Latest news with #NicolasBatum
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Sport
- Yahoo
Joel Embiid's Ex-Teammate's Candid Reaction to 76ers Star's Knee Issues
Joel Embiid's Ex-Teammate's Candid Reaction to 76ers Star's Knee Issues originally appeared on Athlon Sports. Joel Embiid, the star of the Philadelphia 76ers, has suffered from several ailments during his career. Although he's often made a successful return, Embiid's knee injury has bothered him for a long time now, affecting his availability and effectiveness on the floor. He suffered from knee issues last season as a result of tearing his left meniscus during the 2023–24 season. Many believed he was ready as he participated in the 2024 Paris Olympics and represented Team USA. Unfortunately for the 2023 MVP, he ought to have worked out during his downtime. Embiid was then limited to just 19 games last season, averaging 23.8 points, 8.2 rebounds and 4.5 assists. His unavailability affected the team's performance and the 76ers missed the playoffs for the first time since 2018. On Wednesday, ESPN's Dotun Akintoye released a feature on Embiid. In the piece, former 76ers forward Nicolas Batum revealed that he's seen the star's knee multiple times. The veteran French basketball star gave a candid reaction to the Cameroonian star's knee injuries. "I was sitting next to him in the locker room," Batum said. "I saw his knee before every game, after every game. I saw his knee. I have no idea how he could even walk." Embiid wants to change the narrative and have a strong campaign for the 2025-26 season. The seven-time All-Star has proven that he's capable of being one of the best players in the NBA. However, his health has been affected gravely, limiting him in the past few seasons. This offseason, he's focused on getting his body right before the season starts. The 2025-26 campaign could be a revenge year for story was originally reported by Athlon Sports on Jul 17, 2025, where it first appeared.
Yahoo
06-07-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Rumor: Clippers a ‘strong potential destination' for likely Hawks departure
The post Rumor: Clippers a 'strong potential destination' for likely Hawks departure appeared first on ClutchPoints. The Los Angeles Clippers have a need at the center position heading into the 2025 offseason, and a former teammate of James Harden could be the answer. Now that they've reached agreements with two of their own big free agents in Harden and Nicolas Batum, the Clippers can look at the free agent market. Advertisement According to reports, Clint Capela could be eyeing the LA Clippers in free agency. Clippers a 'strong potential destination' for likely Hawks departure The Atlanta Hawks have seen Onyeka Okungwu emerge as a strong starter for their franchise in recent years, and Clint Capela appears to be have slowed down a bit as well. According to NBA insider Marc Stein, Capela could be eyeing a free agency commitment to the LA Clippers. The Clippers have been categorized as a strong potential destination for Capela, who has been widely expected to depart the Hawks going back to February's trade deadline. The Clippers have been active on the trade market this offseason, but have not been one of the teams to get in on the action so far. They have, however, reached agreements with their own free agents in James Harden and Nicolas Batum. Advertisement Harden opted out of the final year of his deal for the 2025-26 season, but agreed to a new, two-year deal worth $81.5 million to remain with the Clippers. Batum also opted out of the final year of his deal, but agreed to a new, two-year, $12 million deal to return to Los Angeles. The Clippers drafted 22-year old Yanic Konan Niederhauser out of Penn State with the 30th pick in the 2025 NBA Draft. President of Basketball Operations Lawrence Frank spoke highly of the 6-foot-11 athletic center on draft night, but would not immediately commit to Konan Niederhauser being the backup center behind Ivica Zubac. That's where a player like Clint Capela could come in, acting a a reliable backup center while Konan Niederhauser learns the ropes. Advertisement Additionally, Capela would be reuniting with James Harden, a player who helped his career growth when the two spent six seasons together with the Houston Rockets. Alongside Harden for the final four seasons in Houston, Capela averaged 14.3 points, 11.1 rebounds, 1.1 assists, and 1.6 blocks in 29 minutes per game on 64.5 percent shooting. Last season, Capela averaged 8.9 points, 8.5 rebounds, 1.1 assists, and 1.0 block in 21.4 minutes with the Atlanta Hawks. Free agency is set to begin at 3PM PST on Monday afternoon. Related: Nicolas Batum returns to Clippers with $12 million contract despite retirement rumors Advertisement Related: Grading James Harden's $81.5 million Clippers contract
New York Times
01-07-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
Clippers begin free agency by adding Brook Lopez. Could Chris Paul be next?
