Denver Nuggets Rumors | Hoops Rumors

Contract Details: Powell, Mavs, Barton, Pacers

July 28th, 2015 at 9:18pm CST by Charlie Adams

The terms of a contract between a newly acquired player and his team aren’t always immediately clear since clubs typically don’t release salary figures in official signing announcements. Below are some specifics on recently inked deals, all courtesy of Basketball Insiders’ Eric Pincus:

The precise value of No. 46 pick Norman Powell‘s three-year deal with the Raptors is $2,539,382, as Pincus shows (via Twitter). This season’s salary is the only one that exceeds the minimum.
Newly acquired Mavericks swingman John Jenkins’ 2015/16 minimum salary is fully guaranteed, according to Pincus (Twitter link), who also confirms Ian Begley of ESPNNewYork’s report that recent Dallas signee Maurice Ndour’s minimum-contract is guaranteed for the upcoming year.
Will Barton will make precisely $10,590,000 over the course of his new three-year deal with the Nuggets, Pincus relays on Twitter.
The Pacers’ three-year deal with Lavoy Allen is worth a total of $12.05MM, but it includes a team option in the final year of the deal, as Pincus notes on his salary page for Indiana.
Glenn Robinson III’s starting salary with the Pacers is for slightly above the minimum at $1.1MM, Pincus tweets. The minimum salary for a player with GRIII’s experience would be $845,059, as our glossary entry for the minimum salary exception shows.

Chuck Myron contributed to this post.

Nuggets Sign Nikola Jokić

July 28th, 2015 at 12:26pm CST by Chuck Myron

JULY 28TH, 12:26pm: The signing is official, the Nuggets announced. For more details on the contract, click here.

JULY 14TH, 8:34am: The Nuggets have yet to make an official announcement, but the signing has taken place, according to the RealGM transactions log.

JULY 13TH, 11:09am: The four-year deal is worth $5.5MM, reports Marc Stein of ESPN.com, who indicates that Jokić has already signed the deal. The team has yet to make any formal announcement (Twitter links).

JULY 10TH, 11:28am: It’s a four-year deal with an option on year four, agent Misko Raznatovic tweets (hat tip to Sportando’s Enea Trapani). It’s not clear whether that’s a team or player option. The team still hasn’t made any formal announcement.

JUNE 30TH, 12:12pm: The Nuggets are finalizing a fully guaranteed three-year contract with Nikola Jokić, whom Denver drafted 41st overall last year, reports Shams Charania of RealGM (Twitter link). Christopher Dempsey of The Denver Post wrote in May and again on Twitter today that Denver was expected to sign the 6’10” center before summer league, but it wasn’t clear just what sort of deal he would be getting.

Jokić had been insistent on a long-term deal, but he was enthusiastic about the prospect of joining Denver and had begun making it known he was on his way there, as David Pick of Eurobasket.com chronicled. The 20-year-old averaged 16.5 points, 9.7 rebounds in 29.5 minutes per game for KK Mega Vizura in his native Serbia this past season.

Denver has about $53MM in guaranteed salary against a projected $67.1MM cap, so the Nuggets could open cap space and sign Jokić into that. Otherwise, they’d have to use the $5.434MM mid-level exception on him. Either way, the signing couldn’t become official until next week, when the July Moratorium is over.

Latest On Carlos Boozer

July 28th, 2015 at 9:12am CST by Chuck Myron

The Knicks, Rockets and Mavericks continue to have interest in signing Carlos Boozer, league sources tell Michael Scotto of SheridanHoops (Twitter link). Scotto first identified the Knicks as among the teams eyeing the Rob Pelinka client earlier this month, though Marc Berman of the New York Post reported soon thereafter that the Knicks had engaged in internal conversations about him but hadn’t made a formal pursuit. Chris Broussard of ESPN.com pegged the Mavs and Rockets as among the teams in on Boozer just before free agency began, while Broussard later heard that the Mavs were one of four teams in talks with the former All-Star.

