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Knicks Sign D.J. Mbenga

October 8th, 2014 at 11:30am CST by Chuck Myron

The Knicks have signed seven-year NBA veteran center D.J. Mbenga, the team announced (Twitter link). The team is limited to giving out only the minimum salary, but it’s unclear if any of it will be guaranteed for the 33-year-old who played under Knicks president Phil Jackson when he was coaching the Lakers. New York doesn’t have to let anyone go to make room, since the team had been carrying 18 players, two shy of the preseason roster limit of 20.

Mbenga hasn’t played an NBA regular season game since the 2010/11 season, but he was with the Mavs for the 2012/13 preseason. He spent the regular season that year playing in China and in the Philippines. The 7-footer’s greatest success came when he was with Jackson and averaged a career-high 2.7 points in 7.9 minutes per game for the title-winning 2008/09 Lakers. Mbenga has never seen more than 8.1 MPG in any NBA season.

The team made the signing with only training camp in mind, though it had been in the works for a while, tweets Marc Berman of the New York Post. There’s little opportunity for Mbenga or any of New York’s camp invitees to crack the 15-man regular season roster, since the team has 14 fully guaranteed deals and a partial guarantee with Samuel Dalembert, as I outlined Tuesday. Still, if the Knicks let him go and he’d like to play in the D-League, New York can retain his rights for its D-League affiliate.

Pacers Sign Frank Vogel To Extension

October 8th, 2014 at 10:46am CST by Chuck Myron

The Pacers have signed coach Frank Vogel to an extension, the team announced. The arrangement covers multiple seasons, but no other terms are immediately available. Vogel had been set to enter the final season of his existing deal.

The 41-year-old Vogel revealed last month that he and the team were in extension talks and said that he wanted to remain with the Pacers “forever.” It seemed an iffy proposition this spring that he would hold the job much longer, as Marc Stein of ESPN.com reported that the Pacers would dismiss him if the team performed poorly in the playoffs. GM Kevin Pritchard dismissed the notion, but Mark Jackson loomed as a potential replacement, as Stein wrote later. There even appeared to be an outside chance that president of basketball operations Larry Bird would oust Vogel and come down to the bench and coach in his place before the playoffs began. Bird nonetheless expressed confidence in Vogel during the final week of the regular season after making comments earlier in the season that seemed critical of Vogel’s coaching style.

Indiana reached the Eastern Conference Finals and took the Heat to six games before falling, nearly matching the team’s achievement the year before, when the Pacers extended the Heat to seven games in the same round. Still, the Pacers took a circuitous path back to that point, with a hot start to this past season and a disturbing post All-Star malaise. Indiana nonetheless held on to grab the top seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs, but the franchise suffered a pair of painful losses in the offseason. Lance Stephenson rejected a five-year, $45MM offer to re-sign and bolted for the Hornets, while Paul George broke his leg during a Team USA scrimmage, likely knocking him out for the season.

Vogel’s tenure as Pacers coach dates to the 2010/11 season, when he took over on an interim basis for the final 38 games of the regular season and secured the team’s first playoff bid in five years. The Pacers removed the interim tag the following summer, and the Pacers went a round deeper into the playoffs the next two seasons before plateauing this spring. Vogel has compiled a 167-100 record in the regular season and a 28-26 mark in the playoffs over the course of his time as Indiana’s head coach.

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.

Jamaal Franklin Signs To Play In China

October 8th, 2014 at 8:50am CST by Chuck Myron

Former Grizzlies shooting guard Jamaal Franklin has signed a two-month deal with the Zhejiang Guangsha Lions of the Chinese Basketball Association, as he tells Mark Zeigler of The San Diego Union-Tribune. Chema de Lucas of Gigantes del Basket was the first to report that the 41st overall pick from 2013 was headed to China (Twitter link; translation via HoopsHype). Franklin will serve as a replacement for Jonathan Gibson, an injured Lions guard. It’s unclear just how much Franklin will make as part of the arrangement.

Franklin, 23, worked out for the Spurs shortly after the Grizzlies waived him at the end of August, and it appears as though he auditioned for the Wizards, too. The Brian Elfus client indicated to Zeigler that he had opportunities to join an NBA team for camp on a non-guaranteed deal but decided against doing so for financial reasons. Franklin saw limited action this past season with Memphis, racking up nearly three times as many total minutes on D-League assignment as he saw in the NBA. He averaged 1.9 points and 1.1 rebounds in 7.7 minutes per game across 21 NBA appearances. Still, he displayed a better long-range shooting stroke than he demonstrated in college at San Diego State, nailing 38.2% of his three-point attempts in the NBA and the D-League combined.

Memphis used the stretch provision to reduce Franklin’s guaranteed minimum salary for this season to just $163,296. Since the value of his Chinese deal is unknown, it’s not clear whether it’ll be enough to trigger the right of set-off to further reduce the amount the Grizzlies owe him.

