Clippers Close To Signing Chris Douglas-Roberts
The Clippers and Chris Douglas-Roberts are nearing a deal, a source tells Dan Woike of the Orange County Register (Twitter link). USA Today’s Sam Amick first identified the Clippers as an interested party last week as the team was poised to clear enough room beneath its hard cap for Douglas-Roberts and others. The Clips are also reportedly close to a deal to bring back Hedo Turkoglu now that they’ve waived and stretched Carlos Delfino and Miroslav Raduljica.
There’s been competition for Douglas-Roberts, as the Heat recently auditioned the 27-year-old, one of last year’s best midseason signees. The Creative Artists Agency client helped Charlotte offset injuries to small forwards Michael Kidd-Gilchrist and Jeffery Taylor, playing a key role on a postseason-bound team as he shot a career-high 38.6% from behind the three-point arc. Somewhat surprisingly, the Hornets didn’t seem to make a strong push to re-sign Douglas-Roberts, and they renounced his rights to accommodate their offer sheet to Gordon Hayward.
Neither the Clippers nor the Heat could give Douglas-Roberts more than the minimum, so it doesn’t appear as though financial considerations are at play. The Clippers, who are carrying just 11 players, have also been linked to Ray Allen and Ekpe Udoh over the last several days, and it looks like they have room to ink four free agents to minimum-salary deals.
Free Agent Stock Watch: Antawn Jamison
Two years ago, Hoops Rumors readers overwhelmingly voted for Antawn Jamison as the best minimum-salary signee in the league soon after his decision to sign with the Lakers for what looked like a steep discount. A year and a half later, Jamison’s stock had plummeted, and he’s been out of the NBA since the Hawks waived him shortly after acquiring him from the Clippers at the trade deadline this past February. No one is immune to the ravages of age, but it’s tough to imagine that Jamison’s skills have eroded so quickly after he scored 17.2 points per game for the Cavs in 2011/12 that he’s become unworthy of a place on an NBA roster.
The 37-year-old Jamison told DeAntae Prince of The Sporting News recently that he has options in free agency, as we passed along, but the one-time No. 4 overall pick didn’t specify whether any of those options included offers from NBA teams. The Wasserman Media Group client has signed with teams that figured to contend for titles the past two seasons. Should the right NBA opportunity materialize for him this year, it wouldn’t necessarily matter if it involved going to a team without a reasonable chance of winning the title, as Jamison also told Prince.
Jamison was reportedly among the players the Knicks were considering in February, shortly after his release from the Hawks, but that was before Phil Jackson took over the team’s front office. The Wizards were eyeing him around that same time, and Washington GM Ernie Grunfeld was in place there for the entirety of Jamison’s five and a half seasons in the nation’s capital. Still, one report suggested Washington’s interest in a reunion was only “lukewarm.” The Hawks and Jamison appeared to share interest in parting ways with each other last season, so it doesn’t seem like he’ll be returning to Atlanta anytime soon, even if he’s more willing to consider teams outside the title picture. Reports have linked the former University of North Carolina star to the Hornets (then Bobcats) in previous offseasons. Charlotte has 14 guaranteed deals, as our roster counts show, and while the team appears to be reluctant to use the final spot on a center, that probably doesn’t apply to a stretch four like Jamison. Still, there’s been no chatter connecting Jamison to the Hornets this summer.
The Spurs were apparently another team interested in Jamison this past February, and they wouldn’t force him to give up his title dreams. However, San Antonio is carrying 14 fully guaranteed pacts and three partially guaranteed deals, and the team still has a qualifying offer out to restricted free agent Aron Baynes, so it doesn’t appear there’s room for Jamison there. The Bulls were also linked to Jamison in that same report, and while the team only has 12 players, Taj Gibson, Pau Gasol, Nikola Mirotic and second-round pick Cameron Bairstow crowd the power forward position, so Jamison wouldn’t be a logical fit in Chicago, either.
