Hawks Sign Jarell Eddie To 10-Day Contract
THURSDAY, 10:10AM: The Hawks officially announced via press release that they have inked Eddie to a 10-day deal.
WEDNESDAY, 8:15AM: The Hawks have agreed to sign training camp invitee Jarell Eddie to a 10-day contract, reports Shams Charania of RealGM. The small forward has been playing for the Spurs affiliate in the D-League. He’ll move into Atlanta’s lone open roster spot Thursday, according to Charania.
Eddie, who went undrafted out of Virginia Tech this past June, joined the Hawks for preseason on a deal without any guaranteed salary. The Celtics claimed Eddie shortly after Atlanta released him about a week shy of opening night, but he lasted only a few days in Boston and didn’t make the regular season roster. He instead made his mark as a sharpshooter in the D-League, knocking down 42.2% of his three-point looks for the Austin Spurs and winning the D-League’s All-Star Game three-point contest. The 23-year-old is averaging 12.1 points in 25.6 minutes per game across 36 appearances for San Antonio’s affiliate. The Hawks have frequently used the Austin Spurs for D-League assignments because of the close ties between the Atlanta and San Antonio organizations and Atlanta’s lack of its own one-to-one affiliate.
The Hawks reportedly spoke to Ray Allen earlier this season, and speculation that the NBA’s all-time leading three-point shot-maker would head to Atlanta intensified when the Hawks opened a roster spot in the trade that sent Adreian Payne to the Timberwolves. However, executives around the league have begun to doubt that Allen will play this year, and while a 10-day contract doesn’t cost the Hawks much flexibility, Atlanta’s use of one on a three-point shooter is nonetheless seemingly a further signal that teams are moving on from Allen.
Jazz To Sign Jerrelle Benimon To 10-Day Deal
The Jazz are set to sign power forward Jerrelle Benimon to a 10-day contract, a source tells Chris Reichert of Road to the Association (Twitter link). Benimon has been playing with Utah’s affiliate in the D-League since shortly after the Nuggets, who’d signed him for training camp this past fall, waived him in advance of opening night.
Benimon had a $35K partial guarantee on his Nuggets contract, more than the $29,843 he’d make on a standard 10-day contract for a rookie. Still, it seems the 23-year-old is poised for his first taste of regular season NBA action after going undrafted of Towson this past June. He’s averaging 19.9 points and 10.6 rebounds in 34.9 minutes per game in 35 D-League appearances this season.
Utah is without an open roster spot for now, but two members of the Jazz are on 10-day contracts. The team’s deals with Jack Cooley and Bryce Cotton expire at the end of Thursday.
Pelicans Sign Elliot Williams To 10-Day Deal
WEDNESDAY, 10:19am: The deal is official, the team announced. The move, coupled with Justin Hamilton’s release, leaves the Pelicans with 14 players.
TUESDAY, 2:53pm: The Pelicans are expected to sign guard Elliot Williams to a 10-day contract, reports John Reid of The Times-Picayune (Twitter link). The former 22nd overall pick has been playing for the D-League affiliate of the Warriors since shortly after the Hornets terminated their 10-day contract with him early so they could pull off the Mo Williams trade last month. The 25-year-old Elliot Williams would fill the Pelicans’ lone roster vacancy.
New Orleans would be the third team with which Williams has signed a 10-day contract this season, joining Charlotte and Utah, as our 10-Day Contract Tracker shows. He didn’t see action on his lone pact with the Hornets, but he averaged 3.6 points in 8.4 minutes per contest in five appearances for the Jazz, who signed him to two 10-day deals.
Jrue Holiday hasn’t played for the Pelicans since January, so Williams will be the latest to try to plug that gap after the team cycled through 10-day pacts with Nate Wolters and Toney Douglas. Williams is just a season removed from seeing 17.3 MPG in 67 contests for the Sixers.
Pelicans Waive Justin Hamilton
5:08pm: New Orleans has waived Hamilton, the team announced in a press release.
3:06pm: The Pelicans are expected to waive Justin Hamilton, league sources tell John Reid of The Times-Picayune (Twitter link). Reid reported minutes earlier that the Pels are expected to sign Elliot Williams to a 10-day contract, but New Orleans doesn’t have to make a corresponding move, since it has an open roster spot. In any case, it appears the team is parting with the big man it acquired from the Heat in a three-team deadline-day trade with Phoenix. Hamilton would be ineligible to appear in the playoffs for another team if he indeed hits waivers, and the Pelicans would be on the hook for his entire minimum salary of more than $816K unless another team puts in a waiver claim.
The 24-year-old had yet to appear in a game for the Pelicans since the trade after averaging 12.0 minutes per contest in 24 appearances, five of them starts, for the banged-up Heat. Still, he had a marginal impact for Miami, averaging just 2.8 points and 2.0 rebounds. The contract that he signed with Miami toward the end of last season had a series of dates that triggered partially guaranteed salary, and he remained on the roster past them all, as well as the leaguewide guarantee date in January that locked in his full salary.
