Southwest Notes: Murray, McGowens, J. Smith, Christie
With Dejounte Murray‘s season debut imminent, Mirin Fader of The Athletic and Rod Walker of NOLA.com both look at what has been a long road back for the Pelicans guard, whose Achilles tear in January 2025 represented the worst of his professional setbacks following a series of personal tragedies.
During the months leading up to his Achilles tear, Murray’s mother sustained a stroke, his cousin was killed, and his uncle suffered an overdose, Fader writes. Given all he was dealing with off the court, the 29-year-old was able to put the challenge of making it back from an Achilles tear into perspective, according to Walker.
“I’ve been through so much,” he said. “This is part of the journey. Injuries are a part of sports. It’s not how you fall. It’s how you get back up. For me, it was attacking the process day-by-day and staying level-headed and trying to find some positive and fun out of it.”
At 16-42, the Pelicans are well out of the postseason picture, but they also don’t control their 2026 first-round pick, so they have no incentive to lose down the stretch of the 2025/26 season. With that in mind, head coach James Borrego is looking forward to welcoming Murray back to the rotation and seeing what kind of impact the former All-Star guard will have on his teammates and the club as a whole.
“Dejounte will raise our level,” Borrego said, per Walker. “… He’s worked his tail off, so there’s probably a little bit of relief of ‘I’m finally back.’ But more than anything, I just want him to go out there and compete and embrace the moment and be there with his teammates.”
We have more from around the Southwest:
- The new three-year contract signed by Pelicans wing Bryce McGowens is fully guaranteed through the 2026/27 season, tweets Michael Scotto of HoopsHype, with a team option for ’27/28. New Orleans used $724,598 of its mid-level exception to promote McGowens from his two-way deal and to lock him up for two more seasons beyond this one.
- Former No. 2 overall pick Jabari Smith Jr., whose new five-year, $122MM rookie scale extension will go into effect this July, has been showing in recent weeks why the Rockets signed him to that deal, as Matt Young of The Houston Chronicle writes (subscription required). Smith’s 31-point outing vs. Utah on Monday increased his scoring average over the past 10 games to 18.6 PPG on .550/.483/.833 shooting. “The last month or so, I think Jabari has been catching his rhythm, understanding more his role,” teammate Kevin Durant said. “I know guys have been here for a while but it’s still a different team from last year, so guys got to understand their roles a little bit more and I think ‘Bari has just stepped into his position and been great for us the last month.”
- Mavericks swingman Max Christie spoke to Mark Medina of EssentiallySports about a variety of topics, including not being included in the three-point contest, why he thinks Cooper Flagg should be Rookie of the Year, and the impact Kyrie Irving has had on the team despite not playing this season. Christie also told Mike Curtis of The Dallas Morning News (subscription required) that he wants to put an exclamation point on what has already been a career year. “I just want to play better for the last 26 games than I did for the first 51,” said Christie, who has averaged a career-high 13.3 points per game on .469/.427/.871 shooting. “If you look at it from a statistical standpoint, if I could bump those (per-game) averages up a little bit, that would be successful for me. … I’ve been shooting it well from the two and the three, but I think if I’m willing to sacrifice a little bit of percentage for volume, I think that can be a good building block for me. Obviously, not going crazy but just looking to try and improve.”
Dejounte Murray Expected To Make Season Debut Tuesday
February 23: Murray believes he’ll make his season debut on Tuesday, Will Guillory of The Athletic tweets. New Orleans hosts Golden State tomorrow.
February 20: Pelicans guard Dejounte Murray has been sidelined since January 31, 2025 after rupturing his right Achilles tendon, but he’s close to returning to action. The one-time All-Star went through full practices on Wednesday and Thursday, writes Rod Walker of NOLA.com.
“He’s close,” interim head coach James Borrego said after Thursday’s practice. “I’d say in the next week, he’s back on the floor playing NBA games, which is amazing.”
