Miroslav Raduljica To Play In China
Center Miroslav Raduljica has signed a one-year deal with the Shandong Flaming Bulls, sources tell Shams Charania of RealGM. Raduljica took to Twitter this morning to relay the news and he sounds rather excited. “Next station in my career is CBA league, I’m looking forward to playing for Shandong!,” the big man wrote.
Raduljica, 26, was waived by the Clippers in late August shortly after he came over in the Jared Dudley trade. The 7-footer spent his lone NBA season with Milwaukee last year but didn’t get a whole lot of burn. Across 48 games, the big man averaged just 9.7 minutes per night and put up 3.8 points and 2.3 rebounds per contest.
Earlier this month it was reported that the center was leaning toward signing a lucrative contract with a European team if the NBA offers didn’t improve. The Matt Babcock client didn’t get the NBA deal he was after and presumably found something better in Shandong than in Europe. Teams reportedly called the Bucks last season to inquire on Raduljica and he had interest from several NBA teams this summer, including the Spurs and 76ers, according to Charania.
Wizards Sign Damion James
SEPTEMBER 29TH: The deal is official, the team announced.
SEPTEMBER 18TH: The Wizards have signed small forward Damion James, according to the RealGM transactions log, though the team has yet to make an official announcement. J. Michael of CSNWashington.com reported earlier this week that an agreement was close. It’s almost certainly for the minimum salary, since that’s all the Wizards can give, though it’s unclear whether it involves any guaranteed salary.
It’s the third straight September that James has signed a new deal, and the former 24th overall pick is surely hoping for better luck this time after he failed to make it to opening night on non-guaranteed contracts with the Hawks and Nuggets. The Mark Bartelstein client has nonetheless found his way onto NBA rosters in each of the past two seasons via 10-day contracts, and the Spurs signed him for the final few days of the regular season and the playoffs this spring, though he failed to appear in a postseason game.
Washington has been carrying 13 guaranteed deals, and the team’s contract with Glen Rice Jr. is partially guaranteed, so that seemingly sets up a battle between James and Xavier Silas, both wing players, for the team’s 15th regular season roster spot. Still, it would be somewhat surprising to see the Wizards leave four open spots beneath the 20-man preseason roster limit, and Michael indicated in his report this week that there’s a strong chance the Wizards won’t carry 15 players on opening night.
Grizzlies Sign Kalin Lucas To Camp Deal
SEPTEMBER 25TH: The deal is official, the team announced.
SEPTEMBER 18TH: The signing has taken place, according to the RealGM transactions log, though the team has yet to make a formal announcement.
SEPTEMBER 16TH: The Grizzlies and former Michigan State standout Kalin Lucas have struck a deal, as the agent for Lucas tells Sportando’s Emiliano Carchia (Twitter link). Presumably the arrangement will be for camp, perhaps with a diminutive guarantee involved. The Grizzlies have a sliver of their mid-level exception left to pay a bit more than the minimum salary, but it seems unlikely they’ll make that commitment in this case.
Lucas was briefly in camp with the Bulls last autumn, but it appeared they signed him specifically so they could reach the roster threshold necessary to ink others to Exhibit 9 contracts and reduce their liability. The Bulls cut him just as camp began to avoid running the risk that he’d be injured and they’d have to keep him on the roster and pay his salary during the regular season. The Grizzlies already have at least 14 non-Exhibit 9 contracts on the books, so Lucas will likely get a legitimate shot to participate in the preseason with Memphis.
The 25-year-old point guard averaged 8.3 points and 1.8 assists in 15.5 minutes per game with the Grizzlies summer league team in July, and he spent much of last season with the D-League’s Iowa Energy. Otherwise, he’s played overseas, with stops in Greece and Turkey, since going undrafted in 2011.
Kings Sign Omri Casspi
SEPTEMBER 18TH: The deal is finally official, the team announced.
JULY 30TH: It’ll be a guaranteed deal, tweets David Pick of Eurobasket.com.
JULY 25TH: The Kings are finalizing a one-year contract at the league minimum with Omri Casspi, tweets Marc Stein of ESPN.com. Casspi somewhat surprisingly cleared waivers earlier today, as the Kings had reportedly planned to put in a claim. It nonetheless appears as though they maintained interest, and the feeling had been mutual for Casspi, who spoke in recent days of his fondness for a return to Sacramento.
