- According to Amick, Pelicans guard Eric Bledsoe is thought to be “very available,” but interest has been minimal so far. Bledsoe’s contract, which pays him $16.9MM this season and $18.1MM next year, will be an obstacle.
As our 10-day contract tracker shows, there are currently five players around the NBA who have active 10-day deals. Those players are as follows:
- Henry Ellenson, Raptors (runs through March 19)
- Sindarius Thornwell, Pelicans (runs through March 19)
- Damian Jones, Lakers (runs through March 20)
- Mason Jones, Rockets (runs through March 21)
- Quinn Cook, Cavaliers (runs through March 21)
Thornwell and Damian Jones are on their second 10-day contracts with their respective teams. Players can’t sign three 10-day deals with the same club, so Thornwell and Jones will either have to be re-signed to rest-of-season deals or will become free agents.
Since their contracts expire just a few days before the March 25 trade deadline, Thornwell and Jones likely won’t be re-signed immediately, as the Pelicans and Lakers look to maximize their roster flexibility for potential trades.
Ellenson, Mason Jones, and Cook are each eligible to sign one more 10-day contract with their respective teams after their current deals expire, but again, if teams prioritize roster flexibility around the trade deadline, those players may have to wait until after March 25 to get a second offer — Jones is the one exception here, since the Rockets are very shorthanded due to injuries and may not want to lose him for even a few days.
While there are just five players on active 10-day pacts for now, the Nets are a team to keep an eye on this week. They’ve had fewer than 14 players on standard contracts since March 8, when Andre Roberson‘s and Iman Shumpert‘s 10-day deals expired. Teams are only permitted to dip below that minimum roster requirement for two weeks at a time, so Brooklyn will have to add a 14th man within the next week — a 10-day signing is the most likely solution to address that issue, though the team could also make a trade or target a player for a rest-of-season contract.
The Pelicans and Lakers will also each only have 13 players under contract once their current 10-day players are no longer on the roster, so if they don’t re-sign those players right away and don’t add at least one player in a trade-deadline deal, they’ll each have to fill at least one roster spot shortly after the trade deadline, via a 10-day or rest-of-season signing.
Several other teams around the league also have an open 15th roster spot and could be candidates to sign players to 10-day contracts soon, as our roster counts page shows.
With the 2021 G League bubble coming to an end last week, players on the G League Ignite have essentially gone their separate ways and are expected to train individually ahead of the draft, Marc Stein of the New York Times tweets.
The roster has four players in particular — Jalen Green, Jonathan Kuminga, Isaiah Todd and Daishen Nix — who are projected to be drafted in 2021. Green and Kuminga are recognized as probable high lottery picks.
The team’s facilities in Walnut Creek, California remain available for players to use, Stein adds. The Ignite finished its inaugural season with an 8-7 record, having competed with a unique mix of young players and veterans.
Here are some other odds and ends from around the basketball world:
- Fred Katz of The Athletic takes a look at how the G League arrangement between the Wizards and Pelicans worked this season. Washington opted not to have an affiliate in the G League bubble, though the team did reach an agreement to send multiple players to New Orleans’ team, the Erie BayHawks, instead.
- Dan Woike of the Los Angeles Times examines how the coronavirus pandemic has virtually decimated practices in the NBA this season. Woike explores how the pandemic has made it difficult for teams to schedule practices in an unprecedented campaign, something the league hopes will improve as the year goes on. “We use the games as practice,” Nets star James Harden said. “… The most important thing is being ready once the postseason starts.”
- Maccabi Rishon (Israel) has released guard Trey Lewis, announcing the news on social media today. Lewis, 28, holds several years of overseas experience, also playing with the Jazz’s G League affiliate during the 2018/19 season. He went undrafted in 2015 after playing at Penn State, Cleveland State and Louisville.
Following non-surgical treatment today to address a sore, inflamed right heel, Pelicans guard J.J. Redick will miss at least one week of game action, according to an Associated Press report. New Orleans will re-assess the heel next week and adjust his recovery timeline accordingly.
Redick, currently on an expiring $13MM deal, has been floated as a possible sharpshooting addition to more playoff-ready rosters. With a 15-21 record, the Pelicans are currently the No. 11 seed in the West.
The 36-year-old Redick, who has been moved to a full-time bench role for the first time since the 2012/13 NBA season, is averaging 8.7 PPG on 40.7% field goal shooting and 36.4% shooting from long range this season.
The AP’s report goes on to note that the loss of Redick, a key reserve for the Pelicans this season, will yield more minutes for young guards Nickeil Alexander-Walker and Kira Lewis Jr.
“Hopefully, they make good, smart plays, take good shots — not any added pressure on them,” New Orleans head coach Stan Van Gundy said of the players’ increased workload. “They’re just going to get opportunities.”
- With the NBA G League season about to end, more young players are being recalled to their NBA clubs. The Mavericks have transferred two-way guard Nate Hinton back to the NBA from the Santa Cruz Warriors (Twitter link), while the Pelicans brought back Wenyen Gabriel, Naji Marshall, and Will Magnay from the Erie BayHawks (press release).
The Pelicans have signed guard Sindarius Thornwell to a second 10-day contract, the team announced on Twitter.
