Courtesy of USA Today Sports Images
JULY 9TH, 11:13pm: The signing is official, the team announced. “Words cannot describe the excitement of the New Orleans Pelicans to have Anthony Davis as the cornerstone of our organization,” said Pelicans GM Dell Demps. “Anthony is a great person, a phenomenal player and the ideal representative of his family, the Pelicans and the New Orleans community. We are thrilled to have Anthony commit to the Pelicans as we continue to build our team to have sustained success.”
JUNE 30TH, 11:03pm: The Pelicans and Anthony Davis have agreed to an extension moments after they became eligible to do so, reports Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports (on Twitter). It’s a five-year max deal worth an estimated $145MM, Wojnarowski writes in a full story. The full value won’t be known until next July, when the NBA sets the salary cap and max salaries for 2016/17. It’ll have either a player option or an early termination option on the final year, according to Marc Stein on ESPN.com (Twitter link). Davis took to Twitter to confirm the deal (hat tip to Sean Deveney of The Sporting News).
Davis was an All-NBA selection this season, and if he is again so honored in 2015/16, or if he wins MVP, he’ll trigger the Derrick Rose rule and be eligible for a maximum salary of approximately 30% of the cap instead of just 25%. That 30% max will be an estimated $25MM, or thereabouts, for 2016/17, while the 25% max would be about $21MM. Davis will presumably receive the maximum 7.5% raises on whatever the starting salary in his new deal is.
New Orleans has been planning a max extension for its budding star for a while, and John Reid of The Times-Picayune wrote today that the Pelicans intended to act quickly. They did just that, securing the Wasserman Media Group client for at least five more seasons, since the extension won’t kick in until after 2015/16.