Signing the Dan Fegan client for just one year at the minimum, as opposed to claiming his two-year contract off waivers, will save the team enough money to keep it beneath the luxury tax line. The Kings had been at $75,852,705 in team salary, according to the latest estimates from Basketball Insiders, just $976,295 shy of the tax threshold. Casspi will make $1,063,384 as a five-year veteran at the minimum salary, but Sacramento will only be on the hook for the portion equivalent to the two-year veteran’s minimum of $915,243, since it’s a one-year contract. The league will pick up the tab for the rest.
That provision only applies to one-year deals, so if the Kings had claimed Casspi’s two-year contract off waivers, they would have had to pay his full salary, pushing them into tax territory and likely prompting the team to waive or trade Quincy Acy. Sacramento and Acy this week agreed to push back the date upon which his salary would become fully guaranteed so the club could explore its options.
Casspi’s camp is quite pleased with the agreement that will bring him back to the team with which he spent his first two NBA seasons, tweets David Pick of Eurobasket.com. The native of Israel averaged 9.5 points in 24.5 minutes per game with 37.1% shooting as a King, but those numbers dropped precipitously when a trade sent him to Cleveland. He rebounded this past season with the Rockets, but the Pelicans nonetheless saw fit to let him go soon after they acquired him as part of the Omer Asik trade.
Chuck Myron contributed to this post.
Ryan Hollins Signs With Kings
THURSDAY, 3:28pm: The deal is official, the team announced.
WEDNESDAY, 7:13pm: Ryan Hollins has agreed to a deal to sign with the Kings, Marc J. Spears of Yahoo! Sports reports (Twitter link). Exact contract details aren’t yet known, but it is a one-year, fully-guaranteed deal according to Spears. The Lakers, Bulls, Heat, and Spurs had also expressed interest in the twenty nine year-old seven-footer out of UCLA. This will bring Sacramento’s preseason roster count to 19.
As for what he brings to Sacramento, Hollins will compete with Reggie Evans and Sim Bhullar for minutes as DeMarcus Cousins‘ backup. He offers the Kings high-percentage shooting, defense, and rim protection, as Chuck Myron of Hoops Rumors points out in his Free Agent Stock Watch article on the veteran center.
Hollins spent last season with the Clippers, where he appeared in 61 contests, averaging 2.3 PPG and 1.5 RPG. His slash line was .736/.000/.625. In eight seasons in the NBA, Hollins’ career numbers are 3.8 PPG and 2.2 RPG.
Grizzlies Sign Hassan Whiteside To Camp Deal
SEPTEMBER 25TH: The deal is official, the team announced.
SEPTEMBER 18TH: The Grizzlies have signed big man Hassan Whiteside to a non-guaranteed deal for training camp, a source tells Ronald Tillery of the Commercial Appeal (on Twitter).
Whiteside spent parts of two seasons with the Kings but has been out of the NBA since 2011/12. Sacramento liked the potential of the 7-footer when they took him with the No. 33 overall pick in the 2010 draft, but he was too raw to stick on the roster.
Since being waived by the Kings in the summer of 2012, Whiteside has had stints in the D-League and with multiple clubs in Lebanon and China. The 25-year-old hooked on with China’s Jiangsu TX earlier this year and finished the season averaging 29.6 points per contest, making him one of the top scorers in the league.
In 19 games for the Kings between 2010/11 and 2011/12, Whiteside averaged 1.5 PPG and 2.1 RPG in 5.8 minutes per contest.
Bulls Reach Deal With E’Twaun Moore
THURSDAY, 12:17pm: The Bulls officially announced the signing.
TUESDAY, 1:25pm: Moore’s deal is for two years, and his salary is partially guaranteed for 50% of its value for the coming season, tweets Shams Charania of RealGM. The partial guarantee might signal that the team is still leaving the door open to the possibility that free agent target Ray Allen might choose to come to Chicago, but that’s just my speculation.
12:16pm: The Bulls have signed E’Twaun Moore, according to Moore’s Priority Sports agency (Twitter link). Chicago has yet to confirm the signing with an official announcement, but a report from last month indicated that the move was expected. The terms of the deal aren’t immediately clear, but it almost certainly won’t be for any more than the minimum salary, since the Bulls are among the teams limited to that amount.
Moore had a deal to play in Italy earlier this summer, but he hesitated to sign a contract when a pair of NBA teams emerged with interest. The Cavs appeared to be one of them, but the Mark Bartelstein client from suburban Chicago will instead play as close to home as possible. Moore expressed interest this spring in returning to the Magic, but they didn’t appear to reciprocate that desire too strongly and made him an unrestricted free agent after declining to tender a qualifying offer at the start of the offseason.
