New Orleans Pelicans Rumors | Hoops Rumors

Southwest Notes: Lawson, McCallum, Pelicans

July 21st, 2015 at 9:58pm CST by Eddie Scarito

Rockets GM Daryl Morey isn’t shy about gambling, and he acknowledges that trading four players for troubled point guard Ty Lawson carries with it some potential pitfalls, Calvin Watkins of ESPN.com writes. “I think when you’re trying to get the best team out of 30, you got to take risk all over the place,” Morey said. “Again, it’s a playing risk, injury risk, character risk. We feel Ty is someone we wanted to add to our team.”

With Houston badly in need of a playmaker at the point, Morey believes he has filled that need with Lawson, Watkins notes. “He’s one of the best playmakers in the league,” Morey continued. “If you look at the leaderboard for assists in the last few years or since he’s been in the league, he’s near the top. I think, as we saw, especially when [Harden] played a couple of teams last year, we struggle against teams that really load on James Harden, and we feel Ty will be a lot more difficult for teams to do that.”

Here’s more out of the Southwest Division:

Recent Spurs trade acquisition Ray McCallum‘s minimum salary of $947,276 became fully guaranteed when San Antonio didn’t waive him by the end of Monday, as Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders notes (Twitter link). It had been partially guaranteed for $200K, as the schedule of salary guarantee dates shows.
The Pelicans are looking into establishing their own D-League franchise, John Reid of The Times Picayune writes. New Orleans GM Dell Demps acknowledged the franchise’s interest in the D-League, but he didn’t know the exact time frame for the process, Reid adds. ”A couple of years ago, we did not do it because our players were so young and growing and we figured we just throw them into the fire,” Demps said. ”But that is the next step for us. We’re looking at some options right now on the Gulf Coast and in the state of Louisiana. So we’re looking into that. We have some plans to add our own D-League team.”
Danny Green surprised some when he elected to re-sign with the Spurs with a four-year, $45MM deal when numerous teams had expressed interest in his services, and he likely could have earned more elsewhere. But Green believes his annual salary is in line with his production, Dan McCarney of The San Antonio Express-News notes (Twitter links). “People keep saying that I took less. I think I took what I was worth,” said Green. Though, to get his full market value, Green would have likely had to go to a team like the Pistons or the Kings, who certainly don’t offer as good a chance to contend as San Antonio does, McCarney adds. The Pistons, Mavericks, Blazers, Knicks and the Kings, who’d reportedly made Green their top target, all had some degree of interest in the swingman.

Chuck Myron contributed to this post.

Southwest Notes: Gee, Cunningham, Barea, Spurs

July 20th, 2015 at 10:43pm CST by Charlie Adams

The Pelicans used a portion of their mid-level exception to sign Alonzo Gee and Dante Cunningham, as Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders passes along (on Twitter). Gee will earn $1.32MM this season, while Cunningham will take home a bit more at $2.85MM. That means New Orleans still has $1.294MM of its mid-level exception remaining and 10 guaranteed contracts on the books. We’ve got more contract details in tonight’s look at the Southwest Division:

The front-loaded deal J.J Barea inked with the Mavericks will pay him slightly more than $16MM over four years, as Pincus reveals in his updated Dallas salary page. He’ll earn $4.29MM this season, $4,096,950 the following year, $3,903,900 in year three, and $3,710,850 during the 2018/19 season. The Mavs upped the Puerto Rican guard’s yearly salaries after missing out on DeAndre Jordan.
It has been a busy offseason in San Antonio, and the most overlooked move that the Spurs have made is the addition of 7’3” center Boban Marjanovic, as David Pick details for Bleacher Report. Marjanovic was a relative unknown prior to last season, but his efficient play and massive size netted him some lucrative offers from European teams that he turned down in favor of the Spurs, as Pick relays.
LaMarcus Aldridge, Tim Duncan, Kawhi Leonard, David West, and Danny Green all have player options in the final years of their contracts, as Pincus notes on his updated Spurs salary page.

Pelicans Re-Sign Luke Babbitt

July 20th, 2015 at 11:01am CST by Eddie Scarito

JULY 20TH, 11:01am: The signing is official, the team announced.

JULY 9TH, 10:13pm: The Pelicans and unrestricted free agent Luke Babbitt are finalizing a deal that would bring the forward back to New Orleans, Marc Stein of ESPN.com reports (Twitter link). The pact is for two years, and valued in the $2.5MM range, Stein adds.

Babbitt made 63 appearances for the Pelicans last season, including 19 starts. He notched averages of 4.1 points, 1.8 rebounds, and 0.4 assists in 13.2 minutes per contest. His shooting numbers were .479/.513/.684. Through five NBA seasons split between the Blazers and Pelicans, Babbitt’s numbers are 4.2 PPG, 2.1 RPG, and 0.5 APG, with a slash line of .401/.403/.722.

