Suns forward Ryan Anderson lowered his guaranteed salary to $15.4MM for the final year of his contract in 2019/2020 but it can be traded for the prior fully guaranteed value of $21.4MM, Tim Bontemps of the Washington Post tweets. Anderson agreed to the reduction to facilitate the trade from the Rockets. However, since his contract was signed under the previous CBA, its trade value remains unchanged. The Suns will have until July 10, 2019 to decide whether they want to guarantee Anderson’s full salary for the final year of his contract or waive him, in which case they’d still have to pay the reduced guarantee.
In other news from around the Western Conference:
- Shooting guard Tyrone Wallace can’t be traded by the Clippers without his consent as a result of Los Angeles matching his offer sheet, salary cap expert Albert Nahmad tweets. The restricted free agent signed a two-year, $2.9MM offer sheet with the Pelicans but the Clippers opted to match it on Wednesday despite a roster logjam. The Clippers are prohibited from trading Wallace to the Pelicans for one year, Nahmad adds.
- Maxi Kleber needs to improve his long-range shooting to earn rotation minutes with the Mavericks during the upcoming season, Eddie Sefko of the Dallas Morning News writes. Kleber will be competing with Dwight Powell and Salah Mejri for playing time with DeAndre Jordan and Dirk Nowitzki guaranteed to play steady minutes. The 6’11” Kleber shot 31.3% from deep in his first season with the club.
- Anthony Davis called Julius Randle three times after Randle hit the free agent market to ensure the former Laker would sign with the Pelicans, William Guillory of The Athletic reports. Randle had his rights renounced by the Lakers after LeBron James agreed to sign with Los Angeles and Randle quickly agreed to a two-year, $18MM deal with New Orleans. Randle had more lucrative deals on the table, Guillory adds, but Randle wants to remain with the franchise even though he has an opt-out next summer.
Randle and Davis are going to dominate, I see the Pelicans as a 4th-5th seed.
nah they might drop as a 6 or 7th, maybe…
I remember when Rockets played Warriors in the playoff, Anderson barely got off the bench. When he finally played a few minutes, Warriors substituted in Curry and juked Anderson hard, and then Rockets immediately benched him again.
Rockets are obviously in win now mode, and Warriors will likely always stand in their way for a chip. Rockets can’t afford to pay 20+ millions to a guy that is barely played against the Warriors. In win now mode, there isn’t much time to develop a second rounder (Melton) much, either. So trading away those two guys for anything is a plus.
Knight should help in regular season to get Paul more healthy. Maybe against lineups that doesn’t have much offense, there could be a Paul-Harden-Knight-Gordon-Tucker lineup. Chriss could be another lob threat other than Capela, but that probably is it. Maybe Capela can teach him some rim-protection.
Agree with Dionis in that is a very exciting pairing of AD & JR, but not so for #4-5, GSW, Lakers, Houston, definitely better, then is a toss with Denver, OKC, Minny, Portland & NOLA, in whichever order for the final playoff spots. But with that pair, Pels will be in the playoffs that’s for sure. They can be very good complementing each other. Hopefully with adding Payton & with Jrue & Niko, they can become competitive enough so AD stays in the “Big Easy” for good.
You forgot utah! Utah swept okc yet you have okc as a contender? Minnesota is trash and with so many personalities it will be hard to see them do much.