Mavericks Sign Matthew Cleveland, Moussa Cisse
The Mavericks have officially signed guard/forward Matthew Cleveland and center Moussa Cisse, the team announced today in a press release (Twitter link). Both players went undrafted in June.
While the terms of their deals weren’t disclosed, Cleveland and Cisse almost certainly signed Exhibit 10 contracts. In fact, Cisse’s Exhibit 10 agreement was reported last month, shortly after the draft ended.
Exhibit 10 contracts are non-guaranteed minimum-salary deals that entitle players to bonuses worth up to $85,300 if they’re waived before the regular season and spend at least 60 days with their team’s G league affiliate. They can also be converted to two-way deals before the regular season begins, and Cisse, at least, is expected to have the opportunity to compete for a two-way spot in Dallas.
Cleveland played his last two college seasons at Miami after spending his first two years at Florida State. In 2024/25, he averaged 17.6 points and 4.4 rebounds per game with a .511/.382/.776 shooting line in 29 outings for the Hurricanes.
Cisse, meanwhile, started and ended his college career at Memphis, sandwiching stints with Oklahoma State and Ole Miss. The Guinean big man blocked 1.7 shots per game in 150 career college contests despite averaging fewer than 20 minutes per game.
Central Notes: Pistons, Ivey, Nance, Nesmith, Mathurin
Speaking on Tuesday to reporters, including Keith Langlois of Pistons.com, Pistons president of basketball operations Trajan Langdon spoke about the size and shooting that Duncan Robinson will bring to the team and lauded Caris LeVert for his defensive versatility, ball-handling, and “unselfish brand of basketball.” He also pointed out that both newcomers have plenty of postseason experience.
However, Langdon also made it clear that the additions of Robinson and LeVert aren’t the only reasons why he’s enthusiastic about his team’s potential in 2025/26.
“I think the one thing that does get lost in all of this, to be honest with you, is (Jaden Ivey‘s) return,” Langdon said. “A lot of people are saying, who are you filling with these guys that are exiting. I say, well, we have a pretty good free agent pickup in J.I., so I think he’s going to fill a lot of those point guard roles and play-making roles.”
In addition to getting Ivey back, the Pistons also expect young cornerstones like Cade Cunningham and Jalen Duren to continue improving.
“We have a chance to compete next year,” Langdon said. “The main thing for us is continuing to let these young guys develop and they’re in the gym working their butt off. Like I said from initially in the summer, if they get better, we’re going to be better. So it was finding pieces to complement our young players and their growth and ability to reach their potential. I think with our two additions, we got bigger and we want to continue to put them around guys who can play-make. That’s going to continue to help Cade grow and develop.”
Here’s more from around the Central:
- After the Pistons generated a $14.1MM traded player exception in their sign-and-trade deal sending Dennis Schröder to Sacramento, Hunter Patterson of The Athletic considers what sort of players it might make sense to target using that TPE. Herb Jones, Goga Bitadze, and Brandon Clarke are among the names he suggests.
- A member of the Cavaliers from 2018-21, Larry Nance Jr. has remained close with the organization since then and spent his summers in Cleveland in the years, writes Chris Fedor of Cleveland.com (subscription required). That’s one reason why it came as no surprise that the Ohio native signed a deal to return to the Cavs this offseason. “It just made too much sense, you know? I knew I would (be back one day). I didn’t know when,” Nance said. “… This is a team that’s really got a chance to win it all. And that’s the goal. That’s why I came back, and that’s what we’re going to do this year.”
- Aaron Nesmith and Bennedict Mathurin will be extension-eligible ahead of the start of the 2025/26 regular season and the Pacers plan to discuss new deals for them, but president of basketball operations Kevin Pritchard is preaching patience, per Dustin Dopirak of The Indianapolis Star. “Can I just have like 24 hours please?” Pritchard said when asked on Monday about potential Mathurin and Nesmith extensions. “Literally, guys, we went straight from the Finals to the draft to free agency to Summer League. … We’ll look at all those kinds of things. But I think that’s a little premature. We have all summer and up until next year to do those.” Dopirak views Nesmith (who will be extension-eligible starting in October) as a no-brainer candidate for a new contract but acknowledges that Mathurin’s situation is a little more complicated.
Nets Sign Drake Powell To Rookie Scale Contract
The Nets have signed No. 22 overall pick Drake Powell to his rookie scale contract, the team announced today in a press release.
Powell officially became a Net on Monday when the three-team trade involving the Hawks and Celtics that was agreed to prior to the draft was finally finalized, sending his draft rights to Brooklyn.
