Hoops Rumors Originals

Free agent signees, trade acquisitions, and 2019 draftees are the most common additions to NBA rosters this summer. However, a small number of players will come via the draft-and-stash route, as teams bring aboard players drafted in previous years.

While first-round draftees from the last three years are limited to the 2019 rookie scale, there are no draft-and-stash signings who fit that bill this year. Players who were previously selected in the second round of a draft are free to sign any type of contract via cap room or exceptions.

Listed below are the draft-and-stash prospects who have signed so far this offseason, with contract details noted. If and when more teams add draft-and-stash players, we’ll update this list, which can be found at anytime on the right-hand sidebar of our desktop site under “Hoops Rumors Features,” or in the “Features” page in our mobile menu.

• Denver Nuggets: Vlatko Cancar, F (2017 draft; No. 49) (story)
  • Cancar was just 20 years old when he was selected by the Nuggets in 2017. After spending two more seasons with Mega Leks (Serbia) and Burgos (Spain), he’s considered a little more NBA-ready. He received a guaranteed contract that makes him a virtual lock to earn a regular season roster spot.
  • Contract: Three years, $4.2MM (minimum salary). First two years guaranteed. Signed using mid-level exception.
• Oklahoma City Thunder: Devon Hall, SG (2018 draft; No. 53) (story)
  • Hall spent his first professional season in Australia and the G League after being selected in the second round of the 2018 draft by the Thunder. His agent said when he first headed overseas that they expected him to be in Oklahoma City for the 2019/20 season. That will indeed be the case, though it’ll be on a two-way deal rather than as part of the standard 15-man roster.
  • Contract: Two-way contract.
• Oklahoma City Thunder: Kevin Hervey, PF (2018 draft; No. 57) (story)
  • Hall didn’t last long on his two-way deal with the Thunder, having been waived in December to make room for fellow 2018 second-rounder Hervey. The former UT Arlington standout spent his rookie season and the first part of his second season with the Oklahoma City Blue, the Thunder’s G League affiliate.
  • Contract: Two-way contract.
• Utah Jazz: Nigel Williams-Goss, PG (2017 draft; No. 55) (story)
  • Despite playing his college ball in America (at Washington and Gonzaga), Williams-Goss was willing to head overseas after the Jazz drafted him in 2017. He won a Serbian Cup with KK Partizan during his rookie season, then spent his second year playing for EuroLeague club Olympiacos. Williams-Goss projects to be in Utah’s point guard mix, though he’ll have to battle Dante Exum and Emmanuel Mudiay for minutes behind Mike Conley.
  • Contract: Three years, $4.8MM. First-year salary ($1.5MM) guaranteed. Signed using cap room.

Multiple draft-and-stash players from previous drafts have had their NBA rights renounced this offseason. We’ll keep tabs on those players here too:

• Sixers renounced Anzejs Pasecniks (2017 draft; No. 25) (story)
• Rockets renounced Marko Todorovic (2013 draft; No. 45) (story)
• Cavaliers waived Sir’Dominic Pointer (2015 draft; No. 53) immediately after he signed his required tender (story)

We’re six weeks into the NBA’s 2019 free agent period, and the market has been just about picked clean. None of our top 50 free agents of 2019 remain on the board, and news of free agent signings within the last couple weeks has focused primarily on non-guaranteed training camp invitees.

Still, our list of remaining 2019 free agents features some interesting names. Roster spots around the NBA are becoming scarce, but a number of unsigned players could help out contending teams. Some of these players could sign in the coming days or weeks, while others may have to wait for injuries to open up opportunities.

In a series of posts, we’re taking a closer look at some of the most noteworthy free agents still on the board, breaking them down by position. That series started last Thursday when we focused on a handful of the best free agent guards available, and continued on Friday as we turned to the top free agent wings. Now we’re closing things out by examining some of the most intriguing veteran big men on the open market.

