Knicks Sign Orlando Sanchez
4:42pm: Sanchez has officially signed with the team, the Knicks announced.
2:01pm: The deal is partially guaranteed, as Zagoria reports.
1:36pm: The Knicks have a deal with undrafted St. John’s power forward Orlando Sanchez, agent Brian J. Bass tweets. Bass indicates that Sanchez has a signed contract with the team, though the Knicks have yet to make any formal announcement. The terms aren’t immediately clear, but it’ll have to be a minimum-salary contract, since that’s all the Knicks can offer, and perhaps there’s a partial guarantee attached. It’s a one-year deal, tweets Adam Zagoria of SNY.tv.
Sanchez, 26, played just one season of college ball, having put up 7.4 points, 5.6 rebounds and 1.1 blocks in 22.3 minutes per game. He didn’t stand much chance of hearing his name called on draft night, but he had predraft workouts with the Kings, Pacers and Sixers. The 6’8″ Sanchez averaged 2.2 PPG and 2.5 RPG in nearly 11 minutes per game with the Dominican Republic team in the recent FIBA World Cup.
The Knicks had been carrying 14 fully guaranteed deals and three more with partial guarantees. Samuel Dalembert has one of those partial guarantees, so there will be little opportunity for Sanchez to make the opening-night roster.
Tyshawn Taylor To Play In Russia
WEDNESDAY, 1:17pm: Taylor has signed his contract with the team, according to his representatives at the Interperformances agency (hat tip to Sportando’s Emiliano Carchia).
MONDAY, 11:33am: Former Nets point guard Tyshawn Taylor is putting the finishing touches on a deal with Dynamo Moscow, reports David Pick of Eurobasket.com (Twitter link). It’s not clear whether it will include any sort of out clause that would allow the 24-year-old to return stateside if NBA interest perks up, but considering the sparse activity on his rumors page, it seems likely Taylor will begin the season overseas.
Taylor has been out of the NBA since the Pelicans cut him loose two days after acquiring him from Brooklyn. Prior to the trade, he more than doubled his minutes per game in his sophomore campaign for the Nets, who’d put him on the floor for just 5.8 minutes per contest in his rookie season. The 41st pick from 2012 averaged 3.9 points, 1.6 assists and 1.3 turnovers in 11.7 minutes per contest over 23 NBA games last year before finishing up the season in the D-League and with Puerto Rico’s Atleticos de San German.
Dynamo Moscow will compete in Russia’s Super League, a minor league that plays second fiddle to the VTB League, as Pick points out (on Twitter). That’s quite a comedown for Taylor, who averaged 16.6 points per game as a senior at Kansas in 2011/12. It wouldn’t be surprising to see him stay with the club for just a short time if he puts up strong numbers and proves he deserves a shot on a more well-regarded circuit.
Wolves Sign Glenn Robinson III
1:03pm: The deal is official, the team announced.
WEDNESDAY, 8:28am: The contract will cover just the coming season, Wolfson tweets, adding that no move involving Barea is imminent.
TUESDAY, 11:02pm: Robinson’s deal is partially guaranteed according to Wolfson, who also hears that the Michigan product is no lock to make the roster out of training camp (Twitter link).
2:58pm: The Wolves have agreed to a guaranteed deal with Glenn Robinson III, the 40th overall pick in this year’s draft, reports Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports (Twitter link). The deal will be the 16th fully guaranteed pact for Minnesota, but the team has reportedly sought to trade J.J. Barea, and the Wolves are also open to allowing the veteran guard to buy his way out of his fully guaranteed contract, as Darren Wolfson of 1500 ESPN Twin Cities hears (Twitter link).
The terms of Robinson’s deal aren’t immediately clear, and the Wolves have $1.555MM left on their mid-level exception to make it worth more than the minimum salary and extend the length of the deal beyond two years. Minnesota had held out hope of creating a roster spot for Robinson as the Kevin Love trade loomed, but that swap left the team with just as many players as it had before. Robinson turned down a partially guaranteed offer a couple of weeks ago, Wolfson tweets.
Robinson averaged 13.1 points and 4.4 rebounds in 32.3 minutes per game as a sophomore for Michigan this past season. The small forward is listed at the same 6’7″ height as his father, former No. 1 overall pick and NBA All-Star Glenn Robinson.
