Before signing Archie Goodwin to a rest-of-season contract to fill their 15th roster spot, the Nets made a series of moves designed to honor commitments made to a pair of players this season. As Ben Nadeau of Basketball Insiders tweets, the club signed and waived Cliff Alexander, then did the same thing with Prince Ibeh.
[RELATED: Nets re-sign Archie Goodwin]
According to Bobby Marks of The Vertical, a former Nets executive, the team made commitments to both Alexander and Ibeh at some point this season to sign them to 10-day contracts (Twitter links). However, injuries on the Nets’ roster forced the team to change its plans. Although Brooklyn wasn’t able to carry Alexander or Ibeh on its roster this season, the club wanted to honor its commitments.
As Marks observes (via Twitter), the Warriors made a similar move earlier this season with Jose Calderon. Golden State had reached an agreement to sign Calderon, but when Kevin Durant went down with a knee injury, the team opted to sign Matt Barnes instead. Before finalizing their deal with Barnes, the Warriors signed and waived Calderon, ensuring that he’d receive the rest-of-season salary he was promised. Alexander and Ibeh will receive full 10-day salaries from the Nets.
While the moves were not announced by the Nets and will go unnoticed by many fans, there’s little downside from the team’s perspective. Making good on those commitments will help strengthen the Nets’ relationships with agents and players, and won’t cost the team any extra money — Brooklyn remains under the salary floor for 2016/17, so the club will have to pay the difference at season’s end anyway. The deals for Alexander and Ibeh simply moved the Nets a little closer to the floor, slightly reducing their year-end bill.
Alexander and Ibeh both spent time this season with the Long Island Nets, Brooklyn’s D-League affiliate.
Archie Goodwin should have been a player they locked up to a decent deal, he just doesn’t get the minutes to perform. He would flourish as a 6th man off the bench.
They did sign Goodwin to a two year deal.
He’s gonna become a star
I disagree that there is no downside. The current players will lose some of their true-up money, which can create some displeasure among the current players. On balance, though, this seems like a good move.
Fair point, though the 10-day deals are worth so little (relative to other salaries) that it won’t make much of a difference. The Nets are still about $1.1MM below the floor, so if they don’t make any more moves, that’d work out to 15 payments worth more than $70K each to reach the floor. These two 10-day deals will only cut into that by about $5K apiece.
I’d also argue that the guys on the 15-man roster at season’s end who will get paid when the Nets don’t get to the salary floor will appreciate that the Nets didn’t end up claiming a Mo Williams type on waivers to artificially reach the floor.
Cliff should have never went to Kansas