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Kevin Porter Jr. To Decline Player Option

June 28th, 2025 at 7:04pm CST by Dana Gauruder

June 28: Porter has informed the Bucks that he won’t pick up the option and plans to test free agency, sources tell Eric Nehm and Fred Katz of The Athletic (Twitter link).

June 11: Bucks guard Kevin Porter Jr. is expected to decline his $2.55MM player option in order to become a free agent, Michael Scotto of HoopsHype tweets.

It certainly doesn’t come as a surprise, considering the contributions Porter made after being dealt from the Clippers to the Bucks. In 30 regular season appearances, Porter averaged 11.7 points, 3.9 rebounds and 3.7 assists in 19.9 minutes per game with Milwaukee. He averaged 11.2 points, 3.6 rebounds and 5.4 assists in five postseason outings.

Milwaukee hopes to retain Porter, according to Scotto. That makes plenty of sense, given Damian Lillard‘s Achilles tear, which will likely keep Lillard out of action all of next season. Porter projects as the Bucks’ starting point guard, unless they acquire one via a trade or free agency. Milwaukee does not have a first-round selection in this month’s draft.

Porter was dealt to the Bucks in February after appearing in 45 games with the Clippers.

He is a former first-round pick who played in Greece last season after multiple off-court incidents, including reaching a plea agreement for misdemeanor assault and harassment in January 2024 after allegedly attacking his then-girlfriend in September 2023. The Clippers gave him another NBA opportunity in July when they signed him to a two-year, minimum-salary contract.

Nicolas Batum To Decline $4.9MM Player Option

June 28th, 2025 at 6:21pm CST by Arthur Hill

Clippers forward Nicolas Batum has decided to turn down his $4.9MM player option for next season, sources tell Shams Charania of The Athletic (Twitter link). Charania adds that there’s “mutual interest” in a new deal with the team.

L.A. holds Non-Bird rights on Batum, so his next contract can start at $5.6MM, which is 120% of his $4.7MM salary for this season, according to Bobby Marks of ESPN (Twitter link). If they want to offer more, the Clippers could use a portion of their $14.1MM non-taxpayer mid-level exception.

A report in May suggested that Batum plans to retire after one more season, but it’s possible the Clippers could change his mind with a multiyear offer.

Batum was a reliable presence off the bench this season and is still an effective three-and-D player at age 36. He appeared in 78 games, averaging 4.0 points, 2.8 rebounds and 1.1 steals in 17.5 minutes per night with .437/.433/.810 shooting splits. His usage expanded in the playoffs, as he logged 24.6 minutes per game during the first-round series against Denver.

Batum returned to the Clippers as a free agent last summer after being sent to Philadelphia in November 2023 as part of the James Harden trade. He has also played for Portland and Charlotte during his 17-year NBA career.

L.A. is also awaiting a decision from James Harden, who will become a free agent if he turns down his $36.3MM player option by Sunday. In addition, Amir Coffey, Patty Mills and Ben Simmons will all be unrestricted when free agency begins Monday.

Nuggets Agree To Deal With Reece Beekman, Won’t Retain PJ Hall

June 28th, 2025 at 5:12pm CST by Arthur Hill

5:12pm: Denver will create a two-way opening by not re-signing Hall, league sources tell Tony Jones of The Athletic (Twitter link). The 23-year-old center out of Clemson spent one year with the team and averaged 1.7 points and 1.2 rebounds in 19 games.

Meanwhile, Durando has removed his report on Beekman agreeing to an Exhibit 10 contract with Denver and now says (via Twitter) that the guard has a Summer League agreement in place with the Nuggets.

Two-way free agents who won’t be retained by their previous team are typically permitted to seek out new Summer League opportunities before the new league year begins, but full-fledged contract agreements with new teams can’t technically be negotiated until 5:00 pm Central time on June 30. I’d still expect Beekman to eventually sign an Exhibit 10 contract with Denver.

4:34pm: The Nuggets will sign Reece Beekman to an Exhibit 10 contract, sources tell Bennett Durando of The Denver Post (Twitter link).

The 23-year-old point guard finished the season as a two-way player with the Nets, and the reported agreement is a strong sign that he won’t receive a qualifying offer from Brooklyn for another two-way contract.

Beekman signed a two-way deal with Golden State last July after going undrafted out of Virginia. He made just two brief appearances for the Warriors before being sent to the Nets in mid-December as part of the Dennis Schröder trade.

Beekman got a larger NBA opportunity after arriving in Brooklyn, appearing in 34 games and averaging 2.7 points, 1.1 rebounds and 1.8 assists in 13.7 minutes per night.

Trey Alexander, PJ Hall and Spencer Jones were Denver’s two-way players when the season ended, but they’re all headed for free agency and aren’t guaranteed to return to the team, so there could be an opportunity for Beekman.

