The Thunder are trading center Steven Adams to the Pelicans and it isn’t the first time New Orleans tried to make that happen, ESPN’s Royce Young tweets. The Pelicans pursued an Adams trade last offseason when the Thunder shook up their roster by trading Paul George and Russell Westbrook but the teams couldn’t work out an agreement at that time.
NOVEMBER 30: Both signings are now official, per RealGM’s NBA transactions log.
NOVEMBER 23: The Pelicans are filling two of their roster spots with forward Wenyen Gabriel and guard Sindarius Thornwell, ESPN’s Andrew Lopez tweets.
Both will play on veteran minimum deals. Gabriel is receiving a two-year contract with a team option for the 2021/22 season.
New Orleans plans to go with a 14-player roster, including restricted free agent Brandon Ingram, Will Guillory of The Athletic tweets. Ingram has yet to sign but he’s expected to get a max contract.
The Pelicans also plan to fill both two-way slots, Guillory adds.
Gabriel began last season with the Kings and was traded in midseason to the Trail Blazers. The undrafted Gabriel appeared in a combined 30 regular-season games as a rookie and also saw action in four postseason games.
Thornwell was part of the Clippers’ rotation for two seasons but appeared in just two games with the Pelicans last season after signing as a substitute player during the restart. Otherwise, he spent the 2019/20 season with the Rio Grande Valley Vipers in the G League.
Big man Serge Ibaka was not bereft of contending suitors in free agency, according to Michael Scotto of HoopsHype. Scotto notes that the Raptors, the team with whom Ibaka spent most of the last four seasons, apparently offered a one-year, $12MM deal to Ibaka for an encore appearance in 2020/21. Toronto was believed to be unwilling to offer multiple years, which would have cut into the team’s projected 2021 cap space.
The Nets also wanted Ibaka, but could only afford a taxpayer mid-level exception, which would have started at $5.7MM this season. Ibaka ultimately inked a two-year, $19MM contract with the Clippers.
Here are more free agency rumors:
- Though swingman Wesley Iwundu ultimately opted to sign a two-year, veteran’s minimum contract with the Mavericks, the Hawks, Pelicans and Kings were also in the running for Iwundu’s services this offseason, Scotto reports in the same piece.
- The Mavericks and Kings also considered adding reserve center Willy Hernangomez before he agreed to terms with the Pelicans on a one-year, veteran’s minimum deal, per Scotto. Hernangomez’s 2019/20 club, the Hornets, also apparently wanted to re-sign the 26-year-old big man.
- Scotto reports that former Kings wing Kent Bazemore also found himself in high demand this offseason before agreeing to a one-year veteran’s minimum deal with the Warriors. The Lakers, Clippers, Bucks, Celtics, Suns, Knicks, Nets, and Hornets were all interested in adding the three-and-D vet this offseason.
Kenrich Williams, Josh Gray, and Zylan Cheatham will be dealt from the Pelicans to the Thunder as part of the massive multi-team trade that will send Jrue Holiday to Milwaukee and Steven Adams to New Orleans, reports Shams Charania of The Athletic (via Twitter).
[RELATED: Thunder trading Steven Adams to Pelicans]
The Pelicans needed to send out a little more salary in order to accommodate the incoming contracts of Adams ($27.5MM) and Eric Bledsoe ($16.9MM). Because Williams, Gray, and Cheatham were free agents, they’ll have to be signed-and-traded to be included in the deal.
Sign-and-trade contracts must run for at least three seasons, with a fully guaranteed first year, so being included in the trade will work out well for Williams, Gray, and Cheatham, as Bobby Marks of ESPN notes (via Twitter). They would have been hard-pressed to find fully guaranteed minimum-salary contracts on the open market.
Darius Miller – who is also being sent to Oklahoma City from New Orleans – is another big winner in the swap, as he’ll have his $7MM salary guaranteed for salary-matching purposes.
With all of those players being included in the deal, Adams will no longer be required to waive his trade kicker, worth about $2MM, tweets Marks. That’ll bump the veteran center’s cap hit to about $29.6MM.
As reported by Charania, the blockbuster Holiday/Adams deal currently looks like this:
- Bucks to acquire Holiday and the draft rights to Sam Merrill (No. 60 pick; from Pelicans).
- Pelicans to acquire Adams, Bledsoe, the Bucks’ 2025 first-round pick (unprotected), the Bucks’ 2027 first-round pick (unprotected), and the right to swap first-round picks with the Bucks in 2024 and 2026.
