Cavs, Raptors Eye Will Cherry
Will Cherry‘s strong summer league showing for the Cavs this month has Cleveland strongly considering a more substantial arrangement with the free agent guard, and the Raptors also have serious interest in him, reports Marc J. Spears of Yahoo! Sports (Twitter link). It appears as though the teams are envisioning him as a training camp invitee, though it’s conceivable he could wind up with at least a partial guarantee, given the competition for his services.
The 6’1″ 23-year-old averaged 12.8 points and 4.0 rebounds in 25.3 minutes per game in five appearances for the summer Cavs in Las Vegas. Cleveland is also familiar with Cherry from his work for its D-League affiliate last season, when he notched 11.6 PPG and 3.7 RPG in 30.4 MPG. He also dished out 4.5 assists per contests in his time with the Cavs affiliate.
Cherry went undrafted out of Montana in 2013, and he wasn’t in an NBA camp last fall. The Raptors have 13 guaranteed contracts and the Cavs have only 12, but Cleveland’s roster is in flux as a potential Kevin Love trade looms, leaving it uncertain whether Cherry would have a better shot in Cleveland or Toronto.
Grizzlies Sign Patrick Christopher For Camp
SEPTEMBER 25TH: The deal is official, the team announced.
JULY 25TH: Free agent shooting guard Patrick Christopher has agreed to a non-guaranteed deal with the Grizzlies, reports Marc Stein of ESPN.com (Twitter link). It appears it’ll be a summer contract that will allow the former University of California standout to go to training camp in October with a chance of making the opening night roster.
Christopher had a similar arrangement with the Bulls last year, but he was one of the team’s first cuts, in early October, and he didn’t appear in a preseason game. He wound up joining the D-League’s Iowa Energy, averaging 13.6 points in 33.4 minutes per contest and swishing 44.6% of his three-point attempts.
The 26-year-old will join a fairly crowded roster in Memphis, which has 14 players on guaranteed contracts. That doesn’t include Jarnell Stokes, this year’s 35th overall pick, who remains unsigned. Memphis can carry up to 20 players into camp, but it appears there’s just one spot up for grabs on the team’s regular season roster, which can have no more than 15 players.
Teams Limited To Paying The Minimum Salary
Money dries up quickly in NBA free agency. Teams come to dozens of agreements within in the first two weeks of July, leaving little remaining cash for stragglers. That’s often why top restricted free agents remain on the table until late in the process, as teams hesitate to tie up cap room on an offer sheet that could end up being matched. Mid-tier veteran unrestricted free agents also feel the squeeze, as patience is often rewarded only with a shrinking pool of options.
Eleven of the NBA’s 30 teams are already limited to offering no more than the minimum salary to free agents from other teams. They’ve used up all of their available cap room and exceptions, aside from the minimum-salary exception. Teams below the tax apron can take sign-and-trades, as the Wizards did with Kris Humphries and DeJuan Blair, and some clubs, like the Cavs, can waive non-guaranteed salary to open up more cap space. Still, these 11 teams can’t sign players for more than the minimum, at least without a corresponding move, and in most cases, such a move would require the cooperation of another team:
Updated 3/25/15
- Nets: Tax team. Used taxpayer’s mid-level exception on Bojan Bogdanovic.
- Bulls: Cap room exhausted. Used room exception on Kirk Hinrich.
- Cavs: Cap room exhausted. Used room exception on Mike Miller. Used disabled player exception on Iman Shumpert.
- Clippers: Over the cap. Used non-taxpayer’s mid-level exception on Spencer Hawes and biannual exception on Jordan Farmar.
- Heat: Cap room exhausted. Used room exception on Udonis Haslem. Disabled player exception expired.
- Kings: Over the cap. Used non-taxpayer’s mid-level exception on Darren Collison and Eric Moreland. Used biannual exception on Ramon Sessions.
- Knicks: Tax team. Used taxpayer’s mid-level exception on Jason Smith.
