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Lamar Patterson Signs With Turkish Team

August 5th, 2014 at 9:37am CST by Chuck Myron

The 48th overall pick in this year’s draft is headed overseas, as Lamar Patterson has signed with Tofas Bursa of Turkey, the team announced (translation via Sportando’s Emiliano Carchia). The Hawks acquired the rights to Patterson on draft night, sending their 2015 second-round pick to the Bucks in exchange. The terms aren’t immediately clear, and whether the deal includes any sort of NBA escape clause is unknown.

“Lamar is in a good position to continue his development while playing meaningful minutes for a strong professional program next season,” Hawks GM Danny Ferry said in a statement from the team. “We have a great respect for the international game and will be closely monitoring Lamar’s progress with Tofas.”

The 22-year-old shooting guard acknowledged the chance that he would head overseas but indicated a preference for signing with the Hawks when he spoke last month with Chris Vivlamore of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Patterson expressed excitement about the deal with Tofas Bursa while maintaining that his goal is to eventually play for Atlanta in his comments as part of the statement from the Hawks. It appears that the Hawks are content to stash both of their 2014 second-rounders overseas, since Edy Tavares, whom Atlanta drafted 43rd overall, is reportedly likely to stay with his team in Spain. Still, the Hawks brought 2013 second-round pick Mike Muscala aboard in the middle of last season, so there’s precedent for Atlanta to sign Patterson or Tavares before next summer.

Patterson averaged just 6.0 points in 25.3 minutes per game across six summer league appearances in July for Atlanta, but he was an all-around threat as a senior for the University of Pittsburgh this year. He notched 17.1 PPG in 32.6 MPG while also putting up 4.9 rebounds and 4.3 assists per contest with 38.8% three-point shooting in his final campaign for the Panthers.

James Anderson Signs To Play In Lithuania

August 5th, 2014 at 9:10am CST by Chuck Myron

Free agent swingman James Anderson has officially signed a one-year contract with Zalgiris Kaunas of Lithuania, the Euroleague announced. The move is somewhat surprising, since the former 20th overall pick was a significant part of the Sixers roster last season, having started 62 games. Tolis Kotzias of the Greek news outlet SportDay originally reported the news (Twitter link).

The 20th overall pick from 2010 departs the NBA after his strongest season in the league. He averaged 10.1 points and 3.8 rebounds in 28.9 minutes per game for Philadelphia, though his 10.9 PER demonstrates a lack of efficiency. Anderson had difficulty establishing a toehold in the league, as the Spurs declined the third-year team option on his rookie scale contract and his next two deals were minimum-salary arrangements. The Sixers acquired him when they claimed him off waivers from the Rockets last summer, but Philadelphia waived him in June before his minimum salary for the coming season would have become fully guaranteed.

The deal to play in Lithuania is the first overseas venture for the ASM Sports client. It’s unclear whether the contract will allow Anderson, 25, an avenue to return to the NBA at any point this season.

Vasilije Micic To Play In Germany

August 4th, 2014 at 8:06am CST by Chuck Myron

AUGUST 4TH: The deal is official, as Bayern Munich announced (translation via Sportando’s Emiliano Carchia). It’s a three-year contract with an option for the final season, though it’s not entirely clear whether that’s a team option or a player option. The team also apparently makes no mention of an NBA buyout that would allow Micic to join the Sixers next summer.

JULY 21ST: Micic told Aco Lazarević of MVP.rs that the deal isn’t quite done yet, though he confirms he’s in the process of finalizing it (translations via Sportando’s Emiliano Carchia and Orazio Cauchi of Sportando, on Twitter).

JULY 15TH: Sixers second-round draft pick Vasilije Micic has an agreement to play for Bayern Munich in Germany, reports David Pick of Eurobasket.com (Twitter link). The Serbian point guard was the 52nd selection in this year’s draft.

Remaining overseas was the likely outcome for the 20-year-old, who’s played the past few seasons with KK Mega Vizura in his native Serbia. Philadelphia will have no shortage of rookies for the coming season, even without No. 10 overall pick Dario Saric, who’ll also stay in Europe.

Metta World Peace, Chinese Team Agree To Deal

August 4th, 2014 at 7:55am CST by Chuck Myron

MONDAY, 7:55am: World Peace took to Twitter to confirm the deal, posting a photo of what appears to be him next to Blue Whales officials, set to put pen to paper on a contract.

FRIDAY, 10:01am: Multiple sources tell David Pick of Eurobasket.com that World Peace’s contract will only be worth $700K (Twitter link).

THURSDAY, 2:40pm: The deal is worth $1.43MM, according to Shams Charania of RealGM. It’s indeed for just one season, and World Peace will look for work in the NBA once it’s done, Charania hears (Twitter links).