The Knicks and Mavericks have access to the $2.814MM room exception. The Rockets are in a tough spot, since they only have roughly $2.3MM left on their mid-level exception to spend but would trigger a hard cap if they gave any of it to Boozer. Houston also has No. 32 pick Montrezl Harrell who remains unsigned.

Several other teams, including the Clippers, Spurs, Raptors, Pelicans, Nuggets, Nets, Lakers and Heat, have reportedly been interested in Boozer over the last month, but it’s unclear if any of them remain in the mix. Boozer and the Clippers reportedly had mutual interest.

Emmanuel Mudiay Signs With Nuggets

July 25th, 2015 at 4:59pm CST by Dana Gauruder

The Nuggets have signed No. 7 overall pick Emmanuel Mudiay, as Mudiay revealed on his Twitter account. The team hasn’t made a formal announcement, but it did tacitly acknowledge the signing on Twitter.

Courtesy of USA TODAY Sports

Mudiay can receive a maximum of $3,102,240 in the upcoming season and $3,241,800 in 2016/17 with a total of $14.02MM over the next four seasons, as our chart of likely salaries for first-round picks shows. The point guard, who played in China last season after originally committing to SMU, was expected to be a top-five pick leading up to the draft before he slipped to the Nuggets’ spot in the lottery.

With veteran Jameer Nelson the only other viable option on the roster, Mudiay is expected to be the team’s starting point guard in his rookie season. As GM Tim Connelly told Christopher Dempsey of the Denver Post, the main concern with Mudiay is not playing him too much.

“I think it’s certainly a slippery slope,” Connelly said. “If you look at a lot of the elite players, they were thrown to the wolves early. Their early failures led to big-time success down the road. There’s going to be nights when Emmanuel is going to look like a 19-year old, and hopefully there’s nights where he looks like one of the elite point guards in the league. But we’re not going to put too much pressure on him. We’re going to kind of let it happen organically. And having a guy like Jameer [Nelson] behind him makes the transition that much easier.”

Northwest Notes: Jazz, Mudiay, Blazers

July 25th, 2015 at 4:00pm CST by Will Joseph

The Jazz have a logjam at point guard behind Dante Exum that they must sort out prior to next season’s opener, Randy Hollis of the Deseret News reports. The trio of Trey Burke, Bryce Cotton and Raul Neto could be fighting it out for two roster spots during training camp, though GM Dennis Lindsey indicated that it’s possible the team could carry four point guards into next season, Hollis continues. Cotton’s quickness and entertaining style make him a candidate to be the second-stringer and displace Burke, a lottery pick whose shooting issues have pushed him to the bench, Hollis adds. The logjam could be broken by trading Burke, who is rumored to be on the block and doesn’t seem to fit coach Quin Snyder’s system, Hollis concludes.

In other news around the Northwest Division:

The Nuggets’ lottery pick Emmanuel Mudiay will be the starter at point guard, Christopher Dempsey of the Denver Post opines. While Denver has a safety net in veteran Jameer Nelson, it’s clear that the Nuggets are committed to making Mudiay their floor leader in his rookie season, Dempsey adds. The only concerns are monitoring his workload and allowing him to work through his mistakes, something Nuggets GM Tim Connelly addressed with Dempsey. “We don’t want to put too much pressure on him,” Connelly said. “He’s a 19-year-old kid. We saw some good in summer league and we also saw some bad. I thought that he struggled shooting the ball. We’ve got to improve his free throw line percentage. But I think you see things like positional size, natural playmaking ability, and kind of the will and the approach to be great that excites us.”
Blazers coach Terry Stotts spent a sizable portion of the summer league evaluating five players under contract with the team — Allen Crabbe, Noah Vonleh, Luis Montero, Pat Connaughton and Tim Frazier — and was particularly pleased with Crabbe and Vonleh, Mike Richman of The Oregonian writes. The Blazers added nine new players and are entering a transition season after LaMarcus Aldridge‘s departure. Portland does have some young and athletic talent, however, which has Stotts optimistic, Richman adds.

