Los Angeles Clippers Rumors | Hoops Rumors

Clippers Waive Lester Hudson

July 16th, 2015 at 7:58am CST by Chuck Myron

JULY 16TH, 7:58am: The Clippers officially waived Hudson, the team announced via press release before the guarantee deadline Wednesday night. He’s reportedly expected to sign in China.

JULY 15TH, 11:13pm: The Clippers will waive Lester Hudson today, a league executive tells Ben Bolch of the Los Angeles Times (Twitter link). Bolch reported Tuesday that the move was likely. Hudson’s non-guaranteed minimum salary, worth $1,015,421, would become fully guaranteed if he remains on the roster through today.

The 30-year-old joined the Clippers this spring on a 10-day contract, and he later beat out Nate Robinson, who was still recovering from a left knee injury, for a deal that covered the rest of the season. The Clips and Hudson tacked an extra year onto the contract, but the team is poised to let him go, clearing more roster flexibility to add other minimum-salary signees. No. 56 overall pick Branden Dawson just officially signed to a contract that runs two years at the minimum with the first year guaranteed, according to Dan Woike of the Orange County Register (on Twitter).

Hudson averaged 11.2 minutes per game in five regular season games and made cameo appearances in seven playoff contests, his first NBA action since the 2011/12 season. He had been playing in China, where he was a major scoring force, pouring in 31.2 points per game for Liaoning this past season before joining the Clippers.

Will Lester Hudson latch on with another NBA team this summer? in Hoops Rumors’s Hangs on LockerDome//

Lester Hudson Expected To Sign In China

July 15th, 2015 at 11:21pm CST by Chuck Myron

Lester Hudson is expected to return to play for Liaoning of the Chinese Basketball Association, assuming he clears waivers from the Clippers, tweets Nick Bedard of Basketball Buddha. The team has yet to officially announce Hudson’s release, but a league executive told Ben Bolch of the Los Angeles Times that the Clippers would waive the point guard today, the last day for them to do so without guaranteeing his full minimum salary for 2015/16.

Hudson spent much of this past season with Liaoning before joining the Clippers for the stretch run. He averaged 31.2 points per game for Liaoning and led the CBA with 3.1 steals per contest. He’d played in China in each of the three seasons since 2011/12, the last in which he’d seen NBA action prior to his time with the Clippers this spring.

Most Hoops Rumors readers predicted that Hudson would end up outside the NBA for this coming season. The early guarantee date that his agents at Priority Sports negotiated with the Clippers affords Hudson the likelihood of free agency before opportunities dry up both stateside and abroad. Any NBA team could claim him using the minimum-salary exception and keep him from returning overseas, but because of the full guarantee that would kick in for him if a team did that, it seems likely that he’ll pass through waivers.

Southwest Notes: Mavs, Williams, Calathes

July 15th, 2015 at 1:17pm CST by Chuck Myron

Mavericks owner Mark Cuban spoke Tuesday with Clippers owner Steve Ballmer and “it started off more than a little frigid,” as Cuban recounted via Cyber Dust, his social media app, and as the Dallas Morning News relays. That’s not surprising, given the DeAndre Jordan saga, but Cuban said he and Ballmer cleared the air.

“I told him exactly what I told other owners, I didn’t have a problem with his hail Mary approach to keeping a player,” Cuban wrote. “I understood why they did it. And even how they did it. They got their player back. End of story.”

Cuban said he doesn’t have a problem with the July Moratorium, which seemingly helped facilitate Jordan’s reversal, but even if he did, the moratorium doesn’t look like it’s going away anytime soon. Here’s more from around the Southwest:

