Sixers Sign Scottie Wilbekin
JULY 24TH, 9:04am: The deal is official, the team announced via press release.
2:39pm: The first season includes a partial salary guarantee, Michael Scotto of SheridanHoops tweets.
JULY 18TH, 11:56am: The Sixers have reached a contract agreement with unrestricted free agent Scottie Wilbekin, Shams Charania of RealGM reports (Twitter link). The deal is for four years, Charania notes, though the exact amount of the pact, and if any guaranteed money is included, is unknown at this time.
Wilbekin will opt out of his current deal with the Cairns Taipans of Australia’s National Basketball League to join the NBA. The 22-year-old played for the Magic in this year’s Orlando Summer League before suiting up for the Sixers in the Las Vegas Summer League.
The 6’2″ point guard will likely have a solid shot to stick in Philly since the team is sorely in need of additional backcourt depth. In four seasons with the Florida Gators before going undrafted in 2014, Wilbekin notched career averages of 7.3 points, 2.2 rebounds, and 3.1 assists to go along with a slash line of .422/.389/.787.
Kings Sign Caron Butler
4:00pm: The signing is official, the Kings announced.
JULY 23RD, 3:09pm: Butler has already visited the Kings to sign his contract, and a formal announcement should come soon, tweets Jason Jones of The Sacramento Bee.
2:25pm: The deal is worth a total of $3MM, tweets Jeff Zillgitt of USA Today, though it appears he’s rounding down. The least he could make over two years would be $3,050,846. In any case, the deal is ostensibly for the minimum.
2:19pm: Year two is a player option, Wojnarowski writes.
JULY 10TH, 1:56pm: The Kings and Caron Butler have agreed on a two-year deal, reports Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports (Twitter link). Butler recently became a free agent after the Bucks, who had just acquired him via trade from the Pistons, waived him rather than guarantee what would have been a $4.5MM salary.
The Thunder, Bulls, Clippers, Spurs, Lakers and Knicks were all reportedly eyeing him as July neared, and the Cavaliers apparently made consistent contact. Instead, Butler appears headed to Sacramento, which used the cap flexibility it’s secured in its trade with the Sixers to come to agreements with a handful of players already.
The Raymond Brothers client figures to provide depth behind Rudy Gay at small forward, and perhaps play alongside Gay in small-ball configurations. Butler, 35, has mostly been a reserve the past two seasons with the Bucks, Thunder and Pistons, though he started 21 games this year for Detroit.
Mavericks Sign Maurice Ndour
The Mavericks have signed undrafted forward Maurice Ndour, the team announced via a press release. The length and terms of the arrangement are not yet known, but it’s most likely a training camp deal, though that is merely my speculation.
Ndour comes off of a successful run at the Las Vegas Summer League where he played for the Knicks’ squad. The 6’9″ forward averaged 9.6 points, 4.8 rebounds, 1.0 block, 1.0 steal in 28.3 minutes per contest. The Knicks were reportedly impressed with Ndour, but a dwindling amount of open roster slots kept New York from signing him. “Maurice was solid, he brought energy and activity to our game,’’ Knicks coach Derek Fisher said. “He showed ability to shoot fairly well and defend, block shots, rebound. He represented himself well. We may not be able to keep him. Our roster’s filling up pretty fast.’’
The 23-year-old native of Senegal spent the last two seasons playing for Ohio University, and his career NCAA numbers are 14.8 PPG, 7.6 RPG, and 1.6 APG. Ndour’s slash line was .498/.388/.757.
Pistons Sign Adonis Thomas For Camp
JULY 23RD, 2:29pm: The deal is official, the Pistons announced via press release.
JULY 16TH, 2:35pm: The Pistons will bring former Magic and Sixers power forward Adonis Thomas to training camp this fall, according to Vince Ellis of the Detroit Free Press (All Twitter links). Thomas played for Detroit’s summer league team this month. Most camp invitees end up on minimum-salary contracts with little or no guaranteed money, and Ellis indicates that he’ll be fighting for a spot on the opening night roster.
