- The Jazz have set themselves up for a big season, adding a number of veterans to their solid young core. But the talent the team has accumulated will become markedly more expensive over the next few season if the team wishes to keep the roster together, Tony Jone of The Salt Lake Tribune writes. “Post Karl Malone and John Stockton, the Jazz have had some decent years, most notably with Deron Williams and Paul Millsap,” said Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders. “They’ve done a great job in building this current team, but now this is a key moment. Gordon Hayward can leave, Rudy Gobert is up for an extension. The front office has to make decisions now for the long term. They need to show who they are, and the players need to show they are a core worth building around.”
As expected, the Jazz have waived newly-acquired point guard Kendall Marshall, the team announced today in a press release. Utah’s tweets announcing the trade for Marshall and the point guard’s release came 25 minutes apart, so the former 13th overall pick was officially a member of the Jazz for less than a half-hour.
Marshall’s $2MM+ salary for 2016/17 would have become guaranteed within the next few days if he had remained on an NBA roster. By acquiring him in a deal for Tibor Pleiss, who has a guaranteed $3MM salary, Utah created $3MM in cap room and avoided paying any salary, though the team did send the Sixers some cash in the deal.
Marshall, who turned 25 last Friday, has played for the Suns, Lakers, Bucks, and Sixers since entering the NBA as a lottery pick in 2012, and will now be seeking a new home for the 2016/17 campaign. This is the third time he has been traded and subsequently waived — it also happened in 2013 and 2015.
Despite the fact that Marshall has failed to stick with an NBA team for more than a single season since his debut, several league executives believe there’s still a spot in the league for the former lottery pick as a backup point guard, writes Adrian Wojnarowski of The Vertical.
Marshall’s best season as a pro came in 2013/14, when he averaged 29 minutes per game in 54 contests for the Lakers. The former UNC standout averaged a career-high 8.0 PPG and 8.8 APG that year, while shooting 39.9% on three-point attempts. Marshall has taken a step back since then, though he was off to a solid start as a backup for the Bucks in 2014/15 before he suffered a season-ending ACL injury.
The Jazz and Sixers completed a trade today that sent Kendall Marshall to Utah and Tibor Pleiss to Philadelphia, with both teams officially confirming that the deal is done. Reports have indicated that Utah will waive Marshall soon, avoiding having his contract become guaranteed. And even though Pleiss has a fully guaranteed $3MM salary, it sounds like he may ultimately be cut as well.
Adrian Wojnarowski of The Vertical reports (via Twitter) that the Sixers are still evaluating whether Pleiss will be a part of the team’s roster this season or whether he’ll be waived. According to Jessica Camerato of CSNPhilly.com (via Twitter), Philadelphia is likely to waive the German big man.
Pleiss, a former second-round pick who signed with the Jazz last summer, barely saw any action in his first NBA season, playing just 82 total minutes for Utah. The German big man was assigned to the D-League for a good chunk of the season, and he played well there, averaging 12.3 PPG and 10.4 RPG in 28 contests.
Because Pleiss’ salary is already fully guaranteed, there’s no rush for the Sixers to make a move right away. The team could bring the 26-year-old to training camp and make a decision on him shortly before the start of other regular season. However, Philadelphia reportedly agreed to a deal with Cat Barber last month and has yet to make that deal official because the 20-man offseason roster has been full — perhaps Pleiss will be waived to make room for Barber.
Here are a couple more notes on today’s Jazz/Sixers trade, and the fallout:
- According to Derek Bodner of PhillyMag.com, the Sixers will receive the most favorable and the least favorable of Utah’s four 2017 second-round selections. The Jazz currently hold their own second-rounder, along with the Knicks’, Pistons’, and Warriors’ picks. All four teams have playoff (or championship) aspirations, so there’s a chance neither of the picks Philadelphia gets will be that high.
- Despite the fact that Marshall has failed to stick with an NBA team for more than a single season since entering the league in 2012, several league executives believe there’s still a spot in the league for the former lottery pick as a backup point guard, writes Adrian Wojnarowski of The Vertical.
11:07am: The deal is official, the Jazz announced in a press release.
9:38am: The Jazz and Sixers have agreed to a trade that will send point guard Kendall Marshall to Utah, reports Adrian Wojnarowski of The Vertical (via Twitter). According to Wojnarowski, the Jazz will send Tibor Pleiss, two second-round picks, and cash to Philadelphia in exchange for Marshall. Utah will subsequently waive Marshall, whose deal is not guaranteed, tweets Wojnarowski.
