Lakers Notes: Nash, Clarkson, Scott
The only reason Steve Nash didn’t retire when nerve issues forced him out for the season before it even began was because the Lakers asked him not to make an announcement so that the team could find a taker for him on the trade market, team sources tell Bleacher Report’s Kevin Ding.
Here’s more from Los Angeles:
- Having so many players on expiring contracts makes for a motivated bunch of Lakers, but there are downsides to that pressure, too, and chemistry is difficult to foster under the circumstances, as Mark Medina of the Los Angeles Daily News examines.
- The Lakers were in a similar spot last season, but Wesley Johnson credits Byron Scott for holding the team accountable, a quality he believes former coach Mike D’Antoni lacked, as Johnson asserts to Medina for the same piece.
- Nash’s work with rookie guard Jordan Clarkson has been paying off for both the player and the team, Baxter Holmes of ESPNLosAngeles.com writes. “His passing has gotten much better,” Scott said. “We always talk about the little pocket pass; he’s starting to make that with ease. You start seeing some of the stuff that Steve is talking with him about. Sometimes it’s easier to relate to a player like that than it is to us as coaches, because we’re sitting there saying, ‘The pocket pass is open, Jordan the pocket pass is open.’”
- Despite Nash’s private sessions with Clarkson, the veteran has been absent at the team’s games, something Scott would prefer wasn’t the case, Holmes adds. Scott added that he wasn’t sure how Lakers fans would react to Nash’s return to the sidelines, Holmes relays. “I really don’t know,” Scott said “I’ve read some of the blogs which I thought were unfair to Steve. But I don’t know if he wants to put himself in that position. I don’t know how they would react. But I know us as an organization would love it.“
Eddie Scarito contributed to this post.
Stan Van Gundy Hints At Interest In Green
Stan Van Gundy appeared careful to say that he simply liked the type of player that Draymond Green is when he spoke with reporters before Wednesday’s Pistons-Warriors game, but it’s clear that Van Gundy would like to have Green on his team, writes Jimmy Durkin of the Bay Area News Group. The native of Saginaw, Michigan, has “significant interest” in signing an offer sheet with the Pistons this summer, as Adrian Wojnarowski reported last month, though Green downplayed the notion Wednesday, as Vince Ellis of the Detroit Free Press relays.
“Everybody needs that kind of guy,” Van Gundy said in response to a question about whether the Pistons need a tough guy like Green. “Yeah, absolutely. Everybody needs those guys.”
“When you’re talking about a tough guy who can also shoot the ball, there’s your ideal,” Van Gundy also said.
It would be no surprise if the Pistons indeed have at least some level of interest in the former Michigan State standout who’s having a breakthrough season in his third NBA campaign. He’s on a minimum-salary contract, but he’s in line for a significant raise. The Warriors have more than $77.5MM in guaranteed salary against a projected $81MM tax line for next season, yet Golden State has given every indication it will match any offer for Green, as Tim Kawakami of the Bay Area News Group wrote in response to Wojnarowski’s report.
Signing a max offer sheet with another team could allow Green to make more than Klay Thompson without the deal having come directly from the Warriors, who are hesitant about making such an offer, according to Wojnarowski. The Warriors capped Thompson’s starting salary at $15.5MM, the projected maximum at the time, when they signed him to an extension this past fall, but if the max winds up exceeding that amount, Golden State is wary of internal politics coming into play, as Wojnarowski explained. If Green signs a max offer sheet with the Pistons, that would mean Detroit would have set the price point, and it would be easier for Thompson and his supporters to swallow if the Warriors simply matched the offer, Wojnarowski suggested.
The 25-year-old had a forceful response when asked if he longs to return to his home state, as Ellis observes.
“Home is always home,” Green said. “But honestly I don’t really even think about it because trying to win a championship is enough to think about on a daily basis. … So I don’t have time to sit and think, ‘Man, it would be great for me to go back home and play in Detroit, play in my home state.’ I don’t have time for that because I got one goal and that’s to try to win a championship with the team that I’m on.”