The LA Clippers headed into free agency having handled the expected items. James Harden was who president of basketball operations Lawrence Frank declared as the team's 'top priority' following the draft. He is back, with a player option for 2026. Frank said it was 'a dark day' when backup power forward Nicolas Batum was included in the trade that brought Harden to LA from the Philadelphia 76ers in the fall of 2023, signaling an intention for Batum to be back. Like Harden, Batum declined his player option and signed a new deal with the Clippers that gave him a raise, while the Clippers have a team option on Batum in 2026. Advertisement I identified two needs for the Clippers, ones that mirrored their needs for the draft but were more acute because the Clippers needed short-term playable options: ball handling and frontcourt help. One of my named targets was Milwaukee Bucks center Brook Lopez. My inclusion of Lopez, who turned 37 years old in April, had as much to do with the connections as it did with basketball. Lopez was born in Los Angeles County in 1988, along with twin brother and 16-year NBA veteran Robin Lopez. In 2008, the New Jersey Nets drafted Lopez out of Stanford with the 10th overall pick. Lopez's first NBA head coach? None other than Lawrence Frank, who also was on the Brooklyn Nets coaching staff to begin the 2013-14 season. In Lopez's final season with the Nets in 2016-17, one of Brooklyn's assistants was Shaun Fein, who is now the shooting guru on LA head coach Tyronn Lue's staff; that also happened to be the season that Lopez made 134 3s after only making 3 3s in his first eight NBA seasons combined. When Lopez was traded to the Los Angeles Lakers in 2017, one of the assistants was current Clippers assistant coach Brian Shaw. The Lakers also had a young center on their roster in 2017-18 named Ivica Zubac. And, if nothing else, Lopez is a notable Disney fan. And Intuit Dome happens to be 30 miles away from Disneyland. Whatever it took for Lopez to leave a place where he was a co-starter next to two-time MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo and a NBA champion in 2021, it worked in the Clippers' favor. Lopez agreed to sign a two-year, $18 million deal to join the Clippers Monday. Lopez will backup Zubac, a major departure for Lopez after starting all but 50 of his 1,105 career games. Time to update the Clip graphic — Brook Lopez gives the LA Clippers a professional center behind Ivica Zubac @TheAthletic — Law Murray 🚨 (@LawMurrayTheNU) July 1, 2025 Frank hinted that the Clippers would target a veteran center. After the first round of the draft last week saw the Clippers select Penn State center Yanic Konan Niederhauser with the 30th overall pick, Frank said, 'We'll probably have at least three centers. We may want to get a different complement to balance it, because it's hard at any level for rookies to come in, but especially on a team like ours. But we'll kind of see how the roster plays out.' Advertisement The Clippers have that complementary look with their three centers now. Zubac just finished third in points scored out of post ups this season behind All-Stars Nikola Jokić and Alperen Şengün, per Synergy, while being named to his first All-Defense (second) team. Niederhauser is a raw 6-foot-11, 243-pound athlete who had the best vertical leaps of any of the centers at the 2025 combine. And Lopez is one of six players in NBA history (along with Clifford Robinson, Rasheed Wallace, Dirk Nowitzki, LeBron James and Kevin Durant) to have at least 1,000 made 3s and 1,000 blocked shots, and the only one of those six with more than 2,000 blocked shots. The only other players last season besides Lopez to have at least 100 3s and 100 blocks each were Alex Sarr, Myles Turner and All-Stars Jaren Jackson Jr. and Victor Wembanyama. Lopez doesn't just provide solid 3-point shooting (37.3 percent 3s last season) and rim protection (1.9 blocks per game last season). He made 82.6 percent of his free throws and 50.9 percent of his field goals overall as part of his 13.0 points per game in 31.8 minutes. While Lopez isn't the All-Star scorer that he was in Brooklyn, he is still capable of being an inside-outside threat, and he will occasionally put the ball on the floor to take advantage of mismatches. Lopez can spot up as well as hit 3s as a trailer, and he does respectable big man things such as screen, roll, and cut into dunks. Lopez still had enough juice to catch 15 alley-oops last season, and as Zubac found out in February, Lopez can still put back a missed shot from the top rope: Lopez has never been a strong passer, having never averaged more than 2.3 assists per game in his 17-year career, and he struggled mightily in