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Players Who Signed July 1 Are Now Eligible To Be Traded

July 31st, 2023 at 9:22am CST by Arthur Hill

The peak of the NBA’s transactions season has calmed down after an active start to July, but a few more players have become eligible to be traded on the final day of the month, notes Bobby Marks of ESPN (Twitter link).

The 30-day trade restriction window has expired for draft picks who signed their contracts on July 1, along with six players who inked two-way contracts on that date.

The designation won’t matter for those at the very top of the draft, as the Spurs and Trail Blazers obviously won’t consider trading Victor Wembanyama and Scoot Henderson, respectively. However, it could come into play for a few others, especially if more big-name players are on the move as the summer winds down.

In addition to those top-three picks, first-rounders who signed on July 1 are the Magic’s Anthony Black and Jett Howard, the Pacers‘ Jarace Walker and Ben Sheppard, the Trail Blazers‘ Kris Murray and the Heat’s Jaime Jaquez. The No. 18 pick out of UCLA, Jaquez has been mentioned as a potential asset in a trade to bring Damian Lillard to Miami.

Two-way players who signed on July 1, according to NBA.com’s transactions log, are the Sixers‘ Terquavion Smith and Ricky Council, the Heat‘s Dru Smith and Jamaree Bouyea, the Trail Blazers‘ Ibou Badji and the Rockets‘ Trevor Hudgins.

Most veteran free agents who signed this summer won’t become eligible to be traded by their teams until December 15 or January 15, depending on their circumstances. Those signings didn’t become official until July 6 or later because of the NBA’s summer moratorium.

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Rockets Notes: Brooks, Whitmore, Smith, Samuels

July 20th, 2023 at 10:57am CST by Arthur Hill

The Rockets were facing competition for Dillon Brooks on the free agent market, Kelly Iko of The Athletic writes in a mailbag column. Houston raised its offer beyond what was originally projected, eventually signing the defensive-minded swingman to a four-year contract that could pay him up to $90MM if he meets incentives.

The Mavericks were “seriously in the mix” for Brooks, sources tell Iko, and the Bucks were watching him closely in case they weren’t able to re-sign Khris Middleton. Brooks had a meeting with the Lakers, Iko adds, but L.A. didn’t have enough cap space to give him the kind of offer he wanted and wasn’t willing to arrange a complex sign-and-trade like Houston did.

Iko understands that many Rockets fans are surprised by the money they gave to Brooks, who landed a yearly salary close to what Bruce Brown did in free agency and now has a contract similar to Jordan Clarkson, Terry Rozier and Malcolm Brogdon. However, Iko points out that Houston had to overpay to get any significant free agent considering its dismal record over the past three years, and there’s hope that Brooks can transform his approach, especially on offense, while playing for a demanding coach like Ime Udoka.

There’s more from Houston:

  • Summer League MVP Cam Whitmore played mostly at small forward, which Iko expects to be his primary position during the upcoming season. Iko has the 20th overall pick listed behind Tari Eason as the backup small forward on his projected depth chart and says it’s hard to predict how much he’ll play as a rookie. Iko states that Whitmore has the talent to create a steady role for himself right away, but the Rockets don’t have to rush him with their revamped roster so he may be sent to the G League to get consistent minutes.
  • In a separate story, Iko talked to some of the league’s best defenders throughout the season about what Jabari Smith has to do to become elite in that area of the game. The Rockets were happy to land Smith with the third pick in the 2022 draft because of his defensive potential, combining the size of a center with the quickness to stay in front of smaller players. “Watch a lot of film,” advised Nets forward Royce O’Neale. “Try to study guys as much as you can. This league has a lot of great scorers and different guys like doing different things. Learn and watch other guys. Don’t be afraid to ask guys who are defenders how they guard certain people and little tips like that.”
  • Jermaine Samuels appears to be the most likely unsigned member of the Rockets’ Summer League team to get a training camp invitation, according to Jonathan Feigen of The Houston Chronicle. Houston has two roster slots and a two-way spot open, and Feigen lists Nate Hinton, Matthew Mayer and current two-way player Trevor Hudgins as others who helped themselves in Las Vegas.
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Trevor Hudgins Accepting QO From Rockets

July 1st, 2023 at 8:52pm CST by Arthur Hill

Rockets two-way player Trevor Hudgins has accepted his qualifying offer from the team, his agent tells ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski (Twitter link). The offer will amount to another one-year deal as a two-way player with a small salary guarantee.

Hudgins signed with Houston last summer after going undrafted out of Northwest Missouri State. He spent the season almost entirely in the G League, where he averaged 19 PPG for Rio Grande Valley, but he did see minimal playing time in five NBA games.

The new Collective Bargaining Agreement has given each team a third two-way player, so Hudgins’ spot on the roster may be secure.

The Rockets also made a qualifying offer to Darius Days, their other two-way player from last season.

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Rockets Exercising Team Option On Kenyon Martin Jr.

June 29th, 2023 at 9:12am CST by Luke Adams

The Rockets are exercising their $1,930,681 team option on Kenyon Martin Jr. for the 2023/24 season, reports Kelly Iko of The Athletic (Twitter link).

