Western Notes: Lakers, Bonner, Taylor
Projecting the playoff teams in the Western Conference would be difficult enough if it weren’t for the unresolved saga involving Eric Bledsoe and the Suns, but Phoenix is the true X-factor in the equation as it stands. The Suns were 28-15 when Bledsoe played last season, a winning percentage of .651 that would have made them the West’s sixth seed. They were just 20-19 without him, which dragged the team down far enough to miss the playoffs. Of course, there are plenty of other unknowns still at play in the West, and we’ll round up the latest here:
- The inclusion of Toney Douglas and Bobby Brown among those in Tuesday’s Lakers workout was somewhat curious, since they both have deals to play in China, but both contracts contain NBA escape clauses, as USA Today’s Sam Amick explains. Douglas intends to head to China regardless and views the audition as an early tryout for when he returns stateside after the Chinese season ends, agent David Falk tells Amick. Brown is interested in joining the Lakers right away if given the opportunity, Amick adds, and presumably so are the rest of the hopefuls who took part in the workout.
- Matt Bonner only re-signed with the Spurs for one year, but the 34-year-old would like to play until he’s 40, as he tells Jonathan Demay of the French-language website Basket USA (translation via Jeff Garcia of Project Spurs).
- Two Western Conference teams invited former University of Wisconsin point guard Jordan Taylor to camp, but he turned them down to take a deal with Israel’s Hapoel Holon instead, tweets David Pick of Eurobasket.com. A trip to camp with an NBA team would have been a first for the 24-year-old, who spent summer league with the Bucks.
Jazz Sign Toure’ Murry
THURSDAY, 1:05pm: The deal is official, the team announced.
WEDNESDAY, 12:53pm: The Jazz have yet to make an official announcement, but the signing has taken place, according to the RealGM transactions log.
TUESDAY, 5:05pm: Murry’s deal includes a $250K guarantee for this season, and is non-guaranteed for 2015/16, reports Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports (Twitter link).
2:42pm: The Jazz and Toure’ Murry have finalized a deal, reports Chris Herring of The Wall Street Journal (Twitter link). Marc Stein of ESPN.com reported earlier this month that the sides were close to a two-year, $2MM arrangement.
The Knicks elected not to tender Murry a qualifying offer this summer, making him an unrestricted free agent after his first NBA season, though they were among the teams reportedly interested in re-signing him. The Clippers, Heat and Lakers were also apparently in the mix.
Utah appears to be using cap space to sign the Bernie Lee client to a deal for more than the minimum. It’s somewhat surprising that he’d receive that, since Murry averaged just 7.3 minutes per game in 51 appearances last season. He played for the Rockets D-League affiliate in 2012/13 after going undrafted out of Wichita State two years ago.
Explaining The Wolves’ Trade Exception
The Timberwolves reaped a trade exception worth $6,308,194 from Saturday’s completion of the Kevin Love trade, as Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders confirmed Tuesday. That wasn’t the only avenue the Wolves could have gone down to create an exception from the swap, as Pincus pointed out, and the multitude of scenarios in play seemed to add to the confusion that swirled about the precise details of the trade almost until it went down. The creation of trade exceptions is one of the most difficult to understand facets of a salary cap that’s otherwise convoluted enough, but we’ll try to explain how the Wolves wound up with the exception and examine alternate scenarios they could have pursued.
The trade itself was a three-teamer that saw Love go to the Cavs, Thaddeus Young, Andrew Wiggins and Anthony Bennett go to the Wolves, and Luc Mbah a Moute, Alexey Shved and a draft pick go to the Sixers. Still, the league allows each team involved in a trade to frame it differently so that the ability to create trade exceptions is maximized. A trade exception is the product of a deal in which a team gives up more salary than it receives. They allow capped-out teams to participate in subsequent trades in which they take back more salary than they relinquish, trades that otherwise wouldn’t be legal under the terms of the collective bargaining agreement.