the postseason against the Indiana Pacers. While Lopez has a massive body at 7-foot-1, 282 pounds, he is a boxout player more than a player who will secure a high share of rebounds. And defensively, Lopez is limited to drop coverage, especially at this stage of his career. Lopez and Zubac shared the floor for 13 games together seven years ago with the Lakers for seven minutes, and that is not a reasonable option in 2025. But the Clippers having Lopez as a likely 20-minute backup is a major improvement over what the team has been used to behind Zubac over the last six years. Montrezl Harrell won a Sixth Man of the Year award in 2020 while coming off of the bench behind Zubac, but the Clippers moved on from him after the bubble. Serge Ibaka was signed to start over Zubac in 2020, but back issues led to Ibaka's decline, Zubac's permanent re-entry into the starting lineup, and a DeMarcus Cousins cameo. Isaiah Hartenstein went from 2021 training camp invite to a replacement for Ibaka, but the Clippers prioritized backup point guard in the 2022 offseason while completely punting the backup center position, choosing instead to lean into wing heavy lineups that featured Batum and Robert Covington. In the middle of the 2022-23 season, LA finally relented and got Mason Plumlee to replace Moses Brown as the backup center. And when Plumlee was injured in November 2023, the Clippers signed Daniel Theis as a backup. Last season, the Clippers went from Mo Bamba to a combination of Drew Eubanks and ball handler Ben Simmons behind Zubac, who saved the Clippers by playing at least 22 minutes in all 80 of his regular season games and at least 31 minutes in each game of the playoffs against the Nuggets. Lopez' addition leaves the Clippers with just one player left to fill a second unit spot with their existing roster. LA has multiple playable centers in Zubac and Lopez. They have multiple wing defenders in Kawhi Leonard and Batum. They have multiple point of attack defenders in Kris Dunn and Derrick Jones Jr. The Clippers have multiple on-off ball shooters in Norman Powell and Bogdan Bogdanović. And Harden and Leonard are the two stars. Harden just needs a true backup point guard. Advertisement At the top of my list at the point guard position is perhaps the greatest Clipper ever, and that's Chris Paul. The drawbacks with Paul are obvious: he's a 6-foot 40-year-old who has played 20 NBA seasons. But the Clippers have the longest active streak of consecutive winning seasons at 14 years, and that streak started with Paul's arrival to the franchise in 2011 and continued after Paul was traded in 2017 to Harden's Rockets. While Paul was with the Clippers, both Lue and Frank were assistant coaches under Doc Rivers. Steve Ballmer bought the team in 2014, midway through Paul's tenure. Paul also happened to visit Intuit Dome for Game 3 against the Nuggets, sitting next to Disney CEO Bob Iger (you see, a potential networking opportunity for Brook Lopez if it comes together). The best Clipper of the Lob City era is here — Law Murray 🚨 (@LawMurrayTheNU) April 25, 2025 It helps that Paul can still play. Paul just started all 82 games for the San Antonio Spurs last season, averaging 8.8 poiints, 3.6 rebounds, 7.4 assists, 1.3 steals and 1.7 3s while shooting 37.7 percent on 3s and 92.4 percent on free throws. The only player older than Paul in NBA history who started all 82 games in a season was John Stockton, and Stockton didn't play 20 NBA seasons. Like Lopez, Paul would be brought in to be a backup to one of LA's most important players, theoretically dropping his minutes to around 20 per game at most. Paul would bring what the Clippers need most based on their weakness from last season offensively, and that's a player who can take care of the basketball. And while Paul's age and size makes him a defensive liability, he still has a nose for the ball, as Zubac found out on New Year Eve: If LA's backup point guard isn't Paul, then the pickings get slimmer, although they get younger and bigger by default. There's Malcolm Brogdon, who was a reported Clipper for a few hours prior to the 2023 NBA Draft. There's Cameron Payne, who played in New York last season and backed up Paul in Phoenix. There's Cory Joseph, who started in the playoffs for Orlando and won a ring with Leonard in San Antonio. There's Spencer Dinwiddie, a Los Angeles native who played with Lopez in Brooklyn. Perhaps the door could be open return for a Ben Simmons return now that the Clippers have a floor-spacing center in Lopez. It all may come down to the money. The Clippers still have about $5 million left to spend from the non taxpayer midlevel exception, but they could also waive Drew Eubanks and his $4.8 million