Cartier Martin

And-Ones: Brand, Martin, D-League

The Sixers are now likely to look to add veterans to the roster for additional leadership now that Jerry Colangelo is officially a member of the front office, and one name to keep an eye on is veteran power forward Elton Brand, Zach Lowe of ESPN.com opines. The 36-year-old was pessimistic about his chances for playing a 17th season in the NBA back in August, when he told Al Coqueran of The Examiner News, “I could get in shape if I got the call but this looks like the end of the run for me, right now it is family time.” Brand made 36 appearances for the Hawks last season, averaging 2.7 points and 2.8 rebounds in 13.5 minutes of action per contest.

Here’s more from around the league:

  • Cartier Martin, who was cut by the Pistons during the preseason and is currently a member of the Grizzlies‘ D-League affiliate in Iowa, is expected to miss several months due to a wrist injury, Chris Reichert of Upside & Motor relays (via Twitter).
  • Knicks combo forward Derrick Williams indicated that communication between he and coach Derek Fisher isn’t great, which is something he misses about George Karl, who took over as Kings coach late last season, Marc Berman of The New York Post writes. Williams appreciates the brief time he had under Karl, saying, “He’s a good coach. He wasn’t really tough like that. That was one game. He expects a lot of things out of me. I think that’s always good, when you have a coach that really expects things out of you, wants to bring out the best in you. Myself and him, we talked about it. It was no hard feelings with the quotes. That happens when a coach expects a lot of you. At the end of the day, he wasn’t too, too hard on me. He wanted the best out of me.
  • The Grizzlies have assigned small forward James Ennis to their D-League affiliate in Iowa, the team announced. This will be Ennis’ third stint with the Energy on the season, as our D-League tracker shows.
  • The Mavericks have assigned Justin Anderson, Jeremy Evans and Salah Mejri to the Texas Legends, their D-League affiliate, Earl K. Sneed of Mavs.com relays (Twitter link). This is the second jaunt to the D-League on the season for both Anderson and Mejri, while Evans is making his initial trip.
  • Mitch McGary has been assigned to the Thunder‘s D-League affiliate, the team announced (on Twitter). This is McGary’s third assignment to the Blue on the season.
  • The Pacers have assigned Joe Young to their D-League affiliate in Fort Wayne, the team announced.

NBA Teams Designate Affiliate Players

NBA teams cut as much as 25% of their rosters at the end of the preseason, but franchises that have D-League affiliates have a way to maintain ties to many of the players they release from the NBA roster. An NBA team can claim the D-League rights to up to four of the players it waives, as long as the players clear waivers, consent to join the D-League, and don’t already have their D-League rights owned by another team. These are known as affiliate players, as our Hoops Rumors Glossary entry details.

NBA teams allocated 46 affiliate players to the D-League at the beginning of the season last year, and this year, that number has risen to 56, according to the list the D-League announced today. These players are going directly to the D-League affiliate of the NBA team that cut them and weren’t eligible for the D-League draft that took place Saturday. Teams that designated fewer than the maximum four affiliate players retain the ability to snag the D-League rights of players they waive during the regular season, but for now, this is the complete list:

Boston Celtics (Maine Red Claws)

Cleveland Cavaliers (Canton Charge)

Dallas Mavericks (Texas Legends)

Detroit Pistons (Grand Rapids Drive)

Golden State Warriors (Santa Cruz Warriors)

Houston Rockets (Rio Grande Valley Vipers)

Indiana Pacers (Fort Wayne Mad Ants)

Los Angeles Lakers (Los Angeles D-Fenders)

Memphis Grizzlies (Iowa Energy)

Miami Heat (Sioux Falls Skyforce)

New York Knicks (Westchester Knicks)

Oklahoma City Thunder (Oklahoma City Blue)

Orlando Magic (Erie BayHawks)

Philadelphia 76ers (Delaware 87ers)

Phoenix Suns (Bakersfield Jam)

Sacramento Kings (Reno Bighorns)

San Antonio Spurs (Austin Spurs)

Toronto Raptors (Raptors 905)

Utah Jazz (Idaho Stampede)

Also, several players who were on NBA preseason rosters are on D-League rosters through means other than the affiliate player rule. Most of them played under D-League contracts at some point within the last two years, meaning their D-League teams have returning player rights to them. Others entered through last weekend’s D-League draft, while others saw their D-League rights conveyed via trade. Most of these players aren’t with the D-League affiliate of the NBA team they were with last month, with a few exceptions.

