JULY 9TH, 9:33am: The deal is official, the team announced.
JULY 1ST, 1:00pm: The Pelicans will re-sign Alexis Ajinca to a four-year, $20.2MM deal, reports Marc Stein of ESPN.com (Twitter links). Sam Amick of USA Today has the deal worth $20.5MM (on Twitter). Ajinca took to Twitter to reveal that he and New Orleans have a deal. It’s quite a raise on the minimum salary that the Bradley Ames client had been making. The Pelicans, who are above the cap, can use Early Bird rights on the center.
New Orleans withdrew its $1,147,276 qualifying offer to Jeff Withey shortly before reports of the agreement, as Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders notes (on Twitter), making Withey an unrestricted free agent and further pointing to the team’s commitment to Ajinca as its backup center. The Pelicans have a deal on an extension with Anthony Davis, but Omer Asik, the team’s starting center, is a free agent.
Like the move, hopefully they can go after KJ McDaniel or J Crowder
I don’t think they can sign Ajinca with Early Bird rights. You can only sign your own Early Bird guy for 175% of last year, and this greatly exceeds that. So this has to be cap space or the mid-level, right?
Nice deal to get him locked up at that amount.