Transactions Rumors | Hoops Rumors

Bulls Sign Justin Simon To Exhibit 10 Deal

September 15th, 2019 at 8:05am CST by Luke Adams

SEPTEMBER 15: The signing is official, according to the Real GM Transactions Log.

SEPTEMBER 12: Undrafted rookie free agent Justin Simon will sign an Exhibit 10 contract with the Bulls today, league sources tell Adam Zagoria of ZagsBlog.com. Once it’s official, the signing will increase Chicago’s roster count to 17 players.

Simon, who declared for the 2019 draft as an early entrant following his junior year at St. John’s, averaged 10.4 PPG, 5.1 RPG, and 3.2 APG in 34 games (32.9 MPG) last season. The 6’5″ shooting guard struggled from beyond the arc, making just 28.9% of his attempts, but provided plenty of value on the other end of the court, earning Big East Defensive Player of the Year honors.

After going undrafted in June, Simon joined the Bulls for Summer League play and impressed the team in Las Vegas by averaging 6.8 PPG and 4.0 RPG with a .516 FG% in five games (21.0 MPG). He worked out for the Heat last month, but will head to training camp with Chicago.

With 14 players on guaranteed contracts and Shaquille Harrison also expected to make the regular season roster, the Bulls project to have a full 15-man squad. According to Zagoria, Simon will likely end up with the team’s G League affiliate, the Windy City Bulls.

Spurs Sign Jeff Ledbetter To Exhibit 10 Deal

September 12th, 2019 at 5:32pm CST by clarkcrum

Approximately three weeks after originally offering him a contract, the Spurs have signed guard Jeff Ledbetter to an Exhibit 10 deal, reports Nicola Lupo of Sportando.

Ledbetter, 31, is an Idaho product primarily known for his marksmanship from long range. He has spent the last three seasons with the Spurs’ G League affiliate, the Austin Spurs, but did leave the team early last season to play in Mexico.

In 101 career NBAGL games, Ledbetter has posted a respectable stat line of 11.0 PPG, 2.6 RPG, and 3.2 APG. He figures to become an affiliate player in Austin for the fourth straight season.

With Ledbetter under contract, the Spurs now have 20 players on their offseason roster, including two-way players Drew Eubanks and Quinndary Weatherspoon.

Blazers Sign Troy Caupain, London Perrantes To Exhibit 10 Deals

September 12th, 2019 at 12:17pm CST by Luke Adams

The Trail Blazers have officially added two players to their training camp roster, according to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, who reports (via Twitter) that Troy Caupain and London Perrantes have signed Exhibit 10 contracts with the club.

Caupain, 23, has spent his first two professional seasons playing for the Lakeland Magic, Orlando’s G League affiliate. The 6’4″ guard was on a G League contract in his rookie season and on a two-way deal with Orlando last season, appearing in four contests at the NBA level. In 99 career NBAGL games, he has recorded 16.0 PPG, 6.7 RPG, and 5.4 APG on .457/.367/.812 shooting.

As for Perrantes, the 24-year-old point guard appeared in 14 games with the Cavaliers and 35 with the Canton Charge during the 2017/18 season while on a two-way contract with Cleveland. The former Virginia standout spent last season playing in France, first for Limoges CSP and then for Cholet Basket.

Because they don’t have a G League affiliate of their own, the Blazers’ options for camp invitees are limited. While they can sign Exhibit 10 contracts, those players won’t be eligible to receive $50K bonuses if they spent the 2019/20 in the NBAGL. Still, Portland does have an open two-way contract slot available alongside Jaylen Hoard, so one of the club’s Exhibit 10 players could end up filling that opening.

With Caupain and Perrantes under contract, the Blazers now have 18 players on their offseason roster, including 14 on guaranteed contracts, Hoard on a two-way deal, and Moses Brown also on an Exhibit 10.

Heat Exercise 2020/21 Option On Bam Adebayo

September 11th, 2019 at 2:52pm CST by Luke Adams

The Heat have exercised their team option on the fourth year of Bam Adebayo‘s rookie contract, the team formally announced today in a press release.

Adebayo’s salary for the coming season had already been guaranteed, but this decision ensures that he’s now officially locked up for 2020/21 season as well. His cap hit for ’20/21 will be $5,115,492, per Basketball Insiders.

Adebayo, 22, appeared in all 82 games for Miami last season, averaging 8.9 PPG, 7.3 RPG, and 2.2 APG in 23.3 minutes per contest. The young center, who took part in Team USA’s training camp last month, is poised to assume a larger role for the Heat this season following the trade that sent Hassan Whiteside to Portland. Meyers Leonard and Kelly Olynyk will be among the other players in the mix at the five.

