Phoenix Suns Rumors | Hoops Rumors

Pacific Notes: Pierce, Clippers, Suns

July 20th, 2015 at 9:31pm CST by Will Joseph

Paul Pierce, a native of California, is happy to be back home after signing with the Clippers, but the Lakers would have never been an option, Gary Washburn of the Boston Globe writes. Pierce signed a three-year deal for approximately $10MM.

“It’s a dream come true to be able to come home, finally,” Pierce said. “I grew up a Laker fan but playing on all the Boston Celtic teams . . . there’s no way I could go there — so this was the next best choice. And it’s always been a dream to play in front of my family and friends.”

Here’s more on the Clippers and Pacific Division:

Despite reports that indicated a rift between Chris Paul and DeAndre Jordan played a role in the center agreeing to sign with the Mavericks before ultimately re-signing with the Clippers, Paul said he’s delighted to have the big man back, Justin Verrier of ESPN.com writes. “DeAndre, he’s like my big little brother. We talk a lot more than people realize,” Paul said. “It doesn’t matter; the only thing that matters is we brought in [Pierce], who I’m probably the happiest about because of his championship pedigree, being that voice in our locker room. We brought in [Lance Stephenson], Wesley Johnson, brought Austin [Rivers] back, Josh Smith. Big summer for us.
Suns president Lon Babby said re-signing Brandon Knight was the team’s most important move, Paul Coro of The Arizona Republic tweets. Knight, who signed a five-year, $70MM contract with the Suns, said he did not talk to any other teams, Coro also tweets.
Warriors coach Steve Kerr expects James McAdoo, who is expected to compete for a reserve spot with the Warriors in training camp in late September, to contribute next season, Monte Poole of CSNBayArea.com writes. McAdoo split time between the Warriors and D-League last season.

Suns Waive Jerel McNeal

July 18th, 2015 at 12:39pm CST by Eddie Scarito

The Suns have waived guard Jerel McNeal, the team announced. McNeal’s minimum salary arrangement with Phoenix for the 2015/16 campaign would have become fully guaranteed if he remained on the roster past July 21st, as is shown by our schedule of guarantee dates. This move reduces the Suns’ roster count to 13 players.

McNeal initially signed with the Suns via a 10-day contract back on April 1st after Phoenix opted not to re-sign guard A.J. Price when Price’s 10-day deal expired. The shooting guard, who was not drafted when he was eligible in 2009, had been playing for the Bakersfield Jam, the Suns’ D-League affiliate, prior to joining Phoenix. In 27 games for the Jam, McNeal had averaged 18.5 points, 4.0 rebounds, and 4.6 assists in 32.6 minutes per contest. He has previously had NBA training camp stints with the Clippers, Raptors and Rockets.

The Pelicans and Jazz have briefly carried McNeal on regular season rosters in the past, but he didn’t see action with either team during those stints. In just six total NBA regular season appearances, all with Phoenix last season, McNeal has notched averages of 1.5 points, 0.5 rebounds, and 0.3 assists in 6.0 minutes per contest. His shooting line is .273/.500/1.000.

2015/16 Roster Counts: Phoenix Suns

July 17th, 2015 at 8:32pm CST by Eddie Scarito

During the offseason it’s OK for teams to carry as many as 20 players, but clubs must trim their rosters down to a maximum of 15 by opening night. In the meantime, some teams will hang around that 15-man line, while others will max out their roster counts. Some clubs may actually have more than 15 contracts that are at least partially guaranteed on the books. That means they’ll end up paying players who won’t be on the regular season roster, unless they can find trade partners.

With plenty more movement still to come, here’s the latest look at the Suns’ roster size, the contract guarantee status of each player, and how each player came to be on Phoenix’s roster.