salary. Flexibility is key, especially considering how the Clippers don't need much from the backup point guard spot; they just need some Harden insurance. If Paul joins Lopez, then it makes the NBA's oldest team that much older. But LA also can say that the players in their late 30s are also backup up by young players who need to be ready to play anyway. There's no pathway toward playing time like being asked to step up when a player near (or at) 40 needs a vet day. That will definitely help Niederhauser spell Lopez, or 2023 first-round pick Kobe Brown spell Batum. Niederhauser was selected over a better shooting center like Maxime Raynaud or a more proven defender like Ryan Kalkbrenner in part because Lopez was in their sights, while the presence of Brown reduced the need for a draft pick such as Rasheer Fleming. Players like Cam Christie or Jordan Miller would be needed to play if players ahead of them can't make it. We'll see if it is all this simple for the Clippers in the coming days. What appears certain for now, though, is that the Clippers will be old in 2025-26. But they should also be good — and deep. (Benny Sieu/USA Today Sports)
New York Times
30-06-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
What's next for Clippers after retaining Harden, Batum?
NBA free agency officially began Monday evening, and we've already seen some key moves and re-signings. Petre Thomas / Imagn Jayne Kamin-Oncea / Imagn With free agency a few hours away, the LA Clippers basically have only two spots on the roster that need to be addressed: ball handling and frontcourt help. Those were the areas that president of basketball operations Lawrence Frank outlined days after the Clippers were eliminated by the Denver Nuggets in the West quarterfinals. The 8-man rotation that finished the Clippers-Nuggets series is intact after the team agreed to terms with All-NBA point guard James Harden and veteran reserve forward Nicolas Batum. Both players declined their player options and secured raises for next season. The Clippers also have their last five draft picks who will be under team control: 2025 picks Yanic Konan Niederhauser and Kobe Sanders (a likely 2-way contract), 2024 second round pick Cam Christie, and 2023 picks Kobe Brown and Jordan Miller (nonguaranteed but fully expected to return). Amir Coffey and Ben Simmons are incumbent free agents, and while both were rotation players entering the postseason, they were both out of the mix by the end of the Denver series. In Coffey's case, he didn't play a single minute in the playoffs. Coffey and Simmons are both expected to get better offers elsewhere than they will from the Clippers, with Simmons in particular looking at teams with exceptions; he's not looking for a minimum deal. Veteran Patty Mills is also a free agent, while center Drew Eubanks has a nonguaranteed contract that could be used in a potential trade. What happens with Eubanks is to be determined, but he might be a long shot to make it to Week 1 if the Clippers add another veteran center. Teams can have a maximum of 21 players under contract in the offseason. The Clippers tendered one of last year's two-way contract players, Trentyn Flowers, so he is a restricted free agent who is expected to return. The other two-way contracts that ended last season, Patrick Baldwin Jr. and Seth Lundy, are still on those contracts. The Clippers also added undrafted rookies John Poulakidas and Jahmyl Telfort, though LA likes to wait to officially sign Exhibit 10 contracts while they do other business. So if the Clippers add two players, likely a backup point guard and a backup center, that will put them at 21 players, including Eubanks and the four 2025 rookies. LA has the nontaxpayer midlevel exception to work with, a little over $14 million. Look for them to use that on Harden and Ivica Zubac insurance. Any other positions would signal that a trade would likely be necessary to balance the roster. Adam Glanzman / Getty Images The Warriors' front office will be stationed in Los Angeles at the start of free agency, as has been their recent custom. They quickly pursued De'Anthony Melton at the start of last summer's free agency and, team sources said, they will be on the recruiting trail for veteran help again in the opening hours on Monday afternoon. Team sources have identified a stretch center as a high priority. Many in the league continue to link Al Horford to the Warriors as a preferred target. If the Warriors use the taxpayer midlevel exception (projected at around $5.7 million) on Horford or another free agent, they'll be hard-capped at the second apron, currently projected at $207.8 million. The Utah Jazz will agree to buy out Jordan Clarkson's