Melvin Ajinca, who was selected with the No. 51 overall pick in last month’s draft, won’t be immediately joining the Mavericks. The 6’8″ forward has signed a one-year contract with ASVEL Basket, according to an announcement from the French team.
A native of France, Ajinca has spent the last several years playing in his home country, including the past two seasons with Saint-Quentin. The club played in LNB Pro B (France’s second-tier league) in 2022/23, then earned a promotion to LNB Elite (the top league in the country) for the ’23/24 season.
In 28 games for Saint-Quentin last season, Ajinca averaged 9.3 points and 3.3 rebounds in 24.6 minutes per contest. The 20-year-old struggled to score efficiently, however, making just 37.5% of his shot attempts from the floor, including 30.9% of his three-pointers. That trend continued this month at the Las Vegas Summer League, where he made just 13-of-44 (29.5%) shot attempts across five games for the Mavs and went 5-of-25 (20.0%) from beyond the arc.
Dallas traded up during the second round of last month’s draft in order to nab Ajinca. The Mavs sent the No. 58 pick and $1MM in cash – along with the draft rights to Petteri Koponen – to the Knicks in exchange for the No. 51 pick, which they used on Ajinca.
There was never likely to be room on the Mavs’ 15-man roster for Ajinca though. Dallas currently has 13 players on guaranteed contracts, with Spencer Dinwiddie set to sign a one-year deal and Markieff Morris widely expected to return to fill out the roster.
Ajinca looked like a possible two-way candidate, but now that he’ll remain overseas for at least one more season, the Mavs will have the flexibility to fill that third two-way slot with another player. Alex Fudge and Brandon Williams are currently on two-way contracts with the club, leaving one opening.
Do things like this ever work out down the road?
If you mean guys being drafted, staying overseas, then eventually coming to the NBA and succeeding, it certainly happens.
Bogdan Bogdanovic, Bojan Bogdanovic, Isaiah Hartenstein, Cedi Osman, Dario Saric, Davis Bertans, Nikola Mirotic, Raul Neto, James Ennis, Furkan Korkmaz, and some guy named Nikola Jokic are among the draft-and-stash players who signed in the NBA in the past decade.
Not sure why euro contracts are allowed to void nba contracts ? Is it because international law won’t enforce?
Seems like Stern setting a bad precedent with Vezenkov and. Now players going to play the field to drive up usa labor prices
Ajinca didn’t have an NBA contract yet. Seems safe to assume the Mavs are on board with him signing overseas and continuing to develop there while they retain control of his NBA rights.
Vezenkov wouldn’t have been allowed to sign in Greece if the Raptors were really determined to keep him. He had to give up his entire NBA salary to get out of his deal with Toronto.