The Pistons have less than $28MM committed for next season. However, that doesn’t include any money for Reggie Jackson, who’s also set for restricted free agency, nor a contract for Greg Monroe, who will be an unrestricted free agent.
Midseason Signees On Multiyear Contracts
The Pistons are reportedly set to make Quincy Miller one of more than a dozen players who’ve signed contracts since the start of the season that last beyond season’s end. Agent Jared Karnes secured a partial guarantee on next year’s salary for Miller, but many who travel his path are not so lucky. Quite often, multiyear deals favor teams, because they afford them the chance to keep the player into the offseason without any guarantee that they’ll pay him beyond the first season of the contract. It’s the case for the majority of the players who signed multiyear deals after the start of this season.
That made it easy for the teams who’ve parted with midseason signees on multiyear deals even before year one reached its conclusion. The Sixers made this maneuver four times this year, in part because GM Sam Hinkie employs a strategy of signing marginal players to long-term deals using the team’s cap space to secure their rights, even if there’s little chance those contracts will run to term. Even teams without cap space can use the minimum-salary exception to sign players to two-year deals, and that’s been a boon for the Heat, who tacked an extra year at the minimum salary onto Hassan Whiteside‘s deal.
Here’s a look at each midseason signee who’s on a multiyear deal:
- Quincy Miller, Pistons — His two-year deal is partially guaranteed for next season.
- JaMychal Green, Grizzlies — His three-year deal worth nearly $1.96MM is partially guaranteed for $150K next season and non-guaranteed for the third season. The third year becomes partially guaranteed for $200K if he remains under contract through July 11th, 2016, and that partial guarantee escalates to a full guarantee if he remains under contract through New Year’s Day, 2017.
- Reggie Williams, Spurs — His two-year minimum-salary deal is non-guaranteed for next season.
- Lorenzo Brown, Timberwolves — His two-year minimum-salary deal is non-guaranteed for next season.
- Hassan Whiteside, Heat — His two-year minimum-salary deal is non-guaranteed for next season.
- James McAdoo, Warriors — His two-year minimum-salary deal is partially guaranteed for $100K next season.
- Joffrey Lauvergne, Nuggets — His three-year deal worth nearly $5.21MM is fully guaranteed for next season and non-guaranteed for the third year.
- Tyler Johnson, Heat — His two-year minimum-salary deal is non-guaranteed for next season, unless he remains under contract through August 1st, in which case the salary will be 50% guaranteed.
- Langston Galloway, Knicks — His two-year minimum-salary deal is non-guaranteed for next season, unless he remains under contract through July 1st, in which case the salary will be partially guaranteed for $220K. That partial guarantee jumps to $440K if he remains under contract through September 15th.
- Elijah Millsap, Jazz — His three-year deal worth more than $2.067MM is non-guaranteed beyond this season.
- Furkan Aldemir, Sixers — His four-year deal worth nearly $11.421MM is non-guaranteed beyond next season. The third year becomes partially guaranteed for $1.4MM if he remains under contract through August 5th, and the same is true of the fourth year.
- Darius Morris, Nets — His two-year minimum salary deal is non-guaranteed for next season, unless he remains under contract through July 1st, in which case the salary will be partially guaranteed for $25K.
- Robert Covington, Sixers — His four-year deal worth more than $4.103MM is non-guaranteed beyond this season. The final year is also a team option.
The following players signed multiyear deals during the season, but they’ve already been waived:
- Malcolm Thomas, Sixers — His four-year deal for about $4.1MM was non-guaranteed beyond this season.
- Ronald Roberts Jr., Sixers — His four-year deal for about $3.3MM was non-guaranteed beyond this season.
- Patrick Christopher, Jazz — His two-year, minimum salary deal was non-guaranteed beyond this season.
- Malcolm Lee, Sixers — His four-year deal for about $4MM was non-guaranteed beyond this season.
