Wolves Waive J.J. Barea, Mavs Plan To Sign Him
MONDAY, 1:59pm: The Wolves have waived Barea, the team announced (Twitter link). It’s unclear if he agreed to give up any salary in a buyout arrangement or if it was a straight release.
SUNDAY, 3:55pm: The Wolves are finalizing a buyout with J.J. Barea, sources tell Marc Stein of ESPN.com. The buyout will be completed before Monday’s 4pm CT roster cutdown deadline, putting Minnesota at the 15-man maximum.
With a logjam of guards in Minnesota, there has been speculation this offseason that the Wolves would buy Barea out of the final year of his contract or trade him. Coach/president Flip Saunders insisted in late September that there was a role for Barea in Minnesota, noting that his camp performance last summer was the best of anyone on the team. Still, with a glut of backcourt options, including free agent pickup Mo Williams, it was clear that Barea could get more burn elsewhere.
The Mavericks are planning on signing Barea once he clears waivers, according to Stein, and the guard wants to return to Dallas. The Mavs’ roster is currently full with the regular season maximum 15 players, so bringing Barea aboard would require another roster move. The guard should clear as he carries a $4.5MM cap number for 2014/15. Stein suggests that Dallas could clear a spot by trading or releasing guard Gal Mekel or big man Greg Smith.
If the Barea-Dallas reunion falls through, there should be plenty of other clubs with interest. The Lakers immediately come to mind as a club that could go for Barea in the wake of Steve Nash‘s season-ending injury.
Earlier today, Darren Wolfson of 1500 ESPN Twin Cities (Twitter link) heard that the feeling around the league was that Barea would wind up with the Mavs. Barea could be the second member of the Mavs’ 2011 championship team to return to Dallas this offseason, following big man Tyson Chandler.
Nuggets Waive Miller, Benimon, Williams
12:53pm: The Nuggets have officially waived Miller, the team announced.
MONDAY, 12:40pm: Miller’s release no longer appears on the RealGM transactions log, and the team has been looking to find a taker for him via trade, tweets Chris Dempsey of The Denver Post. However, the Nuggets haven’t found any trade partners and are set to release Miller in advance of today’s 4:00pm Central deadline for teams to submit their opening-night rosters.
WEDNESDAY, 1:52pm: The Nuggets have waived Miller, according to the RealGM transactions log, though the team has yet to make an official announcement about him.
1:10pm: Denver has officially released Benimon and Williams, the team announced, though Miller remains with the team for now, according to Dempsey, who indicates that the Nuggets are thinking of keeping him right up until they have to let him go to make Monday’s opening-night roster deadline (Twitter links).
8:28am: The Nuggets are waiving Quincy Miller, reports Shams Charania of RealGM (Twitter link), and the team will also release Marcus Williams and Jerrelle Benimon, according to Chris Dempsey of The Denver Post. The moves will drop the Nuggets to the 15-player regular season maximum and allow the team to keep Alonzo Gee and his non-guaranteed contract for opening night, Dempsey points out. They also signal that Erick Green will remain with the team into the regular season in spite of only $50K in guaranteed salary. Dempsey indicates that the Nuggets have already placed Miller on waivers, though the team has made no official announcement.
The Nuggets part ways with Miller in spite of his $150K partial guarantee, one that would have escalated to cover his entire minimum salary had he made it to opening night. The team drafted him 38th overall in 2012, but he struggled to recover from tearing his left ACL as a high school senior, when he was the fifth-best prospect in the country, according to the Recruiting Services Consensus Index. He averaged 4.9 points and 2.8 rebounds in 15.2 minutes per game last season, the first in which he felt fully healthy since the injury, Dempsey notes, but that wasn’t enough to save his spot on the roster for this year.
The Nuggets also owe a $35K partial guarantee to Benimon, who joined the team after going undrafted in June and appearing in summer league with Denver as well as the Heat. Williams, a forward from the University of Arizona not to be confused with the point guard by the same name, signed a non-guaranteed contract with Denver in an effort to make it back to the NBA for his first regular season action since the 2008/09 season.
Gee’s defense helped fuel the Nuggets decision-making, and he had four steals in Tuesday’s preseason game, as Dempsey points out. He earned a measure of stability after a summer that saw him go from the Cavs to the Pelicans to the Rockets to the Kings in a series of trades before Sacramento waived him, freeing the Nuggets to ink the 27-year-old small forward. Green, the 46th overall pick in 2013, signed with the Nuggets this year after playing last season with Montepaschi Siena of Italy.
Sixers Sign Malcolm Thomas
MONDAY: 12:10pm: The deal is official, the team announced via press release.
