DeMarre Carroll Signs With Hawks
AUGUST 3RD: The Hawks confirmed the move via press release.
JULY 5TH: DeMarre Carroll will sign with the Hawks, agent Mark Bartelstein tells Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports, who adds that it’s a two-year, $5MM deal for the second Utah forward to leave for Atlanta tonight (Twitter links). Paul Millsap is also headed to the Hawks.
Carroll figures to add depth to an Atlanta front line that includes Millsap and Al Horford. He averaged career highs in points (6.0) and rebounds (2.8) for the Jazz this past season. This will be the fourth contract already for the 27th pick in the 2009 draft who was waived by both the Rockets and the Nuggets before he signed a minimum-salary deal with Utah.
Bartelstein had frequent conversations with the Jazz about a return to Utah for Carroll, but today’s trade with Golden State that brought aboard Richard Jefferson, among others, helped push Carroll out the door, according to Bill Oram of The Salt Lake Tribune (Twitter links).
Odds & Ends: Pekovic, Adelman, Johnson, Sixers
Timberwolves president of basketball ops Flip Saunders remains optimistic that the club will soon re-sign Nikola Pekovic, and tells Sid Hartman of the Star Tribune that he's trying to explain the thought process behind the team's offer to the big man and his camp. Saunders stopped short of confirming that coach Rick Adelman will be back for this coming season, but echoed owner Glen Taylor's comments from last month, saying that he's optimstic that Adelman will return. There's more from Minnesota and other NBA locales in tonight's roundup:
- The Wolves reached out to Ivan Johnson's camp earlier this summer, but the team has since moved on, reports Darren Wolfson of 1500 ESPN Twin Cities (Twitter link).
- The Sixers received permission last month to interview Bulls assistant coach Ed Pinckney, and the interview has indeed taken place, observes Keith Pompey of the Philadelphia Inquirer, who names David Vanterpool, Michael Curry, and Jay Larranaga as the other "serious candidates" behind front-runner Brett Brown.
- A multitude of conflicting recent reports left it unclear whether 53rd overall pick Colton Iverson would play overseas or join the Celtics this season, but a source tells Jay King of MassLive.com that Iverson has signed his one-year deal with Besiktas of Turkey.
- DeMarre Carroll indicated on Twitter tonight that he's inked his deal with the Hawks. The team is expected to make a formal announcement Saturday, according to Chris Vivlamore of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
- LeBron James has "serious reservations" about whether he can take on the presidency of the union, writes Ken Berger of CBSSports.com, who nonetheless supports the MVP's candidacy, even as sources describe James as unlikely to take the job.
- The Magic didn't strike a buyout agreement before they waived Al Harrington today, Josh Robbins of the Orlando Sentinel confirms. That means the team is stuck paying the guaranteed portion of his contract, minus whatever it can recoup via set-off rights.
- Pac 12 commissioner Larry Scott wants to see the end of the "one-and-done" rule for NBA draft eligibility, and Matt Norlander of CBSSports.com wonders if incoming NBA commissioner Adam Silver will make a push for change on that front.
Fallout From Greg Oden’s Choice To Sign With Heat
Greg Oden let former college teammate Mark Titus of Grantland know about his decision to sign with the Heat ahead of the news breaking this evening, and heard from the one-time can't miss prospect about why Miami won him over.
"Obviously the chance to play with the best player in the world and compete for a championship was a big selling point," Oden said. "But more than that, what I really liked was how they thought I could really add something to their team. They’ve won back-to-back championships without me, so for them to pursue me as hard as they did meant a lot, especially given all that I’ve gone through."
Here's more on the Heat's second major victory of the summer:
- Other teams offered more money, but a conversation Oden had with Heat coach Erik Spoelstra last week at a Chili's in Indianapolis played a key role in the decision, agent Mike Conley Sr. says to Chris Tomasson of Fox Sports Florida.
- Sources tell Sam Amico of Fox Sports Ohio that the Heat were willing to make promises to Oden that other teams wouldn't. Some of Oden's other suitors wanted a team option in year two rather than the player option the Heat gave him, Amico says (Twitter links).
- Oden tells Marc Stein and Jeff Goodman of ESPN.com that the Heat's willingness to bring him along slowly this season was a “big deciding factor” for him. Oden's not sure he'll be ready for opening night, and just wants "to finish the season healthy."
- The Heat expect Oden to take part in training camp, but they aren't putting any pressure on him to play in the regular-season opener, writes Ira Winderman of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, who wonders if Oden's arrival signals that the team will look to trade Joel Anthony.
- Heat team president Pat Riley and company passed on signing Marcus Camby while they were waiting on Oden's decision, Winderman also reports.
- Oden isn't expected to play back-to-backs early in the season, a source tells Chris Haynes of CSNNW.com.
- The Heat will pay an approximately $2.6MM tax bill on Oden's contract, pushing their total projected tax payment to $18.8MM, tweets Brian Windhorst of ESPN.com. With no further roster moves, the team's payroll, tax included, will be $101,539,013, according to Windhorst's math.
