Pistons Waive Josh Harrellson, Peyton Siva
The Pistons have waived Josh Harrellson and Peyton Siva, according to a trio of reports. There’s been no official statement from the team, but Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders, Mark Deeks of ShamSports and Vincent Goodwill of The Detroit News are all reporting that the team has released both of them (All Twitter links). Shams Charania of RealGM reported late Monday that the Pistons intended to waive Siva (Twitter link).
Both were on non-guaranteed minimum-salary contracts that were to become fully guaranteed if the Pistons didn’t waive them on or before July 20th. Siva’s guarantee date was listed as July 12, but multiple sources recently cited the date as July 20th, as I noted Monday. The team’s five contract agreements so far in free agency gave the team 16 players, so the releases of Siva and Harrellson help alleviate that numbers crunch, bringing the total down to 14. Detroit would be back up at 15 if it brought back restricted free agent Greg Monroe.
The Pistons also renounced their rights to Rodney Stuckey, Chauncey Billups and Charlie Villanueva, meaning they can’t exceed the salary cap to re-sign any of those players. That likely means none of them will be back with the team, Stuckey in particular.
Siva saw action in just 24 NBA games last season, averaging 9.3 minutes per contest, after the Pistons drafted him 56th overall in 2013. Harrellson, a three-year veteran, saw slightly more time, getting in 32 games and averaging 9.9 MPG.
Heat Sign Danny Granger
JULY 14th: The deal is now official, the team has announced. Of the signing, Heat president Pat Riley said, “One of our main priorities this offseason was obtaining a proven veteran like Danny with All-Star experience. We expect him to be a multi-position player and have a very successful season in our system.”
JULY 7th: The Heat and Danny Granger have struck a two-year, $4.2MM deal, reports Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports. It’ll be for the bi-annual exception and it’ll include a player option in year two.
It’s the second agreement Miami has reached today after securing a deal with Josh McRoberts for the non-taxpayer’s mid-level exception. Granger, the long-time Pacers star, comes to Miami after finishing last season with the Clippers, largely failing to regain his scoring prowess after missing almost all of 2012/13 with injury.
In 41 combined games for the Pacers and Clippers last season, Granger averaged 8.2 PPG and 3.6 RPG in 20.7 minutes per contest. His total PER amounted to 10.9 and that was boosted by a small uptick in his dozen games with the Clippers.
The Wizards, Suns, and Clippers have been among the teams that have reached out to Granger since the start of free agency. Obviously, the former All-Star has lost a step or three in recent years but the Heat will be delighted if the 31-year-old can at least gain some of that form back. Excluding these last two forgettable seasons, Granger averaged 18.2 PPG and 5.2 RPG.
Wojnarowski reports that Granger was willing to take less than market value for the chance to join up with LeBron James in Miami which would imply that he was offered more elsewhere.
Bulls Trade Anthony Randolph To Magic
5:30pm: The deal is now official, the Magic has announced. The Magic receive second rounders in 2015 and 2016, cash considerations, and Randolph, while the Bulls receive the draft rights to Rakovic.
4:29pm: The Magic would send the draft rights to Milovan Rakovic to Chicago and Orlando would also receive cash as part of the deal, reports Josh Robbins of The Orlando Sentinel (Twitter links).
3:38pm: The Bulls will trade Anthony Randolph and a pair of second-round picks to the Magic, who are expected to waive Randolph once they receive him, reports Sam Amick of USA Today (Twitter link). Chicago has been shopping Randolph, whom the team acquired in a draft-night trade from the Nuggets, in an effort to clear cap room. His salary, worth more than $1.825MM for the upcoming season, is fully guaranteed, so it appears it will remain on the books for the Magic, who’ll use their cap space to absorb Randolph, with the second-rounders as enticement for them to do so. It’s not immediately clear what Orlando will give up, but it’s unlikely to involve any guaranteed salary.
Chicago has to open up cap space one way or another to accommodate its agreements with Pau Gasol and Nikola Mirotic, as I explained this morning. Sending out Randolph will move the Bulls only incrementally toward that goal, one that’s unlikely to be reached unless Carlos Boozer leaves either by amnesty or salary-clearing trade. Still, it’s a maneuver that could allow the Bulls to use their Early Bird rights to re-sign Kirk Hinrich and preserve their room exception. Chicago also has an agreement in place to send Greg Smith and his guaranteed salary to the Mavs.
In 43 games with the Nuggets last season, Randolph averaged 4.8 PPG, 2.8 RPG, and 0.7 APG while playing 12.3 minutes per contest. His career averages are 7.1 PPG, 4.3 RPG, and 0.7 APG in six seasons.