Jamison took 17.5 shots per game in 2011/12 with the Cavs, matching a career high. His PER that season was 16.1, which set a career low at the time. That suggests that his high scoring average was at least in part the product of a stripped-down roster that gave then-coach Byron Scott few other choices for creating offense. Jamison’s efficiency has continued to decline over the past two seasons, coming in at a still-respectable 15.3 in his lone season with the Lakers before bottoming out at 7.8 in the small sample size of his 248 total minutes with the Clippers. There’s no doubt that Jamison is fading, but it’s debatable whether he’s any worse at this point than most of the players taking up space at the back end of NBA rosters.
He’s not going to win another Sixth Man of the Year award, as he did back in 2003/04, but the 6’8″ Jamison is not far removed from having nailed 36.1% of his three-point attempts with the Lakers in 2012/13, the third highest percentage he’s ever recorded. He’s been consistent from behind the arc, making 34.6% of his treys during his career, save for last season’s 8 for 41 performance in his brief stint as a Clipper. Last year might have soured the league’s front offices on Jamison, but in an NBA increasingly obsessed with analytics, I’m not sure his time with the Clippers provided an acceptable amount of evidence.
There’d be little call for Jamison to reprise the high-volume shooting role he played for the Cavs a few years ago, so even as he opens himself to signing with a non-contender, it seems Jamison is best suited to help teams that want to win now. There are plenty of teams with which he wouldn’t make sense, but it only takes one club that believes in him for the two-time All-Star to wear an NBA jersey again. Jamison said in Prince’s report that while he’s not ruling out retirement, he won’t know what he’s going to do next for at least another month, perhaps suggesting that he envisions signing with a team at midseason rather than going to training camp. Waiting a full year to return to the league would be risky, but when teams are allowed to issue 10-day contracts again in January, such a deal would allow Jamison to make at least small slice of guaranteed money while keeping a team’s initial investment minimal. There’s a strong chance that we’ve seen the last of Jamison in sneakers, but don’t bet on it.
Clippers Rumors: Rivers, Sterling, Raduljica
The Clippers have pulled off a trade, reached a new deal with coach/executive Doc Rivers, and waived two players, and they reportedly met with Ekpe Udoh as they eye fellow free agent Chris Douglas-Roberts. That’s all within the space of the last three days. There’s a long holiday weekend ahead for some, but the Clippers certainly aren’t easing into it. Here’s the latest on the team:
- Few knock the coaching credentials of Rivers, but his roster-building skills as an executive are another matter. Plenty of executives around the league question Rivers’ acquisition of Jared Dudley last year and his surrender of a first-round pick in the deal to rid the Clippers of Dudley this week, as Bleacher Report’s Ric Bucher writes. “If [former Timberwolves GM] David Kahn made those deals, they’d have been burning crosses on his lawn,” one NBA executive told Bucher.
- Shelly Sterling didn’t know who Steve Ballmer was when he called her this spring to express interest in buying the Clippers, as she tells Linda Deutsch of The Associated Press. Still, she negotiated him up from an initial offer of $1.9 billion to the $2 billion price he wound up paying and obtained a promise from Ballmer that he would never move the team to Seattle, as Deutsch details.
- Rival teams called the Bucks to talk about trading for Miroslav Raduljica last season, according to Shams Charania of RealGM. That seems to suggest there will be NBA suitors for the center whose three-day tenure with the Clippers just ended, though that’s just my speculation.
Clippers Waive Carlos Delfino
1:10pm: The move is official, the team announced via press release, so Delfino hits waivers in time for the Clippers to stretch his salary.
12:16pm: The Clippers will indeed waive Carlos Delfino today, a source tells Ben Bolch of the Los Angeles Times (Twitter link). USA Today’s Sam Amick reported earlier this week that the move was likely to happen. The team will use the stretch provision to spread out his remaining salary, just as the Clippers will do with Miroslav Raduljica, whom the Clippers are also reportedly set to release, Bolch adds.