It’s essentially a cost-cutting move for the Jazz, who had been on track to pay Pleiss a guaranteed $3MM salary in 2016/17. Utah ditches that contract and takes on Marshall’s deal, which is fully non-guaranteed for now. The point guard’s $2,048,257 salary is set to become guaranteed soon, but the Jazz will waive him before that happens.
The move seems somewhat unusual on the surface for Utah, whose cap commitments for 2016/17 only totaled about $85MM prior to the trade. It’s possible though that the club is opening up a little extra cap room in order to renegotiate and extend Derrick Favors‘ contract. The Jazz will now have more than enough cap room to give Favors a pay raise to the max for 2016/17, while locking him up for additional seasons. Dana Gauruder of Hoops Rumors recently examined Favors’ case for an extension.
Whether or not the Jazz extend Favors this year, the team created more cap flexibility for 2017/18, when Pleiss would have had a modest $500K guarantee on his salary. With Favors and Rudy Gobert both candidates for max extensions, and Utah potentially wanting to lock up George Hill beyond this season as well, every little bit of cap room could help.
The Jazz also created an opening on their 15-man roster for the coming season, which is good news for the players competing for a spot. Utah selected three players – Joel Bolomboy, Marcus Paige, and Tyrone Wallace – in the second round of the 2016 draft, and the odds are good that at least one or two of those players make the regular-season roster.
As for the Sixers, they’re still well below the salary floor, and even if they don’t plan to use Pleiss at all, they’ll pick up a pair of future second-round picks and some cash for their trouble. The conditions on those second-rounders isn’t known, but Philadelphia didn’t have much to lose by making the deal.
Pleiss, a former second-round pick who signed with the Jazz last summer, barely saw any action in his first NBA season, playing just 82 total minutes for Utah. The German big man was assigned to the D-League for a good chunk of the season, and he played well there, averaging 12.3 PPG and 10.4 RPG in 28 contests.
Marshall, meanwhile, continues to jump from team to team, having failed to develop into a reliable NBA point guard since being selected 13th overall in 2012. The 25-year-old has played for the Suns, Lakers, Bucks, and Sixers since entering the league, and will now be seeking a new home for the 2016/17 campaign. This will be the third time he has been traded and subsequently waived — it also happened in 2013 and 2015.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
The increased usage of smaller lineups, along with a greater emphasis on 3-point shooting, theoretically reduces the need for a quality center. Considering the contracts being handed out, that’s not the case.
Hassan Whiteside, despite a somewhat limited track record, was a hot commodity on the free agent market this summer. He received a max four-year extension to stick with the Heat. Joakim Noah, who lost his starting job with the Bulls and was injured the second half of last season, got a truckload of money to sign with the Knicks.
Andre Drummond, even with his free throw shooting issues, received a max five-year extension from the Pistons.
Unheralded centers such as Timofey Mozgov, Ian Mahinmi and Bismack Biyombo landed giant contracts while jumping teams.
Given those developments, Rudy Gobert shouldn’t have much trouble receiving a max contract offer — or something close to it — from the Jazz. The biggest question mark is whether Utah will decide to lock up its defensive stalwart prior to the regular season or take some risk by waiting until next summer, when Gobert can become a restricted free agent.
The two parties agreed to delay the process until the Rio Olympics wrapped up. Gobert was busy playing for Team France, then decided to stay overseas for a couple of weeks before returning to Utah late this month or in early September to get ready for the NBA season.
From a salary cap standpoint, the Jazz certainly have the freedom to hammer out an agreement by the end of training camp, the deadline for rookie scale contract extensions. One or both parties might also want to get it done before the possibility that NBA Players’ Association or the league opts out of the current Collective Bargaining Agreement. That could occur in mid-December and go into effect after the season.
Utah has just $34.3MM in guaranteed salary commitments for 2017/18, though its inclusive totals (non-guaranteed salaries, early termination options, etc.) is closer to $78.3MM. The projected salary cap for that season is $102MM.
So why would the Jazz wait to extend Gobert entering his prime years at 24 years old? The 7’1” Gobert has a modest $5.3MM cap hold. That gives the Jazz plenty of flexibility in terms of re-signing their free agents, pursuing top free agents and making trades next offseason if they hold off on Gobert’s extension.
Utah also has some major decisions regarding two of its other top players. Power forward Derrick Favors is eligible for a veteran’s extension right now. Small forward Gordon Hayward can opt out of the final year of his contract and become an unrestricted free agent next summer. Hayward will almost certainly command a max salary if Utah tries to retain him.
