Clippers, Doc Rivers Agree To New Deal
2:00pm: The deal is worth more than $50MM over the next five seasons, reports Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports (Twitter link).
1:43pm: It’s an entirely new contract rather than an extension for Rivers, tweets Ben Bolch of the Los Angeles Times. That indicates that the terms of Rivers’ original pact with the team, which wasn’t set to expire until the summer of 2016, no longer apply.
11:07am: The Clippers and Doc Rivers have reached a deal that will keep him under contract with the team through the 2018/19 season, the team announced. Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports first reported a couple of weeks ago that Rivers, who serves as coach and president of basketball operations, was set for extension talks with the team just as new owner Steve Ballmer formally took control of the franchise. The terms of the new deal aren’t immediately clear, but Rivers signed a three-year, $21MM contract when he joined the Clippers last summer.
“This is an important day for this organization,” Ballmer said in the team’s statement. “I am excited to work with Doc for a long time as we build a championship culture that will deliver results both on and off the court. Not only is Doc one of the best coaches and executives in the game, but he continually embodies the hard core, committed and resilient character and winning culture that the Clippers represent. It was one of my top priorities to ensure that he was firmly in place as the long-term leader of this team.”
The extension announcement comes just a day after Rivers and his front office staff pulled off a trade that sent Jared Dudley to the Bucks and provides some long-term salary flexibility for the Clippers. Rivers has had a busy and tumultuous past several months, and the saga involving former owner Donald Sterling was at the center of it.
Rivers helped guide the team through the playoffs this spring just after the scandal burst into the headlines, but it was weeks before he shushed rumors that he would leave if the Sterling mess weren’t quickly remedied. Doubts about Rivers’ future resurfaced when interim CEO Dick Parsons testified in Sterling’s probate trial that Rivers had told him he didn’t think he would continue with the team if Sterling remained the owner. Ballmer’s formal acquisition of the club earlier this month seemed to stabilize that situation, and Rivers spoke of his admiration for the new owner and enthusiasm for a long-term future with the club as part of the team’s statement today.
Ballmer several days ago stopped short of acknowledging extension talks, but he called Rivers “phenomenal” and made it clear that he wanted to keep Rivers around. The former Microsoft CEO paid $2 billion to buy the team, a record price, but with a net worth of $18 billion, according to Forbes.com, there’s little reason to suspect he was unwilling to pony up for Rivers, particularly given the speed with which they reached agreement.
Rivers, 52, has only more than a year of experience as an executive but has served as a head coach for at least part of each of the last 15 seasons, compiling a 644-498 record. He won the 2008 title with the Celtics, but that was one of just three postseasons in which the teams that Rivers coached won more playoff games than they lost.
Photo courtesy USA Today Sports Images.
Central Notes: Love, Meeks, Bucks
Kevin Love was unsurprisingly an early topic of conversation between Cavs GM David Griffin and new coach David Blatt, as Tim Warsinskey of the Star Tribune passes along.
“Kevin Love [is] a player who quite frankly fits us as well as any player possibly could,” Griffin said Tuesday. “The very first thing David Blatt said was, ‘I need a spacing big. Somebody who can shoot and pass and who knows how to play.’ We said, ‘We have one in mind. His name is Kevin Love, he’s a trade target.’ He said, ‘If you could get Kevin Love to go with LeBron James, you would have had a really good offseason.’ ”
Cleveland’s offseason has indeed been “really good,” and then some, but whether it translates into a championship and sustained success remains to be seen. There’s more on the Cavs amid the latest from the Central Division:
- Love’s commitment to the Cavs is really more of a commitment to playing with James, as Brian Windhorst of ESPN.com writes as he explains the reasons why Love isn’t signing an extension with Cleveland. Love is excited about having star teammates who can help him win, and with James possessing the ability to opt out after this coming season, Love isn’t about to give up his ability to do the same, Windhorst explains.
- Jodie Meeks confirms a report from the start of free agency that there were several teams interested in him, but he prioritized taking the first worthwhile offer, as he tells Keith Langlois of Pistons.com. Meeks hopped the first flight out to meet with Pistons coach/executive Stan Van Gundy the morning after Van Gundy called to make his pitch, as Langlois chronicles, and the sides had their deal on the first day of free agency.
- Ben Golliver of SI.com lauds the Bucks for having been willing to take on Jared Dudley‘s salary to land a first-round pick in Tuesday’s trade. Golliver gives Milwaukee an A+ largely for coming away with the draft choice even though it’s likely to come at the back end of the first round.