Deron Williams‘ two-year deal with the Mavs is worth $10MM and includes a player option, according to Marc Stein of ESPN.com (Twitter link).
The clock appears to be ticking on an NBA future for Grizzlies restricted free agent Nick Calathes. The point guard denied to Ronald Tillery of The Commercial Appeal that he has signed with Panathinaikos of Greece, but he’ll commit to that team if he doesn’t find an NBA deal today, according to David Pick of Eurobasket.com (Twitter link). Calathes is drawing NBA interest, but he’s hesitant to continue as a backup, Pick hears. The Mavericks have reportedly contacted him, though that was two weeks ago. Memphis has the power to match all competing bids from NBA teams, but not from overseas clubs.
Panathinaikos is close to a deal with center Nikola Milutinov, this year’s 26th overall pick, Sportando’s Enea Trapani writes. Regardless, Milutinov won’t soon be joining the Spurs, the team that drafted him, as San Antonio has informed the NBA that it won’t sign him or 2013 No. 28 pick Livio Jean-Charles during 2015/16, allowing San Antonio to remove their cap hits, notes Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders (Twitter links).
The Rockets reportedly had hopes of signing draft-and-stash prospect Marko Todorovic this summer, but that won’t be happening, as the big man has signed a three-year deal with Khimki Moscow, the Russian club announced (Twitter link; hat tip to Sportando’s Emiliano Carchia).
Spurs GM R.C. Buford said he and the front office didn’t think that they would have been able to snag Ray McCallum if he’d have been a free agent on the open market, so they were pleased to pull off the trade with the Kings that brought him in, as Dan McCarney of the San Antonio Express-News chronicles. McCallum, who’s excited about the deal, earned a $200K partial guarantee on his salary when the Spurs didn’t waive him Sunday.
A $390,089 sliver of Houston’s Jeremy Lin trade exception expired Monday, though it was essentially too small to use. The Rockets had already used the majority of the exception, once worth $8,374,646, to trade for Corey Brewer and Alexey Shved in December.
Brewer’s new three-year deal with the Rockets is worth precisely $23,420,913, as Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders shows.

Clippers Sign Branden Dawson

July 15th, 2015 at 11:31am CST by Chuck Myron

WEDNESDAY, 11:31am: Dawson has officially signed with the Clippers, the team announced.

TUESDAY, 2:22pm: The Clippers are expected to sign Branden Dawson, this year’s No. 56 overall pick, within the week, reports Ben Bolch of the Los Angeles Times (Twitter link). The former Michigan State forward’s strong showing in the summer league is fueling the Clippers’ desire for a deal, Bolch indicates. It would likely be a minimum-salary deal covering no more than two seasons for Dawson, since that’s all the Clippers are limited to after re-signing DeAndre Jordan and spending their taxpayer’s mid-level exception on Paul Pierce.

New Orleans originally drafted Dawson, quickly trading him to the Clippers in return for cash. Early returns on the $630K investment are positive for the Clips, as the 22-year-old averaged 12.8 points and 10.3 rebounds across 25.6 minutes per game in his first four summer league appearances.

Defense is Dawson’s calling card, but he’s been working on a jump shot, as he told Zach Links of Hoops Rumors before the draft. The 22-year-old mentioned the Clippers and the Pelicans among the teams that liked him.

And-Ones: Labor, Moratorium, Max Salaries

July 15th, 2015 at 10:16am CST by Chuck Myron

Commissioner Adam Silver struck an optimistic tone about labor negotiations with a December 15th, 2016 deadline looming for owners and players to opt out of the collective bargaining agreement, writes Sam Amick of USA Today.

“You know, I’m not sure if the players association is going to opt out,” Silver said as he addressed media Tuesday. “[Union executive director] Michele [Roberts] made some early remarks suggesting maybe they were leaning that direction, but she hasn’t told me that she plans to opt out. And I know that in discussions that she and I have had and I’ve had with players association representatives, it’s clear the goal on both sides is to avoid any sort of work stoppage whatsoever and maybe even to avoid the opt out.”

Still, Silver claims a “significant number of teams” are losing money, Amick notes. The commissioner said the league projects that it’ll need to issue a $500MM check to the players after the 2016/17 season because total salaries aren’t expected to add up to the required 50-51% of basketball related income, even as the salary cap surges, as Ken Berger of CBSSports.com observes. Berger sees a strong chance that the owners opt out, in spite of Silver’s seeming confidence that such can be avoided. Here’s more from around the league:

Owners discussed the idea of changing the July Moratorium to avoid sagas like the one that surrounded DeAndre Jordan as he decommitted to the Mavs to return to the Clippers, but none of the owners could come up with an appealing solution, Silver said, according to Berger.
The projected maximum salaries for next season are $20.4MM for players with fewer than seven years of experience, $24.9MM for those with seven to nine years in the league, and $29.3MM for veterans of 10 or more years, tweets former Nets executive Bobby Marks. See this year’s max salaries right here.
The union continues to consider a get-tough stance on agencies that represent both players and coaches, but the most likely outcome is a continuance of the same policies, despite the conflict of interest, Grantland’s Zach Lowe reports. Agencies are allowed to represent both as long as they create separate divisions, with separate agents, to handle player and management clients, as Lowe explains. Still, not all are pleased with arrangement, and when the Bucks, who have close ties to Excel, drafted Excel client Rashad Vaughn last month, some people around the league found it untoward, Lowe writes.
The Nets once more led luxury taxpayers for this past season, though it wasn’t the record amount of some $90MM from a year ago. This time, they paid $19.98MM, followed by the Cavs with $6.96MM, the Clippers at $4.8MM, and the Thunder at $2.79MM, salary cap expert Larry Coon tweets. Teams that didn’t pay the tax saw $830K each as a result.
The second-round pick that the Celtics are sending to the Thunder as part of the Perry Jones III trade is Boston’s own 2018 second-rounder, but if it falls within the top 55 picks that year, the Celtics’ debt to Oklahoma City is extinguished, according to RealGM.