Delfino has a guaranteed salary of $3.25MM for the coming season, while his salary of the same amount for 2015/16 is non-guaranteed. Using the stretch provision allows a team to evenly spread a player’s remaining salary out over two times the number of years remaining on his contract, plus one. That means Delfino’s salary will be stretched over five seasons, as Bolch points out. Since only half of Delfino’s remaining salary is guaranteed, that would reduce his cap hit to $65K for this season and each year through 2018/19. There had been confusion about whether the non-guaranteed season would count, and thus whether Delfino’s guaranteed salary would be stretched over three years instead of five. However, NBA Salary Cap FAQ author Larry Coon confirms to Eric Pincus of the Los Angeles Times that Delfino’s salary will indeed be stretched over five years (Twitter link).
Raduljica’s contract is similarly structured, with fully guaranteed salary for this year and non-guaranteed salary for 2015/16. He’s set to make $1.5MM for this coming season, so waiving and stretching him drops his payout to $300K each year. Put together, today’s anticipated moves would give the Clippers an extra $3.8MM in breathing room against their hard cap. The team had been only $649,228 shy of that cap after Tuesday’s trade, according to the data compiled by Pincus for Basketball Insiders, so this gives the Clippers enough ammunition to sign veterans like Chris Douglas-Roberts and Ekpe Udoh, whom they have been eyeing, as Amick reported this week.
Cutting Delfino and Raduljica would drop the team’s roster to 11 players. The Clippers can only sign free agents for the minimum salary, having exhausted their cap exceptions, but it appears as though they’ll be able to add four minimum-salary veterans to field a full 15-man regular season roster once Delfino and Raduljica are officially gone. The timing of the moves will be key, since Sunday is the last day that teams can use the stretch provision to reduce salaries for the coming season, but it appears that the team will pull the trigger today.
Delfino missed all of last season with a right foot injury, and he’s reportedly expected to miss part of this one. The former 25th overall pick, who turns 32 today, has been a double-digit scorer in three of his last four healthy seasons, so it would seem there would be strong interest if he can fully recover.
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thinks it’s time for the Bulls to open their wallets.
- The only reason his shooting percentage dropped is because he was being asked to do so much on defense and then was getting double-teamed on offense because there weren’t any other threats in the backcourt. With Derrick Rose returning, the addition of Doug McDermott, Pau Gasol and Tony Snell stepping it up, I think Butler will do good things offensively. The Bulls should get a contract in place now because if he improves on offense even a little bit they may lose him to free agency when that time comes. Butler is by far a top-five defender of wings in a league full of talented scorers at that position. The Bulls need him more than most realize.
Many Hoops Rumors readers are supportive of Sixers GM Sam Hinkie‘s radical rebuilding project, and count Michael Nguyen among them.
- As a Sixer fan I have embraced the tank and still go to games because the seats are so cheap! If the plan works, the Sixers will dominate for at least a decade. If the plan fails they still get high draft picks. The current ownership group did try to win. They went all in and spent money on players and made trades for Andrew Bynum but things just didn’t work out one way or another. But I thoroughly am enjoying Hinkie’s plan.
The Cavs seem to have been scouring the market for centers of late, and Al-Zamar McKinney suggests a veteran who could also offer some rebounding.
- I don’t know what the Cavs are waiting for, they need to hurry up and get Greg Stiemsma. He’s the best healthy all-around big man still on the market. He has great touch around the basket, he rebounds well enough to be a solid backup, and he knows how to protect to the rim.
Check out what more readers had to say in previous editions of Hoops Rumors Featured Feedback. We appreciate everyone who adds to the dialogue at Hoops Rumors, and we look forward to seeing more responses like these from you!
Poll: Should Bledsoe, Monroe Sign QOs?
Monday will mark two months since the start of free agency, and still two of the top five players on the 2014 Hoops Rumors Free Agent Power Rankings remain unsigned. The restricted free agencies of Eric Bledsoe and Greg Monroe have dragged on longer than it seemed reasonable to expect, even though teams and their restricted free agents often engage in protracted negotiations, as the Wolves and Nikola Pekovic did last year. There’s little doubting the game-changing ability of either, but the power for Phoenix and Detroit to match all other offers for their respective young stars appears to have effectively short-circuited the market.
