- A handful of teams using cap room this season have renounced their free agent rights to one or more players in order to maximize their space. According to RealGM’s transaction log, the Pacers (George Hill), Kings (Terence Davis, Jeremy Lamb, Corey Brewer), Pistons (Hamidou Diallo, Rodney McGruder, and Buddy Boeheim), and Thunder (eight players, including Dario Saric, Jared Butler, and Nick Collison) all renounced players. In some cases, those cap holds had been on teams’ books for multiple seasons — they won’t be there going forward.
JULY 6, 8:15pm: The Pacers and Kings have officially completed the trade sending Duarte to Sacramento. The Kings put out a press release confirming the move.
JULY 6, 2:43pm: The Pacers and Kings are in agreement on their Duarte trade, according to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski (Twitter link), who reports that the deal is expected to be finalized today.
Indiana will receive Dallas’ 2028 second-round pick and Sacramento’s own 2030 second-rounder, reports Dustin Dopirak of The Indianapolis Star (Twitter link).
JUNE 30, 9:41am: The Kings and Pacers are nearing an agreement on a trade that will send wing Chris Duarte to Sacramento, sources tell Shams Charania of The Athletic (Twitter link). According to Charania, Indiana would receive draft compensation in the deal.
Duarte, 26, was the 13th overall pick in the 2021 draft out of Oregon. He had a promising rookie season in 2021/22, averaging 13.1 PPG with a .369 3PT% in 55 games (28.0 MPG), but took a step back in his second year in the NBA.
The 6’6″ swingman battled injuries that limited him to 46 games in 2022/23 and his numbers dipped to 7.9 PPG with a .316 3PT%. The emergence of rookie Bennedict Mathurin and the addition of another former lottery pick, Aaron Nesmith, resulted in Duarte playing a diminished role (19.5 MPG) even when he was available.
The Kings appear willing to bet that Duarte can recapture his rookie former and will take on his $4.1MM guaranteed salary for 2023/24. They’ll have to make a decision by October 31 on his $5.9MM option for the ’24/25 season. If that option is picked up, Duarte would become extension-eligible during the 2024 offseason.
The Pacers also reportedly discussed Duarte in their trade talks with the Hawks about De’Andre Hunter.
JULY 6: The trade between the Kings and Mavericks is official, according to an announcement from the Mavs (Twitter link). Dallas acquired Holmes into the trade exception created in the Bertans deal, along with the rights to Prosper, in exchange for cash considerations.
JUNE 22: The Kings will trade center Richaun Holmes and the 24th pick to the Mavericks, tweets ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski. Marquette’s Olivier-Maxence Prosper was the selection at No. 24.
Holmes is under contract for 2023/24 at $12MM and holds a $12.8MM player option for the following season. Dallas will acquire him using the traded player exception it created earlier in the night by sending Davis Bertans to Oklahoma City.
Holmes, who had been Sacramento’s starting center for two-and-a-half seasons, saw his playing time slip dramatically after the 2022 trade deadline as Domantas Sabonis took over the starting job. Holmes averaged just 3.1 points and 1.9 rebounds in 42 games while playing 8.3 minutes per night.
The Mavericks continue to add frontline depth after landing Duke center Dereck Lively II with the 12th pick. It appears likely that Holmes will have a larger role in Dallas as the team tries to rebuild its supporting cast around Luka Doncic and the expected return of Kyrie Irving.
Prosper was able to raise his draft stock with an impressive showing at the combine and strong showings throughout the workout process. He reportedly held workouts with at least 16 teams.
The Kings’ return in the deal is not yet known, but it will likely be minimal, since Holmes is considered a salary dump. Sacramento now has the ability to create more than $30MM in cap room this offseason.
On a recent episode of Podcast P with Paul George (YouTube link), Draymond Green said new point guard Chris Paul will help stabilize the Warriors‘ second unit and “unlock” one of the team’s former lottery picks.
“CP can anchor that unit…and I think that is a big thing to helping unlock our team again…I’ll tell you one more thing that I think it unlocks and I look forward to learning this from him; I think Chris Paul will completely unlock Jonathan Kuminga and his growth. CP is great with young guys,” Green said (hat tip to HoopsHype).
The Warriors are trading Jordan Poole, Ryan Rollins, Patrick Baldwin, a top-20 protected 2030 first-round pick, and a 2027 second round pick to the Wizards for Paul. The deal isn’t official yet but likely will be tomorrow once the free agency moratorium lifts.
