Transactions Rumors | Hoops Rumors

Rockets Release Forward Ryan Anderson

November 18th, 2019 at 2:04pm CST by Dana Gauruder

2:04pm: The Rockets have officially waived Anderson, the team’s PR department tweets.

12:30pm: The Rockets will waive forward/center Ryan Anderson, Jonathan Feigen of the Houston Chronicle reports.

It’s an uninspiring and swift end to Anderson’s second stint with the franchise. He signed a partially guaranteed contract after being waived by Miami under the stretch provision. Anderson received a $500K guarantee on his $2,564,753 salary when he made the opening night roster.

Anderson is still collecting on the four-year, $80MM deal that Houston gave him in the summer of 2016. He spent two years with the team before being traded to Phoenix last August in a salary dump. The Suns shipped him to Miami in February and he was waived in July.

Anderson played just 14 minutes this season and remained glued to the bench despite the team being shorthanded last week due to injuries, including a concussion suffered by starting center Clint Capela.

Trail Blazers To Sign Carmelo Anthony

November 15th, 2019 at 6:07pm CST by clarkcrum

NOVEMBER 15: Anthony still needs to pass his physical and won’t make his Blazers debut until at least Tuesday, Wojnarowski tweets.

NOVEMBER 14: The Trail Blazers have agreed to a non-guaranteed deal with free agent forward Carmelo Anthony, according to Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN. Woj adds that Anthony, once signed, will join the Blazers on the team’s upcoming six-game road trip, and that the team hopes to have him fill the void at power forward created by the loss of Zach Collins (Twitter link).

Portland, off to a 4-8 start, has been one of the bigger disappointments of the first few weeks of this NBA season. As such, it comes as no surprise that the team would take a flyer on Anthony, 35, as the 10-time NBA All-Star looks to reinvent himself as a role player after being out of the league for the last 12 months.

Interestingly, however, the Trail Blazers suggested earlier this month that signing a 15th man was not a priority for them and that they’d opt instead to rely on depth and positional versatility. Of course, at that time, Portland was only 3-4, so the club’s top decision-makers may have changed their minds after going 1-4 over the last five games.

According to Woj (link), Blazers’ GM Neil Olshey and Anthony’s agent, Leon Rose, had stayed in contact on Carmelo since the preseason, with conversations picking up over the past couple days. Olshey and head coach Terry Stotts talked directly with Anthony before reaching today’s agreement.

It will be interesting to see how Anthony meshes with the Blazers’ backcourt pairing of Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum. According to Chris Haynes of ESPN, Lillard was notified of the potential signing last night and made it clear that he’s always been supportive of bringing Anthony into the fold in Portland.

Jason Quick of The Athletic, who has covered the Blazers for the past 20 seasons, seems skeptical of the fit, opining that the team’s biggest deficiency at this point seems to be on the defensive end of the floor (i.e. – not Anthony’s strength). However, given the team’s poor start, Quick also appears to concede that the signing is worth a shot.

As Bobby Marks of ESPN notes, Anthony will earn $14,490 per day while a member of the Blazers, which mean he’s signing for the league minimum salary for a veteran with 10+ years of NBA experience. The Blazers only have 14 players on their roster currently, so no corresponding move will have to made, but the team will see its luxury tax bill grow with the signing.

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.

Nets Sign Iman Shumpert

November 13th, 2019 at 3:50pm CST by ChrisCrouse

3:50pm: The Nets have officially signed Shumpert, the team announced today in a press release. His minimum-salary contract will pay him about $13.1K per day as long as he remains on the roster.

2:24pm: The Nets are bringing in free agent swingman Iman Shumpert, Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN.com tweets. No corresponding roster move will be necessary, as Brooklyn has the ability to carry a 16th man until Wilson Chandler returns from suspension.

The news of Shumpert signing coincides with Stadium’s Shams Charania reporting that Caris LeVert is expected to miss several weeks because of feared ligament damage in his thumb. LeVert, who recently signed a three-year, $52MM extension, has missed 79 games because of injury since coming into the league.

Shumpert’s deal will give him the opportunity to once again be teammates with Kyrie Irving after the two vets won a title in Cleveland together. As NetsDaily relays, Irving lobbied for the team to sign Shumpert over the summer.

As we explained earlier this month, players serving longer-term suspensions can be moved to the suspended list after five games, at which point a team is eligible to add an extra player to its roster. Chandler will be eligible to return from his 25-game ban on December 15, so Brooklyn will have to make a roster move at that time, releasing Shumpert or trading or waiving of its other players to get back down to 15 players on standard contracts.

Magic Sign B.J. Johnson To Two-Way Contract

November 4th, 2019 at 3:41pm CST by Luke Adams

After promoting Amile Jefferson to their standard roster on Friday, the Magic have filled their newly-opened two-way slot by signing B.J. Johnson to a two-way contract, the team announced today in a press release.

