Northwest Notes: Christon, Brown, Wolves
Semaj Christon, the 55th pick in the 2014 draft, has signed with Italy’s Vuelle Pesaro, the team announced (translation via Sportando’s Emiliano Carchia). Christon leaves the Thunder’s system after having spent this past season playing for Oklahoma City’s D-League team, but the Thunder retain his NBA rights as a draft-and-stash prospect. Check out our freshly updated list of draft rights held players here, compiled by Mark Porcaro.
In other news around the Northwest Division:
- Lorenzo Brown‘s minimum salary is partially guaranteed for $75K, according to Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders (Twitter link). Brown was in line to receive $200K if he had remained on the Timberwolves roster through Saturday, as Hoops Rumors reported, before he and the Wolves changed the guarantee structure as part of a deal that would keep him on the roster for training camp, as Darren Wolfson of 1500 ESPN Twin Cities heard.
- The Timberwolves will keep shooting coach Mike Penberthy around, president of basketball operations Flip Saunders told of Dan Barreiro KFAN Radio (hat tip to Jon Krawczynski of The Associated Press and Andrew Renschen), a move that will likely please Ricky Rubio, Krawczynski observes (Twitter links). Rubio, the team’s most highly paid player, had developed a bond with Penberthy, who hadn’t been certain to return, the AP scribe notes.
- The first two years of Tibor Pleiss‘ contract with the Jazz are fully guaranteed, with a $500,000 guarantee for the third season, Pincus reports in a separate tweet. Pleiss signed a three-year, $9MM contract on July 14th.
Nuggets Renegotiate, Extend Danilo Gallinari’s Deal
AUGUST 3rd, 6:05pm: The Nuggets have confirmed the signing (Twitter link).
JULY 31ST, 3:00pm: Gallinari posted a photo to Instagram that appears to show him signing the renegotiation-and-extension paperwork. The Nuggets have yet to make a formal announcement.
2:06pm: The sides are finalizing an agreement that would add two years to Gallinari’s contract in a renegotiation and extension deal, reports Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports. He’ll see about $2.5MM more the $11.559MM that he was set to see on his contract this season, bringing his salary to about $14MM, with $15.5MM coming in 2016/17 and $16.1MM in 2017/18, Wojnarowski adds. That final year will be a player option, and the deal will include a full trade kicker, Wojnarowski also reports. That presumably means a 15% trade kicker, the maximum size for such a bonus.
JULY 21ST, 1:02pm: The Nuggets are expected to sign Danilo Gallinari to an extension this week, league sources tell Christopher Dempsey of The Denver Post. The forward confirmed to Italian media this week that he was in extension talks with the team, shortly after Dempsey reported that the Nuggets intended to begin such discussions.
Denver will use some of the cap flexibility it cleared in Monday’s Ty Lawson trade, according to Dempsey, a hint that Gallinari will receive an extension and renegotiation, which would up his salary of more than $11.559MM for this coming season, in the same sort of deal that Denver did with Wilson Chandler this month. Such a maneuver would allow Gallinari to make more in 2016/17 than the 7.5% of his 2015/16 salary he’d be limited to if he signed a conventional veteran extension, but renegotiations are rare, and Chandler’s deal was the first of its kind since the latest collective bargaining agreement went into place in 2011.
In any case, the Arn Tellem client would only be able to sign for three additional years, whereas he could ink a new contract with the Nuggets next summer that would give him five more years in Denver. The total amount of a conventional extension couldn’t exceed $39,879,326 over a three-year period, but a new contract that the sides could sign next summer would be allowed to be worth as much as the max.
The timing of Denver’s apparent movement with Gallinari is somewhat surprising, since it came on the heels of a report that the Celtics and Nuggets engaged in trade talks involving the veteran shooter. Denver was also apparently shopping Gallinari before the draft, when Memphis seemingly gave chase.
What do you think a fair extension for Gallinari would look like? Leave a comment to let us know.
Northwest Notes: Alexander, Gallinari, Thunder
Cliff Alexander‘s camp deal with the Trail Blazers covers three years and has a $100K partial guarantee, according to former Nets executive Bobby Marks, writing for HoopsHype. Alexander was one of 441 players who took part in at least one of the three summer leagues without having signed a guaranteed contract, and that $100K means he wound up with a lot more than many summer leaguers, who left only with the $127 per diems they received while taking part in the Orlando, Las Vegas and Salt Lake City leagues, as Marks details. There’s more on Alexander amid the latest from around the Northwest Division:
- Alexander told SB Nation’s Ricky O’Donnell that it “blindsided” him when he went undrafted in June, but agent Reggie Brown of Priority Sports said to O’Donnell that going undrafted was a better fate than having become a draft-and-stash pick (hat tip to TNT’s David Aldridge). “We knew the draft-and-stash would not be of benefit to him,” Brown said. “Cliff was not mature enough at 19 years old to go overseas for the first time. He didn’t have an older brother to help guide him like Emmanuel Mudiay did. I thought that would have been disastrous for his career so I made the decision not to do it. I could have took a lot of pressure off myself and in the media it looks great to have one of those teams take him, but I had to look him in the eye and tell him that we can’t do this. This is not best for your career. I felt he had the heart big enough to climb out of this.”
