SEPTEMBER 18TH: The deal is finally official, the team announced.
JULY 30TH: It’ll be a guaranteed deal, tweets David Pick of Eurobasket.com.
JULY 25TH: The Kings are finalizing a one-year contract at the league minimum with Omri Casspi, tweets Marc Stein of ESPN.com. Casspi somewhat surprisingly cleared waivers earlier today, as the Kings had reportedly planned to put in a claim. It nonetheless appears as though they maintained interest, and the feeling had been mutual for Casspi, who spoke in recent days of his fondness for a return to Sacramento.
Signing the Dan Fegan client for just one year at the minimum, as opposed to claiming his two-year contract off waivers, will save the team enough money to keep it beneath the luxury tax line. The Kings had been at $75,852,705 in team salary, according to the latest estimates from Basketball Insiders, just $976,295 shy of the tax threshold. Casspi will make $1,063,384 as a five-year veteran at the minimum salary, but Sacramento will only be on the hook for the portion equivalent to the two-year veteran’s minimum of $915,243, since it’s a one-year contract. The league will pick up the tab for the rest.
That provision only applies to one-year deals, so if the Kings had claimed Casspi’s two-year contract off waivers, they would have had to pay his full salary, pushing them into tax territory and likely prompting the team to waive or trade Quincy Acy. Sacramento and Acy this week agreed to push back the date upon which his salary would become fully guaranteed so the club could explore its options.
Casspi’s camp is quite pleased with the agreement that will bring him back to the team with which he spent his first two NBA seasons, tweets David Pick of Eurobasket.com. The native of Israel averaged 9.5 points in 24.5 minutes per game with 37.1% shooting as a King, but those numbers dropped precipitously when a trade sent him to Cleveland. He rebounded this past season with the Rockets, but the Pelicans nonetheless saw fit to let him go soon after they acquired him as part of the Omer Asik trade.
Chuck Myron contributed to this post.