Let’s dive in…

• Nene: After he made the surprising decision to turn down his $3.8MM player option for 2019/20, Nene hasn’t had any luck finding a new contract on the open market. He also hasn’t indicated that he plans to retire, despite some rumors that he might end up going in that direction. The big man will turn 37 in September, so we’ll see if another NBA deal is in his future.
• Amir Johnson: Johnson logged minutes in 51 regular season games for the Sixers last season, but had fallen out of the rotation by the playoffs. He’s a smart, heady player and he’s still just 32 years old, so I doubt we’ve seen the last of him in the NBA. Still, the fact that he doesn’t thrive in any one particular area – such as protecting the rim or shooting three-pointers – may hurt his market.
• Joakim Noah: Noah was surprisingly effective in 42 games for the Grizzlies last season, averaging 7.1 PPG, 5.7 RPG, and 2.1 APG in just 16.5 minutes per contest. That performance hasn’t earned him an NBA job yet, but he’d have options overseas if he’s interested — a club in New Zealand was said last month to covet him.
• Kenneth Faried: Faried experienced a renaissance in Houston last season, averaging 12.9 PPG and 8.2 RPG in 25 games for the Rockets. He’s also been working on adding an outside shot to his game. At age 29, Faried can still be a solid contributor for an NBA team, and I’d be surprised if he’s not on a roster by opening night.
• Ryan Anderson: This would have been the fourth and final year of Anderson’s four-year, $80MM contract, which he signed in 2016. Instead, he’s back on the open market. His ability to stretch the floor from well beyond the three-point line is valuable, but it doesn’t always make up for his poor defense. On top of that, he wasn’t even making shots last season, knocking down just 9-of-40 threes (22.5%).
• Marcin Gortat: Gortat started 43 games at center in 2018/19 for the Clippers before being waived at the trade deadline. While he has talked in the past about wanting to join the Magic to finish his NBA career, Orlando’s frontcourt is pretty crowded at this point, and the veteran big man had also suggested earlier in his career that the 2018/19 season might be his last. There’s no guarantee he’ll return to an NBA team.
• Zaza Pachulia: At age 35, Pachulia’s NBA days may be numbered, but he appeared in 68 games for the Pistons as a backup center last season.

Jonas Jerebko would be an intriguing target for a team seeking frontcourt shooting, but last we heard, he was close to signing with a Russian team. (Update: Jerebko’s deal with Khimki is now official.)

Justin Patton is 22 years old and is just two years removed from being drafted 16th overall. If he can get – and stay – healthy, he might be worth a flier. Health hasn’t been an issue for Marquese Chriss, a 22-year-old who was a lottery pick in 2016, but he has yet to develop into a positive contributor. Perhaps a new club could get more out of him.

Another former first-round pick, Jarell Martin, doesn’t have Patton’s or Chriss’ upside, but was a regular rotation player as recently as 2017/18 and is still just 25.

Salah Mejri, Jon Leuer, Eric Moreland, Jason Smith, Tyler Zeller, and Guerschon Yabusele are among the other bigs who remain unsigned.

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.

Waiver claims are something of a rarity in the NBA. In order to claim a player off waivers, a team generally must be able to fit the player’s entire salary into cap room, a traded player exception, or a disabled player exception. While there are a few teams with sizable trade exceptions available, disabled player exceptions can only be granted during the season, and the Hawks are the only team with any cap room left.

Given those limitations, the players most frequently claimed on waivers are those on minimum salary deals, since any club is eligible to place a claim on those players using the minimum salary exception. Even then though, there are exceptions — the minimum salary exception can only be used to sign players for up to two years, so the same rules apply to waiver claims. If a player signed a three-year, minimum salary contract, he can’t be claimed using the minimum salary exception.

Taking into account all the rules that reduce the odds of a waiver claim – not to mention the limited roster spots available for NBA teams – it makes sense that nearly all of the players who get released ultimately clear waivers. The 2018/19 league year featured 10 waiver claims, but the number of claims in a year typically falls short of that. During the 2017/18 league year, only four players were claimed off waivers. That number was six in 2016/17 and seven in 2015/16.

Despite how infrequent they are, we still want to track all the waiver claims that take place during the 2019/20 league year, so we’ll do so in the space below. This list will be updated throughout the offseason and regular season to include the latest claims.

Here’s the list:

