Nuggets Sign Pops Mensah-Bonsu For Camp
3:24pm: The team has made the deal official, including Mensah-Bonsu’s name on an updated version of the camp roster.
TUESDAY, 1:04pm: Mensah-Bonsu practiced with the team today, observes Chris Dempsey of The Denver Post, confirming that the veteran will indeed be with the team (Twitter link). The Nuggets have yet to publicly acknowledge any signing, however, and they haven’t made any announcement regarding their reported deals with Alonzo Gee and Joe Alexander, either.
MONDAY, 4:51pm: The deal is non-guaranteed, a source tells Pick (Twitter link).
4:10pm: Four-year NBA veteran Pops Mensah-Bonsu has turned down a pair of lucrative offers from European clubs to instead agree to join the Nuggets for training camp, tweets David Pick of Eurobasket.com. The Nuggets have the capacity to give the 31-year-old more than the minimum, but it seems unlikely they would do so for the 6’9″ power forward who last appeared in an NBA regular season game during the 2010/11 season. It’s unclear whether there’s any guaranteed money involved.
Mensah-Bonsu has made stops in Turkey, Italy and Spain since his departure from the NBA, averaging 8.7 points and 6.3 rebounds in 20.1 minutes per game last season for Turkey’s Galatasaray. Still, it’ll be the second straight autumn in which the former George Washington University standout will join an NBA team for camp, since he did so with the Wizards last year.
Nuggets GM Tim Connelly is making a habit of bringing players long absent from the NBA to Denver’s camp, having done so with Joe Alexander and Marcus Williams already this year. The Nuggets have 13 fully guaranteed deals and two that contain partial guaranees, so there’s no clear path for Mensah-Bonsu or the other two NBA vets to make it to opening night.
Nuggets Sign Alonzo Gee
3:23pm: The team has made the deal official, including Gee’s name on an updated version of the camp roster.
2:58pm: Gee didn’t take part in the team’s first practice today, but he took his physical and is still on track to join the team, tweets Chris Dempsey of The Denver Post. Gee’s name wasn’t on the camp roster the Nuggets released today, but it seems that’s a matter of timing and doesn’t signal that the deal is off.
7:31am: The Nuggets and Alonzo Gee have struck agreement on a deal, reports Shams Charania of RealGM (Twitter link). Denver had been actively pursuing the free agent small forward, as Charania wrote over the weekend. The team has the capacity to exceed the minimum, but it’s unlikely they’ve done so in this case. Still, it seems a distinct possibility that there’s at least a partial guarantee involved for the five-year veteran.
Gee cleared waivers Saturday after the Kings cut him loose last week, not long after acquiring him from the Rockets in the Jason Terry trade. It was the third trade in which Cleveland’s former starting small forward found himself this summer, as teams passed around his contract, which had been worth a non-guaranteed $3MM for this season. Still, the 27-year-old Happy Walters client drew interest from the Nuggets as soon as he became available, proving he still has some value in spite of a down year this past season.
The move will bring the Nuggets to the preseason roster limit of 20 players. Denver has guaranteed deals with 13 of them and partial guarantees out to three more, so just how much guaranteed money Gee gets will probably dictate the likelihood that he’ll make the opening-night roster.
Deal Off Between Nuggets, Joe Alexander
SEPTEMBER 30TH: Alexander tore his hip flexor and failed his physical with the Nuggets, so he won’t be in Denver’s camp, as he said in an appearance on Sportsline with Tony Caridi on MetroNews radio in West Virginia (audio link at 29:30 mark). His name didn’t appear on the preseason roster the Nuggets released today, so it appears the contract was voided (hat tip to Justin Harrison).
SEPTEMBER 24TH: It’s a non-guaranteed pact, Charania confirms (Twitter link).
SEPTEMBER 23RD: The Nuggets have signed Joe Alexander to a training camp deal, according to the RealGM transaction log. The news was first tweeted by Shams Charania of RealGM. The deal will give the forward an opportunity to compete for a regular season roster spot.