- Lakers: Cap room exhausted. Used room exception on Ryan Kelly and Xavier Henry. Disabled player exceptions expired.
- Mavericks: Cap room exhausted. Used room exception on Jameer Nelson.
- Nets: Tax team. Used taxpayer’s mid-level exception on Bojan Bogdanovic.
- Pacers: Over the cap. Used non-taxpayer’s mid-level exception on C.J. Miles and Damjan Rudez. Biannual exception unavailable this year (used on C.J. Watson in 2013).
- Rockets: Over the cap. Used non-taxpayer’s mid-level exception on Kostas Papanikolaou and Nick Johnson. Used biannual exception on Josh Smith.
- Warriors: Over the cap. Used non-taxpayer’s mid-level exception on Shaun Livingston. Biannual exception unavailable this year (used on Jermaine O’Neal in 2013).
- Wizards: Over the cap. Used non-taxpayer’s mid-level exception on Paul Pierce. Biannual exception unavailable this year (used on Eric Maynor in 2013).
Basketball Insiders and ShamSports were used in the creation of this post.
Buycks Spurns NBA Offers To Play In Spain
Former Raptors point guard Dwight Buycks has signed with Valencia of Spain, the Spanish ACB league’s website announced (translation via Sportando’s Emiliano Carchia). It’s a one-year deal, as Euroleague.net reveals. The Lakers and Clippers extended non-guaranteed invitations to Buycks for preseason camp, according to David Pick of Eurobasket.com (Twitter link), and he was close to signing with the Nuggets before they instead came to terms with Erick Green, as Pick tells Hoops Rumors. The Suns were also reportedly interested in him.
The Relativity Sports client drew offers from multiple teams overseas, but Valencia bid highest among those clubs, Pick reports (All Twitter links). It’s likely he’s receiving guaranteed salary to play in Spain, which would explain why he’s passing up a shot at continuing his NBA career. Toronto waived him this past weekend rather than guarantee his NBA minimum salary for the coming season.
Buycks saw action in just 14 games this past season, his first official NBA experience. He averaged 3.1 points and 0.7 assists in 10.4 minutes per contest for Toronto.
Sixers Sign Pierre Jackson
6:28pm: Jackson has announced his signing on his personal Instagram account (H/T Dwain Price of Fort Worth Star-Telegram via Twitter).
4:50pm: Jackson’s rookie minimum salary of $507,336 is guaranteed for $400K, Deeks tweets.
3:23pm: The Sixers have signed point guard Pierre Jackson to a partially guaranteed one-year deal, reports Mark Deeks of ShamSports (All Twitter links). It completes an unusual odyssey to an NBA contract for last year’s 42nd overall pick, who put on a dazzling performance in the D-League but failed to come to terms with the Pelicans, the team that held his NBA rights until trading them to Philadelphia last month.
Jackson, 22, averaged 29.1 points, 6.2 assists and 4.0 turnovers in 41.5 minutes per game for the D-League’s Idaho Stampede last season after he went unsigned through last summer. The numbers helped drive up his value, and once it became clear the Pelicans and agent Colin Bryant couldn’t agree on an NBA deal, New Orleans allowed Bryant to reach out to other teams to see if they’d be interested in trading for Jackson’s NBA rights. The Wizards, Cavs and Nuggets were among those who were reportedly in the mix, but Jackson fled to Turkey after no deal materialized, signing with European powerhouse Fenerbahce Ulker.
The overseas experiment didn’t go so well, as the 5’10” Jackson averaged just 4.3 points in 10.3 minutes for Fenerbahce. Jackson joined the Sixers for summer league after the trade, but he ruptured his achilles tendon, an injury that threatens to knock him out for the entire season. It’s therefore somewhat odd that the Sixers would sign him to a one-year deal. It’s conceivable that Jackson merely signed the required one-year tender that Philadelphia had to make to keep his draft rights, but the fact that the deal is partially guaranteed makes that a remote possibility, as Deeks notes.