The 26-year-old was the No. 16 overall pick in the 2010 NBA Draft, and played his college ball at the University of Nevada.

And-Ones: Gallinari, Belinelli, Jazz, Harrellson

July 20th, 2015 at 10:35am CST by Chuck Myron

Danilo Gallinari confirmed to Italian media that he and the Nuggets are discussing an extension, as Dario Vismara of Rivista Ufficiale NBA tweets (translation via Sportando’s Orazio Cauchi). Christopher Dempsey of The Denver Post reported last week that the team intended to begin talks. The Nuggets can open about $6MM in cap room if they waive both Pablo Prigioni and Kostas Papanikolaou, whom they’re reportedly about to acquire in the deal for Ty Lawson, as former Nets executive Bobby Marks points out (on Twitter). They could use the cap room to give Gallinari a renegotiation and extension, as they did with Wilson Chandler, a maneuver that would be more lucrative for Gallinari than a simple extension. While we wait to see if that’s the route the Nuggets take, here’s more from around the NBA:

The Pelicans, Knicks, Clippers, Lakers, Spurs and Warriors all made offers to Marco Belinelli, who instead signed with the Kings, as he said at the same gathering of Italian media, Vismara notes (Twitter link).
The salary cap is set to surge next summer, but the 2016 free agent class doesn’t have much depth beyond Kevin Durant and LeBron James, leaving many teams with a conundrum as they face the prospect of a salary floor of some $81MM, as Marks examines for HoopsHype.
A work stoppage in 2017 is a “virtual certainty,” an executive from a team recently told Kevin Arnovitz of ESPN.com, in spite of commissioner Adam Silver’s suggestion to the contrary. Teams are worried that the new TV revenue somehow won’t allow them to keep up with surging payrolls, and clubs that have traditionally relied on revenue sharing figure to take a hit with fewer teams in line to pay into the luxury tax in seasons to come, as Arnovitz details.
The Jazz are drawing raves from coaches and GM around the league for their home-grown approach to rebuilding and hesitance to sign mid-tier free agents who’d only help the team make incremental gains, Arnovitz writes in the same piece.
Tim Reynolds of The Associated Press tells the story of a handful of summer leaguers who carry divergent credentials, including three-year NBA veteran Josh Harrellson, who’s willing to be flexible as he tries to make it back to the NBA now that he’s recovered from a career-threatening back injury. “I think I’ll get a camp invite,” Harrellson said. “My main goal is to get a contract out of this. Even if it’s a partial [guarantee], just something.”

Southwest Notes: Smith, Cuban, Curry, Allen

July 18th, 2015 at 10:54pm CST by Arthur Hill

Owner Mark Cuban said the Mavericks weren’t pursuing Josh Smith before he left the Rockets to sign with the Clippers, according to The Dallas Morning News. “We weren’t in that mix at all,” Cuban said in a radio interview with KESN-FM, adding that the Mavericks unsuccessfully tried to sign Smith after he was waived by the Pistons in December. There was a report last week that Dallas was one of the teams in play for the free agent forward.

There’s more from the Southwest Division:

Cuban overpaid free agents by millions to prove his loyalty, charges Tim Bontemps of The New York Post. Being spurned by DeAndre Jordan affected Cuban’s judgment in subsequent deals, Bontemps contends. He praises the Mavericks owner for acquiring Zaza Pachulia cheaply and gambling on Deron Williams for $11MM over two seasons, but writes that the deals given to Wesley Matthews ($70MM over four seasons) and J.J. Barea ($16MM over four seasons) could lead to an ugly cap situation in the future.
The Pelicans haven’t decided whether to offer a contract to Seth Curry, tweets John Reid of The Times-Picayune. GM Dell Demps discussed the possibility tonight on NBA TV. New Orleans is rumored to be close to giving a guaranteed deal to Curry, who was the top scorer in the Las Vegas summer league heading into today’s games.
The Grizzlies‘ Tony Allen is convinced that he made the right choice when he left Boston for Memphis five years ago, writes Geoff Calkins of The Commercial Appeal. The defensive specialist signed with the Grizzlies as a free agent in July of 2010. Allen has two more seasons and more than $10.6MM left on his current contract. “I can’t envision myself no place else,” he said. “I got about five more years.”

Pelicans Close To Signing Seth Curry

July 17th, 2015 at 1:43pm CST by Chuck Myron

Seth Curry is near a deal on a guaranteed contract with the Pelicans, reports Gery Woelfel of The Journal Times (Twitter link). The two-year NBA veteran is the younger brother of MVP Stephen Curry. Seth Curry, who turns 25 in August, joined the Pelicans’ summer league team this month.