Kevin Love Fallout: Taylor, Wolves, Cavs
Wolves owner Glen Taylor said Tuesday that Kevin Love‘s health was one reason he hesitated to sign him to a five-year extension in 2012, and he believes it’s a lingering question surrounding around the star power forward, as Jerry Zgoda of the Star Tribune observes.
“I had that concern then,” Taylor said. “I still have that concern, and Cleveland should have that concern, too: if he can keep his health. If they sign him to a five-year contract like they’re thinking about, that’s a big contract on a guy who’s had some times when he has missed games.”
Love acknowledged that there are some raw emotions surrounding the blockbuster move but called for Taylor to keep his focus on his own roster, as the newest Cavalier said today on ESPN Radio’s “Mike and Mike” show, Zgoda notes. We passed along plenty on Love Tuesday night, and we’ll detail more here:
- Taylor said Love never asked him directly to be traded, but agent Jeff Schwartz did make the request to Wolves coach/executive Flip Saunders, according to Taylor, as Zgoda writes in the same piece. The owner suggested that he would have preferred that Love go through him instead.
- Love and Taylor haven’t spoken since the end of the season, the owner said, though he insists they’re still on good terms, as Derek Wetmore of 1500 ESPN Twin Cities chronicles.
- Taylor had insisted amid Love trade rumors early in the summer that he was in no hurry to make a trade, and he explained his shift in thinking Tuesday to reporters, including Wetmore. “I spoke the truth when I said if Kevin would stay here then we would have the best season. Inside I knew Kevin wasn’t giving us that alternative even though it’s what I wanted,” Taylor said. “So now you have the thing where Kevin kind of said, ‘Trade me or you’re going to pay the fine next year if you don’t trade me.’ I think once we got going on that, we had about four teams that came to us with significant offers. But this one truly had the biggest upside. Flip pushed it and negotiated it the best he could so I’m really happy with it.”
Sixers Notes: Embiid, Salary Floor, Richardson
Sixers GM Sam Hinkie expressed optimism Tuesday about what Luc Mbah a Moute and Alexey Shved can contribute, but he seemed most excited about acquiring the Heat’s protected 2015 first-round draft pick, observes Marc Narducci of the Philadelphia Inquirer. The Sixers wound up with those assets in the Kevin Love trade, though it appears like they’ll simply net cash from Tuesday’s Hasheem Thabeet swap once they waive Thabeet, as expected. In any case, Philadelphia has been a hub of activity the past few days, so we’ll round up the latest here:
- Hinkie also said Tuesday that he’s not sure whether Joel Embiid will play this season, as Bob Cooney of the Philadelphia Daily News writes. The GM had said in June that the timetable for Embiid’s recovery from a broken foot was five to eight months. The team has yet to officially announce the signing of Embiid, though the No. 3 pick from this past June indicated Tuesday on Twitter that he had inked his deal, posting a photo of what appeared to be his signed contract.
- The Sixers aren’t concerned about reaching the NBA’s minimum team salary, Hinkie said, as Cooney notes. That’s not surprising, since the penalty for any club that fails to meet the $56.759MM salary floor is only that the team must distribute the difference between that figure and its team salary among the players on the roster.
- In Cooney’s estimation, Jason Richardson and Arnett Moultrie are more likely to reach buyout deals with the team than remain for the regular season.
Bucks Sign Damien Inglis
AUGUST 26TH, 6:03pm: The signing is official, the team announced.
AUGUST 20TH, 8:05pm: The Bucks have signed 31st overall pick Damien Inglis, tweets Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders. The team has yet to make an official announcement, but the move took place Tuesday, as the RealGM transactions log shows. It’s a multiyear deal, according to RealGM. Inglis probably received a three-year deal worth a shade under $1MM this season and the minimum salary in the final two seasons if he’s like many of his peers from the top of the 2014 second round, including 36th overall pick and new Bucks teammate Johnny O’Bryant.
Inglis is a native of French Guiana who spent last season playing for Chorale Roanne in France. He had a decent chance to end up as a first-round pick, since he ranked 26th in Jonathan Givony’s DraftExpress prospect listings and 30th with Chad Ford of ESPN.com. The 6’8″ small forward is nonetheless a raw prospect, having averaged just 4.6 points and 3.6 rebounds in 15.3 minutes per game in France this year.
The signing creates a logjam of sorts in Milwaukee, particularly if Inglis’ contract is guaranteed, as is likely the case. The team already had 14 guaranteed deals, as our roster counts show, not including Kendall Marshall, who figures to be a part of the rotation on his minimum-salary pact after averaging 8.8 assists per game for the Lakers last season. The Bucks also renounced their rights to free agent Ramon Sessions, as Pincus and RealGM report, and while that doesn’t clear an additional roster spot, it’s a signal that the club is done with free agent signings this summer, save for perhaps a few training camp invitations.