Western Notes: Huestis, Kings, Hamilton, Hill
The idea of having Josh Huestis sign in the D-League in exchange for becoming an NBA first-round draft pick came from his representatives rather than the Thunder, agent Mitchell Butler tells SB Nation’s Mike Prada.
“This was the perfect team and the perfect storm,” Butler said. “This isn’t for everyone.”
Butler also told Prada that the Thunder haven’t said whether they plan to sign Huestis to an NBA deal next summer or at a later point. There’s more on Huestis among the latest from the Western Conference, as we detail:
- The union sees the Thunder‘s arrangement with Huestis as a positive, as interim executive director Ron Klempner said to Grantland’s Zach Lowe. “This is an example of the player flipping the script,” Klempner said. “The player essentially drafted his team.”
- Kings GM Pete D’Alessandro said he’s on the lookout for rim-protection and particularly shooting to round out the roster in an attempt to make the playoffs this season, as he told Jared Zwerling of Bleacher Report.
- Richard Hamilton tells David Alarcon of HoopsHype that he’s fielded a couple of calls from NBA teams and that while he considered retirement, he’d like to return to the NBA with a contending team. The 36-year-old, who last played in 2012/13, said that the Timberwolves showed interest in signing him early last season, but he declined to specify any teams that have spoken with him more recently.
- Jordan Hill‘s two-year deal with the Lakers contains a team option for the final season, according to Mark Deeks of ShamSports.
Rockets, Francisco Garcia Have Mutual Interest
Francisco Garcia “definitely” has interest in playing in Houston again and agent Aaron Goodwin has spoken with the Rockets about his client, as Goodwin tells Jonathan Feigen of the Houston Chronicle. The Rockets are one of a handful of teams reported to have shown interest in the swingman this month, and Goodwin said that he and Garcia continue to sort through their options.
The 32-year-old Garcia turned down a minimum salary option to remain under contract with the Rockets for this coming season, and Houston has multiple ways to give him more money than he passed up. The Rockets still possess their $5.305MM mid-level and $2.077MM biannual exceptions, and they can also give Garcia up to 20% more than the minimum salary through his Non-Bird rights.
The Jazz, Pelicans and Nets were the other teams apparently interested in Garcia as of two weeks ago, though Goodwin told Feigen that Garcia would prefer to sign with a title contender. Brooklyn has the strongest chances of at least a deep playoff run among those three, though the Nets would be limited to giving Garcia no more than the minimum salary.
Suns Waive Dionte Christmas
The Suns have waived guard Dionte Christmas, the team announced (on Twitter). His non-guaranteed minimum salary was to have become fully guaranteed if Phoenix hadn’t waived him by the end of the month.
Christmas was a favorite of Suns GM Ryan McDonough, who’d worked with the 27-year-old when they were together with the Celtics. Phoenix signed to a deal that included a partial guarantee for last season even though the team had an abundance of other guaranteed deals, and the unbalanced Marcin Gortat trade helped create an opportunity for him to stick around for the regular season.
The former Temple Owl saw limited playing time this past season, the first in which he saw any regular season NBA action. He averaged 2.3 points in 6.4 minutes per game across 31 appearances.
Cavs Sign Andrew Wiggins
The Cavaliers have signed No. 1 overall pick Andrew Wiggins, the team announced. The move triggers a 30-day period in which Cleveland can’t officially complete a trade involving him. The Timberwolves have demanded Wiggins be a part of any package involving Kevin Love, and while there are conflicting reports, many of them indicate Cleveland is willing to include him.
It’s a virtual certainty that Wiggins will receive a salary of slightly more than $5.5MM this season, as our table of salaries for 2014 first-round picks shows. That amount would help salaries match in a trade should the Cavs decide to pull one off after the 30 days are up. Still, the Cavs could have traded his rights immediately had they held off on signing him, using other players to help balance the salaries.