An undrafted guard of La Salle, Johnson was with the Magic for training camp and the preseason in 2018, then spent most of his rookie year playing for the Lakeland Magic, Orlando’s G League affiliate. He averaged 15.4 PPG, 5.0 RPG, and 1.4 SPG with a shooting line of .476/.444/.841 in 39 NBAGL games.

Johnson also had brief NBA auditions in 2018/19 with the Hawks, who signed him to a pair of 10-day contracts in March, and the Kings, who signed him for the final week of the regular season. The 23-year-old appeared in seven total regular season games for the two clubs, with Sacramento waiving him in July. He then signed another Exhibit 10 contract with Orlando in September and spent the preseason with the organization in preparation for reporting back to Lakeland this fall.

While Johnson still figures to spend most of his time with Lakeland this season, his two-way deal will give him more of an opportunity to shuttle back and forth between the NBA and G League as needed. He’ll be eligible to spend up to 42 days in the NBA until the NBAGL season ends in March.

The Magic now have 14 players on standard contracts and two on two-way contracts, leaving just one open spot on their roster.

Amile Jefferson Signs Two-Year Contract With Magic

November 1st, 2019 at 4:47pm CST by Luke Adams

4:47pm: The signing is official, according to a team press release.

1:37pm: The Magic have agreed to sign big man Amile Jefferson to a two-year contract, agent Michael Tellem tells ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski (Twitter link). Jefferson had been on a two-way deal with Orlando.

A former undrafted free agent out of Duke, Jefferson spent much of the 2017/18 season on a two-way contract with the Timberwolves, though he didn’t appear in an NBA game for the team. He was on a two-way deal with the Magic for the entire 2018/19 campaign, playing limited minutes in 12 games at the NBA level, before signing another two-way pact for ’19/20.

Although Jefferson hasn’t seen much action in the NBA, he has thrived in the G League, with averages of 17.9 PPG, 12.1 RPG, and 2.9 PG in 81 total games (34.1 MPG) for the Iowa Wolves and Lakeland Magic. He was named to the All-NBAGL Third Team last spring.

The Magic had been carrying just 13 players on their standard roster to open the regular season. NBA rules require teams to dip below 14 players for up to two weeks at a time, so Orlando had to add a player by early next week. Jefferson will be the club’s 14th man once his new deal becomes official.

While Wojnarowski didn’t offer additional details on Jefferson’s two-year contract, I’d expected a non-guaranteed, minimum-salary deal to give the Magic some flexibility.

Kings Won’t Pick Up 2020/21 Options On Giles, Swanigan

October 31st, 2019 at 5:14pm CST by Luke Adams

The Kings are declining two of their four rookie scale options for the 2020/21 season, a league source tells James Ham of NBC Sports California (Twitter link). According to Ham, Sacramento won’t be picking up the fourth-year options for Harry Giles ($3,976,510) or Caleb Swanigan ($3,665,787).

As expected, Sacramento has exercised its fourth-year option on De’Aaron Fox ($8,099,627) and its third-year option on Marvin Bagley III ($8,963,640). Those were procedural moves and were never in doubt. However, the decisions on Giles and Swanigan are a little more interesting.

Giles, the 20th overall pick in the 2017 draft, has been plagued by knee issues since entering the league. Injuries cost him his entire rookie year and limited him to 58 games (14.1 MPG) in 2018/19. He has also yet to play this season as he battles knee pain.

Given his upside, I still though Sacramento would likely exercise Giles’ 2020/21 option. However, it appears the club decided the risk outweighed the reward when it came to guaranteeing nearly $4MM for the big man.

The Kings’ option decision on Swanigan is less surprising. The former Purdue power forward has averaged just 2.1 PPG and 2.4 RPG in 51 career regular season contests with Portland and Sacramento, having never developed into a reliable rotation player.

Giles and Swanigan, two of just four players around the NBA who have had their rookie scale options turned down, will both become unrestricted free agents in 2020 as a result of today’s decisions. At that time, Sacramento won’t be able to offer them a starting salary worth more than the value of their declined options.

Meanwhile, Fox will become extension-eligible next July, while Bagley has one more option on his rookie scale contract for the 2021/22 season.

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.

Warriors Pick Up 2020/21 Options On Spellman, Evans

October 31st, 2019 at 2:43pm CST by Luke Adams

2:43pm: The Warriors have officially exercised their options on both Spellman and Evans, the team confirmed (via Twitter).

8:50am: The Warriors have exercised their 2020/21 rookie scale option on Omari Spellman, reports Logan Murdock of NBC Sports Bay Area (via Twitter). In addition to picking up Spellman’s third-year option, the team will do the same for Jacob Evans‘ third-year option, sources tell Shams Charania of The Athletic (Twitter link).

Spellman, 22, had a promising rookie season for Atlanta in 2018/19, averaging 5.9 PPG and 4.2 RPG with a .344 3PT% in 46 games (17.5 MPG). However, the Hawks determined he wasn’t in their long-term plans and sent him to Golden State in an offseason trade for Damian Jones and a future second-round pick.

