Clippers center DeAndre Jordan will opt out of his contract and become an unrestricted free agent on Sunday, Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN tweets.
Jordan can negotiate a long-term contract with the Mavericks, who were engaged in trade talks with the Clippers to acquire him if he opted in. Dallas was unwilling to give up draft picks in a potential trade and preferred to pursue the veteran big man in free agency, Marc Stein of the New York Times tweets.
Jordan’s decision to leave $24.1MM on the table still doesn’t give the Clippers a large amount of cap space. In fact, as Bobby Marks of ESPN points out, the maximum amount of room they could open up is $13.6MM but they’d have to waive two point guards, Milos Teodosic and Patrick Beverley, to make that happen. If the Clippers stay over the cap, they’d still their $8.6MM mid-level and $3.4MM bi-annual exceptions at their disposal.
However, they could have as much as $60MM in cap space next summer, Marks adds in another tweet.
Of course, the Mavericks have been down this road before with one of the league’s premier rebounders. Jordan, who averaged 12.0 and a career-best 15.2 RPG last season, famously reneged on a verbal agreement with Dallas in the summer of 2015 to remain in L.A. However, the Mavericks are intent on getting a premier center and probably won’t have a lot of competition to get him to sign the dotted line the second time around.
Milwaukee!!!
I could see this.
Hard to see a market outside of Dallas, and he’ll fit nicely there in what’s shaping up as a decent team.
KNICKS
No
Carlisle needs a big man in his scheme. Nerlens was not it.
jbl: ESAD!
Carlisle made Tyson Chandler an all-world player. You might be right and we all may be underestimating what Rick Carlisle has left in his bag of tricks. Dwayne Casey and Terry Stotts owe their whole careers to the Mavs winning that championship in 2011. Same with Popovich, these are elite coaches who have not had elite teams very recently.
Stotts had a good reputation long before Carlisle as George Carl’s assistant. Did it get better? I am sure it did but not owing their whole career.
It certainly helped them get head coaching jobs. Same way all of Popovich’s assistants got head coaching interviews. They are good coaches themselves and worked hard the get where they are but the exposure under a great coach definitely helped.
Nets!
DJ was part of the big 3 that changed the clippers forever. His part will be severely underrated in the future, but man was he important and deserves a jersey retirement. Sad to see austin and DJ leave
The clippers weren’t bottom feeders for a while. That doesn’t mean they are changed forever.
Oh yeah, that free agent class of 2105 was loaded.
Not that it means anything but Jordan reached out to James. Could be a James, Jordan and George show in LA.
Then again James might sign a longer term contract in Cleveland, Jordan goes to the Mavs and George stays in Houston.
The fun has just begun. What will be the first big domino to fall this summer?
No wonder Dallas won’t have much competition for him this summer, don’t get me wrong he is a good solid center, but he isn’t a difference maker, does the job, aim for DMC he can & will make the difference, please be ambitious for once Mr Cuban.