SATURDAY, 9:25pm: The Sixers have agreed to a deal with free agent Malcolm Thomas, reports Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports. While many signees this late in the preseason have been quickly waived as means of teams securing D-League rights to players that won’t make the regular season NBA roster, Wojnarowski writes that Thomas is assured of a spot on Philadelphia’s opening-night roster.
The terms of the deal are unclear at this time, but I would speculate that it is likely for the minimum and possibly non-guaranteed. Thomas spent time last year with both the Spurs and Jazz, appearing in a total of eight games and slightly upping his 5.9 MPG average for his three-year career. His non-guaranteed deal was shipped to the Cavs, then the Celtics, this summer before Boston waived it.
The move will bump the Sixers’ roster count up to 18, three more than the maximum they can keep for the regular season. The team waived three partially guaranteed contracts earlier today, and have at least seven deals without guaranteed money, not including Thomas’ contract.
Rockets Waive Jeff Adrien, Ish Smith
The Rockets have waived Jeff Adrien and Ish Smith, the team announced via press release. Shams Charania of RealGM reported overnight that the team would do so with Adrien (Twitter link), adding that Houston was considering Smith or Francisco Garcia for the final cut necessary to take the team’s roster down to the regular season limit of 15. That appears to put rookie Tarik Black on the opening-night roster, as Charania noted, in spite of the lack of a full guarantee on his contract. Adrien and Smith both signed fully guaranteed one-year contracts for the minimum salary with Houston this summer, and the team will be on the hook for them providing they clear waivers.
Smith had held the lead earlier this preseason on fellow point guard Isaiah Canaan, who remains on the roster, but Canaan made a strong push in the past two weeks and the Rockets always felt he had higher long-term potential, tweets Jonathan Feigen of the Houston Chronicle. Smith has bounced around to six teams in his four NBA seasons, spending last year with the Suns, where he averaged a career-high 14.4 minutes per game.
Adrien is another journeyman coming off perhaps his finest season, one in which he averaged 10.9 points and 7.8 rebounds in 25.2 mintues per game over 28 appearances with the Bucks after they brought him to Milwaukee in a deadline-day trade with Charlotte. It wouldn’t be surprising to see a team claim the power forward off waivers, though that’s just my speculation.
The moves leave the Rockets with 13 fully guaranteed deals plus Black and the non-guaranteed contract of Patrick Beverley. Charania indicated that Black’s contract would be partially guaranteed when he agreed to his deal, though Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders lists the pact as non-guaranteed.
Rockets Waive Robert Covington
MONDAY, 9:44am: Houston has officially released Covington, the team announced via press release.
SUNDAY, 5:31pm: The Rockets have waived Robert Covington, as is reflected by the RealGM transactions log. There has been no formal announcement by the team yet, but this news doesn’t come as a surprise. Covington has reportedly been away from the team for the last two weeks weighing some guaranteed offers to play in Europe.
Waiving Covington will cost Houston $150K, which was the amount of his partial guarantee. The Rockets still have some trimming to do on their preseason roster which stands at 17 after Covington’s departure. The team will have until tomorrow afternoon to whittle down their numbers to the regular season maximum of 15.
Covington spent much of last season with Houston’s D-League affiliate despite being on the team’s NBA roster the entire year. He earned himself a trip to the D-League’s All-Star game by averaging 23.2 PPG and 9.2 RPG in 34.1 minutes per game in 42 D-League appearances.
Rockets Waive Earl Clark, Akeem Richmond
MONDAY, 9:43am: The moves are official, the team announced via press release.
SATURDAY, 7:24pm: Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders tweets that the Rockets have waived Earl Clark and Akeem Richmond, shortly after claiming and signing each, respectively, to their preseason roster.
The moves aren’t surprising, as the team is looking to reduce the size of its roster, which includes 15 guaranteed contracts and starting point guard Patrick Beverley on a non-guaranteed pact. Clark’s contract was non-guaranteed and won’t hit the Rockets cap sheet. It is unknown if Richmond’s deal contained any guarantees, although I would speculate that it would have been a partially guaranteed contract at best.
Clark has slipped considerably as an NBA commodity, in danger of falling out of the league after signing an $8.5MM deal just last year. Richmond wasn’t selected in the 2014 NBA Draft after declaring following his sophomore season at East Carolina. Houston will retain the D-League rights to both, provided they clear waivers. The maneuvers were most likely made with that end in mind, although that is also just speculation on my part.
Pistons Release Aaron Gray
5:48pm: Detroit has officially waived Gray, the team has announced.
4:39pm: The Pistons will release Aaron Gray to get down to a 15-man roster, according to Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders (on Twitter). Gray signed a two-year deal with Detroit in August that included a player option on the final season. The deal was guaranteed for the minimum salary in both years so the Pistons will be on the hook for both seasons, presuming he clears waivers.