The Timberwolves chose to regard the transaction as a pair of trades, one in which they swapped Love for Young and another in which they gave up Mbah a Moute and Shved and took back Wiggins and Bennett, as Pincus pointed out. It doesn’t matter that Love went to a different team than Young came from, nor that Mbah a Moute and Shved went to a different team than Wiggins and Bennett did. For the purposes of creating trade exceptions, it simply matters what the Wolves relinquished and what they got back.
Each of the component trades had to meet the NBA’s salary matching requirements for the capped-out Wolves and Cavs, but not for the Sixers, who are far beneath the cap. The swap of Love for Young meets the requirements for Minnesota, since the Wolves are giving up more than they’re receiving. Love’s $15,719,062 salary is more than 150% plus $100K greater than Young’s pay of $9,410,869, which would exceed the amount the salary matching rules allow if Philadelphia were over the cap, but all that matters is what the Wolves gave up and what they’re getting, so Philly’s situation isn’t relevant as it applies to the trade from Minnesota’s perspective. Of course, Love isn’t, nor was he ever going to be, a member of the Sixers, but again, the NBA allows teams to structure “mini-trades” as they see fit within the larger structure of the transaction itself for the purpose of creating trade exceptions.
The other “mini-trade” the Wolves pull off here sees them exchange Mbah a Moute, who makes $4,382,575, and Shved, at $3,282,057, for the salaries of Bennett ($5,563,920) and Wiggins ($5,510,640). They’re receiving more than they’re giving up, so the sum of the salaries for Bennett and Wiggins have to come in under the matching limit, which, once more, is 150% of the outgoing salary plus $100K, since the outgoing salary is less than $9.8MM. Mbah a Moute and Shved combine to make $7,664,632, so 150% of that figure is $11,496,948, and another $100K makes it $11,596,948. That’s not too much more than $11,074,560, the sum of the salaries for Bennett and Wiggins, but it works. Since this swap is allowed, it lets the Wolves pair it with the Love/Young swap, which is the one in which they give up more than they get. The amount of the difference between the salaries for Love and Young results in Minnesota’s $6,308,194 trade exception.
That exception is better than the $4,644,503 exception the Wolves could have come away with if they had framed the transaction as a trade of Love for Wiggins and Bennett and a swap of Mbah a Moute and Shved for Young. That structure is more straightforward, since the “mini-trades” involve exchanges of players that mimic the real-life structure of the transaction, but it’s also less advantageous for Minnesota, which is why the team took a more complicated route.
The Wolves also had the option of creating a pair of smaller trade exceptions that would add up to more than the one they chose. They could have done that if they considered Love for Young, Bennett and Wiggins as one trade and the offloading of Mbah a Moute and Shved as second and third trades. The league wouldn’t allow Mbah a Moute and Shved to go out on their own without the Sixers giving anything in return if they were standalone transactions, but since this is within the structure of a larger trade, it’s OK. The salary-matching requirement for the other component of this structure is different because Love makes more than $9.8MM. So, the Timberwolves are allowed to take back Love’s salary plus $5MM, or $20,719,062. The salaries for Bennett, Wiggins and Young add up to $20,485,429, a shade under the limit. But, again, it works.
That means the Wolves could reap exceptions of $4,382,575 and $3,282,057 equivalent to the salaries of Mbah a Moute and Shved. That would allow them to add a greater amount of salary via trade overall, but it wouldn’t allow them to acquire a single player who makes more than either amount, as the $6,308,194 Love-for-Young exception would. Minnesota chose to give itself the chance to net a more highly paid player, and while it could still split that exception on multiple acquisitions, the team wouldn’t be able to accommodate quite as much salary as it otherwise could have.