Roster information from Adam Johnson of D-League Digest, Chris Reichert of Upside & Motor and freelancer and Hoops Rumors contributor Mark Porcaro was used in the creation of this post.

Several With NBA Ties Enter D-League Draft

The NBA D-League Draft is set for today, and a whopping total of 290 players are eligible for selection during this annual event. The D-League posted the full list of eligible participants, which can be viewed here, and it contains a number of notable players with NBA ties.

The two names that immediately jump out off the list are Jimmer Fredette, who was waived by the Spurs last week, and Perry Jones III, whose fully guaranteed deal was cut loose by Boston. Fredette’s chances of catching on in the NBA appear to be dwindling rapidly, though I do expect that there is a better than average chance he will be selected No. 2 overall by Westchester, the Knicks’ D-League affiliate. If that is indeed the case, then Fredette may have a shot at catching on with the Knicks at some point during the course of the 2015/16 campaign, given New York’s lack of backcourt depth.

As for Jones, his is likely to be the first named called by Idaho, Utah’s affiliate, when the draft commences, though that is merely my speculation. Jones, a former first-rounder, hasn’t been able to get on the court consistently over the course of his three years in the league. This was partly due to the depth and talent ahead of him while with the Thunder, but his lack of a consistent outside shot and defensive limitations also held him back from carving out a place in the team’s rotation. It was a bit of a surprise to see Boston cut him loose, but Jones was the victim of a numbers crunch with the Celtics, who had 16 fully guaranteed deals on their roster heading into the October 26th deadline to cut rosters to the league maximum of 15 players.

We’ve sorted through those 290 names to pare it down to a list of all D-League draft-eligibles who were in NBA camps this year or on NBA regular season rosters in 2014/15. The last NBA team with which they were under contract is in parentheses.
*Note that since the recent camp cuts among the names listed above are entering the D-League draft, they’re not affiliate players whose D-League rights were claimed by their former NBA teams.
These are NBA veterans who don’t fit the criteria for the above list but are otherwise noteworthy:

The current order for the first round of the 2015 NBA D-League Draft is as follows:

1. Idaho
2. Westchester
3. Iowa (from Los Angeles)
4. Iowa (from Reno)
5. Delaware
6. Texas
7. Grand Rapids
8. Delaware (from Santa Cruz via Erie)
9. Iowa
10. Rio Grande Valley
11. Raptors 905
12. Rio Grande Valley (from Fort Wayne)
13. Oklahoma City
14. Sioux Falls
15. Canton
16. Austin
17. Bakersfield
18. Santa Cruz
19. Maine

And-Ones: Morris, Stephenson, D-League, Stretch

Markieff Morris didn’t have a lot to say when asked about playing apart from his brother, notes Paul Coro of the Arizona Republic. Morris seemingly vacated an offseason trade demand when he arrived at Suns camp in September, nearly three months after Phoenix irked him with the trade that sent his twin to Detroit.

“It is what it is. He’s at work. I’m at work. Same thing,” Morris said.

He also expressed no surprise that Marcus Morris is off to a strong start with the Pistons, Coro notes. See more from around the league:

  • Lance Stephenson has pleasantly surprised the Clippers so far, unexpectedly winning a starting job and rewarding the team for its extra diligence during the vetting process for the trade that brought him to L.A., as USA Today’s Sam Amick details. Clippers GM Dave Wohl made 61 calls to people who know Stephenson instead of the standard 20, according to Amick. “I don’t think we’ve ever made more [background] calls for a player in my life,” Clippers coach and president of basketball operations Doc Rivers said before Thursday’s game. “We had to make sure, but I’ve got to tell you that I’m really excited.”
  • Cartier Martin, whom the Pistons waived last week despite a fully guaranteed salary of nearly $1.271MM, and eight-year NBA veteran Ronnie Brewer are among the players signing D-League contracts that will funnel them to Saturday’s D-League draft, league sources tell Adam Johnson of D-League Digest (Twitter links). In Martin’s case, that means the Pistons elected not to claim his D-League rights. Hornets camp cut Sam Thompson is also signing with the D-League and heading to the D-League draft, a source tells Chris Reichert of Upside & Motor (Twitter link). Charlotte won’t have an affiliate until next year and thus couldn’t claim his rights.
  • The use of the stretch provision is down this year after a surge in 2014, but a Western Conference GM who spoke with Brian Windhorst of ESPN.com believes that over time, teams will more frequently use the mechanism to spread out the payment schedule for money owed to players. “The stretch provision was something that was really being underutilized until pretty recently. I don’t think some teams understood how it could be used as a benefit,” the GM said. “I think we’ll see it more in the future because with the salary cap going up, it will be easier to fit into your planning.”