Here’s more from the Pacific:
- Kings forward Keegan Murray is once again shining in Summer League action. As he prepares for his sophomore season, the first-team All-Rookie member is working with star guard De’Aaron Fox on a daily basis, writes Hunter Patterson of The Athletic. “I’ve been with him every single day so far this summer,” Murray said. “We play one-on-one three, four times a week so that’s helped me a lot in different areas on the court.” For those curious, Murray said he has yet to beat Fox one-on-one, though he’s come “very close.”
- Additional trades could still be in the works, but it appears as though the Clippers‘ free agency work is done, according to Law Murray of The Athletic, who examines the team’s moves this offseason. With 16 players on standard contracts and Jason Preston on a non-guaranteed deal (it will be guaranteed July 18), the young guard’s performance during Summer League will be critical for his future with the team, says Murray.
- Speaking of Preston, he said he underwent LASIK eye surgery and had another procedure to fix a deviated septum, tweets Ohm Youngmisuk of ESPN. The 23-year-old former second-round pick missed his entire rookie season after foot surgery and appeared in just 14 games with the Clippers in 2022/23.
Former Furman small forward Jalen Slawson has signed a two-way contract with the Kings, per a team press release.
Sacramento selected the 6’7″ forward with the No. 54 pick in this year’s draft. The 23-year-old was voted the Southern Conference Player of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year for his efforts in the 2022/23 NCAA season.
He was also a two-time All-Southern Conference First Team selection during his collegiate tenure.
Across 36 contests last year, he averaged 15.6 PPG on .556/.394/.775 shooting splits, along with 7.1 RPG, 3.2 APG, 1.5 SPG and 1.5 BPG.
Considered a skilled creator with intriguing upside, his lack of athleticism and an occasional tendency for turnovers limited his draft stock somewhat.
The Kings have become the first team to use the NBA’s cap exception for second-round picks, having signed No. 34 overall pick Colby Jones, per NBA.com’s official transactions log.
According to Shams Charania of The Athletic (Twitter link), Sacramento agreed to give Jones a four-year contract worth $8.76MM. The first two years will be guaranteed, Charania adds.
The second-round pick exception is a new addition to the league’s Collective Bargaining Agreement. It allows teams to sign their second-rounders without requiring cap room or a cap exception like the mid-level. In past years, the Kings would have had to use a portion of their cap space (or the non-taxpayer mid-level, if they’d operated over the cap) in order to give Jones a four-year contract.
The second-round pick exception requires four-year deals to include a team option in the final year. It allows Jones to receive salaries worth more than the rookie minimum in the first two seasons of the deal, with minimum salaries in the last two.
The signing also won’t count against the Kings’ cap room until the end of July — this is to ensure a club can sign its second-rounders for Summer League play without having to worry about the impact on the team’s financial flexibility.
Jones is coming off a strong junior season at Xavier, where he averaged 15.0 PPG, 5.7 RPG, and 4.4 APG with a .509/.378/.653 shooting line in 36 games (34.0 MPG) in 2022/23.
Jones has already been part of two trades in his brief NBA career. The Hornets technically drafted the 6’6″ wing, but his rights were flipped to the Celtics and then to Sacramento. The Kings sent a future second-round pick to Boston in order to move up four spots from No. 38 to land Jones.
Taking into account their reported deals with Alex Len, Trey Lyles, and Sasha Vezenkov, as well as PJ Dozier‘s non-guaranteed contract, the Kings now have 14 players on standard contracts.
The Kings have re-signed shooting guard Keon Ellis to a two-way contract, according to NBA.com’s transaction log.
Sacramento had tendered Ellis a two-way qualifying offer in the days leading up to free agency, making him a restricted free agent, so he may have simply accepted that QO.
Ellis, who went undrafted out of Alabama in 2022, signed a two-way contract with the Kings last July and spent his entire rookie season within the organization. He was deployed sparingly at the NBA level in 2022/23, appearing in 16 games and playing just 71 total minutes.
Ellis played extensively for the Stockton Kings in the G League, however, averaging 16.8 points, 5.3 rebounds, and 3.4 assists per night in 23 regular season appearances (30.4 MPG) while registering an impressive shooting line of .517/.444/.784.