A day later, he has become the last of 2025’s first-round picks to sign his rookie scale contract — all 30 of those players, including each of Brooklyn’s five first-rounders, are now under contract with their respective teams.
[RELATED: 2025 NBA Draft Pick Signings]
Powell averaged 7.4 points, 3.4 rebounds, and 1.1 assists per game for UNC last season on .483/.379/.648 shooting. At 6’6″ with a 7’0″ wingspan and elite athleticism, he brings a versatility and hard-nosed defensive mindset that the Nets could use in their rotation.
However, he won’t be available when Summer League gets underway for Brooklyn later this week. As Brian Lewis of The New York Post details, Powell is being held out as a precaution due to tendinopathy in his left knee, an injury he sustained during the pre-draft process.
Assuming he signs for 120% of his rookie scale amount, which is the standard, Powell will earn $3.37MM as a rookie and $3.54MM in year two, with third- and fourth-year team options that could bring the total value of his rookie contract to $16.72MM.
Heat Notes: Mitchell, Powell, Beal, Lillard, Fontecchio, Ware
Davion Mitchell, who re-signed with the Heat this week after playing the best basketball of his NBA career following a trade-deadline deal that sent him to Miami, said on Tuesday that the organization is “completely different” from the other NBA teams he has spent time with (Sacramento and Toronto).
“One, coach (Erik Spoelstra) is one of the greatest coaches of all time,” Mitchell said when asked what makes Miami different, per Anthony Chiang of The Miami Herald. “So just learning from him, just asking questions, you won’t get any better answers from anybody else, I think. And just my teammates, my teammates wanted me here, they embraced me here, they wanted me to be myself. If I can be somewhere and be myself, I know I can be the best player I can be.”
As good as Mitchell was in during his 30 regular season games with Miami, the team struggled during those contests, posting a 10-20 record. He’s optimistic that working together this offseason will help put the Heat in a better position to open the 2025/26 season.
“It’s going to be good for me and the team, just the chemistry that we can build,” Mitchell said. “We won a couple games, we even made it to the playoffs with very little chemistry, especially with injuries and just getting traded here. So we didn’t really know how to jell with one another. I feel like we kind of figured it out a little bit (near the end of the season. But to have a training camp with one another, just to go at each other, just to learn from one another, spend time outside of basketball with each other, I think is going to build a lot of team chemistry.”
Here’s more on the Heat:
- Mitchell is excited about Miami’s addition of Norman Powell, noting that the veteran wing will bring championship experience to the team. “He’s a winning player, he plays both sides of the ball, he can score with the best of them,” Mitchell said. “He kind of does it all. Even if he’s not shooting the ball well, he can disrupt defensively. So you want guys like that on the floor that can help you win like that.”
- While the acquisition of Powell makes a Bradley Beal signing a long shot, the Heat are still in play as a possible Damian Lillard landing spot, Chiang writes in another Miami Herald story. However, Chiang believes Miami’s odds would increase if Lillard waits until midway through the season or next offseason to sign his next contract.
- New Heat forward Simone Fontecchio, acquired from Detroit in the Duncan Robinson sign-and-trade, is hoping to fill a similar offensive role to the one Robinson played in Miami, according to Chiang. “I watched a lot of Duncan Robinson in the last three years, because I think our skill set is pretty similar,” Fontecchio said. “Of course, he’s a tremendous shooter and he did an amazing job all the years in Miami and I was always kind of looking at him, the way he was getting off shots and I always kind of wanted to do the same thing. I think I can try to play like a little bit off handoffs, running off screens, do a little bit of that.”
- Sharing his takeaways from the Heat’s second Summer League game at this week’s California Classic, Chiang writes that the team will want to see more going forward out of second-year center Kel’el Ware, who put up an underwhelming stat line of 12 points (on 4-of-10 shooting) and three rebounds in 28 minutes in Sunday’s loss to the Lakers. As we noted last week, the Heat’s coaching staff had hoped Ware would “dominate” Summer League play ahead of his second NBA season.
Free Agent Notes: Melton, Warriors, Horford, Hayes-Davis
There was chatter early in the free agent period connecting De’Anthony Melton to the Lakers, but that talk has “cooled” in recent days, according to Jovan Buha, who said during a Monday live-stream (YouTube link) that the free agent guard has been more frequently connected to the Warriors as of late.
NBA insider Marc Stein (Twitter link) confirms as much, citing league sources who say that Golden State has emerged as a “strong contender” to sign Melton.
The Warriors used their full non-taxpayer mid-level exception to sign Melton to a one-year contract in free agency last season, but he suffered a season-ending ACL tear in just his sixth game with his new team. Prior to the injury, the 27-year-old was looking like an ideal fit in Golden State’s backcourt, with an average of 10.3 points per game and a .371 3PT%, albeit in a very small sample size.
