Lakers Sign Jalen Hood-Schifino, Maxwell Lewis
The Lakers have officially locked up their two 2023 draft picks, announcing today in a press release that they’ve signed Jalen Hood-Schifino and Maxwell Lewis to their first NBA contracts (Twitter link via Khobi Price of The Southern California News Group).
The No. 17 overall pick, Hood-Schifino is in line for a four-year contract worth up to $17.9MM, including $3.7MM in year one, assuming he signs for 120% of the standard rookie scale, which virtually every first-rounder does.
The 6’6″ wing, who spent last season at Indiana, was named the Big Ten Rookie of the Year after averaging 13.5 points, 4.1 rebounds, and 3.7 assists in 33.1 minutes per game across 32 contests (all starts). He declared for the draft as an early entrant after a strong freshman year.
Lewis, meanwhile, was the No. 40 overall pick, so the details of his deal aren’t yet known. However, it’s very likely that the Lakers used the new second-round pick exception to sign him to a three- or four-year contract that will include a team option on the final season.
Lewis spent two college seasons at Pepperdine before entering the draft following his sophomore year this spring. In 2022/23, he put up 17.1 points per night on .468/.348/.787 shooting, adding 5.7 RPG and 2.8 APG in 31 games (31.4 MPG).
With Hood-Schifino and Lewis under contract, the Lakers are carrying 13 players on standard deals and three on two-ways. They’ll make at least one more roster addition, but won’t necessarily carry a full 15-man standard roster to start the 2023/24 regular season.
As our list of draft pick signings shows, 43 players from the 2023 draft class have now officially signed with their respective teams.
Jazz Trade Damian Jones To Cavaliers
JULY 8: The trade is official, according to the Cavaliers, who announced in a press release that they sent cash to the Jazz to complete the deal.
JULY 1: The Jazz have agreed to trade center Damian Jones to the Cavaliers, reports Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN (Twitter link).
It’s not yet clear what Utah will receive in the deal, but according to Wojnarowski (Twitter link), Cleveland is acquiring Jones without sending out a player of its own. That’s possible because the big man is in the second year of a two-year, minimum-salary contract, so his salary can be taken on using the minimum salary exception.
Jones picked up his $2,586,665 player option for the 2023/24 season last week.
A former first-round pick, Jones signed with the Lakers last offseason after playing for five different teams in his first six NBA seasons, then was sent to the Jazz in the three-team trade-deadline deal involving D’Angelo Russell, Russell Westbrook, and Mike Conley.
Jones saw more regular playing time in Utah than he had in Los Angeles, averaging 4.6 points and 3.5 rebounds in 15.8 minutes per contest in his 19 appearances for the Jazz. In total, he played in 41 regular season games and averaged 3.5 PPG and 3.0 RPG in 11.6 MPG.
The Cavaliers have been active in the last 24 hours, but their moves have focused on the wing (Caris LeVert, Max Strus) and forward (Georges Niang) spots. Jones will provide some additional size in the frontcourt behind starting bigs Jarrett Allen and Evan Mobley.
Wizards Sign Kyle Kuzma To Four-Year Contract
JULY 8: The Wizards have officially re-signed Kuzma, per Josh Robbins and Shams Charania of The Athletic (Twitter link).
According to The Athletic’s duo, Kuzma’s four-year deal will actually be worth $90MM guaranteed, with $6MM in unlikely incentives tied to team performance. It won’t contain any team or player options, but it will feature a 15% trade kicker, Robbins and Charania add (via Twitter). It will also have a descending structure, starting at $25.6MM and eventually dipping to $19.4MM by year four.
JUNE 30: The Wizards and forward Kyle Kuzma have agreed to a four-year, $102MM deal that will keep him in Washington, agent Austin Brown tells Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN (Twitter link).
Kuzma is coming off a career year, averaging 21.2 points, 7.2 rebounds and 3.7 assists on .448/.333/.730 shooting in 64 games last season (35.0 minutes). His points, assists and minutes per game all represented career highs.
A former late first-round pick (27th overall in 2017), Kuzma won a championship with the Lakers in 2019/20, having spent his first four seasons in Los Angeles. He was sent to the Wizards in the summer of 2021 as part of the Russell Westbrook trade.
It’s an interesting transaction for both Kuzma and the Wizards, who have drastically remade their roster after trading Bradley Beal (to Phoenix) and Kristaps Porzingis (to Boston). Kuzma was looking for a major payday after declining his $13MM player option for 2023/24, and he found a nine-figure deal to remain with Washington.
Kuzma, alongside former Warriors guard Jordan Poole (whom the team acquired for Chris Paul), figures to be a major part of the Wizards’ offense in ’23/24. When engaged, he’s also a solid defensive player, and is still developing in other areas.