Sacramento still has two-way slots available for 2023/24 after bringing back Ellis. The team also tendered a qualifying offer to its other two-way player from ’22/23, Neemias Queta, but because Queta has been on a two-way deal with the Kings for two seasons instead of just one, his QO is equivalent to a standard (partially guaranteed) minimum-salary deal rather than another two-way contract.
Technically, most of this year’s top free agents remain unsigned. Until the moratorium in place at the start of the 2023/24 league year lifts at 11:01 am Central time on July 6, most of them are ineligible to sign their new contracts.
However, within the last 40-ish hours, 36 of the players from our list of 2023’s top 50 free agents have taken themselves off the market by reaching contract agreements with teams around the league.
[RELATED: 2023 NBA Free Agent Tracker]
While those are just tentative agreements and could still fall apart, that usually doesn’t happen more than once or twice in a given offseason, so it’s safe to pencil those deals in for the time being and assume those free agents are off the board.
So who does that leave? As of early Sunday morning, here are the top free agents from our top-50 list who have yet to agree to new deals:
- Miles Bridges, F, Hornets (RFA)
- P.J. Washington, F, Hornets (RFA)
- Grant Williams, F, Celtics (RFA)
- Christian Wood, F/C
- Kelly Oubre, F
- Eric Gordon, G
- Malik Beasley, G/F
- Matisse Thybulle, F, Trail Blazers (RFA)
- Lonnie Walker, G/F
- Mason Plumlee, C
- Ayo Dosunmu, G, Bulls (RFA)
- Torrey Craig, F
- Hamidou Diallo, G
- Paul Reed, F/C, Sixers (RFA)
The Hornets are very much in the mix for all three of the remaining free agents in our top 20. As long as their qualifying offers to Washington and Bridges remain on the table, they control those players’ free agencies, with the ability to match any offer sheet they sign.
A report on Saturday indicated Charlotte is also mulling the possibility of an offer sheet for Williams. If the Hornets went ahead with a pursuit of the Celtics forward, it would presumably mean moving on from at least one of Bridges or Washington. According to Michael Scotto of HoopsHype, Washington has received interest from a few other teams and may be looking at a deal in the range of the one Rui Hachimura got from the Lakers (three years, $51MM).
Since being restricted can slow down the free agency process for players who don’t quickly negotiate a deal with their own teams, it’s possible there won’t be resolution right away for Thybulle, Dosunmu, and Reed. However, the rest of the players in this group are unrestricted and could move faster.
Scotto also has an update on Beasley, reporting today that the veteran shooter has drawn interest from the Sixers, Suns, Raptors, Mavericks, Bucks, and Warriors since reaching free agency. Some of those teams are limited to a minimum-salary offer.
The Kings and Pistons are among the teams that have displayed interest in Craig, according to Scotto, who notes that Detroit’s new head coach Monty Williams was a fan of the wing in Phoenix.
The following free agents were noted in the honorable mention section of our top-50 list and aren’t yet spoken for:
- Mohamed Bamba, C
- Dalano Banton, G
- Terence Davis, G
- Javonte Green, G
- Derrick Jones, F
- Cory Joseph, G
- Romeo Langford, G/F
- Jaylen Nowell, G
- Kendrick Nunn, G
- Dario Saric, F
Here are our full lists of free agents by position/type and by team.
July 10: Len’s new deal is official, the Kings announced (Twitter link via James Ham of TheKingsBeat.com).
July 1: Alex Len will stay with the Kings on a one-year, veteran’s minimum contract, tweets Shams Charania of The Athletic. It will pay him $3,196,448.
The 30-year-old appeared in just 26 games last season, averaging 1.7 points and 2.3 rebounds in 6.2 minutes per night. He claimed a role as the team’s backup center late in the season, but his playing time was sporadic in the seven-game playoff series against the Warriors.
There may be a clearer path to regular minutes for Len in 2023/24 following Sacramento’s trade of Richaun Holmes and the free agent departure of Chimezie Metu.
However, with the offseason far from over, the team also may still bring in another big man to be Domantas Sabonis‘ primary backup.
Len was the fifth pick in the 2013 draft, but he has never been able to live up to that status. He returned to the Kings as a free agent in 2021 after briefly playing for them during the 2019/20 season.
- The Kings and Pacers were reportedly nearing an agreement Friday morning on a trade that would send wing Chris Duarte to Sacramento in exchange for draft compensation. However, as of Friday night, the two teams had yet to agree to terms, a league source tells Jason Anderson of The Sacramento Bee.