Omri Casspi Clears Waivers
Forward Omri Casspi has cleared waivers and hit free agency, reports Marc Stein of ESPN.com (Twitter link). The news is a surprise, since the Kings had reportedly planned to submit a claim. The Pelicans released Casspi on Wednesday, as they had seemed likely to do after acquiring him from the Rockets in the Omer Asik trade.
Agent Dan Fegan had spoken with the Kings, among several other teams, about Casspi with New Orleans poised to let him go, as Casspi told Ailene Voisin of The Sacramento Bee earlier this week. Casspi also expressed interest in returning to Sacramento, where he played his first two NBA seasons, which doubled as his most productive. The Kings and any other team are free to sign Casspi now that he’s hit the open market, but Sacramento might wind up paying a greater premium than the minimum salary he would have made if the Kings had claimed him off waivers.
The Kings have their $2.077MM biannual exception available if necessary to sign Casspi, who was a regular part of Houston’s rotation this past season. There are already 11 teams limited to doling out just the minimum salary to free agents, so that could work to Sacramento’s advantage if the team indeed still envisions a reunion with the 26-year-old native of Israel.
Sacramento is nonetheless about $1MM beneath the tax threshold, and if Casspi consents to sign a one-year deal for the minimum salary, the Kings will only be on the hook for the two-year veteran’s portion of it, with the league picking up the tab for the rest. That would allow the team to stay beneath the tax line and retain Quincy Acy‘s non-guaranteed contract, as Stein points out (on Twitter). The Kings would have been on the hook for his full five-year veteran’s minimum had they claimed his contract off waivers, since that deal had covered two years instead of one.
Kings Arena Clears Final Legal Hurdle
A judge today denied a request to issue an injunction that would forestall construction of a new arena for the Kings in Sacramento, allowing the city and the team to proceed toward meeting a league-imposed deadline for its completion, reports Dale Kasler of The Sacramento Bee. A group opposing the project on environmental grounds was the last standing among a wide range of foes who took legal maneuvers to prevent the arena from being built. One such group drew the financial backing of investor Chris Hansen, who fronted a group last year that came close to buying the team and moving it to Seattle.
The NBA negotiated the right to buy the team and sell it to another bidder into the purchase agreement between owner Vivek Ranadive and the Maloof family, the team’s previous owners. That clause would be triggered if the arena weren’t complete by 2017 or if the Kings didn’t show satisfactory progress toward that deadline. Still, commissioner Adam Silver has expressed full confidence that the project will meet its targets. The arena is scheduled to open in 2016.
The primary challenges have been to the city’s $255MM contribution to the $455MM building, and Hansen admitted that he funded a petition drive that sought to put civic funding up to a public referendum. Hansen also said he would seek to withdraw his financial support of the petition campaign, although it’s not clear whether the group returned his reported $100K contribution.
Pacific Notes: Lin, Kings, Sterlings
The Lakers have finally acquired Jeremy Lin after two failed attempts to land the point guard in recent years, writes Dave McMenamin of ESPNLosAngeles.com. At the veteran’s introductory press conference, Los Angeles GM Mitch Kupchak told reporters including McMenamin, “The first thing I said to [Lin] when he sat down was, ‘You know, three times is a charm.'” Here’s more from the Pacific Division:
- Quincy Acy‘s contract was set to become fully guaranteed tomorrow, but the Kings have been granted an extension to make their decision on the small forward’s fate until August 15, reports Jason Jones of The Sacramento Bee (on Twitter). The deadline extension, presumably granted by Acy and his management, will give Sacramento more time to explore their options to keep the 23-year-old while avoiding the luxury tax.
- A Sacramento judge is set to make a final ruling against a citizen-led attempt to block construction of the new Kings arena, reports Dale Kasler and Ryan Lillis of The Sacramento Bee. The judge issued a temporary rejection of the lawsuit today, which is the last remaining legal barrier to the arena, which was initially approved in May.
- Donald Sterling attorney Max Blecher accused commissioner Adam Silver of having given Shelly Sterling the idea that she should take full control of the family trust to facilitate the sale of the Clippers, as Ramona Shelburne of ESPNLosAngeles.com details.
Chuck Myron contributed to this post.
Western Notes: Huestis, Kings, Hamilton, Hill
The idea of having Josh Huestis sign in the D-League in exchange for becoming an NBA first-round draft pick came from his representatives rather than the Thunder, agent Mitchell Butler tells SB Nation’s Mike Prada.
“This was the perfect team and the perfect storm,” Butler said. “This isn’t for everyone.”
Butler also told Prada that the Thunder haven’t said whether they plan to sign Huestis to an NBA deal next summer or at a later point. There’s more on Huestis among the latest from the Western Conference, as we detail:
- The union sees the Thunder‘s arrangement with Huestis as a positive, as interim executive director Ron Klempner said to Grantland’s Zach Lowe. “This is an example of the player flipping the script,” Klempner said. “The player essentially drafted his team.”