- The Cavs showed early interest in Oden, but the Andrew Bynum signing took them out of the running, tweets Mary Schmitt Boyer of the Plain Dealer.
Antawn Jamison To Meet With Clippers
Free agent Antawn Jamison will have dinner Saturday night with Doc Rivers, who doubles as Clippers coach and head of the team's basketball ops, tweets Marc J. Spears of Yahoo! Sports. The Clippers are one of four teams reportedly interested in the 37-year-old. The Bobcats, Grizzlies and Bulls are the others.
The Clippers can only offer the minimum salary, and adding Jamison would put the club over the tax line, even if it waives the non-guaranteed contract of Maalik Wayns. Still, the Clips have been linked to Jamison on numerous occasions this summer, with one report indicating that the team would sign either Jamison or Lamar Odom.
Jamison would be a curious fit for the Clippers, since it would leave the team without a true center to back up DeAndre Jordan. Byron Mullens is a 7-footer, but he, like Jamison, relies on an outside game. The 6'8" Jamison shifted between small forward and power forward this past season for the Lakers, averaging 9.4 points in 21.5 minutes per game, both career lows.
Cavs Sign Carrick Felix To Four-Year Deal
The Cavs have signed second-round pick Carrick Felix to a four-year contract, and the first three seasons are fully guaranteed, HoopsWorld's Eric Pincus tweets. RealGM.com first reported the signing on their transactions log.
The deal is for $510K in year one, according to Pincus, and that's slightly more than the $490,180 minimum salary for a rookie. The other three seasons are for the minimum. Previous signings and agreements the Cavs have made this summer appear to have put them over the cap, but perhaps the reported figures are off. Cleveland has its room exception available, but teams can't use it to sign players to contracts of more than two years in length.
Felix, who was the 33rd overall pick in June, and Ricky Ledo of the Mavs are the only two second-round picks to receive four-year contracts this summer. The Arizona State shooting guard is the second of Cleveland's three selections this season to sign. No. 19 pick Sergey Karasev inked his deal last month, but top pick Anthony Bennett remains unsigned.
Southeast Notes: Magic, Wizards, Heat, Hawks
The Hawks acquired five players in the Joe Johnson trade last summer, and with their release of DeShawn Stevenson today, none of the five remain on the team's roster, as Chris Vivlamore of the Atlanta Journal Constitution points out via Twitter. GM Danny Ferry has radically reshaped the club in little more than a year, and the Stevenson move wasn't Atlanta's only transaction of the day, as we detail amid other news from the Southeast Division:
- Magic owner Rich DeVos is 87 years old, but he has no plans to sell the club, as Josh Robbins of the Orlando Sentinel writes in an early Eastern Conference preview. Instead, he has given his four children shares of the Magic with the intent that the family will continue to own the team for decades to come.
- The Magic would like to pursue a one-to-one affiliation with a D-League team that would be stationed in Florida, but obstacles are in the way, Robbins reports in the same piece. Orlando will be one of six teams sharing the Fort Wayne Mad Ants this season. Ideally, the Magic want to have a "hybrid" partnership, wherein they'd run the D-League team's basketball operations while local ownership took care of the business side.
- The Wizards seem likely to push for one of the final three playoff spots in the East, and owner Ted Leonsis believes a postseason berth would be a significant help to the team's hopes of signing a marquee free agent, observes Michael Lee of The Washington Post.
- Ira Winderman of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel believes that with so many teams with an eye on the lottery, buyouts could come earlier than usual this season. Winderman figures the Heat will be active in the market for bought-out players.
- Hawks coach Mike Budenholzer completed his staff Friday, hiring Jim Thomas as an assistant, the team announced. Thomas had been serving as a scout for the Thunder.
Signees With The Most Non-Guaranteed Money
Most of the money teams are handing out to free agents this summer is guaranteed, as usual, but that still leaves several players who'll have to prove they're worth the full value of their deals before they can collect on them. Most non-guaranteed contracts are for the minimum salary or slightly more, but a few leverage quite a lot of cash on a player's performance. None of this year's signees have as much on the line as Andrew Bynum, as the Cavaliers can dodge more than 75% of his nearly $25MM contract.
The majority of the money on Keith Bogans' deal is non-guaranteed, too, but even though there aren't nearly the health questions about him as there are of Bynum, the veteran shooting guard seems much less likely to collect on his entire contract. The Nets shipped him to the Celtics in a sign-and-trade that allowed the salaries to match up for the Kevin Garnett/Paul Pierce blockbuster. Sign-and-trade contracts must be for three years, but there's no stipulation that any season other than the first be guaranteed. So, Bogans' contract is non-guaranteed in years two and three.