Bulls Re-Sign Mike Dunleavy

July 14th, 2015 at 5:21pm CST by Chuck Myron

JULY 14TH, 5:21pm: The deal is official, the Bulls announced via a press release.

9:08am: The sides have reached agreement, reports Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports (on Twitter). It’ll be $14.4MM over the course of the three years with a partial guarantee on the final season, Wojnarowski also tweets.

JULY 1ST, 8:16am: The Bulls and Mike Dunleavy are close to a three-year, $15MM deal, reports Marc Stein of ESPN.com (Twitter link). Chicago has remained the favorite even as other teams were poised to give chase. LeBron James apparently prompted the Cavaliers to pursue the client of outgoing Wasserman agent Arn Tellem, while the Wizards and Clippers also reportedly had interest.

Chicago has Early Bird rights on Dunleavy, and it would seem they’re putting them to use here. The Cavs were likely limited to no more than the taxpayer’s mid-level of $3.376MM, and while the Wizards could have spent their $5.464MM non-taxpayer’s mid-level, the Bulls appear to have come up with a comparable figure. That’s even though Chicago is poised to pay the tax, too.

Clippers Likely To Waive Lester Hudson

July 14th, 2015 at 2:19pm CST by Chuck Myron

The Clippers are likely to waive Lester Hudson and his non-guaranteed minimum salary before it becomes fully guaranteed at the end of Wednesday, as Ben Bolch of the Los Angeles Times hears (on Twitter). The team signed Hudson at the end of the regular season this past spring, tacking an additional year onto the contract.

Hudson had been out of the NBA since the 2011/12 season before he inked his deal with the Clippers. The 30-year-old combo guard, who’ll turn 31 next month, averaged 3.6 points in 11.2 minutes across five regular season appearances, and he made it into seven of the team’s 14 playoff games, though he saw just 5.4 MPG.

The defensive ability of Hudson intrigued Clippers coach/president Doc Rivers, but Nate Robinson was also in the running for the roster spot that went to Hudson, and Rivers acknowledged that a knee injury to Robinson that hadn’t yet healed played a part in the team’s decision to sign Hudson instead. Hudson probably has a safe landing in China if he so chooses, since he averaged 31.2 points per game for Liaoning this past season before returning stateside.

Atlantic Notes: Sixers, Miller, Ellington, Mickey

July 14th, 2015 at 1:01pm CST by Chuck Myron

The Sixers, for all their losing on the court, continue to turn a profit, and the value of the franchise has at least tripled since owner Josh Harris and his partners bought the team in 2011, Grantland’s Zach Lowe reports. Thus, Harris continues to appear patient with a slow, draft-focused rebuild, and even as last month’s draft was going on, the Sixers were in talks with teams in the bottom half of the lottery, seeking to acquire their picks, Lowe hears. Philadelphia is reportedly interested in Norris Cole, but it remains to be seen if that manifests into the first free agent signing of much significance in the tenure of GM Sam Hinkie. Here’s more from around the Atlantic Division:

The Nets appeared likely to waive Quincy Miller shortly after acquiring him from the Pistons on Monday, but a source tells Marc Stein of ESPN.com that Brooklyn plans to keep him at least through the start of training camp in the fall (Twitter links). It’ll cost the Nets a $50K partial guarantee if they keep him through Wednesday.
Wayne Ellington‘s two-year deal with the Nets is worth $3,067,500, reports Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders.
The Celtics and No. 33 overall pick Jordan Mickey began negotiations on Monday, reports Steve Bulpett of the Boston Herald (on Twitter), and confidence about the ability to reach a deal surrounded the opening of the talks, MassLive’s Jay King hears. Still, neither side is in a hurry, Bulpett tweets. Mickey, a client of Matt Babcock, is expected to seek guaranteed money, King writes.
Gigi Datome spoke with the Mavericks, Clippers and Wizards, but those teams wouldn’t promise him that he’d be a part of their rotations, tweets Mark Murphy of the Boston Herald. The former Celtics forward just signed with Turkey’s Fenerbahce Ulker.
Celtics president of basketball operations Danny Ainge doesn’t see deals for veterans like David Lee and Amir Johnson as antithetical to a youth-focused approach, believing that vets can serve important mentorship roles, as Steve Bulpett of the Boston Herald details.