The Nuggets have 13 guaranteed contracts on the books for 2014/15, and Alexander’s deal will be the fourth non-guaranteed contract for the team heading into training camp. Denver must roster between 13 and 15 players during the season, so Alexander has a reasonable chance at making the team to backup the wing behind Danilo Gallinari and Wilson Chandler.
Alexander was a lottery pick for the Bucks in the 2008 draft, but he hasn’t been in the league since the 2009/10 season, save for training camp appearances with New Orleans in 2010 and Golden State last fall, and he’s otherwise spent recent years playing overseas and in the D-League. Nonetheless, he had received interest from multiple NBA teams this summer. Alexander averaged 4.7 PPG in his rookie season with Milwaukee, but saw his minutes cut to just 3.6 per contest in his sophomore campaign with the Bulls.
Rockets Re-Sign Francisco Garcia
SEPTEMBER 30TH: The team inked Garcia to a new contract Monday, according to Pincus (Twitter link). Presumably, it’s guaranteed for the minimum salary and covers one season, just like the original pact.
SEPTEMBER 11TH: It appears as though Garcia’s contract with the Rockets has become invalid, likely because he failed to take his physical in time, reports Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders (Twitter links). The matter is likely clerical in nature and Garcia will probably ink a new version of the contract and take his physical soon, Pincus says in a pair of tweets. The collective bargaining agreement stipulates that a player must report for his physical no later than the third day following the time at which the contract becomes official. That would have been August 27th, three days before the start of the FIBA World Cup in Spain, where Garcia played for the Dominican Republic team. Rockets GM Daryl Morey referred today to signings that had been delayed by the World Cup as the last items on his offseason agenda, as Mark Berman of Fox 26 Houston notes on Twitter.
AUGUST 22ND, 11:28am: The deal is official, the team announced via press release.
AUGUST 21ST, 6:52pm: The Rockets will re-sign veteran guard Francisco Garcia to a one-year deal, reports Mark Berman of Fox 26 Houston (via Twitter). Berman confirmed the report with Aaron Goodwin, Garcia’s agent, after Houston GM Daryl Morey welcomed back the Louisville product to his roster on Twitter. The deal is for the veteran’s minimum of $1.32MM, reports Jonathan Feigen of the Houston Chronicle, which is equivalent to the minimum salary option Garcia turned down from the team in May.
“He liked the opportunity,” Goodwin told Berman. “He felt he could continue to help the team in a number of ways outside of just being a good guard on the team. He thought he’d have an opportunity to play there a little bit more with Chandler Parsons being gone.” (Twitter links here)
We also heard from Goodwin last week, when he told Chris Haynes of CSNNW.com that Garcia had not yet re-signed with Houston. Though he turned down his option with the Rockets, there were reports that the sides maintained mutual interest. The Jazz, Pelicans and Nets all reportedly had interest in Garcia, who preferred to play for a title contender.
Garcia averaged 19.7 minutes over the course of 55 games in his second season with the Rockets in 2013/14. He shot a paltry 40.1 percent from the field — he’s a career 43 percent shooter — but his 35.8 percent mark from three was near his career average. While Trevor Ariza figures to be the man primarily responsible for replacing Parsons, Garcia has carved out a nice long-range role over the past two seasons in Houston.
Clippers Sign Joe Ingles
SEPTEMBER 30TH: The deal is official, the team announced, listing Ingles on the preseason roster.
SEPTEMBER 25TH, 10:47pm: The signing has taken place, according to the RealGM transactions log.
2:32pm: Dan Woike of the Orange County Register hears the deal is non-guaranteed, contradicting the earlier report (Twitter link). Ben Bolch of the Los Angeles Times also has it as a non-guaranteed deal, and he confirms it’s for the minimum (on Twitter).
12:16pm: Ingles’ representatives at Priority Sports confirmed the deal, via Twitter.
11:35am: The deal is guaranteed, Pick tweets.
