Cavs Waive Michael Lee
The Cavs have waived forward Michael Lee, general manager Chris Grant reports.
The 6’9″ 207 lb. Lee went undrafted out of St. Bonaventure in 2008, and had spent the ensuing years playing internationally in the Ukraine, Serbia, Hungary, Croatia, and France. In three preseason games with the Cavs, Lee averaged 1.7 rebounds in 4.3 minutes per game.
As Sam Amico of Fox Sports Ohio tweets, and which Hoops Rumors mentioned earlier tonight, the Cavs roster now stands at 19 players, with four more to be cut before the season opens.
Bucks Exercise Options On Knight, Henson
1:50pm: The Bucks have confirmed the moves via Twitter.
1:27pm: Milwaukee has decided to keep former first-round picks Brandon Knight and John Henson around a little longer, as the Bucks have picked up the 2014/15 team options on their rookie scale contracts, according to Matt Moore of CBSSports.com (Twitter link). Knight goes on to next year’s books for $3,553,917, as our rookie contract option tracker shows, while Henson will receive $1,987,320.
Neither of the moves comes as a surprise, and while I didn’t categorize the decisions on Knight and Henson as “no-brainers” when I examined at rookie scale options around the league last month, I wrote that they would probably have their options picked up. Knight, entering his third season, came to the Bucks this summer as part of the Brandon Jennings trade, and it’s clear that Milwaukee intends for him to occupy the starting point guard job for the foreseeable future. Henson’s path to the starting lineup is blocked by Larry Sanders and Ersan Ilyasova, both of whom are on long-term deals, but the Bucks deemed Henson off-limits while exploring trades at the deadline this past season.
Knight, whom the Pistons drafted eighth overall in 2011, and Henson, picked at No. 14 by the Bucks in 2012, are former lottery picks. Today’s option decisions push the total of Milwaukee’s guaranteed salaries for 2014/15 to more than $48MM.
Pistons Exercise Andre Drummond’s 2014/15 Option
The Pistons announced that they have exercised Andre Drummond‘s third-year option worth $2.5MM. The move was expected for the No. 9 overall pick in the 2012 draft.
Drummond, 20, averaged 7.9 PPG and 7.6 RPG in 20.7 minutes per game during his rookie season. The UConn center made ten starts on the year but mostly came off of the bench. Drummond also missed significant time around the midway point of the season with a stress fracture of the fifth lumbar vertebra in his back.
Drummond shows plenty of promise, but he also has a good deal to work on, including his free throw shooting. The big man shot just 37% from the charity stripe in 2012/13, a percentage low enough to make Chris Dudley wince.
Jazz Sign Derrick Favors To 4-Year Extension
SATURDAY, 11:30am: The Jazz confirmed the extension via press release.
FRIDAY, 9:18pm: The deal doesn’t contain any options, tweets Shams Charania of RealGM.com.
8:11pm: The Jazz and Derrick Favors have agreed to a lucrative four-year extension to his rookie scale contract, reports Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports. The base salary totals more than $49MM, and there are incentives that could carry the package well over $50MM, according to Wojnarowski. The deal could be a bargain, depending on the outcome of those incentives, since Woj hears from executives around the league that several teams would give him a $13MM annual salary if he were to hit restricted free agency next summer. Instead, it looks like the Wallace Prather client will be in Utah for quite some time, as the extension is set to run through 2017/18.
The Jazz placed a high value on Favors’ desire to remain with the team, as Wojnarowski writes. He becomes the fifth eligible player to strike a deal for a rookie scale extension this offseason, joining DeMarcus Cousins, Paul George, Larry Sanders and John Wall. Favors and Sanders are the only ones of that group to agree to annual salaries of less than the maximum, as the Bucks gave Sanders four years and $44MM. Utah’s deal for Favors resembles the extension Serge Ibaka and the Thunder signed last year. Ibaka’s getting $49.4MM in base salary, and he can earn an additional $100K each year in performance incentives that he’s likely to meet.
The 22-year-old, 6’10” Favors came to Utah in the middle of his rookie year as part of the Deron Williams trade after the Nets drafted him third overall in 2010. He’s yet to average 10 points per game in any NBA season, but he’s seen little playing time behind Al Jefferson and Paul Millsap in Utah. That figures to change this season, as both Jefferson and Millsap are gone, and Favors will have the chance to demonstrate whether his career per-36-minute rebounding average of 10.6 will hold up in starter’s minutes. He’s also played stellar defense, blocking 2.6 shots per 36 minutes in 2012/13.
My prediction in March of a four-year, $48MM extension for Favors was a lot closer to the mark than the revised view I took when I examined his extension candidacy in August and figured the two sides might do a deal for between $42MM and $44MM. Utah only has about $4.5MM in guaranteed money on the books for 2014/15, not including likely option pickups for Enes Kanter and Alec Burks, so this represents the first major commitment for the team after this summer’s retooling. There’s plenty of room for an extension to Gordon Hayward, the team’s other player entering the final season of a rookie scale contract, and I could see him striking a four-year, $40MM deal, as I wrote when I looked at his case for an extension. The team has been in negotiations with Favors and Hayward since August.