Dana Gauruder contributed to this post.

Northwest Notes: Lawson, Contract Details, Exum

July 22nd, 2015 at 9:31pm CST by Eddie Scarito

Nuggets team president Josh Kroenke told Marc J. Spears of Yahoo! Sports that the team had been privately trying to help Ty Lawson with his drinking issues for the past couple of years and that there had been problems for a long time. Kroenke indicated that he had repeated conversations with Lawson about his struggles, and noted that Lawson often said he would attempt to fix his issues but he could never fully shake them, Spears adds. Lawson was recently traded to the Rockets.

“He always had an affinity for burning the candle at both ends,” Kroenke said. “We want to give our players freedom to be young guys as well. We’re not going to be drill sergeants. But we want our guys to be able to handle their personal lives on their own. Ty … there were times when he was better than others. But the problems have been there for several years, going back to when we were having a lot of on-court success. I don’t want to go back too far. There were just a lot of times where you were at practice and you just know. You could smell it. You know there is probably deeper issues than he would probably let on.”

Here’s more out of the Northwest Division:

GM Tim Connelly said it was a difficult choice for the Nuggets to trade Lawson, Christopher Dempsey of The Denver Post writes. “It was a tough day,” said Connelly. “Ty was a huge part of our success here. He’s certainly one of the really talented lead guards. Sometimes a change of scenery is best for both parties. Where we were, it made sense to make the move.“
Raul Neto‘s three-year pact with the Jazz will see him earn $900K for the 2015/16 season, $937,800 the following season, and $1,014,746 during the 2017/18 campaign, Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders tweets. Joe Ingles‘ two-year deal with Utah will pay him $2.150MM for each season, Pincus adds.
Al-Farouq Aminu‘s contract with the Blazers will pay him $8,042,995 this season, $7,680,956 in 2016/17, $7,319,035 the following year, and $6,957,105 in 2018/19, Pincus relays (on Twitter). Ed Davis‘ three-year deal will pay him $6,980,802, $6,666,667, and $6,352,531 respectively, notes Pincus.
Jazz point guard Dante Exum knows that he needs to improve his outside shooting if he hopes to emerge as a star in the NBA, Moke Hamilton of Basketball Insiders writes. “I think just the consistency of it, being straight, being on target, even if I’m not making them—as long as it’s still a good looking shot and it feels good,” Exum said regarding the progress that he has made over the summer. “I think that’s the most important thing. … Once it gets into the game and I start playing one-on-one and five-on-five that I get that carryover.”

Hoops Rumors Glossary: Renegotiations

July 22nd, 2015 at 10:29am CST by Chuck Myron

Fans often wonder if NBA Team X can renegotiate its contract with Player Y, as is common practice in the National Football League. The answer is almost always no, and it’s a firm no if the follow-up question is whether the sides can renegotiate the value of the contract downward. But, renegotiations are allowed to make the contract more lucrative, and they can happen as long as a specific set of circumstances are in place, as the Nuggets have proven this month.

Denver renegotiated its contract with Wilson Chandler as part of their deal on an extension. The move lifted Chandler’s salary for this coming season from close to $7.172MM to more than $10.449MM. Danilo Gallinari is reportedly set for a similar renegotiation simultaneous to an extension, taking his salary for 2015/16 from more than $11.559MM to about $14MM. Chandler was the first player to renegotiate his contract since the existing collective bargaining agreement went into place in 2011, and Gallinari is poised to become the second. It might be a while before we see the third. No player aside from Gallinari is eligible for a renegotiation, as former Nets executive Bobby Marks points out (Twitter link), and that speaks to just how stringent the restrictions on them are.