Murray, whom the Pelicans acquired in the 2024 offseason in a trade with Atlanta, had a tough start to his tenure in New Orleans. He fractured his left hand in the team’s 2024/25 season opener, causing him to miss 17 games, then suffered the torn Achilles a few months later.
The 29-year-old made 31 appearances last season, averaging 17.5 points, 7.4 assists, 6.5 rebounds and 2.0 steals in 32.6 minutes per game. He struggled with his offensive efficiency, posting an underwhelming .393/.299/.823 shooting slash line.
Murray has been ruled out for Friday’s game vs. Milwaukee, but Borrego is optimistic about what the former All-Defensive guard will bring to the Pelicans when he makes his season debut.
“I’m expecting a lot from him,” Borrego said, per Walker. “He’s coming off a massive injury, but what I’ve seen has been encouraging. I look forward to watching him.”
Southwest Notes: Irving, Wembanyama, Jordan, Middleton
The Mavericks recently announced that Kyrie Irving would miss the rest of the 2025/26 season, and according to Mike Curtis of The Dallas Morning News, the decision was the right one, both for Irving’s health and the team’s long-term success.
Curtis notes that by the time Irving returns to play, nearly 600 days will have elapsed from the time of his last on-court action. While that time off will make it difficult to immediately recapture his previous form, it should give the veteran guard ample time to make sure that his knee is fully healthy before diving into the next era of Mavericks basketball.
Irving has undergone multiple surgeries on his left knee over the years, and given his age and the mileage he has accumulated over his 15-year career, there’s likely additional concern about the possibility of re-injuring the knee should he return too soon.
The Mavs will also be looking to maximize their draft position this summer to add another high-end talent to the duo of Irving and star rookie Cooper Flagg. This will be the last year Dallas controls its own first-round pick until 2031.
Curtis notes that it would have been useful for the team’s two cornerstones to get some time to start building their chemistry, but playing things safe on the injury and lottery fronts should yield even higher benefits over time.
“I am looking forward to coming back stronger next season,” Irving said. “The belief and drive I have inside only grows.”
We have more from around the Southwest Division:
- Victor Wembanyama had an outsized impact on the All-Star game this year, adding a sense of intensity and competitiveness to what is often a less-than-enthusiastic affair. Next, the Spurs‘ star may have his sights set on another event: the Slam Dunk Contest. “I’ll be in the dunk contest one day,” he said after Saturday’s San Antonio victory in which he unleashed a two-handed windmill dunk (Twitter video link via Kevin O’Connor of Yahoo Sports).
- DeAndre Jordan hadn’t played for the Pelicans since October 29 heading into Saturday’s contest against the Sixers. Against Philadelphia, he logged over 31 minutes in a starting role, recording 15 rebounds (five of them offensive) and four blocks. In an article for NOLA.com, Rod Walker called it a “turn back the clock” performance. The blocks total was the highest Jordan has recorded since the 2020/21 season. “I was extremely excited,” Jordan said. “Anytime you can go out there and compete in this league, it’s a gift. It was cool to be able to go out there and be able to play.” After the game, Jordan said he was craving two things: wine and ice.
- Khris Middleton had his best scoring game of the season on Sunday for the Mavericks, putting up 25 points on 11-of-15 shooting while adding seven rebounds and seven assists in a five-point victory over the Pacers. After the game, coach Jason Kidd effusively praised the veteran wing. “A lot of times, you don’t understand how tall he is so he can create space with his height, and mid-range game,” Kidd said, per Curtis (Twitter link). “He can always get his shot off. His ability to playmate, being able to run an offense with him. We got guys layups and wide open shots. He was really good tonight.” Middleton has stepped up with Flagg out, having also scored 18 points in Friday’s loss to the Wolves.
Seven NBA Teams Have An Open Two-Way Slot
After a busy trade deadline, we’ve reached the portion of the season where teams make changes to the back ends of their roster in preparation for the playoffs and the future. That often involves promoting players from the G League to either 10-day deals or two-way contracts, and converting two-way standouts to standard deals.