Still, it remains to be seen whether or not Kuzma will be in Washington’s long-term plans. The team’s front office — led by president Michael Winger — was completely revamped, so time will tell how they’ll choose to build out the roster.
Rory Maher contributed to this story.
Mavs Notes: G. Williams, Kyrie, Holmes, Thybulle
The Mavericks entered this offseason aiming to get younger, more athletic, and stronger defensively, according to Tim Cato of The Athletic, who notes that swapping out Reggie Bullock for Grant Williams could help achieve a couple of those goals. Dallas pivoted to Williams in free agency after missing out on Bruce Brown and will land the restricted free agent in a sign-and-trade deal with Boston.
As Cato outlines, Williams will essentially be playing the role that players like Dorian Finney-Smith and Bullock had in Dallas last season, guarding opposing perimeter threats on defense and stretching the floor on offense.
However, Cato believes that Williams has more to offer on offense than the players he’s replacing, writing that the Mavs’ newest forward isn’t as “static” and could get an opportunity to be a secondary creator when Luka Doncic and/or Kyrie Irving are double-teamed.
Here’s more on the Mavs:
- Irving’s new three-year contract, originally reported to be worth $126MM, actually has a guaranteed base value of $120MM, tweets ESPN’s Bobby Marks. The remaining $6MM is made up incentives that are tied to games played and team success — Kyrie can earn $1MM per year by playing at least 65 games and $1MM each year the Mavs get to 50 wins (and Irving plays at least 58 games), reports Tim MacMahon of ESPN (Twitter link).
- Richaun Holmes waived his $1.8MM trade kicker as part of the deal that sent him from Sacramento to Dallas, per MacMahon (Twitter link). That gave the Mavericks a little extra flexibility under their hard cap for their offer sheet to Matisse Thybulle, which was matched by Portland. The Mavs’ team salary remains $10.9MM below that hard cap, according to MacMahon and Marks.
- Thybulle will be returning to the Trail Blazers after they matched his offer sheet, but it doesn’t sound like that was his preferred outcome. On the #thisleague UNCUT podcast, Marc Stein said that ending up in Dallas was something Thybulle had “been wanting even before this summer,” and Chris Haynes agreed. “Matisse desperately wanted to be a member of the Dallas Mavericks,” Haynes said (hat tip to Ashish Mathur of Heavy.com).
Mavericks Re-Sign Kyrie Irving To Three-Year Contract
JULY 7: Irving’s new contract with the Mavericks is official, the team announced (via Twitter).
JUNE 30: The Mavericks and star guard Kyrie Irving have reached an agreement on a new contract within the first hour of free agency, reports Shams Charania of The Athletic (Twitter link).
According to Charania, Irving will sign a three-year, $126MM contract that will include a player option in the final season. That’s an average of $42MM annually, which is a little below Irving’s 2023/24 maximum of $47.6MM.
While Irving is certainly enigmatic and has missed an alarming amount of games over the past four seasons, there’s no question that he’s an elite scorer and ball-handler when he’s on the court, having averaged 27.1 PPG, 5.8 APG, 4.9 RPG and 1.3 SPG on .491/.395/.914 shooting in 163 games (36.0 MPG) over that span.
Dallas acquired Irving in February after he requested a trade ahead of the deadline. Considering the Mavs gave up two solid role players (Spencer Dinwiddie and Dorian Finney-Smith) as well as an unprotected 2029 first-round pick to land the 31-year-old, they were always viewed as the frontrunner to re-sign the veteran guard.
A former first overall pick, Irving has earned numerous accolades during his career, including eight All-Star nods, three All-NBA appearances, a Rookie of the Year award, and a championship trophy with the Cavs in 2016.
It will be interesting to see how the Mavs build out the rest of their roster around Luka Doncic and Irving, two incredible offensive talents who don’t always put forth much effort defensively.
Rory Maher contributed to this story.
Contract Details: Poeltl, Strus, Love, Robinson, Walsh, R. Lopez
Jakob Poeltl‘s four-year contract with the Raptors has a flat base value of $19.5MM per year, for a total of $78MM, tweets Blake Murphy of Sportsnet.ca. There are $500K in annual incentives currently considered unlikely to be earned — if Poeltl maxes out those bonuses, it’ll be worth $80MM. As previously reported, the fourth year is a player option.
Murphy adds that Jalen McDaniels‘ two-year deal is, as expected, worth the full amount of the bi-annual exception and is fully guaranteed, with no options on the second year.
