Cliff Alexander‘s camp deal with the Trail Blazers covers three years and has a $100K partial guarantee, according to former Nets executive Bobby Marks, writing for HoopsHype. Alexander was one of 441 players who took part in at least one of the three summer leagues without having signed a guaranteed contract, and that $100K means he wound up with a lot more than many summer leaguers, who left only with the $127 per diems they received while taking part in the Orlando, Las Vegas and Salt Lake City leagues, as Marks details. There’s more on Alexander amid the latest from around the Northwest Division:
- Alexander told SB Nation’s Ricky O’Donnell that it “blindsided” him when he went undrafted in June, but agent Reggie Brown of Priority Sports said to O’Donnell that going undrafted was a better fate than having become a draft-and-stash pick (hat tip to TNT’s David Aldridge). “We knew the draft-and-stash would not be of benefit to him,” Brown said. “Cliff was not mature enough at 19 years old to go overseas for the first time. He didn’t have an older brother to help guide him like Emmanuel Mudiay did. I thought that would have been disastrous for his career so I made the decision not to do it. I could have took a lot of pressure off myself and in the media it looks great to have one of those teams take him, but I had to look him in the eye and tell him that we can’t do this. This is not best for your career. I felt he had the heart big enough to climb out of this.”
- Danilo Gallinari will see precisely $14MM this season, $15.05MM next season and $16.1MM in 2017/18 as part of his renegotiation-and-extension with the Nuggets, as Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders shows (Twitter link).
- The Thunder made a cost-cutting move in July, trading Perry Jones III to the Celtics, but the Oklahoma City organization isn’t anxious to move any more contracts and feels an urgency to win, sources close to the Thunder tell Steve Kyler of Basketball Insiders, who writes in an NBA AM piece.