While 16 two-way standouts have been promoted in the past few weeks, that’s not always the case. Minnesota recently waived Johnny Juzang after he reached his 50-game active limit, for example, and Oklahoma City did the same a few weeks ago with Chris Youngblood.
Teams can convert players on two-way contracts to standard deals until April 12, the last day of the regular season. However, March 4 is the final day for a team to sign a player to a two-way contract, and several clubs currently have a two-way opening ahead of that deadline.
As our tracker shows, a total of seven two-way spots are vacant around the NBA, and each opening is for a different team. Here’s the full list:
- Atlanta Hawks
- Boston Celtics
- Milwaukee Bucks
- Minnesota Timberwolves
- New Orleans Pelicans
- Portland Trail Blazers
- Sacramento Kings
Each of these seven teams is virtually certain to fill its open two-way spot in the next several days. Two-way contracts don’t count against the salary cap, so there’s no financial reason to not have all three spots filled by March 4.
Players on two-way contracts generally bounce back and forth between the NBA and G League, but remain under team control and can’t be poached by rival franchises. You can learn more about two-way deals in our glossary entry.
Jeremiah Fears Discusses Rookie Season; Dejounte Murray May Play On Tuesday
- It’s been a season filled with growing pains for Jeremiah Fears and the Pelicans, but the rookie guard expresses confidence that better times are ahead in an interview with Sam Yip of HoopsHype. “Being able to lose to understand how to win, I think that’s huge,” Fears said. “We’ve been in a lot of very close games. We just got to learn how to finish. And I think once we learn how to finish, we’ll be really, really good and we’ll end up flipping the switch.”
- The Pelicans are targeting Tuesday against Golden State for Dejounte Murray‘s season debut, according to Rod Walker of NOLA (Twitter link).“I expect him to be there in the next couple games,” interim coach James Borrego said before tonight’s contest. “Hopefully it’s Tuesday night. We’d all be excited for that.”
Pelicans Sign Bryce McGowens To Three-Year Deal
3:15 pm: McGowens’ conversion is now official, the Pelicans announced in a press release (Twitter link).
12:24 pm: The Pelicans and two-way wing Bryce McGowens have reached an agreement on a new three-year standard contract, agents Kyle McAlarney and Mark Bartelstein tell ESPN’s Shams Charania (Twitter link).
McGowens, 23, has averaged 7.9 points, 1.9 rebounds, and 1.5 assists in 19.9 minutes per game this season at the NBA level. He has made 11 starts for the Pelicans and has scored efficiently in his limited role, shooting 48.0% from the floor and 45.3% from beyond the three-point line.
Prior to signing a two-way contract with New Orleans last summer, McGowens appeared in 118 games for the Hornets and Trail Blazers from 2022-25, recording 4.8 PPG and 1.7 RPG in 14.4 MPG. The 6’6″ shooting guard was the 40th overall pick in the 2022 draft out of Nebraska.
McGowens still had the ability to appear in up to nine more regular season games before reaching his limit as a two-way player, but the Pelicans, with an open spot on their 15-man roster, decided not to wait to promote him to a standard deal.
While the details of that contract aren’t yet known, the fact that it’ll cover three years suggests the team will use part of its mid-level exception to complete the signing.
The transaction will open up a two-way slot for New Orleans alongside Trey Alexander and Hunter Dickinson.
Trey Murphy III Added To NBPA Executive Committee
- The Grizzlies‘ Santi Aldama and the Pelicans‘ Trey Murphy III have been selected as vice presidents for the NBPA executive committee, Cole tweets.
Blazers’ Cissoko Latest Two-Way Player To Reach Active Game Limit
Several teams will head into the NBA’s All-Star break with roster decisions to make before their schedules resume next week. One of those teams in the Trail Blazers, who deployed two-way player Sidy Cissoko for his 50th game of the season on Thursday in Utah.
Cissoko, who made his 24th start of the season and played 30 minutes in Portland’s win over the Jazz, has now reached the active game limit for two-way players and will no longer be able to suit up for the NBA team unless he’s promoted from his two-way contract to the Blazers’ standard 15-man roster.