- Gal Mekel, Pelicans — His two-year, minimum salary deal was non-guaranteed beyond this season.
- Drew Gordon, Sixers — His four-year deal for about $3.3MM was non-guaranteed beyond this season.
- Will Cherry, Cavaliers — His two-year, minimum salary deal was non-guaranteed beyond this season.
The Basketball Insiders salary pages were used in the creation of this post.
Southwest Notes: Gentile, Conley, Ajinca
Swingman Alessandro Gentile didn’t join the Rockets after they drafted him 53rd overall this past June, but he’s growing increasingly fascinated with the idea of playing in the NBA, as he tells the Italian newspaper La Gazzetta dello Sport (translation via Sportando’s Emiliano Carchia). The Rockets have traveled to scout him and been in frequent contact, and they’ve made him feel like a family member, Gentile added. All of it seems like a departure from Gentile’s comments in September, when he said that he had no interest in playing in the NBA and questioned whether he ever would. Here’s more from around the Southwest Division:
- The Grizzlies have benefited from Mike Conley‘s discount deal since the 2010/11 season, but they’ll face a challenge when it comes off the books just when teams are set to have plenty of cash to throw around in 2016, as Amin Elhassan of ESPN.com examines in an Insider-only piece.
- Jim Eichenhofer of Pelicans.com examines the changes to Alexis Ajinca that have allowed him to become a contributor for New Orleans since rejoining the NBA last season after an absense of more than two years. Ajinca’s minimum-salary deal with the Pelicans is up at season’s end.
- The final pick of the 2014 first-round is headed on D-League assignment for the fourth time this season, as the Spurs have sent Kyle Anderson to their affiliate, the team announced. Still, Anderson has averaged 12.6 minutes per game and made eight starts for the big club this season.
- The Mavericks have recalled Dwight Powell from the D-League just one day after sending him down, tweets Earl K. Sneed of Mavs.com. The rookie power forward scored 33 points in 37 minutes Wednesday for the D-League Texas Legends.
Fallout From Union’s Refusal Of ‘Cap Smoothing’
The players union’s ultimate rejection Wednesday of any gradual increase to the salary cap as opposed to a drastic leap for 2016/17, when the league’s $24 billion TV deal kicks in, figures to have widespread consequences. Just about every team stands to have the ability to open the cap space necessary to sign a maximum-salary free agent, as I explored, and the ripple effects of the change in the NBA’s salary structure will be felt long after 2016 free agent frenzy is over. Here’s more on the aftermath of the union’s decision:
- Teams are projecting the 2016/17 salary cap to come in between $88MM and $92MM, sources tell Brian Windhorst of ESPN.com, which largely jibes with the roughly $90MM figure many around the league had reportedly assumed as of early last month.
- The union’s refusal to compromise on so-called “cap smoothing” increases the odds that there will be a lockout in 2017, when the players and owners have a mutual option on the collective bargaining agreement, Windhorst believes, as he writes in the same piece. Players association vice president LeBron James spoke Wednesday of a “huge meeting” that the union will hold this summer, Windhorst notes.
- Salary cap guru Larry Coon thinks the union didn’t want tiered increases to the cap because a spike in 2016 would come in advance of any 2017 lockout. Marquee players, like James, will benefit from the jump but pedestrian players near the end of their careers stand to miss out, Coon believes. That’s because the league would have distributed among all players what probably would have been a large difference between total team expenditures on player salary in 2016/17 and the 51% of the league’s basketball revenue that teams are required to spend on salaries, as Coon explains. Players near the end of their careers won’t see that sort of shortfall check now that cap smoothing is off the table, and if they don’t sign a new contract after next season, they won’t have a piece of the pie, according to Coon (All five Twitter links here).
- Stefan Bondy of the New York Daily News asked three players before Wednesday’s Nets-Heat game about the union’s decision to reject cap smoothing, and none of the three knew what he was talking about. That suggests that the union wasn’t unanimously behind the choice, Bondy tweets.
