our young core,” McDonough said.
- The Suns signed Mirza Teletovic for only one year, but they hope to re-sign him to a new deal next summer, Coro writes in the same piece.
- The Jazz‘s three-year deal with Tibor Pleiss is worth an even $9MM, and the team’s three-year deal with Raul Neto is worth precisely $2,852,546, reports Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders (Twitter link).
Marcus Thornton Signs To Play In Australia
WEDNESDAY, 8:12am: The deal is official, the Australian team announced.
8:50pm: Thornton has indeed agreed to a one-year pact with the Sydney Kings of Australia’s National Basketball League, Adam Himmelsbach of The Boston Globe relays. “I think it’s good for him to get an opportunity to play and just continue to progress wherever he chooses to play, whether it was in Australia or the D-League or anyplace he was going to get a chance to play,” Boston executive Danny Ainge said. “We’ve certainly seen flashes from him this summer.”
TUESDAY, 10:43am: Celtics draftee Marcus Thornton is set to sign in Australia, a source told Sportando’s Enea Trapani. Thornton, this year’s 45th overall pick out of William & Mary, is not to be confused with the former Celtics shooting guard by the same name who’s reportedly agreed to sign with the Rockets. It’s not entirely clear which Australian team is landing this Thornton, who’s a combo guard.
Regardless, the news isn’t entirely surprising, as Celtics president of basketball operations Danny Ainge said soon after the draft that Thornton would most likely end up either overseas or in the D-League this season. The Celtics have a roster crunch, since after the Monday signing of No. 33 overall pick Jordan Mickey, they’re poised to have 16 fully guaranteed salaries for the season ahead, assuming they sign first-round picks Terry Rozier and R.J. Hunter. Boston’s roster seems in flux, so that dynamic is subject to change, but adding Thornton as a fourth rookie on the team would nonetheless present a challenge for coach Brad Stevens.
Thornton seemed like a reach at No. 45, as Jonathan Givony of DraftExpress ranked him as only the 83rd-best prospect in the draft, and Chad Ford of ESPN.com had him 95th. He poured in 20.0 points in 36.7 minutes per game with 40.2% three-point shooting this past season as a senior competing in the Colonial Athletic Association, a far cry from NBA-level competition. Thornton put up 5.1 PPG in 11.0 MPG and was just 2 for 10 on three-pointers in eight summer league appearances this month.
No. 49 overall pick Aaron White is also reportedly close to signing overseas. Who’ll have a greater impact in the NBA once he gets there, Thornton or White? Leave a comment to let us know.
Bucks Nearing Deal With Chris Copeland?
9:13pm: Copeland had a strong workout with the Bucks today, but the Spurs and Thunder are still in the mix for his services, Marc J. Spears of Yahoo! Sports tweets.
7:30pm: The Bucks and Copeland are working to finalize a deal, and it is expected to be completed sometime this week, Marc Stein of ESPN.com tweets.
JULY 21ST, 12:22pm: Copeland has traveled to Milwaukee for a meeting with the Bucks and perhaps to take a physical, Woelfel tweets.
JULY 17TH, 2:09pm: Some higher-ups from around the league think the Bucks have become the front-runners for Copeland, Woelfel reports (Twitter link).
JULY 14TH, 11:42am: The Bucks are interested in Chris Copeland, but they have yet to make an offer to the unrestricted free agent forward, reports Gery Woelfel of The Journal Times (Twitter link). Milwaukee is still looking to replace the perimeter shooting it gave up in the Ersan Ilyasova trade, Woelfel notes, pointing to Copeland’s career 37.3% three-point shooting.
That three-point shooting percentage was above 40% before this past season, when he nailed only 31.1% and dropped out of the Pacers rotation in the second half as many of Indiana’s regulars returned to health. His season ended prematurely when he was stabbed and suffered a broken elbow in April outside a New York nightclub.
Milwaukee is among four teams on Copeland’s radar, and the 31-year-old is expected to decide between them in the next couple of days, Woelfel tweets. The Wizards were linked to the John Spencer client early in free agency.