- Kings GM Pete D’Alessandro said he’s on the lookout for rim-protection and particularly shooting to round out the roster in an attempt to make the playoffs this season, as he told Jared Zwerling of Bleacher Report.
- Richard Hamilton tells David Alarcon of HoopsHype that he’s fielded a couple of calls from NBA teams and that while he considered retirement, he’d like to return to the NBA with a contending team. The 36-year-old, who last played in 2012/13, said that the Timberwolves showed interest in signing him early last season, but he declined to specify any teams that have spoken with him more recently.
- Jordan Hill‘s two-year deal with the Lakers contains a team option for the final season, according to Mark Deeks of ShamSports.
Teams With Hard Caps For 2014/15
The NBA’s salary cap is really a misnomer of sorts, since it doesn’t truly cap salaries. Look no further than last year’s Nets for confirmation of that. They doled out nearly $103MM in salaries, incurring more than $90.57MM in luxury taxes and smashing the record for the greatest expenditure on a single roster in NBA history.
The NBA’s salary cap is commonly referred to as a “soft cap,” but there are still ways that teams can impose a “hard cap” upon themselves and set a finite limit to their spending. If a team’s salary exceeds the luxury tax threshold ($76,829,000) by more than $4MM, that team is not permitted to acquire a player via sign-and-trade, or to use the non-taxpayer’s mid-level or biannual exceptions. The only exceptions available to such a team are the taxpayer’s mid-level of $3,278,000, the minimum-salary exception, and whatever form of Bird rights they have on their own free agents. As soon as a team completes a sign-and-trade deal, uses its BAE, or uses more than $3,278,000 of its MLE to sign a player, that club becomes hard-capped at $80,829,000 for the 2014/15 season. In other words, team salary can’t exceed that amount at any point between now and June 30th, 2015.
For some clubs, that hard cap isn’t a major concern. For instance, the Suns still have about $18MM in breathing room below the hard cap, so they have plenty of flexibility to re-sign restricted free agent Eric Bledsoe to a max contract if need be. On the other hand, the Clippers are only about $1MM below the hard cap, so any trades or signings they make for the rest of the season will have to be constructed to ensure their team salary doesn’t surpass that $80.829MM cutoff.
More clubs may trigger hard caps as the offseason wears on, but here are the teams that are now locked into a hard cap for the 2014/15 season, along with an estimation (via Basketball Insiders) of their current team salaries and the reason(s) why the hard cap was created:
Hawks
Hard cap created: Acquired Thabo Sefolosha via sign-and-trade
Estimated team salary: $60,975,564
Rockets
Hard cap created: Acquired Trevor Ariza via sign-and-trade
Estimated team salary: $68,125,942
Wizards
Hard cap created: Acquired Kris Humphries via sign-and-trade; acquired DeJuan Blair via sign-and-trade; signed Paul Pierce via non-taxpayer MLE
Estimated team salary: $76,646,603
Suns
Hard cap created: Acquired Isaiah Thomas via sign-and-trade
Estimated team salary: $51,805,537
Warriors
Hard cap created: Signed Shaun Livingston via non-taxpayer MLE
Estimated team salary: $72,232,245
Pacers
Hard cap created: Signed C.J. Miles and Damjan Rudez via non-taxpayer MLE
Estimated team salary: $74,798,942
Clippers
Hard cap created: Signed Spencer Hawes via non-taxpayer MLE; signed Jordan Farmar via biannual exception
Estimated team salary: $79,679,772
Grizzlies
Hard cap created: Signed Vince Carter via non-taxpayer MLE; signed Beno Udrih via biannual exception
Estimated team salary: $75,529,943
Trail Blazers
Hard cap created: Signed Chris Kaman via non-taxpayer MLE; signed Steve Blake via biannual exception
Estimated team salary: $69,322,824
Kings
Hard cap created: Signed Darren Collison via non-taxpayer MLE
Estimated team salary: $75,852,705
Pacific Rumors: Bledsoe, Thomas, Clippers
The Suns have little interest in sending restricted free agent Eric Bledsoe away in a sign-and-trade, and Suns president of basketball operations Lon Babby is confident in the team’s two-point guard look, writes Bob Young of the Arizona Republic. The four-year, $48MM offer the Suns reportedly have out to Bledsoe is for significantly more than what the team and agent Rich Paul spoke about last fall in extension talks, Young adds. There’s more from Young’s piece amid the latest on the Suns and the rest of the Pacific Division:
- New Suns acquisition Isaiah Thomas told Young that he felt as though the Kings were looking to replace him at every turn. “I felt very disrespected,” Thomas said. “Every year it was somebody new. I felt I did a good enough job to show them I was a starting point guard or a guy who could play a big role with their team. But they thought differently.