11:18am: Free agent forward Metta World Peace has an agreement in principle with the Sichuan Blue Whales of the Chinese Basketball Association, the team’s GM confirms to Sina.com (hat tip to Sportando’s Enea Trapani). It’s a $1.3MM arrangement, according to Trapani. Presumably it covers one season. Ian Begley of ESPN.com wrote earlier this week that the sides had been close to a deal.

The Knicks had been thinking about giving World Peace an invitation to training camp, and the 34-year-old has expressed regret about buying out his contract with New York last season before the team hired Phil Jackson as president. The Marc Cornstein client had also been eyeing the Lakers and the Clippers, but it didn’t seem like those teams reciprocated that interest.

The deal with Sichuan will give him slightly less than the $1,448,490 he would have made on a veteran’s minimum deal with an NBA team, but his Chinese salary appears to be guaranteed. Going to China will also probably give World Peace the chance to return to the NBA for the stretch run, since China’s season ends as early as February.

World Peace put up career lows in several categories thanks to a drastic cut in minutes this past season. He averaged just 13.4 minutes per game compared to 33.7 in 2012/13, which helps to explain why he engineered the buyout.

Raptors Sign Lucas Nogueira

August 3rd, 2014 at 12:13pm CST by Cray Allred

SUNDAY: The signing is now official, the team announced via press release.

TUESDAY: The Raptors and Lucas Nogueira will buy out his contract with Estudiantes of Spain, as Javier Maestro of Encestando.es reports (translation via Emiliano Carchia of Sportando). Toronto is expected to pay most of the roughly $800K the NBA release clause requires. The maximum Toronto is allowed to pay is $600K, and Nogueira will cover the rest.

The Raptors acquired the rights to Nogueira, the No. 16 pick from the 2013 draft, in a trade with the Hawks last month. Toronto was known to be planning on bringing the Brazilian big man to the NBA this season. He will still be bound by the rookie scale, so his salary will likely start at over $1.75MM.

Nogueira, a center, is expected to join forward Bruno Caboclo as Brazilian additions to the Raptors this season, but Nogueira likely has a clearer path to playing time than Caboclo, the 20th overall selection from this year’s draft. The 7’0″ Nogueira will join a roster featuring only a single true center in Jonas Valanciunas, and Toronto is also open to dealing away forward/center combo Chuck Hayes.

Raptors Sign Will Cherry

August 3rd, 2014 at 12:09pm CST by Eddie Scarito

SUNDAY: The signing is official, the team has announced via press release. The exact terms were not disclosed.

WEDNESDAY: The Raptors have agreed in principle to sign Will Cherry to a two-year minimum deal, reports Marc J. Spears of Yahoo! Sports (Twitter link). It had been previously reported that both Toronto and the Cavaliers were interested in the guard’s services. Cherry went undrafted out of Montana in 2013, and he wasn’t in an NBA training camp last fall.

The 6’1″ 23-year-old averaged 12.8 PPG and 4.0 RPG while logging 25.3 minutes per contest in five games for the Cavs Summer League team in Las Vegas. Cherry also played for the Cavs’ D-League affiliate last season, when he provided 11.6 PPG, 3.7 RPG, and 4.5 APG in 30.4 MPG.

The Raptors currently have 13 guaranteed contracts on their roster and Cherry will provide depth in the backcourt, primarily behind Kyle Lowry and Greivis Vasquez at the point guard position.

Jazz To Keep Ian Clark

August 1st, 2014 at 8:36pm CST by Alex Lee

The Jazz will guarantee the 2014/15 contract of second year shooting guard Ian Clark, reports Jody Genessy of the Deseret News. GM Dennis Lindsey indicated earlier today that the team would address the contract situation of the Belmont product, who signed a two-year deal with the Jazz last July that wasn’t guaranteed for the upcoming season. Aaron Falk of the Salt Lake Tribune confirms Genessy’s report (via Twitter). Clark’s salary was set to become fully guaranteed for $816,482 if he wasn’t waived by the end of today, as shown in our schedule of contract guarantee dates.

The Bill Duffy client played in 23 games for the Jazz in his rookie season, averaging three points in 7.5 minutes per game. Clark shuttled between Utah and the D-League for much of the year, where he averaged 12.4 points and 5.6 assists in eight games for the Bakersfield Jam. While he’s only 23, Clark’s minutes figure to remain limited with the Jazz due to a crowded backcourt that already includes Dante Exum, Trey Burke, Gordon Hayward and Alec Burks.

As Genessy reminds us, the Jazz now have 13 players on guaranteed deals entering this season and speculates that they could add one more. In addition to adding Exum and Rodney Hood in the draft, Utah has traded for Steve Novak and signed Trevor Booker this summer. Their most significant move, of course, was retaining highly sought after Hayward, who was a restricted free agent.