Reports have indicated that both Bledsoe and Monroe are prepared to sign their qualifying offers, the standard one-year offers that teams must make at the start of free agency to retain matching rights on their restricted free agents. One report amid a series of dispatches earlier this month indicated that Monroe had already let the Pistons know he would accept the qualifying offer, though other reports conflict with that notion. Bledsoe is insisting that he either receive a max deal or he’ll take the qualifying offer, according to the latest we’ve seen on him.
Signing the qualifying offer would represent a drastic step. Monroe’s QO is worth a shade less than $5.48MM, while Bledsoe would make just $3.727MM this season if he signed his. The Pistons and Suns appear to have made long-term offers that would pay much more than that. Phoenix reportedly has four years and $48MM on the table for Bledsoe, while the Pistons are apparently willing to give Monroe more than $54MM over four years. Still, the max for both would be a five-year, $84,789,500 contract, and it seems neither would be satisfied settling for less. Sign-and-trades remain a possibility, but it doesn’t appear as though there’s much traction toward one for either of the free agents stuck in limbo.
Bledsoe and Monroe could hit unrestricted free agency in a year if they sign their qualifying offers, and while it would seem that both would field more competitive offers from teams who would no longer have to worry that the Suns or Pistons would match, there are no guarantees. Bledsoe has only started 78 games in his career, and it appears few around the NBA regard Monroe as someone worthy of a maximum-salary contract. Only 17 players have signed qualifying offers in the past two decades, and none have carried cachet of either Bledsoe or Monroe, underscoring just what an unusual move it would be.
Let us know whether you think signing the qualifying offer, and the chance to hit unrestricted free agency in a year that comes with it, would be worthwhile for Bledsoe and Monroe, or if you think they should take the more lucrative long-term deals in front of them. Weigh in on your choice in the comments.
Jordan McRae To Play In Australia
Sixers second-round draftee Jordan McRae has signed with CTI Melbourne United of Australia, the team announced (hat tip to Sportando’s Orazio Cauchi). The terms aren’t immediately clear, but it looks like this year’s 58th overall pick is set to spend the season overseas rather than with Philadelphia, which acquired his NBA rights in a draft-night swap with the Spurs.
The 23-year-old shooting guard gradually emerged as a scoring force over his time at the University of Tennessee, averaging 18.7 points per game as a senior this past season, 10.1 more than he’d poured in as a sophomore. McRae led the Volunteers in scoring this year, outpacing 35th overall pick Jarnell Stokes, and he also possesses a 7’0.5″ wingspan, according to DraftExpress, to aid him defensively. McRae prides himself on his versatility and is confident he can play point guard, too, as he told Zach Links of Hoops Rumors prior to the draft for our Prospect Profile Series. McRae will have a chance to refine his skills in Australia, where he’ll play for former Bulls and Mavericks center Chris Anstey, the CTI Melbourne United head coach.
Philadelphia was among the teams to have McRae in for a predraft workout, as McRae also informed Zach. The patiently rebuilding Sixers will wait to bring him stateside, just as they’re doing with No. 12 overall pick Dario Saric and 52nd overall pick Vasilije Micic, two others among the six 2014 draftees whose rights the team possesses. McRae will join fellow second-round pick DeAndre Daniels, whose NBA rights belong to the Raptors, in Australia this season.
Rockets Eye Sign-And-Trade For Sessions?
THURSDAY, 4:39pm: Sessions is unlikely to end up with the Rockets, tweets Jonathan Feigen of the Houston Chronicle. There’s only limited interest in a deal, Feigen says, though it’s not entirely clear whether he’s referring to the interest of the Rockets, the Bucks, Sessions, or some combination of the three.
MONDAY, 12:56pm: Free agent point guard Ramon Sessions and the Rockets have mutual interest, and Houston has spoken with the Bucks about the possibility of a sign-and-trade that would bring Sessions to the Rockets, reports Alex Kennedy of Basketball Insiders (Twitter links). Still, no deal is imminent, Kennedy cautions. Houston has only the $2.077MM biannual exception to give Sessions any more than the minimum salary after spending its mid-level exception on Kostas Papanikolaou and Nick Johnson, but a sign-and-trade would allow the Rockets to give Sessions a better deal.
