NBA FREE AGENCY OPENS MONDAY, AFTER WAVES OF PLAYER MOVEMENT IN RECENT DAYS
Technically, the NBA free agency period was scheduled to open at 6 p.m. Eastern time on Monday.
In actuality, it has been rolling along.
LeBron James has already opted in to a $52.6 million deal with the Los Angeles Lakers for this coming season, the Houston Rockets have traded for Kevin Durant — not a free agency move, obviously — and the Los Angeles Clippers saw James Harden decline his option in return for a new deal and a raise. There was even a surprise addition to free agency, with Portland announcing it has bought out the contract of former No. 1 pick Deandre Ayton — making him able to sign with any team he chooses.
And on Monday, more deals: Nicolas Batum will come back to the Clippers, his agency said, on a two-year deal, while Joe Ingles agreed to return to the Minnesota Timberwolves. Deals like those could get done before the 6 p.m. Monday official start time because teams are allowed to negotiate with their own free agents once the NBA Finals are finished.
What’s next
In very specific situations, teams can announce signings when completed. But in most situations, and this even applies to some draft-related trades (such as the one involving Durant going to Houston), teams won’t be able to announce those until the start of the new league year on July 6.
REPORTS: KNICKS ADD VETERAN G JORDAN CLARKSON
Jordan Clarkson agreed to a buyout from the Utah Jazz on Monday, and he intends to sign with the New York Knicks when he clears waivers, multiple media outlets reported on Monday.
Clarkson, four years removed from being selected the NBA’s Sixth Man of the Year, played just 37 games (nine starts) last season. He missed the final 10 games because of a medical procedure designed to alleviate plantar fasciitis in his left foot.
The 33-year-old guard averaged 16.2 points, 3.7 assists and 3.2 rebounds in the 2024-25 season. He shot a career-low 40.8 percent from the floor.
Clarkson was part of the 2017-18 Cleveland Cavaliers team that reached the NBA Finals before getting swept by the Golden State Warriors.
A second-round draft pick of the Washington Wizards in 2014, Clarkson was immediately dealt to the Lakers. He played 3 1/2 seasons in Los Angeles, then parts of three seasons in Cleveland before he was traded to Utah in December 2019.
In 753 games (231 starts), Clarkson owns NBA averages of 16.0 points, 3.4 rebounds and 2.9 assists.
REPORTS: BUCKS RETAIN KEVIN PORTER JR., GARY TRENT JR., TAUREN PRINCE
Three veteran free agents agreed to two-year contracts to remain with the Milwaukee Bucks, according to multiple media reports on Monday.
Kevin Porter Jr.’s deal reportedly is worth $11 million, with Gary Trent Jr. to get $7.5 million and Taurean Prince to receive $7.1 million.
Milwaukee did lose one player on Monday, as big man Brook Lopez and the Los Angeles Clippers agreed to a two-year, $18 million contract, per multiple media reports.
Porter, 25, joined the Bucks in a February trade with the Los Angeles Clippers. He ended the season averaging 10.3 points, 3.7 rebounds and 3.4 assists, down from his career norms of 13.9, 4.1 and 4.6 respectively, in 271 games (150 starts). He previously played for the Cleveland Cavaliers (2019-20) and Houston Rockets (2020-21 to 2022-23).
Trent, 26, just completed his first season with the Bucks, averaging 11.1 points, 2.3 rebounds and 1.2 assists.
In 415 career NBA games, including 210 starts, with the Portland Trail Blazers (2018-19 to 2020-21), Toronto Raptors (2020-21 to 2023-24) and Milwaukee, Trent has averages of 13.7 points, 2.4 rebounds and 1.4 assists.
Prince, 31, also has spent only one season in Milwaukee, producing 8.2 points, 3.6 rebounds and 1.9 assists.
Overall in 582 games (344 starts) with the Atlanta Hawks (2016-17 to 2018-19), Brooklyn Nets (2019-20 to 2020-21), Cavaliers (2020-21), Minnesota Timberwolves (2021-22 to 2022-23), Los Angeles Lakers (2023-24) and the Bucks, Prince contributes 9.9 points, 3.6 boards and 1.7 assists.
PISTONS REPORTEDLY LAND G CAVIS LEVERT FOR 2 YEARS, $29M
Caris LeVert, a former collegiate star at Michigan, reportedly is heading back to the Great Lakes State.
The 30-year-old guard agreed to a two-year, $29 million deal with the Detroit Pistons, multiple media outlets reported on Monday.
LeVert could take the place of free agent wing Malik Beasley, who reportedly is the subject of a federal investigation into gambling irregularities. According to the Detroit Free Press, the Pistons tabled a potential three-year, $42 million offer for Beasley due to the probe.