Understanding trade exceptions is no easy task, but it’s a requirement for every NBA executive. Wolves president of basketball operations Flip Saunders and his staff surely spent plenty of hours during the weeks-long waiting period between the time the teams agreed to the trade and the time the trade became official crunching the numbers and weighing all the different scenarios at play. Cavs GM David Griffin and Sixers GM Sam Hinkie surely did, too, even though neither of them had a way to come away with a trade exception from the transaction. The Sixers have plenty of cap room that serves in place of any exception. The Cavs have Love and a team that will contend for the title. The Wolves have a new foundation and a mathematical weapon they can use to acquire a player they otherwise couldn’t within the next year.
Larry Coon’s Salary Cap FAQ and the Basketball Insiders Salary pages were used in the creation of this post.
Sam Hinkie On Rebuilding, Mbah a Moute, Shved
The majority of Hoops Rumors readers who voted in Wednesday’s poll believe that Sixers GM Sam Hinkie is pursuing a shrewd strategy, at least in theory, as he continues to strip the roster of veteran mainstays. Philadelphia reduced its cap commitments once more in this weekend’s Kevin Love trade, and only Jason Richardson and the newly acquired Luc Mbah a Moute have salaries that exceed what any Sixer on a rookie scale contract will make this season. Hinkie addressed his philosophy and the players he acquired this weekend as he spoke in a conference call that took place hours before the team’s participation in Tuesday’s Hasheem Thabeet trade, one from which the Sixers will likely net nothing more than $100K in cash. Max Rappaport of Sixers.com recaps the GM’s comments, and we’ll share a few highlights here:
On the team’s aggressive rebuilding:
“I continue to hear optimism from our fans about the type of thing that we’re building. I think they view our approach as bold, but I think they view it as something that is a departure and something that could very well end up in a place that we could all be proud of.”
On Luc Mbah a Moute:
“Luc’s relationship with Joel [Embiid] can only help. I think we’re definitely in the mode of player development, and Joel will be a big part of that. Sometimes that’s about getting in the gym and getting up more shots, and sometimes it’s, ‘This is the way life in the NBA works, this is the rhythm, this is how to take care of your body, this is how to get your rest, this is how to manage your life off the floor.’”
On Alexey Shved, whom the team is reportedly likely to keep, along with Mbah a Moute:
“He’s played at a very high level in some high-pressure games. He’s a ball-handling guard that can play pick-and-roll, off the ball sometimes, sometimes on the ball, and bring it up on occasion. That’s something of interest to us.”
On the procedure the team is following:
“Step one is our ability to coach [our young players] and see them on the floor. But definitely the way we approach it is that every day we’re looking for people that have the kind of characteristics, that have the kind of work ethic, and that have the kind of talent to really move our program forward. We focused from the very beginning on building something special for the city of Philadelphia and trying to put a program in place to do that. We’re focused on doing all the things every day, including the things that may sound mundane – the details of our practice facility, counting the number of threes our guys are getting up in the middle of May … we’re focused on those kinds of things because that’s what we can control to build what we want to build as fast as we can.”
Sixers Sign Joel Embiid
SEPTEMBER 29TH: The team finally acknowledged the signing, including Embiid on its preseason roster.
AUGUST 28TH: The Sixers still haven’t made an official announcement, but the appearance of the move on the RealGM transactions log provides further confirmation that the signing has taken place.
AUGUST 26TH: No. 3 overall pick Joel Embiid has signed his rookie scale contract with the Sixers, according to his verified Twitter account. The team has yet to make an official announcement, but it appears as though the last remaining first-round pick from this June who had yet to sign with his NBA team or agree to play elsewhere has inked his deal. He’ll make nearly $3.69MM, as our table of salaries for this year’s first-rounders shows.
Embiid was a strong contender, if not the front-runner, to become the No. 1 overall pick until he suffered a broken foot shortly before the draft. The most recent estimate has him out anywhere from between November and February, though it appears as though he’s in line to see action at some point this season for Philadelphia. A back injury that forced him to miss the final six games of his college career at Kansas sparked concern for much of the spring, but ultimately that didn’t seem to depress his draft stock nearly as much as his foot did.
