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Minor Moves: Johnson, Blazers, Brown

October 31st, 2012 at 7:40pm CST by Chuck Myron

With the D-League draft two days away and several training camp invitees out on the open market after cuts this week, there's plenty of player movement going on outside the NBA. We'll round up the latest here.

JaJuan Johnson, whom the Rockets recently waived, has entered his name into the D-League draft and is expected to be the No. 1 pick, reports Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports (Twitter link).
Blazers camp invitees Coby Karl, Dallas Lauderdale and Justin Holiday have all been added to the roster of the Idaho Stampede, Portland's D-League affiliate, tweets Ben Golliver of Blazer's Edge. Presumably, that means the Blazers elected not to protect the D-League rights of Demonte Harper and Adam Morrison, the other two camp invitees the team waived this weekend.
A Russian team has announced that they've signed free agent forward Derrick Brown, reports Emiliano Carchia of Sportando. The newest member of the club Lokomotiv Kuban was competing for a roster spot with the Spurs until San Antonio waived him last week.

Blazers To Send Harper, Lauderdale To D-League

October 23rd, 2012 at 6:24pm CST by Chuck Myron

Camp invitees Demonte Harper and Dallas Lauderdale aren't traveling with the Blazers to Utah for Thursday's preseason game, and Chris Haynes of CSNNW.com tweets that the team plans to send them to the Idaho Stampede, Portland's D-League affiliate. While that doesn't necessarily mean those two are getting cut, Haynes points out via Twitter that NBA clubs are allowed to protect up to three training camp invitees for their D-League affliates, once those players clear NBA waivers. So, it seems likely that's the plan for Harper and Lauderdale.

Haynes also tweets that GM Neil Olshey said he'll make roster cuts Saturday, which would allow the players to clear waivers by 5pm Eastern time Monday, the deadline for teams to be at the 15-man regular season roster limit. Harper and Lauderdale won't be waived before Saturday, Haynes says, since Olshey has maintained that he wants to wait as long as possible to make his cuts (Twitter link). The Blazers currently have 20 players on the roster, which is the preseason limit. Six are candidates to be cut, since they are all without even a partial guarantee, and that list includes Harper and Lauderdale. The other 14 have fully guaranteed deals. Mike Tokito of The Oregonian identifies Coby Karl and Justin Holiday as two likely candidates to be the third player waived and protected for Idaho (Twitter link).

Harper, a 6'4" guard, spent last year with the Croatian club KK Cibona after going undrafted out of Morehead State in 2011. He played with the Nuggets in summer league, but has registered just four minutes of playing time in preseason with the Blazers. Lauderdale, a 6'8" Ohio State product, was also passed over in the 2011 draft, and played with Turow Zgorzelec in Poland last season. He was with the Warriors' summer league team, but like Harper, hasn't seen much preseason action, garnering only six minutes.

Blazers Sign Demonte Harper, Dallas Lauderdale

September 21st, 2012 at 3:10pm CST by Luke Adams

The Trail Blazers have added Demonte Harper and Dallas Lauderdale to their training camp roster, the team announced today (Twitter link). The Blazers also made their signing of Adam Morrison official, bring their roster count to 18 players.

Harper, 23, was part of the Nuggets' summer league roster in July, having gone undrafted out of Morehead State in 2011. In his senior year, the 6'4" guard averaged 15.5 PPG, shooting 37.3% from three-point range. Lauderdale, meanwhile, played his college ball at Ohio State and also went undrafted a year ago. The big man played for the Warriors' summer league squad in Vegas.

Harper, Lauderdale, and Morrison are all likely competing with Sasha Pavlovic to earn the final roster spot, since Portland's other 14 players are on guaranteed contracts.