LeVert split last season between the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Atlanta Hawks, averaging a combined 12.1 points, 3.4 assists and 3.2 rebounds per game.
After playing for Michigan from 2012-13 to 2015-16, LeVert was selected by the Indiana Pacers with the 20th overall pick in the 2016 draft but was immediately traded to the Nets. He spent four-plus seasons in Brooklyn before returning to play parts of two seasons for Indiana.
LeVert played 3 1/2 seasons in Cleveland.
In 524 career NBA games (223 starts), he has averages of 13.9 points, 4.0 assists and 3.8 rebounds.
REPORTS: VETERAN G DENNIS SCHRODER AGREES TO DEAL WITH KINGS
Dennis Schroder will join the Sacramento Kings on a free agent deal, The Athletic reported Monday. Terms of the contract were not yet known.
The Kings were interested in both Schroder and Russell Westbrook as veteran backcourt options, according to multiple reports, and they still may sign both.
Schroder, 31, split 2024-25 among three teams. He began the season with the Brooklyn Nets, was dealt to the Golden State Warriors in December and then flipped to the Detroit Pistons before the trade deadline in February.
All told, Schroder still managed to average 13.1 points, 5.4 assists and 2.6 rebounds per game across 75 appearances (49 starts) for that trio of teams.
The Kings will be Schroder’s 10th NBA team in his 13th season. He’s averaged at least 10 points per game in every season since his second in the league, with a career mark of 13.9 ppg in 842 games (424 starts).
REPORTS: HAWKS, NICKEIL ALEXANDER-WALKER AGREE TO $62M DEAL
The Atlanta Hawks plan to acquire shooting guard Nickeil Alexander-Walker in a sign-and-trade with the Minnesota Timberwolves, multiple reports said Monday.
Alexander-Walker will receive a new four-year, $62 million contract that features a player option and a trade kicker, according to ESPN.
The deal will see Atlanta send Minnesota a 2027 second-round draft pick originally belonging to the Cleveland Cavaliers, along with cash, per the reports.
Alexander-Walker, 26, averaged 9.4 points, 3.2 rebounds and 2.7 assists while shooting 38.1 percent from 3-point range for the Wolves in 2024-25. He played in all 82 games, starting 10, in his second full season in Minnesota.
In six NBA seasons split among the New Orleans Pelicans (2019-22), Utah Jazz (2022-23) and Wolves (2023-25), Alexander-Walker has career averages of 8.6 points, 2.5 rebounds and 2.3 assists per game across 381 games (68 starts).
REPORTS: BROOK LOPEZ AGREES TO TWO-YEAR DEAL WITH CLIPPERS
Veteran big man Brook Lopez has agreed to a two-year, $18 million deal with the Los Angeles Clippers, according to multiple reports on Monday.
Lopez, 37, is a veteran of 17 seasons with the last seven coming for the Milwaukee Bucks. He was a member of the Bucks’ team that won the 2021 NBA Finals.
Lopez averaged 13.0 points, 5.0 rebounds and 1.9 blocked shots in 80 games last season.
Lopez spent his first nine seasons with the Nets and was an All-Star for Brooklyn in the 2012-13 season. He spent the 2017-18 season with the Los Angeles Lakers before joining the Bucks as a free agent.
Lopez has career averages of 15.9 points, 6.1 rebounds and 1.9 blocked shots in 1,105 games (1,065 starts). He also has made 1,075 3-pointers.
The Bucks could be a franchise about to retool as star Giannis Antetokounmpo hasn’t yet indicated whether he wants to remain with the franchise. In addition, Damian Lillard will miss most of the season and possibly all of it after sustaining a torn Achilles tendon injury during the playoffs.
REPORT: DORIAN FINNEY-SMITH TO ROCKETS ON 4-YEAR, $53M DEAL
Nine-year NBA veteran Dorian Finney-Smith will sign a four-year contract with the Houston Rockets, according to multiple reports on Monday.
The deal is reported to be valued at $53 million for the defensive standout.
It is the Rockets’ second acquisition of the offseason following a blockbuster trade for Kevin Durant that was first reported on June 22.
Finney-Smith averaged 7.9 points and 3.6 rebounds per game while shooting nearly 40 percent from 3-point range in 43 games for the Los Angeles Lakers this season. He played 34 minutes per game in the playoffs.
Finney-Smith, 32, arrived in Los Angeles after a trade from the Brooklyn Nets in December. He spent the 2023-24 season and the first half of this year’s campaign in Brooklyn after seven seasons with the Dallas Mavericks.