contract, a league source confirmed to The Athletic. Clarkson, the 2021 NBA Sixth Man of the Year, averaged 16.2 points and 3.7 assists per game last season. The 33-year-old was slated to make $14.3 million next season. Clarkson and Collin Sexton, who was traded to Charlotte yesterday, were never going to be on the Jazz roster next season. The Jazz were moving off them no matter what. Utah wants to provide more minutes for youngsters Isaiah Collier, Keyonte George, Cody Williams, Brice Sensabaugh and rookie Walter Clayton Jr. Getty Images F, Warriors Age: 22 BORD$: $24,030,341 OK. ... Let's talk about this. Jonathan Kuminga represents the fundamental limitation with statistically evaluating free agents: You can only go by what contribution they made to their current team, but what you're trying to solve for is the player's value to their next team. Most of the time, those two numbers are close enough that the valuation problem isn't particularly challenging. However, for odd players or odd systems, the degree of difficulty multiplies. In Kuminga's case, we might have a particularly notable example of that problem: An odd player and an odd system — magnified, in this case, by the player not fitting the system. Golden State's read-react, pass-and-cut system has made other tunnel-visiony on-ball shot-creators look much worse than they were before or after (see Russell, D'Angelo; Schröder, Dennis), and Kuminga may be another. Alas, we can't be totally sure, because Golden State is the only place he's ever played. Our entire body of work for evaluating Kuminga is in the context of his square-peg game and Golden State's round hole of an offense. To explain this statistically, there is a lot in Kuminga's track record that suggests maybe he just isn't all that good. Most notably, his career shooting marks are 33.2 percent from 3 and 69.6 percent from the line. He's just OK as a defender, seems to have poor instincts for reading the game at both ends and is prone to spectacular bouts of dribble blindness. The Warriors have pushed him to be a beast on the glass, but historically, players rarely change their stripes in this realm, and his rebound rate has stayed right around 10.0 percent his whole career — fine for a combo forward but unremarkable. GO FURTHER LeBron? Harden? Kuminga? The Top 25 NBA free agents for the 2025 offseason The Phoenix Suns have officially announced the Mark Williams trade. The Suns traded Vasa Mičić, the draft rights to Liam McNeeley and a 2029 first-round pick (worst of Cleveland, Minnesota and Utah) for Williams while also receiving their 2029 second-round pick back. F, Bulls Age: 22 BORD$: $34,768,411 Giddey is a restricted free agent this offseason. My formula spit out a fanciful number that would give pause to even the biggest Giddey fan. So instead, let me make the larger argument for why Giddey might be worth more than you think: He is unusually young for a player in this position. Despite having played for four years, Giddey won't turn 23 until October. Thus, his accomplishments to date on a rookie contract must be seen in the context of players who are usually at least a year or two older by this point in their NBA careers. No, he is not an All-Star or anything close to it. Yes, his defense is bad, he has no pull-up game to speak of and the 3-point shooting still comes and goes. That said, Giddey shot 37.8 percent from 3 last season on decent volume and hit 78.1 percent from the foul line; people talk about him like he's Tony Allen, but he requires defending at the arc. The biggest limitation, actually, is his push shot, which may leave him struggling to generate a high volume of attempts even if he's making them consistently. Inside the arc, Giddey shot only 51.2 percent last season and did not have a notably high free-throw rate; that would trouble me more than the outside shooting if I were a Chicagoan trying to project ahead. Giddey also has some other subtle advantages, though; he's an awesome rebounder for a perimeter player, and his ability to play point guard at his size offers some interesting lineup options. The Bulls will have the upper hand in any negotiation because Giddey is a restricted free agent, and because only one other team (Brooklyn) has significant cap space. Giddey is young, but it still seems unlikely that the Nets would commit a big heap of their cap space to trying to scare off Chicago from matching. Where does this dance end? I wouldn't quite go to the BORD$ number above, but something around four years and $100 million to $110 million feels right from both sides. GO FURTHER LeBron? Harden? Kuminga? The Top 25 NBA free agents for the 2025 offseason Guard Collin Gillespie is expected to return to