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.