Celtics Waive Will Bynum
The Celtics have waived point guard Will Bynum, the team announced via press release. The move had appeared likely since shortly after Boston acquired him via trade from the Pistons, though the Celtics made attempts to move his guaranteed salary rather than simply release it. The Celtics will be on the hook for Bynum’s nearly $2.916MM salary for this season unless another team claims him off waivers. Boston also announced the waiver of five other players in its press release, so the team is at the 15-man regular season roster limit.
Bynum has spent the past six seasons with Detroit, primarily as a backup point guard. He figured to be the third-stringer behind Brandon Jennings and D.J. Augustin this year, and there wasn’t much room for him on the Celtics, either, with Rajon Rondo and lottery pick Marcus Smart around, among others.
The C’s appeared to acquire Bynum in large measure to reduce the amount of guaranteed salary they would have to eat, as Joel Anthony, who went to the Pistons in that trade, will make $3.8MM this season, about $900K more than Bynum. Boston had been carrying 16 fully guaranteed deals all preseason, but it seems there wasn’t a trade to be had that could fix that logjam and save the C’s from releasing one of those contracts.
C’s Waive McGruder, Murphy, Frazier, Watford
MONDAY, 3:43pm: The Celtics have officially waived McGruder, Murphy, Frazier and Watford, the team announced via press release.
SUNDAY, 10:22pm: In addition to the previously mentioned trio, Frazier has now also been waived, according to the RealGM transactions log. The team has made no formal announcement yet.
10:25pm: The Celtics have waived McGruder, Murphy and Watford, according to the RealGM transactions log, though the team has yet to make a formal announcement. Frazier has not been waived yet, though all indications are that he will be tomorrow, as Marc D’Amico of Celtics.com tweets.
TUESDAY, 10:59am: The Celtics will waive Rodney McGruder, Erik Murphy, Tim Frazier and Christian Watford, coach Brad Stevens told reporters, including Gary Washburn of The Boston Globe (Twitter link). All are on non-guaranteed contracts, except for Murphy, whose deal is partially guaranteed for $100K. The moves will leave the Celtics with 16 players, all of whom have fully guaranteed pacts, with one more cut to come before opening night.
Murphy is the only one of the trio with NBA regular season experience, having appeared briefly in 24 games last season with the Bulls, who drafted him 49th overall in 2013. He was nonetheless an afterthought in a series of cap-related moves that began when the Jazz claimed him off waivers from the Bulls late last season. Utah sent him to Cleveland in a three-for-one swap in July, and the Cavs shipped him to the Celtics in their Keith Bogans trade. McGruder, who went undrafted in 2013, was in an NBA training camp for the second autumn in a row after spending last October with the Thunder. Watford also went undrafted that year, though he signed a pair of deals with the C’s this year as Boston waived him to accommodate the Bogans trade, then brought him back. Frazier has had a more conventional tenure with Boston after going undrafted this past June.
The moves still leave president of basketball operations Danny Ainge with a decision to make with Monday’s opening-night roster deadline looming. Will Bynum appeared at one point this weekend to be the guaranteed contract set to go, but the Celtics have yet to commit to parting ways with him.
Blazers To Decline Option On Thomas Robinson
The Blazers have told Thomas Robinson that they won’t exercise their fourth-year team option on his rookie scale contract, reports Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports (Twitter link). Robinson has been set to make more than $4.66MM in 2015/16 if the Blazers picked up the final year of his deal, but he’ll instead hit unrestricted free agency this summer, with the Blazers unable to pay him more than the amount of his option to retain him. The same would hold true for any team that would acquire him via trade this season.
Robinson has had a difficult adjustment to the NBA after the Kings made him the fifth overall pick in 2012. Sacramento shipped him to Houston in the middle of his rookie season, and the Rockets sent him along to Portland the following summer to clear cap space for Dwight Howard. Robinson saw fewer minutes per game in Portland than he did in either of his other stops, making it in for only 12.5 MPG this past season.
Portland only has about $17.4MM in commitments for 2015/16, so the Blazers would have plenty of room to accommodate Robinson’s option if they changed their minds. Still, LaMarcus Aldridge is poised to command a max deal in free agency this summer, and Wesley Matthews and Robin Lopez are set to become free agents, too.
Knicks Waive Arnett Moultrie
The Knicks have waived Arnett Moultrie, the team announced at the same time at which they confirmed they’ve traded for him (Twitter link). A decision had been due by Friday on a rookie scale team option worth more than $2MM for the 27th overall pick from 2012, but that salary will be nullified unless a team claims Moultrie off waivers. New York will still be on the hook for Moultrie’s 2014/15 salary, worth slightly more than $1.136MM, if another team doesn’t submit a claim.
