JULY 15TH: The deal is official, the team announced via press release.
JULY 10TH: 3:31pm: The sides have reached agreement, tweets Ronald Tillery of The Commercial Appeal. The second year is partially guaranteed, Tillery adds.
3:07pm: Point guard Beno Udrih has given his commitment to stay in Memphis, and a deal is set to be complete today, tweets Marc Stein of ESPN.com. It’ll be a two-year contract for the biannual exception, Stein adds (Twitter link). The full value of the biannual is $2.077MM for 2014/15 and a total of $4,247,465 over two years.
The 32-year-old Marc Cornstein client will end up with a raise from the minimum-salary contract he signed last summer with the Knicks. New York waived him along with Metta World Peace shortly after the trade deadline, but Memphis claimed him off waivers, a move that paid dividends when the NBA suspended backup point guard Nick Calathes for the playoffs. Udrih, who played only 55 regular season minutes for the Grizzlies, stepped into the rotation for the postseason and averaged 7.9 points and 1.7 assists in 16.4 minutes per game.
The move seems to cast doubt on the future of Calathes, who’s on a non-guaranteed deal that becomes fully guaranteed if Memphis doesn’t waive him by the end of this coming Tuesday. Calathes has a pair of lucrative overseas offers waiting for him if the Grizzlies cut him loose. Still, Grizzlies coach Dave Joerger has signaled that the team intends to keep Calathes.