The 20-year-old Robinson will join Andrew Wiggins and Zach LaVine as 2014 draftees on the Wolves roster, which also features training camp deals with Kyrylo Fesenko and Brady Heslip. Whatever Robinson receives on his deal, that amount plus LaVine’s approximately $2MM salary wouldn’t add up to the more than $4.5MM that Barea is set to make in the final season of his deal this year.
Spurs Auditioning Michael Beasley
Michael Beasley is working out for the Spurs this week in San Antonio, reports Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports. The former No. 2 overall pick is the latest and most high-profile in a string of veteran free agents the Spurs have reportedly auditioned, one that includes Hakim Warrick, Julyan Stone and Jamaal Franklin.
The Spurs are maintaining a dialogue with Aron Baynes, according to Wojnarowski, but fellow Yahoo! scribe Marc J. Spears reported this week that the club was open to sign-and-trade scenarios involving the restricted free agent. A fully guaranteed contract that bring Baynes back would be San Antonio’s 15th fully guaranteed deal, but while the slot sits open, the Spurs are showing interest in a long list of names, with Ray Allen the most prominent among them. Centers Gustavo Ayon and Ryan Hollins are also on the team’s radar.
The 25-year-old Beasley had a pair of workouts with the Lakers earlier in the offseason, but while several teams have reportedly expressed interest, no deal has materialized. The Jared Karnes client would have liked to have re-signed with the Heat, but the team didn’t make him an offer, tweets Barry Jackson of the Miami Herald. Concerns over Beasley’s defense and maturity had persuaded the team against bringing him back, as Jackson wrote last week.
Hoops Rumors Features
Hoops Rumors passes along the latest news and rumors on NBA player movement 365 days a year, but those aren’t the only updates you’ll see on the site. On our right sidebar, you’ll find a number of additional features and featured posts. Here’s a rundown of a few of them:
- We’re looking ahead to the October 31st rookie scale extension deadline with our Rookie Scale Extension Primer, and we examine some of the more noteworthy cases in depth with our Extension Candidate Series.
- That same October 31st deadline applies to team options on rookie scale contracts, and we’ve categorized the likelihood that each option will be exercised.
- Our Free Agent Tracker provides an array of sorting tools to help you sift through all of the training camp signings throughout the league as well as look back on more notable deals from the offseason.
- There’s still one player among the top 10 in our Free Agent Power Rankings without a deal for the coming season, and other notables who remain unsigned are a part of our full list of 2014 free agents. We’ve profiled several of them with our Free Agent Stock Watch series.
- We’re also keeping track of the 2015 free agents as the ability for LeBron James, Kevin Love, Rajon Rondo, Marc Gasol and others to hit the market next year begins to affect the landscape of the league. Some teams are already looking ahead to the summer after that, when Kevin Durant is scheduled to hit free agency, so we’ve listed him and the other 2016 free agents.
- Our agency database is a handy reference point for determining the representation for virtually every NBA player.
- We’ll be keeping track of the size of each team’s roster throughout the season in our Roster Counts post, so you’ll know at a glance whether your team has the flexibility necessary to make a move.
- See the assets that changed hands in every trade that’s become official this summer with our list of offseason trades.
- Our register of outstanding traded player exceptions is updated whenever a trade exception is created, used or expires.
- Several teams can pay no more than the minimum salary to any free agent signee for the coming season. Our updated list identifies these clubs.
- See how far each team has come toward accomplishing the goals we outlined in our Offseason Outlook series, which provides a detailed look at where all 30 NBA teams stood going into the summer.
- Eddie Scarito recapped and graded the draft from the perspective of every team. He broke it down into divisions (Atlantic, Central, Southeast, Southwest, Northwest, Pacific).
- Eddie’s also looking back on notable trades from the past several years to see how they’ve panned out over time. His Trade Retrospective Series recently examined the deals that sent James Harden to the Rockets, LaMarcus Aldridge to the Blazers and Shaquille O’Neal to the Heat.
- Using our 10-day contract tracker, you can find any 10-day contract signed this year or in any season since the 2006/07. You can sort by player, team, year and other variables.
- We give you a turn in the spotlight when we showcase the best reader comments with our Hoops Rumors Featured Feedback posts.
- On Wednesdays at 3:00pm CT, I answer reader questions in a live chat. You can check out transcripts of our past discussions here.
