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Lester Quinones

Checking In On Active, Expired 10-Day Contracts

March 12th, 2023 at 12:00pm CST by Luke Adams

Lester Quinones‘ 10-day contract with the Warriors expired after Saturday’s game, opening up a spot on Golden State’s 15-man roster.

Quinones remained with the Santa Cruz Warriors in the G League for most of the 10 days he spent under contract with Golden State. He was recalled to the NBA on Saturday and was technically active for last night’s game vs. Milwaukee, but didn’t play at all and has yet to make his NBA debut.

As we outlined when Quinones first signed his 10-day deal, his addition to the 15-man roster allowed the Warriors to continue using both of their two-way players, Anthony Lamb and Ty Jerome. Lamb has since reached his limit of 50 games on the active roster, while Jerome is now at 47 games and will be ineligible to play his final three unless Golden State fills its 15th roster spot again.

It will be interesting to see how the Warriors manage their two-way contracts and their 15-man roster going forward. Promoting Lamb to the standard roster would make him eligible to play in the rest of the team’s regular season games and in any postseason contests, in addition to freeing up Jerome for three more games. However, it would limit Golden State’s roster flexibility going forward and would force the club to waive a player on a guaranteed contract in order to sign anyone else before the end of the season.

Quinones is one of two players whose 10-day contract expired this week, joining Willie Cauley-Stein of the Rockets. Houston is now carrying just 13 players on standard deals and must add a 14th man (Cauley-Stein again or someone else) by March 23 to meet the NBA’s minimum roster requirements.

Three more players on 10-day contracts will see their deals expire tonight, while two others will expire on Monday night. Here’s the breakdown of the 10-day contracts currently active around the NBA:

Players marked with an asterisk (*) are on their second 10-day deals with their respective teams. That means Dunn and Leonard would have to be signed for the rest of the season if their clubs want to retain them beyond Monday night, since they aren’t permitted to sign three standard 10-day contracts with the same team.

Players marked with a caret (^) are on clubs that don’t currently have full 15-man rosters. The Jazz are actually currently carrying just 13 players and will need to get back up to at least 14 by March 18. So even if they lock up Dunn to a full-season contract, they’ll need to sign one more player before next Saturday.

The Knicks, meanwhile, would be at 13 players on their standard roster if they don’t re-sign Jeffries to a second 10-day deal and would have up to two weeks to add a new 14th man.

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Warriors Sign Lester Quinones To 10-Day Contract

March 2nd, 2023 at 12:50pm CST by Luke Adams

MARCH 2: Quinones’ 10-day deal is now official, the Warriors announced (via Twitter).

MARCH 1: The Warriors intend to promote guard Lester Quinones from their G League affiliate in Santa Cruz to their NBA roster, having agreed to sign him to a 10-day contract, reports Shams Charania of The Athletic (Twitter link).

The move is being made due to a rule buried deep in the NBA’s Collective Bargaining Agreement, as Anthony Slater of The Athletic explains. A team that has an open spot on its 15-man roster can only have its two-way players active for a total of 90 combined games, rather than 100 (50 each).

Golden State’s two-way players have hit that 90-game limit — Anthony Lamb has been active for 47 games and Ty Jerome has been active for 43. By filling the 15th spot on their standard roster, the Warriors will ensure that they can continue to activate Lamb and Jerome for at least a few more games.

As Slater observes, a simpler solution may have been for the Warriors to promote one of those two-way players to a standard contract, but the club wants to maintain some roster flexibility before finalizing any decisions on Lamb or Jerome. There’s an expectation that at least one of them will likely be promoted before the end of the season, but it may come down to which player head coach Steve Kerr believes would be more needed in the playoff rotation.

After going undrafted out of Memphis last summer, Quinones signed a two-way contract with Golden State, but he was waived just before the regular season began in October and has instead spent his first professional season as an affiliate player for the Santa Cruz Warriors.