SEPTEMBER 16TH, 8:45pm: The Clippers and Australian swingman Joe Ingles have agreed to a one-year deal, reports Marc Stein of ESPN.com. It’s almost certainly for the minimum, since that’s all the Clippers can hand out. It’s unclear whether the pact is guaranteed, as Stein wrote earlier this month that Ingles would likely land a guaranteed deal with an NBA team, while Ingles told Boty Nagy of The Courier Mail, a Queensland-based newspaper in Australia, that he wouldn’t be receiving any guaranteed money.
Stein referred to Ingles a couple of weeks ago as a “virtual lock” to sign in the NBA, with seven or eight teams in pursuit as he put on a strong showing in the FIBA World Cup. The Grizzlies and Sixers were among those clubs, though Stein said Ingles was unlikely to end up in Philadelphia, even given his ties to former Australian national team coach and current Sixers bench boss Brett Brown. The guaranteed salaries on the books for Memphis put them only about $1.2MM shy of the luxury tax line, and Stein cites that as reason why the Grizzlies didn’t make as hard a push for Ingles this season as they did last year, when he rejected a two-year offer from the team. Still, the minimum salary that Ingles is in line to receive from the Clippers wouldn’t have put the Grizzlies into the tax, and Marc Gasol, who can become a free agent next summer, supported the idea of bringing his former Spanish-league teammate to Memphis. The Hawks, Jazz, Pacers and Bucks are the other NBA clubs to have been linked to Ingles over the past two offseasons.
The 6’8″ Ingles, who turns 27 next month, spent last season playing for new Cavs coach David Blatt with Maccabi Tel Aviv in Israel, averaging 6.0 points, 2.9 rebounds and 2.7 assists in 21.2 minutes per game as a part-time starter. His numbers were better in the World Cup, as he put up 11.4 PPG, 3.2 RPG and 3.4 APG in nearly 31.0 MPG. Ingles had a tough time generating interest on the European professional circuit before his World Cup performance, according to David Pick of Eurobasket.com, yet he turned down private workout invitations from NBA teams during summer league in July, Pick tweets.
The Clippers have been carrying 14 fully guaranteed pacts plus a deal with DeAndre Liggins that’s presumably no more than partially guaranteed. The team has kept fewer than 15 players on the opening-night roster in recent years, but perhaps new owner Steve Ballmer is willing to change that.
Clippers Sign Jared Cunningham
SEPTEMBER 30TH: The deal is official, the team announced, listing Cunningham on the preseason roster.
SEPTEMBER 22ND: Cunningham’s deal is in fact non-guaranteed, as Eric Pincus of the Los Angeles Times reveals in his updated Basketball Insiders salary page for the Clippers.
SEPTEMBER 20TH: The Clippers have signed Jared Cunningham, according to the RealGM transactions log. No official announcement from the team has been made yet, and details of the contract are not yet known. It is most likely a non-guaranteed training camp deal for the 22-year-old shooting guard out of Oregon State. This signing ups the Clippers’ preseason roster count to 18, with 15 of those deals being fully guaranteed.
Cunningham has appeared in a total of 21 games over two seasons in the league, and his most recent action came with the Kings last season when he parlayed a 10-day contract into a deal that covered the remainder of the 2013/14 season. His career numbers are 2.0 PPG, 0.4 RPG, and 0.4 APG. His career slash line is .343/.300/.833.
Los Angeles already has J.J. Redick, C.J. Wilcox, and Jamal Crawford on the roster at the shooting guard position, which makes it a real longshot for Cunningham to remain on the roster for opening night.
Nuggets Sign Jerrelle Benimon
SEPTEMBER 30TH: The signing is official, the Nuggets announce as they release their training camp roster.
AUGUST 19TH: The team has yet to announce the transaction, but Benimon has indeed signed a contract with Denver, according to the RealGM transactions log. The power forward is one of three players with partially guaranteed contracts on the Nuggets, as our roster counts show.
AUGUST 14TH: Undrafted rookie Jerrelle Benimon has agreed on a partially guaranteed two-year deal with the Nuggets, league sources tell Shams Charania of RealGM (on Twitter). Benimon worked out for the Nuggets in mid-June and even though he went undrafted, he clearly made a strong impression with them.