Martin, 22, has been with Houston for the last three years and had arguably his best NBA season in 2022/23, appearing in all 82 games and making 49 starts. The 6’6″ forward established new career highs in points (12.7), rebounds (5.5), and assists (1.5) per game, as well as field-goal percentage (56.9%).

While the Rockets’ decision to pick up Martin’s option may look like a no-brainer on paper, it wasn’t a lock. Exercising the option will put the former second-round pick on track for unrestricted free agency in 2024, whereas turning it down and issuing him a qualifying offer would’ve allowed Houston to negotiate with Martin as a restricted free agent this summer.

Still, there are plenty of reasons why it made sense for the Rockets to pick up the option. Keeping Martin on a minimum-salary cap hit will allow the club to maximize its league-high cap room, which projects to exceed $60MM. Martin will also immediately become eligible to be extended or traded — he has consistently been mentioned in trade rumors for over a year.

In other Rockets news, according to Iko (Twitter link), the team will also issue two-way qualifying offers to Darius Days and Trevor Hudgins, making them restricted free agents.

Because Days and Hudgins were NBA rookies in 2022/23 and finished the season on two-way contracts, their qualifying offers will each be the equivalent of another one-year, two-way deal with a small partial guarantee.

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Rockets Sign Trevor Hudgins To Two-Way Contract

July 1st, 2022 at 1:23pm CST by Arthur Hill

JULY 1: The Rockets have officially signed Hudgins to his two-way deal, the team announced today in a press release. It’s a one-year contract, tweets Jonathan Feigen of The Houston Chronicle.

JUNE 24: Trevor Hudgins, a two-time Division II Player of the Year at Northwest Missouri State, will sign a two-way deal with the Rockets, tweets ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski. The agreement was confirmed by Hudgins’ agent, George Langberg.

A 23-year-old guard, Hudgins averaged 23.0 points, 4.3 assists and 1.5 steals as a senior. He’s an accomplished shooter, connecting at 48.2% from the field, 41.5% from three-point range and 90.1% from the foul line this season. He was named Most Outstanding Player in the Division II Tournament in both 2019 and 2022 and won three national titles with the Bearcats.

Hudgins had one year of eligibility remaining, but chose to forego it and enter the draft. He also declared for the 2021 draft before deciding to return to school.

ESPN ranks Hudgins 33rd on its list of best undrafted players.

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NBA Announces Initial Early Entrant List For 2022 Draft

April 27th, 2022 at 10:05am CST by Luke Adams

The NBA has officially released the initial list of early entrants for the 2022 NBA draft, announcing in a press release that 283 players have filed as early entry candidates. Of those prospects, 247 are from colleges, while 36 are international early entrants.

Those are big numbers, but they fall well short of the 353 early entrants who initially declared for the draft a year ago. Beginning in 2021, the NCAA granted players an extra year of eligibility due to the coronavirus pandemic, resulting in seniors having to decide between staying at college for one more season or declaring for the draft as an “early” entrant.

That tweak to the NCAA’s eligibility rules has increased the number of total early entrants due to the influx of seniors into the pool. However, as Jonathan Givony of ESPN observes (via Twitter), the number of college non-seniors (123) on the initial early entry list this year is actually the lowest since 2016, while the number of international prospects (36) is the lowest since 2014.

This year’s total of 283 early entrants figures to shrink significantly by June 1 and again by June 13, the two deadlines for players to withdraw their names from the draft pool. But it still looks like the pool will remain extremely crowded, with the eventual number of early entrants certain to exceed 58, the number of picks in the draft.

Our tracker of early entrants for the 2022 draft is fully up to date and can be found right here.

Here are the changes we made to our tracker today:

Newly-added players:

College players:

These players either didn’t publicly announce that they were entering the draft or we simply missed it when they did.

International players:

These players weren’t previously mentioned on our list of international early entrants. The country listed here indicates where they last played, not necessarily where they were born.

Other notable draft-eligible early entrants:

The NBA sent its teams a list of 33 “also-eligible” names. That list isn’t public, but Jonathan Givony of ESPN (Twitter link) shared some of the most notable players on it, and we’ve added them to our early entrant tracker. They are as follows:

  1. Dominick Barlow, F, Overtime Elite
  2. MarJon Beauchamp, G/F, G League Ignite
  3. Dyson Daniels, G, G League Ignite
  4. Henri Drell, G/F, Windy City Bulls
  5. Michael Foster, F, G League Ignite
  6. Jaden Hardy, G, G League Ignite
  7. Makur Maker, C, Sydney Kings (formerly Howard Bison)
  8. Jean Montero, G, Overtime Elite
  9. Samson Ruzhentsev, G/F, Mega Basket (formerly Florida Gators)
  10. Kai Sotto, C, Adelaide 36ers (formerly G League Ignite)
  11. Zaire Wade, G, Salt Lake City Stars
  12. Kok Yat, F, Overtime Elite
  13. Fanbo Zeng, F, G League Ignite

Players removed:

Despite reports or announcements that the players below would declare for the draft, they didn’t show up on the NBA’s official list.