- We’re tracking each team’s use of the amnesty clause. Our complete table shows which clubs have used the provision and which still have it available.
- The Hoops Rumors glossary helps explain some of the more complex concepts in the NBA’s collective bargaining agreement. Recently, I added entries on summer contracts and Exhibit 9 contracts, the sorts of deals that teams are handing out to training camp invitees this month.
- Zach Links rounds up the best of the blogosphere with Hoops Links on Sundays.
- If you’re looking to catch up, our Week in Review posts compile the top news and rumors from the past seven days, while our Hoops Rumors Originals posts recap the site’s original content for the week. Both roundups are published every Sunday.
- Be sure to check out the Featured Posts section on the right sidebar for more original pieces from the Hoops Rumors writing team. Recently, Zach went one-on-one with recent Bucks signee Elijah Millsap, and I examined the more frequent use of the stretch provision around the NBA and identified a leaguewide decline in lucrative one-year deals.
James Nunnally To Play In Spain
Former Hawks and Sixers small forward James Nunnally has signed with Estudiantes of Spain, the Spanish ACB league announced (on Twitter; translation via Sportando’s Emiliano Carchia). The terms are unclear, but that presumably takes him out of the running to join an NBA team for training camp. The 24-year-old was reportedly one of a handful of players to work out for the Lakers last week.
Nunnally signed a pair of 10-day contracts with both Atlanta and Philadelphia last year, as our 10-Day Tracker shows, but neither team followed with a contract that covered the rest of 2013/14. He averaged 3.4 points in 12.7 minutes per game in the 13 NBA contests in which he appeared last season, but he saw more extensive action in the D-League, just as he did in 2012/13, his first season as a pro after he went undrafted out of UC Santa Barbara in 2012. Still, he’s consistently remained on the NBA radar, having worked out earlier in the offseason for the Warriors and Jazz and having spent time with the Pacers, Heat and Mavs during summer league this year. He was a widely sought-after camp invitee last fall before he finally chose to spend the preseason with the Suns.
Heading to Spain will make it more difficult for NBA scouts and executives to keep tabs on his game, but he certainly won’t vanish from their sights, given the strength of the ACB league. Nunnally joins Ryan Gomes, Orlando Johnson, Tornike Shengelia and Dwight Buycks among the players who found deals in the ACB league after appearing in the NBA last season.
Spurs Work Out Jamaal Franklin
Former Grizzlies shooting guard Jamaal Franklin has spent the last few days working out for the Spurs in San Antonio, reports Jabari Young of the San Antonio Express-News (Twitter link). The 41st overall pick from last year’s draft is tight with fellow former San Diego State standout Kawhi Leonard, who’s up for an extension to his rookie scale contract this fall, as Young points out in a second tweet.
Franklin became a free agent earlier this month after Memphis waived him and spread out his salary using the stretch provision. The 6’5″ shooting guard made nearly as many appearances in the D-League as a rookie as he did in the NBA, where he averaged 1.9 points in 7.7 minutes per game across 21 contests with Memphis. Still, he remains an intriguing prospect just one year removed from having been selected near the top of the second round.
San Antonio has reportedly been setting up workouts with several veterans of late, including Hakim Warrick and Julyan Stone, and they’ve also shown interest in Ray Allen, Gustavo Ayon and Ryan Hollins. They’re apparently open to sign-and-trade possibilities for restricted free agent Aron Baynes, though they seemed to maintain a level of interest throughout the summer in re-signing him. The Spurs have fully guaranteed deals with 14 players, as our roster counts show, leaving one open spot for the regular season roster.
Myck Kabongo To Join Wolves For Camp?
SEPTEMBER 16TH: Kabongo failed to impress in his tryout with Södertälje, and the Swedish team has released him, reports Jacob Sjölen of LT.se (hat tip to Sportando’s Emiliano Carchia and translation via SwedishBasketball.com. That presumably clears the path for Kabongo to join the Wolves, though an underwhelming performance at that level of professional basketball doesn’t bode well for Kabongo’s chances in the NBA.
SEPTEMBER 5TH: Point guard Myck Kabongo had been in line to join the Timberwolves for training camp, a source told Ryan Wolstat of the Toronto Sun (Twitter link), but he has a tryout slated with the Sweden’s Södertälje Kings, according to Peter Hegethorn of Hegethorns Basketblogg, as Wolstat translates. It’s not uncommon for players to continue to pursue overseas opportunities even after they secure camp deals with NBA teams as insurance in case they don’t make it to opening night, so perhaps Kabongo is indeed headed to Minnesota, though that remains unclear.