The Bucks renounced their rights to Sessions last week, but they’re still allowed to send him out in a sign-and-trade. It’s not immediately clear what they’re seeking, but perhaps they’ll look to acquire draft assets, given their rebuilding efforts after last year’s league-low 15 wins. If so, the Rockets could accommodate them without having to send out any salary, using part of the nearly $8.4MM trade exception to take on Sessions at a salary greater than they could offer if they signed him outright.
The market for Sessions appeared to have gone cold not long after Kennedy reported in July that three teams reached out to the 28-year-old within the first hour of free agency. The Bulls were among those showing interest, while there were conflicting reports about whether the Hornets were also in that group. The idea of returning to Charlotte, where he spent most of the last two seasons before the deadline trade that sent him to Milwaukee, intrigued Sessions this spring. Still, with Kemba Walker, Brian Roberts and Jannero Pargo in tow, it doesn’t appear as though there’s room for Sessions on the Hornets.
The Bucks picked up Jerryd Bayless and Kendall Marshall this summer to go with Brandon Knight and Nate Wolters, putting a similar squeeze on the point guard position in Milwaukee. The Bucks have 15 players with guaranteed deals plus Marshall, who figures to play a key role, so it’s possible that they envision sending at least one rostered player Houston’s way in a sign-and-trade.
Sessions, a client of Jared Karnes, balances shaky shooting with a knack for earning trips to the free-throw line, as Cray Allred of Hoops Rumors noted when he examined the seven-year veteran’s free agent stock. He’s coming off a two-year, $10MM deal he signed after having been one of the marquee acquisitions at the 2012 trade deadline, when he went to the Lakers, so it’s not altogether surprising that he’s generating strong interest, even at this stage of free agency.
And-Ones: Griffin, Calipari, Mozgov, Jamison
The Cavs were in talks with John Calipari about a coach/executive role that would give him authority over the front office even after they removed the interim tag from GM David Griffin‘s title, but Griffin doesn’t sound upset about the team’s attempted maneuver. Griffin made his comments Wednesday in a radio appearance on The Doug Gottlieb Show, and James Herbert of CBSSports.com provides a partial transcription.
“To be honest with you, I don’t think anything was ever done without my knowledge of what was being done, for one,” Griffin said. “And two, I turned down opportunities to be a GM because the fit wasn’t right, and when I sat with [owner] Dan [Gilbert] and [Cavs vice chairman] Nate [Forbes], when we talked about our vision for the future and me having this job, I encouraged them to talk to other people. It was something that was really important to me.”
Gilbert said he would have been “disappointed” if the team hadn’t spoken with Calipari, so it seems he and his bosses are in lockstep as the Cavs prepare to chase a title. There’s more from Cleveland amid the latest from around the league:
- Timofey Mozgov is intrigued by the idea of again playing for David Blatt, who coached him on the Russian national team, and with LeBron James, but he says he’s not going to push for a trade from the Nuggets, as Boris Khodorovsky of ITAR-TASS observes (translation via Alexander Chernykh of Rush’n Hoops). The Cavs have reportedly been trying to trade for Mozgov.
- Free agent Antawn Jamison won’t rule out retirement, but the 38-year-old would prefer to find an NBA deal, as he tells DeAntae Prince of The Sporting News. The 16-year vet also said to Prince that while he has “options” in free agency, he won’t decide on any of them for at least another month, and he won’t limit himself to signing with contenders, as he has the past two offseasons.
- Some NBA teams had planned on scouting three-year NBA veteran Mickael Gelabale at the World Cup, and he’s also drawing interest from FC Barcelona of Spain, tweets Shams Charania of RealGM.
Lucrative One-Year NBA Deals Increasingly Rare
Two years ago, Chris Kaman signed a one-year, $8MM contract with the Mavs. No NBA player has approached that kind of money on a one-year deal since. Teams and players seem to have a growing reluctance to do one-year deals for more than the minimum. This summer, there have only been four new one-year deals exceeding $1,448,490, the amount of the 10-year veteran’s minimum, as our Free Agent Tracker shows. Last year, there were six such contracts, as I noted then, and in 2012, Kaman was among a group of eight.
