Warriors Sign Georges Niang
The Warriors have added another player to their training camp roster, according to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, who reports (via Twitter) that former Pacer Georges Niang has inked a partially guaranteed deal with the defending champs. It’s a one-year pact.
Golden State already has 15 players on fully guaranteed contracts, so barring something unexpected happening in camp, Niang won’t make the club’s regular season roster. As Wojnarowski notes, the 24-year-old power forward will likely end up playing for the Santa Cruz Warriors, Golden State’s G League affiliate.
Niang, the 50th overall pick in the 2016 draft, spent his rookie season with the Pacers last season, playing sparingly in 23 NBA games for the club. The Iowa State alum saw a bigger role during his G League stints at Fort Wayne, though he played in just six games for the Mad Ants, averaging 19.0 PPG, 7.2 RPG, and 3.3 APG.
With Niang and Antonius Cleveland on camp deals and Chris Boucher on a two-way contract, the Warriors now have 18 total players on their offseason roster, leaving two open slots.
Center Rotation Likely To Stay The Same
- The Warriors’ center rotation is unlikely to change next season despite the presence of some promising young players at the back end, Anthony Slater of The Athletic opines. Zaza Pachulia will continue to start with JaVale McGee backing him up and David West getting minutes there at the start of second quarters, according to Slater. Damian Jones, who was inconsistent in summer-league play, or rookie Jordan Bell could force their way into the rotation at some point, Slater adds.
Warriors Notes: Durant, George, G League
After taking a pay cut this year to help the Warriors keep their roster intact, Kevin Durant cited Tim Duncan and Dirk Nowitzki as other players who have been willing to accept less over the years in order to help their respective clubs build winning squads. Speaking to Anthony Slater of The Athletic, Durant suggested that outside observers wanted the rising cost of the Warriors’ roster to break up the team, and he wanted to do his part to make sure that didn’t happen.
“They were all underpaid and I knew at some point they’d want to get what they deserve,” Durant said of teammates Andre Iguodala, Stephen Curry, and Shaun Livingston. “So I just took a step back and let the chips fall where they may. Then I took it in my hands. I wanted to keep the team together and I thought it was going to help the ownership bring all the guys back. And on top of that, it’s my money. It’s my decision. I can do what the hell I want with it.”
Slater’s Q&A with Durant, which is worth checking out in full, also included a discussion of some revamped Western Conference contenders, the recruitment of Nick Young, and an offseason trip to India.
Here’s more out of Golden State:
- After suggesting recently on Tim Bontemps’ podcast that he expects the Warriors to pursue Paul George in free agency next summer, Tim Kawakami of The Athletic does a little damage control, writing that he has no inside information on Golden State’s interest in George. As Kawakami explains, the Warriors are simply the type of franchise that will go after virtually any top free agent that fits their style of play, and George’s two-way skill-set and expiring contract fit that bill for 2018. The odds of the Dubs actually landing George are probably slim, Kawkami notes.
- The Santa Cruz Warriors – Golden State’s G League affiliate – have named former University of Kansas standout Aaron Miles as their new head coach, the club announced in a press release. “Aaron has stood out as a leader at every stop in his playing career and as a collegiate assistant coach,” GM Kent Lacob said in a statement. “We are confident that he will be a tremendous fit for our team and our organization as we look toward the 2017/18 season and beyond.”
- For more news, notes, and rumors on the Warriors, be sure to check out their team page.
Poll: Which Pacific Team Had Best Offseason?
It almost seems unfair that a team with a 67-15 record in the regular season and a 16-1 postseason mark could subsequently have one of the NBA’s offseasons too, but Golden State may have achieved that feat.
Heading into the summer, the Warriors knew Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant would be back, but none of the team’s other free agents were a lock to return. When the dust settled, the Dubs had re-signed virtually all their notable FAs, including Andre Iguodala, Shaun Livingston, Zaza Pachulia, David West, and JaVale McGee. The team even fortified its bench by adding Nick Young and Omri Casspi in free agency, and Jordan Bell in the draft.
While Golden State’s summer moves were impressive, some of their division rivals had very strong summers too. The Lakers, led by a new-look front office, drafted a potential franchise point guard in Lonzo Ball, dumped Timofey Mozgov‘s mega-contract, and improbably landed Kentavious Caldwell-Pope in free agency.
Meanwhile, the Kings – like the Lakers – certainly won’t challenge Golden State for Pacific supremacy right away, but Sacramento’s offseason’s moves featured an impressive mix of roster additions. Not only did the Kings sign a few veterans – George Hill, Zach Randolph, and Vince Carter – but the team also added several youngsters with big upside, including De’Aaron Fox, Bogdan Bogdanovic, Justin Jackson, Harry Giles, and Frank Mason.