- Differing opinions on the relative values of David Lee and Kevin Love, a reluctance to take on Kevin Martin, and a reticence to give up Harrison Barnes on top of it all have the Warriors holding out in talks with Minnesota, as Tim Kawakami of the Bay Area News Group explains. That’s in addition to Golden State’s decision to keep Klay Thompson‘s name out of the discussion.
- Attorneys for Donald Sterling made it clear Tuesday that he wants the NBA to vote to terminate his ownership of the Clippers so he can move forward with his antitrust suit against the league, tweets Ramona Shelburne of ESPNLosAngeles.com. The judge in the probate trial between Sterling and his wife can rule that Shelly Sterling’s sale of the team to Steve Ballmer would go forward even if Donald Sterling appeals, but such a ruling would be difficult to come by, Shelburne adds (on Twitter).
- The Kings are among several teams that Dan Fegan, the agent for Omri Casspi, has spoken to, as Casspi tells Ailene Voisin of The Sacramento Bee. Casspi, whom the Pelicans are likely to waive this month, added that he has interest in returning to Sacramento, where he played his first two NBA seasons.
And-Ones: Kings, Turner, Mudiay, Union, Bulls
Kings GM Pete D’Alessandro told Grantland’s Zach Lowe that the two keys to his rebuilding strategy are to surrender nothing of lasting value in exchange for capable veterans like Rudy Gay and to be willing to take quality players on inflated contracts.
“There are players that are being paid more than the league thinks they should be paid,” D’Alessandro said. “We see those contracts as an opportunity. Our first question is, ‘Do we like the player?’ If we do, then can we use a contract the league doesn’t look favorably on as an opportunity to make our team better?”
We passed along more on the Kings from Lowe this morning, and we’ve got plenty from around the rest of the league here:
- The Celtics had been in contact with Evan Turner almost every day between the start of free agency and Monday, when they reached agreement on a deal, writes Steve Bulpett of the Boston Herald.
- Emmanuel Mudiay isn’t the first well-regarded high school player to turn pro overseas rather than play in college, but his $1.2MM pact with Guangdong of China makes him the most highly compensated ever to have done so, notes Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports.
- Three candidates remain for the players association’s vacant executive director position, tweets Gery Woelfel of The Journal Times. The job has been open since the union ousted Billy Hunter at the All-Star break in 2013 and installed Ron Klempner in an interim capacity. It’s unclear whether Klempner is one of the finalists.
- Cameron Bairstow‘s deal with the Bulls is for three years, starting at the minimum salary, reports K.C. Johnson of the Chicago Tribune. That means the team used all but a sliver of its remaining cap space to sign the rookie out of New Mexico, whom the Bulls picked 49th overall in last month’s draft. The first season of Bairstow’s contract is the only one that’s fully guaranteed, Johnson adds.
- Chris Andersen‘s two-year deal with the Heat is for a total of $10.4MM, all of which is fully guaranteed, tweets Marc Stein of ESPN.com.
Latest On Josh Smith
TUESDAY, 8:21am: The Smith talks were serious between the Kings and Pistons, according to Grantland’s Zach Lowe, contradicting part of Wojnarowski’s report. Lowe also suggests there’s a decent chance that they pick up again at some point.
MONDAY, 1:05pm: Van Gundy has told Smith that reports about trade talk with the Kings have been inaccurate and assured him that he’ll begin this coming season with the Pistons, barring an unexpected turn of events, reports Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports. The Kings had called about Smith, but Detroit never heard an offer it liked, and the discussion never reached a serious stage, sources tell Wojnarowski. Smith likes the idea of remaining with the Pistons, Wojnarowski also hears.
SATURDAY, 2:49pm: A source tells Vince Ellis of the Detroit Free Press that there are “no legs” to reports suggesting that the Kings and Pistons are discussing a deal involving Smith.
THURSDAY, 8:59am: The idea of a Smith deal didn’t intrigue Kings GM Pete D’Alessandro, tweets Vincent Goodwill of The Detroit News, who says it seems like coach Mike Malone is the catalyst for the talks. Stein noted Malone’s fondness for defense in story, one in which Stein also points to Smith’s defensive capabilities as one of the reasons the Kings are pursuing him. Pistons president of basketball operations Stan Van Gundy didn’t give Smith any promise that he wouldn’t trade him when they met recently, but while Van Gundy is open to trading the forward, he wants value in return, Goodwill also tweets.
8:14am: The Pistons and Kings are once more discussing trade scenarios involving Josh Smith and are on the hunt for a third team to make a deal work, reports Marc Stein of ESPN.com. Sacramento remains interested in the 28-year-old forward, as the Kings brass is fond of his defensive capabilities and intrigued by the idea of acquiring a player of his talent without giving up a piece of the team’s core, Stein hears.