the Phoenix Suns on a guaranteed one-year deal, a league source confirmed to The Athletic . Gillespie, 26, played on a two-way contract last season. He got a chance to play meaningful minutes because of injuries late in the season and took advantage. While serving mostly as a back-up point guard, Gillespie averaged 5.5 points and 3.0 assists in 15.3 minutes in 15 games in March. That production jumped to 10.6 points, 3.9 rebounds, 3.0 assists and 23.4 minutes in April. Phoenix is still sorting out its backcourt but Gillespie could keep his role as a backup point guard under new head coach Jordan Ott. Nicolas Batum will return to the LA Clippers, as expected, league sources said. He will sign a two-year, $11.5 million deal with a team option in 2026 and a trade kicker. This will be his fifth contract with the Clippers. Veteran sharpshooter Luke Kennard is expected to receive interest from a host of playoff teams, including the Rockets, Pistons, Pacers, Magic, Nuggets, Clippers and Knicks. The 29-year-old shot 43.3 percent from 3 on four attempts per game last season in Memphis, and is also an underrated playmaker who averaged 3.3 assists per game. Your annual reminder that a BAD year for Tyus Jones taking care of the rock — like his 4.7 assist-turnover ratio with the Phoenix Suns last season — would be cause for celebration for most point guards. The 29-year-old will have multiple suitors in free agency as a veteran/rotation guy who never turns the ball over. Stacy Revere / Getty Images Before Dorian Finney-Smith opted out of the final year of his contract and became an unrestricted free agent, it was difficult to see how a team like the Lakers might be able to create more room for Brook Lopez than the Bucks. Now, not only do the Lakers have enough space, but our Dan Woike reports the Lakers have interest in signing Lopez. As I wrote in my Bucks free agency primer, in what was admittedly a confusing set of cap machinations — sorry, the new CBA is confusing! — the Bucks could realistically fill out a 14-man roster for next season and have roughly $7 million under the luxury tax and $12.9 million under the first apron to re-sign Lopez. Before Finney-Smith's decision, the Lakers would have only had the taxpayer midlevel exception of $5.1 million to offer to Lopez. Now, they have the spending power of the $14.1 million nontaxpayer midlevel exception to compete with the Bucks, which will put both teams in an interesting spot. Lopez is still one of the only players in the NBA that knocks down 3-pointers (37.3 percent on 4.7 attempts per game last season) and blocks shots (1.9 blocks per game) at an elite level. But he will be 37 years old next season, his 18th in the NBA. How much do both teams think that is worth? And how much will either team be willing to pay to get him on their roster next season? Why is Joe Ingles returning to the Timberwolves on a minimum contract despite not being in line for minutes? The Timberwolves see him as a beloved teammate and a veteran the coaches value for his perspective on the game. The Wolves declined to pick up Josh Minott's team option because he was a young player who wanted more playing time. Ingles will come in knowing the landscape and won't complain about it. The Wolves will still be looking for a point guard and/or a center when free agency opens. Kiyoshi Mio / Imagn The Rockets are working quickly to secure meetings with Dorian Finney-Smith, Nickeil Alexander-Walker and Luke Kennard at the outset of free agency, team sources tell The Athletic. The veteran trio sits atop Houston's wish list of two-way, win-now players. The organization is hoping to move quickly to secure additional depth after re-signing key rotation pieces in recent days. Kevin C. Cox / Getty Images Armed with the $14.1 million mid-level exception, the Lakers are expected to chase Milwaukee Bucks center Brook Lopez and the Atlanta Hawks' Clint Capela, with the surprise addition of Portland Trail Blazers center Deandre Ayton as another target on their list. The Lakers are not making calls gauging Austin Reaves' trade value, one of the sources said. As free agency begins, the Lakers are motivated not to sacrifice long-term flexibility as they begin to arm themselves for a potential run at another superstar to pair with Luka Dončić as soon as next summer. Reaves, who turned down a nearly $90 million extension last week, is viewed as a key piece alongside Dončić, the star the team is building around in the present and future. Joe Ingles will sign a one-year, $3.6 million deal to return to the Minnesota Timberwolves, a team source confirmed. ESPN was first to report. Johnny Juzang — who will be released by the Jazz, per ESPN — has a BORD$ value