Hornets Acquire Nicolas Batum
8:09pm: The trade is official, the Blazers announced. “Nic Batum was a key contributor to all of our recent success,” said Blazers executive Neil Olshey. “He will truly be missed as a person and a player. We wish Nic all the best for the future.”
6:08 pm: The Blazers and Hornets are finalizing a deal that would send Nicolas Batum to Charlotte in exchange for Noah Vonleh and Gerald Henderson, Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports reports (Twitter link). The Yahoo! scribe had reported earlier today that the Hornets were seeking to acquire a wing player in advance of the NBA Draft, but Wojnarowski had relayed that the team was aggressively shopping big man Cody Zeller.
Batum, 26, certainly can be considered an upgrade for Charlotte, despite him coming off a subpar 2014/15 campaign. He appeared in 71 contests for the Blazers, averaging 9.4 points, 5.9 rebounds, and 4.8 assists. His career numbers are 11.2 PPG, 5.1 RPG, and 4.8 APG, with a slash line of .446/.363/.834. Batum is set to earn $12,235,750 for the 2015/16 season, and that amount is fully guaranteed.
It’s a bit of a surprise that the Hornets would deal away Vonleh, the team’s lottery selection of a year ago. The 19-year-old only appeared in 25 contests for the Hornets after getting off to late start due to a preseason sports hernia injury. The immediate conclusion would be that Vonleh was acquired by the Blazers to protect themselves in the event that unrestricted free agent LaMarcus Aldridge departs this offseason, but the deal was made with Aldridge’s knowledge, and was done independently of his free agent decision, Wojnarowski tweets. Vonleh averaged 3.3 points and 3.4 rebounds in 10.4 minutes per contest this past season, and is set to earn $2,637,720 in 2015/16.
Henderson, 27, recently picked up his $6MM player option for next season, and is set to become an unrestricted free agent next summer. He appeared in 80 games for Charlotte during the 2014/15 campaign, and averaged 12.1 points, 3.4 rebounds, and 2.6 assists in 28.9 minutes per contest. His shooting numbers last season were .437/.331/.848.
Ed Davis Opts Out With Lakers
Lakers forward Ed Davis has declined his player option for the 2015/16 campaign and will become an unrestricted free agent, Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders reports (Twitter link). The move comes as no surprise since it had previously been reported that Davis intended to decline his option worth $1,100,602 and test free agency. Davis has said that he would prefer to return to Los Angeles next season.
The Lakers have also expressed a willingness to bring back Davis, and would be open inking him to a multiyear arrangement as long as the cap hit was a reasonable amount. With Los Angeles likely to turn down its 2015/16 team option for Jordan Hill worth $9MM, the Lakers will need depth in its frontcourt, and Davis could certainly fit the bill. The Lakers have approximately $35MM in guaranteed salary already on the books for next season, so they wouldn’t have much trouble re-signing Davis or Hill under the projected $67.1MM cap. Though the team is certainly hoping to use its available cap space on a big ticket free agent this summer.
Davis was solid for the Lakers this past season, appearing in 79 games, 24 as a starter. He averaged 8.3 points, 7.6 rebounds, and 1.2 blocks in 23.3 minutes per contest. His career stats are 7.2 PPG, 6.3 RPG, and 1.0 BPG, and owning a shooting line of .556/.000/.566.
Brandon Rush Opts In With Warriors
Brandon Rush has picked up his minimum-salary player option with the Warriors, reports Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders (Twitter link). The team hasn’t made a public announcement, but it appears as though the move has indeed taken place. The news isn’t surprising, since the seven-year veteran saw sparse playing time this past season for the NBA champs.
Rush signed with Golden State last summer, returning to the team with which the former 13th overall pick scored a career-high 9.8 points per game as a valuable sixth man in 2011/12. A Mark Bartelstein client, he wound up with a two-year, $8MM pact the following summer but tore his ACL in the opening week of the 2012/13 season, and his career hasn’t gotten back on track since. Rush averaged less than a point in 8.2 minutes per game across 33 appearances this past season.
The Warriors already had more than $77.6MM in guaranteed salary for 2015/16, well in excess of a projected $67.1MM cap, so Rush’s option, worth nearly $1.271MM, compounds the team’s financial issues. The tax threshold of $81.6MM looms as the team seeks to re-sign Draymond Green, so it’s no surprise that the Warriors are reportedly looking for takers for David Lee and his nearly $15.494MM salary.
