The Jazz have waived Kyle Collinsworth and Juwan Morgan, according to a tweet from the team.
Collinsworth spent last year with Raptors 905 of the G League. He has NBA experience with the Mavericks, getting into 32 games during the 2017/18 season.
Morgan is a rookie who signed an Exhibit 10 contract after going undrafted out of Indiana. He appeared in two preseason games, averaging 7.0 points and 4.0 rebounds.
Luol Deng will retire from the NBA after 15 seasons, according to a press release from the Bulls. Deng signed with the team today so he could announce his retirement with the organization where he had the most success. Chicago waived Perrion Callandret to create room for the signing.
“We’re very fortunate and humbled that Luol has chosen to retire as a Chicago Bull,” said President and Chief Operating Officer Michael Reinsdorf. “He was a role model on and off the court during his nine-plus years in Chicago, and he gave everything he had to help us win. I want to thank Luol for not only what he accomplished on the court for the team, but also for the leadership he demonstrated through his philanthropic efforts.”
Deng spent 10 years with the Bulls after being selected with the seventh pick in the 2004 draft. He also spent time with the Cavaliers, Heat, Lakers and Timberwolves, averaging 14.8 points, 6.1 rebounds and 2.3 assists in 902 career games.
He remained productive in Cleveland and Miami, but his career hit a roadblock after signing a four-year, $72MM contract with the Lakers in 2016. He played just one game during the second season of that deal and was waived during the following offseason.
Deng ended his career last season in Minnesota, averaging 7.1 points and 2.4 rebounds in 22 games.
Marcus Allen has signed a contract with the Lakers, the team announced in a press release. Reggie Hearn, who signed with the team on Tuesday, was waived to make room on the 20-man roster.
Allen spent last season with the G League’s South Bay Lakers, averaging 8.5 points, 2.5 rebounds and 1.1 assists in 43 games. The former Stanford guard also joined the Lakers for Summer League play.
Allen appears ticketed for the G League again. L.A.’s roster for the start of the season is virtually set with 14 players on guaranteed contracts and both two-way slots already filled.
Memphis has signed former Murray State guard Shaq Buchanan, tweets Adam Johnson of 2 Ways and 10 Days. Buchanan will receive an Exhibit 10 deal and will be claimed as an affiliate player, taking his name out of the Oct. 26 G League draft.
The Grizzlies confirmed the signing in a tweet, adding that Jarrod Uthoff has been waived to make room on the roster. The team has been making minor roster adjustments all week to help stock its G League affiliate.
Buchanan played two seasons for the Racers, averaging 13.0 points and 4.2 rebounds per game as a sophomore. He joins his former backcourt partner, Ja Morant, who was taken second overall by the Grizzlies in this year’s draft.
12:35pm: The extension is official, according to a tweet from the Wizards.
7:42am: The Wizards have reached an agreement on a two-year contract extension for All-Star shooting guard Bradley Beal, reports ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski. According to Wojnarowski, the deal will be worth just shy of $72MM, the maximum amount the team could offer.
Beal’s current contract pays him approximately $27.1MM in 2019/20 and $28.75MM in 2020/21. His new extension will start at 120% of his ’20/21 salary, which works out to a $34.5MM figure for 2021/22. According to Wojnarowski, Beal’s 2022/23 salary ($37.26MM) will be a player option.
In total, the Wizards’ star will be in line to earn about $127.6MM over the next four years — or he could opt out and hit the free agent market after three seasons, when he’d have 10 years of NBA experience under his belt and would qualify for a maximum salary worth 35% of the cap.
“This will allow him to do another deal while he’s potentially in his prime,“ Beal’s agent Mark Bartelstein said of the extension, per Candace Buckner of The Washington Post (Twitter link).
The Wizards first offered Beal a three-year, $111MM+ contract extension back in July, but the 26-year-old indicated he wanted to take his time and evaluate the team’s direction under its new management group before making any decisions. As Wojnarowski points out, Beal’s decision to re-up with Washington – even on a short-term extension – represents a “spectacular victory” for team owner Ted Leonsis and new general manager Tommy Sheppard.
“Brad has always made it clear to me, that in a perfect world, he would never leave Washington,” Bartelstein told ESPN. “He has felt an obligation to be the focal point in turning the Wizards into an elite team. He’s thrilled about all the resources that Ted is pouring into the franchise and thrilled how committed (Leonsis) and Tommy are to building something special.”
Wojnarowski reported last week that the Wizards were willing to do an extension for Beal “in any form” he wanted, and it appears the team stuck to that promise. Besides being a one-plus-one extension rather than a three-year deal, Beal’s new contract also features as 15% trade kicker and a 50% advance on his 2021/22 and 2022/23 salaries once the extension begins, as Bobby Marks of ESPN details.