Thunder Trade Hasheem Thabeet To Sixers
5:07pm: The trade is official, the Thunder have announced via press release. It’s Thabeet and cash headed to Philadelphia with a protected 2015 second-rounder going to Oklahoma City. That pick will probably never change hands, as Slater reported.
4:57pm: Oklahoma City is receiving a second-round pick, but it’s conditional and so heavily protected that Philadelphia is unlikely to ever have to convey it, reports Anthony Slater of The Oklahoman.
3:55pm: The Thunder will deal Hasheem Thabeet to the Sixers, reports Marc Stein of ESPN.com (on Twitter). The Sixers will likely waive Thabeet after the trade becomes official, Stein also hears (Twitter link). Philadelphia will also receive cash, and the Thunder won’t be taking back any salary, so they can create a trade exception worth Thabeet’s $1.25MM salary, Stein adds (via Twitter).
Thabeet’s salary is non-guaranteed, but it’s set to become fully guaranteed by the end of this coming Monday, which helps explain the timing of the move. Thabeet, the No. 2 pick in the 2009 draft, fell out of Oklahoma City’s rotation this past season amid the emergence of rookie Steven Adams. The 27-year-old Thabeet saw action in just 23 games with an average of 8.3 minutes per appearance.
It’d be a little surprising to see Philadelphia wind up with only cash from the transaction, especially given how much Sixers GM Sam Hinkie covets draft picks, so perhaps there’s more to the transaction than is being reported, though that’s just my speculation. Oklahoma City will have to net an asset of some sort in the trade, too. In any case, the move is set to take Oklahoma City down to 15 players, including 14 guaranteed deals and Lance Thomas, who has a non-guaranteed pact.
The 7’3″ Thabeet has never found solid footing in the league after spending three years at the University of Connecticut. The Grizzlies sent him on D-League assignment in his rookie season, a rarity for a player taken so highly in the draft, and they traded him to the Rockets midway through his second season. Houston swapped him to the Blazers a year later, and he signed with the Thunder the following summer. He spent his first season with Oklahoma City as the primary backup center behind Kendrick Perkins, but he lost that job in 2013/14.
Bucks Acquire Jared Dudley
4:11pm: The deal is official, the Bucks announced. It’s Dudley and a 2017 first-rounder to the Bucks and Delfino, Raduljica and the Clippers’ own 2015 second-round pick, which Milwaukee acquired in a previous trade, going to the Clippers.
3:41pm: The 2017 first-round pick going from the Clippers to the Bucks will be lottery protected, a source indicates to Charles F. Gardner of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (Twitter link).
3:07pm: Delfino is only expected to miss part of the coming season, as Wojnarowski writes in his full story after deleting the tweet that indicated Delfino would likely miss the entire season.
2:33pm: The first-rounder headed Milwaukee’s way is a protected 2017 selection, according to Marc Stein of ESPN.com (on Twitter).
2:20pm: The Clippers will also receive their own 2015 second-round pick that Milwaukee had acquired through a previous trade, reports Sam Amick of USA Today (Twitter link).
1:59pm: The Clippers are sending Jared Dudley to the Bucks, tweets Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports. Carlos Delfino, Miroslav Raduljica head to L.A. while the Clippers also send Milwaukee a future first-round pick, Wojnarowski adds in a second tweet. Delfino, who missed all of last season because of injury, is likely to be out all of this year, too, according to Wojnarowski, making this trade purely about unloading Dudley’s salary from the Clippers’ perspective (Twitter link). Dudley is set to make $4.25MM this season and has an early termination option for the final season of his contract in 2015/16, which is also for $4.25MM.
Delfino originally hurt his right foot while with the Rockets in the 2013 playoffs, and while he signed a three-year, $9.75MM contract last summer with Milwaukee, he’ll never have taken the floor for the club while on that deal. The final season is non-guaranteed, so given L.A.’s apparent motivation to offload salary in the deal, it appears there’s a strong chance that Delfino will end up never having played at all under his contract.
Raduljica will make $1.5MM this season, but his salary for slightly more than that in 2015/16 is non-guaranteed, so the Clippers can cut ties with both he and Delfino next summer and pocket the savings. There was no guarantee that Dudley would have opted in, but the deal gives them greater cost control.
The move is a net gain in salary of $500K for the Clippers this year, moving them less than $1MM beneath their hard cap. The Clippers will end up with 13 players as a result of the transaction, so they won’t have to sign anyone else to meet the regular season roster minimum. The deal will leave the team with $649,228 to spend under the hard cap, according to the figures compiled by Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders, so that leaves only room for a prorated contract later in the season.