Rockets Exercise Option On Papanikolaou
The Rockets have exercised their team option for Kostas Papanikolaou, Marc Stein of ESPN.com reports (Twitter link). The forward is set to earn $4,797,664 during the 2015/16 campaign, and though his deal is a non-guaranteed one, it would become fully guaranteed if he remains on Houston’s roster past October 4th.
On Sunday, Jonathan Feigen of The Houston Chronicle noted that the team was on the fence regarding Papanikolaou’s option. Houston was reportedly considering rolling the dice and declining its option on the forward, and would then try and re-sign him as a free agent this summer. The Rockets already have $54,629,767 in guaranteed salary on the books for the 2015/16 season, and the addition of Papanikoloau’s salary would increase that amount to $59,427,431.
Papanikolaou was a regular part of the Rockets’ rotation during the first half of the 2014/15 season, but the acquisition of Josh Smith cut into the 24-year-old’s minutes the rest of the way. He averaged 6.1 points and 3.9 rebounds in 24.6 minutes per game before Smith joined the team and 2.3 PPG, 1.5 RPG and just 12.1 MPG in 21 appearances afterward.
Grizzlies Acquire Luke Ridnour
2:33pm: The trade is official, the Magic and Grizzlies announced via press releases.
10:21am: The Grizzlies and Magic have agreed to a trade that will send Luke Ridnour to Memphis, reports Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports (Twitter link). The Magic will get the rights to 2013 second-round pick Janis Timma, Wojnarowski adds (on Twitter).
The 34-year-old Ridnour was reportedly considering retirement as of March, and he hasn’t publicly said whether or not he intends to play next season. His $2.75MM salary is non-guaranteed, though it becomes fully guaranteed if he remains under contract through July 10th. So, the move doesn’t immediately add to the roughly $47MM the Grizzlies have in guaranteed salary for next season, nor does it reduce the Magic’s nearly $39MM in commitments. Orlando was almost certainly going to waive Ridnour before his salary locked in, tweets Josh Robbins of the Orlando Sentinel.
The Grizzlies have a trade exception worth more than $3MM as a vestige of having sent Quincy Pondexter to the Pelicans in January’s Jeff Green trade, so the Grizzlies could use that to officially acquire Ridnour before July 1st. They could open cap space to make the move if they wait until next month to formalize it, though they’re unlikely to go under the cap unless Marc Gasol bolts, so it would seem the trade exception will go to use. Orlando, which is already under the cap, doesn’t have the chance to create a trade exception of its own for Ridnour.
Memphis is gaining a backup point guard who’s also seen time at the two, so his acquisition would seemingly create competition for Beno Udrih, whose salary of nearly $2.175MM is partially guaranteed for $923K, and Nick Calathes, who’s entering free agency. The Grizzlies can make Calathes a restricted free agent if they tender a qualifying offer $1,147,276 by month’s end, though perhaps today’s news is a signal that they’re prepared to move on from him. It’s also possible that the Grizzlies will try to flip Ridnour in another trade, Wojnarowski suggests.
Timma, a small forward who turns 23 next month, averaged 12.6 points, 5.0 rebounds and 3.5 assists in 28.9 minutes per game this past season for VEF Riga of Latvia. It’s assumed that his contract with that team expires this year, as Mark Porcaro notes in our Draft Rights Held Players database.
League OKs Tony Ressler’s Purchase Of Hawks
Private equity mogul Tony Ressler and his partners have officially assumed control of the Hawks after receiving unanimous Board of Governors approval today, the league announced. Controlling owner Bruce Levenson, who last September announced his decision to sell as he self-reported racially insensitive emails that he had sent in 2012, and the rest of an often-divided consortium of co-owners have relinquished the team in the $730MM deal. The Ressler group is also assuming some $120MM in arena-related debt, raising the total purchase price to $850MM, as several reports made clear in April, when Ressler and his partners secured an agreement to buy the team. USA Today’s Jeff Zillgitt reported a few days ago that league approval and the transfer would take place today.