• Timberwolves claim Tyrone Wallace from Clippers (July 8) (story)
  • Having missed out on their top free agent target – D’Angelo Russell – the Timberwolves gave themselves a low-cost depth option at the point guard spot by claiming Wallace from the Clippers. His $1,588,231 salary remained non-guaranteed following the claim though, so Minnesota eventually decided to cut Wallace before opening night and wasn’t on the hook for his cap charge.
• Pistons claim Christian Wood from Pelicans (July 17) (story)
  • Wood has been claimed off waivers twice in 2019, with the Pelicans nabbing him when the Bucks initially waived him in March. Wood impressed down the stretch in New Orleans, averaging 16.9 PPG and 7.9 RPG in eight games, but apparently wasn’t in the plans for new head of basketball operations David Griffin. Now he’ll start the regular season with the Pistons, who won’t have to fully guarantee his $1,645,357 salary until January.
• Lakers claim Kostas Antetokounmpo from Mavericks (July 21) (story)
  • Antetokounmpo was on a two-way contract with Dallas, and now occupies one of the Lakers‘ two-way slots. It’s unclear if the Lakers would’ve placed a claim if he had a different last name — his connection to older brother Giannis Antetokounmpo was probably a factor in the team’s decision, since L.A. will want to target the reigning MVP in free agency in 2021.
• Mavericks claim Aric Holman from Lakers (August 29) (story)
  • A month after the Lakers claimed a Mavericks player, Dallas returned the favor by claiming Holman off waivers. The Lakers had intended to bring Holman to training camp but had to cut him to make room for Dwight Howard. The Mavs took advantage of the opportunity to take an extended look at Holman themselves, but eventually released him.
• Rockets claim Ray Spalding from Hawks (October 10) (story)
  • A 2018 second-round pick, Spalding joined his fourth team in the span of 16 months when he was claimed off waivers by the Rockets less than two months before the season began. Because Spalding was on a non-guaranteed, minimum-salary contract, it was a simple process for Houston to bring him in and consider him for a regular season roster spot. He was waived before the regular season though.
• Cavaliers claim Tyler Cook from Nuggets (October 18) (story)
  • After the Nuggets waived Cook to open up a two-way contract slot for PJ Dozier, the Cavaliers took advantage of having their own open two-way slot to claim Cook. The undrafted rookie out of Iowa joined Dean Wade as Cleveland’s players on two-way deals.
• Cavaliers claim Alfonzo McKinnie from Warriors (October 21) (story)
  • The Cavaliers‘ second claim in less than a week was on one of the most popular waiver targets of the offseason — Cleveland likely wasn’t the only team that put in a claim on the forward, who became the victim of a roster crunch in Golden State. McKinnie opens the regular season as a member of the Cavs’ standard roster.
• Kings claim DaQuan Jeffries from Magic (October 21) (story)
  • One of five players waived by the Magic just before the regular season, Jeffries may have ended up playing for Orlando’s G League team if he hadn’t been claimed by the Kings. Because he was on an Exhibit 10 contract, Sacramento was able to convert Jeffries to a two-way contract after claiming him.
• Hawks claim Tyrone Wallace from Timberwolves (October 23) (story)
  • The first player claimed during the 2019/20 league year, Wallace also became the first player to be claimed a second time since July. His minimum salary contract and NBA experience has made him a popular target, and the Hawks had the regular season roster spot available to give him an audition to start the year.
• Pistons claim Jordan McRae from Nuggets (March 4) (story)
  • The Nuggets didn’t have much of a role for McRae after trading for him at the deadline, so they let him go on the evening on March 1 to allow him to seek a new opportunity. It looked like that opportunity would come in Phoenix, but the Pistons placed a waiver claim of their own and had a better waiver priority than the Suns.
• Knicks claim Jared Harper from Suns (June 25) (story)
  • This waiver claim was over three months in the making — the Suns initially decided to waive Harper in March, right when the NBA’s transaction moratorium went into effect. When the move finally become official in June, the Knicks were ready with a claim, cutting Kadeem Allen to open up a two-way contract slot.
• Knicks claim Theo Pinson from Nets (June 26) (story)
  • A day after nabbing Harper, new Knicks president of basketball operations Leon Rose made the second waiver claim of his tenure, waiving free-agent-to-be Allonzo Trier to make room for Pinson. The former Net has a minimum-salary team option for 2020/21. There’s no guarantee New York will pick it up, but the claim signals that the club likes him.

Every week, the Hoops Rumors writing team creates original content to complement our news feed. Here are our original segments and features from the past seven days:

• We updated our lists of the NBA’s longest-tenured head coaches and longest-tenured heads of basketball operations. The same name – Gregg Popovich – tops both lists.
• Half of the NBA’s teams face hard caps during the 2019/20 league year. We broke down the full list of teams and explained how each club imposed that hard cap on itself.
• We checked in on some of the most notable free agent guards and free agent wings who remain unsigned, nearly six weeks into the 2019/20 league year. We also looked at which members of this year’s draft class have yet to sign their first professional contracts.
• No NBA player has a no-trade clause in his contract. However, a number of players have veto power on trades during the 2019/20 league year. Here’s the list.
• Chris Crouse profiled former Sixers guard Tony Wroten in the wake of news that he’s expected to continue his playing career in Europe.
• We examined the five most valuable traded player exceptions from around the NBA to see which ones are worth keeping an eye on in trade talks in the coming months.
• In this week’s polls, we asked:
  • Which team will win the Pacific Division? (link)
  • Will Carmelo Anthony be on an NBA roster by opening night? (link)
• In this week’s Community Shootaround discussions, we explore the following topics:
  • Which 12 players should make Team USA’s 12-man World Cup roster? (link)
  • Which team has the better group of role players, the Lakers or Clippers? (link)