Whenever he’s healthy enough to play, he’ll look to build upon last season’s breakout campaign, one in which he came to join college teammate Andrew Wiggins, a far more heralded prospect coming out of high school, and Jabari Parker as contenders for the top pick. The 7’0″ center only began playing basketball in 2011, so his skills are raw, but with a game that shows shades of Hakeem Olajuwon, his upside is vast, as Zach Links of Hoops Rumors examined this past April in his Prospect Profile of Embiid.
He’ll join fellow Cameroonian native and mentor Luc Mbah a Moute on the Sixers, and Mbah a Moute’s close ties to Embiid appeared to be one of the reasons Philadelphia acquired the veteran forward as part of its participation in the Kevin Love trade. The 20-year-old Embiid won’t encounter much in the way of immediate expectations in Philadelphia, which is in a long-term rebuilding effort, and while Embiid is a centerpiece of that project, the Sixers appear willing to wait for his skills to more fully develop.
The Sixers had been carrying 16 players after Tuesday’s acquisition of Hasheem Thabeet and before Embiid’s signing, though Philadelphia appears poised to waive Thabeet. Embiid is one of just eight players with fully guaranteed deals on Philadelphia’s roster.
Eddie Scarito contributed to this post.
Heat Sign Shannon Brown
5:15pm: The signing is official, the team announced.
3:10pm: The Heat and Shannon Brown have come to terms, according to the Priority Sports agency that represents the free agent shooting guard (Twitter link; hat tip to Jeff Zillgitt of USA Today). Sam Amick of USA Today hears it’s a one-year, $1.3MM deal (Twitter link), so that appears to be rounded down from the $1,310,286 minimum salary for a veteran of eight years, as Brown is. That stands to reason, since Miami is limited to handing out only the minimum.
A report from about a week ago indicated that finding a shooting guard was a priority for the Heat, though Brown wasn’t among the players linked to the team. The rumor mill surrounding the 28-year-old has been quiet since the Knicks waived him rather than guaranteeing his contract last month. It remains to be seen whether the Heat are including any sort of guarantee in their pact with the Mark Bartelstein client.
Brown, a former 25th overall pick, spent the first half of last season out of the league after the Wizards let him go following the Marcin Gortat trade that brought him from Phoenix, where he’d put up back-to-back career highs in minutes per game. The Spurs brought him in on a pair of 10-day contracts in February, and the Knicks later did the same before signing him to a deal that covered the rest of the season with a non-guaranteed 2014/15 salary tacked on.
The Heat had been carrying just 14 deals with any guaranteed money, as our roster counts show, so Brown appears to have a strong chance to remain with the team come opening night.
And-Ones: James Jones, Sterling, Young
The Wolves haven’t made the playoffs in 10 years, leaving owner Glen Taylor to blame as the constant amid a changing cast of star players, coaches and executives, argues Tom Ziller of SB Nation. Taylor’s latest salvos, aimed at Kevin Love, reflect poorly upon him, too, Ziller believes. Here’s more from around the league:
- The Heat and James Jones had mutual interest in a new deal this summer and they spoke about the possibility before he chose to sign with the Cavs instead, as he tells Ira Winderman of the Sun Sentinel. Jones called his departure from Miami “the toughest professional decision I’ve had to make,” and while he previously cited a desire for more playing time as the reason why he left, he says to Winderman that he doesn’t harbor any resentment toward coach Erik Spoelstra.
- Donald Sterling failed to petition the California Supreme Court by Monday’s deadline for review of a lower court’s decision to reject Sterling’s earlier petitions to halt or unwind the sale of the Clippers, according to Michael McCann of SI.com. That means Sterling has essentially run out of legal avenues to fight the sale, as McCann explains.