The Heat first acquired Hamilton on draft night in 2012 and twice signed him to deals, but Miami can’t re-sign him until July because the league prohibits teams from re-signing players they trade for one year, or until the end of the traded contract, whichever is sooner. Hamilton was also with Charlotte last season on a 10-day contract.
Suns Sign Earl Barron To Second 10-Day Pact
12:33pm: The deal is official, the Suns announced.
10:13am: The Suns and center Earl Barron have reached agreement on a second 10-day deal, a league source told Shams Charania of RealGM (Twitter link). His first 10-day contract with Phoenix expired Monday. It’ll be the third time Barron has inked with the Suns this season, including his training camp deal.
The ninth-year veteran failed to make it to opening night with the team, but the Suns retained his D-League rights and he’s spent much of the season with Phoenix’s affiliate. Barron averaged 20.2 points and 10.9 rebounds in 32.6 minutes per game across 27 appearances for the D-League Bakersfield Jam, but he’s seen just 5.5 MPG in his five-game stint with the big club, his first NBA regular season action since 2012/13.
Phoenix has just 13 players signed through the end of the season after its flurry of deadline moves. So, GM Ryan McDonough and company would continue to have flexibility even if they re-sign Barron for the season, which they’d have to do to bring the 33-year-old back once his latest 10-day deal expires.
Nuggets Fire Brian Shaw
12:25pm: The firing is official, the team announced. Hunt will be the interim coach through the end of the season, the Nuggets also confirmed. Denver will conduct an “extensive” search for a head coach after the season, the statement also indicates.
“I want to sincerely thank Brian for his time with our organization,” Connelly said. “You won’t find a better guy than Brian and he is one of the brightest basketball minds I’ve ever been around. Unfortunately things didn’t go as we hoped, but we know with his basketball acumen that he has a very bright future ahead of him.”
11:40am: Hunt will indeed be the interim coach, and he’ll fill that role for the balance of the season, a source tells TNT’s David Aldridge (Twitter link). Hunt, a holdover from George Karl‘s staff, has been an assistant in Denver since 2010/11. He was previously an assistant coach with the Cavs, Lakers, and Rockets, and it was Houston that gave him his start as a video coordinator in the 1990s.
11:36am: Assistant Melvin Hunt is the front-runner to assume the job on an interim basis, but that’s not set in stone, according to Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports (Twitter link). Denver plays tonight against the Bucks.
11:23am: The Nuggets are letting go of coach Brian Shaw, a source tells Chris Dempsey of The Denver Post. Dempsey indicates that the move took place this morning, though the team has yet to make an official announcement. Denver has dropped 17 of its last 19 games amid roster turnover at the deadline. Shaw insisted Monday that his team’s “1, 2, 3 … six weeks!” chant during Friday’s game wasn’t a reference to the time left in the season but instead to the number of weeks since the team’s last home win. Either way, it wasn’t a positive omen for the coach. It’s not immediately clear who will replace him.
GM Tim Connelly said nearly a month ago that the team had no plans of firing Shaw before season’s end, but it appears as though the team’s continued losing has changed that stance. The second-year head coach, who turns 49 in a few weeks, has been publicly critical of his players this season, one in which the Nuggets had hoped the return of several who’d missed time last year with injury would boost the club into contention for a playoff berth.
Shaw was reportedly making about $2MM a year in the second year of a three-year deal he signed when the Nuggets hired him in the summer of 2013. The pact includes an option for a fourth year, presumably belonging to the team.
The coach’s job security seemed to take a negative turn earlier this season after the Nuggets had stiff-armed a pursuit from Knicks team president Phil Jackson, who previously employed Shaw as an assistant with the Lakers. Speculation that Shaw was in danger began in November amid a 2-7 start, but a five-game winning streak brought the team back to .500. The Nuggets haven’t seen the break-even point since they were 9-9 in December, and even that wouldn’t have put the Nuggets in line for a playoff spot in the rugged Western Conference.
Shaw tried unconventional methods this season, doing away with shootarounds and even rapping pregame personnel reports, as Steve Bulpett of the Boston Herald noted. Still, it wasn’t enough amid a season in which the Nuggets current roster has only Will Barton and Jameer Nelson to show for a series of trades in which the team relinquished Timofey Mozgov, Arron Afflalo, Nate Robinson, JaVale McGee and Alonzo Gee. It appears Shaw will finish his Nuggets tenure at a combined 56-85 for this season and last.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
Mavs Re-Sign Bernard James For Season
The Mavericks have re-signed Bernard James to a contract that covers the balance of the season, as Earl K. Sneed of Mavs.com tweets and as the team announced via press release. The news is no surprise, since Mavs owner Mark Cuban said even before the club’s second 10-day contract with James was official that he would eventually sign him for the rest of the season. That second 10-day pact expired Monday. Neither the team nor Sneed indicate that it’s a multiyear pact, which suggests that it doesn’t contain any non-guaranteed salary for next season as such contracts often do.