The 6’8″ swingman entered his freshman season at Kansas last year as far and away the top prospect for the 2014 NBA draft, but an underwhelming performance allowed others, including teammate Joel Embiid, to contend for the top spot. Embiid seemed the odds-on favorite until he broke his foot, and Wiggins prevailed over Jabari Parker of Duke, to whom the Cavs also reportedly gave strong consideration.
Wiggins averaged 17.1 points and 5.9 rebounds along with 34.1% three-point shooting in 32.8 minutes per game for Kansas this past season, earning consensus All-American honors. The 19-year-old chose agent Bill Duffy of BDA Sports as his representative.
Teams With Hard Caps For 2014/15
The NBA’s salary cap is really a misnomer of sorts, since it doesn’t truly cap salaries. Look no further than last year’s Nets for confirmation of that. They doled out nearly $103MM in salaries, incurring more than $90.57MM in luxury taxes and smashing the record for the greatest expenditure on a single roster in NBA history.
The NBA’s salary cap is commonly referred to as a “soft cap,” but there are still ways that teams can impose a “hard cap” upon themselves and set a finite limit to their spending. If a team’s salary exceeds the luxury tax threshold ($76,829,000) by more than $4MM, that team is not permitted to acquire a player via sign-and-trade, or to use the non-taxpayer’s mid-level or biannual exceptions. The only exceptions available to such a team are the taxpayer’s mid-level of $3,278,000, the minimum-salary exception, and whatever form of Bird rights they have on their own free agents. As soon as a team completes a sign-and-trade deal, uses its BAE, or uses more than $3,278,000 of its MLE to sign a player, that club becomes hard-capped at $80,829,000 for the 2014/15 season. In other words, team salary can’t exceed that amount at any point between now and June 30th, 2015.
For some clubs, that hard cap isn’t a major concern. For instance, the Suns still have about $18MM in breathing room below the hard cap, so they have plenty of flexibility to re-sign restricted free agent Eric Bledsoe to a max contract if need be. On the other hand, the Clippers are only about $1MM below the hard cap, so any trades or signings they make for the rest of the season will have to be constructed to ensure their team salary doesn’t surpass that $80.829MM cutoff.
More clubs may trigger hard caps as the offseason wears on, but here are the teams that are now locked into a hard cap for the 2014/15 season, along with an estimation (via Basketball Insiders) of their current team salaries and the reason(s) why the hard cap was created:
Hawks
Hard cap created: Acquired Thabo Sefolosha via sign-and-trade
Estimated team salary: $60,975,564
Rockets
Hard cap created: Acquired Trevor Ariza via sign-and-trade
Estimated team salary: $68,125,942
Wizards
Hard cap created: Acquired Kris Humphries via sign-and-trade; acquired DeJuan Blair via sign-and-trade; signed Paul Pierce via non-taxpayer MLE
Estimated team salary: $76,646,603
Suns
Hard cap created: Acquired Isaiah Thomas via sign-and-trade
Estimated team salary: $51,805,537
Warriors
Hard cap created: Signed Shaun Livingston via non-taxpayer MLE
Estimated team salary: $72,232,245
Pacers
Hard cap created: Signed C.J. Miles and Damjan Rudez via non-taxpayer MLE
Estimated team salary: $74,798,942
Clippers
Hard cap created: Signed Spencer Hawes via non-taxpayer MLE; signed Jordan Farmar via biannual exception
Estimated team salary: $79,679,772
Grizzlies
Hard cap created: Signed Vince Carter via non-taxpayer MLE; signed Beno Udrih via biannual exception
Estimated team salary: $75,529,943
Trail Blazers
Hard cap created: Signed Chris Kaman via non-taxpayer MLE; signed Steve Blake via biannual exception
Estimated team salary: $69,322,824
Kings
Hard cap created: Signed Darren Collison via non-taxpayer MLE
Estimated team salary: $75,852,705