The Nets have signed Darius Morris, the team announced. The point guard had been a free agent since shortly after the Blazers waived him at the end of the preseason. Multiple reports had indicated that the Nets had a player they were ready to sign once the completion of today’s Andrei Kirilenko trade opened a roster spot, so it appears that was Morris. It’s a non-guaranteed deal for the minimum salary, reports Reed Wallach of NetsDaily (Twitter link). It’s not clear whether it runs only for this season or if it includes 2015/16 as well, but the Nets are limited to using only the minimum-salary exception to sign players, so the deal for Morris can’t cover more than two seasons.
The 23-year-old Morris has been on an NBA regular season roster every season since the Lakers drafted him 41st overall out of the University of Michigan in 2011. He started 17 games for the Lakers in 2012/13, but he averaged only 14.2 minutes per game over the course of that season, one in which the team sent him on multiple D-League assignments. The Brian Dyke client saw 16.1 MPG over a 12-game stretch with the Sixers last year, but Philadelphia let him go less than a month into the season, and he later surfaced on 10-day contracts with the Clippers and Grizzlies.
The addition of Morris restores Brooklyn to a full 15-man roster, though only 11 of the team’s contracts are fully guaranteed. Brandon Davies, acquired in the Kirilenko trade, is on a non-guaranteed pact, while Cory Jefferson and Jerome Jordan are on partially guaranteed arrangements that are de facto non-guaranteed deals, since they’ve already earned more than the amounts of their guarantees.