Quinones averaged 17.4 points on .498/.436/.745 shooting in 18 Showcase Cup games (29.6 MPG) and has put up 20.7 PPG, 7.1 RPG, and 4.9 APG with a .448/.361/.808 shooting line in 21 NBAGL regular season appearances (32.5 MPG) for Santa Cruz.

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Warriors Waive Quinndary Weatherspoon, Lester Quinones

October 13th, 2022 at 12:19pm CST by Luke Adams

The Warriors have opened up both of their two-way contract slots, announcing today (via Twitter) that they’ve waived guards Quinndary Weatherspoon and Lester Quinones. Both players had been on two-way deals.

With Weatherspoon and Quinones on waivers, the four players who are on Exhibit 10 contracts with the Warriors have become prime candidates to fill those newly opened two-way spots. Ty Jerome, Jerome Robinson, Pat Spencer, and Anthony Lamb are all eligible to have their Exhibit 10 deals converted into two-ways.

The 49th overall pick in the 2019 draft, Weatherspoon signed a two-way contract with the Warriors in January after spending his first two years in the NBA with San Antonio. The 26-year-old appeared in 11 games for Golden State, averaging 2.7 PPG and 1.3 RPG in 6.6 MPG.

Quinones, meanwhile, agreed to a two-way deal with the Warriors after going undrafted out of Memphis in June. Quinones averaged 10.0 PPG, 3.5 RPG, 1.3 APG and 1.2 SPG during his junior season in 2021/22, shooting 44.9% from the field and making 39.0% of his three-point attempts.

Golden State has until Monday to set its roster for the regular season.

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Warriors Working Out Ben McLemore, Elfrid Payton, Others

September 6th, 2022 at 1:51pm CST by Luke Adams

The Warriors are bringing in a number of veteran free agents this week for workouts, league sources tell Shams Charania and Anthony Slater of The Athletic.

According to Charania and Slater, some of the free agents taking part in the workouts are Ben McLemore, Elfrid Payton, Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, Kenneth Faried, Miye Oni, Ty-Shon Alexander, Wesley Saunders, and Jon Axel Gudmundsson.

Golden State also held similar free agent workouts in August, according to Charania and Slater, who say that Shabazz Muhammad, Solomon Hill, Tyler Cook, and Kelan Martin were among the players who participated in those sessions about two weeks ago.

The purpose of this week’s workouts is twofold — as Tim Kawakami of The Athletic tweets, the players currently on the Warriors’ roster are beginning their informal pre-camp work at the team’s facility this week, so the free agents who join them will help ensure there are enough bodies to play 5-on-5 scrimmages. Additionally, there’s an expectation that the Warriors could sign one or more of the auditioning veterans to their 20-man training camp roster, per Charania and Slater.

Golden State currently has 18 players under contract (13 on guaranteed standard deals), with Jerome Robinson expected to be the 19th. That leaves one spot available for now.

Andre Iguodala has yet to decide whether he’ll retire or return to the Warriors for another season, so it’s possible he could fill that 20th and final roster spot (and become the 14th man on the team’s projected regular season roster). Robinson, Mac McClung, Pat Spencer, and Trevion Williams are among the camp invitees who could compete for a place on the 15-man regular season roster, especially if Iguodala doesn’t return.

Charania and Slater also note that that, while Lester Quinones and Quinndary Weatherspoon are currently on two-way deals, those roster spots are flexible. According to The Athletic’s duo, the Warriors are high on Weatherspoon, who is a candidate to join the 15-man roster either this fall or later in the season

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Lester Quinones Signs Two-Way Deal With Warriors

July 5th, 2022 at 6:28pm CST by Dana Gauruder

JULY 5: Quinones’ two-way deal with the Warriors is now official, the team announced (via Twitter).

JUNE 23: The Warriors are adding Memphis guard Lester Quinones on a two-way contract, Shams Charania of Stadium tweets.

Quinones averaged 10 PPG, 3.5 RPG, 1.3 APG and 1.2 SPG during his junior season. He shot 44.9% from the field and 38.9% on 3-point attempts.