Point guard George Hill, arguably the Jazz’s biggest addition this offseason, is entering his walk year. Hill’s current $8MM salary is well under market value for a starter and if the Jazz want to make him a competitive offer next summer, they’ll probably have to give him a huge raise.
Gobert has not been a major part of the Jazz’s offense, even as his playing time has grown the past two seasons. He’s never averaged more than six shot attempts in his three NBA seasons.
As a part-time starter in 2014/15, Gobert averaged 8.4 points, 9.5 rebounds and 2.3 blocks. Those numbers improved slightly to 9.1/11.0/2.2 as a starter last season, though he was limited to 61 games because of injuries.
Free throw shooting is also a problem for Gobert — he’s made 58.5% of his foul shots during his short NBA career.
His value on the defensive end overshadows his offensive deficiencies. According to Basketball-Reference.com’s Defensive Box Rating, he was the league’s second-best defender (4.8) last season behind the Spurs’ recently-retired Tim Duncan (5.0). His Defensive Box Rating the previous season was even higher at 5.1, behind only the Warriors’ Andrew Bogut (5.5).
Difference makers on either side of the ball are hard to find and there’s no viable option on the roster to replace Gobert. Thus, it’s reasonable to assume he’ll be maxed out, though it’s conceivable he could give the club a little discount in order to get the extension done early. Remember, if the Players’ Association or league opts out of the CBA, the rules regarding contracts could be significantly altered.
How much could Gobert receive? According to Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders, players with less than seven years of service could get a max of approximately $24MM under the projected cap of $102MM. With 7.5% raises each season, Gobert could sign a four-year extension worth approximately $107.35MM. A five-year extension could max out around $139.4MM.
That’s an awful lot of money to shell out for someone who isn’t an offensive threat or considered a franchise-type player. Having multiple players making max money severely curtails what clubs can do with their rosters, even with the recent rise in the salary cap. The Jazz might be hesitant to commit about half its cap to Hayward and Gobert, who fall short of superstar status.
Yet it’s abundantly clear that retaining Gobert will require something at or close to the max. The market for big men is as competitive as ever, whether or not teams continue to play small ball.
(Photo courtesy of John David Mercer / USA Today Sports Images)
As our list of 2016 offseason trades shows, five of the deals agreed upon on draft night this year featured one team sending cash to the other. The NBA’s Collective Bargaining Agreement allows clubs to include cash payments, but only up to a certain amount.
In the 2016/17 league year, teams are allowed to receive a total of $3.5MM in trades, and can also send out $3.5MM in trades. Those limits are separate, so a team that sends $3.5MM in a deal and then later receives $3.5MM doesn’t get a fresh, new slate — that club is capped out for the league year. In 2014/15, the limit for cash sent and received in trades was $3.4MM.
Since the league year ends on June 30, teams that hadn’t taken advantage of those cash allowances earlier in the season will often use remaining cash during the draft to move up or to snag an extra pick. Many of the cash details on those draft-day deals for 2016 were previously reported. For instance, we already knew about the following payments:
- Warriors sent $2.4MM to Bucks to acquire No. 38 overall pick (Patrick McCaw).
- Trail Blazers sent $1.2MM (and a 2019 second-round pick) to Magic to acquire No. 47 overall pick (Jake Layman).
- Cavaliers sent approximately $2.5MM to Hawks to acquire No. 54 overall pick (Kay Felder).
Based on those numbers, it appears the Warriors got a much better deal from the Bucks than the Cavaliers did from the Hawks. Of course, if the Cavs badly wanted Felder, the cost to move into the draft was hardly exorbitant — Atlanta likely asked the Cavs for the maximum amount of money they could send, since Cleveland used over $900K in a separate trade earlier in the year.
In addition to those three swaps, two other draft-night deals featured money changing hands, and Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders has the details on those payments, along with several others from the 2015/16 league year. According to Pincus, these are the details on the other two draft trades involving cash:
- Nets sent $3MM (and the No. 55 overall pick) to Jazz to acquire No. 42 overall pick (Isaiah Whitehead).
- Thunder sent $730K to Nuggets to acquire No. 56 overall pick (Daniel Hamilton).
Once again, one of these deals looks far more favorable than the other, with the Thunder paying a fraction of what the Nets did for a second-round pick. But again, the available players and interested teams essentially set the market for these cash payments.
