Pelicans Sign Corey Webster For Training Camp
SEPTEMBER 23RD,: 8:03am: Webster has put pen to paper, as he revealed via Twitter and in an interview with stuff.co.nz. The Pelicans have yet to make a formal announcement.
SEPTEMBER 13TH, 8:59am: The Pelicans will sign New Zealand star Corey Webster for training camp, according to Marc Hinton of stuff.co.nz. Several NBA teams had expressed interest in Webster, who recently held a workout for New Orleans. He will receive a a three-year, non-guaranteed contract.
At 6’2″, Webster will be seeking a backcourt spot with the Pelicans, who have just 13 guaranteed contracts. His competition will include guards Bryce Dejean-Jones and Sean Kilpatrick, who both inked partially guaranteed deals this summer. Restricted free agent Norris Cole remains unsigned with barely two weeks remaining until training camp.
Webster, 26, attended college in the United States at the former Lambuth University in Tennessee, but has played his entire professional career overseas. He will continue to work out with the Pelicans staff until camp opens September 29th.
“I am not there yet but this is another positive step towards my dream of playing in the NBA,” Webster said. “The past week has gone well and the coaches have been impressed enough by the workouts to want me to stay for the training camp. It is again up to me now to prove my value to the organisation, to put my head down and give it my best shot at training camp. I came here this week with a three-day window to impress, this has bought me more time and a chance to take the jump into the actual NBA roster.”
Knicks Sign DaJuan Summers
TUESDAY, 4:32pm: The signing official, the Knicks have announced.
MONDAY, 9:44am: The Knicks have agreed to sign DaJuan Summers, according to Shams Charania of Yahoo Sports (on Twitter). Summers’ agent, Brian Elfus of Impact, has confirmed the deal.
Summers, 27, last appeared in the NBA in 2012/13 when he saw a handful of minutes across two games for the Clippers. Prior to that, Summers spent two seasons with the Pistons and also had a stint with New Orleans in 2011/12. For his NBA career, Summers has averaged 3.3 PPG and 1.0 RPG in 9.9 minutes per game.
While he has yet to make a real impact at the NBA level, Summers played well in 29 games for the D-League’s Maine Red Claws in 2012/13, averaging 18.0 PPG and 7.6 RPG in 33.1 minutes per contest. He has also performed well overseas with stints in Italy, Ukraine, and Spain. Summers auditioned for the rival Nets back in June, but it turns out that he’ll be signing with New York City’s other club.
Knicks Sign Travis Trice For Camp
SEPTEMBER 22ND, 4:30pm: The signing is official, the team has announced.
SEPTEMBER 10TH, 12:12pm: The Knicks have agreed to sign undrafted Michigan State point guard Travis Trice to a one-year, partially guaranteed contract, reports Shams Charania of Yahoo Sports (Twitter link). Trice was with the Heat during summer league, but he’ll be with New York this fall, joining four others who have partially guaranteed deals with the Knicks, plus 13 players with full guarantees, as our Knicks roster page shows.
Trice was a largely unheralded draft prospect, falling outside of ESPN’s rankings, but he showed a knack for outside shooting with the Spartans, nailing 39.5% of his three-point attempts in his four years of college ball. The 6’0″ 22-year-old brought that stroke with him to the summer league, canning five of 14 total attempts. This past season was his only year as a full-time starter at Michigan State, and he averaged 15.3 points, 5.1 assists and 1.8 turnovers in 33.6 minutes per game. However, his 36.9% three-point shooting was the worst mark of his college career.
The Knicks will probably keep Langston Galloway on his partially guaranteed contract, and Thanasis Antetokounmpo, in whom New York invested the 51st overall pick in 2014, would appear to have the inside track on the 15th regular season roster spot despite his lack of a full guarantee. So, Trice faces long odds to stick around for opening night. The Knicks can claim the D-League rights to as many as four of the players they cut at the end of the preseason, so Trice appears to have a better shot of remaining with the organization that way.
Do you think Trice is capable of making a regular season contribution for an NBA team? Leave a comment to let us know.
