5:56pm: Hopson has decided against signing the deal, agent Eric Fleisher tells David Pick of Eurobasket.com (Twitter link).
11:09am: Small forward Scotty Hopson is close to putting pen to paper on a deal with Galatasaray of Turkey, Ismail Senol of NTV Spor reports (Twitter link; translation via Sportando’s Emiliano Carchia). A follow-up tweet from Carchia indicates that the sides have already reached agreement and that Hopson is likely to make his debut for the team this weekend. The arrangement only covers a month and a half, though Hopson will have an option to extend it through the end of the season, according to Senol. It’s unclear how much the 25-year-old stands to earn through the pact.
Hopson spent the summer as NBA trade fodder, going from the Cavs, who signed him late last season, to the Hornets, to the Pelicans, to the Rockets, and finally to the Kings, who waived him the week before training camps began. Hopson had a non-guaranteed salary of more than $1.45MM that teams found useful to help them match salaries thanks to Cleveland’s decision to use its prorated room exception to ink him at the end of March. The Cavs would have been able to create an even larger non-guaranteed salary, and thus a more attractive trade chip, had they signed a veteran to a minimum-salary deal, but Hopson came aboard without NBA experience, having played overseas since going undrafted out of Tennessee in 2011. He was with Turkey’s Anadolu Efes when Cleveland came calling last season.
Reports shortly before Sacramento waived Hopson indicated that he was moving close to a deal with Italy’s Enel Brindisi, though the Italian team denied that there were talks, and the sides never wound up coming to terms. The former McDonald’s All-American had his best pro season in 2012/13, when he put up 17.7 points and 5.2 rebounds in 32.3 minutes per game for Hapoel Eilat of Israel. He appeared in only two games for a total of less than seven minutes during his stint with the Cavs last season.