- Thunder to acquire George Hill, Miller, Williams, Gray, Cheatham, the Nuggets’ 2023 first-round pick (top-14 protected), the Wizards’ 2023 second-round pick (from Pelicans), and the Hornets’ 2024 second-round pick (from Pelicans).
- Nuggets to acquire the draft rights to RJ Hampton (No. 24 pick; from Bucks).
It’s not clear if that’s what the trade will look like in its final form or if more pieces will be added before it becomes official.
The Bucks are taking the protections off the 2022 first-round pick they previously sent to the Cavaliers, and Cleveland is getting an extra second-round pick for Milwaukee for accommodating that change, which frees up the future first-rounders to be sent to New Orleans. That pick going to the Cavs will be Indiana’s 2025 second-rounder, per John Hollinger of The Athletic.
The Bucks/Cavaliers aspect of the deal could be completed separately, as cap expert Albert Nahmad tweets. But if it gets rolled into this trade, it would mean a fifth team joining the fray once it becomes official.
NOVEMBER 24: The Pelicans have officially signed Hernangomez, per the NBA’s transactions log.
NOVEMBER 22: The Pelicans are set to sign center Willy Hernangomez to a one-year veteran’s minimum contract, Shams Charania of The Athletic and Stadium tweets. With four years of NBA experience to his credit, Hernangomez should earn $1,737,145 on such a deal.
The 250-pound 6’11” journeyman center, 26, started his NBA career with the Knicks, who drafted him with the 35th pick in 2015. Hernangomez finally joined New York for the 2016/17 season, and was eventually flipped to the Hornets in 2018. He will now back up starting Pelicans center Steven Adams, sent to New Orleans in a recent trade by the Thunder.
Hernangomez will essentially replace reserve center Jahlil Okafor in the New Orleans rotation. Okafor left the Pelicans for the Pistons in free agency. Hernangomez holds career averages of 6.9 PPG and 5.4 RPG in just 14.4 MPG.
9:00am: Wojnarowski has another update on this deal, reporting (via Twitter) that George Hill will indeed end up with the Thunder rather than the Pelicans. New Orleans will also send Oklahoma City Darius Miller‘s $7MM expiring contract, Washington’s 2023 second-round pick, and Charlotte’s 2024 second-round pick, Woj adds.
New Orleans is still acquiring Bledsoe in the multi-team trade, per Woj (Twitter link), so Miller’s contract will likely need to become fully guaranteed for salary-matching purposes and the Pelicans will still probably have to send out a bit more salary. So I expect there are still more parts of this deal to be reported.
ESPN’s Bobby Marks notes (via Twitter) that Adams may also need to amend his trade kicker to make the money work.
12:41am: The lottery-protected 2023 first-round pick that the Nuggets agreed to send to the Pelicans on draft night in order to land RJ Hampton will be rerouted to Oklahoma City as part of this deal, according to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski (via Twitter). The Thunder will also receive two future second-round picks from New Orleans, per ESPN.
12:00am: Having already traded away guards Chris Paul and Dennis Schröder, the Thunder are now finalizing a trade that will send veteran center Steven Adams to the Pelicans, according to Shams Charania of The Athletic (Twitter link).
The deal is becoming a part of the Jrue Holiday blockbuster that New Orleans and the Bucks previously agreed upon, according to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, who reports (via Twitter) that the Holiday trade will expand to include more teams and players. It still has “a lot of moving parts” and will take some work to finish, tweets Wojnarowski.
The Thunder will be receiving a first-round pick and second-round picks as part of the expanded swap, per Woj (Twitter link).
While it’s tricky to evaluate the deal before we know all those moving parts, we can at least break down Adams’ fit in New Orleans. He’ll fill the hole in the frontcourt created by the free agent departures of Derrick Favors and Jahlil Okafor earlier this evening. The Pelicans were said to have interest in Aron Baynes, among other big men, but it looks like Adams will be the team’s new man in the middle.
In 2019/20, Adams averaged 10.9 PPG, 9.3 RPG, and 2.3 APG in 63 games (26.7 MPG) as Oklahoma City’s starting center. His contract is somewhat onerous, with a $27.5MM cap hit for 2020/21. However, it’ll be an expiring deal and will come off the Pelicans’ cap next summer.