Hawks, Pero Antic Interested In New Deal
Just about every scenario Hawks management is planning for next season involves re-signing Pero Antic, according to Chris Vivlamore of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and Antic has made it clear he wants to remain with the team, as he told Vivlamore. The Hawks can match offers for the 32-year-old big man if they tender a qualifying offer of nearly $1.563MM when his contract expires this summer.
“He’s a good part of our core, our substance, our locker room,” said Mike Budenholzer, Atlanta’s coach and acting GM, according to Vivlamore. “Then, the way he plays on the court, I think he’s done a ton to be somebody you want to be a part of your team going forward. The summer and free agency is a ways off but we love him.”
Vivlamore wrote last month that the Hawks had given indications that they’d like to try to re-sign him in the offseason, but it seems like the team’s interest in a continued relationship, and Antic’s shared desire for that, are becoming more clear. Antic, a native of Macedonia who played for many years overseas before finally making his NBA debut at age 31 last season, told Vivlamore that his experience with the Hawks has been the best of his career.
“From your mouth to God’s ears, we say,” Antic said in response to a question about whether he’d like to re-sign. “I love it. I love the guys. I love everything. I couldn’t be happier to come. The coaching staff, to be so similar to Europe, to be so understanding of the players, rarely you can find that.”
Hawks GM Danny Ferry, now on indefinite leave of absence, signed Antic in 2013 to a two-year, $2.45MM contract with non-guaranteed salary for the second season that would become fully guaranteed if he remained on the deal through mid-July 2014. The Hawks indeed kept him after a season in which he started 26 regular season games and all seven of the team’s playoff games amid a rash of injuries to the team’s frontcourt. His numbers are down this year, and he’s started only twice with Al Horford back healthy. Antic’s shot is off and he’s dealt with an ankle injury this year, but Budenholzer is enamored with the Misko Raznatovic client‘s defense, leadership and on-court intelligence, Vivlamore writes.
Atlanta already has more than $39MM in guaranteed salary for next season. They’ll have Antic’s Early Bird Rights, meaning they can exceed the cap to sign him to a starting salary of 104.5% of the average salary for this season. That would likely come close to $6MM, so Atlanta should have no trouble within those bounds, though that’s just my speculation.
Luke Ridnour Considering Retirement
Luke Ridnour is under contract with the Magic through next season, but the 34-year-old says he isn’t sure he’ll play after the conclusion of this season, according to Gery Woelfel of The Journal Times (Twitter link). He’s due a non-guaranteed salary of $2.75MM in 2015/16 on the two-year, $5.5MM deal he signed with Orlando this past summer, and he’s played a career-low 13.6 minutes per game in 38 appearances this year.
There was a “sense” shortly before the trade deadline that the Magic were making the 12th-year veteran available for a trade, according to Steve Kyler of Basketball Insiders, and the news wasn’t surprising considering his marginal role. The combo guard saw 16.2 minutes per contest in November, but his playing time has gone down as the team has given more burn to rookie point guard Elfrid Payton.
The Magic would be able to simply release Ridnour without obligation should he retire this summer, since his salary is non-guaranteed. The Jim Tanner client was the 14th overall pick in the 2003 draft, and, according to Basketball-Reference data, he’s racked up more than $45MM in NBA salary over the course of his career, including this season’s pay. His career high in points per game was in 2011/12, when he put up 12.1 PPG for the Timberwolves, while his best year in assists per contest was 2005/06, a season in which he averaged 7.0 APG for the SuperSonics, his original NBA team.