The 6-foot-7 wing declined his player option with the Lakers and elected free agency.
It was also reported that Houston re-signed center Clint Capela to a three-year contract, valued at $21.5 million. Capela, 31, played the first six years of his career in Houston before playing for Atlanta from 2020-25. The 6-foot-10 Capela averages a double-double for his career with 12.0 points and 10.5 rebounds in 664 NBA games (587 starts).
REPORTS: NUGGETS SENDING MICHAEL PORTER JR. TO NETS FOR CAM JOHNSON
The Denver Nuggets are trading forward Michael Porter Jr. and a 2032 unprotected first-round draft choice to the Brooklyn Nets for forward Cam Johnson, according to multiple outlets on Monday night.
Porter has spent all six of his NBA campaigns with the Nuggets and averaged 18.2 points and 7.0 rebounds in 77 games last season.
Porter, who turned 27 on Sunday, has dealt with injuries throughout his career, including a back ailment that delayed his NBA debut for a year.
He has career averages of 16.2 points and 6.4 rebounds in 345 games (291 starts). Porter averaged 13.4 points and 8.1 rebounds during Denver’s 2023 run to the NBA title.
Johnson, 29, averaged a career-high 18.8 points in 57 games last season for Brooklyn. He also averaged 4.3 rebounds and 3.4 assists.
Johnson has career averages of 12.9 points and 3.9 rebounds in 340 games (181 starts) over six seasons. He spent his first 3 1/2 seasons with the Phoenix Suns before being dealt to the Nets at the 2023 trade deadline in the deal that netted Kevin Durant.
Also, guard Bruce Brown reportedly agreed to a one-year, $3.63 million deal with Denver. He also was on the club’s NBA title team.
Brown, 28, has played for six franchises and has averages of 8.9 points and 4.2 rebounds in 457 games (268 starts) over seven campaigns. He split last season between the Toronto Raptors (18 games) and New Orleans Pelicans (21) and averaged 8.3 points and 4.0 rebounds.
REPORTS: D’ANGELO RUSSELL GETS TWO-YEAR DEAL WITH MAVERICKS
Free agent point guard D’Angelo Russell is joining the Dallas Mavericks on a two-year deal worth $13 million, ESPN reported Monday.
Russell joins a Mavs team in win-now mode following the midseason Luka Doncic trade, with a core of Kyrie Irving, Anthony Davis, Klay Thompson, Daniel Gafford, Dereck Lively II and No. 1 overall draft pick Cooper Flagg.
Irving is recovering from an ACL tear he suffered in March, and Russell may be asked to start at point guard until Irving is healthy early in 2026.
Russell, 29, split the 2024-25 season between the Los Angeles Lakers and Brooklyn Nets and averaged 12.6 points, 5.1 assists and 2.8 rebounds in 58 games (36 starts). Russell played with Davis in Los Angeles before Davis was shipped to Dallas in the Doncic blockbuster.
An All-Star in 2018-19 with Brooklyn, Russell has posted career averages of 17.3 points, 5.7 assists and 3.4 rebounds while shooting 36.5 percent from 3-point range in 629 games (536 starts) with the Lakers, Nets, Golden State Warriors and Minnesota Timberwolves.
REPORT: JAREN JACKSON JR. TO RECEIVE $240M DEAL FROM GRIZZLIES
Two-time All-Star big man Jaren Jackson Jr. is on the verge of agreeing to a five-year, $240 million deal with the Memphis Grizzlies, ESPN reported on Monday.
The final season of the deal in 2029-30 is a player option, according to the report.
Memphis also agreed to a three-year, $52.5 million deal to retain Santi Aldama, who was slated to become a restricted free agent.
Jackson, 25, was the NBA Defensive Player of the Year for the 2022-23 season. He was an All-Star that season and again last season.
Jackson averaged 22.2 points per game last season, slightly behind the career-best 22.5 he put up one season earlier. He is averaging 18.5 points in 407 games (398 starts) over seven seasons in Memphis.
Jackson also has career averages of 5.5 rebounds, 1.9 blocked shots, 1.5 assists and 1.0 steal per game.
Aldama, 24, established career bests of 12.5 points, 6.4 rebounds and 2.9 assists in 65 games (16 starts) last season.
Overall, he is averaging 9.8 points, 5.2 rebounds and 1.9 assists in 235 games (71 starts) over four seasons with the Grizzlies.
Memphis also agreed to terms with guard Cam Spencer, reportedly for $4.5 million over two years. Spencer, 25, averaged 4.2 points and shot 36.5 percent from 3-point range in 25 games (one start) as a rookie.