Sixers Sign Lee, Gordon, Cut Bogans, Varnado

October 7th, 2014 at 3:53pm CST by Chuck Myron

The Sixers have signed Malcolm Lee and Drew Gordon, and they waived Keith Bogans and Jarvis Varnado to make room on the 20-man preseason roster, the team announced (Twitter link). The team reportedly came to agreements with both Lee and Gordon prior to camp, but they were left off the team’s roster when training camp began. The dismissal of Varnado is somewhat surprising, since he had a $75K partial guarantee and the team had been carrying eight players with non-guaranteed contracts. Bogans was one of those eight, and his nearly $5.3MM salary was the largest by far, so it’s certainly not a shock to see Philadelphia part ways with him. The Sixers have plenty of capacity to exceed the minimum salary in their new arrangements with Lee and Gordon, but the terms aren’t immediately clear.

Lee was one of a handful of players to work out for the Lakers in late August, and he also worked out for the Nets earlier in the summer, though that audition seemed to be geared mostly toward summer league. The 24-year-old guard appeared in summer league with the Raptors, but the two-year NBA veteran will attempt to officially return to the league with the Sixers after sitting out 2013/14, in part because of injury. Gordon, a 24-year-old power forward, was with the Sixers in summer league after splitting this past season between Italy and Turkey. He also had a stop in Serbia after going undrafted out of New Mexico in 2012, and this will be his first NBA preseason experience.

Bogans joined the Sixers after a pair of trades brought him from the Celtics through Cleveland. He sat out much of last season as Celtics president of basketball operations Danny Ainge sought to use his sizable non-guaranteed deal in a trade. Varnado hooked on with both the Bulls and the Sixers via 10-day contracts last season, and Philadelphia elected to keep him for the balance of 2013/14 when its short-term deal with the power forward ran out, tacking the partially guaranteed 2014/15 season onto his contract.

The moves leave the Sixers with a full 20-man preseason roster. Only nine of their players known to have fully guaranteed deals, and the release of Varnado makes it an even more wide open race for the final regular season roster spots.

Semaj Christon To Play In D-League

October 7th, 2014 at 8:59am CST by Chuck Myron

Second-round draft pick Semaj Christon has agreed to play for the Thunder’s D-League affiliate this year, agent Doug Neustadt tells Shannon Russell of the Cincinnati Enquirer. The Thunder will retain the NBA rights to the point guard, whom they acquired via trade from the Hornets, after Charlotte originally picked him up from the Heat. News about this year’s No. 55 overall pick was scarce during the summer, and Oklahoma City left him off its training camp roster, indicating that Christon was destined either for the D-League or an overseas deal.

The 6’3″ Christon, who turns 22 next month, was more of a scoring guard than a traditional point man in college for Xavier, having put up 17.0 points in 35.3 minutes per game as a sophomore this past season while balancing 4.2 assists against 2.6 turnovers each night. He added proficiency from behind the arc to his game this year, nailing 38.8% of his three-point attempts.

The Thunder are taking advantage of a new D-League rule that allows them to retain the D-League rights to Christon, who would have been subject to the D-League draft in years past. That’ll prevent the Oklahoma City Blue, the Thunder’s D-League team, from having to trade to secure his rights, as they did last year with Thunder second-rounder Grant Jerrett. Two of the three players the Thunder acquired through this year’s NBA draft will play for their D-League team this year, as Christon will join No. 29 overall pick Josh Huestis.

Bucks To Release Chris Wright

October 6th, 2014 at 1:43pm CST by Chuck Myron

Small forward Chris Wright has left the Bucks to accept an offer to play overseas instead, coach Jason Kidd told reporters, including Matt Velazquez of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (Twitter links). Kidd said it was Wright’s choice to leave, so it appears the team will accommodate his request and release him. The coach said he didn’t know which team Wright would join, but Gery Woelfel of The Journal Times indicates (via Twitter) that Wright is headed to Greece, the home of Panathinaikos, a team that’s reportedly been in pursuit of the 26-year-old in recent days.

Milwaukee followed up a pair of 10-day contracts with Wright last season and inked him to a deal that extended into 2014/15 with a non-guaranteed minimum salary. The former Dayton Flyer appeared in eight games last season, his second in the NBA after a stint with the Warriors in 2011/12, and he averaged 6.0 points and 2.5 rebounds in 15.8 minutes per contest for the Bucks. Still, it looked like he had little shot of remaining with the team, since Milwaukee has 14 fully guaranteed contracts plus a non-guaranteed deal with Kendall Marshall, who’s likely to be part of the team’s rotation this year.

The departure of the Octagon Sports client nonetheless seemingly gives Elijah Millsap and Micheal Eric a boost in their longshot bids to make the opening-night roster, since it eliminates competition. Wright is not to be confused with the former Mavs shooting guard by the same name.

Warriors Sign Jason Kapono

October 4th, 2014 at 1:00pm CST by Eddie Scarito

1:00pm: The Warriors have received FIBA clearance and have signed Kapono, the team has announced via press release. Contract details haven’t been announced yet, so it’s unclear if any guaranteed money is involved.

OCTOBER 4TH, 10:40am: The signing has not taken place yet because Kapono and the Warriors are still awaiting FIBA clearance since Kapono last played overseas, Diamond Leung of the Bay Area News Group notes.