An Exhibit 10 contract can be converted into a two-way deal prior to the start of the regular season. Beekman will be eligible to earn a bonus worth up to $85K if he’s waived and then spends at least 60 days with the Nuggets’ G League affiliate.

Luke Adams contributed to this story.

Quentin Grimes Gets Qualifying Offer From Sixers

June 28th, 2025 at 5:06pm CST by Arthur Hill

The Sixers have tendered an $8.7MM qualifying offer to Quentin Grimes, a league source tells Kelly Iko of The Athletic (Twitter link).

While the move was never in doubt, it’s significant because it officially makes Grimes restricted heading into the start of free agency on Monday. He and the team are continuing to negotiate a new deal that could keep him off the open market, Iko adds.

Grimes made $4.3MM this season in the final year of his rookie contract and positioned himself for a large raise with a scoring explosion after being traded to Philadelphia in February. The 25-year-old shooting guard averaged a career-best 21.9 PPG in 28 games with the Sixers with .469/.373/.752 shooting numbers.

Grimes was the team’s number one scoring option late in the season, but he’ll be dealing with a more crowded backcourt situation if he remains in Philadelphia. Tyrese Maxey and Jared McCain will both be returning from injuries, and the Sixers added rookie guard VJ Edgecombe with the third pick in this week’s draft.

Jake Fischer of The Stein Line reported last weekend that Grimes is expected to get offers that exceed the $14.1MM non-taxpayer midlevel exception if he becomes a free agent.

Re-signing Grimes might force the Sixers to part with free agent big man Guerschon Yabusele, although the team won’t have a clear picture of its financial situation until Kelly Oubre and Eric Gordon make decisions on their player options. Backup center Andre Drummond exercised his $5MM option on Friday.

Blazers Exercise Rayan Rupert’s 2025/26 Option

June 28th, 2025 at 3:13pm CST by Luke Adams

The Trail Blazers are picking up Rayan Rupert‘s team option for the 2025/26 season, reports Sean Highkin of The Rose Garden Report (Twitter link). The team issued a press release confirming the move is official.

Rupert’s $2.22MM salary for next season will technically remain non-guaranteed for a couple more days, but will become fully guaranteed as long as he remains under contract through Tuesday (July 1). It sounds like that will happen.

A 6’6″ wing from France, Rupert has been with Portland since being selected 43rd overall in the 2023 draft. He has appeared in 91 NBA games during his first two NBA seasons, but has seen a limited role, with averages of 3.4 points, 1.8 rebounds, and 1.0 assist in 12.0 minutes per game and a shooting line of .370/.321/.764.

The 21-year-old has been more of a go-to option during stints with the Rip City Remix, Portland’s G League affiliate. In 11 games with the Remix this past season, he put up 18.9 PPG, 5.9 RPG, and 3.7 APG on .497/.229/.692 shooting.

With his option exercised, Rupert will be extension-eligible beginning in July, though a new deal seems unlikely unless he moves up on the depth chart this season. Assuming he plays out his current contract, he’ll be eligible for restricted free agency in the summer of 2026.

Warriors Make Jonathan Kuminga Restricted FA

June 28th, 2025 at 2:43pm CST by Luke Adams

The Warriors have issued qualifying offers to three players, making them restricted free agents, according to Keith Smith of Spotrac (Twitter link).

That trio includes forward Jonathan Kuminga, one of this summer’s most intriguing young free agents. The 22-year-old received a qualifying offer worth roughly $7.98MM. The other two players getting qualifying offers from the Warriors are Taran Armstrong and Nico Mannion — they both received two-way QOs.

Kuminga, whose season was derailed in January by a badly sprained ankle that sidelined him for over two months, has an inconsistent rotation role for Golden State in 2024/25, continuing a years-long trend. He averaged just 24.3 minutes per game and struggled to settle into a regular role following the trade-deadline acquisition of Jimmy Butler, since lineups featuring Kuminga, Butler, and Draymond Green didn’t feature enough shooting to be viable. That trio had a -24.9 net rating in just 38 minutes together during the regular season.

Kuminga, who posted career lows in shooting percentage (45.4%) and three-point percentage (30.5%), even earned DNP-CDs during a handful of games at the end of the season, in the play-in, and in the first round of the playoffs. However, a Stephen Curry hamstring strain in the second round of the postseason opened the door for him to reclaim a major offensive role and give his stock a boost entering free agency — he averaged 24.3 points per night on .554/.389/.720 shooting in those games.

Kuminga spoke recently about wanting to claim more of a featured role going forward, whether that happens with the Warriors or another team.

As we explain in our glossary entry, a qualifying offer is a procedural one-year contract offer, with the value determined by the player’s draft slot and/or previous salary. For some RFAs, the qualifying offer simply serve as a placeholder while the player and the team work out a multiyear deal. In other cases – especially for two-way players like Armstrong – the QO is more likely to be accepted.