Rockets Sign Joshua Smith
MONDAY, 6:16pm: The Rockets have formally announced the signing on Twitter.
FRIDAY, 7:14pm: The signing is official, Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders tweets. The deal is a one-year, minimum salary arrangement that includes no guaranteed money, Pincus adds.
THURSDAY, 4:45pm: The Rockets and unrestricted free agent center Joshua Smith have reached an agreement on a contract, Ira Winderman of the Sun Sentinel reports (via Twitter). The length and terms of the agreement are not yet known, though it is most likely a minimum salary training camp deal. The Heat also reportedly expressed interest in the big man.
Smith, 23, finished his NCAA career at Georgetown this spring after spending his first two seasons at UCLA, and he appeared in 33 games as a senior, averaging 10.8 points, 5.8 rebounds, and 1.2 assists in 20.5 minutes per night. His career collegiate numbers overall were 10.4 PPG, 5.3 RPG, and 0.7 assists, and his career slash line was .591/.000/.613. Smith played summer league ball for the Heat this offseason, appearing in nine contests, where he averaged 5.0 PPG and 4.0 RPG.
The addition of Smith will give the Rockets a roster count of 19 players, including 14 with fully guaranteed pacts. However, Houston is a bit thin at the pivot as far as depth goes, which could give Smith a chance to make the regular season roster with a strong preseason showing.
Rockets Sign Cummings, Livingston, Walker
SEPTEMBER 21ST, 6:15pm: The Rockets formally announced the signings of Cummings, Livingston and Walker (Twitter link). Houston waived Yusuf on Friday without ever formally recognizing his signing.
SEPTEMBER 9TH, 6:59pm: Walker has officially been signed, Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders reports (Twitter link).
SEPTEMBER 5TH, 8:10am: Cummings and Livingston have signed contracts with the Rockets, according to the RealGM.com transactions log.
12:09pm: The signing of Yusuf has taken place, and it’s a non-guaranteed contract worth the rookie minimum salary, reports Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders (Twitter link). That means it wouldn’t count against the hard cap the Rockets would impose upon themselves if they signed No. 32 pick Montrezl Harrell for more than the minimum or for longer than two years, as I explained earlier.
11:24am: Feigen has corrected his earlier report, omitting Wood’s name from his revised list (Twitter links). Wood’s status with the Rockets thus appears unclear.
SEPTEMBER 3RD, 11:00am: The Rockets are close to signing Denzel Livingston, Will Cummings, Christian Wood, Remi Yusuf and Chris Walker for training camp, a source tells Jonathan Feigen of the Houston Chronicle (Twitter link). A deal with Wood, who went undrafted out of UNLV this year, has apparently been in place since June Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo Sports reported that the Rockets had agreed to sign him, but the other four names appear to be new additions for Houston.
Livingston, a 6’4″ combo guard who played his college ball at Incarnate Word, also went undrafted this year. He saw a smidgen of playing time with Houston’s summer league squad, averaging 2.0 points in 7.5 minutes per contest across three appearances. Cummings, a point guard from Temple, was another college senior passed up in the draft this June. He saw more extensive time for the Rockets in summer league, compiling 10.0 PPG in 22.8 MPG, though his 3.3 assists against 2.8 turnovers per game isn’t an encouraging ratio.
Walker, a once-heralded prospect whose stock plummeted at Florida, put up 4.2 PPG in 8.8 MPG for the summer Rockets. The forward/center declared for this year’s draft after his sophomore season with the Gators. Yusuf is a somewhat more surprising addition, since he didn’t play NBA summer league ball. The guard, a native of Nigeria, played at Texas A&M-Kingsville before going undrafted in 2006, and he spent time last season playing with SKP Banska Bystrica in Slovakia.
Warriors To Sign Tony Mitchell
The Warriors have agreed to sign forward Tony Mitchell, league sources tell Shams Charania of Yahoo Sports (on Twitter). The forward was a former No. 37 overall pick of the Pistons in 2013. Agent Brian Elfus of Impact has confirmed the deal, Charania adds.