Cissoko is one of several players in that boat, along with Nuggets forward Spencer Jones, Timberwolves guard Johnny Juzang, and Sixers forward Jabari Walker. All four two-way players have been active for 50 NBA games this season.
Cissoko and Jones have emerged as key contributors for their respective teams and will likely be promoted to standard contracts sooner rather than later. The Nuggets might have taken that route with Jones already if not for the concussion that sidelined him for the final three games before the All-Star break, which allowed the team to put off an official roster move for an extra couple weeks.
Denver has two openings on its 15-man roster, so no corresponding move will be necessary to promote Jones, making the club’s decision even more straightforward.
That’s not the case in Portland though, where one of the team’s 15 players currently holding standard contracts will need to be cut if the Blazers want to promote Cissoko. If the team decides to convert both Cissoko and its other standout two-way player, Caleb Love (who is at 45 active games), two cuts would be required. Rayan Rupert and Matisse Thybulle have been mentioned as possible odd men out, but that’s not necessarily a given.
There’s less urgency for certain other teams whose two-way players have reached – or are fast approaching – their active game limits. For instance, while Juzang has been active for 50 games this season, he only actually saw the floor in 21 of them — he was a DNP-CD in the other 29. As such, it’s perhaps no surprise that the Wolves haven’t rushed to promote him to the standard roster. Juzang was on the inactive list for Minnesota’s last three games prior to the All-Star break.
Rockets two-way guard JD Davison is another player nearing his 50-game limit (he has five games left), but like Juzang, he hasn’t been a crucial part of his team’s rotation when he’s active. Davison has appeared in 24 games and been a DNP-CD in 21 others. With that in mind, Houston may not be in a rush to move him to the 15-man roster when he gets to his game limit.
It’s also worth noting that promoting a two-way player or leaving him in limbo aren’t the only two options a team has at its disposal after he reaches his active game limit. When two-way player Chris Youngblood found himself in that situation last week, the Thunder decided to waive him, recognizing that there was no room for him on their 15-man roster and wanting to give him the chance to explore other opportunities before the end of the season.
Mavericks guard Ryan Nembhard (six games left) and center Moussa Cisse (eight games left), Wizards big man Tristan Vukcevic (nine games left), Pelicans guard Bryce McGowens (nine games left), and Suns guard Jamaree Bouyea (10 games left) are among the other notable two-way players whose teams will have roster decisions to make in the coming weeks.
The full list of players who have already been converted from two-way deals to standard contracts can be found here.
Post-Deadline Rumors: Morant, JJJ, Bulls, Missi, Celtics
The fact that Ja Morant wasn’t traded at last week’s deadline came as a bit of a surprise to him, according to Tomer Azarly of ClutchPoints, who says the Grizzlies weren’t willing to accept a package similar to what Atlanta got for Trae Young.
The Grizzlies talked to the Heat, Timberwolves, and Bucks about Morant, but didn’t come close to making a deal, Azarly writes. League sources tell ClutchPoints that Ryan Rollins was a player Memphis and Milwaukee talked about, but the Grizzlies were averse to taking back Kyle Kuzma and/or Bobby Portis, who are both on multiyear guaranteed contracts.
According to reporting last week, Memphis signaled a willingness to take on long-term salary if it came attached to first-round draft compensation, but there’s no indication the Bucks would’ve put their lone tradable first-rounder on the table for Morant.
The expectation is that the Grizzlies will try to trade Morant again in the summer, and Azarly suggests that the point guard should be able to return from his left elbow injury not long after the All-Star break. As Azarly explains, even though Memphis has pivoted to a full-on rebuild and would benefit from piling up losses down the stretch, both the team and Morant himself would appreciate the opportunity to have the 26-year-old rebuild his trade value with a strong finish to the season.