The Clippers suffered the biggest single-player loss of any Pacific team as Chris Paul headed to Houston, but L.A. recovered nicely to retool its roster. Patrick Beverley, Lou Williams, and multiple young big men arrived in the CP3 trade, and the Clips managed to add potential starters like Danilo Gallinari and Euroleague star Milos Teodosic in free agency. The team also re-signed Blake Griffin when many NBA observers expected him to explore other options.
One of those teams that may have been eyeing Griffin was the Suns, but Phoenix ultimately opted to lay low and be patient with its rebuild rather than pursuing a top free agent. That made for a quiet summer, but it’s probably the right long-term move, and it’s not as if the Suns were totally inactive. The club landed one of the top players on its draft board in Josh Jackson and re-signed free agent big man Alan Williams to a team-friendly three-year deal.
What do you think? Which Pacific team has had the best offseason so far? Weigh in below with your vote and then jump into the comment section to share your thoughts.
Which Pacific team has had the best offseason?
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Golden State Warriors 41% (669)
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Los Angeles Lakers 28% (459)
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Sacramento Kings 18% (290)
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Los Angeles Clippers 7% (116)
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Phoenix Suns 6% (104)
Total votes: 1,638
Trade Rumors app users, click here to vote.
Previously:
NBA Teams Carrying At Least 15 Guaranteed Contracts
As we detailed earlier today in our breakdown of each NBA team’s current roster count, clubs can carry up to 20 players in the offseason, but are limited to 15 players on their regular season rosters. As such, teams will often only carry 13 or 14 players on guaranteed contracts into training camp, giving a non-guaranteed player or two the opportunity to impress coaches and earn a spot on the 15-man squad.
However, even with training camps still a month and a half away, several NBA teams are already carrying 15 or more players with fully guaranteed salaries, limiting their roster flexibility and their ability to take fliers on camp invitees.
Here’s a breakdown of those teams, with their fully guaranteed salaries noted in parentheses:
- Boston Celtics (16)
- Golden State Warriors (15)
- Memphis Grizzlies (15)
- Sacramento Kings (15)
- Utah Jazz (15)
Of those five teams, the Celtics are the only club that will absolutely have to trade or waive a player on a guaranteed contract before the regular season gets underway. Shane Larkin and Daniel Theis may be the most at-risk players, since they don’t have any guaranteed money on their deals beyond the 2017/18 season. Abdel Nader and Semi Ojeleye also don’t have fully guaranteed salaries beyond this season, though they have partial guarantees for 2018/19.
Meanwhile, the Grizzlies will be in the same boat as Boston if they ultimately bring back restricted free agent JaMychal Green. A new deal for Green would give Memphis 16 guaranteed salaries. The Grizzlies also haven’t signed second-round pick Ivan Rabb, so if they intend to do so, they could create an even more significant roster crunch.
The other teams on the list above should, for the most part, have their 15-man regular season rosters locked in at this point, but if changes need to be made, the Kings should be willing to eat a guaranteed contract — they’re still well below the cap. The Jazz could afford to eat some money too, if necessary. The Warriors may be the team that needs to best make use of all 15 roster spots as they look to defend their title, but replacing a player on a guaranteed contract would be pricey, since Golden State is already deep into tax territory.
Finally, one other team worth watching is the Thunder. Currently, Oklahoma City only has 14 players on guaranteed contracts for 2017/18, but that figure doesn’t include Jerami Grant or Semaj Christon, both of whom could have a place on the club’s roster this season. I don’t think Grant will be going anywhere, so the Thunder may have to decide whether to part ways with Christon or whether another move can be made to keep him on the 15-man roster.
Salary information from Basketball Insiders was used in the creation of this post.
Warriors Notes: 15th Man, Looney, Offseason
- In a piece for The Athletic, Danny Leroux examines the Warriors‘ options for their 15th man, exploring whether the club should simply keep Kevon Looney or go in another direction with that final roster spot.
- The Warriors earned the No. 1 spot on David Aldridge’s list of offseason rankings, as he details in a piece for NBA.com. Aldridge’s list is based on each team’s summer roster moves, rather than its overall roster strength, so the Kings and Lakers rank in his top 10 as well.
Three 2017 Free Agents Signed Five-Year Contracts
The NBA’s current Collective Bargaining Agreement is designed to give teams certain benefits when it comes to re-signing their own free agents. Many players who reach free agency, for instance, are permitted to get 8% annual raises from their own teams, while they can only get 5% raises from another team. More notably, Bird rights free agents can sign five-year contracts with their own teams, but can only go up to four years with other clubs.
In some cases, that extra year doesn’t make much of a difference. For instance, Gordon Hayward left Utah for Boston and signed a four-year contract with the Celtics, even though the Jazz likely would have been willing to do a five-year max.