Heat Sign Josh McRoberts
JULY 14th, 5:05pm: The Heat have made the announcement that the deal is now official. Of the signing, Pat Riley said (Twitter links), “We felt from day one that he was one of our main targets. We are delighted that this multi-faceted player will help us immensely in being the kind of team that Coach Spoelstra wants with his versatility.”
2:58pm: The deal that McRoberts received from the Heat was slightly better than the Hornets’ best offer, as Rick Bonnell of the Charlotte Observer hears (Twitter link). The Heat released a statement today acknowledging their agreement with the power forward.
JULY 7th, 2:03pm: Josh McRoberts has verbally committed to sign with the Heat, reports Marc Stein of ESPN.com (Twitter link). Miami appeared to be in a two-way battle with the Hornets earlier today. It’s a four-year deal worth the full value of the non-taxpayer’s mid-level exception, with a player option for the final season, Stein adds (on Twitter). That would make it worth $22,652,350, as I explained.
The use of the mid-level will make the Heat hard-capped for the 2014/15, meaning they can’t go more than $4MM above the tax level at any point. That hard cap is projected to be about $81MM.
Charlotte apparently made the same offer to retain the slick-passing power forward, but the Heat have seemingly won out. An increasing number of executives reportedly believed that the client of agent Mike Conley Sr. would indeed end up with a deal for the mid-level.
It’s the first agreement so far this month for the Heat and team president Pat Riley, who’ve been courting LeBron James, Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade in the hopes that the star trio will return. McRoberts isn’t the sort of significant free agent addition that Marcin Gortat, Kyle Lowry and Luol Deng, all of whom the Heat have reportedly had on their radar, would have been, but he is coming off a career year. He averaged 8.5 points and 4.8 rebounds in 30.3 minutes per game for the then-Bobcats, but he also notched one of the league’s best assist-to-turnover ratios, averaging 4.3 and 1.1 in those categories, respectively. The Blazers, Mavs, Cavs, Clippers, Knicks, Spurs, Suns and Lakers were all among his reported suitors.
Pistons Sign Jodie Meeks
JULY 14TH: The deal is official, the team announced via press release.
“Jodie’s approach to the game fits the style of basketball we want to play and his ability to shoot the ball from the outside is a skill that will help our team moving forward,” GM Jeff Bower said in the team’s statement.
JULY 1ST: 4:32pm: No options are involved as a part of the deal, tweets Dave McMenamin of ESPNLosAngeles.com.
3:53pm: The Pistons and Jodie Meeks have agreed on a three-year deal for more than $19MM, reports Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports (Twitter link). The two-guard leaves the Lakers to fill a need in Detroit, which was woeful from behind the three-point arc last season, and he’ll receive a tidy raise for doing so after making just $1.55MM this past season in L.A.
It appears that Pistons coach/executive Stan Van Gundy will use cap space on the maneuver, and the deal doesn’t bode well for the future of free agent guard Rodney Stuckey in Detroit. Meeks made a career-high 40.1% of his three-pointers this past season, though he’s only a 37.6% three-point shooter for his career. Still, that’s much better than Stuckey, who shot just 27.3% from behind the arc last season and carries a 28.6% mark in that category.
Meeks expressed desire to remain with the Lakers, and they were reportedly one of a number of teams making contact with him last night. The Pistons likely outbid others for the Andrew Vye client, who became the first free agent to agree to a deal in the 2014/15 season.
Daryl Morey On Lin, Parsons, Bosh
Rockets GM Daryl Morey gambled and lost with Chandler Parsons, electing not to match a near-maximum three-year offer sheet from the Mavs when he could have simply brought him back for $964,750 had he exercised Houston’s team option on the small forward. He also missed out on Carmelo Anthony and Chris Bosh last week, settling for a much less glamorous agreement with Trevor Ariza. Morey took to the radio airwaves Monday in Houston to try to explain just what went wrong, and he called the structure of the Parsons offer sheet “one of the most untradeable structures that I’ve ever seen,” as we passed along earlier. Adam Wexler of CSNHouston.com and the Houston Chronicle roundup more of Morey’s remarks on SportsTalk 790 and SportsRadio 610, and we’ll hit the highlights here:
On why the team completed the Jeremy Lin trade an opened cap room:
“We had the offer to Chris, while it looked extremely likely, our deal for Jeremy [Lin] was going to go away. We had to move before we had the 100% [from Bosh], because the Lakers were ready to move on with other things.”
On the decision against matching the deal for Parsons:
“It takes three, at least, three elite players with very little exception, throughout history, it takes three elite players and a good set of players that fit around them. Once Bosh said ‘no’ it put us into another very difficult decision of, is matching Chandler Parsons, do we have a better chance of winning a title by matching it or not matching it. That comes down to a very simple question, is [James] Harden, [Dwight] Howard, Parsons a three that can be a championship three? I actually think it can be. I think Chandler is a great player, getting better. Really, really good player, no doubt. But the question is actually: is Harden, Howard, Parsons, is that three a better championship odds than Harden, Howard and the team we can put together with a guaranteed lottery pick, trade exceptions, mid-level young team improving and continuing to be flexible? That was the very tough decision before us. But I can tell you this, in our opinion it was not close. We are in a better [place] to win a championship by not matching it, once Bosh goes away than by not matching it.”