Golden State had guards Chris Chiozza and Quinndary Weatherspoon on two-way deals at the end of the season, but Chiozza is no longer eligible for a two-way contract and there’s no guarantee Weatherspoon will be back.

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New York Notes: Nets, M. James, Knicks, Workouts

June 7th, 2022 at 9:00am CST by Luke Adams

After playing with the Nets down the stretch in the 2020/21 season, veteran guard Mike James is interested in returning to Brooklyn, a league insider tells NetsDaily. James remains close with star forward Kevin Durant, who traveled to Europe to watch his former teammate play in the EuroLeague this spring.

With Kyrie Irving, Patty Mills, and Goran Dragic all eligible for free agency, the Nets’ backcourt could undergo some changes this offseason, so a reunion with James isn’t out of the question. The team still controls his Non-Bird rights and could offer him either a minimum-salary deal or something slightly above it.

Still, it’s unclear whether the Nets have interest in bringing back James, who threw some cold water on NetsDaily’s report himself in a reply on Twitter.

“(I don’t know) how to even take this rumor,” James wrote. “Would I like to play alongside my friend Kevin? Yes. But I’d also like to play alongside my 10 other of my close friends. Some play in the NBA, Europe and some don’t play professional.”

Here’s more on the NBA’s two New York teams:

  • The Knicks worked out a handful of possible lottery targets on Monday. In addition to TyTy Washington, G League Ignite guard Dyson Daniels and Ohio State wing Malaki Branham were also in town to audition for the team, according to Fred Katz of The Athletic and Ian Begley of SNY.tv (Twitter links).
  • Memphis forward Josh Minott, viewed as a probable second-round pick, also worked out for the Knicks on Monday, tweets Adam Zagoria of ZagsBlog.com.
  • Memphis shooting guard Lester Quinones is working out for the Knicks on Tuesday and the Nets on Thursday, a source tells Jake Weingarten of StockRisers.com (Twitter link). Quinones has previously worked out for the Warriors and Lakers, among other teams.
  • Notre Dame forward Paul Atkinson, the 2020 Ivy League Player of the Year at Yale, will work out on Tuesday for the Nets, tweets Zagoria.
  • Fred Katz of The Athletic explores several hypothetical scenarios in which the Knicks trade up from No. 11, weighing how many assets they’d have to give up and whether their potential trade partners would have legitimate interest.
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Southeast Notes: Heat, Magic, Quinones, Wizards

June 5th, 2022 at 3:44pm CST by Alex Kirschenbaum

After an exciting 53-29 season that saw them get to within one win of its second NBA Finals appearance in three seasons, the Heat appear set to make some adjustments during the summer to get over the hump. Ira Winderman of the South Florida Sun Sentinel notes that the Heat rarely leave a stone unturned in the free agency and trade markets, and that the team could pursue adding All-Star talents like guards Donovan Mitchell and Bradley Beal if they become available.

There’s more out of the Southeast Division:

  • The Magic worked out Memphis guard Lester Quinones over the weekend, according to Jake Weingarten of StockRisers.com (Twitter link). Quinones played for three seasons with the Tigers, averaging 10.1 PPG, 4.3 RPG, 1.8 APG and 0.9 SPG across 87 games, including 81 starts. The Magic possess the top pick in the 2022 draft, as well as the No. 32 and No. 35 selections in the second round.
  • The Wizards are set to work out several young hopefuls tomorrow ahead of the draft, per Ava Wallace of the Washington Post (Twitter link). Wallace notes that Vanderbilt guard Scotty Pippen Jr., LSU forward Tari Eason, Baylor guard James Akinjo, and Connecticut guard R.J. Cole will be working out for Washington. The Wizards possess the No. 10 and No. 56 picks in the upcoming 2022 NBA draft. Eason is the highest-ranked prospect among these four, coming in at No. 18 on ESPN’s big board.
  • In case you missed it, we took a look at the Hawks‘ 2022 offseason, examining the personnel that could be on the move, both among players under contract for the 2022/23 season and free agents.
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Southeast Draft Notes: Murray, Hawks, Wizards, Hornets