Thomas averaged 8.6 points and 4.0 rebounds in 26.0 minutes per game for the summer Pistons. I identified him in my chat Wednesday as a summer leaguer to watch. He scored 14 points in 37 total minutes of regular season NBA action across six games split between Orlando and Philadelphia in the 2013/14 season. The Happy Walters client played for Detroit’s D-League affiliate last year. The 22-year-old who went undrafted out of the University of Memphis in 2013 is no stranger to NBA training camps, having joined the Hawks, Nets and Pacers during preseason the past two autumns.
The Pistons have contracts or agreements with 17 players, and No. 8 overall pick Stanley Johnson is in line to become the 18th once he signs his rookie scale contract. All but Thomas appear to have fully guaranteed arrangements, signaling that more movement on the way for Detroit before opening night.
Raptors Sign Axel Toupane
The Raptors have signed swingman Axel Toupane off their summer league squad, the team announced (Twitter link). Toupane, who turns 22 today, went undrafted in 2014. The move, along with the official signing of Michale Kyser, brings Toronto’s roster to 17 players. Toupane’s deal is partially guaranteed, according to Josh Lewenberg of TSN.ca (Twitter link), and it’s almost certainly for the minimum salary, since that’s all the Raptors can give after using their room exception on Bismack Biyombo.
The 6’7″ Toupane has been a mainstay for France’s Strasbourg IG over the past few seasons, and he averaged 7.0 points in 18.3 minutes per game with 35.4% three-point shooting in 2014/15. He put up 4.3 PPG in 10.9 MPG for the Raptors in summer league, missing all four of his three-point attempts.
Toupane faces long odds to make the opening-night roster, especially since the Raptors already have 14 fully guaranteed contracts. He, Kyser and Ronald Roberts all have partially guaranteed deals, and while they’re presumably battling for the 15th and final regular season spot, teams need only carry 13 players. Thus, it would seem Toupane has a far better shot to wind up with Raptors 905, which is Toronto’s new one-to-one D-League affiliate. NBA teams can retain the D-League rights to as many as four of the players they waive at the end of the preseason.
Stephen Jackson Retires
Stephen Jackson has decided to retire from pro basketball, as he revealed via Instagram (hat tip to Manny Randhawa of the Indianapolis Star). The 37-year-old last played during the 2013/14 season for the Clippers. He saw action for eight different NBA teams across 14 seasons, remembered as much for his mercurial demeanor as his potent scoring prowess.
Jackson averaged 15.1 points a game for his career, a remarkable accomplishment given that he was just the 42nd overall pick in 1997. The swingman who came from Butler County Community College in Kansas didn’t appear in his first regular season game until more than three years later, though he jumped in and started 40 games for the Nets as a rookie in 2000/01. He moved on to the Spurs, where he helped them win the 2003 title, and he emerged as a scoring force with the Hawks the next season before a trade to the Pacers. His involvement in the 2004 brawl with the Pistons at the Palace of Auburn Hills marred his tenure in Indiana, but a trade to the Warriors in the 2006/07 season revitalized his career.
Golden State entered the playoffs as the eighth seed and the shocked top-seeded Mavericks in the first round of the playoffs in Jackson’s first spring with the team, and the next season, he eclipsed 20 PPG for the first time in Don Nelson’s up-tempo offense. He set a career high with 20.7 PPG in 2008/09, but the Warriors traded him early the next season to Charlotte, where he helped the then-Bobcats to their first playoff appearance. He didn’t find as much success at his next stop with the Bucks, and his desire for a contract extension hasted his exit from Milwaukee, which sent him back to Golden State in the Andrew Bogut trade. The Warriors flipped him back to the Spurs two days later, but though he spent more than a year in his second San Antonio stint, he sparred with coach/president Gregg Popovich, and the team released him shortly before the 2013 playoffs as Jackson struggled to adapt to his diminished game. The Clippers signed him to a non-guaranteed deal early in 2013/14 but waived him a few weeks later rather than guarantee it for the season.