Multiple Teams Eye Carlos Boozer

July 13th, 2015 at 9:15pm CST by Chuck Myron

July 13th, 9:15pm: The Nuggets and Knicks, in addition to the Pelicans, Clippers, Raptors and Spurs, are interested in Boozer, according to Michael Scotto of Sheridan Hoops (Twitter link).

1:21pm: The interest between Boozer and the Clippers is mutual, a source tells Ben Bolch of the Los Angeles Times (Twitter link).

July 7th, 1:12pm: The Pelicans are also showing interest, Broussard tweets. His latest dispatch doesn’t include the Spurs, so it’s unclear if they’re still in the mix after reaching a deal with David West.

July 6th, 1:21pm: Free agent Carlos Boozer is in talks with the Clippers, Spurs, Mavericks and Raptors, sources tell Chris Broussard of ESPN.com (Twitter link). Ramona Shelburne of ESPN.com first reported that the Spurs had expressed interest, while Broussard identified San Antonio and Dallas on the eve of free agency as teams that were poised to pursue the Rob Pelinka client, along with the Nets, Rockets, Heat and incumbent Lakers.

The Mavs and Spurs would appear to have the most to spend among the four teams that Broussard reports in connection with Boozer today, as they have the $2.814MM room exception at their disposal. However, it seems Dallas is nearing a deal for that exception amount, and San Antonio reportedly has interest in David West, perhaps at that same price point. It looks like Toronto has its room exception earmarked for Bismack Biyombo, while the Clippers have $2.088MM left on their mid-level in the wake of Paul Pierce‘s deal and the departure of DeAndre Jordan.

Boozer, who’ll turn 34 in November, expressed a willingness to take a bench role as he expressed his desire to re-sign with the Lakers. Someone close to the power forward told Barry Jackson of the Miami Herald that he wouldn’t be surprised if Boozer signed with the Heat this summer, though it’s unclear if either the Lakers or the Heat still have interest.

Pacific Notes: Jordan, Love, Pierce, Cousins

July 13th, 2015 at 6:15pm CST by Chuck Myron

DeAndre Jordan often returns the purchases he makes, friends tell Ramona Shelburne and Tim MacMahon of ESPN.com, who note that he’s on his third agent in seven years. Thus, perhaps the Mavs might have known that Jordan wasn’t quite in the bag until he put pen to paper. They triumphantly celebrated when it seemed Jordan was on his way to Dallas, as Shelburne and MacMahon detail.

“I hear this scream in the backyard and it’s [Mavs owner Mark] Cuban, walking inside with his hands up like, ‘We got him!'” Chandler Parsons said. “It was unbelievable. I was so hyped, because he really is a franchise-changing type player. They don’t come around very often. It was awesome. His mom was crying. I think Cuban might have even cried.”

Parsons called Jordan’s decision soon thereafter to instead return to the Clippers “very unethical and disrespectful,” as the Mavs small forward said to the ESPN scribes. Still, the Jordan saga isn’t the only storyline that’s changed during NBA free agency. A few more are amid the latest from around the Pacific Division:

The Lakers reportedly had a meeting planned with Kevin Love before he recommitted to the Cavs, but the purple-and-gold were never under the impression they would get that visit, a Lakers source told Jason Lloyd of the Akron Beacon Journal (Twitter link).
Paul Pierce doesn’t have a team option on the final season of his three-year deal with the Clippers, as originally reported, but he does have a partial guarantee of $1,096,080 on the final season, which is worth a total of $3,679,840, reports Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders (Twitter link). The deal is the most the Clips could have given him using their taxpayer’s mid-level exception.
Wesley Johnson‘s contract with the Clippers covers two years, instead of just one as originally reported, Pincus reports (Twitter link). Both seasons are at the minimum salary, and the second season is a player option, according to Pincus.
DeMarcus Cousins expressed his enthusiasm this weekend for playing alongside Rajon Rondo, notes Marc J. Spears of Yahoo Sports (Twitter link). Cousins reportedly wants a trade to the Lakers, but Rondo has committed to sign with the Kings.
The Suns had been eyeing Sonny Weems for more than a year, but Phoenix’s two-year, $5.8MM offer shocked him, and when he jumped on it, he turned down a fully guaranteed two-year, $6MM offer from Barcelona, as Paul Coro of the Arizona Republic details. The Phoenix deal reportedly includes a team option on year two, but the Suns think he can become the first guard off their bench, Coro writes. The Spurs also had a level of interest in the 29-year-old swingman, according to Coro.