Pistons Waive Martin, Thomas, Bachynski

9:49am: Bullock has indeed won a regular season roster spot, tweets Keith Langlois of Pistons.com.

9:21am: The Pistons have waived Cartier Martin, Adonis Thomas and Jordan Bachynski, the team announced via press release. The moves leave Detroit with 16 players, all of whom are on fully guaranteed contracts, but they nonetheless provide a strong indication of what the opening night roster will look like. Danny Granger has been away from the team rehabilitating his knee trouble, and indications surfaced even when the Pistons traded for him this summer that they would waive him, as Vince Ellis of the Detroit Free Press recently explained to Hoops Rumors. That, plus the three players hitting waivers today, puts Reggie Bullock in a strong position to make the regular season roster. Martin also has a fully guaranteed salary, so the Pistons will swallow $1,270,964 assuming he clears waivers, and they’ll eat the $60K guarantee for Thomas if he passes through waivers, too. Bachynski’s deal is non-guaranteed.

Martin, 30, picked up a player option after teammates reportedly encouraged him to do so despite his apparent dissatisfaction with his playing time. He appeared in only 23 games last season, averaging 8.6 minutes per contest, even though Pistons coach/executive Stan Van Gundy committed a two-year deal to him on the first day of free agency in 2014.

The 22-year-old Thomas said that Van Gundy assured him he had a shot to make the regular season roster when the Pistons signed him this summer, but Thomas has dealt with Achilles tendon issues that limited him to a single preseason appearance of about 10 minutes. He spent last season with Detroit’s D-League affiliate, making the All-D-League Third Team, and the Pistons still own his D-League rights.

Bachynski scored six points in about six minutes of action spread over two preseason games. The 26-year-old center who went undrafted out of Arizona State in 2014 joined the Pistons on his first NBA contract this summer after having split last season between the D-League affiliate of the Knicks and Turkey’s Ekishehir Basket.

Bullock already had a line on a regular season roster spot because of his strong preseason play, and the Pistons are thinking about picking up Bullock’s $2,255,644 team option for 2016/17, Ellis reported. A decision on the option, part of the rookie scale contract for the former 25th overall pick, is due November 2nd. The Pistons acquired him from the Suns in the same trade that brought in Granger and Marcus Morris.

Cartier Martin Opts In With Pistons

JUNE 30th: Martin has officially opted in, Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders tweets.

JUNE 1st: Cartier Martin is picking up his minimum-salary option for next season, letting the Pistons know of his decision last week, a league source tells Shams Charania of RealGM (Twitter link). The small forward who turns 31 in November will draw a guaranteed salary of nearly $1.271MM for next season.

The decision is no surprise after Martin saw little playing time in his sixth NBA season this year. Coach Stan Van Gundy only called on him to appear in 23 games for an average of 8.6 minutes per night after signing him to a two-year deal last summer. It was somewhat surprising to see Van Gundy commit guaranteed money for as many as two seasons to the journeyman, though Martin had a career mark of 38.3% from behind the arc as of last summer, and that surely played into the ASM Sports client‘s deal. Martin didn’t show off that sort of accuracy in limited chances this season, making only six of 33 three-point attempts.

Martin’s option pickup, once official, will leave the Pistons with still only about $29MM against a projected $67.1MM cap. That doesn’t include a new deal for Reggie Jackson, whom the Pistons seem intent on re-signing, or one for Greg Monroe, should he surprise and choose to remain in Detroit.

Central Notes: Hoiberg, Pacers, Martin

With the Bulls‘ current lack of financial flexibility, changing coaches was the best way for the franchise to shake things up after a disappointing playoff run, Bradford Doolittle of ESPN.com writes in his breakdown of what Fred Hoiberg brings to the team on both the offensive and defensive ends of the hardwood. Doolittle also opines that it would serve the team well if Hoiberg were to retain assistant coaches Ed Pinckney and Adrian Griffin, both of whom could maintain the roster’s defensive focus while Hoiberg revamps the offense.