Here are a few more free agent notes from around the NBA:
- Big man Al Horford is another free agent who has been frequently connected to the Warriors. According to Noa Dalzell of CelticsBlog (Twitter link), Celtics president of basketball operations Brad Stevens acknowledged on Tuesday that it’s “unlikely” Horford returns to Boston, though Stevens did say the team made offers to both him and Luke Kornet (who signed with San Antonio).
- Veteran forward Nigel Hayes-Davis and Fenerbahce have officially parted ways, the Turkish team announced (via Twitter). The move paves the way for Hayes-Davis to get his FIBA letter of clearance and officially finalize his reported agreement with the Suns. Hayes-Davis reportedly turned down a lucrative offer from Fenerbahce that would have made him one of the EuroLeague’s highest-paid players.
- Chris Herring, Zach Kram, Bobby Marks, and Kevin Pelton of ESPN broke down some of their favorite – and least favorite – moves of the free agent period so far, with Kornet to the Spurs, Brook Lopez to the Clippers, and Dorian Finney-Smith to the Rockets among the signings that earned kudos.
Kings Sign Drew Eubanks
The Kings have officially signed center Drew Eubanks, according to NBA.com’s transaction log. The move had been anticipated after the big man was waived last week by the Clippers.
Eubanks, 28, opened the 2024/25 season with the Jazz and appeared in 37 games for the club, averaging 5.8 points, 4.5 rebounds, and 1.2 assists in 15.4 minutes per contest.
His playing time dropped off after he was sent to the Clippers in a deadline deal — the 6’10” center averaged just 2.7 PPG and 2.4 RPG in 7.4 MPG across 24 appearances in Los Angeles and only saw garbage-time action in the playoffs for the Clippers. As such, it came as no surprise when L.A. opted to waive him before his $4.75MM salary for 2025/26 became guaranteed.
Eubanks will provide depth in the Kings’ frontcourt behind center Domantas Sabonis, giving the team a reliable veteran off the bench alongside young bigs Isaac Jones and Maxime Raynaud.
While the terms of his one-year deal haven’t yet been reported, it will almost certainly be a minimum-salary contract for Eubanks.
NBA Transactions Becoming Official: July 8, 2025
The July moratorium is over and teams are now permitted to officially finalize all the free agent signings and trades they’ve agreed to since the new league year began (or earlier, in some cases).
Rather than bumping all of our previous stories on those free agent and trade agreements, we’ll be tracking all the previously reported moves that become official on Tuesday in the space below. We did the same in separate articles on Sunday and Monday.
To be clear, we’ll still be publishing new stories on breaking free agent and trade agreements. This space is just to track the moves we knew about before today if they’ve now been formally completed. In other words, if news of a deal breaks for the first time on Tuesday and is also finalized today, we won’t include it here.
These lists will be in chronological order, so we’ll add the most recent items to the bottom throughout the day.
Free agent signings:
- Pistons sign Caris LeVert to two-year contract (story).
- Bulls sign Caleb Grill and Wooga Poplar to Exhibit 10 contracts (story).
- Note: These signings were technically completed on Sunday, but slipped through the cracks until today.
- Bucks re-sign Gary Trent Jr. to two-year contract (story).
- Pistons re-sign Paul Reed to two-year contract (story).
- Rockets re-sign Aaron Holiday to one-year contract (story).
- Kings sign Isaiah Stevens to two-way contract (story).
- Bucks re-sign Taurean Prince to two-year contract (story).
- Kings sign Drew Eubanks to one-year contract (new story).
- Hawks sign Luke Kennard to one-year contract (story).
- Mavericks sign Moussa Cisse to Exhibit 10 contract (new story).
- Bucks sign Gary Harris to two-year contract (story).
- Sixers sign Igor Milicic Jr. to Exhibit 10 contract (story).
- Bucks re-sign Ryan Rollins to three-year contract (story).
Contract extensions:
- Raptors sign Jakob Poeltl to four-year veteran extension (story).
- Thunder sign Shai Gilgeous-Alexander to four-year super-max extension (story).
Trades:
- Nets trade Cameron Johnson to Nuggets for Michael Porter Jr., future first-round pick (story).
Pacers Sign Kam Jones, Quenton Jackson
The Pacers have officially announced a pair of signings, issuing a press release to say that they’ve finalized a standard contract with second-round pick Kam Jones and have brought back restricted free agent guard Quenton Jackson on a two-way deal.