- Danilo Gallinari will see precisely $14MM this season, $15.05MM next season and $16.1MM in 2017/18 as part of his renegotiation-and-extension with the Nuggets, as Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders shows (Twitter link).
- The Thunder made a cost-cutting move in July, trading Perry Jones III to the Celtics, but the Oklahoma City organization isn’t anxious to move any more contracts and feels an urgency to win, sources close to the Thunder tell Steve Kyler of Basketball Insiders, who writes in an NBA AM piece.
Western Notes: McDaniels, Barton, Babbitt
Here’s a look at the latest contract news from the Western Conference:
- The three-year contract that K.J. McDaniels signed with the Rockets is worth exactly $10MM, as Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders shows (Twitter link).
- Will Barton will make $3,533,333 in each season with no options in his new three-year deal with the Nuggets, according to Pincus.
- Luke Babbitt‘s two year deal with the Pelicans is for the minimum salary, reports Pincus (Twitter link).
- Salah Mejri is receiving a guaranteed rookie minimum of $525,093 this season, the first on his three-year deal with the Mavs, tweets Pincus.
Will Joseph contributed to this post.
Eastern Notes: Jerebko, McRae, Dedmon, Hornets
Jonas Jerebko said he got several free agency phone calls after the clock struck midnight on July 1st, but he was glad that one of them came from Celtics president of basketball operations Danny Ainge, according to Gary Washburn of The Boston Globe. Jerebko, who inked a two-year, $10MM contract with the Celtics, wanted to stay in Boston after being acquired from the Pistons in a February trade. “It was like proof that you had a good year,” Jerebko said of the calls from other organizations. “I had other teams interested, but after talking to Danny and the way we worked stuff out, this is where I wanted to be and we worked it out.” Jerebko averaged 7.1 points and 4.8 rebounds per game after the deal, both up from his numbers in Detroit.
There’s more from the Eastern Conference:
- The Sixers will have Jordan McRae for training camp, tweets Jake Pavorsky of Liberty Ballers. He cites an unidentified league source and says no formal deal has been reached yet.
- Dewayne Dedmon had his non-guaranteed minimum salary become fully guaranteed when the Magic elected not to waive him by Saturday’s deadline, as the schedule of salary guarantee dates shows. Jordan Clarkson, Erick Green and Tyler Johnson all had their guarantees of varying amounts picked up, too, as had been expected.
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Tyler Hansbrough‘s deal with the Hornets is fully guaranteed for one year at the minimum salary, according to Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders (Twitter link). The camp deal between the Hornets and Elliot Williams covers two seasons at the minimum salary, as Pincus shows (Twitter link).
Northwest Notes: Nuggets, Papanikolaou, Jazz
Denver will drop to about $7MM below the salary cap once they officially waive Kostas Papanikolaou, former Nets exec Bobby Marks notes on Twitter. Marks adds that Milwaukee, Minnesota, Cleveland and Golden State have trade exceptions while Philadelphia and Portland have the cap space to claim the forward’s salary, which is worth slightly less than $4.8MM.
Here’s more from the Northwest Division:
- If claimed, the 24-year-old’s contract will become guaranteed should he remain on the roster past October 4th. Any team that claims Papanikolaou off waivers cannot trade him until the 30th day of the regular season, as Marks notes on Twitter. With the season set to kick-off on October 27th, claiming the forward will not provide a potential suitor with the same type of valuable trade chip that the Nuggets previously possessed.
- The Jazz didn’t sign any outside free agents because they didn’t want to block any of their young players’ development, Jonathan Tjarks of RealGM writes. Tjarks argues that most year-to-year improvements come from internal development rather than transactions in the offseason and the Jazz could end up being the team that improved the most due to their up-and-coming, young core.
- Utah knew Enes Kanter was probably not going to be worth the mammoth contract he was set to receive this offseason and with the number of young players on the roster set to earn raises over the next few seasons, the team could not afford to add an ill-advised contract, Tjarks adds in the same piece.
And-Ones: Faried, Deng, DeRozan
The growing sense around the Nuggets is that the team wants to see if Michael Malone can mentor Kenneth Faried the way he reached DeMarcus Cousins with the Kings, and it seems highly unlikely that Denver will trade the power forward before the start of the season, writes Steve Kyler of Basketball Insiders.
Here’s more from around the league:
- The Heat want to hold on to Luol Deng and see how well the team can play, sources close to the organization tell Kyler, but if Miami underwhelms, Kyler believes Miami would put Deng on the block.
- The Raptors are not entertaining trades for DeMar DeRozan, sources close to the team informed Kyler.