Cory Higgins Signs To Play In Russia
Shooting guard Cory Higgins has begun the past two seasons in the NBA, but this time around, he’s headed to Russia. He’s signed a one-year deal with Triumph Lyubertsy, tweets Marc J. Spears of Yahoo! Sports. Higgins has 44 games of NBA regular season experience, all of them with Charlotte, where his father, Rod Higgins, is Bobcats president of basketball operations.
The younger Higgins averaged 9.0 points in 21.7 minutes per game for the Cavaliers summer league team, but though he earned mention from coach Mike Brown as a possible training camp invitee, no deal with Cleveland ever came about. Higgins had spent most of 2012/13 with the Erie BayHawks of the D-League after the Bobcats waived him in December, and he drew interest from a pair of Italian teams this summer.
Higgins joins Luke Babbitt, Mickael Gelabale and Jeremy Pargo among players who’ve signed with a Russian team after appearing in the NBA last season, as our International Player Movement Tracker shows.
Nets Sign Adonis Thomas
Four days after being cut by the Hawks, undrafted rookie Adonis Thomas has landed in Brooklyn. The Nets announced today in a press release that the team has signed Thomas to a contract, increasing their roster to 18 players.
Thomas, 20, was a surprising entry in this year’s draft, declaring his intent following his sophomore season at Memphis. In his last year with the Tigers, the 6’6″ forward averaged 11.7 PPG and 4.5 RPG, with a .405 FG%.
The Nets have 15 players on fully guaranteed contracts on their roster, so there’s a strong possibility that the team will retain Thomas’ rights for its D-League affiliate, the Springfield Armor. In addition to Thomas, non-guaranteed camp invitees Jorge Gutierrez and Chris Johnson also remain under contract with Brooklyn.
Rockets Sign Troy Daniels
While most NBA teams are paring down their preseason rosters, the Rockets have increased theirs by one today, officially signing free agent guard Troy Daniels, according to the team (Twitter link). Daniels had been in camp with the Bobcats before being released last week.
Daniels, 22, averaged 12.3 PPG and shot 40.3% on three-pointers in his final season at VCU, then auditioned for the Jazz and Pacers in June before going undrafted. He joined Charlotte’s Summer League squad in July, then eventually agreed to participate in camp with the club.
With the addition of Daniels, the Rockets’ roster count is back up to 18, including 13 players on fully guaranteed deals. Daniels is unlikely to make the team’s regular-season roster, so perhaps he’ll end up with the Rio Grande Valley Vipers, Houston’s D-League affiliate.
Nets Waive Gary Forbes
According to Stefan Bondy of the New York Daily News, the Nets have waived swingman Gary Forbes (Twitter link). The 6’7 small forward had signed a non-guaranteed contract with Brooklyn in late September and had drawn interest from the Knicks and Lakers over the summer. Forbes played sparingly in four pre-season games for the Nets, totaling roughly 6.3 PPG in 9.5 MPG.
The move reduces the Nets’ roster to 17 players, which includes 15 fully-guaranteed and two non-guaranteed deals.
Darius Johnson-Odom To Sign In China
6:55pm: Mark Medina of the Los Angeles Daily News says that Johnson-Odom has signed a one-year deal reportedly worth $500K to play for the Sichuan Blue Whales of the Chinese Basketball Association.
9:49am: The timing of the Lakers’ decision to release Darius Johnson-Odom may have initially seemed odd, considering the club is still in China, writes Mike Bresnahan of the Los Angeles Times. However, according to Bresnahan, the Lakers made the move when they did to allow Johnson-Odom to sign with a Chinese team. While it’s not clear yet which club Johnson-Odom will join, he has agreed to terms on a contract worth about $400K, reports Bresnahan.
Johnson-Odom, 24, appeared for just four games for the Lakers last season after being selected in the second round of the 2012 draft. Following his release in January, the former Marquette guard signed with Spartak St. Petersburg in Russia, so he has some experience playing internationally.
According to Bresnahan, Johnson-Odom had been weighing the offer from the unknown Chinese team for about a week, and decided to sign it when the Lakers “strongly suggested” he wouldn’t earn a spot on their regular-season roster.
Pacers Waive Ron Howard, Darnell Jackson
The Pacers have released Ron Howard and Darnell Jackson, reducing their camp roster to 15 players, the team announced today in a press release. With 15 players now under contract, the team won’t necessarily have to make more cuts before opening night. However, according to Candace Buckner of the Indianapolis Star (via Twitter), coach Frank Vogel has indicated Indiana figures to start the year with a 13-man roster, so more moves are likely on the way.
The 6’5″ Howard was a D-League All-Star last season, averaging 19.1 PPG and recording an 18.2 PER for the Fort Wayne Mad Ants. The 6’8″ Jackson, meanwhile, participated in Utah’s training camp last fall before joining the D-League’s Reno Bighorns. A second-round pick in the 2008 draft, Jackson has played for the Cavaliers, Bucks, and Kings in 138 total NBA contests. As Buckner notes (via Twitter), Howard and Jackson were the only two active Pacers players not to get into last night’s game against the Mavericks.
Assuming the Pacers make two more cuts before opening night, as planned, Hilton Armstrong and Rasual Butler are likely to be the odd men out. Both players are on fully non-guaranteed deals.