Only contracts that cover four or more seasons can be renegotiated, and rookie scale contracts, which run four seasons, can’t be renegotiated, either. Renegotiations can only occur after the third anniversary of a contract signing, extension or previous renegotiation, if the previous renegotiation lifted the salary in any season by 4.5% or more. Teams can’t renegotiate any contracts if they’re over the cap, and they can only increase the salary in the current season by the amount of cap room that they have. Renegotiations can’t happen as part of a trade, and if a player waives a portion of his trade kicker to facilitate a trade, as Roy Hibbert did earlier this month, he’s ineligible to renegotiate his contract for the next six months. Teams can renegotiate contracts once the July Moratorium ends, but not after the end of February.

A further set of rules restrict just how much can change in a renegotiation. The raises for any seasons that follow the first renegotiated season in a contract are limited to 7.5%. That’s also true of salary decreases, though if a renegotiation happens simultaneous to an extension, as was the case with Chandler and will likely be the case with Gallinari, the player’s salary can drop by as much as 40% from the last season of the existing contract to the first season of the extension. That won’t happen for either Chandler or Gallinari, each of whom is set to see more money in 2016/17 than in 2015/16. Also, only renegotiations that happen in conjunction with an extension may contain signing bonuses.

All of this helps make renegotiations as rare as they are. However, with the salary cap projected to surge beginning next season, and surge again for 2017/18, more teams will have cap room, one of the necessary elements for amending contracts. Conceivably, that’ll open more doors for renegotiations, as well as veteran extensions, which are also rare under the current collective bargaining agreement. Teams can entice players they want to keep with added salary this way, and prevent them from hitting the open market. The rules are subject to change if the union, the owners or both exercise their mutual option to end the labor agreement in 2017, but in the meantime, the power to renegotiate will continue as an obscure but sometimes useful tool for roster building.

Note: This is a Hoops Rumors Glossary entry. Our glossary posts will explain specific rules relating to trades, free agency, or other aspects of the NBA’s Collective Bargaining Agreement. Larry Coon’s Salary Cap FAQ was used in the creation of this post.

And-Ones: Labor Negotiations, NBPA, Lawson

July 21st, 2015 at 10:39pm CST by Eddie Scarito

Many agents don’t see reason for the union to opt out of the collective bargaining agreement in 2017, in part because of the influx of billions of dollars in new revenue and in part because the league would try to negotiate a deal worse for players than the one they’d be opting out of, Bleacher Report’s Howard Beck details. Some sources indicate to Beck that as many as a dozen teams are losing money. Both the owners and the union have the right to opt out of the agreement, but an increasing number of people on both sides believe a pitched battle over labor issues won’t take place, Beck hears. The league projects that the average salary by 2016/17 will be $7.5MM, a 44% increase from 2010/11, Beck writes in the same story.

Here’s more from around the league:

The National Basketball Players Association is studying ways to use the $57,298,826 shortfall coming their way from the owners as a result of the failure of 2014/15 salaries to add up to the required percentage of basketball related income, reports Ken Berger of CBSSports.com. The union will discuss using part of it to fund health care costs for retired players and decide how to divvy up the rest among active players, as Berger details.
The union will distribute among affected players a $5.3MM settlement in a lawsuit against the state of Tennessee over its “jock tax” that requires players on visiting teams going against the Grizzlies to fork over sums to the state, Berger adds in the same piece. The tax, which ends after this season, had perhaps its most profound effect on players who signed 10-day contracts, and the Tennessee legislature used data from our 10-Day Contract Tracker as it considered the tax’s eventual repeal.
Nuggets team president Josh Kroenke discussed Ty Lawson in the wake of the point guard being dealt to the Rockets, Marc J. Spears of Yahoo! Sports relays. “We did our best to try to help Ty. I’m excited to see he is embracing the first step of the process to get better,” Kroenke said. “I hope this is a good thing for Ty the person. There is no guarantees. Sometimes you need to hear it from a different person. With Jameer Nelson and Emmanuel Mudiay we’re excited about the future. We’re excited to turn the page and move on even if the [trade] value wasn’t equal,” Kroenke continued. “There wasn’t a lot of teams [interested]. Houston was in a position where it could put them over the top. We’re fully aware of that.“
The two guaranteed years in No. 33 pick Jordan Mickey‘s four-year, $5MM contract with the Celtics are worth a combined $2.4MM, reports Steve Bulpett of the Boston Herald.