“We are pleased that the NBA’s Board of Governors has approved the purchase of the Atlanta Hawks by principal owner Tony Ressler,” commissioner Adam Silver said. “Tony and his diverse and experienced ownership group will bring tremendous energy and passion to the Hawks and the team and its fans will greatly benefit from their commitment to the Atlanta community.”
Former player Grant Hill, private equity investor Rick Schnall, women’s wear magnate Sara Blakely and her husband, entrepreneur Jesse Itzler, are among those in Ressler’s group. They beat out another bid that reportedly involved baseball legend Hank Aaron as well as former Grizzlies CEO Jason Levien and current Grizzlies minority owner Steve Kaplan. Former Suns and Raptors GM Bryan Colangelo, former player Junior Bridgeman and neuropsychologist Richard Chaifetz also apparently teamed for a run at the Hawks as part of a bid that once included Hill.
The new owners appear poised to work on a deal that would make Mike Budenholzer team president and coach, as well as one that would give assistant GM Wes Wilcox a promotion to GM, as Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports reported last week. Former GM Danny Ferry received a buyout earlier this week that gave him more than he would have received over the remainder of his contract, according to Kevin Arnovitz of ESPN.com. Ferry had been on a leave of absence since September that he began after the revelation that he repeated racially charged comments about Luol Deng that had been written in a scouting report from an outside firm. The departures of Ferry and Levenson allow the team to move on from the scandal that hung in the background amid the team’s 60-win season.
Ressler and the front office face a challenge this summer to retain both Paul Millsap and DeMarre Carroll with only Early Bird rights on them and perhaps not enough cap space to meet their collective market price, as I examined in our Offseason Outlook for the team. Atlanta holds the 15th, 50th and 59th picks in Thursday’s draft.
Cavs Pick Up Option On Timofey Mozgov
1:00pm: The move is indeed official, the team confirmed.
9:59am: The Cavs have picked up their $4.95MM team option on Timofey Mozgov, reports Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders (Twitter link). The team has yet to make an official announcement, but it would appear that the move has indeed taken place. It’s largely an academic transaction, since it would have been shocking if Cleveland had turned down a relatively inexpensive option on the starting center whose acquisition helped turn the team’s season around this year.
Mozgov came from Denver via trade on January 7th in a move that involved two first-round picks heading to the Nuggets. Cavs GM David Griffin and his staff had long coveted the 7’1″ native of Russia, and when the Cavs rebounded from a 19-20 start to reach the Finals with Mozgov locking down the interior on defense, it validated the team’s pursuit.
Cleveland has only slightly more than $31MM in guaranteed salary after picking up Mozgov’s option, though that number doesn’t include a slew of marquee free agents, including LeBron James and Kevin Love. The Cavs appear intent on retaining much of their team and have reportedly had internal discussions about a shelling out a payroll between $100-$110MM plus some $75MM in taxes next season.
Arron Afflalo Opts Out From Trail Blazers
JUNE 23RD: The deadline for Afflalo to opt in was Monday, and since that’s lapsed, he has officially opted out, The Oregonian’s Joe Freeman reports. Player options require players to say when they’re opting in, but they don’t have to give any notice if they’re opting out.
JUNE 21ST: Afflalo is expected to opt out, tweets David Aldridge of TNT.
MAY 7TH: It’s still too early to say definitively that Afflalo will opt out, sources tell The Oregonian’s Joe Freeman, who writes in a roundtable report that examines the shooting guard’s brief time with the Blazers and whether the team should bring him back for next season.
MAY 1ST: Arron Afflalo intends to turn down a $7.75MM player option for next season and become a free agent this summer, reports Marc Stein of ESPN.com. That’s even though a shoulder injury forced him to miss the initial two games of Portland’s first-round series against the Grizzlies and seemed to limit him the rest of the way. Afflalo went scoreless over about 29 minutes of play across the final two games of that series, which the Blazers lost 4-1. As the end of the regular season neared, he was reportedly ready to let his postseason performance dictate what he would do with the option, with the plan seemingly having been to opt in if he didn’t play well, so it appears the Sam Goldfeder client has changed course.