In the case of the Nets/Jazz deal, Brooklyn clearly wanted to make sure not to miss out on Whitehead, and the team was willing to pay a relatively significant amount to secure him. The Thunder, meanwhile, offered all their available remaining cash to the Nuggets for the 56th pick, and Denver likely had no better offer and no player targeted at that spot — so the Nuggets took what they could get.
Be sure to check out Pincus’ piece at Basketball Insiders for more thorough details of how teams spent and received cash in trades during the 2015/16 league year.
We’ve already published one contract details round-up today, passing along some specifics on deals for Jason Terry (Bucks), Joel Bolomboy (Jazz), and Yi Jianlian (Lakers). However, several more details on recently-signed contracts have surfaced since then, so let’s dive in and round up the newest updates…
- According to Bobby Marks of The Vertical, Marcus Paige‘s new deal with the Jazz is a two-year, minimum-salary pact with $125K guaranteed in year one.
- Joel Bolomboy, the 52nd overall pick in this year’s draft, received a fully guaranteed first-year salary of $600K from the Jazz, and has half of his minimum second-year salary guaranteed as well, per Pincus (Twitter link). Utah’s cap flexibility allowed the team to sign the Weber State alum for more than the minimum and for three years; a $1MM+ commitment in guaranteed money suggests the club expects Bolomboy to be on its regular-season roster.
The NBA draft took place two months ago tonight, and when Brandon Ingram signed his rookie contract with the Lakers earlier today, he became the final first-rounder to lock in a plan for the 2016/17 season.
Of course, for Ingram, there was never any doubt that he’d sign an NBA contract and enter the league immediately, but that’s not the case for all of this year’s first-rounders. As our list of draft pick signings shows, three of the 30 players selected in the first round – including two Celtics – will play overseas this season.
The percentage of draftees heading (or staying) overseas is higher among second-round picks, but for those second-rounders, there are options besides entering the NBA or playing international ball — Celtics second-rounder Abdel Nader, for instance, has agreed to sign with Boston’s D-League affiliate in Maine. He’ll earn less money there than he would’ve overseas, but the Celtics will be able to keep a close eye on him and will have a hand in his development as they retain his NBA rights.
When we provided an update on 2016 draft pick signings in late July, five first-round picks and eight second-rounders were still waiting to resolve their situations. Since then, 10 of those draftees have gotten that resolution, leaving just three players whose statuses remain uncertain. They are as follows:
- Oklahoma City Thunder: Daniel Hamilton, SG (UConn)
- Sacramento Kings: Isaiah Cousins, SG (Oklahoma)
- Utah Jazz: Tyrone Wallace, PG (California)
Hamilton, Cousins, and Wallace were all bottom-five picks in the draft, having been selected 56th, 59th, and 60th, respectively. All three were also drafted by teams with their own D-League affiliates. As such, it wouldn’t be surprising if those clubs wanted agreements similar to the one Nader worked out with the Celtics — getting these draftees to sign D-League contracts would mean retaining their rights without having to worry about clearing an NBA roster spot for them.
If Hamilton, Cousins, or Wallace signs an NBA contract, then doesn’t earn a spot on his team’s 15-man, regular-season roster, that team would still hold his D-League rights, but would lose his NBA rights. In other words, Hamilton could be assigned to the OKC Blue, but another NBA team could sign him to its regular-season roster, and the Thunder wouldn’t be able to stop it.
For a team to retain its NBA rights to a second-round pick, it must tender a one-year, minimum-salary contract offer before September 6. With that deadline fast approaching, we should soon find out what the short-term future holds for this year’s final three unsigned draftees.
The Jazz have signed 2016 second round pick Marcus Paige (No. 55 overall) the team announced. The length and terms of the arrangement are unknown, nor if any guaranteed salary was included. Utah still has approximately $10MM in available cap space, so Paige’s deal wouldn’t be limited to the league minimum. Though, it would be a surprise if it was in excess of that amount.
The 22-year-old was a member of the Jazz’s summer league squad, averaging 7.0 points, 1.6 assists, 1.6 rebounds and 1.1 steals in 19.7 minutes of action in nine games. With Utah’s preseason roster count at 16, including 14 players possessing fully guaranteed deals, Paige is likely ticketed for the D-League to start the season.
Paige spent four years at North Carolina, notching career averages of 13.1 points, 2.8 rebounds and 4.3 assists to go along with a shooting line of .407/.375/.844. Paige was recognized as an Academic All-American for three of those seasons, including First Team honors following his senior season. He was named to the ACC All-Tournament Team in 2015 and 2016 as well as the 2014 ACC Most Improved Player of the Year, per the release.