(Last Updated 3-12-16, 5:00pm)

Fully Guaranteed (14)

Eric Bledsoe (G) — 6’1″/25 years old. Acquired via trade with Clippers.
Devin Booker (G) — 6’6″/18 years old. Drafted with No. 13 overall pick in 2015.
Chase Budinger (F) — 6/7″/27 years old. Free agent signing.
Tyson Chandler (C) — 7’1″/32 years old. Free agent signing.
Archie Goodwin (G) — 6’5″/20 years old. Draft rights acquired via Warriors.
John Jenkins (G) — 6’4″/24 years old. Claimed off waivers from Mavericks.
Brandon Knight (G) — 6’3″/23 years old. Acquired via trade with Bucks.
Alex Len (C) — 7’1″/22 years old. Drafted with No. 5 overall pick in 2013.
Jon Leuer (F) — 6’10″/26 years old. Acquired via trade from Grizzlies.
Ronnie Price (G) — 6’2″/32 years old. Free agent signing.
Mirza Teletovic (F) — 6’9″/29 years old. Free agent signing.
P.J. Tucker (F) — 6’6″/30 years old. Free agent signing.
T.J. Warren (F) — 6’8″/21 years old. Drafted with No. 14 overall pick in 2014.
Alan Williams (C) — 6’8″/23 years old. Free agent signing.

10-Day Contracts (0)

None

TOTAL ROSTER COUNT (14)

Suns Re-Sign Brandon Knight

July 17th, 2015 at 7:32pm CST by Will Joseph

JULY 17TH, 7:32pm: The signing is official, the Suns announced. “We are delighted to have reached a multi-year agreement with Brandon,” said president of basketball operations Lon Babby. “He will be an integral member of our team on the court and will enhance our culture with his leadership and professionalism.”

1:57pm: The Suns won’t be trading Bledsoe even though they’ve secured a deal with Knight, as a source strongly emphasized to TNT’s David Aldridge (Twitter link).

1:48pm: The Suns and Knight have reached agreement on those five-year, $70MM terms, as Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports confirms (Twitter link).

10:52pm: If the Suns re-sign Knight, they would seriously consider trading Bledsoe, Marc Stein of ESPN.com tweets.

Courtesy of USA Today Sports Images

JULY 1ST, 5:46pm: Brandon Knight, who will become a restricted free agent on July 1st, will sign a five-year, $70MM contract with the Suns, reports Gery Woelfel of the Racine Journal Times, who cites a league source. Of course, it is illegal for sides to have discussed a dollar amount and length of a potential deal before July 1st, but that doesn’t mean negotiations didn’t happen.

Knight, 23, was traded to the Suns in February in a multiple-team deal. He has expressed interest in re-signing with the Suns and mentioned that he was looking for that to happen swiftly. The Suns, reportedly, want to bring him back, and Knight told them that he has no issues sharing duties with Eric Bledsoe in the backcourt. Interestingly, Knight’s reported deal worth $13MM annually for five years are the exact terms the Suns gave Bledsoe last September.

Knight was averaging 17.8 points per game and 5.4 assists per game before the Bucks dealt him to the Suns. He then played 11 games for the Suns, averaging 13.4 points per game and 4.5 assists per game. After suffering an ankle injury March 9, Knight missed 16 of the Suns’ final 17 games. He underwent minor arthroscopic surgery on his left ankle in April.

Suns Ink Mirza Teletovic

July 17th, 2015 at 4:21pm CST by Chuck Myron

JULY 17TH, 4:21pm: The Suns have officially announced the signing. “We have followed Mirza Teletovic’s career for a long time and we are excited to have him wear a Suns uniform,” said GM Ryan McDonough. “Mirza is one of the best shooting big men in the world and we think his skill set will be a great fit for our style of play.”

JULY 9TH, 5:42pm: The Suns will sign Mirza Teletovic to a one-year deal for $5.5MM, TNT’s David Aldridge reports (Twitter link). The move comes shortly after the Nets pulled their qualifying offer to the forward earlier today, making him an unrestricted free agent. Phoenix is likely using cap space to accommodate the transaction.

The client of Jeff Schwartz and Mike Lindeman ends up with a deal that’s about $1.3MM more lucrative than he’d have had if he’d simply signed the more than $4.21MM qualifyer while it was on the table. The agreement with Phoenix comes as somewhat of a surprise, as aside from a vague link to the Spurs, it didn’t seem as though any NBA team other than the Nets had much interest. Nets GM Billy King said this morning that the Nets and Teletovic were in talks and that he was hopeful of re-signing the three-year veteran, but Brooklyn never made Teletovic a priority this offseason, according to Mike Mazzeo of ESPN.com (Twitter link).