Here are a few more details on recently signed contracts that Hoops Rumors can confirm:
- Max Strus‘ four-year contract with the Cavaliers, which has a total value of $62.3MM, has a first-year salary of $14,487,684. That means the trade exception created by the Heat in the sign-and-trade deal is worth $7,243,842, half of Strus’ salary, due to base year compensation rules.
- Kevin Love‘s two-year deal with the Heat is worth the full Non-Bird amount — $3.84MM in year one and $4.03MM in year two (with a player option). That represents 120% of his minimum salary.
- Orlando Robinson‘s two-year, minimum-salary contract with the Heat is only partially guaranteed for $75K in 2023/24. That guarantee will increase to $425K if he remains under contract through the start of the regular season and to $850K if he’s not waived on or before December 1. Because Robinson’s current guarantee is only $75K, he’d be eligible for a two-way deal if he’s waived before the regular season.
- Jordan Walsh‘s four-year deal with the Celtics is worth the minimum in all four seasons. It’s fully guaranteed in the first two years, with a $200K partial guarantee in year three.
- Robin Lopez‘s minimum-salary contract with the Bucks is for one year.
- We’re continuing to update our free agent tracker and our list of draft pick signings with contract details as we learn them.
Jazz Renegotiate, Extend Jordan Clarkson’s Contract
JULY 7: Clarkson’s renegotiated and extended contract is now official, per the Jazz.
JULY 2: After picking up his 2023/24 option last week to remain in Utah, Jordan Clarkson will commit to the team for a couple more seasons, according to Shams Charania of The Athletic (Twitter link).
Clarkson and the Jazz are finalizing a renegotiation and extension that will give him a raise in 2023/24 and will add two new years to his current contract, his agents at Klutch Sports tell Charania.
The deal will be worth $55MM, Charania adds. Based on the wording of his report, it’s unclear if that $55MM is all new money or if it includes Clarkson’s preexisting $14.3MM salary for 2023/24 — I’d assume the latter unless we hear otherwise, since agents leaking word of an agreement typically frame it in the most flattering light.
As we outlined on Saturday when Domantas Sabonis completed a similar deal with the Kings, contract renegotiations in the NBA are rare, since they can only be completed when a team has cap space and intends to increase a player’s salary rather than reducing it. Like Sacramento with Sabonis, Utah has the cap room necessary to give Clarkson’s current-year salary a bump and negotiate an extension off that new cap hit.
Interestingly, without a renegotiation, the maximum two-year extension Utah could give Clarkson would be worth about $41.5MM — when added to his current $14.3MM salary, that would also work out to just over $55MM.
By forgoing a traditional ascending extension structure and renegotiating his current-year salary to give him an immediate raise, the Jazz may end up paying the veteran guard the same amount of money overall while applying more of it to the 2023/24 cap in order to maximize future flexibility. An extension signed signed as part of a renegotiation can decline by as much as 40% in the first season.
Clarkson, 31, entered Utah’s starting lineup in 2022/23 after coming off the bench as a microwave scorer for most of his nine-year NBA career. In 61 games (32.6 MPG) in 2022/23, he averaged 20.8 points, 4.4 assists, and 4.0 rebounds with a shooting line of .444/.338/.816.
The Jazz, who are acquiring John Collins into their cap room in a trade with Atlanta, still projected to have nearly $15MM in cap room available after completing that deal, per Keith Smith of Spotrac (Twitter link). Whether or not they have more room to operate after the Clarkson renegotiation will depend on how much money they add to his 2023/24 salary, as well as the team’s plans for players on non-guaranteed contracts like Luka Samanic and Vernon Carey.
Clarkson is the third player to agree to renegotiate his contract in 2023, joining Sabonis and Pacers center Myles Turner. Prior to Turner, no player had renegotiated a deal since Robert Covington in 2017.
And-Ones: Howard, Team USA, F. Jackson, Zikarsky
Longtime NBA center Dwight Howard was out of the league during the 2022/23 season, which he spent in Taiwan. However, he still believes he can be a productive player in an NBA rotation, he said during a wide-ranging interview with Zion Olojede of Complex.com.
“I know that there’s at least 15 to 20 teams that I could play for,” Howard said. “And I know there’s teams that got great starting centers, but I know I could be a great backup center. I know I can provide a team with 25 minutes of dominant basketball. And that’s not even scoring, that’s just playing defense, locking people up, protecting the paint, rebounding, and finishing around the basket. I’ve had my fun in the game. I just want to go out like a champ like I’m supposed to.”
Referencing a June interview in which Howard said he’d love to join the Kings, Olojede asked the three-time Defensive Player of the Year which five teams he believes would be good matches for him.