This is the third contract of the season for Thornwell, even though he has been with New Orleans virtually the entire time. He signed a non-guaranteed deal in training camp, then was waived last month to avoid having his $1.62MM cap hit locked in for the entire season.
Teams can only offer players two 10-day deals, so if the Pelicans want to keep Thornwell after this one expires, they’ll have to sign him for the rest of the season. Thornwell has appeared in 11 games so far, starting one, and averages 1.4 PPG in 4.8 minutes per night.
The former South Carolina star was a second-round pick in 2017 and spent his first two NBA seasons with the Clippers. He joined the Pelicans as a substitute player for the restart last summer, but only played two games in Orlando.
The signing leaves New Orleans with one open roster spot.
Though the Pelicans had a rocky start to the 2020/21 season, they remain in the hunt for a play-in appearance. With a 15-21 record, New Orleans is currently three games behind the Grizzlies, the No. 10 seed, for a shot at a postseason play-in game. Christian Clark, Rod Walker and Scott Kushner of NOLA.com explore how New Orleans might be able to make the postseason.
The NOLA.com team examines the Pelicans’ porous defense, whether or not guard Lonzo Ball‘s improvement since missing a handful of games in January with knee soreness is here to stay, and the lack of consistent minutes for multiple recent first-round picks. The improvement of Zion Williamson on offense, reflected by his first All-Star appearance this weekend, also gives the writers hope for the Pelicans’ postseason chances.
While Pelicans guard Lonzo Ball was a subject of frequent trade speculation earlier in the season, trade talks involving the former No. 2 overall pick have “fizzled” for the time being, sources tell Kevin O’Connor of The Ringer. A report last week also suggested that a Ball deal is becoming less likely as the trade deadline nears.
Still, that doesn’t mean that Ball will be untouchable before March 25. As O’Connor writes, New Orleans will have to assess how high it’s willing to go to retain the fourth-year point guard in restricted free agency this summer. If they think there’s a chance a rival team will give him an offer sheet they won’t want to match, the Pelicans have to at least consider getting something in return for Ball now.
Executives around the NBA still aren’t sure whether the Pelicans will end up as buyers or sellers, according to O’Connor, so they’ll be a team worth keeping a close eye on at the start of the second half.
All seven of the 10-day contracts that were signed during the final week of February have now expired. As our 10-day tracker shows, that list included three Nets deals (Tyler Cook, Iman Shumpert, and Andre Roberson), along with contracts signed by the Pelicans (Sindarius Thornwell), Raptors (Donta Hall), Lakers (Damian Jones), and Kings (Norvel Pelle).
None of those players have been re-signed to a second 10-day deal so far, but that comes as no surprise. The five teams that had players on 10-day contracts won’t begin their second-half schedules until Thursday at the earliest (Friday for the Lakers), so it doesn’t make sense to sign someone to a 10-day contract now and waste the first few days of the deal.
That doesn’t mean that all the players listed above will get a second 10-day stint with their respective teams later this week, but some of them seem like good bets to stick around a little longer. Jones, for instance, looked good during his 10 days as a Laker, putting up eight points in eight minutes in his first appearance and earning a start in Sacramento last Wednesday.
Additionally, it’s worth noting that the Lakers and Pelicans are now carrying 13 players on standard contracts, while the Nets are carrying just 12. The NBA requires teams to have a minimum of 14 players under contract (not counting two-ways), but clubs are permitted to dip below that minimum for two weeks at a time.
So even if those three clubs decide not to bring back the same players on 10-day contracts, they’ll have to add a player (two players in Brooklyn’s case, but one will be Blake Griffin) at some point during the next couple weeks.
The Jazz are also in this boat, but will have to add a player even sooner. They dipped to 13 players on standard contracts when they waived Shaquille Harrison on February 24, so we can probably expect them to sign a player to a 10-day deal before the second-half schedule gets underway this week.
The Hornets, Cavaliers, Pistons, Rockets, Clippers, Bucks, Timberwolves, Suns, Trail Blazers, Kings, Spurs, and Raptors also have openings on their 15-man rosters, but aren’t under any pressure to fill them in the near future, since they’re all at the 14-player minimum.
Most teams with open roster spots will fill them before the end of the regular season, but for the time being, it makes sense for those teams to either hold them open or fill them with players on 10-day deals in order to maximize their roster flexibility for the March 25 trade deadline.
- During a recent interview with team broadcaster Todd Graffagnini of ESPN New Orleans, Pelicans team president David Griffin explained the reasoning behind the team prioritizing its veterans over its youth. “So where we’re struggling right now is finding a way to play those guys in a way that makes sense within the framework of a system that doesn’t allow for practice to put them in a position to succeed when they’re on the court,” Griffin said (a transcript is viewable here). “So it’s complicated, and I think the coaches have done a remarkable job of trying to find the balance there. I really take exception to the idea that, well, if you’re losing, you might as well be playing the young kid, that that doesn’t make any sense.”
- Pelicans forward Zion Williamson will start in place of Sixers center Joel Embiid in the starting lineup for tonight’s All-Star game, Adrian Wojnarowski of EPN tweets. Embiid and his Philadelphia teammate Ben Simmons will be missing the contest as a result of COVID-19 contact tracing. Scott Kushner of The Times-Picayune details how Williamson’s exciting offensive game makes him an ideal fit for the All-Star stage.