- It’s been less than two months since Cameron Payne underwent surgery on his right foot to repair a Jones fracture and the Thunder guard is on track to be ready for the start of training camp, Erik Horne of The Oklahoman writes. But despite his solid progress, Payne doesn’t want to rush things and risk a setback, Horne adds. “I’m getting back into things,” Payne said. “I’m shooting, jumping around, running. Everything’s been going great. I hope I’m ready as soon as the first day comes. But I don’t want to rush anything. I want to be perfectly ready. One-hundred percent. It’s really day-by-day, but right now, the things that we’re doing, we’re going at 100%.”
Just over two months ago, Thunder forward Mitch McGary received a five-game suspension from the NBA for a failed drug test. According to Adrian Wojnarowski of The Vertical, the league has tacked an additional 10 games onto that suspension for McGary’s non-compliance with the NBA’s drug policy, meaning the Michigan product will miss the first 15 games of the 2016/17 season.
Per Wojnarowski, McGary isn’t believed to have produced another positive drug test. Instead, the new suspension is reportedly the result of a failure to follow “the procedural guidelines set forth in the program.”
As we noted at the time of McGary’s initial suspension in July, his absence to start the season likely won’t be a major on-court problem for the Thunder, since he wasn’t a regular part of the team’s rotation last year. However, it’s the latest in a series of troublesome off-court developments for the 24-year-old, who tested positive for marijuana in college and avoided a one-year NCAA suspension by entering the NBA draft.
The Thunder acquired Joffrey Lauvergne in a recent trade with the Nuggets, despite already having 15 guaranteed contracts on their books, suggesting that at least one player with a guaranteed salary will be traded or waived before the season gets underway. Based on the latest developments with McGary, it wouldn’t be a surprise if he ends up being that player.
McGary is owed a salary of $1,526,040 in 2016/17, though he’ll forfeit about $191K of that amount due to his 15-game suspension. The Thunder will also have to decide by October 31 whether or not to exercise his 2017/18 option, worth $2,430,982. That option looks unlikely to be picked up at this point.
- FC Barcelona executive Manel Arroyo said the team is “upset” about losing Alex Abrines, even though he understands the allure of playing in the NBA, according to Erik Horne of The Oklahoman. Abrines left the Spanish club in July to sign a three-year deal worth roughly $17.1MM with Oklahoma City. Horne adds that the move probably wouldn’t have happened if Kevin Durant had remained with the Thunder. “Sometimes it is a situation where we are discussing how we manage the future of the team and how we must be the model of the other basketball teams because for the players the target is always to be in the United States,” Arroyo said. “Clearly when he [Abrines] receives a call and proposal from the NBA, he wants to be in the main league in the basketball world.”
While NBA teams are limited to carrying 15 players on their regular-season rosters (with a few exceptions), roster limits expand to 20 players during the offseason. The five extra roster slots allow clubs to bring in veterans hopeful of earning a place on the regular-season roster, or young players who may eventually be ticketed for D-League assignments.
Most teams will fill up their 20-man rosters for training camp, but at this point in the NBA offseason, it can be difficult to determine which clubs still have room on their rosters. Many potential camp invitees have reportedly reached agreements with teams, but those signings haven’t yet been officially announced.
By our count, there are currently just two team at the 20-man offseason roster limit. One is the 76ers, who were at the 20-man limit for much of the offseason before waiving Carl Landry and Tibor Pleiss. Since then, they’ve added Elton Brand and Cat Barber, though it appears only 11 of the club’s 20 players have fully guaranteed salaries for 2016/17.
Meanwhile, on their official website, the Nuggets list 14 players who have guaranteed contracts, plus Axel Toupane, JaKarr Sampson, and D.J. Kennedy, who are on non-guaranteed or partially-guaranteed deals. In addition to those 17 players, the team has also reportedly reached agreements with Nate Wolters, Robbie Hummel, and Jarnell Stokes, bringing Denver’s total roster count to 20.
Still, not all of Denver’s signings are official, and even once they are, the Nuggets could easily make room for another player by cutting a non-guaranteed salary from their books. The same can be said for Philadelphia. While their rosters may technically be “full,” it’s not as if the Nuggets and the Sixers don’t have the flexibility to replace a camp invitee with a veteran free agent, if they so choose.
A more productive way of determining which teams’ rosters are “full” at this point in the offseason might be to examine the number of guaranteed salaries on their books. The deadline for teams to stretch the 2016/17 salary of a waived player is now behind us, so any team that cuts a player with a guaranteed salary won’t be able to reduce that cap hit unless the player agrees to a buyout. Most teams are reluctant to add much dead money to their cap with such a move, so if a club has 15 guaranteed contracts on its cap, we can assume its regular-season roster is fairly set, barring a trade or a surprise cut.