A 6’5″ combo guard, Jones spent his entire four-year college career at Marquette, where he was a consensus second-team All-American and a member of the All-Big East first team in 2025 after averaging 19.2 points, 5.9 assists, and 4.5 rebounds in 33.8 minutes per game across 34 outings as a senior.
Pacers president of basketball operations said on Monday that Jones reminds him of Andrew Nembhard as a player and Tyrese Haliburton as a person, per Dustin Dopirak of The Indianapolis Star.
“He’s hyper-positive,” Pritchard said. “… He’s got that kind of an ‘it factor’ of, that’s a Pacer.”
Indiana drafted Jones using the No. 38 overall pick, which the team had agreed to acquire a day earlier from San Antonio in exchange for a future second-round pick and cash. The rookie guard will occupy a spot on the Pacers’ 15-man roster in 2025/26 after signing a four-year, $8.7MM contract, according to Tony East of Locked on Pacers (Twitter link), who says the deal includes a good deal of non-guaranteed money in the later seasons.
As for Jackson, he received a qualifying offer to make him a restricted free agent after finishing each of the past two seasons on two-way deals with Indiana. The former undrafted free agent averaged 5.8 PPG, 1.9 APG and 1.6 RPG on .475/.375/.775 shooting in 28 games (13.6 MPG) in ’24/25 for the Pacers.
With Jackson back under contract on another two-way deal alongside RayJ Dennis, the Pacers have two of their three slots filled. The leading candidate for that third opening is probably Enrique Freeman, given that Indiana still has a two-way qualifying offer on the table to the 2024 second-rounder.
Mavs’ Anthony Davis Undergoes Procedure On Eye
Mavericks star Anthony Davis has undergone a procedure to repair a detached retina, reports Shams Charania of ESPN (Twitter link). The expectation is that he’ll be fully recovered for training camp, Charania adds.
While it’s unclear exactly when the injury first occurred, Charania notes that Davis played through “multiple hits to the face” last season.
Most notably, the big man visited an ophthalmologist last November after getting poked in the left eye — reporting at the time indicated he was experiencing swelling and had difficulty keeping the eye open. That injury, which occurred when Davis was a Laker, was referred to last fall as a corneal abrasion and didn’t cost him any games.
Davis, who was traded from Los Angeles to Dallas in the controversial Luka Doncic blockbuster in February, was only able to make nine appearances during his first half-season as a Maverick due to an adductor injury.
The 32-year-old averaged 20.0 points, 10.1 rebounds, 4.4 assists, and 2.2 blocks in just 29.6 minutes per night in those nine outings, generating excitement about what he might be able to do after spending the offseason getting fully healthy and acclimating to his new team.
Contract Details: KPJ, J. Smith, Wiseman, Schröder, Stevens
Despite the fact that the Bucks used their room exception to complete the signing, guard Kevin Porter Jr. received the exact value of the bi-annual exception on his new two-year deal, Hoops Rumors has confirmed. The first year is worth $5,134,000, with a second-year player option worth $5,390,700. The move leaves roughly $3.65MM on Milwaukee’s room exception.
A player who re-signs with his previous team on either a one-year contract or a two-year deal with a second-year option is typically awarded the right to veto a trade for the rest of that season. However, Porter is one of a few players, along with Lakers big man Jaxson Hayes, who have waived that right as part of their new deals.
Sixers guard Eric Gordon and Raptors wing Garrett Temple have also given up that right to veto a trade, Hoops Rumors has confirmed.
We have more details on some of the recently signed contracts from around the league:
- Jabari Smith Jr.‘s five-year, $122MM rookie scale extension with the Rockets declines in the second season before increasing in each of the final three years, notes Mike Vorkunov of The Athletic. That dip in 2027/28 comes during the season in which an extension for Amen Thompson figures to be hitting Houston’s books — it could also be the final year of Kevin Durant‘s contract, if he signs a two-year extension with the team at some point.
- James Wiseman‘s new two-year, minimum-salary contract with the Pacers, which features a second-year team option, is partially guaranteed for $1MM in 2025/26, Hoops Rumors has learned. If Wiseman’s option for ’26/27 is exercised, that year’s salary would be partially guaranteed for roughly $1.13MM.
- Dennis Schröder‘s three-year deal with the Kings, which is worth exactly the three-year value of the mid-level exception ($44,427,600), is partially guaranteed for $4.35MM in the third year, tweets Michael Scotto of HoopsHype. Although the contract fits into the MLE, Sacramento is believed to have used an existing trade exception to accommodate the acquisition of Schröder.
- Isaiah Stevens‘ two-way contract agreement with the Kings will cover two years, according to Scotto (Twitter link).