Pat Riley On Stars, LeBron, Bosh, Playoffs
The choice LeBron James made to rejoin the Cavaliers this summer “just crushed us,” Heat team president Pat Riley told Bleacher Report’s Ethan Skolnick, but the Hall-of-Famer remains confident that he can build another championship team in Miami. He acquired quite possibly the best player dealt at the trade deadline, swinging a deal for Goran Dragic, but he did so having already learned of Chris Bosh‘s pulmonary blood clots that ended his season, as Riley revealed to Skolnick. Riley feels as though he was a better coach than he is an executive, but with his 70th birthday coming later this month, he made it clear that he has no desire to coach again, as Skolnick relays. Retirement from the front office crossed his mind while LeBron was still with the team, but it isn’t a consideration now, Riley told Skolnick, though he also indicated during the interview that he’ll probably retire right after he wins his next championship.
Skolnick’s entire piece provides a broad sketch of Riley, dating back to his humble NBA beginnings in the 1960s. It’s worth a full read, but we’ll pass along a few notable quotations from Riley about current-day Heat issues:
On his philosophy of attracting established stars:
“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to be able to see what it takes. If you can get three of those kinds of players and fill it out with some other good guys, then you might be ahead of the curve. … So there are a lot of ways to skin a cat. For me, it’s not through the draft, because lottery picks are living a life of misery. That season is miserable. And if you do three or four years in a row to get lottery picks, then I’m in an insane asylum. And the fans will be, too. So who wants to do that?”
On LeBron’s departure:
“That was almost shocking to me that the players would allow that to happen. And I’m not just saying LeBron. I mean, the players, themselves, would allow them to get to a state where a guy would want to go home or whatever it is. So maybe I’m dealing with a contemporary attitude today of, ‘Well, I got four years here, and I think I’ll go up there for whatever reason I went.’ You know, the whole ‘home’ thing, I understand that. But what he had here, and what he had developed here, and what he could have developed over the next five or six years here, with the same team, could have been historic.”
On the Heat’s post-LeBron plans:
“Our plan was always to move to great as quick as we could, past good. And I think that was more disappointing than anything, once we made that deal, to see what happened to Chris, which was devastating to me just from a personal standpoint. For his health. But also for the team, it was another hit. That’s why it would be so great for this team, we’re in this race here, if somehow we could get into the playoffs and make something of it. But I do think we have enough, in that in any series with anybody in the East, with what’s going on in the East, that you never know. And I love that.”
2016/17 Cap Commitments For Each NBA Team
A salary cap of around $90MM for the 2016/17 season has seemed like an inevitability since last month, when the players union rejected the league’s proposal to gradually phase in the effect of the league’s $24 billion TV deal. Today’s news that the league and the union couldn’t agree on any “cap smoothing” measure after revisiting the issue is further confirmation that the cap will spike drastically after next season. That means every team has enough flexibility, or nearly enough, to sign at least one free agent to a maximum-salary contract that summer. The max salaries will escalate, too, since they’re tied to a percentage of the cap, but that the Wizards and Clippers are the only teams with enough salary commitments for 2016/17 to come close to squeezing themselves out of the chance to clear max-level space.
The Trail Blazers and Sixers are on the opposite end. Neither team has any guaranteed salary on the books for that season, though the Blazers will be sorely disappointed if that doesn’t change by this summer, with LaMarcus Aldridge, Wesley Matthews and Robin Lopez all set for free agency. Philadelphia, too, will no doubt add to its 2016/17 ledger when it picks up rookie scale team options for Joel Embiid and Nerlens Noel, though the Sixers are probably better positioned for a spending spree than any other team. Of course, that assumes that they’ll have the ability and willingness by the summer of 2016 to convince desirable free agents that their radical rebuilding will have hit a turning point.
Brooklyn and Dallas have the next fewest dollars committed, though each of those teams must contend with more than $20MM in player options. The Bucks and Lakers follow as the only teams other than the Sixers and Blazers to have no player options and fewer than $10MM in commitments for 2016/17.