The former Towson standout helped engineer the greatest single-season turnaround in Division-I history. The Tigers went from a 1–31 record in 2011/12 to an 18–13 mark in the following year. In that year, the 6’8″ forward averaged 17.1 PPG and 11.2 RPG off of 53% shooting from the floor. For an encore, Benimon put up 18.7 PPG and 11.2 RPG in his senior season.
Nuggets Sign Marcus Williams
SEPTEMBER 30TH: The signing is official, the Nuggets announce as they release their training camp roster.
SEPTEMBER 23RD: The deal has been signed according to the RealGM transaction log, although no announcement from the team has been made yet.
SEPTEMBER 22ND, 10:52am: The contract will cover one season, Charania notes via Twitter.
10:30am: The Nuggets and former University of Arizona forward Marcus Williams have agreed to a deal, reports Shams Charania of RealGM (Twitter link). Williams is not to be confused with the former University of Connecticut point guard by the same name. It’s likely a minimum-salary deal for camp, though the Nuggets have most of their $5.305MM mid-level exception to give him more. It’s not clear whether the deal includes any guaranteed salary.
Williams played 11 NBA regular season games in two seasons with the Clippers and Spurs after San Antonio made him the 33rd overall pick in 2007, but he’s been out of the league since the Spurs waived him in the 2009 preseason. He’s spent time with San Antonio’s D-League affiliate since then, and he’s also been a mainstay for China’s Shanxi Zhongyu. He’s averaged 30.7 points over the last three seasons with the Chinese club, a mark that’s put him near the top of the scoring leaders in the Chinese Basketball Association, a circuit dotted with NBA veterans.
Denver appears to offer Williams, who’ll turn 28 in November, a decent chance to make it to opening night, since the Nuggets had been carrying only 13 fully guaranteed deals. Jerrelle Benimon, Erick Green and Quincy Miller all have partially guaranteed minimum salaries.
Hawks Sign Jarell Eddie For Camp
SEPTEMBER 29TH: The deal is official, the team announced via press release.
SEPTEMBER 19TH: The Hawks and Jarell Eddie have agreed to a training camp deal, Shams Charania of RealGM reports (Twitter link). The contract is likely non-guaranteed according to Charania. This signing brings Atlanta’s preseason roster count to 16, with 14 of those players being signed to fully-guaranteed contracts. The other player, Mike Muscala, has his contract partially guaranteed for $408,241, which makes Eddie a longshot to make the opening night roster.
The 6’6″ forward went undrafted this year out of Virginia Tech after averaging 13.1 PPG, 4.2 RPG, and 1.1 APG his Senior year. His slash line was .358/.376/.776.
Eddie will compete John Jenkins, Kyle Korver, and DeMarre Carroll for minutes at small forward, with Korver the likely starter.
Dexter Pittman Signs With Hawks
SEPTEMBER 29TH: The deal is official, the team announced via press release.
SEPTEMBER 24TH: Free agent Dexter Pittman has agreed to a deal with the Hawks, Shams Charania of RealGM reports (Twitter link). Terms of the deal weren’t revealed, but it’s likely a minimum salary camp deal with a nominal guarantee at best. This signing gives Atlanta a total of 17 players on their preseason roster, with 14 of those being fully-guaranteed and one other player who has a partial guarantee.
The 6’11” 26-year-old out of Texas appeared in two games for the Hawks last season while on a 10-day contract that was cut short when Pittman was released in order to make room on the roster for Mike Muscala. In 50 career games, including six starts, Pittman has averaged 2.3 PPG and 1.8 RPG. His career field goal percentage is 45%.
Pittman will compete with Muscala and Pero Antic for a spot backing up Al Horford at center, though he’s unlikely to stick on the roster until opening night without an especially strong training camp. Pittman had also worked out for the Lakers back in August, but it’s unlikely that L.A. made any contract offer.