The 25-year-old combo guard was a part of the rotation during his two seasons in Orlando after he saw sparing minutes as a rookie with the Celtics. Moore averaged 7.1 points and shot 34.6% from three-point territory in 20.7 minutes per game in two years with the Magic.
Moore’s production suggests he’ll warrant a full guarantee, though it’s not clear whether the Bulls committed that to him. Chicago had been carrying 12 players, all of whom have guaranteed pacts. The Bulls appeared to have interest in Denzel Bowles, though the team would likely see him as an addition for camp and nothing more. Chicago hasn’t had more than 13 men on the roster for opening night in any of the past three seasons.
Brady Heslip To Join Wolves For Camp
SEPTEMBER 18th: The Wolves confirmed Heslip’s deal via Twitter.
AUGUST 27th: Undrafted point guard Brady Heslip and the Wolves have agreed on a deal that will bring him to camp, reports Darren Wolfson of 1500 ESPN Twin Cities (Twitter link). Wolfson noted last week that the 24-year-old from Baylor had impressed the club during his stint on the summer league Wolves. It’s not immediately clear whether the arrangement involves any sort of partial guarantee, as is common with such contracts at this point in the process, but it’s probably for the minimum salary.
The 6’2″ Heslip wasn’t a highly regarded draft prospect, as neither Jonathan Givony of DraftExpress nor Chad Ford of ESPN.com had him among their rankings. He nonetheless received plenty of exposure in college, where he played in the NCAA tournament during two of his three seasons at Baylor, and he made his mark as a premiere long-range shooter. He nailed 46.5% of his three-pointers on 6.7 such attempts per game last season, and he was a double-figure scorer, averaging 11.7 points in 27.4 minutes per game. Heslip nailed seven of the 10 three-pointers he took in summer league, though that’s a small sample size, of course.
It’d be difficult for Heslip to make it to opening night as the Wolves roster stands now, with 15 players on guaranteed deals. Still, the team reportedly continues to try to unload J.J. Barea, so perhaps coach/executive Flip Saunders can see Heslip taking Barea’s backcourt spot. The Wolves apparently had recent talks with power forward Dante Cunningham, too, so much is unsettled.
Wolves Sign Kyrylo Fesenko
SEPTEMBER 18th, 11:23am: The Wolves announced (via Twitter) that Fesenko has signed with the club on a “training camp” contract.
SEPTEMBER 2nd: The Wolves have signed Kyrylo Fesenko, according to the RealGM transaction log. There is as of yet no report or team announcement on the details for the deal, but it is likely a non-guaranteed contract for the minimum that won’t ensure Fesenko a roster spot beyond training camp.
Fesenko’s improved physique and solid summer league play had reportedly fueled Minnesota’s interest in the center for training camp. The team already has the maximum of 15 guaranteed contracts on the books for 2014/15, so Fesenko would need more than strong play to earn a role extending into the season. The Wolves would either need to waive or trade away a guaranteed salary to create space for Fesenko or any other training camp invite.
Fesenko has played five seasons in the NBA as a big for the Jazz and Pacers, spending recent years overseas and in the D-League. He has career averages of 2.3 PPG and 2.0 RPG from his time in the league.
Jordan Crawford To Play In China
Hoops Rumors (Twitter link) has confirmed that Jordan Crawford has agreed to sign with the Xinjiang Flying Tigers of the Chinese Basketball Association. The deal was first reported by Chinese language site Hupu (translation courtesy of Sportando’s Enea Trapani). The Hupu report says that Crawford’s one-year deal could be worth as much as $2MM.
It’s a somewhat surprising outcome for the CAA client who started the season strong with the Celtics, averaging 13.7 PPG and 5.7 APG in 30.7 minutes per contest. The C’s later sent Crawford to the Warriors in a three-team deal that will likely net them a trio of second round selections. Things didn’t work out as planned in Golden State and the Warriors wound up acquiring Steve Blake to fill the role Crawford was ticketed for. They tried to dangle Crawford at the deadline but there were no takers as he was putting up just 6.6 PPG and 2.2 APG in 16.5 minutes per contest for his new team.
The 25-year-old Xavier product reportedly had interest from the Heat, Bulls, Mavericks, Lakers, Knicks, and Nets. Ultimately, most of those teams wound up finding backcourt help elsewhere and it’s possible that Crawford was holding out for more than the minimum salary.
Meanwhile, the Flying Tigers have found another ex-NBA guard to replace the production of Lester Hudson. Hudson is a free agent and has been connected to the rival Liaoning Hunters.