Copeland signed a two-year, $6.135MM deal with Indiana two years ago, when he was coming off a surprisingly successful rookie season with the Knicks, with whom he made his NBA debut six years after going undrafted out of Colorado. He wasn’t able to duplicate that performance with the Pacers, who declined their chance to match competing bids for him this summer when they elected not to make a qualifying offer that would have been worth nearly $3.919MM.
Clippers Notes: Griffin, Jordan, Pierce, Smith
Blake Griffin was amused by what he labeled as false reports of the Clippers’ rendezvous with DeAndre Jordan in the hours leading up to the end of the July Moratorium, as the forward made clear in The Players’ Tribune. Griffin penned his own account of what took place when Jordan reneged his Mavs deal to instead re-sign with the Clippers.
“By Tuesday morning [July 7th], I knew he was really struggling with it,” Griffin wrote in part about Jordan. “He really didn’t want to disappoint people, but I could tell his heart wasn’t in it. We text every day. It’s not always about basketball. Mostly it’s about life. I’m his friend above all else. I stuffed some clothes into a bag, ran through LAX and got on the first flight to Houston. My intention wasn’t to go down and sell DeAndre on the Clippers. We promised each other a long time ago that we’d never do that stuff. I just wanted to be there for my friend and hear him out.”
We passed along some highlights of Jordan’s first-person story about the affair earlier today, and he said in a press conference this afternoon that he didn’t intend the “fiasco” that took place, notes Dan Woike of the Orange County Register (Twitter link). Here’s more from Clipperland:
- Paul Pierce, who inked a three-year deal with the Clippers this month, signaled that he intends to retire with the team, as Woike and Rowan Kavner of Clippers.com relay (Twitter links). “This will probably be the last ride of my career,” Pierce said. “I think this is where I’m going to end it. I’m going to go all in.”
- The Clippers are only shelling out the minimum to Josh Smith on his one-year deal, and Smith said today to reporters, including Woike (Twitter link), that the roughly $5MM he still has coming his way from his old Pistons contract gave him the security to sign at a bargain rate in L.A. Still, he said he’ll look for a long-term deal next summer, notes Eric Pincus of the Los Angeles Times (on Twitter).
- The offseason for the Clippers has come a long way from the F-minus grade that J.J. Redick gave it before Jordan broke his deal with the Mavs, writes Jesse Blancarte of Basketball Insiders, who adds that the Clippers are nonetheless lacking a true backup point guard.
Nuggets Still Interested In Sergio Rodriguez?
2:40pm: There’s no truth to the latest report linking Rodriguez to the Nuggets, David Pick of Eurobasket.com tells Hoops Rumors.
8:33am: The Nuggets have been trying for weeks to lure four-year NBA veteran Sergio Rodriguez back from overseas, reports Javier Maestro of Encestando (translation via HoopsHype). Jesus Perez Ramos of Mundo Deportivo reported a month ago that Denver was one of three NBA teams eyeing the point guard who last played in the league during the 2009/10 season. Rodriguez confirmed soon after that report that he was considering an NBA comeback, but David Pick of Eurobasket.com wrote just last week that Rodriguez was staying in Spain despite talks with an NBA Western Conference team, as Real Madrid fought to keep him.
The buyout clause in Rodriguez’s deal with Real Madrid reportedly requires 2 million euros, or about $2.178MM in today’s dollars. It’s an amount that Rodridguez late last month referred to as reasonable, though the Nuggets or any other NBA team could effectively only pay $625K toward it. That jibes with a report in June from Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports, who wrote that the buyout was not expected to be an obstacle.
NBA teams see Rodriguez as an elite backup point guard, Wojnarowski wrote then. The Nuggets officially traded Ty Lawson to the Rockets on Monday, but they still have the newly re-signed Jameer Nelson, No. 7 overall pick Emmanuel Mudiay and Erick Green to play at the point. Green’s salary is non-guaranteed through August 1st. Denver can open up about $11MM in cap space if it waives Kostas Papanikolaou‘s non-guaranteed salary, too.
Rodriguez, the 27th overall pick in 2006, spent his first three seasons playing for the Blazers before finishing up with the Kings and Knicks. He averaged 4.3 points, 2.9 assists and 1.3 turnovers in 13.2 minutes per game over his NBA career.
Do you think Rodriguez belongs in the NBA? Leave a comment to let us know.