The teams reportedly had talks last month before the Pistons put a stop to them, and the framework involved then would have seen Jason Thompson and either Derrick Williams or Jason Terry off to Detroit, Stein adds. It’s unclear whether any of that trio are subjects of the latest conversations, but Terry is seemingly agitating for an exit for Sacramento, having spoken of his fondness for the Mavericks and criticized Kings teammates DeMarcus Cousins and Rudy Gay in a recent interview. The Kings would rather trade Terry than let him buy his way out of his contract, according to Stein.
Smith signed a four-year, $54MM contract with the Pistons a year ago, but the team’s decision to line him up next to Greg Monroe and Andre Drummond was ill-fated, and it’s left the club with a dilemma involving Monroe’s restricted free agency. The Pistons had serious talks with the Blazers about a sign-and-trade that would have sent Monroe to Portland, but the Blazers dropped out of the running for Monroe when they struck a deal with free agent Chris Kaman, Stein reports.
Smith has appeal to the Kings based on his relationship with Rajon Rondo, whom the team has long coveted, as Stein points out. Smith would love to play with Rondo, having called him “my best friend” in an interview this spring in which Smith said he and Rondo have had multiple conversations about the possibility of becoming teammates. The Celtics point guard is poised to become a free agent next summer.
Contract Details: Collison, Young, Hinrich
The difference between Darren Collison‘s first year salary and the $5.305MM mid-level exception is precisely equivalent to the rookie minimum salary, as Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders points out (on Twitter). That allows the Kings to use that remaining portion of their mid-level to sign a rookie for three or four years rather than just the two that the minimum-salary exception would allow. Here’s a round up of the latest contract details to come to light this evening..
- Nick Young will make $4,994,420 this season and $21.3MM over the course of his four-year contract with Lakers, according to Pincus (on Twitter). Swaggy P’s new deal with the Lakers became official earlier today.
- Kirk Hinrich‘s new deal with the Bulls includes a 15% trade kicker, Pincus tweets. In 73 games (61 starts) last season for the Bulls, Hinrich averaged 9.1 PPG and 3.9 APG in 29 minutes per contest. Hinrich has put up a 10.8 PER over the last two seasons, a far cry from the 17.0 PER he put up in his best season for the Bulls (2006-07).
- The third and final year of Kris Humphries‘ contract with the Wizards is non-guaranteed, tweets Pincus. It was previously unclear whether that third year was non-guaranteed or simply a team option.
- Marc Stein of ESPN.com (on Twitter) has the goods on Ryan Kelly‘s two-year deal with the Lakers. Kelly will earn $1.65MM in 2014/15 and ~$1.72MM in 2015/16.
- Trevor Booker‘s deal with the Jazz has just $250K guaranteed in year two, Pincus tweets. It was previously reported that the second season on Booker’s deal was not fully guaranteed.
Chuck Myron contributed to this post.
Western Rumors: Smith, Lakers, Ballmer, Thunder
The Kings don’t believe any of their power forwards is a solution at the position, and they’ve tried to move one this summer in a quest for an upgrade that’s sparked revitalized talks with the Pistons involving Josh Smith, as Jason Jones of The Sacramento Bee details. Here’s more from the Western Conference:
- The Lakers have renounced the rights to Wesley Johnson, Xavier Henry, and Kent Bazemore, Eric Pincus of The Los Angeles Times reveals (all on Twitter). The maneuvers will accommodate the re-signings of Nick Young, Henry, and Johnson, all of whom have agreed to new deals. Pincus expects Young to be renounced before re-signing as well.
- The Times scribe suspects that the Lakers are using part or all of the room exception to sign Ryan Kelly, considering the cap room that will be eaten up by Young’s contract, and a “reasonable” market of suitors for the power forward (all via Twitter).
- Steve Ballmer agreed to extend his deal to purchase the Clippers until August 15th, but Linda Deutsch of The Associated Press reports that Ballmer’s lawyer told a judge in the Donald and Shelly Sterling legal proceedings that the agreement will be off if there is no ruling prior to that date. Ballmer’s potential withdrawal would further cloud the team’s status, as commissioner Adam Silver recently cautioned that Sterling could still own the Clippers at the beginning of next season.
- The Thunder have announced that their D-League affiliate will move from Bixby, Oklahoma to Oklahoma City next season, as first reported by Darnell Mayberry of The Oklahoman. The change will make shuffling players between the Thunder and 66ers more convenient.
- The Jazz still have free agency moves to make in filling out their roster, reports Tony Jones of The Salt Lake Tribune (all Twitter links). Francisco Garcia is a possibility for Utah, who seek a shooting wing along with a third point guard brought in to sit behind the team’s developing backcourt.
Chuck Myron contributed to this post.