Teletovic, who turns 30 in September, was to have missed the rest of the season when doctors diagnosed him with blood clots in his lungs after a game in January, but he came back for the playoffs and appeared in three games during Brooklyn’s first-round series loss to the Hawks. He was a significant part of Brooklyn’s rotation prior to the ailment, averaging 22.3 minutes per game this past season.

Suns Sign Ronnie Price

July 17th, 2015 at 4:17pm CST by Eddie Scarito

Courtesy of USA Today Sports Images

JULY 17TH, 4:17pm: The deal is official, Phoenix announced. “The Suns are pleased to welcome Ronnie Price and his family back to Phoenix,” said president of basketball operations Lon Babby. “As we know, Ronnie is the consummate professional and a great teammate.”

JULY 8TH, 4:24pm: The Suns have reached an agreement with unrestricted free agent Ronnie Price, Paul Coro of The Arizona Republic reports (Twitter link). The deal is a one-year, minimum salary arrangement, Coro notes. Price is in line to make $1,499,187 as 10-year vet, with the Suns responsible only for the $947,276 two-year veteran’s minimum and the league picking up the rest, since it’s a one-year deal. The veteran point guard spent the 2011/12 season with Phoenix.

Price spent the 2014/15 campaign with the Lakers, appearing in 43 contests, including 20 as a starter. His numbers were 5.1 points, 1.6 rebounds, and 3.8 assists, with a slash line of .345/.284/.800. Through 468 career games the point guard is averaging 3.6 PPG, 1.2 RPG, and 1.7 APG, while shooting .374/.291/.735.

The 32-year-old had expressed a desire to return to the Lakers back in April, even if it was as a third-string guard. “I enjoyed being a voice in the locker room. I enjoyed being able to help younger guys. I helped great veterans that can help me. I’d be selfish not to extend that knowledge to players that are younger than me,” Price told Mark Medina of The Los Angeles Daily News. “Of course you want to play. That’s why we do what we do. You want to play. You never know what’s ahead. Whatever role is my role, I’ll embrace it whether it’s being here or the third guard.” Price should certainly see more playing time in Phoenix, who is in need of depth in its backcourt.

Suns Sign Sonny Weems

July 17th, 2015 at 4:13pm CST by Chuck Myron

JULY 17TH, 4:13pm: The signing is official, the Suns announced. “Sonny Weems has been one of the best players outside of the NBA over the past few years,” said GM Neil McDonough. “We’ve seen him dominate high-level competition at both ends of the floor and we think his versatility and experience help solidify our wing rotation.”

4:16pm: The second year of the deal is a team option, Paul Coro of The Arizona Republic reports (Twitter link).

JULY 8TH, 2:50pm: The Suns have agreed to a two-year, $5.8MM deal with Sonny Weems, reports Chris Broussard of ESPN.com (Twitter link). The former Nuggets and Raptors swingman who turns 29 today hasn’t played in the NBA since the 2010/11 season with Toronto. The Suns still have cap room to sign him, but this deal would appear to fit within the room exception.

Weems’ career NBA numbers through 140 contests are 7.7 points, 2.5 rebounds, and 1.5 assists in 20.3 minutes per game. His NBA shooting line is .474/.241/.717.

The swingman has spent the last three seasons with the Russian club CSKA Moscow. Weems appeared in 166 games split between the Euroleague and the VTB United League, averaging 12.1 points, 3.1 rebounds and 3.0 assists per game for CSKA.