Still, for at least a small handful of players, that five-year contract may have played a part in their decisions to return to their own teams. As our Free Agent Tracker shows, three free agents signed five-year deals this year, and all three of those contracts were worth at least $131MM. One was a maximum salary pact, and another was very close to the max.
Here are those five-year contracts, which will run through the 2021/22 season:
- Stephen Curry (Warriors): Five years, $201,158,790 (maximum salary)
- Blake Griffin (Clippers): Five years, $171,174,820 (fifth-year player option)
- Jrue Holiday (Pelicans): Five years, $131,100,000 (fifth-year player option)
Curry was never a threat to leave Golden State, but Griffin and Holiday reportedly drew interest from several other teams. The Suns were believed to be eyeing Griffin, while Holiday was said to have received interest from the Mavericks, Knicks, and others. However, the fact that those players’ old teams were willing to offer five years likely made negotiations much simpler, since no rival suitor could offer that fifth year.
Although neither Griffin nor Holiday received the max from their respective teams, they’ll both earn more money over five years than any other team could have offered over four — Holiday’s deal is believed to include unlikely incentives that could increase its total value to $150MM.
Meanwhile, Griffin and Holiday also received fifth-year player options, which gives them a safety net for the summer of 2021. If they’re still playing at a high level at that point, it might make sense to opt out and sign a new, longer-term contract. If their production has slipped, or if they’re battling injuries, they’ll have the option of remaining in their current contract and collecting a big pay check in that fifth year.
The ability to offer an additional year to their own free agents hasn’t always prevented teams from losing top-tier players on the open market, but there are still a few instances where that fifth year seems to make a difference. In 2017, there may have only been a couple scenarios where that fifth year was a difference-maker, but the Clippers and Pelicans are likely happy that it remained written into the new CBA.
NBA Teams Projected To Be 2017/18 Taxpayers
In the wake of 2016’s salary cap spike, the luxury tax line was higher than ever in 2016/17, and only two teams finished the season above it. The Clippers barely crossed over into taxpayer territory, while the Cavaliers blew past that threshold and were on the hook for a big tax bill.
In 2017/18, the salary cap increase was far more modest, and as a result, it appears that several more teams will finish the season as taxpayers, surpassing this year’s $119.266MM tax line. Teams have until the end of the ’17/18 regular season to adjust team salary in an effort to get back under the tax line, but most of those clubs will have little leverage if they try to dump salary, so it won’t be easy to cut costs.
Here’s an early look at the teams likely to finish 2017/18 as taxpayers:
Cleveland Cavaliers
Current guaranteed team salary (approximate): $139.73MM
No team is further over the tax line than the Cavaliers, and Cleveland will also qualify as a repeat taxpayer for the first time this year, making the penalties levied against the franchise more punitive. Currently, the Cavs’ projected tax bill is approaching $70MM, which explains why the team is interested in attaching an extra contract or two to Kyrie Irving in any trade.
Golden State Warriors
Current guaranteed team salary (approximate): $135.36MM
Last year’s dominant Warriors team actually didn’t have one of the more expensive rosters in the league, but that will change this time around, with several players signing lucrative new deals. The biggest raise belongs to Stephen Curry, who played out the final season of a four-year, $44MM deal in 2016/17, and will now start a five-year, $200MM+ pact.
Oklahoma City Thunder
Current guaranteed team salary (approximate): $125.99MM
Years ago, the Thunder decided to move on from James Harden when he and the team couldn’t agree to terms on an extension that would have created luxury-tax issues for the franchise. Now, Oklahoma City has the third-highest team salary in the NBA, and a projected tax bill that will exceed $10MM.
Portland Trail Blazers
Current guaranteed team salary (approximate): $124.25MM
The Trail Blazers managed to slash their projected tax bill significantly a couple weeks ago when they sent Allen Crabbe to the Nets for Andrew Nicholson. Assuming they eventually waive and stretch Nicholson’s contract, as expected, the pair of transactions will save the club upwards of $40MM in tax payments alone.
Washington Wizards
Current guaranteed team salary (approximate): $123.54MM
Going into tax territory was necessary if the Wizards wanted to match Otto Porter‘s offer sheet from the Nets and bring him back. Fortunately for the club, John Wall‘s new super-max extension won’t go into effect until 2019/20 — his current salary is far below the 2017/18 max, which will save the Wizards from paying more exorbitant tax penalties.
Milwaukee Bucks
Current guaranteed team salary (approximate): $119.38MM
The Bucks currently project to be over the tax threshold by a very small amount, and I’d be surprised if the team doesn’t make every effort to trim payroll and sneak below that line before the season is over. Milwaukee isn’t a big-market team, and the opportunity to be on the receiving end of the luxury tax – rather than the paying end – will be tantalizing.