Here’s more from the Central Division:

  • Kansas swingman Kelly Oubre will work out for the Pacers today, Michael Scotto of Sheridan Hoops tweets. You can view our full prospect profile for Oubre here.
  • Also scheduled to work out for the Pacers today are Anthony Brown (Stanford), Cady Lalanne (UMass), Luis Montero (Westchester Community College), Jon Octeus (Purdue), and Gabe Olaseni (Iowa), the team announced.
  • Cartier Martin‘s teammates on the Pistons encouraged him to swallow his pride and exercise his player option worth nearly $1.271MM for next season, Terry Foster of The Detroit News writes. The forward was unhappy with his playing time this past season, having only appeared in 23 contests for Detroit.
  • The solid play of Tristan Thompson and the Cavs‘ success in the playoffs this season has changed the narrative regarding Kevin Love‘s player option for 2015/16, Ken Berger of CBSSports.com writes. Instead of wondering if Love would return, talk now centers around whether the team needs or wants him to return next season, Berger notes.

Pistons Sign Cartier Martin

AUGUST 18TH: The Pistons have finally followed up with an official announcement.

AUGUST 6TH: The team has yet to announce the deal, but the signing has occurred, according to Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders (Twitter link).

JULY 14TH: It’ll be a minimum-salary contract, according to Vincent Goodwill of The Detroit News (Twitter link).

JULY 2ND: The deal includes a second season that’s a player option, tweets Shams Charania of RealGM.

JULY 1ST: The Pistons have struck a one-year deal with Cartier Martin, tweets Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports. The 29-year-old swingman spent most of last season with the Hawks, save for a pair of 10-day contracts with Chicago. It’s unclear just how much Martin will receive, but it seems likely to be a minimum-salary arrangement.

The addition of Martin, along with Jodie Meeks, seems like an attempt by new Pistons coach/executive Stan Van Gundy to upgrade the team’s outside shooting. Martin is an above average three-point shooter, knocking down 39.1% of his treys last season and 38.3% for his career.

Martin, like Meeks, is a client of Andrew Vye, so it appears as though negotiations happened simultaneous. There weren’t reports of other suitors for the six-year veteran, who saw 15.5 minutes per game for Atlanta last season.

Hawks Re-Sign Cartier Martin For Season

3:19pm: Atlanta has made its signing of Martin official, the team announced.

9:07am: The Hawks will re-sign Cartier Martin for the balance of the season, tweets Shams Charania of RealGM. The Hawks were set to terminate Martin’s 10-day deal Thursday, but the team never officially announced that move before the end of the day, when the contract was set to expire anyway, making him a free agent.

Martin, 29, has seen time in 31 games this season for the Hawks, averaging 6.7 PPG and 2.0 RPG in 17.1 minutes per contest. The 29-year-old has spent most of the season with Atlanta after making the team out of camp. The Hawks cut him in January, before his contract would have become guaranteed for the season, which led to a pair of 10-day deals with Chicago, as our 10-Day Contract Tracker shows. The Andrew Vye client followed those up with two more 10-day contracts with the Hawks.

Yesterday, just hours after acquiring Antawn Jamison, we learned that Atlanta was mulling the possibility of buying out the veteran forward. That move will create the roster opening necessary to officially bring Martin back into the fold.

Hawks Release Cartier Martin

FRIDAY, 8:00am: Atlanta has yet to officially announce the move, but Martin’s deal was set to expire at the end of the day Thursday, so he is no longer with the Hawks, one way or another.

THURSDAY, 5:05pm: The Hawks will release Cartier Martin ahead of the expiration of his 10-day deal to make room for the newly-acquired Antawn Jamison, tweets Chris Vivlamore of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Though Vivlamore says the team will waive Martin, he won’t actually go on waivers. Teams can terminate 10-day contracts at any point, and when that happens, the player becomes a free agent immediately.

Atlanta acquired Jamison earlier today along with cash considerations from the Clippers.  The 37-year-old veteran may not be staying in Atlanta for long, however, as the Hawks are thinking about buying him out.

Martin, 29, has seen time in 31 games this season for the Hawks, averaging 6.7 PPG and 2.0 RPG in 17.1 minutes per contest. His 10-day contract was to expire at the end of tonight anyway, and since the Hawks don’t have a game, the early termination of his deal is of little effect.

Chuck Myron contributed to this post.