Northwest Notes: Lawson, Wolves, Montero

July 16th, 2015 at 9:00am CST by Chuck Myron

The Nuggets were requesting a first-round pick and a young player in trade talks about Ty Lawson days before his latest DUI-related arrest, reports Marc J. Spears of Yahoo Sports. Opposing teams were showing little to no interest, Spears adds, advancing a report from Yahoo Sports colleague Adrian Wojnarowski, who said that clubs were waiting for Lawson’s price to come down. Now, after the arrest, the Nuggets are in a position where they’re better off waiting for Lawson’s value to bounce back, an assistant GM tells Spears. We asked for your feedback about Lawson on Wednesday night. There’s more on the Nuggets amid the latest from around the Northwest Division:

Denver is scanning for trades that provide greater financial and roster flexibility, league sources tell Christopher Dempsey of The Denver Post. The search is unrelated to Lawson, as Dempsey makes clear. In any case, the report would suggest that the Nuggets are looking to unload a player in a deal that doesn’t bring back anyone in return.
Coach/executive Flip Saunders, with the $2.139MM biannual exception and roughly $1.7MM left on the mid-level exception, sounds open to adding a veteran point guard to the Timberwolves, according to Kent Youngblood of the Star Tribune (Twitter link via Tribune scribe Jerry Zgoda).
The Timberwolves had their choice of three trade exceptions with which they could take in Damjan Rudez from the Pacers, and Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders says they used the $1.5MM Ronny Turiaf exception to do so (Twitter link). That reduces the Turiaf exception, which expires December 19th, to $350,500, essentially exhausting its value.
The Oregonian’s Mike Richman chronicles the unusual journey of Luis Montero to his partially guaranteed contract with the Blazers, adding the Knicks, Sixers, Suns and Thunder to the list of teams that previous reports indicated he worked out for prior to the draft.
A virtually unusable $88K sliver of the Thunder‘s Thabo Sefolosha trade exception expired Wednesday. Oklahoma City used most of what was originally a $4.15MM exception to trade for Dion Waiters in January.
Jazz power forward Trevor Booker‘s salary, which had been partially guaranteed for $250K, is now fully guaranteed for $4.775MM, as our list of salary guarantee dates shows.

Pacific Notes: Suns, Young, Karl

July 14th, 2015 at 8:13pm CST by Eddie Scarito

The Suns have an outmoded local TV deal that squeezes their revenue, and they struggle to draw when they don’t make the playoffs, Grantland’s Zach Lowe reports, suggesting that’s behind owner Robert Sarver’s aggressive push to get the team back to the postseason. Phoenix came up short in its strong pursuit of LaMarcus Aldridge, but Sarver insists to Lowe that the Tyson Chandler deal wasn’t made solely in an effort to woo Aldridge. The cap-clearing Marcus Morris trade was a signal of the team’s interest in Aldridge, but Phoenix also made it out of a desire to open playing time for other wing players, T.J. Warren in particular, Lowe writes.

Here’s more from the Pacific Division:

Lakers swingman Nick Young has been the subject of trade rumors this offseason, but the team currently has no plans to deal the scorer, Bill Oram of The Orange County Register tweets. According to Oram, the Lakers had shopped Young in an effort to clear some quick cap room, but no enticing offers materialized.
Despite the rocky start to their relationship, Kings coach George Karl believes he and center DeMarcus Cousins can coexist in Sacramento, Marc J. Spears of Yahoo! Sports relays. “I just said hello to him this afternoon,” Karl told Spears. “I don’t think it’s something we have to rush through. You got two guys that are very frustrated with losing, two guys that are somewhat stubborn and two guys that love to compete. Sometimes, that doesn’t work the first time you hang around. But you have to take your time to make it work. I’m very confident to make it work.“
During his offseason dealings, Kings vice president of basketball and franchise operations Vlade Divac tried to sell players on the changing culture of the Sacramento organization, Spears adds. When asked what his sales pitch was to free agents, Divac said, “We are changing the culture and we want to make a team that’s going to have the same energy that we had during my time because Sacramento needs that. They believe in it and I believe it. We really put good talent over there and now it’s up to Coach to put it together.“
Rajon Rondo believes that he can rebuild his free agent value this season with the Kings, writes Gary Washburn of The Boston Globe. “I’ve been faced with challenges my whole life,” said Rondo. “A lot of people didn’t expect me to come this far in the NBA. I have no doubts about what my talents can do and what I can bring to the team and I’m looking forward to putting my work in and getting the job done.”

Chuck Myron contributed to this post.

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.