The Blazers gave up a first-round pick, among other assets, to acquire Afflalo from the Nuggets at the deadline, but it looks like yet another key member of their team will hit free agency. Fellow shooting guard Wesley Matthews, LaMarcus Aldridge and Robin Lopez are also among the Blazers who can choose to leave this summer. GM Neil Olshey said Thursday that he has contingency plans for each in case they don’t re-sign, and it seems increasingly likely that he’ll have to employ his plan for Aldridge, who no longer appears the safe bet to re-sign that he once was. Portland only has about $23MM in guaranteed salary for next season against a projected $67.1MM cap, so the Blazers have no shortage of flexibility.
Portland has Afflalo’s Bird rights, though unless the Blazers are willing to insert a fifth year in the 29-year-old’s next contract, that will matter little, since he’s not a contender for a maximum salary. The Blazers can offer 7.5% raises instead of 4.5% raises, but another team can offset that with a higher salary in the first year of the deal. Afflalo was the Magic’s leading scorer in 2013/14 with 18.2 points per game, but his scoring was off significantly, from 18.2 points per game last year to 13.3 this season, despite a much less profound dip in the number of his field goal attempts. He was better defensively this season, as Basketball-Reference’s Defensive Box Plus/Minus shows, but he had a woeful 8.2 PER in his 25 regular season games as a Blazer.
Goran Dragic Formally Opts Out From Heat
Goran Dragic has turned down his $7.5MM player option for next season, reports Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders (Twitter link). The team has yet to make an official announcement, but since player options don’t require players to say when they’re opting out, only when they’re opting in, there may well be no formal acknowledgement of the move from the team. Dragic’s decision has been thoroughly expected, as he said in April that he would opt out, as he had long planned to do. The Heat are preparing a five-year offer in excess of $80MM for him to return, as Marc Stein of ESPN.com reported this weekend, but an offer in the neighborhood of $80MM would still be significantly less than the max.
The expectation when Miami acquired Dragic from the Suns in exchange for a package that included two first-round picks was that the Heat would make him a max offer this summer, as Ramona Shelburne of ESPN.com reported at the time. However, the team is apparently in salary-clearing mode with Dwyane Wade angling for more money amid his openness to leave Miami, so perhaps that’s led the Heat to try to see if they can save on Dragic, a client of Bill Duffy and Rade Filipovich.
A five-year deal worth somewhat more than $80MM would still be roughly in line with what other teams can offer in terms of total money, since competitors are limited to handing out only four-year contracts. Dragic has been insistent that he’s high on Miami, but he apparently nonetheless saw the Lakers as a “perfect fit” at the trade deadline, and that team is reportedly a likely suitor, as are the Knicks, Pelicans, Kings and Bucks.
Thaddeus Young Opts Out From Nets
10:29am: Young has indeed opted out, King confirmed today to reporters, including Andy Vasquez of The Record (Twitter link), saying that he has his sights set on re-signing him. King added that the team has extended a qualifying offer to Mirza Teletovic, as the GM said the Nets would.
10:10am: Thaddeus Young has opted out from the Nets, a league source tells Chris Haynes of Cleveland.com (Twitter link). Haynes indicates that the move has already taken place, and while the Nets have made no official announcement, there won’t necessarily be formal acknowledgement, since players don’t have to declare when they’re turning down player options; they only have to say when they’re opting in. Young was in line to make nearly $10.222MM had he picked up the option.
The news is no shock, since Young was reportedly leaning toward opting out as of late last month, though that came a few weeks after Young said agent Jim Tanner had suggested that he instead opt in and hit free agency next summer, when the salary cap is projected to surge. Young also said in early May that he wanted to see what Brook Lopez would do with his player option, so perhaps today’s news is an indication that Lopez has made up his mind, too. Nets GM Billy King has made it clear that it’s a priority for the club to retain both Young and Lopez regardless of whether they opt out. That’s in spite of the looming luxury tax threshold that would make it difficult for the Nets, who have nearly $59MM in guaranteed salary already on the books for next season, to keep both without passing the projected $81.6MM tax line. The Nets would pay repeat-offender tax penalties if they’re again in the tax at the end of next season. King has indicated a willingness to trade every player on the roster, including the bloated contracts of Deron Williams and Joe Johnson.
The 29-year-old Young averaged 14.1 points and 5.4 rebounds in 32.0 minutes per game this season, his first away from the Sixers, and his numbers during the second half of the season in Brooklyn were similar to those that he put up before a midseason trade that sent him away from Minnesota.