The 23-year-old Moultrie had been Philadelphia’s longest tenured player before the Sixers shipped him to the Knicks today. Still, he didn’t appear to have much of a future with the team, particularly in light of his drug-related suspension last season. He saw action in only 12 games in 2013/14 after appearing in 47 as a rookie, averaging 3.6 points in 12.4 minutes per game for his career.
New York is set to save about $4.7MM against its luxury tax bill, as Marc Stein of ESPN.com estimates (on Twitter), as a result of putting Moultrie’s salary on the books as opposed to the $3MM in cash that’s guaranteed to Travis Outlaw, who went to the Sixers in today’s trade. The Knicks began today with about $88.9MM in guaranteed salary, well above the $76.829MM tax line, but the league only calculates the tax based on a team’s roster at the end of the regular season. In any case, letting go of Moultrie leaves the Knicks with 15 players, the regular season max, including 13 fully guaranteed contracts and partial guarantees with Samuel Dalembert and Travis Wear.
Knicks Trade Travis Outlaw To Sixers
3:07pm: It’s the Clippers’ 2018 pick that the Sixers would send to the Knicks if they swap second-round draft choices that year, Philadelphia announced.
3:01pm: The trade is official, the Knicks announced (Twitter link). It’s Outlaw to the Sixers and Moultrie to the Knicks. The Sixers get New York’s 2019 second-round selection and the right to swap 2018 second-rounders with the Knicks, too.
2:33pm: The Knicks and Sixers have an agreement that will send Travis Outlaw to Philadelphia, reports Marc Stein of ESPN.com. The Sixers will also receive a future second-round pick as well as the right to swap another second-rounder with New York, according to Stein (Twitter links). Arnett Moultrie goes to New York in the swap, and the Sixers are likely to release Outlaw after the trade becomes official, Stein adds in another tweet.
The Knicks, who’ve been carrying 16 players, had reportedly been poised to release Outlaw. It’s unclear if the plan is to do the same with Moultrie, though Moultrie’s fully guaranteed salary, a little more than $1.136MM, is less than the $3MM that Outlaw is in line for, so the Knicks wouldn’t be on the hook for quite as much dead money if they went that route. New York appears to want to keep rookie undrafted rookie Travis Wear on his nominally guaranteed deal for the 15th and final regular season roster spot. Samuel Dalembert‘s partially guaranteed contract, which the Knicks will almost assuredly keep, and 13 fully guaranteed deals occupy the other 14 spots.
Philadelphia continues a strategy of using its cap space to acquire second-round picks, just as the Sixers did a few days ago in the Marquis Teague trade, last month’s acquisition of Keith Bogans, and numerous other examples since GM Sam Hinkie took control in 2013. Hinkie’s latest move means the Sixers are cutting ties with Moultrie, their longest-tenured player. The Knicks will have until Friday to decide whether to pick up a 2015/16 team option worth more than $2MM on Moultrie if they don’t cut him loose.
Executives from around the league reacted incredulously to the news of the latest Sixers deal, tweets Chris Mannix of SI.com, as the team continues to make deals focused on the future rather than the present. Still, Moultrie seemed to have a tenuous grip on a roster spot, at best, suggesting the only cost to Philadelphia is a degree of salary cap flexibility, of which they still have plenty.
And-Ones: Brazil, Shorter Games, Hawks, Nets
The NBA has struck a deal to partner with Brazil’s Liga Nacional de Basquete, the top domestic league in that country, Grantland’s Zach Lowe reports. The arrangement will likely give the NBA an ownership stake in the league and will allow for the exchange of ideas on marketing, player development and other best practices, according to Lowe. Many NBA league office types would like to see the pro game played with one universal set of rules around the globe, a sentiment that some others around international basketball share, Lowe notes, so the Brazilian deal could be a step in that direction. There’s more from Lowe amid our look at the latest around the league:
- There’s “nearly unanimous” opposition to the idea of reducing the length of games to 44 minutes, as Lowe writes in the same piece, laying out a handful of reasons why many around the league are against the idea that the NBA experimented with earlier this month. Still, Lowe believes there’s a decent chance the idea resurfaces at some point.
- Sources tell Daniel Kaplan of SportsBusiness Journal that they expect the Hawks to sell for at least $750MM and perhaps close to $1 billion. Presumably, those figures pertain to 100% of the franchise, and it’s still uncertain just how much of the Hawks will end up on the block.