Kabongo, a native of Toronto, was once a highly touted prospect, coming in 10th in the Recruiting Services Consensus Index ratings as he entered college in 2011. An NCAA suspension cost him the second half of his sophomore season at the University of Texas, and he went undrafted after turning pro in 2013. The Spurs signed the Rich Paul client for training camp last year, but he spent the season with their D-League affiliate after San Antonio waived him midway through preseason. The 6’3″ Kabongo averaged 9.2 points, 4.7 assists and 3.9 rebounds in 30.1 minutes per game for the D-League Austin Toros.
The Wolves have agreements with 17 players, 15 of whom have guaranteed deals, as our roster counts show. The team is reportedly shopping J.J. Barea, whose contract is guaranteed, but if Minnesota can’t find a way to unload him without taking back guaranteed salary in return, it would be difficult for camp invitees Brady Heslip and Kyrylo Fesenko to make the opening-night roster. The same would be true for Kabongo if he were to indeed sign with the team for camp, which lends further credence to the idea that he’d turn to the international market for a backup plan.
Pistons Try Out Ben Hansbrough, Andrew Warren
The Pistons have arranged for free agents Ben Hansbrough and Andrew Warren to work out for the team today and Wednesday, a source tells Emiliano Carchia of Sportando (Twitter link). Both spent the past season playing overseas, though Hansbrough was with the Pacers in 2012/13, when he played alongside brother Tyler Hansbrough.
Hansbrough put up 2.0 points in 7.4 minutes per game in 28 appearances with the Pacers in his lone NBA season, and the 26-year-old is coming off a season with Gran Canaria in Spain in which he put up 10.9 PPG in 23.1 MPG. The 27-year-old Warren’s stops have included Australia, New Zealand, Cyprus and Argentina since he went undrafted out of Bradley in 2011. Warren, a 6’5″ two-guard, shot the three-pointer consistently well throughout his travels, nailing 39.5% of his treys last season in Argentina.
Detroit reportedly worked out former James Madison center Denzel Bowles on Monday, and it appears the team is focused on filling out its camp roster with 16 fully guaranteed deals already in tow, as seen on our roster counts. The Pistons have no shortage of cap space to go after more noteworthy figures, but with the roster already over the regular season limit, it looks like they’ll largely preserve that room for now.
Lowe’s Latest: Salary Cap, TV Deal, Burks, Morris
Teams around the league are projecting that the salary cap will leap to as high as $80MM for 2016/17, as Grantland’s Zach Lowe writes, but next season’s salary cap is shrouded in uncertainty. Executives from around the league believed earlier this summer that the NBA would gradually phase in the increase in the salary cap with a larger than usual uptick next summer, but the league has told teams within the last two weeks to hold steady on their projections for 2015/16, according to Lowe. The uncertainty makes it more difficult for teams to make long-term commitments at this point as the October 31st deadline for rookie scale extensions looms. The focus of the Grantland scribe’s piece is on that rookie scale extension market, and his entire piece is worth a read to juxtapose his insight with our in-depth pieces on some of the same up-and-comers featured in our Extension Candidate Series. Lowe also has a few more newsy tidbits, as we’ll pass along here:
- There’s chatter around the league suggesting that the NBA will backload its new television deal, which is expected to be more than twice as lucrative as the current arrangement that runs out after the 2015/16 season, Lowe reports. The aim would be for the league to negotiate the ability to keep a larger percentage of that media rights revenue for itself in the next collective bargaining agreement with the players union.
- Executive around the league see Alec Burks as a sixth man rather than a starter, according to Lowe, who argues that there’s a case to be made to the contrary. Still, it bodes well for the Jazz‘s leverage in extension talks.
- Markieff Morris and Marcus Morris told teams before the 2011 draft that they would take less money to play together, sources tell Lowe. That didn’t end up happening right away, since Houston drafted Marcus and Phoenix took Markieff, but the Suns reunited the twins at the 2013 trade deadline, and if their desire to stick together still holds true, that gives the Suns the ability to exert some pressure, Lowe surmises. Both are extension-eligible.