Knicks Sign Cleanthony Early

August 1st, 2014 at 1:53pm CST by Chuck Myron

The Knicks have signed Cleanthony Early, this year’s 34th overall pick, the team announced (on Twitter). It’ll have to be a minimum-salary arrangement, since the Knicks are well over the cap and have no exceptions other than the minimum-salary exception to use. That exception limits the contract to no more than two years, though it’s not immediately clear whether Early is getting two years or just one.

The small forward from Wichita State is one of three second-round picks from last month whose rights belong to the Knicks, though it’s unclear whether the team intends to sign 51st overall selection Thanasis Antetokounmpo or No. 57 pick Louis Labeyrie this year. Early is the 15th player on the Knicks roster, one that had included only a dozen guaranteed contracts.

Early went just about where he had been expected to go on draft night, as Chad Ford of ESPN.com ranked him as the 32nd best prospect while Jonathan Givony of DraftExpress rated him 38th. The final version of Alex Lee’s Hoops Rumors Mock Draft had Early slipping into the first round at No. 27. Concerns about the 23-year-old’s age and worries about whether he fits into the position of small forward in the NBA surrounded him, as Lee wrote when he examined Early’s prospect profile, but he’s also a polished player capable who shouldn’t require much development.

Spurs Sign Tony Parker To Extension

August 1st, 2014 at 1:49pm CST by Chuck Myron

1:49pm: Wojnarowski, in his full story, pegs the value of the three-year extension at nearly $45MM, so it appears as though Parker is getting the max of $43,335,938.

1:21pm: The extension covers three seasons, reports Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports (Twitter link). That takes it through 2017/18.

12:55pm: The Spurs have signed Tony Parker to a multiyear extension, the team announced via press release. It’s the third extension that Parker has signed with San Antonio over the course of his career. He’s set to make $12.5MM this year in the final season under the terms of his most recent extension. It’s not immediately clear just how long or lucrative Parker’s latest deal is.

There’d been no public talk that the extension had been in the works, as is typical with the San Antonio organization. The news of Gregg Popovich‘s extension earlier this month was similarly sudden. Still, the notion that Parker intends to stick around the Spurs for a while longer is certainly no shock, and the same was the case with Popovich. Parker has been confident that he would remain in San Antonio and told close associates that he had no desire to relocate his family, tweets Jabari Young of the San Antonio Express-News.

Parker’s salary for this season had been only partially guaranteed for $3.5MM, according to Mark Deeks of ShamSports, but as expected the Spurs kept him past June 30th, when the salary became fully guaranteed. The maximum value of an extension that the Creative Artists Agency client could have signed would be $43,335,938 over three years, as Deeks points out via Twitter. That’s much less than Parker could have received if he signed a new contract as a free agent next summer. Just how much a new contract could have given him won’t be known until the NBA sets its maximum salaries next summer, but based on this year’s max for a player of Parker’s experience, he likely would have been eligible for five years and much more than $100MM.

That helps explain why most veterans don’t sign extensions, but Parker and his Spurs teammates have a long history of hometown discounts. Parker lowered his annual pay with his last extension instead of going for the significant raises for which he was eligible.

The 32-year-old point guard is the youngest of a star trio also composed of Tim Duncan and Manu Ginobili, but even Parker is beginning to advance out of his prime years. He, like the other Spurs mainstays, remains a strong producer, even though his 29.4 minutes per game this season were his fewest since he was a rookie. He averaged 16.7 points and 5.7 assists this past year, another All-Star season that culminated in San Antonio’s fifth championship in franchise history and fourth with Parker in tow.

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.

Heat Sign Shawne Williams

August 1st, 2014 at 12:15pm CST by Chuck Myron

The Heat have signed forward Shawne Williams, the team announced. Miami is limited to shelling out only the minimum salary, but it’s not clear how long the deal is for or whether the salary for the former 17th overall pick is guaranteed.

Williams spent 36 games with the Lakers last season, most of them coming while he was on a non-guaranteed deal at the start the season. The team cut him loose just before the deal was to become fully guaranteed and re-signed him to a 10-day contract after he spent time in the D-League. He was out of the NBA during the 2012/13 season, and he’s more than three years removed from his most productive campaign, when he averaged 7.1 points in 20.7 minutes per game and shot 40.1% from behind the three-point arc for the 2010/11 Knicks. The career 33.3% three-point shooter hasn’t been able to duplicate that sort of marksmanship since.

The Heat had been carrying only 10 guaranteed contracts and 12 players total, so the signing helps them bolster their roster, and Williams appears to have a strong chance to make it to opening-night. The 28-year-old is a client of Relativity Sports agent Happy Walters, as our Agency Database shows.