- Evercore Partners, with Bruce Ratner at the controls, is once more shopping its 20% share of the Nets after tabling that pursuit earlier, Kaplan adds.
- Warriors camp invitee Aaron Craft will play for the team’s D-League affiliate, his agent tells Bob Baptist of The Columbus Dispatch (Twitter link). That signals that Golden State made him one of the four preseason cuts it can reserve for its affiliate, since Craft would otherwise have to go through the D-League draft.
- Kim English, whom the Bulls waived earlier this month, has a deal with SLUC Nancy, a French team, sources tell Sportando’s Emiliano Carchia.
Nuggets Waive Miller, Benimon, Williams
12:53pm: The Nuggets have officially waived Miller, the team announced.
MONDAY, 12:40pm: Miller’s release no longer appears on the RealGM transactions log, and the team has been looking to find a taker for him via trade, tweets Chris Dempsey of The Denver Post. However, the Nuggets haven’t found any trade partners and are set to release Miller in advance of today’s 4:00pm Central deadline for teams to submit their opening-night rosters.
WEDNESDAY, 1:52pm: The Nuggets have waived Miller, according to the RealGM transactions log, though the team has yet to make an official announcement about him.
1:10pm: Denver has officially released Benimon and Williams, the team announced, though Miller remains with the team for now, according to Dempsey, who indicates that the Nuggets are thinking of keeping him right up until they have to let him go to make Monday’s opening-night roster deadline (Twitter links).
8:28am: The Nuggets are waiving Quincy Miller, reports Shams Charania of RealGM (Twitter link), and the team will also release Marcus Williams and Jerrelle Benimon, according to Chris Dempsey of The Denver Post. The moves will drop the Nuggets to the 15-player regular season maximum and allow the team to keep Alonzo Gee and his non-guaranteed contract for opening night, Dempsey points out. They also signal that Erick Green will remain with the team into the regular season in spite of only $50K in guaranteed salary. Dempsey indicates that the Nuggets have already placed Miller on waivers, though the team has made no official announcement.
The Nuggets part ways with Miller in spite of his $150K partial guarantee, one that would have escalated to cover his entire minimum salary had he made it to opening night. The team drafted him 38th overall in 2012, but he struggled to recover from tearing his left ACL as a high school senior, when he was the fifth-best prospect in the country, according to the Recruiting Services Consensus Index. He averaged 4.9 points and 2.8 rebounds in 15.2 minutes per game last season, the first in which he felt fully healthy since the injury, Dempsey notes, but that wasn’t enough to save his spot on the roster for this year.
The Nuggets also owe a $35K partial guarantee to Benimon, who joined the team after going undrafted in June and appearing in summer league with Denver as well as the Heat. Williams, a forward from the University of Arizona not to be confused with the point guard by the same name, signed a non-guaranteed contract with Denver in an effort to make it back to the NBA for his first regular season action since the 2008/09 season.
Gee’s defense helped fuel the Nuggets decision-making, and he had four steals in Tuesday’s preseason game, as Dempsey points out. He earned a measure of stability after a summer that saw him go from the Cavs to the Pelicans to the Rockets to the Kings in a series of trades before Sacramento waived him, freeing the Nuggets to ink the 27-year-old small forward. Green, the 46th overall pick in 2013, signed with the Nuggets this year after playing last season with Montepaschi Siena of Italy.
New York Rumors: Shumpert, Nets, Carmelo
A report from Marc Stein of ESPN.com 10 days ago indicated that the Knicks and Iman Shumpert were in active extension negotiations, but Ian Begley of ESPNNewYork.com continues to hear that the sides haven’t engaged in any talks, echoing his dispatch from a month ago. The Knicks upset Shumpert when they made him a frequent subject of trade talk last season, Begley writes, and a source close to the swingman tells Begley that Shumpert is in no mood to give New York a hometown discount should he hit restricted free agency next summer. Here’s more from around the Big Apple:
- Nets GM Billy King confirmed the team will keep Jorge Gutierrez and Jerome Jordan along with the team’s 12 fully guaranteed contracts for opening night, tweets Andy Vasquez of The Record. Presumably, that means Cory Jefferson will stick around on his partially guaranteed deal, too.
- Carmelo Anthony did his part to refute a report that indicated that marquee free agents don’t want to play with Kobe Bryant, telling reporters that he’d “love” to play with the Lakers legend, as Ramona Shelburne and Ohm Youngmisuk of ESPN.com note. Anthony also said that Bryant tried to recruit him to the Lakers this summer, but the Knicks forward can’t hit free agency again until 2018, and Bryant’s under contract through the summer of 2016.