SEPTEMBER 26TH, 4:34pm: The Warriors have reached an agreement with free agent Jason Kapono, Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports is reporting (Twitter link). Length and terms of the deal were not disclosed but Wojnarowski termed it a training camp deal, which means that it’s likely for the minimum with little or no guaranteed money included.

Golden State now has 18 players on the roster, with 17 of them carrying some level of guarantee. Regardless of if any partial guarantee is included in Kapono’s arrangement, he’s going to have to battle to stick on the roster until opening night. His outside shooting acumen certainly fits the Warriors style of play, which can’t hurt Kapono’s chances at the very least.

The 6’8″, 33 year-old swingman last played in the NBA during the 2011/12 season when he appeared in 27 games for the Lakers. Kapono’s career numbers over nine seasons are 6.7 PPG, 1.7 RPG, and 0.8 APG. His career slash line is .442/.434/.835. He had officially announced his retirement back in May of this year, but Kapono obviously believes he has something left in the tank.

Wizards Waive David Stockton, Vander Blue

October 3rd, 2014 at 10:47pm CST by Eddie Scarito

10:47pm: Both players have been officially waived, the team has announced.

10:20pm: The Wizards began paring down their preseason roster tonight by deciding to waive Vander Blue and David Stockton, Chris Mannix of SI.com is reporting (Twitter link). Both of the guards came to camp on non-guaranteed deals. These moves will reduce Washington’s preseason roster count to 18, with 13 fully guaranteed contracts and one that is partially guaranteed still on the books. Blue and Stockton were longshots to make the regular season roster for a Wizards team that is projected to be one of the top five teams in the Eastern Conference this season.

Blue went undrafted out of Marquette in 2013 and spent the bulk of last season splitting time between Maccabi Rishon LeZion of the Israeli League and the NBA D-League, where he appeared in a total of 27 games for three teams. Blue’s D-League stats were 16.8 PPG, 4.4 RPG, and 2.9 APG. His slash line was .393/.327/.763. Blue joined the Celtics in January on a 10-day contract, making three appearances and logging 1.7 PPG.

Stockton, the son of NBA legend John Stockton, went undrafted this year after four seasons at Gonzaga. His college numbers were an unimpressive 4.8 PPG, 1.6 RPG, and 3.1 APG. His career slash line was .424/.306/.700. Stockton played for the Suns in the summer league, scoring a total of six points in less than 19 minutes over two games.

Western Notes: Beasley, Allen, Kings

October 1st, 2014 at 7:31pm CST by Eddie Scarito

Grizzlies GM Chris Wallace says Michael Beasley is one of six guys in training camp with a chance to show the team they deserve to snag the last regular-season roster spot, Teresa M. Walker of The Associated Press writes. “It’s up to him to show us, make the case for himself then we’ll see where this goes,” Wallace said. “We’re just at the beginning of it with training camp started, and obviously he’s someone that’s very talented … His career hasn’t gone the way he would’ve liked but this is the perfect place for him to rebound.”

Here’s more from out west:

Clippers coach Doc Rivers said that free agent Ray Allen was not a candidate to take the team’s final roster spot since Los Angeles has a glut of shooting guards already, Ben Bolch of the Los Angeles Times reports (Twitter link). Allen hasn’t announced if he will play this season or retire despite numerous teams having interest in his services.
Rivers also added that Joe Ingles and Jared Cunningham are candidates for the team’s final regular-season roster spot, tweets Bolch. Both players are in training camp on non-guaranteed deals.
In his season preview for the Kings, Sam Amico of FOX Sports Ohio predicts a 40-win season and Sacramento missing out on the playoffs. Amico believes that the Kings are still one star player away from becoming a factor in the west.

Pelicans Sign D.J. Stephens For Camp

October 1st, 2014 at 1:14pm CST by Chuck Myron

WEDNESDAY, 1:14pm: The deal is official, the Pelicans announced via press release.

MONDAY, 8:27am: The Pelicans and former Bucks swingman D.J. Stephens have reached agreement on a deal for training camp, reports Shams Charania of RealGM (Twitter link). It’ll have to be a minimum-salary deal for the one-year veteran, since the sliver of the mid-level exception that New Orleans has left is only enough for the team to exceed the minimum for a rookie. It’s not clear whether there’s any guaranteed money involved.

The 23-year-old was set to work out for Utah earlier this month, but it appears he’ll wind up in New Orleans instead. Stephens appeared in three games for Milwaukee on a 10-day contract last spring, scoring seven points and grabbing five rebounds in a total of 15 minutes. He saw significantly more playing time overseas last season after going undrafted out of Memphis in 2013, averaging 8.4 points and 7.0 rebounds in 23.8 minutes per game in 25 combined games with Ilisiakos BC of Greece and Anadolu Efes of Turkey.

New Orleans had been carrying 18 players, so the addition of Stephens leaves room for one more player to join the team in advance of Tuesday’s start of camp. A dozen Pelicans have fully guaranteed deals and three more are on partially guaranteed arrangements, and the team has Dionte Christmas, Kevin Jones and Vernon Macklin on non-guaranteed pacts, making it tough to see a clear path to opening night for Stephens.