Mannion hasn’t been with the Warriors since 2021, having played overseas since then, but the team continues to tender him a two-way qualifying offer every June in order to retain his RFA rights in case he eventually returns to the NBA.

Nets Pick Up Team Options On Four Players

June 28th, 2025 at 2:09pm CST by Luke Adams

The Nets have exercised their team options for 2025/26 on four players, the team announced today (Twitter link via Michael Scotto of HoopsHype). Those players, along with their option salaries, are as follows:

Keon Johnson ($2,349,578)
Jalen Wilson ($2,221,677)
Tyrese Martin ($2,191,897)
Drew Timme ($1,955,377)

Crucially, Brooklyn’s decision to pick up these options does not mean that all four players now have fully guaranteed salaries.

As outlined on our team option decision tracker, Johnson will receive a partial guarantee worth about $272K, while Wilson will receive on worth roughly $88K. Martin’s and Timme’s salaries remain entirely non-guaranteed.

Johnson and Wilson will see their partial guarantees increase if they make the regular season roster, but Martin and Timme will remain non-guaranteed until January, so exercising these options doesn’t really affect the Nets’ cap flexibility at all. They could always waive one or more of these players down the road while retaining little to no salary on their cap.

Johnson, Wilson, and Martin each earned regular minutes in 2024/25 for a rebuilding Nets team. Johnson, a 6’5″ shooting guard, emerged as a starter in December after Cam Thomas went down with a hamstring injury, averaging 10.6 points, 3.8 rebounds, and 2.2 assists in 24.4 minutes per game across 79 appearances (56 starts) on the season.

Wilson, a 6’8″ forward, put up 9.5 PPG, 3.4 RPG, and 1.8 APG in 25.7 MPG, starting 22 of his 79 outings. Martin, a 6’6″ wing, averaged 8.7 PPG, 3.7 RPG, and 2.0 APG in 21.9 MPG across 60 games (11 starts).

Timme, a former Gonzaga big man, earned a late-season promotion from the G League and saw plenty of action down the stretch, registering averages of 12.1 PPG, 7.2 RPG, and 2.2 APG in nine games (28.2 MPG).

Counting their four players on guaranteed contracts, their five first-round picks, incoming trade acquisition Terance Mann, and these four players with options, the Nets already have 14 players on their books for 2025/26. That list doesn’t include restricted free agents Thomas, Day’Ron Sharpe, and Ziaire Williams, or anyone else the Nets might add using their significant cap room in the coming days or weeks.

In other words, there likely won’t be enough spots to go around for everyone, so I wouldn’t count on all four of these players opening the season on Brooklyn’s 15-man roster.

Cavs Re-Sign Sam Merrill To Four-Year Deal

June 28th, 2025 at 1:20pm CST by Luke Adams

July 6: Merrill’s four-year contract with the Cavaliers is now official, according to the team.

June 28: The Cavaliers and free agent guard Sam Merrill have agreed to a four-year, $38MM contract that will keep him in Cleveland, sources tell Shams Charania of ESPN.

After spending some time in Milwaukee and Memphis at the beginning of his NBA career, Merrill has been with the Cavs for the past two-plus seasons. He initially signing a 10-day contract in March 2023 before receiving a multiyear minimum-salary commitment that has turned into a bargain for Cleveland.

Merrill, 29, established himself as a regular rotation player in 2023/24 and continued to play consistent minutes for the Cavs in ’24/25 as they racked up 64 regular season wins. Across those two years, he averaged 7.5 points, 2.1 rebounds, and 1.6 assists in 18.7 minutes per game, with a 38.8% mark on 5.5 three-point attempts per night.

In addition to providing important floor spacing for the Cavs, Merrill took a step forward as a defender this past season, earning kudos from coaches and teammates for his effort on that side of the ball. He ranked 35th in our list of 2025’s top 50 free agents.

There was some uncertainty about whether Cleveland would be able to re-sign Merrill due to the team’s rising payroll. Chris Fedor of Cleveland.com (subscriber link) wrote this morning that there had been a “pessimistic tone coming from the organization” about its odds of retaining Merrill and/or his fellow free agent Ty Jerome, though Fedor did say that re-signing one of the two remained in play.

Given that the Cavs reached a trade agreement for a point guard (Lonzo Ball) earlier in the day and has now struck a deal with Merrill, the odds of Jerome re-signing look increasingly slim. He’s believed to be seeking a contract that starts at or around the $14.1MM non-taxpayer mid-level exception, according to Jake Fischer of The Stein Line (Substack link).

Already projected to operate over the second tax apron next season, Cleveland will now move even further above that threshold. Cap expert Yossi Gozlan (Twitter link) estimates that re-signing Merrill will increase the Cavs’ tax penalty next season by about $50MM, to nearly $143MM, though that number is just a projection and could increase or decrease depending on what other moves the teams make.