- It was difficult to trade Thaddeus Young, Sixers GM Sam Hinkie admitted, citing the forward’s professionalism and positive attitude, as Michael Kaskey-Blomain of Philly.com chronicles. “Those things matter,” Hinkie said. “That’s why these decisions, while necessary, are still challenging.”
Lakers Again Work Out Michael Beasley
Michael Beasley auditioned for the Lakers once more today, reports Alex Kennedy of Basketball Insiders (Twitter link). The former No. 2 overall pick also reportedly worked out for the Lakers a few weeks ago, and the team apparently liked what it saw, so it seems as though Beasley continues to intrigue GM Mitch Kupchak and his staff.
Kennedy reported last month that several teams had expressed interest, though the Heat appear to be lukewarm on the idea of bringing him back to Miami, where he played last season and during the first two seasons of his tumultuous NBA career. The Suns made the unusual step of citing concerns about his character in their official release when they waived him as part of a buyout deal a year ago, but Beasley hasn’t seemed to stir any trouble since then. His talent is less of a question mark, and he was productive when he saw the floor last season, as he appears on the lists of the top scorers, rebounders and three-point shooters remaining on the market that I’ve compiled in the past two weeks.
The Lakers can only hand out the minimum salary, though that’s all Beasley made in Miami last season, when he stuck with the team for all of 2013/14 despite having signed a contract without any guaranteed salary. L.A. is carrying just 13 deals known to be guaranteed, so there’d be room to give Beasley a decent chance to make the opening-night roster.
Spurs To Work Out Julyan Stone
Free agent point guard Julyan Stone will be auditioning with the Spurs soon, reports Shams Charania of RealGM (Twitter link). The 25-year-old Stone has been on the market since the Raptors cut him loose last month.
The Sixers, Bucks and Kings were discussing potential deals with Stone last month, as was Toronto, which envisioned bringing him back, as Charania reported then. The RealGM scribe reiterates today that Stone has engaged in talks with teams other than the Spurs, but it’s unclear if any of the clubs from last month are still in the mix. Stone has played sparingly over his three NBA seasons, never averaging more than the 8.1 minutes per game he saw as a rookie, but he appeared to be a favorite of Raptors GM Masai Ujiri, who brought Stone with him when he left the Nuggets for Toronto.
The Spurs have been active in their preparations for camp of late. This week the team signed Josh Davis, a power forward from San Diego State, and a report from last week indicated that Hakim Warrick was one of multiple free agents set to work out for the team. Summer leaguer Denzel Bowles is also apparently set to audition for San Antonio.
2015/16 NBA Free Agent List Updated
The flurry of signings and roster moves in the first few weeks of free agency left several details unresolved, particularly when it came to the option years or non-guaranteed seasons included in each new contract signed this summer. Now that the dust has settled and the terms of most contracts have been reported, we have a clearer idea of what the free agent picture will look like in future offseasons.
We’ve combed over the reports and updated our register of the players who can hit the market next summer. Our list of 2015/16 free agents encompasses players with one last season to go on their contracts, players eligible for restricted free agency, and players with non-guaranteed salary and option clauses for the 2015/16 season. Names like Rajon Rondo, LaMarcus Aldridge and Marc Gasol highlight the list, and LeBron James is once more just months away from becoming a free agent if he chooses, since he has a player option.
Many players with option years or non-guaranteed deals almost certainly won’t hit the free agent market next summer. For instance, Jamal Crawford‘s contract for 2015/16 isn’t fully guaranteed, so you’ll find his name on our list, but barring a catastrophic turn of events, the Clippers will certainly be guaranteeing his deal eventually. We’ll continue to update our list as those sorts of decisions become official, and the list can be found anytime on the right sidebar under “Hoops Rumors Features.”
Additionally, a handful of players with non-guaranteed salary for 2015/16 also have non- or partially guaranteed contracts for 2014/15. Those players won’t find a spot on our ’15/’16 list until their statuses for the coming season are officially determined, so they can be found on the list of 2014/15 free agents in the meantime.