Here are the NBA teams that currently have 15 (or more) guaranteed salaries on their roster:
- Alex Roig of DailyThunder.com proposes three possible trades for the Thunder that could push the team back into contention in the Western Conference. While Roig’s ideas are probably long shots, with Paul George and Jimmy Butler among the suggested targets, it’s worth keeping in mind that Oklahoma City has a crowded frontcourt and an extra guaranteed salary, making Enes Kanter an intriguing trade chip.
With the free agent signing period winding down and teams looking ahead to the preseason, we at Hoops Rumors will be tracking the Salary Cap figures for each team around the league. These posts will be maintained throughout the season once financial data is reported. They will be located on the sidebar throughout the year, once all the teams’ cap figures have been relayed. You can always check RosterResource.com for up-to-date rosters for each franchise, with the Thunder’s team page accessible here.
Here’s a breakdown of where the Thunder currently stand financially:
Guaranteed Salary
- Russell Westbrook —$26,540,100 [Contract has 15% Trade Kicker]
- Enes Kanter —$17,145,838 [Contract has 15% Trade Kicker]
- Taj Gibson — $8,950,000
- Victor Oladipo —$6,552,960
- Alex Abrines —$5,994,764
- Kyle Singler —$4,837,500
- Nick Collison —$3,750,000
- Steven Adams —$3,140,517
- Ronnie Price —$2,557,545 [Waived by team]
- Doug McDermott — $2,483,040
- Domantas Sabonis —$2,440,200
- Andre Roberson —$2,183,072
- Mitch McGary —$1,526,040 [Waived by team]
- Josh Huestis —$1,191,480
- Jerami Grant —$980,431
- Semaj Christon —$543,471
- Norris Cole —$247,991 [Actual salary —$288,131]
- Chris Wright — $100,000 [Waived by team]
- Kaleb Tarczewski — $75,000 [Waived by team]
- Alex Caruso — $50,000 [Waived by team]
- Reggie Williams — $50,000 [Waived by team]
Total Guaranteed Salary= $91,339,949
Cash Sent Out Via Trade: $0 [Amount Remaining $3.5MM]
Cash Received Via Trade: $0 [Amount Remaining $3.5MM]
Payroll Exceptions Available
- Trade Exception — $4,936,529 (Ersan Ilyasova trade; used portion to acquire Doug McDermott) — Expires on 11/1/17
- Room Exception — $2,898,000
Total Projected Payroll: $91,339,949
Salary Cap: $94,143,000
Estimated Available Cap Space: $2,803,051
(Note: team would have to renounce trade exception to use cap space)
Luxury Tax Threshold: $113,287,000
Amount Below Luxury Tax: $21,947,051
Last Updated: 3/1/17
The Basketball Insiders salary pages and The Vertical’s salary database were used in the creation of this post.
With Adrian Wojnarowski of The Vertical having suggested on multiple occasions this offseason that the Thunder are looking ahead and identifying Blake Griffin as a potential free agent target in the summer of 2017, it came as no surprise that Griffin was on the receiving end of a subtle – and humorous – recruiting pitch during a recent event at the University of Oklahoma.
As relayed by Kurt Helin of Pro Basketball Talk, Griffin tactfully blew off the mention of the Thunder at the alumni event, but it certainly won’t be the last time someone broaches the idea of a homecoming for the Oklahoma native. For what it’s worth, the Clippers reportedly remain very confident that Griffin will remain in Los Angeles for the long term.
Here’s more on the Thunder:
- In order to complete this week’s acquisition of Joffrey Lauvergne, the Thunder renounced their free agent rights to Nazr Mohammed, according to RealGM’s transactions log. The move comes as no surprise, since even after removing Mohammed from their cap, the Thunder were just barely able to squeeze in Lauvergne’s salary, with about $29K in cap room to spare. Mohammed, an 18-year NBA veteran, isn’t expected to continue his playing career.
- Berry Tramel of The Oklahoman offers a couple reasons why the Thunder might have traded for Lauvergne despite already having plenty of frontcourt depth. As Tramel writes, Oklahoma City may not be counting on Mitch McGary, who took a leave of absence last season and has been suspended for five games due to a drug violation. Tramel also wonders if Enes Kanter might be on the trade block.
- In a piece for the Players’ Tribune, Serge Ibaka writes about his journey to the NBA and what he learned during his years with the Thunder. Ibaka wrote in a separate piece earlier this week that he “never asked” to be traded by OKC, though he’s excited about his new opportunity in Orlando.
While plenty of trades were completed on draft night earlier this summer, none were bigger than the four-player deal that saw Serge Ibaka head to Orlando in exchange for Victor Oladipo, Ersan Ilyasova, and No. 11 overall pick Domantas Sabonis. In his last season with the Thunder, Ibaka reportedly wasn’t thrilled with his declining role, but in a piece for The Cauldron at SI.com, the veteran big man writes that he didn’t make a trade request.