Here are a few more leftover rumors from last week’s trade deadline:
- In addition to Golden State and Toronto – whose talks with the Grizzlies were previously reported – the Pistons and Hawks also “checked in” on Jaren Jackson Jr. before he was dealt to the Jazz, while the Suns and Hornets also had interest, says Brett Siegel of ClutchPoints. There’s no indication that any of those teams made any real progress toward acquiring Jackson from Memphis.
- The Bulls, who acquired a total of eight second-round picks in their various pre-deadline deals, made an effort to flip some of those second-rounders to the Pelicans last Thursday in a deal for second-year center Yves Missi, Siegel writes. However, New Orleans was holding out for a first-round pick and ended up retaining Missi through the deadline.
- Sources who spoke to Jake Fischer of The Stein Line (Substack link) viewed the Celtics‘ swap of Anfernee Simons for Nikola Vucevic as a “clear indicator” that Boston thinks forward Jayson Tatum will be able to return before the end of the season. Simons’ was the team’s fourth-leading scorer prior to the trade, but would’ve likely seen his role reduced in a rotation that featured a healthy Tatum.
More On Pacers’ Trade For Ivica Zubac
The Clippers were resistant for most of the season to the idea of trading Ivica Zubac, according to Jake Fischer of The Stein Line (Substack link), who says that even after last week’s James Harden deal with Cleveland, there was a sense that L.A. wouldn’t change its stance on its starting center.
However, the Pacers were “more determined than anyone realized” to find a long-term answer at the five, Fischer writes, noting that the team also called the Cavaliers about Jarrett Allen and thought highly of Hawks big man Onyeka Okongwu, whose team-friendly deal (two years and $33MM after this season) was appealing to a team targeting centers with mid-sized contracts.
According to Brett Siegel of ClutchPoints, the Pacers also looked at options like Mavericks center Daniel Gafford and Pelicans big man Yves Missi, but Zubac was always thought to be on top of their list.
For the Clippers to relent on Zubac, it was going require a team to meet their asking price of two first-round picks “and then some,” per Fischer, who suggests that some members of the Clippers wouldn’t have been upset if Indiana had decided the cost was too high, since it would’ve meant L.A. “had” to hang onto the 28-year-old, who was highly valued within the organization.
However, the Pacers put together a package of two valuable first-round picks, a future second-rounder, and two young players – Bennedict Mathurin and Isaiah Jackson – for Zubac, which convinced the Clippers to pull the trigger on a deal.
As Fischer writes, one of those first-rounders features unusual protection. It will convey to L.A. in 2026 only if it lands between No. 5 and No. 9 in this year’s draft. Besides the unique protections, that traded pick also includes unusual roll-over details — if Indiana keeps it this year, the Clippers would instead receive a 2031 first-rounder.
In a typical deal, the Pacers would owe the Clippers their 2027 first-rounder if the ’26 pick were to land in its protected range. However, according to Fischer, it was important to the Clips to secure a farther-off draft pick in that scenario. L.A.’s thinking was that Indiana – armed with Zubac and a potential top-four pick in 2026 – would have a bright short-term outlook, reducing the value of the team’s ’27 first-rounder, whereas there would be more variability by ’31.
Here are a few more notes related to the trade:
- While the Clippers had been prioritizing 2027 cap room in the hopes of going star-hunting that offseason, the team recognized that mere cap space might not be enough to land that sort of player, given how few stars reach free agency these days, Fischer writes. With that in mind, L.A. wanted to replenish its cache of draft picks to some extent. The Clippers that those picks they’ve acquired from the Pacers will help put them in a better position to pursue an impact player down the road, per Fischer.
- The Pacers had zero interest in surrendering their 2026 first-round pick in a deal for Gafford, while the Mavericks didn’t have a ton of interest in Mathurin, so trade talks between those teams didn’t generate any real traction, Siegel writes.
- The Mavericks had been hoping to add a 2026 first-rounder if they were going to move Gafford at the deadline, but the Hawks, another team with interest in the big man, also didn’t have interest in parting with its least favorable ’26 first-round pick (likely to be Cleveland’s), so the discussions between the two teams failed to gain momentum, according to Siegel.