On the opportunity the team lost and what it can still accomplish:
“We felt like we were on the, right there, on having potentially having the best team in the NBA if we got Bosh and matched Parsons. We feel great about where we’re at, as well. With the youngest playoff team last year and a team that is continuing to improve with Patrick Beverley and a young core behind it and a lot of ways to continue to improve this season … We were right at the precipice of, what I would argue maybe is the best team in the NBA.”
On his expectations for the year ahead:
“We feel we were almost there with the Bosh-Parsons moves. When that didn’t happen we felt like the best thing to do was step back. We’ve now got a pick, a guaranteed lottery pick basically that is now is exactly structured like the pick that got us James Harden last time. We now have trade exceptions, we now have cap room and we also have pretty good team that’s a top four seed team in the west even with the decision not to match Chandler.”
Top 2015 Draft Prospect To Play Overseas
1:37pm: Brown has confirmed Mudiay’s decision, Goodman tweets.
1:32pm: Highly touted 2015 NBA draft prospect Emmanuel Mudiay will play professionally overseas next year rather than attend Southern Methodist University for his freshman year as planned, a source tells Jeff Goodman of ESPN.com (Twitter link). SMU coach Larry Brown has been telling people around basketball that he expects the 6’5″ point guard to leave the school, tweets Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports. Mudiay is No. 2 in Chad Ford’s ESPN.com, while Jonathan Givony of DraftExpress had him going No. 3 in his 2015 mock draft.
A source confirmed Mudiay’s plans to Adam Zagoria of SNY.tv, citing family concerns for Mudiay’s reasoning. Mudiay’s camp is concerned about an ongoing NCAA investigation at SMU, according to Goodman (Twitter links), who refutes Wojnarowski’s report that the issue stems from fear that Mudiay wouldn’t be academically eligible. The source who spoke with Zagoria also said the matter wasn’t about academics.
In any case, heading overseas would cast some degree of mystery over Mudiay’s NBA prospects. The jump from high school to professional ball overseas isn’t unprecedented for a player with a bright NBA future, and perhaps the most notorious case is that of Brandon Jennings, who played in Italy for a year rather than attend college. He was the top U.S. prospect coming out of high school in 2008, according to the Recruiting Services Consensus Index, but he wound up going 10th overall in the 2009 draft. Still, Dante Exum was the No. 5 overall pick in this year’s draft based on little more than an Australian high school career, so Mudiay’s stock won’t necessarily fall far, or at all.
Pelicans Likely To Waive Omri Casspi
The Pelicans will likely waive Omri Casspi once their trade agreement to acquire the forward from the Rockets is complete, reports Marc Stein of ESPN.com, who indicates that the swap is expected to become official on Tuesday (Twitter link). The camp for the Dan Fegan client would love to see him wind up with the Knicks, tweets David Pick of Eurobasket.com.
Casspi’s minimum salary is non-guaranteed, and it wouldn’t become fully guaranteed unless the Pelicans waited until after the August 5th to waive him, and that doesn’t appear to be an option they’re considering. It’s somewhat surprising that the Pelicans are eager to let Casspi go, since he revived a flagging career last year in Houston, averaging 6.9 points in 18.1 minutes per game. He posted a PER of just 12.9, but he was a part of the rotation for a Houston team that won 54 games. He’ll likely merit consideration for at least a fully guaranteed minimum-salary deal.
The Pelicans have been involved in a series of moves in the past few days, acquiring Alonzo Gee from the Pelicans and moving him to Houston in the trade agreement that will net the team Casspi and Omer Asik. They’re also shipping Melvin Ely to the Wizards as part of the Asik trade.
Western Notes: Blazers, Parsons, Cunningham
Agent Mark Bartelstein told Chris Haynes of CSNNW.com last week that there remained a chance that Mo Williams would re-sign with the Blazers, but the door is largely closed to that possibility, leaving a disappointed Damian Lillard, as Haynes writes.
“He’s someone who I can say will be a friend forever,” Lillard said. “We got that close in a year. He’s was the one guy I wanted back the most but that’s not in my power and I understand that. We still talk and plan to link up down the road but it’s tough to know he’s not coming back.”
Still, Lillard added that he likes Portland’s additions of Chris Kaman and Steve Blake. Here’s more from around the West:
- Rockets GM Daryl Morey called the structure of the offer sheet Chandler Parsons signed with the Mavs “one of the most untradeable structures that I’ve ever seen” in an appearance on SportsTalk 790 AM in Houston, as Tim MacMahon of ESPNDallas.com transcribes.