The Suns signed him to a 10-day contract this past spring, just as the Cavs did in 2014. The point guard was briefly with the Grizzlies earlier in 2013/14, but he’s seen action in just four NBA regular season games, totaling three points in 21 minutes. The former Duke standout who went undrafted in 2013 has played chiefly in the D-League, spending last season with the affiliate of the Magic, who had him on the NBA roster for preseason in the fall of 2014.

It’s not entirely clear whether the contract with New Orleans would include a full guarantee or a partial guarantee. A full guarantee would represent quite a significant investment, even if it came on the minimum salary, but Curry has ties to the organization, with Alvin Gentry, who coached his brother as an assistant with Golden State this past season, now the Pelicans head coach. Curry has put on a strong display for the New Orleans summer league squad, averaging 25.3 points and 3.5 steals in 32.4 minutes per game across four contests.

Pelicans Notes: Cole, Asik, Ajinca, Cunningham

July 16th, 2015 at 6:55pm CST by Chuck Myron

Pelicans GM Dell Demps said this week that the versatility of his roster from this past season factored into his decision to bring back much of the same cast, as John Reid of The Times Picayune chronicles. New Orleans has signed four of its seven free agents, and Reid hears the Pelicans remain interested in re-signing restricted free agent Norris Cole.

”We believe our team can play big, we can play small and we can play fast,” Demps said. ”We feel like we can play a number of different ways. The guys like each other, they like playing with each other and their skills complement each other.”

Demps said the limited number of games that involved the entire core of the team, which again was without Jrue Holiday for nearly half the season, was another reason why he wanted to keep the roster largely intact, Reid notes, and that echoes similar statements Demps made last year. Here’s more from New Orleans:

The full value of Omer Asik‘s deal is $58MM, but only the first four years, at $44MM, are guaranteed, Reid writes. “In our division, you are playing a number of teams with very good post players,” Demps said. ”Omer gives us the opportunity to match up against certain teams. Omer is an elite rebounder and has been throughout his NBA career.”
The precise value of the cap hits across the four seasons in Alexis Ajinca‘s new contract with the Pelicans comes to $19,500,002, though incentive clauses are liable to change that figure over the course of the pact, as Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders reports (Twitter link).
Dante Cunningham will make exactly $8,934,750 on his new deal with the Pelicans, according to Pincus (Twitter link).

Pelicans Sign Alonzo Gee

July 16th, 2015 at 3:01pm CST by Chuck Myron

JULY 16TH, 3:01pm: The deal is official, the team announced.

JULY 10TH, 10:16am: The Pelicans and Alonzo Gee will sign a deal worth two years and $2.75MM, reports Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports (Twitter link). It’ll include a player option, Wojnarowski also hears (Twitter link). Gee comes from the Trail Blazers, where he quickly developed a bond with LaMarcus Aldridge during the short time they were teammates following the deadline-day trade that brought Gee to Portland.

The Happy Walters client would make about $2.5MM on a two-year minimum-salary deal, and this deal appears to be for slightly more than that, meaning that New Orleans is likely using either part of its $5.464MM mid-level exception or its $2.139MM biannual exception. Gee made the minimum last season after signing before training camp with the Nuggets, who shipped him to Portland in that deadline trade. The 28-year-old averaged only 12.3 minutes per game in 2014/15, but he started all 82 games for the Cavs in 2012/13 and gives new Pelicans coach Alvin Gentry another option at small forward, a consistent trouble spot for the team.

A new deal between Gee and the Blazers didn’t appear out of the question as the offseason began, but Aldridge’s departure no doubt hastened his exit from Portland, and the Blazers renounced his rights Thursday. Gee was traded three times last summer, but his deal with the Pelicans means he can’t be traded until December 15th this year.

Sixers Interested In Norris Cole

July 14th, 2015 at 10:33am CST by Chuck Myron

The Sixers have expressed interested in Pelicans restricted free agent Norris Cole, reports Michael Scotto of SheridanHoops (Twitter link). The point guard’s free agency has been slow-going so far, as the Pelicans have reportedly made a push to re-sign him but are only willing to go so far.

The Rich Paul client went from Miami to New Orleans in the Goran Dragic trade at the deadline, when the Wizards, Thunder, Bucks and Cavs all reportedly had varying degrees of interest in him. None of those teams have been linked to him this summer. The Sixers, as usual, have the cap space necessary to outbid other suitors. Aside from an apparent training camp deal with undrafted free agent T.J. McConnell, Philadelphia has yet to make a move in free agency.

The Pelicans, who can match all competing bids, made Cole a qualifying offer worth nearly $3.037MM. New Orleans is capped out, but it has his Bird rights and no other logical option on the roster to back up at point guard, aside from Toney Douglas, who’s on a non-guaranteed deal, and Tyreke Evans, who sees plenty of time at other positions.

For all the hottest NBA rumors and deals, follow us on Twitter!

Follow @HoopsRumors

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.