“Okay, you got Miami Heat. You got obviously, the Lakers. The Warriors,” Howard said. “The Kings. But the Kings, I would say the Kings got a couple centers so they probably wouldn’t. But the Kings. The Hawks. I’m from Atlanta, go back home with the Hawks.”
Here are more odds and ends from around the basketball world:
- Discussing his roster for the upcoming FIBA World Cup for the first time on Friday, Team USA head coach Steve Kerr said he plans to lean heavily on Knicks guard Jalen Brunson and Nets forward Mikal Bridges. As Joe Vardon of The Athletic writes, Kerr envisions Brunson having “a pretty big role” and intends to rely on Bridges defensively to match up against opponents’ high-scoring wings.
- Veteran NBA guard Frank Jackson, who had a brief stint with the Jazz this past season, will continue his career overseas, having signed a deal with French team ASVEL, per a press release. Jackson had appeared in 214 career regular season NBA games since being drafted in 2017.
- Rocco Zikarsky, a 7’3″ Australian big man, has decided to forgo a move to the NCAA in favor of joining the Brisbane Bullets as part of the National Basketball League’s Next Stars program, he tells Jonathan Givony of ESPN. Zikarsky, who will turn 17 next week, won’t be draft-eligible until at least 2025, but is considered one of the world’s best basketball prospects, per Givony.
- John Hollinger of The Athletic doesn’t want to go so far as to call them the “losers” of free agency, but has questions about the offseason moves made so far by the Raptors, Pelicans, Kings, Trail Blazers, and Nuggets.
Knicks Trade Obi Toppin To Pacers
JULY 7: The trade is official, the Knicks announced today in a press release (Twitter link). Toppin has been traded into the Pacers’ cap room in exchange for the two second-round picks described below.
JULY 6: The Knicks will receive either the Suns’ or Pacers’ 2028 second-round pick (whichever is least favorable) and either the Pacers’ or Wizards’ 2029 second-round pick (whichever is least favorable) for Toppin, reports Dustin Dopirak of The Indianapolis Star (Twitter link).
JULY 1: The Knicks and Pacers are finalizing a trade that will send forward Obi Toppin to Indiana, reports Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN (Twitter link).
According to Wojnarowski, the Knicks will acquire a pair of second-round picks in exchange for Toppin, who was the eighth overall pick in the 2020 draft.
Marc Stein and Ian Begley of SNY.tv reported prior to free agency that the Pacers were talking to the Knicks about Toppin and had emerged as the leading candidate to land him. It’s a logical fit, since Indiana has the cap room necessary to acquire the 25-year-old’s $6.8MM expiring contract without sending out any salary and has been in the market for another power forward.
While lottery pick Jarace Walker figures to see minutes for the Pacers as a rookie, Toppin should have an opportunity to play a bigger role in Indiana than he did in New York, where he spent the majority of his first three NBA seasons backing up Julius Randle.
In 139 games for the Knicks since the start of 2021/22, Toppin has averaged 8.2 PPG and 3.3 RPG on .491/.329/.772 shooting in 139 games (16.4 MPG). He’ll be eligible for a rookie scale extension this offseason, or restricted free agency in 2024 if he doesn’t sign a new deal before then.
It’s a somewhat disappointing outcome for the Knicks, whose lottery pick from three years ago will now turn into a pair of second-rounders. However, the move will help create some additional spending flexibility below the tax apron for the club, potentially opening up the full mid-level exception. It’ll also generate a $6.8MM trade exception and contribute a couple more draft assets to New York’s ever-growing stash.
Timberwolves Sign Jaylen Clark To Two-Way Contract
Former UCLA wing Jaylen Clark has officially signed his first NBA contract, having inked a two-way deal with the Timberwolves, according to NBA.com’s transaction log.
Clark had a big junior year for the Bruins in 2022/23, increasing his scoring average to 13.0 PPG while also contributing 6.0 RPG and 2.6 SPG in 30 contests (30.5 MPG). He was named to the All-Pac-12 team and was the conference’s Defensive Player of the Year.
Clark, who injured his Achilles earlier this year and underwent surgery after the season, isn’t expected to be ready for the start of his rookie year. However, Minnesota is optimistic about what he’ll be able to bring to the team once he’s healthy — after selecting him with the No. 53 pick last month, president of basketball operations Tim Connelly referred to Clark as “the best perimeter defender in the draft.”
Luka Garza holds one of the two-way contract slots for the Timberwolves, so they have one opening remaining. The best candidate to fill it is Matt Ryan, who is still a restricted free agent after receiving a two-way qualifying offer in June.
Of the 58 players selected in the 2023 draft, 38 have now officially signed NBA contracts, as our tracker shows.