Because Spellman was the No. 30 overall pick in the 2018 draft, his option for 2020/21 will have a cap charge of just $1,988,280, the lowest of any 2018 first-rounder. Evans, who was the No. 28 pick in the same draft, will count for $2,017,320 against the cap in ’20/21 with his option exercised.

Evans struggled in his rookie year, averaging just 1.3 PPG on 34.0% shooting in 30 games (6.8 MPG). His option was hardly a lock to be picked up, but the 22-year-old looked a little better in the early going this season, scoring 18 points in 43 total minutes and making 4-of-8 three-pointers. He’s currently sidelined with a left adductor strain and isn’t due to be re-evaluated for about three more weeks, per Anthony Slater of The Athletic (Twitter link).

Timberwolves Exercise Josh Okogie’s 2020/21 Option

October 31st, 2019 at 8:25am CST by Luke Adams

The Timberwolves have officially picked up their 2020/21 rookie scale team option on Josh Okogie, tweets Darren Wolfson of SKOR North. Although Minnesota waited until deadline day to officially make the move, there was never a doubt that the club would exercise the third-year option, worth $2,651,040.

Okogoie, 21, emerged as a reliable rotation player for the Timberwolves in his rookie season after being selected 20th overall in the 2018 draft. While he struggled with his shot (.386 FG%, .279 3PT%), the former Georgia Tech standout provided strong perimeter defense and flashed some offensive potential.

With Okogie now locked up through at least 2020/21, the next decision the Wolves face will be whether to pick up his $4,087,904 fourth-year option for 2021/22. That decision will be due one year from today.

NBA teams have until the end of the day to exercise their rookie scale options for the ’20/21 season, and only a handful of them are still outstanding. We’re tracking all those decisions right here.

Celtics Pick Up 2020/21 Options On Tatum, Williams

October 30th, 2019 at 9:40pm CST by Luke Adams

OCTOBER 30, 9:40pm: As expected, the Celtics have now picked up Williams’ option, per Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN.

OCTOBER 14, 5:00pm: RealGM’s official transactions log lists the Celtics as having exercised Tatum’s option, but not Williams’. While I’d still expect Time Lord’s option to be picked up, it hasn’t happened yet. Boston has until October 31 to make its decision.

OCTOBER 14, 2:58pm: The Celtics have exercised their fourth-year option on former No. 3 overall pick Jayson Tatum, league sources tell Shams Charania of The Athletic (Twitter link). Boston has also picked up its third-year option on 2018 first-rounder Robert Williams, according to Keith Smith of Yahoo Sports (Twitter link).

Both options are for the 2020/21 season, with Tatum’s cap hit ($9,897,120) significantly outweighing Williams’ ($2,029,920). Tatum will now be eligible for a contract extension in 2020 and would be on track for restricted free agency in 2021 if he doesn’t sign a new deal next year. Williams has one more year on his rookie contract in 2021/22 — the C’s will have to make a decision on that option by October 31 next year.

Both Tatum and Williams could take on more responsibilities in 2019/20 after a handful of veterans left the Celtics over the summer. Tatum, in particular, figures to be leaned on more heavily as an offensive play-maker with Kyrie Irving no longer in the mix, as the Celtics hope the 21-year-old can take another leap after an up-and-down performance last season.

Williams, meanwhile, will play a more modest role, but Boston’s frontcourt situation is unsettled now that Al Horford, Aron Baynes, and Marcus Morris are playing for new teams. There could be regular minutes available for the former Texas A&M standout going forward.

With the October 31 deadline nearing, we’re tracking all of the 2020/21 rookie scale option decisions from around the NBA right here.

Cavs Won’t Exercise Ante Zizic’s 2020/21 Option

October 30th, 2019 at 3:36pm CST by Luke Adams

The Cavaliers won’t be picking up their 2020/21 option on Ante Zizic‘s rookie scale contract, league sources tell Tim Bontemps of ESPN (Twitter link). The option would have been worth $3,872,215.

If Cleveland had exercised that fourth-year option, it would have put Zizic on track to become eligible for an extension during the 2020 offseason and restricted free agency during the summer of 2021.

Instead, he’ll become an unrestricted free agent next July. Assuming he finishes the season with the Cavs, they’ll be ineligible to offer him a starting salary higher than $3,872,215 on a new contract.

Zizic, 22, was part of the trade package that the Cavaliers received from the Celtics for Kyrie Irving during the summer of 2017. However, his contributions in Cleveland through two years have been modest. In 91 games, he averaged 6.4 PPG and 4.2 RPG in 14.2 minutes per contest. He has yet to make his 2019/20 debut due to a left foot injury.

Zizic, who is now on an expiring contract, has a $2,281,800 cap hit for the 2019/20 season.