The Bucks had been carrying 15 guaranteed contracts plus two non-guaranteed deals, one of which is for Kendall Marshall, who’ll probably be part of the team’s rotation. So, the trade will allow the team to keep Marshall without having to unload a fully guaranteed contract.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
Pelicans Sign John Salmons
AUGUST 26TH: The deal is official, the team announced.
AUGUST 25TH: The contract Salmons initially signed with the Pelicans wasn’t approved by the league, so the veteran re-signed a new contract with New Orleans for the same amount last Friday, reports Pincus (on Twitter). The reason for the league’s disapproval is unknown, but Pincus hypothesizes there could have been an issue with the deferral structure.
AUGUST 12TH: Salmons has finally signed his deal, tweets Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders. The team has yet to make an official announcement. It’s indeed for $2MM, all of which will count against the cap for the Pelicans this year, even though $500K of the payout is deferred, as Pincus adds in a second tweet.
JULY 14TH: The Pelicans will ink a deal with swingman John Salmons, whom the Hawks waived last week after acquiring him from the Raptors, tweets Marc Stein of ESPN.com. New Orleans appears to be choosing a deal with him over Omri Casspi, whom the Pelicans are reportedly likely to release after the trade that brings him and Omer Asik to New Orleans is finalized. It’ll be a one-year, $2MM deal for Salmons, reports Chris Haynes of CSNNW.com (Twitter link). Presumably, it’ll come out of the team’s $2.732MM room exception.
The Joel Bell client split this past season between the Kings and Raptors, receiving a similar amount of playing time with both teams. He averaged 5.2 points in 22.1 minutes, but his 38.7% three-point shooting was a career high outside of his 41.7% mark in 2008/09.
The 34-year-old’s name was reportedly a part of predraft trade talks between the Raptors and Grizzlies, but Memphis apparently wasn’t too motivated to advance the discussion further. It seems like he’ll nonetheless stand a decent chance of starting at small forward for New Orleans, which renounced its rights to incumbent starter Al-Farouq Aminu and has little other means to acquire a replacement.
Clippers Meet With Ekpe Udoh
Free agent center Ekpe Udoh is visiting the Clippers today, USA Today’s Sam Amick reports (on Twitter). The timing is curious, since the team’s trade agreement with the Bucks leaves the Clippers without the ability to sign him, thanks to the hard cap the club triggered this summer, as Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders points out (Twitter links). L.A. could afford to sign Udoh during the season to a prorated deal, as I noted earlier, or it could create additional space with another trade, or by waiving a player and using the stretch provision.
Udoh was close to a deal with the Clippers earlier this summer before the team signed Glen Davis, as Amick reported last month, though Udoh wasn’t among a group of big men the team was apparently set to work out earlier this month. The Heat have also reportedly held interest.
The Bucks decided against tendering a qualifying offer this summer to Udoh, the former sixth overall pick whom they acquired in 2012 as part of the Andrew Bogut trade. Milwaukee also renounced its rights to him, and while that doesn’t preclude him from re-signing with the team, it signals that it’s highly unlikely, especially in light of a lack of reports connecting the Bucks to the Chris Luchey client.
Hoops Rumors 2014 Free Agent Tracker
This summer’s free agency has significantly changed the NBA landscape. LeBron James lifted the Cavs from lottery team to title contender, the move of Chandler Parsons to the Mavs made one Western Conference playoff team stronger while weaking another, and Lance Stephenson‘s jump to the Hornets was a major swing for the East. Our Free Agent Tracker will help you evaluate all the moves. Using the tracker, you can quickly sort through contract agreements and categorize by team, position, free agent type, and a handful of other variables.
A few notes on the tracker:
- Contract years and dollars are based on what’s been reported to date, so in some cases those amounts are approximations rather than official figures. Salaries aren’t necessarily fully guaranteed, either.
- Eric Bledsoe, Greg Monroe and Aron Baynes are the three remaining restricted free agents. If one of them signs an offer sheet, he’ll be listed under the team that extended the offer sheet, even though that team wouldn’t hold his rights unless the player’s original team declines to match within the three-day period to do so. If the original team matches, we’ll update the tracker to show that the player is back with his old club.
- The tracker doesn’t include signed draft picks, since those players weren’t free agents. We’re keeping on top of 2014 draft pick signings in this post. The tracker also doesn’t include “draft-and-stash” players who’ve signed this summer, but they’re listed here. A list of all the offseason trade acquisitions is right here.
Our 2014 Free Agent Tracker can be found anytime on the right sidebar under “Hoops Rumors Features,” and it’s also under the “Tools” menu atop the site. It will continue to be updated until the offseason is through, so be sure to check back for the latest info. If you have any corrections, please let us know right here.