“I never asked to be traded, even though there was a lot of media conjecture that I was unhappy with my role,” Ibaka wrote. “I had an exit meeting with Billy Donovan and Sam Presti after the season, and both went well. But this is still a business, everybody has to do what’s best for them, and I let my agent deal with the business side of things. I just focus on basketball. I’m not the kind of guy who’s going to go in and ask for a trade, and I would have been happy staying with the Thunder. Playing in the NBA was my dream, and I’d be happy playing anywhere.”
Although Ibaka makes it clear that he didn’t ask the Thunder to trade him, it sounds as if agent Andy Miller was at least somewhat involved in finding his client a new home. In the days after the deal was completed, Miller told Chris Mannix of The Vertical that Oklahoma City had “overpromised and under-delivered” on a larger role for Ibaka. Assuming Ibaka agreed with that sentiment, it’s perhaps not surprising that he sounds excited by the idea of getting a fresh start in Orlando, suggesting in his SI.com piece that he feels like a rookie again.
“I’m thrilled to be in Orlando,” Ibaka wrote. “I know that might sound crazy to some people, that I’m excited to go from a contender like the Thunder to a rebuilding team, one that hasn’t made the playoffs in four years, but playing now for Frank Vogel, a coach who prides himself on defense, is very exciting for me. We have a core of like-minded, young, athletic players, which is going to be very fun. We are an old-school, smashmouth team, and I can’t wait to don a Magic uniform on opening night.”
Ibaka’s contract is set to expire after 2017, so the Magic will eventually have to work out an extension or a new free agent contract with him if they hope to keep him in the fold for more than one season.
12:48pm: The Thunder and Nuggets have each issued press releases confirming the deal.
12:25pm: The two draft picks heading to the Nuggets are 2017 second-rounders, according to Royce Young of ESPN.com (via Twitter). That means Denver will be receiving the Grizzlies’ pick and the Thunder’s pick.
12:01pm: The Nuggets and Thunder have agreed to terms on a trade, according to reports from Chris Dempsey of The Denver Post and Adrian Wojnarwoski of The Vertical. Per Dempsey and Wojnarowski, Denver has agreed to send Joffrey Lauvergne to Oklahoma City in exchange for two future second-round picks.
Lauvergne, who will turn 25 in a month, was a role player for the Nuggets last year, appearing in 59 contests and starting 15 of them. For the season, he averaged 17.6 MPG, chipping in 7.9 PPG, 4.9 RPG, and 0.9 APG for Denver, while shooting 51.3% from the floor and 89.9% from the free-throw line. Lauvergne also played for France in the Olympics this summer.
The Thunder figure to work Lauvergne into their frontcourt rotation off the bench, with Serge Ibaka and Nazr Mohammed no longer on the roster. Steven Adams, Enes Kanter, Domantas Sabonis, Nick Collison, Andre Roberson, and Ersan Ilyasova are among the other players who will look to earn minutes at the four or five this season in OKC, while Mitch McGary may not end up on the regular-season roster, as ESPN’s Royce Young tweets. The Thunder already had 15 guaranteed salaries on their cap for 2016/17 prior to Lauvergne’s arrival.
Meanwhile, with Lauvergne no longer in the mix in Denver, the Nuggets now have 14 guaranteed salaries on their books for ’16/17, plus JaKarr Sampson, D.J. Kennedy, and Axel Toupane on non-guaranteed contracts.
The Thunder have just enough room to fit Lauvergne’s salary in under their cap without waiving or trading any other players. Per Basketball Insiders’ data, Oklahoma City’s team salary for 2016/17 was at $92,403,967 before the trade. Lauvergne is on the books for $1,709,719 this season, while the league-wide salary cap is $94,143,000 — the Thunder should be able to complete the deal with about $30K in cap space to spare.
Lauvergne’s salary for this season is only half guaranteed so far, with $854,859 still non-guaranteed. However, the fact that the Thunder were willing to give up two draft picks for him suggests that the team doesn’t intend to waive him before guaranteeing the rest of that salary.
It’s not clear yet which picks the Nuggets will be receiving in the swap, but OKC had extra second-rounders in 2017 (from Memphis; protected from 31-35) and 2018 (from Boston; protected from 31-55).
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
The fact that the Greensboro Swarm, the Hornets‘ new D-League affiliate, selected the rights to Josh Huestis in Wednesday’s D-League expansion draft raised some eyebrows, since the former first-round pick is currently on the Thunder‘s NBA roster. However, as Erik Horne of The Oklahoman explains, the Thunder can still assign Huestis to their D-League affiliate, the Oklahoma City Blue, as long as Huestis remains on the NBA roster. If OKC waived Huestis, the team would also surrender his D-League rights, with the Swarm getting first dibs.