Perhaps most importantly, signing this extension will make Beal ineligible to be traded for the 2019/20 season. Contract extensions that exceed the league’s extend-and-trade limits ensure that a player can’t be traded for six months, so by the time Beal becomes eligible to be dealt, the February trade deadline will have passed.
Teams around the NBA had viewed Beal as the most likely star player to become disgruntled and become a trade candidate in the coming months, given the Wizards’ lottery expectations for the ’19/20 campaign. However, Washington insisted throughout the offseason that the former Florida Gator was unavailable. Clubs hoping to make a run at Beal will have to wait until at least the summer of 2020 to try to change the Wizards’ minds.
Beal, who has played all 82 games and made the All-Star team for two consecutive seasons, had a career year for the Wizards in 2018/19, averaging 25.6 PPG, 5.5 APG, and 5.0 RPG with a shooting line of .475/.351/.808. He also played an NBA-high 36.9 minutes per contest.
While Beal may not lead the league in minutes again in 2019/20, he’ll be leaned on heavily once more with star point guard John Wall expected to miss most or all of the season as he recovers from a torn Achilles.
Speaking of Wall, he and Beal both now have guaranteed contracts for the next three years, with player options for 2022/23. In 2021/22 – the final guaranteed season for the star guards – they’ll be earning nearly $79MM combined.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
The Knicks have signed Zak Irvin, tweets Mike Vorkunov of The Athletic. The 25-year-old swingman has spent the past two seasons with the team’s G League affiliate in Westchester.
Irvin went undrafted out of Michigan in 2017 and has played in the Dominican Republic and Mexico as well as the G League. He was among 80 players selected to participate in the G League Elite Camp in May.
The Knicks had a roster spot open after waiving Amir Hinton yesterday. They are now back to the league limit of 20 players, with 15 guaranteed contracts and one two-way slot open.
The Spurs have cut Galen Robinson Jr. and Kenny Williams, according to the NBA’s official transactions log. Both players were just signed Tuesday, so it appears they were added to be part of the organization’s G League affiliate in Austin.
Robinson averaged 8.0 PPG and 4.9 APG last season at Houston, while Williams posted an 8.6/3.9/3.5 line for North Carolina. Both were seniors who went undrafted and played for San Antonio’s Summer League team. With Exhibit 10 contracts, they can both become affiliate players for Austin and will be eligible to earn $50K bonuses.
The moves leave the Spurs with 18 players ahead of Saturday’s cutdown date. However, with 15 players under guaranteed contracts and both two-way slots filled, the final roster seems to be set.
The Raptors have added Matt Morgan to their training camp roster, tweets Blake Murphy of The Athletic. The rookie guard out of Cornell will receive an Exhibit 10 contract and will likely be ticketed for a spot with the team’s G League affiliate, Murphy adds.
Morgan played for Toronto’s Summer League entry and impressed the organization with his shooting skills, according to Murphy. He averaged 22.2 PPG for the Big Red last season and shot 43% from beyond the arc.
The Raptors had a roster spot open after waiving Sagaba Konate yesterday. They are now back up to the 20-man limit as Saturday’s cutdown date looms.
The Knicks have waived guard Amir Hinton, according to a release from the club. Hinton was signed to a non-guaranteed Exhibit 10 deal, so the Knicks won’t be on the hook for any dead money.
Hinton, 22, declared for the 2019 NBA Draft after his junior season at Division II school Shaw University, where he led all Division II players with 29.4 points per game and earned CIAA Player of the Year honors.
Shortly after going undrafted, Hinton agreed to a training camp deal with the Knicks, which became official last month. Now that he’s been cut, it’s likely he’ll become an affiliate player for New York’s G League team, the Westchester Knicks.
The Knicks now have 19 players under contract, including one two-way player. Of the 18 guys on standard contracts, 15 have guaranteed deals, meaning it looks like it’ll be an uphill climb for V.J. King, Kenny Wooten, or Lamar Peters to earn a roster spot.
The Nuggets have waived one of their two-way players, announcing today (via Twitter) that forward Tyler Cook has been released.
Cook, who entered the draft this spring after his junior year at Iowa, averaged 14.5 PPG, 7.6 RPG, and 2.4 APG in 33 games (30.8 MPG) in 2018/19, while shooting 51.9% from the field. After recovering from a high ankle sprain suffered during a pre-draft workout, the 22-year-old joined Denver for Summer League action and then for training camp, playing limited minutes in two preseason games.
With Bol Bol occupying one of the Nuggets’ two-way contract slots, the second one is now available. Nick Kosmider of The Athletic notes (via Twitter) that PJ Dozier has had an impressive training camp and appears poised to claim that spot.
Even though the Nuggets don’t have a G League affiliate of their own, Dozier received an Exhibit 10 contract when he signed with the team, tweets ESPN’s Bobby Marks. That will allow Denver to convert Dozier to a two-way deal without putting him through waivers.