- The Rockets have reached out to Dante Cunningham, who’s still a long shot to re-sign with the Wolves, reports Darren Wolfson of 1500 ESPN Twin Cities (Twitter link).
- The Warriors remain in touch with Jermaine O’Neal as he ponders retirement, observes Diamond Leung of the Bay Area News Group.
- Anthony Morrow is set to join the Thunder and Brian Roberts has a deal with the Hornets, and the Pelicans went ahead Sunday and renounced their rights to both, as the RealGM transactions log shows.
The Bulls And The Salary Cap
The Bulls didn’t end up with Carmelo Anthony, but they still wound up making moves that seemingly foretell the end of Carlos Boozer‘s tenure in Chicago. Boozer remains on the roster for now, and it would seem like the Bulls, who prefer to trade him rather than use the amnesty clause to remove his $16.8MM cap hit, will continue to pursue opportunities to make a swap between now and Wednesday, the final day that teams are allowed to use the amnesty clause this year. Still, unless they’re able to trade him or make other drastic moves between now and the end of Wednesday, the Bulls won’t be able to finalize the free agent deals they reportedly have in place unless they go the amnesty route.
Chicago hasn’t officially announced any of its deals since the July moratorium ended, so the team still has $66,277,115 of guaranteed salary on its books, leaving it above the $63.065MM salary cap. That doesn’t count first-round draft pick Doug McDermott, who has a cap hold of $1,898,300 and will almost certainly sign for a salary of $2,277,960. The most powerful weapon the Bulls have as a capped-out team is the non-taxpayer’s mid-level exception, which calls for a starting salary of $5.305MM.
The Bulls have an agreement with Pau Gasol on a three-year deal for more than $22MM, and presuming that figure is accurate, his starting salary wouldn’t fit into the mid-level. The Bulls were apparently pursuing a sign-and-trade for Gasol, but the Lakers renounced his rights to accommodate their trade for Jeremy Lin, which became official Sunday. That doesn’t necessarily preclude the Lakers from signing-and-trading Gasol, but it would make it more difficult, and that’s apparently a route the Bulls and Lakers are no longer pursuing, anyway.
Nikola Mirotic has a deal with the Bulls for three years and more than $17MM, and that figure, too, would require a starting salary of more than the mid-level could provide. Chicago’s other free agent deal so far, a two-year, $5.6MM agreement with Kirk Hinrich, could be completed using Hinrich’s Early Bird rights. Instead, it’ll reportedly be for the room exception, a tool only available to under-the-cap teams. It’s not set in stone that the Bulls will use the room exception on Hinrich, but the report from TNT’s David Aldridge that they intend to do so sheds light on Chicago’s plans.
We don’t know exactly how much Gasol and Mirotic will make next season, but assuming the numbers that have been reported are correct, they’ll likely wind up with at least a combined $12MM for next season. That means the Bulls would have to remove about $17.1MM worth of salary, plus all of their non-guaranteed contracts and all of their cap holds except McDermott’s, to accommodate those deals. That $17.1MM figure is almost identical to Boozer’s salary, so it would be make the math rather simple if Chicago waived Boozer via the amnesty clause. Hinrich’s cap hold, and thus Chicago’s Early Bird rights with it, would be erased in this scenario, but the Bulls could still re-sign him using the room exception, which they evidently plan to do.
Still, Chicago appears to be at work on other fronts, including a trade that will send Greg Smith and his guaranteed salary, worth slightly more than $948K, to the Mavs for little in return. That would make up the difference between Boozer’s salary and our $17.1MM estimate for the amount of salary the Bulls have to clear for Gasol and Mirotic. The Bulls are also apparently continuing to shop Anthony Randolph, according to K.C. Johnson of the Chicago Tribune (Twitter link). Randolph, whom the Bulls acquired when they traded up to nab McDermott on draft night, has a guaranteed salary of more than $1.825MM. The salaries for Randolph and Smith come to about $2.773MM, and if the Bulls could find a way to dump Tony Snell and Mike Dunleavy without taking back any salary, either, they could knock off about $7.527MM. That still wouldn’t take them far enough under the cap to allow them to officially sign Gasol and Mirotic and avoid giving up Boozer one way or another without touching the core of Derrick Rose, Joakim Noah, Taj Gibson, and Jimmy Butler.
So, it’s a safe bet we’ll be passing along the news that Boozer is no longer a Bull sometime between now and the end of Wednesday. Chicago will surely continue to attempt to trade his salary in a deal that doesn’t bring nearly as much salary back, but with Wednesday’s amnesty deadline looming, the Bulls must negotiate against a clock as well as against other teams.