With a 16-man roster, the Pistons were put in a position in which they had to either cut or trade a player, with Gray, Tony Mitchell, and Luigi Datome seemingly the likeliest candidates to hit the waiver wire. With all 16 players on guaranteed deals, Detroit had to eat someone’s salary no matter what if it couldn’t find a trade partner. As David Mayo of MLive.com wrote earlier this month, Stan Van Gundy has been high on Mitchell, even though he would have been the most painless cut with a $816K salary.
“He works in the weight room,” Van Gundy said of Mitchell. “He works on his game out here. He simply has a lot to learn and he has to play the game smarter. He picks up some bad fouls. He has some wild turnovers, things like that. But his effort is not a problem at all, either in games or trying to work on his game. We’ve been very, very pleased with that. And he’s a great athlete.”
Gray, a former Pittsburgh standout, averaged 1.8 PPG and 3.0 RPG across 36 games for the Raptors and Kings last season.
Magic Pick Up 2015/16 Options On Four
OCTOBER 26TH: The Magic confirmed that they have exercised the options via press release.
OCTOBER 20TH: The Magic will exercise their team options to keep Victor Oladipo, Evan Fournier, Maurice Harkless and Andrew Nicholson on their rookie scale contracts through 2015/16, tweets Josh Robbins of the Orlando Sentinel. The moves have been widely expected, as Robbins suggests. Oladipo’s nearly $5.2MM salary for that season is the most expensive of the bunch. Harkless will make nearly $2.9MM, Nicholson almost $2.4MM, and Fournier close to $2.3MM, as our Rookie Scale Team Option Tracker shows.
Oladipo, the No. 2 overall pick in 2013, earned an All-Rookie First Team selection last season even as the Magic experimented with having the shooting guard play point guard. Fournier spent the past two seasons with the Nuggets and saw his minutes jump to 19.8 per game last season before Denver shipped him to Orlando in the Arron Afflalo trade. Harkless also came to Orlando via trade as part of the package the team sent out for Dwight Howard, though the production of the small forward took a step back last year. Nicholson also saw a dip in his scoring output as an NBA sophomore in 2013/14, though he, like Harkless, was a rotation mainstay.
Picking up the options on all four will give Orlando nearly $12.755MM on top of the meager $14.87MM in commitments the team already had on the books for 2015/16. That leaves plenty of room for extensions with Nikola Vucevic and Tobias Harris, deals that the team is working toward, though the preponderance of rookie scale contracts on the Magic’s ledger will force GM Rob Hennigan to be cautious as he commits long-term money.
Knicks To Waive Travis Outlaw, Keep Wear?
The Knicks will waive forward Travis Outlaw, according to Adam Zagoria of SNY.tv. The move will bring the Knicks‘ preseason roster to 15 players and is likely an indication that Travis Wear has made the team, notes Zagoria. The Knicks would be on the hook for Outlaw’s $3MM contract, which is the last year of a fully guaranteed four year, $12MM deal. Wear is signed to a minimum-salary arrangement of which only $62K is guaranteed.
“Travis [Wear] ia a really good player,” Knicks coach Derek Fisher said last weekend, notes Zagoria. “He works hard every single day. He has some natural talents and some natural gifts that you can’t coach. He’s extremely athletic and he has a feel for the game of basketball. He’s helped us in the minutes that he has gotten out on the floor. We have a lot of veteran guys that are already on our roster and it might be tough for him to break through that but he has definitely proven in a short segment that he has some potential so we’re excited about it and we’ll try to make the best decision for him and the team going forward.”
The move to release Outlaw is likely an indication that Knicks believe Ware, who is shooting 45% in the preseason, is a better fit than Outlaw for the triangle offense. Outlaw has averaged 8.5 PPG while shooting 42.3% from the floor for his career.
Sixers Waive Lee, Gordon, Roberts Jr.
6:51pm: Philadelphia has officially waived all three players, the team announced via press release.
6:14pm: Although no team announcement has been made, Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders tweets that the Sixers have waived Drew Gordon, Malcolm Lee, and Ronald Roberts Jr. All three were on low-risk, four-year contracts with Philadelphia.
The Sixers will be on the hook for partial guarantees of $35K, $40K, and $50K for Roberts Jr., Gordon and Lee, respectively. Coach Brett Brown has mentioned the D-League as a possibility for Roberts Jr., who broke off an overseas deal to join the Sixers in camp. The team is allowed to retain the D-League rights for up to four players cut before the season.
The cuts bring the Sixers roster down to 17, two above the maximum they can carry into the regular season. The team has plenty of flexibility as it approaches the deadline to trim the roster, with seven remaining contracts that aren’t guaranteed, as well as plenty of cap room to eat guaranteed salary if they choose to do so.