Now that his fourth-year option has been picked up, Adebayo will be eligible to sign a rookie scale extension during the 2020 offseason. If he doesn’t reach an agreement with the Heat before the ’20/21 season begins, he’d be on track to reach restricted free agency in the summer of 2021.

All teams with decisions to make on rookie scale options for the ’20/21 season must finalize those moves by October 31. Adebayo’s is the first to be formally exercised, but many will follow in the coming weeks. Our tracker can be found right here.

Knicks Officially Sign Four Undrafted Rookies

September 11th, 2019 at 9:34am CST by Luke Adams

The Knicks have officially signed four players who previously reached contract agreements with the team, according to RealGM’s transactions log. All four players are believed to have received non-guaranteed Exhibit 10 deals.

Here are the players who have now officially joined the Knicks:

Amir Hinton, G, Shaw (reported in June)
V.J. King, G/F, Louisville (reported in June)
Lamar Peters, G, Mississippi State (reported in August)
Kenny Wooten, F, Oregon (reported in July)

Word of New York’s deals with Hinton and King broke shortly after the draft concluded in June. The Knicks also struck a tentative agreement on a two-way contract for Kris Wilkes at that time, but it fell through for health reasons. Hinton, a former Division II standout, and King both went undrafted this year.

Like Hinton and King, Peters and Wooten are rookies who went undrafted after declaring as early entrants in the spring. Both players were members of the Knicks’ Summer League team in Las Vegas in July, with Wooten’s 2.5 blocks per game in just 13.3 MPG turning heads. Peters struggled with his shot (2-for-17 from the floor), but still apparently showed enough to earn a deal with New York.

The Knicks now have a full 20-man roster, including 15 players on guaranteed contracts and one (Kadeem Allen) on a two-way contract. One of the players from this new group could end up in that second two-way slot, but most of them are good bets to eventually land with the Westchester Knicks, New York’s G League affiliate.

Warriors Sign Juan Toscano-Anderson To Exhibit 10 Deal

September 10th, 2019 at 9:42am CST by Luke Adams

The Warriors have signed free agent forward Juan Toscano-Anderson to an Exhibit 10 contract, according to agent Misko Raznatovic (Twitter link). RealGM’s transactions log confirms that the deal has been officially completed.

Toscano-Anderson, 26, played his college ball at Marquette before going undrafted in 2015. He has spent most of his professional career with teams in his home country of Mexico, but joined Golden State’s G League affiliate, the Santa Cruz Warriors, for the 2018/19 season.

In 44 games (16 starts) with Santa Cruz, Toscano-Anderson averaged 7.0 PPG, 6.8 RPG, and 2.1 APG with a .438/.341/.590 shooting line in 23.8 minutes per contest. At the conclusion of the NBAGL season, he rejoined Fuerza Regia in Mexico for the LNBP playoffs. He also participated in the G League Elite Camp this spring, then played for Golden State’s Summer League squad in Las Vegas.

His new deal with the Warriors indicates that Toscano-Anderson may return to Santa Cruz for the 2019/20 campaign. If he spends two months with the G League squad, he’d be eligible to earn a bonus of up to $50K as a result of his Exhibit 10 deal with Golden State.

Bulls Release Guard Antonio Blakeney

September 9th, 2019 at 4:50pm CST by marksuleymanov

SEPTEMBER 9, 4:50pm: The Bulls have officially released Blakeney, according to a team press release. He gave up $100K in the buyout agreement, tweets ESPN’s Bobby Marks.

SEPTEMBER 7, 11:32am: The Bulls are set to release guard Antonio Blakeney, reports Shams Charania of The Athletic (Twitter link). According to Charania (via Twitter), the two sides reached an agreement on a buyout.

After Chicago re-signed Shaquille Harrison earlier this offseason, there was an expectation that Blakeney would be released, notes K.C. Johnson of the Chicago Tribune (Twitter link). Unlike Blakeney, Harrison doesn’t yet have a fully guaranteed contract, but it sounds like he’s being penciled in as the team’s 15th man.

Blakeney, 22, has suited up for the Bulls the past two seasons. In a career high 57 games last season, the New York native averaged 7.3 PPG while shooting nearly 40% from beyond the arc.

By cutting the LSU product, the Bulls have brought the total of fully guaranteed contracts on the roster to 14, with Harrison and his partial guarantee also in the mix.

Trail Blazers Sign Moses Brown To Camp Deal

September 9th, 2019 at 12:19pm CST by Luke Adams

The Trail Blazers have signed undrafted UCLA center Moses Brown to a training camp contract, reports ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski (via Twitter). The move increases Portland’s offseason roster count to 16 players.