The most lucrative of this summer’s one-year deals carries an asterisk of sorts, since it was Kevin Seraphin‘s qualifying offer from the Wizards. That means the team and the player didn’t negotiate their one-year deal as much as they simply wound up with it as a result of the mechanics of restricted free agency. That scenario might be repeated again this summer if any one of Eric Bledsoe, Greg Monroe and Aron Baynes, the restricted free agents who remain on the market, ink their qualifying offers.
Still, none of those qualifying offers would equal Kaman’s $8MM payday, and as above-minimum one-year deals diminish in number, they’re also reducing in value. Four of the eight most lucrative one-year deals from 2012 were for more than Seraphin’s qualifying offer, and no one’s matched the $4MM that Elton Brand saw from the Hawks in the one-year deal he signed last summer.
It’s difficult to explain the phenomenon in an NBA where more and more teams set themselves up to have cap flexibility every summer, thanks in large measure to the stricter limits on the lengths of deals that the latest collective bargaining agreement imposed. In theory, teams would be turning to one-year deals with increasing frequency, but that’s not happening.
Players who’ve signed above-minimum one-year contracts the past two summers have almost universally failed to re-sign with the same team the next year. Martell Webster, who signed for $1.6MM with the Wizards in 2012, inked a four-year contract with Washington last year, but none of the 13 other above-minimum one-year signees from the past two offseasons have rejoined their teams.
The results for the players from 2012 were mixed, as four of them wound up seeing raises in 2013 and four of them didn’t. Kaman, who signed high-dollar one-year deals in both 2012 and 2013, will see a raise this coming season, but he won’t make an annual salary as high as what he saw on the one-year deal he signed in 2012. He’s the only member of the 2013 class who’s seen any sort of raise, as four of the six have gone without NBA deals this summer.
Here are the one-year deals from each of the past three offseasons that have exceeded the amount of the 10-year veteran’s minimum salary, with details on what the signees from 2012 and 2013 wound up with the following summer. Note that this takes into account offseason signings only, and not midseason signees like Andrew Bynum, who inked a one-year deal with the Pacers this February for more than the prorated 10-year veteran’s minimum.
2014
- Kevin Seraphin, Wizards, $3.898,693 (qualifying offer)
- Mo Williams, Timberwolves, $3.75MM
- Jason Smith, Knicks, $3.278MM
- John Salmons, Pelicans, $2MM
2013
- Elton Brand, Hawks, $4MM — Next deal: Remains unsigned.
- Al-Farouq Aminu, Pelicans, $3.75MM — Next deal: Signed a two-year, minimum-salary deal with the Mavs.
- Chris Kaman, Lakers, $3.183MM — Next deal: Signed a two-year, $9.816MM deal with the Blazers.
- Greg Stiemsma, Pelicans, $2.676MM — Next deal: Remains unsigned.
- Jermaine O’Neal, Warriors, $2MM — Next deal: Remains unsigned.
- Toney Douglas, Warriors, $1.6MM — Next deal: Signed a $1MM deal to play in China.
2012
- Chris Kaman, Mavs, $8MM — Next deal: Signed a one-year, $4MM deal with the Lakers.
- Nick Young, Sixers, $5.6MM — Next deal: Signed a two-year, minimum-salary deal with the Lakers.
- Chauncey Billups, Clippers, $4.3MM — Next deal: Signed a two-year, $5MM deal with the Pistons.
- J.J. Hickson, Trail Blazers, $4MM — Next deal: Signed a three-year, $16.5MM deal with the Nuggets.
- D.J. Augustin, Pacers, $3.5MM — Next deal: Signed a one-year, $1.267MM deal with the Raptors.
- Randy Foye, Jazz, $2.5MM — Next deal: Signed-and-traded on a three-year, $9.135MM deal to the Nuggets.
- Marco Belinelli, Bulls, $1.957MM — Next deal: Signed a two-year, $5,623,750 deal with the Spurs.
- Martell Webster, Wizards, $1.6MM — Next deal: Re-signed to a four-year, $21,990,500 deal.
The Basketball Insiders salary pages were used in the creation of this post.