No team has more than four fully guaranteed contracts for that season, meaning none of them could strip their payrolls quite as bare as the numbers below indicate. For instance, if the Lakers were to renounce the rights to every player on their roster except Nick Young, who holds the team’s lone fully guaranteed 2015/16 salary, they’d incur roster charges for all but one open spot on their roster underneath the regular season roster minimum of 13. That means the Lakers would be hit with 11 roster charges worth the rookie minimum salary, which is $543,471 for that season. That would add close to $6MM to L.A.’s books, giving the team a total of roughly $11.4MM that it couldn’t use to sign free agents.
Of course, these figures will surely change quite a bit between now and the summer of 2016, and a great deal of those alterations will take place in the offseason ahead. Teams have already demonstrated that they’ve become cautious about handing out guaranteed contracts that run beyond next season, and that will surely be the case in the summer ahead for all but the top free agent talent. Just how willing teams are to spend on deals that cover 2016/17, and whom they’re willing to give up flexibility for, will be key questions in the 2015 offseason.
For now, here’s a look at every team’s salary commitments for 2016/17, ranked in descending order of money on the books, along with the number of fully guaranteed contracts for each club. The list also makes note of player options.
- Sixers: $0
- Trail Blazers: $0
- Nets: $4.073MM (plus a $22.331MM player option for Deron Williams), 1 guaranteed deal
- Mavericks: $4.544MM (plus a $16.023MM player option for Chandler Parsons and a $8.692MM player option for Dirk Nowitzki), 1 guaranteed deal
- Bucks: $4.753MM, 0 guaranteed deals
- Lakers: $5.444MM, 1 guaranteed deal
- Hornets: $12MM, 1 guaranteed deal
- Pistons: $12.392MM, 1 guaranteed deal
- Celtics: $14.857MM, 2 guaranteed deals
- Hawks: $17.089MM, 3 guaranteed deals
- Grizzlies: $18.03MM, 2 guaranteed deals
- Raptors: $18.05MM, 2 guaranteed deals
- Magic: $19.557MM, 2 guaranteed deals
- Pelicans: $25.108MM, 3 guaranteed deals
- Nuggets: $25.292MM, 2 guaranteed deals
- Timberwolves: $25.5MM (plus a $7.378MM player option for Kevin Martin), 2 guaranteed deals
- Rockets: $25.571MM (plus a $23.282MM player option for Dwight Howard), 3 guaranteed deals
- Cavaliers: $26.407MM, 1 guaranteed deal
- Suns: $28.303MM, 3 guaranteed deals
- Wizards: $28.958MM, 2 guaranteed deals
- Spurs: $29.274MM, 3 guaranteed deals
- Heat: $29.524MM, 2 guaranteed deals
- Pacers: $30.898MM, 3 guaranteed deals
- Knicks: $32.268MM, 2 guaranteed deals
- Thunder: $33.869MM, 3 guaranteed deals
- Bulls: $36.056MM (plus a $7.77MM player option for Pau Gasol), 3 guaranteed deals
- Jazz: $37.278MM, 3 guaranteed deals
- Kings: $45.594MM, 4 guaranteed deals
- Warriors: $53.934MM, 4 guaranteed deals
- Clippers: $57.631MM, 4 guaranteed deals
The Basketball Insiders salary pages were used in the creation of this post.
Camp Cuts Currently On NBA Rosters
When Seth Curry signed his 10-day contract with the Suns today, he became a member of a not-so-exclusive club. Players that teams let go at the end of the preseason to trim to the 15-man regular season roster limit are usually lightly regarded, but Curry is now one of 23 camp cuts currently occupying a place on an NBA roster. That means approximately 15% of camp invitees who didn’t make it to opening night have made their way back to the league. The percentage would be even higher if we included those who appeared on regular season rosters earlier this season but are no longer in the Association.
That total of 23 also doesn’t count either Jordan Hamilton or Chris Johnson, since both were waived in advance of opening night but claimed off waivers by other teams. Many of the 23 are on 10-day contracts, while others have already established themselves as fixtures for the team. There’s no name more prominent among them than Hassan Whiteside, who slipped through the hands of the Grizzlies at the end of the preseason and again in November before the Heat snapped him up. Michael Beasley is another Grizzlies camp refugee who’s now with the Heat, hoping his second 10-day contract will lead to a deal for the rest of the season and a Whiteside-like breakthrough.