The move locks Dallas into 15 contracts that run until at least season’s end, so the team would have to eat one of them to make another signing. So, that likely precludes any lingering chance that Jermaine O’Neal would join the team, and the Mavs don’t appear likely to end up with JaVale McGee, either.
Of course, Dallas didn’t mind taking the full hit for James’ guaranteed full-season minimum salary when the Mavs waived him at the end of the preseason to make room for Charlie Villanueva, who was then on a non-guaranteed pact. Still, James, a 30-year-old former Air Force Air Force staff sergeant, filled a prominent role for the banged-up Mavs on his 10-day deals, averaging 4.4 points and 4.4 rebounds in 17.4 minutes per game across five appearances, two of them starts. That’s significantly more minutes a night than the Happy Walters client saw in either of his first two seasons in the NBA, both of which were with the Mavs.
Heat Re-Sign Henry Walker To Second 10-Day
TUESDAY, 11:35am: The deal is official, the team announced via press release.
MONDAY, 5:29pm: Walker confirmed that he’s signing another 10-day deal, as he informed reporters, including Jason Lieser of the Palm Beach Post (Twitter link).
12:01pm: The Heat and Henry Walker have reached agreement on a second 10-day contract, as Shams Charania of RealGM reports (Twitter link), and as a source confirms to Hoops Rumors. His first 10-day deal with the team is up at the end of today. Miami has been carrying Walker as well as Michael Beasley on 10-day contracts that occupy what would otherwise be the team’s only two open roster spots.
It’s no shock to see the Heat keep the 27-year-old Walker around after he started and played 26 minutes in Saturday’s game. He’s averaged 11.8 points in 27.8 minutes per game in his four appearances with Miami, his first NBA action since the 2011/12 season. That’s slightly more playing time than he’d seen with the Heat’s D-League affiliate, for whom he’d averaged 27.7 MPG in 17 games earlier this season.
A decision of greater consequence looms regarding another deal between Walker and the Heat, since players can only sign two 10-day deals with any one team during a single season. Miami would have to re-sign the Mike Naiditch client through at least the end of the season next time around.
Pistons Sign Quincy Miller To Second 10-Day
9:11am: The deal is official, the team announced via press release.
8:40am: The Pistons and Quincy Miller have reached agreement on a second 10-day pact, league sources tell Shams Charania of RealGM (Twitter link). His first deal with the team expired last night. Pistons coach/executive Stan Van Gundy said Friday that he was leaning toward bringing the forward back for a second 10-day stint, though Friday was the same day the team sent him on D-League assignment.
The former 38th overall pick didn’t appear in an NBA game for Detroit on his first 10-day contract with the club. He displayed strong rebounding while in the D-League over the weekend, grabbing 18 rebounds in 39.5 total minutes across two games. However, he didn’t hit the boards at nearly that rate in 15 games with Sacramento’s affiliate before he signed with the Pistons, grabbing 7.6 rebounds in 28.9 minutes per contest, and he’s averaged just 6.6 rebounds per 36 minutes for his NBA career.
Detroit has 14 other players signed through the end of the season, so the roster spot the team has earmarked for Miller is its only vacancy. The 22-year-old was reportedly set to discuss a deal for the rest of the season with the Kings after inking a pair of 10-day contracts with Sacramento earlier this year, but no such deal materialized. The Pistons would have to sign Miller for at least the balance of the season if they’re to renew their relationship once his second 10-day deal expires.
Grizzlies Sign JaMychal Green To Multiyear Deal
MONDAY, 5:25pm: The deal is official, the team announced via press release. It includes partially guaranteed salary beyond this season, as we passed along earlier from Marc J. Spears of Yahoo! Sports.
“Before first coming to Memphis, JaMychal was the top prospect in the NBA Development League, and he has impressed us both in games and in practice during his tenure with the Grizzlies,” GM Chris Wallace said in the team’s statement. “JaMychal is not only a gifted athlete with tremendous upside but he is a humble, very hard working individual who has quickly earned the respect of his new teammates.”
SUNDAY, 1:05pm: The Grizzlies and JaMychal Green have reached agreement on a three-year deal, according to Shams Charania of RealGM. Green completed his second 10-day contract with the Grizzlies on Saturday night.
One has to imagine that the final two seasons are not fully guaranteed, but details of the pact are not yet known. The deal probably called for Memphis to use a portion of its mid-level exception since that’s the only way that the deal could span three years.
Green, 24, averaged 23 PPG and 10.7 RPG in 20 games for the Austin Spurs this season. He didn’t see nearly as much burn in his four games with the Grizzlies, however, notching a total of eight points and five boards in 15 minutes of action. Green first joined the Grizzlies on February 2nd as a free agent after a 10-day stint with San Antonio.
In total, Green has inked three 10-day deals this season between the two with the Grizzlies and his previous stint with the Spurs.