- The additions that the Clippers made this offseason to bolster their bench have made them the NBA’s most improved team heading into the 2015/16 campaign, opines Bradford Doolittle of ESPN.com (Insider subscription required). Doolittle also calls out the Hornets and Mavericks as teams that have made positive strides this Summer, while listing the Nets, Sixers, and Suns as franchises that have taken a step back this offseason.
- With the NBA’s salary cap expected to increase dramatically next Summer there are a number of pending free agents who stand to benefit from the windfall, Kevin Pelton of ESPN.com (Insider subscription required) writes. Some under-the-radar players who can expect significant pay increases on their next contracts include Michael Kidd-Gilchrist (Hornets), Harrison Barnes (Warriors), Langston Galloway (Knicks), and Jordan Clarkson (Lakers), Pelton opines.
Chuck Myron contributed to this post.
Nuggets Expected To Guarantee Erick Green Salary
The Nuggets are expected to retain Erick Green through Saturday, when his non-guaranteed $845,059 one-year veteran’s minimum salary is scheduled to become partially guaranteed for $100K if he doesn’t hit waivers, reports Christopher Dempsey of The Denver Post (Twitter link). The 46th overall pick from two years ago projects as the third-string point guard behind rookie Emmanuel Mudiay and Jameer Nelson.
Green signed a three-year deal for the minimum last summer after he spent a year as a draft-and-stash prospect with Italy’s Montepaschi Siena. The former ACC Player of the Year from his time at Virginia Tech carved out only a limited role on the Nuggets as a rookie, averaging 3.4 points and less than an assist in 9.5 minutes per game. The now 24-year-old also spent a brief time on D-League assignment.
Denver is also expected to re-sign Darrell Arthur, as Dempsey reported earlier, and assuming his salary will be fully guaranteed, the Nuggets are poised to have 15 fully guaranteed salaries, the regular season roster limit. That means one of them will have to go for Green to stick into the regular season, and it seemingly makes chances remote that the Nuggets keep Kostas Papanikolaou past October 4th, when his $4.797MM non-guaranteed salary would become guaranteed.
Pacific Notes: Lieberman, Moreland, Durant
- The Kings decided one-year veteran Eric Moreland‘s playing style was too similar to that of No. 6 pick Willie Cauley-Stein, helping prompt Sacramento to waive Moreland on Thursday rather than guarantee his salary, as Shams Charania of RealGM writes. Jason Jones of The Sacramento Bee wouldn’t be shocked to see Moreland end up with Denver, where former Sacramento GM Pete D’Alessandro, who signed him to the Kings last year, works in the Nuggets front office, but Bill Herenda of CSN California heard early word suggesting that won’t happen (Twitter links).
- The Warriors will surely chase Kevin Durant next summer, when he’s set for free agency, but realistically, they’d have to sign-and-trade for him, and such a deal would probably have to include Harrison Barnes plus more, as Tim Kawakami of the Bay Area News Group posits in a look at Golden State’s chances for the former MVP.
- Golden State has promoted Luke Walton to lead assistant to replace Alvin Gentry, the team announced. Gentry became the head coach of the Pelicans earlier this summer. Walton joined the Warriors coaching staff last year.
- The Suns have officially added Earl Watson, Nate Bjorkgren and Jason Fraser to their coaching staff, the team announced. Watson and Fraser come from the Spurs D-League team while Bjorkgren had coached Phoenix’s D-League affiliate. Chris Haynes of the Northeast Ohio Media Group first reported the addition of Watson, who helped with the Suns’ pitch to LaMarcus Aldridge, his former teammate with the Trail Blazers.
Contract Details: Powell, Mavs, Barton, Pacers
The terms of a contract between a newly acquired player and his team aren’t always immediately clear since clubs typically don’t release salary figures in official signing announcements. Below are some specifics on recently inked deals, all courtesy of Basketball Insiders’ Eric Pincus:
- The precise value of No. 46 pick Norman Powell‘s three-year deal with the Raptors is $2,539,382, as Pincus shows (via Twitter). This season’s salary is the only one that exceeds the minimum.
- Newly acquired Mavericks swingman John Jenkins’ 2015/16 minimum salary is fully guaranteed, according to Pincus (Twitter link), who also confirms Ian Begley of ESPNNewYork’s report that recent Dallas signee Maurice Ndour’s minimum-contract is guaranteed for the upcoming year.
- Will Barton will make precisely $10,590,000 over the course of his new three-year deal with the Nuggets, Pincus relays on Twitter.
- The Pacers’ three-year deal with Lavoy Allen is worth a total of $12.05MM, but it includes a team option in the final year of the deal, as Pincus notes on his salary page for Indiana.
- Glenn Robinson III’s starting salary with the Pacers is for slightly above the minimum at $1.1MM, Pincus tweets. The minimum salary for a player with GRIII’s experience would be $845,059, as our glossary entry for the minimum salary exception shows.
Chuck Myron contributed to this post.