Jackson, who switched from Dan Fegan of Relativity Sports to Herb Rudoy of Interperformances before his Clippers stint, raked in more than $68.882MM for his career, according to Basketball-Reference and Basketball Insiders data. Remarkably, he only once made more than $10MM in a single season, and that came in 2012/13 with the Spurs.
What will you remember most about Jackson? Leave a comment to share your thoughts.
Raptors Sign Michale Kyser For Camp
THURSDAY, 9:12am: The deal is official, the Raptors announced.
MONDAY, 12:38pm: The Raptors will bring undrafted power forward Michale Kyser to camp on a partially guaranteed one-year deal, reports Shams Charania of RealGM (Twitter link). Kyser played last week for Toronto’s summer league team. It’s almost certainly a minimum-salary arrangement, since according to Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders (Twitter link), Toronto spent its room exception on Bismack Biyombo.
Many of Kyser’s numbers at Louisiana Tech weren’t overwhelming, as he put up 8.6 points and 6.6 rebounds in 28.5 minutes per game as a senior this past season, but at 6’10”, he patrolled the paint well, blocking 2.9 shots per contest. He put up 3.5 PPG, 4.0 RPG and 0.8 BPG in 14.6 MPG in four summer league appearances.
Neither Jonathan Givony of DraftExpress nor Chad Ford of ESPN.com rated him within their top 100 draft prospects, though Givony did list him as the 74th-best senior in this year’s draft class. Kyser will turn 24 in November, making him older than many rookies. Still, he’s a candidate to wind up on Raptors 905, Toronto’s new one-to-one D-League affiliate.
Rockets Sign Sam Dekker
The Rockets have signed first round pick Sam Dekker to a rookie scale deal, Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders reports (Twitter link). Dekker was the No. 18 overall selection in this year’s NBA Draft. The addition of the forward will raise Houston’s current roster count to 11, all of which are fully guaranteed, though that number doesn’t include Marcus Thornton, whose deal has yet to be made official.
Dekker will earn more than $1.646MM this coming season in the first year of a four-year deal, presuming he receives the standard 120% of the rookie scale, which is most likely the case. The forward will likely take home $1,720,560 in 2016/17, $1,794,600 in 2017/18, and $2,760,095 in the contract’s final season.
In three seasons at Wisconsin, Dekker posted averages of 12.1 points, 5.0 rebounds, and 1.3 assists. His career shooting line was .493/.348/.695.
Kings Sign Quincy Acy
WEDNESDAY, 8:08pm: The deal is official, the Kings announced.
10:19pm: Acy’s deal calls for the minimum salary, notes former Nets executive Bobby Marks (Twitter link).
MONDAY, 6:52pm: Unrestricted free agent forward Quincy Acy has agreed to a two-year deal with the Kings, reports RealGM’s Shams Charania, who cites league sources (Twitter link). The second year has a player option, Charania adds.
The Magic, Pelicans, Hawks and Spurs were teams who had shown interest in Acy, who became an unrestricted free agent after the Knicks declined to extend the qualifying offer of $1.181MM to the forward. The big man should add some front-court depth.
Acy, in his best season in the league, averaged 5.9 points per game and 4.4 rebounds per game last year with the Knicks. Acy played for the Kings previously. He appeared in 56 games with Sacramento in the 2013/14 season.
Kings Sign Duje Dukan
WEDNESDAY, 8:00pm: The signing is official, the team announced.
MONDAY, 5:33pm: The Kings have agreed to a deal with undrafted Wisconsin forward Duje Dukan, reports RealGM’s Shams Charania, who cites league sources (Twitter link). Dukan’s deal with the Kings will contain guarantees, Charania adds in a full story, but it is not clear what they are yet.
Dukan, a big man who can create some floor spacing, averaged 4.7 points and 2.6 rebounds per game during the 2014/15 season. He has been playing in summer league with the Kings. Dukan was a solid shooter and ball-handler in college.