June 2nd, 2022 at 7:35pm CST by Dana Gauruder

The Magic hold the No. 1 pick and Iowa’s Keegan Murray isn’t expected to go higher than No. 4 in the lottery. That didn’t prevent Orlando from doing its due diligence on the high-scoring wing. Murray came in for a pre-draft workout on Thursday, Khobi Price of the Orlando Sentinel tweets. The two sides also had a discussion during the draft combine in Chicago, Price adds.

We have more developments from the Southeast Division:

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Draft Decisions: Timme, Sasser, Quinones, Bernard, More

June 1st, 2022 at 11:00pm CST by Rory Maher

Big man Drew Timme, ranked No. 63 on ESPN’s big board, has withdrawn from the 2022 NBA draft and will return to Gonzaga for his senior season, he announced via Twitter.

Timme was the 2021/22 West Coast Conference Player of the Year and a two-time All-American for the Bulldogs, but he struggled defensively and needs to “modernize his game” by adding a three-point shot and improving on the boards, according to ESPN’s Jonathan Givony.

Houston guard Marcus Sasser also announced (on Twitter) that he’s withdrawing from the draft and returning to the Cougars for his senior season. He’s No. 70 on ESPN’s board, so he was considered a fringe second-round pick, but shot an impressive 43.7% from deep (on 8.6 attempts) while averaging 17.7 PPG and 2.2 SPG in ’21/22.

Meanwhile, Memphis junior Lester Quinones will stay in the draft and turn pro, a source tells Steven Johnson of The Daily Memphian. Johnson writes that Quinones has impressed teams in workouts and could become a second-rounder despite being unranked by ESPN.

UCLA’s Jules Bernard will forgo his extra year of eligibility and stay in the draft, a source tells Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN (Twitter link). Bernard worked out for the Lakers earlier today, and Kyle Goon of The Southern California News Group reports (via Twitter) that the swingman had a solid performance.

Here are a handful of other early entrants withdrawing from the draft, with the NCAA’s withdrawal deadline about to strike:

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Pacific Notes: James, Kuminga, Booker, Kings Draft Workout

May 14th, 2022 at 9:33am CST by Dana Gauruder

LeBron James can sign a two-year extension this offseason and it increasingly appears he’s on board with the team’s future plans. Brian Windhorst said on ESPN’s Get Up show that James and Lakers owner Jeanie Buss are “in a good place” as the franchise tries to move on from a disastrous season (hat tip to Hoops Hype).

“From what I understand, LeBron and Jeanie are in a good place right now, despite the frustrations of this season,” Windhorst said. “LeBron believes that a few tweaks and some health can actually turn this thing around, and they can be super competitive. He is invested, wants to be there.”

We have more from the Pacific Division:

  • Jonathan Kuminga didn’t play in Game 6 against the Grizzlies but Draymond Green believes the Warriors rookie has a very bright future, as he told Marc Spears of Andscape. “He can be a perennial All-Star in this league,” Green said. “That’s up to him and the work he puts in. But he has the skills, the tools, he can see the floor, he has the opportunity if he puts the work in to be a perennial All-Star.”
  • Devin Booker finished fourth in the voting for the Most Valuable Player award but the Suns guard should be at the forefront of the conversation for next year’s award, Duane Rankin of the Arizona Republic writes. Along with his scoring and play-making, Booker has cut down on his turnovers and improved defensively.
  • The Kings brought in six draft prospects on Thursday, Jason Anderson of the Sacramento Bee tweets. That group included Will Richardson (Oregon), Jamal Bieniemy (UTEP), Lester Quinones (Memphis), Jeriah Horne (Tulsa), Kenneth Lofton Jr. (Louisiana Tech) and Efe Abogidi (Washington State).
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