Davion Mitchell Re-Signs With Heat On Two-Year Deal

June 28th, 2025 at 12:53pm CST by Luke Adams

July 7: Mitchell has officially re-signed with the Heat, per the transaction log at NBA.com.

June 28: Free agent guard Davion Mitchell intends to re-sign with the Heat, according to Shams Charania of ESPN (Twitter link), who hears from sources that Mitchell has agreed to a two-year, $24MM contract. The deal will be fully guaranteed, Charania adds.

The ninth overall pick in the 2021 NBA draft, Mitchell spent his first three seasons in Sacramento, where he earned a reputation as a tenacious perimeter defender but struggled to provide value on offense, averaging 7.4 points and 2.8 assists in 20.4 minutes per game across 227 outings, with a .434/.327/.703 shooting line.

However, Mitchell had a solid first half in 2024/25 after being traded from Sacramento to Toronto last summer, then took his game to another level down the stretch following another trade that sent him from the Raptors to the Heat.

The 26-year-old emerged as a full-time starter in Miami, averaging 10.3 points and 5.3 assists per game with a .504/.447/.702 shooting line in 30 regular season contests for the Heat. He was even better in the postseason, making 59.3% of his field goal attempts and 52.0% of his three-pointers with averages of 15.2 PPG and 6.5 APG in six play-in and playoff outings.

Mitchell also played his usual strong defense in 2024/25. As Charania notes (via Twitter), among players to contest at least 500 shots, Mitchell ranked in the top five in opposing field goal percentage as the contesting defender, per ESPN Research.

The Heat issued an $8.74MM qualifying offer to Mitchell earlier this week, making him a restricted free agent. The Heat would have had the right to match any offer sheet he signed with a rival team, but he directly negotiated with Miami instead, opting not to test the market.

Mitchell’s new contract means the Heat will likely have to waive Duncan Robinson or negotiate a new contract with him in order to avoid crossing the luxury tax line, tweets Anthony Chiang of The Miami Herald.

Robinson has until Sunday to make a decision on an early termination option worth $19.9MM. If he opts in for 2025/26, his salary would be guaranteed for $9.9MM, so Miami could create $10MM in cap savings by waiving him (or more than that waiving him and using the stretch provision on his partial guarantee).

Mitchell was ranked 27th on our list of this year’s top 50 free agents.

Bulls Trade Lonzo Ball To Cavaliers For Isaac Okoro

June 28th, 2025 at 10:08am CST by Earnest Marshall

July 6: The one-for-one trade is official, according to a Bulls press release.

June 28: The Bulls are trading point guard Lonzo Ball to the Cavaliers in exchange for forward Isaac Okoro, according to ESPN’s Shams Charania (Twitter link).

Ball, the No. 2 overall pick in the 2017 NBA Draft, has played for Chicago since 2021. However, due to multiple knee injuries, he spent the better part of those four years recovering. He missed the entirety of the 2022/23 and ’23/24 seasons before returning to the lineup this past year.

While his playing time was down from his career averages this season, he still recorded 7.6 points, 3.4 rebounds, 3.3 assists and 1.3 steals per night and had positive on/off-court numbers.

The Bulls signed Ball to a two-year, $20MM extension in February despite trade interest at the time. He’s on the books for $10MM this coming season and has a team option for 2026/27.

Acquiring Ball gives Cleveland a versatile guard to add to its lineup. The 27-year-old has proven to be an effective defender, shooter and facilitator when healthy. The Cavs’ decision to acquire a point guard could also point to pessimism in their ability to re-sign impending free agent Ty Jerome.

Meanwhile, the Bulls are taking a flier of their own in obtaining former No. 5 overall pick Okoro. The Cavaliers didn’t re-sign Okoro to a multi-year contract until September of last year after he became a restricted free agent following the 2023/24 season.

Okoro’s playing time decreased in new head coach Kenny Atkinson‘s system, and he averaged career lows of 6.1 points and 19.1 minutes per game. In the playoffs, Okoro’s averages shrunk to 4.6 PPG across 14.2 MPG.

He’ll be in the second year of the three-year, $33MM deal he inked with Cleveland last year. He’ll count for $11MM against the cap in 2025/26 before his salary rises to a guaranteed $11.8MM next season.

Ball drew interest on the trade market prior to February’s deadline, with the Grizzlies, Pistons, and Timberwolves said to be among the teams to register interest at that time. The Bulls were reportedly offered draft capital in February, but didn’t want to take on a sizable multiyear contract.

Assuming the Ball/Okoro swap is completed as reported, it will hard-cap the Bulls at the first tax apron for the rest of the 2025/26 league year, since they’ll be taking in more salary than they’re sending out. The trade will become official in July, after the players’ new cap hits take effect.