Wizards Sign Gary Neal

JULY 9TH, 12:39pm: The deal is official, the Wizards announced.

“Gary is a proven veteran who will bring us perimeter shooting and experience,“ GM Ernie Grunfeld said. “Adding him to our rotation makes our backcourt rotation deeper and more versatile.“ 

JULY 3RD, 2:21pm: The Wizards will sign Gary Neal for one year and $2.1MM, reports Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports (Twitter link). Washington will use its biannual exception, worth $2.139MM, to accommodate the contract, a source tells Ken Berger of CBSSports.com (Twitter link). That leaves the $5.464MM mid-level exception for reported target David West, Wojnarowski notes (on Twitter).

Darren Wolfson of 1500 ESPN Twin Cities raised the possibility of a sign-and-trade deal that would preserve Washington’s biannual when he reported interest in Neal from the Bulls, but it looks at this point that it’ll be a straight signing. The David Bauman client drew the eye of the Wizards this past season, when they would have had interest in signing him if he had engineered a buyout from the Timberwolves, as J. Michael of CSNWashington.com reported then.

Washington appealed to the guard based on its proximity to his hometown in Baltimore and the presence of starters John Wall and Bradley Beal, TNT’s David Aldridge tweets. His deal is a slight pay drop from the two-year, $6.5MM deal he signed in 2013, even though his scoring was up from his time with the Spurs.