Seven veterans have agreed to deals that include at least $3MM in non-guaranteed money. Marreese Speights is one of them, even though his non-guaranteed money is in the form of a team option for 2015/16. Several first-round picks have $3MM+ in team options on their rookie-scale deals, but since that's standard practice, we'll leave them off this list:
- Andrew Bynum, Cavaliers: $18,790,000 of his $24,790,000
- Keith Bogans, Celtics: $10,799,252 of his $15,857,450
- Martell Webster, Wizards: $5,845,250 of his $21,990,500
- Jarrett Jack, Cavaliers: $5,800,000 of his $25,200,000
- Earl Clark, Cavaliers: $4,250,000 of his $8,500,000
- Marreese Speights, Grizzlies: $3,815,000 of his $10,972,500 (in the form of a team option for 2015/16)
- Carlos Delfino, Bucks: $3,250,000 of his $9,750,000
Just barely missing the cutoff is Quentin Richardson, for whom $2,987,948 of his three-year minimum salary deal is non-guaranteed. Richardson was signed-and-traded as part of the Andrea Bargnani swap, and, as with Bogans, the second and third years of his deal are non-guaranteed. Those seasons become fully guaranteed if he's not waived on or before this coming New Year's Day, so the Raptors seem like a safe bet to release him by that date.
ShamSports was used in the creation of this post.
Odds & Ends: Oden, Thunder, Clippers
The Heat, Spurs and Mavs are the most likely to land Greg Oden when he makes his decision Friday, sources tell Jeff Goodman and Marc Stein of ESPN.com. Goodman and Stein are hearing conflicting information on whether the Pelicans, Kings and Hawks remain in the running, but it appears New Orleans has the best chance out of those three. The Cavs, Celtics and Grizzlies have also expressed interest, but they declined to make formal offers, the report also says. Here's more on Oden and others around the Association:
- Whichever team signs Oden once he makes his decision tomorrow won't be committing more than a few million dollars, leading HoopsWorld's Alex Kennedy to argue that he's worth the risk. Taking such risks is what shrewd GM's do, SB Nation's Tom Ziller opines.
- The league is reimbursing the Thunder $8MM, or roughly half of the difference between the money the team is shelling out for Kevin Durant and the smaller amount the Thunder agreed to pay when he signed his extension, Grantland's Zach Lowe tweets.
- The ESPN.com staff is high on the Clippers, as Chad Ford gives them the only A+ among his Western Conference offseason grades (Insiders only), while the 5-on-5 crew lauds the team's acquisitions of coach Doc Rivers and sharpshooter Jared Dudley.
- HoopsWorld's Nate Duncan profiles six players whom teams may have undervalued this summer.
Wizards Owner Discusses Wall’s Max Extension
Perhaps most surprising about John Wall's maximum-salary extension with the Wizards is the timing of the deal. The team could have waited to re-sign him in restricted free agency next summer. GM Ernie Grunfeld and company could also have saved negotiations for later this offseason, since most rookie-scale extensions aren't signed until the October 31st deadline approaches.
Instead, as soon as the team was eligible to make an offer, Wizards owner Ted Leonsis hopped on a plane to Los Angeles, where Wall makes his offseason home, to begin talks. Leonsis spoke to the media today about the deal, and J. Michael of CSNWashington.com rounds up several of his remarks. We'll pass along a few here:
On what Wall has proven in his career:
"John and I talked about what we had to do the day we drafted him. It was going to be very painful. Rebuilds are hard. We've had 100% turnover of our team. We owe a lot to our fans for the patience that they've shown and also to the players because it was going to be messy. We're through that point now. I felt that John earned this because of what he'd been through and his level of commitment. Ernie and the staff crunched a lot of numbers. There's a lot of analytics that go into it to show where John ranks and what his upside his. … I thought he was our foundational player and that he deserved to be a max player."
On the challenge of rebuilding and what the deal means for the franchise:
"We’re very, very fortunate that John embraced that challenge early on. Also frankly, (agent) Dan Fegan believed in that was well. John would be a very highly sought-after player around the league. He has probably the most upside of all of the point guards that are out there. To be able to secure his services for five years plus the year that he’s playing this year (for $7,459,925) really gives the fan base, the team, the coaching staff the wherewithal to know that we’ll have stability and we’ll continue to build systematically around what John’s gifts and skills are."
On the benefits of locking up Wall so early:
"By doing this, it should send a message to John and the team that we're about team results, not about individual stats. Everyone has their contract, everyone is taken care of. There is nothing to worry about. There are no distractions. I also made a commitment to having a drama free off-season. I think this organization has had enough drama."
Mavericks, Mike James In Contract Talks
Point guard Mike James started the final 23 games for the Mavericks this past season, a stretch when the team played some of its best basketball. Dallas has agreed to sign four players capable of playing his position this summer, and the Mavs wound up with 18th overall pick Shane Larkin in the draft, but the team and James' reps are nonetheless discussing the possibility of his return, reports Shams Charania of RealGM.com.
James told Chris Haynes of CSNNW.com that he's intent on playing in the NBA again this season, and agent Bernie Lee echoes those sentiments to Charania. The team expressed an interest in re-signing the 38-year-old when free agency began last month, and those talks continue, Charania writes.
The veteran averaged 8.2 points per game, dished out 4.4 assists and shot 41.9% from three-point range as a starter last season. He appeared in 45 total games for the Mavericks, his most NBA contests in any one season since the 61 he played in 2008/09.