REPORT: ZIAIRE WILLIAMS TO RETURN TO NETS ON 2-YEAR, $12M DEAL
Forward Ziaire Williams plans to sign a two-year, $12 million contract with the Brooklyn Nets, ESPN reported Monday.
The second season is a team option, per the report. Williams, 23, would have become a free agent.
Williams, the No. 10 overall pick of the 2021 NBA Draft, played his first three seasons with the Memphis Grizzlies and was traded to the Nets last July with a 2030 second-round pick for Nemanja Dangubic and Mamadi Diakite.
He appeared in 63 games (45 starts) for Brooklyn and averaged 10.0 points and 4.6 rebounds, both career highs.
REPORTS: NIC BATUM BACK TO CLIPPERS ON TWO-YEAR DEAL
Nicolas Batum will sign a two-year, $11.5 million contract this week to return to the Los Angeles Clippers, ESPN reported on Monday.
Batum, entering his 18th NBA season, opted out of a $4.9 million deal for 2025-26 prior to the draft. He spent most of the past five seasons with the Clippers — but played 57 games with the 76ers in 2023-24 — and shot 43.3 percent from 3-point range in 78 games last season.
Batum started eight games but was largely a reserve and averaged 4.0 points and 17.5 minutes per game.
In 1,131 career games, he’s a 36.9 percent 3-point shooter and has career averages of 10 points, 4.8 rebounds and 3.1 assists per game.
A first-round pick of the Houston Rockets in 2008, Batum turns 37 in December.
THUNDER GENERAL MANAGER SAM PRESTI LAUDS ‘HOMEGROWN’ NBA CHAMPIONSHIP TEAM
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Sam Presti put Oklahoma City’s first NBA championship team together in an unconventional way.
The Thunder general manager didn’t make any splashy trades or break the bank in free agency. He didn’t replace the coach with a bigger name during the rebuild to get the team over the top. He relied on good-old-fashioned internal development, with a few strategic additions sprinkled in.
It worked. Somehow, Oklahoma City claimed the title with the same coach and many of the same players who won 24 games four years ago.
“We have people from Canada, Serbia, the West Coast, the East Coast, middle America, France, Australia, that all come together for a collective goal,” Presti said. “There’s compassion on the team. There’s a cowboy toughness, a self-reliance that comes from being homegrown, and an essential sense of goodness.”
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was the regular-season and Finals MVP, but there were plenty of challenges. Jalen Williams, a first-time All-Star, was a force in the playoffs despite playing the entire postseason with a ligament tear in his right wrist that will require surgery. Chet Holmgren missed 50 games this season with a pelvic injury. The Thunder were among the league’s leaders in games lost to injury.
Presti said the key was that the players saw challenges as opportunities. Many took advantage of their additional playing time and were better prepared to contribute during the title run.
“If you want to be the exception, you have to be willing to be exceptional,” Presti said. “That point was basically aimed at the fact that we have to be the exception to the rule. … The quest to be exceptional is met with having to do a lot of things that are unorthodox, and I felt like the team did that in a lot of ways and we were rewarded for it.”
Coach Mark Daigneault, like the team, is an unconventional success story. He coached the team’s G-League affiliate before taking over the Thunder. After winning fewer than 25 games his first two years as Thunder head coach, he’s now a champion.
Presti said Daigneault has improved over the years, and his approach to learning helped the young team stay focused. He said the team never got overwhelmed by circumstances, like losing Game 1 in both the Western Conference semifinals against Denver and the NBA Finals against Indiana, or falling apart in Game 6 at Indiana.
“I think the team saw those as, ‘Hey, this is just the next thing in front of us that we have to accomplish to achieve the goals of being a great team,’ and I don’t think anyone was inconvenienced or saw that as a catastrophic event,” Presti said. “It’s like, ‘Well, I guess this is part of the thing we have to get better at,’ and they met the moment.”
Two additions were guard Alex Caruso, who was acquired in a trade with Chicago last summer, and center Isaiah Hartenstein, who was added through free agency. Those veterans played key roles in the playoffs and helped Presti get named Executive of the Year.
Presti said the Thunder won’t change much — he believes consistency brought them here. The team is positioned to do well going forward with all the key players from the youngest team to win a title since 1977 signed through at least next season.
But Presti said there is work ahead. He noted that no team has repeated since Golden State in 2017 and 2018.
“We’ll have to put our head down,” he said. “We’re not entitled to anything. If you hear us approaching things differently than we have in the past, I’d be a little bit surprised by that. But we’re going to have to fight some human nature there, but I think we have the people and the characters and the program to fight for that. But we’re going to have to stack days in order to stack seasons.”