That could mean a number of things — they may have decided against entering the draft; they may have entered the draft, then withdrawn; they may have had no NCAA eligibility remaining, making them automatically draft-eligible; they may have incorrectly filed their paperwork; or the NBA may have accidentally omitted some names.

In any case, we’ve removed the following names from our early entrant list, at least for the time being.

Finally, Givony reports (via Twitter) that Canadian forward Leonard Miller, from the Fort Erie International Academy has been asked to fill out additional paperwork to finalize his entrance into the draft pool. According to Givony, there’s an expectation that Miller will be added to the list, so we’ve left him listed in our early entrant tracker among the international players.

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NBA Announces 88 Early Entrants Withdrawing From Draft

July 10th, 2021 at 6:15pm CST by Luke Adams

The NBA issued a press release today announcing that 88 prospects who declared for the 2021 draft as early entrants earlier this year have withdrawn their names from the draft pool.

We’ve passed along updates on most of these players in recent weeks, but the following names on today’s list are ones that we hadn’t written about yet. They’ve pulled out of the 2021 NBA draft and will retain their NCAA eligibility for at least one more year:

  1. Josiah Agnew, G, Denmark Technical College (SC) (freshman)
  2. Dalonte Brown, F, Miami (Ohio) (senior)
  3. D.J. Burns Jr., F, Winthrop (sophomore)
  4. Lydell Elmore, F, High Point (senior)
  5. Patrick Greene Jr., G, National Park College (AR) (sophomore)
  6. Ron Harper Jr., G/F, Rutgers (junior)
  7. Trevor Hudgins, G, NW Missouri State (junior)
  8. David Jean-Baptiste, G, Chattanooga (senior)
  9. Jalen Johnson, F, Mississippi State (senior)
  10. Jaizec Lottie, G, Flagler (FL) (senior)
  11. Loudon Love, F, Wright State (senior)
  12. Issa Muhammad, F, Daytona State (FL) (sophomore)
  13. Jordan Phillips, G/F, UT Arlington (junior)
  14. Antonio Reeves, G, Illinois State (sophomore)
  15. Shawn Royal Jr., G/F, Victory Rock Prep (FL) (post-graduate)
  16. Maleek Taylor, F, Allen University (SC) (senior)
  17. Alonzo Verge Jr., G, Arizona State (senior)
  18. Richard Washington Jr., G/F, San Jose State (senior)
  19. Keith Williams, G, Cincinnati (senior)

Our unofficial list of early entrants is now up to date, to the best of our knowledge. While the NCAA’s early entrant withdrawal deadline came and went this past Wednesday, the NBA’s own deadline is on July 19, so there will still be a number of early entrants removing their names from the draft in the next nine days — especially international prospects, since the NCAA deadline didn’t apply to them at all.

We’ll continue updating our list of early entrants through the NBA’s withdrawal deadline on July 19, and will eventually provide an official list of this year’s draft-eligible early entrants.

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NBA Announces Initial Early Entrant List For 2021 Draft

June 2nd, 2021 at 10:38am CST by Luke Adams

The NBA has officially released the initial list of early entrants for the 2021 NBA draft, announcing in a press release that 353 players have filed as early entry candidates. Of those prospects, 296 are from colleges, while 57 are international early entrants.

That number obliterates the previous record of 236 early entrants, established in 2018. That had been expected, however, since the NCAA gave players an extra year of eligibility due to the coronavirus pandemic, resulting in seniors having to decide between staying at college for one more season or declaring for the draft as an “early” entrant.

Since well over half of the college early entrants are seniors, there are actually fewer college underclassmen than usual in this initial group of early entrants.

This year’s total of 353 early entrants figures to shrink significantly by July 7 and again by July 19, the two deadlines for players to withdraw their names from the draft pool. But it still looks like the pool will remain extremely crowded, with the eventual number of early entrants certain to exceed 60, the number of picks in the draft.

Our tracker of early entrants for the 2021 draft now includes seniors and is fully up to date. It can be found right here. It doesn’t include players who are automatically draft-eligible this year. As Jonathan Givony of ESPN tweets, that list of auto-eligible players includes the prospects who played for the G League Ignite, such as Jalen Green and Jonathan Kuminga.

Here are the changes we made to our tracker today:

Newly-added players:

College players:

These players hadn’t previously been included on our unofficial list of underclassmen early entrants and weren’t on the list of senior early entrants that the NBA sent to teams last week.

International players:

These players weren’t previously mentioned on our list of international early entrants. The country listed here indicates where they last played, not necessarily where they were born.

Players removed:

Despite reports or announcements that the players below would declare for the draft, they didn’t show up on the NBA’s official list.

That could mean a number of things — they may have decided against entering the draft; they may have entered the draft, then withdrawn; they may have incorrectly filed their paperwork; or the NBA may have accidentally omitted some names.

In any case, we’ve removed the following names from our early entrant list for the time being.

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