- Lionel Hollins said he never got to know Grizzlies owner Robert Pera before the team let Hollins go in 2013, as he tells Stefan Bondy of the New York Daily News. The new Nets coach added that timing played a key role in his decision to take the Brooklyn job this summer while the Lakers still had a vacancy. “I felt either one of those jobs would be fine,” Hollins says. “The Lakers still had Kobe and they could change the team at a moment’s notice because they only had three players under contract. So I thought that wasn’t a bad situation and I thought this was a good situation so when it came about, it was one that I was happy and I wasn’t going to wait on the Lakers when I had a job in hand.”
Rockets Waive Jeff Adrien, Ish Smith
The Rockets have waived Jeff Adrien and Ish Smith, the team announced via press release. Shams Charania of RealGM reported overnight that the team would do so with Adrien (Twitter link), adding that Houston was considering Smith or Francisco Garcia for the final cut necessary to take the team’s roster down to the regular season limit of 15. That appears to put rookie Tarik Black on the opening-night roster, as Charania noted, in spite of the lack of a full guarantee on his contract. Adrien and Smith both signed fully guaranteed one-year contracts for the minimum salary with Houston this summer, and the team will be on the hook for them providing they clear waivers.
Smith had held the lead earlier this preseason on fellow point guard Isaiah Canaan, who remains on the roster, but Canaan made a strong push in the past two weeks and the Rockets always felt he had higher long-term potential, tweets Jonathan Feigen of the Houston Chronicle. Smith has bounced around to six teams in his four NBA seasons, spending last year with the Suns, where he averaged a career-high 14.4 minutes per game.
Adrien is another journeyman coming off perhaps his finest season, one in which he averaged 10.9 points and 7.8 rebounds in 25.2 mintues per game over 28 appearances with the Bucks after they brought him to Milwaukee in a deadline-day trade with Charlotte. It wouldn’t be surprising to see a team claim the power forward off waivers, though that’s just my speculation.
The moves leave the Rockets with 13 fully guaranteed deals plus Black and the non-guaranteed contract of Patrick Beverley. Charania indicated that Black’s contract would be partially guaranteed when he agreed to his deal, though Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders lists the pact as non-guaranteed.
Kawhi Leonard Pushing For Max Extension
There’s been no progress as agent Brian Elfus and the Spurs have spoken several times over the past few weeks about a rookie scale extension for Kawhi Leonard, who’s seeking the maximum salary, reports Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports. Several league executives tell Wojnarowski that the reigning Finals MVP is in line to receive offer sheets for the max should he hit restricted free agency next summer. The Spurs would almost certainly match in that case, according to Wojnarowski, but it appears the team is reluctant to commit itself to the max before Friday’s deadline for an extension.
It’s not quite clear exactly how much a maximum-salary extension would entail, since the max won’t be known until the NBA sets its salary cap for 2015/16 next July. A five-year max extension would be worth about $85MM based on this year’s figures, which would yield a $66MM max over four years if the Spurs elected not to make Leonard their Designated Player. The league nonetheless projects the cap will rise from $63.065MM this year to $66.5MM for next year, though at least one report has suggested that $66.5MM is a low-end estimate.
The cap will assuredly rise even farther beginning in 2016, when the league’s new TV deal kicks in, and should Leonard hit free agency, that dynamic might drive him to sign an offer sheet similar to the one Chandler Parsons took from the Mavericks. Parsons’ player-friendly deal allows him to become a free agent after two years, and if Leonard signed an offer sheet with the same structure, he could become an unrestricted free agent in 2017, as Wojnarowski points out. That would be after the TV money pushes the cap and the maximum salaries much higher. However, an offer sheet could only contain raises of 4.5%, lower than the 7.5% raises the Spurs are allowed to give.
Leonard expressed confidence in reaching an extension with the Spurs soon after they won the championship this year, and Gregg Popovich has spoken of the 23-year-old Leonard as the next preeminent star of the team. I predicted over the summer that Leonard would be cognizant of the fact that he’s only once scored at least 20 points three games in a row and willing to make financial concessions as so many of his Spurs teammates have. However, it appears he’s not on board with accepting the discounted rate of $50MM over four years that I pegged when I examined his extension candidacy. It’s unclear if the Spurs are pushing for an extension in that range, and they would have plenty of room for the max if they want to go there, since they have only $34.2MM in commitments for 2015/16.