Chuck Myron contributed to this post.

Nuggets Still Interested In Sergio Rodriguez?

July 21st, 2015 at 2:40pm CST by Chuck Myron

2:40pm: There’s no truth to the latest report linking Rodriguez to the Nuggets, David Pick of Eurobasket.com tells Hoops Rumors.

8:33am: The Nuggets have been trying for weeks to lure four-year NBA veteran Sergio Rodriguez back from overseas, reports Javier Maestro of Encestando (translation via HoopsHype). Jesus Perez Ramos of Mundo Deportivo reported a month ago that Denver was one of three NBA teams eyeing the point guard who last played in the league during the 2009/10 season. Rodriguez confirmed soon after that report that he was considering an NBA comeback, but David Pick of Eurobasket.com wrote just last week that Rodriguez was staying in Spain despite talks with an NBA Western Conference team, as Real Madrid fought to keep him.

The buyout clause in Rodriguez’s deal with Real Madrid reportedly requires 2 million euros, or about $2.178MM in today’s dollars. It’s an amount that Rodridguez late last month referred to as reasonable, though the Nuggets or any other NBA team could effectively only pay $625K toward it. That jibes with a report in June from Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports, who wrote that the buyout was not expected to be an obstacle.

NBA teams see Rodriguez as an elite backup point guard, Wojnarowski wrote then. The Nuggets officially traded Ty Lawson to the Rockets on Monday, but they still have the newly re-signed Jameer Nelson, No. 7 overall pick Emmanuel Mudiay and Erick Green to play at the point. Green’s salary is non-guaranteed through August 1st. Denver can open up about $11MM in cap space if it waives Kostas Papanikolaou‘s non-guaranteed salary, too.

Rodriguez, the 27th overall pick in 2006, spent his first three seasons playing for the Blazers before finishing up with the Kings and Knicks. He averaged 4.3 points, 2.9 assists and 1.3 turnovers in 13.2 minutes per game over his NBA career.

Do you think Rodriguez belongs in the NBA? Leave a comment to let us know.

Nuggets Expected To Re-Sign Darrell Arthur

July 21st, 2015 at 1:04pm CST by Chuck Myron

The Nuggets are expected to re-sign Darrell Arthur, NBA sources tell Christopher Dempsey of The Denver Post. The team and the Jerry Hicks client reportedly engaged in productive talks at the start of free agency, but the Clippers later emerged as a team with which Arthur apparently shared mutual interest. The Pistons and Wizards were interested, too, as Dempsey reported at the beginning of the month.

Denver renounced its Bird rights to Arthur, but Dempsey indicates that the Nuggets are set to use some of the cap flexibility they reaped in the Ty Lawson trade to facilitate a deal with the power forward. The Nuggets can open about $11MM in room if they waive the non-guaranteed contracts of Kostas Papanikolaou and Erick Green and refrain from formally signing Emmanuel Mudiay and from making their reported deal with Will Barton official, so that their cap holds remain low. They won’t need all of that space for Arthur, but the Nuggets are expected to sign Danilo Gallinari to an extension this week, as Dempsey also reports, and if that’s a renegotiation and extension in mold of Denver’s new Wilson Chandler pact, it would take up some of that cap flexibility.

A new deal with Arthur would leave the Nuggets poised to have 15 guaranteed contracts on the books once the Barton and Mudiay signings take place. Arthur has been consistent in his two seasons with Denver, averaging 6.2 points and 3.0 rebounds in 17.1 minutes per game over that time.

Is keeping Arthur the right choice for the Nuggets, or should they seek out another free agent power forward? Let us know in the comments.