Brown, who will turn 20 next month, declared for the 2019 draft as an early entrant after spending just one season playing for the Bruins. In his freshman year, Brown averaged 9.7 PPG and 8.3 RPG in 32 games (23.4 MPG).

While Brown isn’t much of a shooter – he didn’t attempt a three-pointer and made just 35.2% of his free throws – he flashed impressive rim-protecting upside, with 1.9 blocks per game. He caught on with the Rockets for Summer League play, but saw just two minutes of action for the team in Las Vegas.

The Trail Blazers typically don’t load up their offseason roster with many camp invitees on non-guaranteed contracts, since they don’t have a G League affiliate of their own to send those players once the regular season begins. Still, the club has one two-way contract slot available, so Brown could be a candidate to fill that opening alongside fellow rookie Jaylen Hoard.

Nuggets Sign Bol Bol To Two-Way Contract

September 6th, 2019 at 6:25pm CST by Luke Adams

SEPTEMBER 6: The signing is official, according to a team press release.

SEPTEMBER 4: The Nuggets have signed rookie center Bol Bol to his first professional contract, according to Shams Charania of The Athletic, who reports (via Twitter) that it’s a two-way deal.

Once viewed as a probable lottery pick, Bol saw his stock dip leading up to the 2019 draft due to long-term health concerns related to his slender 7’2″ frame. The former Oregon standout slipped all the way to No. 44, where the Nuggets landed him, acquiring his rights in a draft-night trade with the Heat.

No player drafted as high as 44th overall has signed a two-way contract to start his career since the NBA introduced two-way deals in 2017. However, the Nuggets and Bol were uniquely suited for such an arrangement for a handful of reasons.

For one, Bol is returning from a stress fracture in his foot that sidelined him for most of his first and only college season. The Nuggets will want to take things slow, as they did last year with Michael Porter Jr., making sure the 19-year-old is 100% healthy before throwing him into the NBA deep end. Bol is also still very raw, so it makes sense that the club would want him to begin his career in the G League rather than debuting in the NBA immediately.

Meanwhile, as cap expert Albert Nahmad recently outlined, Denver is less than $1MM away from the tax threshold, and could move even closer to tax territory if certain veterans earn unlikely contract incentives this season. Adding Bol on a standard rookie contract worth $898K would have jeopardized the Nuggets’ ability to stay out of the tax in 2019/20.

Bol could have forced the issue to some extent, since the Nuggets were required to offer him a one-year, non-guaranteed contract this week in order to retain his NBA rights. However, it appears he and his camp have bought into a plan that will start him out on a modest two-way salary before he’s eventually promoted to the NBA squad.

Developing Bol will be somewhat complicated by the fact that the Nuggets are one of two NBA teams without a G League affiliate of their own. Still, that didn’t stop Monte Morris and Torrey Craig from turning two-way deals into standard contracts (and regular roles in Denver’s NBA rotation). While they were on two-way contracts with the Nuggets, Morris played for the Rockets’ affiliate in the NBAGL and Craig spent time with the Heat’s affiliate.

With Bol locked up, the Nuggets’ roster looks just about regular-season-ready. The team has 14 players on guaranteed salaries, with Bol and Tyler Cook on two-way contracts. PJ Dozier has also been invited to Denver’s training camp, though it’s hard to envision a place on the roster for him unless he replaces Cook as a two-way player.

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.

Nene Returns For 18th NBA Season, Re-Signs With Rockets

September 6th, 2019 at 6:07pm CST by ChrisCrouse

SEPTEMBER 6: The Rockets have officially announced the signing, according to a team press release.

SEPTEMBER 3: Free agent big man Nene plans on returning to the Rockets, according to Kelly Iko of The Athletic (Twitter link).

Nene opted out of the final year of his most recent contract back in June, which led many to believe he would retire. He has spent 17 years in the NBA so far, with the past three seasons coming in Houston.

The Rockets inked veteran center Tyson Chandler this offseason, so with Chandler and Nene in the frontcourt, the team has solid depth at the five. Houston shouldn’t need to rely heavily on either veteran big man to spell starter Clint Capela, which should allow the team to give their elder centers nights off when needed.

Nene was selected by New York with the No. 7 overall pick in the 2002 draft and he was subsequently traded to Denver on draft night along with Marcus Camby and Mark Jackson in a package for Antonio McDyess. Nene is the only member of the 2002 draft class still in the league.

In addition to the Rockets and Nuggets, the Sao Carlos native has also played for the Wizards. Only nine active players have appeared in more NBA games than Nene.