Here’s the complete list of 23, with details on how they went from camp cuts to regular season players:
- Seth Curry — Cut from the Magic on October 25th; signed a 10-day contract with the Suns on March 11th.
- Jabari Brown — Cut from the Lakers on October 25th; re-signed with Lakers on March 10th.
- Michael Beasley — Cut from the Grizzlies on October 9th; signed the first of a pair of 10-day contracts with the Heat on February 26th.
- Jerrelle Benimon — Cut from the Nuggets on October 27th; signed a 10-day contract with the Jazz on March 6th.
- Bryce Cotton — Cut from the Spurs on October 23rd; signed the first of a pair of 10-day contracts with the Jazz on February 24th.
- Jarell Eddie — Cut from the Celtics on October 27th; signed a 10-day contract with the Hawks on March 5th.
- Elliot Williams — Cut from the Sixers on October 27th; signed the first of a pair of 10-day contracts with the Jazz on January 7th; signed a 10-day contract with the Hornets on February 4th; signed a 10-day contract with the Pelicans on March 4th.
- Earl Barron — Cut from the Suns on October 25th; re-signed with the Suns on the first of a pair of 10-day contracts on February 21st.
- Bernard James — Cut from the Mavericks on October 25th; re-signed with the Mavs on February 11th to the first of a pair of 10-day contracts that led to a deal for the rest of the season.
- Quincy Miller — Cut from the Nuggets on October 27th; signed the first of a pair of 10-day contracts with the Kings on January 17th; signed the first of a pair of 10-day contracts with the Pistons on February 21st.
- JaMychal Green — Cut from the Spurs on October 25th; re-signed with the Spurs on a 10-day contract on January 18th; signed with the Grizzlies on February 2nd to the first of a pair of 10-day contracts that led to a multiyear deal.
- John Lucas III — Cut from the Wizards on October 25th; signed with the Pistons on February 2nd to the first of a pair of 10-day contracts that led to a deal for the rest of the season.
- Reggie Williams — Cut from the Heat on October 13th; signed with the Spurs on January 28th to the first of a pair of 10-day contracts that led to a deal for the rest of the season.
- James McAdoo — Cut from the Warriors on October 25th; re-signed with the Warriors on January 19th to the first of a pair of 10-day contracts that led to a deal for the rest of the season.
- Tyler Johnson — Cut from the Heat on October 25th; re-signed with the Heat on January 12th to the first of a pair of 10-day contracts that led to a deal for the rest of the season.
- Dahntay Jones — Cut from the Jazz on October 22nd; signed with the Clippers on January 14th to the first of a pair of 10-day contracts that led to a deal for the rest of the season.
- Langston Galloway — Cut from the Knicks on October 25th; re-signed with the Knicks on January 7th to the first of a pair of 10-day contracts that led to a deal for the rest of the season.
- Elijah Millsap — Cut from the Bucks on October 16th; re-signed with the Jazz on January 5th to the first of a pair of 10-day contracts that led to a deal for the rest of the season.
- Darius Morris — Cut from the Trail Blazers on October 25th; signed with Nets on December 11th.
- Hassan Whiteside — Cut from the Grizzlies on October 22nd; re-signed with the Grizzlies on November 19th; waived by the Grizzlies on November 20th; signed with the Heat on November 24th,
- Robert Covington — Cut from the Rockets on October 27th; signed with the Sixers on November 15th.
- Ish Smith — Cut from the Rockets on October 27th; signed with the Thunder on November 7th; traded on February 19th to the Pelicans, who immediately waived him; claimed off waivers by the Sixers on February 21st.
- J.J. Barea — Cut from the Timberwolves on October 27th; signed with the Mavericks on October 29th.