Mitchell was one of the top players coming out of high school in 2010, but academic issues cost him his true freshman season in 2010/11. As a redshirt freshman, he put up 14.7 PPG, 10.3 RPG and 3.0 blocks per game for North Texas, leading him to consider entering the draft. He wound up staying one more season with the Mean Green before finally going pro and becoming a second-round draft choice of Detroit.
Despite his tremendous athleticism, Mitchell has yet to make his mark at the NBA level. In 2013/14, the forward saw just 3.8 minutes per game for the Pistons with averages of 1.0 PPG and 1.2 RPG. This past season, Mitchell did not see a single second of NBA action as Pistons coach/exec Stan Van Gundy kept him in the D-League for seasoning to start the year. A late December trade sent Mitchell to the Suns, but he dropped from the roster early on in the New Year. In February, Mitchell signed on with a Puerto Rican club when there was ostensibly little or no NBA interest.
Rockets Sign Montrezl Harrell To Three-Year Deal
SATURDAY, 11:19am: The Rockets have formally announced the signing (on Twitter).
2:35pm: Rockets GM Daryl Morey took to Twitter to welcome Harrell to the Rockets, so presumably that means he’s signed.
FRIDAY, 9:46am: The Rockets will sign Harrell to a contract worth $3.1MM over three years today, a source tells Feigen (Twitter link). It’ll include no option years or non-guaranteed salary, Feigen also hears. Still unclear is what Harrell will make this coming season, a figure that will determine how much the Rockets have left beneath their hard cap.
WEDNESDAY, 7:37am: Harrell is close to signing, but the sides are still hammering out some details, in spite of what McHale said, according to Jonathan Feigen of the Houston Chronicle (Twitter link). They do have agreement on the main parts of the deal, Feigen adds.
10:45pm: Rockets coach Kevin McHale said Harrell has signed with the team, Mark Berman of Fox 26 tweets.
11:45am: The sides have reached an agreement in principle, sources tell Spears (Twitter link).
TUESDAY, 11:02am: The Rockets and No. 32 overall pick Montrezl Harrell are finalizing a three-year deal, reports Marc J. Spears of Yahoo Sports (Twitter link). The three-year length means the team is using its mid-level exception and will be hard-capped, as I explained in detail earlier. Houston won’t be able to carry a payroll of more than $88.74MM at any point this season once the deal with the Rich Paul client becomes official. The team already has $86,180,389 in guaranteed salary, according to Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders. It’s not immediately clear how much more the deal for Harrell will add to the total, but regardless, the Rockets won’t have much breathing room beneath the hard cap.
No. 31 pick Cedi Osman, the top pick of the second round, is unsigned, while No. 33 pick Jordan Mickey will receive a guarantee of nearly $1.171MM this season in the first year of the four-year contract he signed with the Celtics. No. 30 pick Kevon Looney will make a guaranteed $1,131,960 this season, though his salary was determined by the rookie scale that applies to first-rounders but not second-rounders. So, it would seem that Harrell is in range for a salary of around $1.1MM to $1.2MM, leaving as little as about $1.36MM beneath that hard cap for the Rockets.
Negotiations between the Rockets and Harrell’s camp have largely been quiet, with a late-August dispatch from Calvin Watkins of ESPN.com indicating the sides were talking the only substantive update since the draft in June. Still, it seemed the Rockets were doing what they could to clear the decks for a Harrell signing, breaking off their deal with Chuck Hayes, who later signed with the Clippers, and apparently also having undone their agreement to sign undrafted power forward Christian Wood, who inked with the Sixers instead. Both Hayes and Wood were to receive partial guarantees from the Rockets that would have counted against a hard cap.
Houston could have signed Harrell using the minimum salary exception and avoided the hard cap, but that would have entailed a salary of just $525,093 this season, one that Harrell and Paul were unlikely to have accepted, unless it came in the form of a one-year deal. The Rockets had to make a tender of a non-guaranteed one-year contract for the minimum salary by September 5th, and while signing that would have meant a short-term financial sacrifice for Harrell, he would have hit restricted free agency next summer just as K.J. McDaniels, last year’s No. 32 overall pick, did this year. McDaniels wound up re-signing with the Rockets on a deal worth $10MM over three years, the sort of price Houston probably wants to avoid paying to keep Harrell.