Outside of the six teams listed above, a handful of other clubs are inching dangerously close to tax territory. Among them: The Clippers, whose estimated guaranteed team salary sits about $100K below the tax threshold; the Pelicans, who are less than $1MM below the tax line; and the Rockets, who only have about $114.75MM in guarantees, but are carrying several million more dollars in non-guaranteed contracts.
Salary information from ESPN, Basketball Insiders, and HeatHoops was used in the creation of this post.
Players Who Can Veto Trades In 2017/18
No-trade clauses are rare in the NBA, but one such provision has been the subject of much discussion so far in 2017, as Carmelo Anthony made use of his NTC to block the Knicks from sending him to an undesirable destination. For much of the offseason, Anthony was focused on joining the Rockets, but he eventually agreed to a deal that sent him to Oklahoma City.
Anthony is one of just two NBA players whose contract includes an explicit no-trade clause, but there are still several players each year who have the ability to veto trades. A player who re-signs with his previous team on a one-year contract – or a two-year deal with an option year – is given no-trade protection, and so is a player who signs an offer sheet and has that offer matched by his previous team. Players who accept qualifying offers after their rookie deals expire can also block deals.
Taking into account that list of criteria, here are the players who must give their consent if their teams want to trade them during the 2017/18 league year:
No-trade clauses
- Carmelo Anthony (Thunder)
- LeBron James (Cavaliers)
- Dirk Nowitzki (Mavericks)
Players whose offer sheets were matched
- Otto Porter (Wizards)
- Note: Even with his consent, Porter cannot be traded to the Nets during the 2017/18 league year.
Players accepting qualifying offers
- Alex Len (Suns)
- Nerlens Noel (Mavericks)
Players re-signing for one year (or two years including an option)
- Nick Collison (Thunder)
- Kevin Durant (Warriors)
- Udonis Haslem (Heat)
- Ersan Ilyasova (Hawks)
- JaVale McGee (Warriors)
- Shabazz Muhammad (Timberwolves)
- Mike Muscala (Hawks)
- Zaza Pachulia (Warriors)
- Jason Terry (Bucks)
- David West (Warriors)
In addition to the players listed above who can veto trades through the 2017/18 league year, there’s another small handful of players who can’t be dealt under any circumstance until at least next July. The following players signed a Designated Veteran Extension this season, which precludes them from being traded for a full calendar year:
- Stephen Curry (Warriors)
- James Harden (Rockets)
- John Wall (Wizards)
- Russell Westbrook (Thunder)
Information from Basketball Insiders and ESPN was used in the creation of this post.
Stephen Curry Asked Warriors About Taking Discount
The Warriors are bringing back just about all of their key free agents involved in last season’s championship run, and Kevin Durant‘s willingness to accept a discount on his new deal helped the team to make those moves. Stephen Curry, who received the largest contract of Golden State’s offseason, tells Marcus Thompson II of The Athletic that he also asked the Warriors about the possibility of taking a discount to accommodate other players.
“I actually asked [GM] Bob [Myers],” Curry said. “If I were to take a discount — at any number, I don’t know what it would be — how much of a difference would that make for us to be able to sign other guys. It wasn’t like [Durant’s] situation. His had a direct impact on us being able to sign Andre [Iguodala] and Shaun [Livingston]. And it was just an unbelievable sacrifice by KD. But mine didn’t matter.”
It’s true that it made much more sense for Durant to accept a discount than Curry. The Warriors held Curry’s Bird rights, meaning the team could make him a five-year maximum salary offer without affecting other free agents. If Curry had taken a discount on the first year, it would have impacted his earnings in all future seasons as well, since raises are limited to 8% annually. Durant, on the other hand, is likely to opt out of his new deal in 2018, so he’ll likely trade a few million dollars this year for a larger – and longer-term – payday a year from now.
If Durant had wanted a max deal of his own this offseason, the Warriors probably would have had to renounce both Iguodala’s and Livingston’s cap holds to make it happen, since the club didn’t hold KD’s full Bird rights.
Still, Durant accepted an even more significant discount than he needed to, allowing the Warriors to avoid going as deep into the tax as they otherwise might’ve. That aspect of Durant’s discount didn’t technically have an impact on the amount the Warriors could offer their free agents by CBA rules — it simply reduced the club’s projected tax penalties, perhaps making ownership more willing to spend on other players.
When considering Curry’s and Durant’s new agreements, it’s also worth noting that Curry was underpaid for the last several seasons, having just finished up a four-year, $44MM contract. He won two MVP awards and two titles during the life of that contract, so it made sense for the Warriors to reward him with a full max deal.