of $2,831,914 and a salary of ... $2,840,000. I'm surprised the Jazz waived him with three non-guaranteed years still left on his deal, an extremely cap-friendly arrangement that would have set the Jazz up to use his contract in future trades or keep him as a cheap fifth guard. I bring all this up because any team with a trade exception worth at least $2.58 million can claim Juzang, 24, off waivers. His 2025-26 salary would be guaranteed, but the acquiring team would get two non-guaranteed years on top of that. Jaime Valdez / Imagn You can probably rule out the Toronto Raptors, now without a president of basketball operations, being too active in free agency, barring a trade that radically changes their financial circumstances. Assuming they let Jamison Battle's contract guarantee and sign second-round pick Alijah Martin at a deal starting at the minimum, they will have 14 players on guaranteed deals while butting right up against the luxury-tax threshold. Although they have some small-ball center options in Scottie Barnes, Jonathan Mogbo and ninth pick Collin Murray-Boyles, they could probably use a more traditional center behind Jakob Poeltl. However, that would take them into the luxury tax, even with just a minimum salary. It is not uncommon for teams to go into the year as a tax-paying team, deciding whether or not to duck below the threshold before the trade deadline. That is what the Raptors will probably do. Another option: trading Ochai Agbaji, who will be battling for minutes on the wing with Gradey Dick and Ja'Kobe Walter, into another team's midlevel exception. Agbaji is in the final year of his rookie contract, making $6.38 million this year. Agbaji had a nice season last year, and it is probably worth keeping him around and letting the three (plus, uhh, Battle) battle it out. Having some wing depth behind Brandon Ingram is a good idea, yes?. Moving Agbaji is an option, though, if they are concerned about letting this play out throughout the season.
Yahoo
30-06-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Key LA Clippers Free Agent Makes Big Decision on Future
Key LA Clippers Free Agent Makes Big Decision on Future originally appeared on Athlon Sports. The L.A. Clippers boast one of the more fascinating offseasons in the league. After finishing with an impressive 50-32 record and the Western Conference's No. 5 seed, L.A. pushed the mighty Denver Nuggets to seven games when, shockingly, 11-time All-Star point guard James Harden collapsed in a do-or-die closeout contest. Advertisement Despite his umpteenth playoff failure, Harden remains a terrific talent — especially during the regular season and in non-closeout playoff games. Last year, the 6-foot-5 Arizona State product averaged 22.8 points on .410/.352/.874 shooting splits, 8.7 assists and 5.8 rebounds across 78 healthy bouts for L.A. According to ESPN's Shams Charania, the 36-year-old declined his $36.3 million player option for next year to instead sign a two-season, $81.5 million deal with L.A. Now, the Clippers have opted to re-sign another one of their own key free agents. Sources inform NBA insider Chris Haynes that combo forward Nicolas Batum is inking a two-year, $12 million deal to remain in Los Angeles. USA: Los Angeles Clippers forward Kawhi Leonard (2) looks on from the bench as he sits next to forward Nicolas Batum (33) in the first half against the Portland Trail Blazers at Intuit Dome.© Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images This agreement appears to hover right around the $5.7 million annual starting salary needed to ink players to the taxpayer's mid-level exception this summer, although year-to-year details have not been revealed. Sources inform ESPN's Shams Charania that L.A. will have a team option on Batum for the 2026-27 season. Should the Clippers want to trade Batum at any point, he will earn a trade kicker (unless he waives it, which happens surprisingly often in these situations). Advertisement Charania reports that Batum's agent at Comsport, Bouna Ndiaye, negotiated the terms of the deal. The 6-foot-8 swingman has spent most of the last five seasons in L.A. He was briefly traded out of town so that his contract could accommodate the Clippers' acquisition of native son James Harden midway through the 2023-24 season, but was re-signed in free agency last summer. Across 78 healthy regular season bouts for L.A. last year, the 36-year-old Frenchman averaged 4.0 points on .437/.433/.810 shooting splits, 2.8 rebounds, 1.1 assists, 0.7 steals and 0.5 blocks in 17.5 minutes per. Related: Clippers Announce Ben Simmons News Before Grizzlies Game This story was originally reported by Athlon Sports on Jun 30, 2025, where it first appeared.