The Rockets instead appear to have averted that scenario at the cost of flexibility for this season. Harrell will presumably become the team’s 14th player with a fully guaranteed deal. Four others are on non-guaranteed deals, as our roster count shows, but it wouldn’t be surprising to see Houston elect not to carry 15 players for opening night, given the team’s financial squeeze. Teams can have between 13 and 15 players during the regular season.
Do you think the Rockets made the right decision to control Harrell for three years and hard cap themselves for this season? Leave a comment to share your thoughts.
Kings Sign Marshall Henderson
SEPTEMBER 18TH, 7:08pm: The signing is official, Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders reports (Twitter links). The one-year, minimum salary deal includes a partial guarantee of $35K, Pincus adds.
AUGUST 27TH, 10:32pm: The Kings will sign unrestricted free agent shooting guard Marshall Henderson, Marc J. Spears of Yahoo! Sports reports (Twitter link). The length and terms of he deal are unknown, but Spears referred to the arrangement as a training camp deal, so it’s likely a minimum salary pact with little or no guaranteed money included. The addition of Henderson will give Sacramento a roster count of 17, including 14 players possessing full guarantees on their deals.
Henderson, 24, went undrafted out of Mississippi in 2014 after a number of incidents involving narcotics, the string of which began during his Senior year of high school. “I got a lot of good feedback about being drafted in the second round,” Henderson had told Spears back in March. “Then I got in trouble that summer and then it seemed like that was the end of [the NBA interest]. There was really nothing after that. I have to live with that.”
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During his Senior season at Mississippi back in 2013/14, Henderson averaged 19.0 points, 1.9 rebounds and 2.0 assists in 31.1 minutes per contest. His slash line was .353/.342/.817. The 6’2″ guard played overseas last season for both Al Rayyan of the Qatari Basketball League and the Iraqi club Nift Al-Janoub.
Hawks To Sign Edgar Sosa
5:38pm: Sosa’s deal is non-guaranteed, international journalist David Pick tweets.
4:35pm: The Hawks have agreed to a deal with unrestricted free agent point guard Edgar Sosa, Chris Vivlamore of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports (via Twitter). The length and terms of the pact are unknown, but Vivlamore refers to it as a training camp pact, which means it is likely a minimum salary contract with little or no guaranteed money included, though that is merely my speculation.
Sosa, 27, went undrafted out of Louisville back in 2010 after posting career NCAA numbers of 9.7 points, 1.8 rebounds, and 2.8 assists. He joined the Pistons summer league entry that season, but he ended up signing overseas with the Italian club Angelico Biella. The point guard spent the 2014/15 campaign playing for Dinamo Sassari in Italy. Sosa’s numbers last season were 10.7 PPG, 1.5 RPG, and 3.5 APG to accompany a slash line of .387/.320/.789.
The 6’3″ guard joins a Hawks squad that already has 18 players on the roster, including 13 with fully guaranteed deals. The team’s coaching staff has some experience with Sosa, with him having played on the Dominican Republic’s squad during this summer’s FIBA Olympic qualifying tournament that Hawks assistant coach Kenny Atkinson was a part of, Vivlamore notes (Twitter link).
Rockets Waive Remi Yusuf
The Rockets have waived guard Remi Yusuf, Eric Pincus of Basketball Insider reports (Twitter link). The guard’s minimum salary deal was non-guaranteed, so Houston won’t be on the hook for any salary as a result of this move. Waiving Yusuf will reduce the Rockets’ roster count to 18 players.
It’s unclear what the exact motivation for the team to release Yusuf prior to the start of training camp is. Former Nets executive Bobby Marks (Twitter links) speculates that Yusuf was originally inked to allow the Rockets to sign Denzel Livingston, Will Cummings, and Chris Walker to Exhibit 9 contracts. As Marks points out, teams need to have 14 players signed prior to being able to ink players to such deals.
Yusuf, a native of Nigeria, played at Texas A&M-Kingsville before going undrafted in 2006, and he spent time last season playing with SKP Banska Bystrica in Slovakia.