With the Pelicans now taking on Adams’ salary, it seems likely that at least one of the point guards they were set to receive in the Holiday trade – Eric Bledsoe and George Hill – will be rerouted elsewhere — most likely to OKC.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
DECEMBER 1: Okafor’s agreement with the Pistons is now official, the team announced in a press release.
NOVEMBER 20: The Pistons added another big man to their stockpile of frontcourt players, as they’re signing Jahlil Okafor to a two-year contract, Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN tweets. Okafor will sign for the veteran’s minimum, Rod Beard of the Detroit News tweets.
Detroit has added a number of centers and power forwards in recent days. It drafted Isaiah Stewart in the middle of the first round on Wednesday and traded for Dewayne Dedmon. The Pistons also reached a three-year agreement with Nuggets free agent Mason Plumlee.
All this makes it more unlikely their top free agent, Christian Wood, will return. It’s still conceivable they could make a sign-and-trade deal with one of Wood’s pursuers.
Okafor has spent the last two seasons with the Pelicans. He contributed 8.1 PPG, 4.2 RPG and 1.2 APG in 15.6 MPG in 30 appearances last season. Like Plumlee, Okafor is not a 3-point threat. The third overall pick in the 2015 draft has averaged 11.0 PPG and 5.0 RPG in 220 career games.
The Kings have interest in free agent center Hassan Whiteside, ESPN’s Brian Windhorst said today on The Jump (Twitter link via Jason Anderson of The Sacramento Bee). James Ham of NBC Sports California confirms (via Twitter) that he has heard similar whispers, though he cautions he’s not sure how serious that interest is.
Here are more free agency rumors:
- Free agent center Derrick Favors is expected to have contact with his current team – the Pelicans – and his old team – the Jazz – as free agency opens, league sources tell Tony Jones of The Athletic (Twitter link). Other teams will also kick the tires on Favors, Jones adds.
- The Jazz are making re-sigining Jordan Clarkson their top priority in free agency, tweets Tony Jones.
- The Wizards are meeting with Davis Bertans as free agency opens, according to Chris Miller of NBC Sports Washington (Twitter link). Re-signing the stretch four has long been considered Washington’s top priority this offseason.
The Lakers anticipate being “first in line” to talk to two of their veteran free agents, Dwight Howard and Avery Bradley, when free agency opens, league sources tell Michael Scotto of HoopsHype.
Howard and Bradley are expected to draw interest from multiple other clubs, including perhaps the Warriors, but it sounds like L.A. has interest in bringing back both of them. The Lakers and veteran forward Jared Dudley also have mutual interest in a new deal, Scotto adds.
Here’s more from Scotto on free agency:
- The Hornets are expected to be in the market for a free agent center, according to Scotto, who notes that the team will likely lose Bismack Biyombo and Willy Hernangomez in free agency.
- Scotto echoes a rumor we heard earlier in the week, writing that the Pelicans are expected to show interest in free agent center Aron Baynes.
- The Kings and Kent Bazemore are expected to have mutual interest in reaching a new deal, according to Scotto, who notes that the free agent swingman will likely speak with a number of teams once free agency begins.
Teams around the NBA are projecting Pelicans forward Brandon Ingram, Celtics forward Jayson Tatum, and Jazz guard Donovan Mitchell to agree to maximum-salary contracts with their respective teams not long after free agency opens, according to Marc Stein of The New York Times (Twitter link).
Ingram, the top restricted free agent on the market this fall, made the All-Star team for the first time in 2020, averaging 23.8 PPG, 6.1 RPG, and 4.2 APG as the Pelicans’ go-to scorer. His maximum salary for the coming season will be $27.3MM and he could earn up to $158.3MM if he signs a full five-year contract. A four-year max deal would be worth $122.2MM.
As for Tatum and Mitchell, neither player is a free agent this year, but both are eligible for rookie scale extensions that will go into effect in 2021/22. They’ve long been considered two of the most likely players from this year’s group of rookie-extension-eligible players to sign lucrative new contracts, so Stein’s report comes as no surprise.
The value of Tatum’s and Mitchell’s contracts will depend on how much the cap increases for the ’21/22 season. A 3% increase would result in a total value of at least $163MM over five years. That number could go a little higher if Rose Rule language is included in their new deals and they make an All-NBA team in 2021.
Stein adds that Anthony Davis is expected to be a max-salary player too, which is a given. A report earlier today indicated that Davis may take his time considering the length and structure of his contract before formally re-signing with the Lakers.