According to The Athletic’s Kelly Iko, the Clippers have extended “an offer” to free agent center Moses Brown. It’s unclear what exactly the offer is, or if Brown is going to accept it.

Based on Brown’s status in the league, it appears likely that this will be a training camp invite. Last season, the Clippers opted to leave their 15th roster spot open and bring two young centers, Isaiah Hartenstein and Harry Giles, in to compete for the spot. That strategy was an unquestioned success, maybe even too successful–Hartenstein had a phenomenal season for the Clippers and played himself out of their price range. If Brown does accept this offer, I would guess that it’s for a similar arrangement: he comes into LAC training camp this fall to compete with a yet-to-be-determined big man for the final roster spot. Brown, currently 22, will turn 23 this fall and has one year of two-way contract eligibility remaining. However, the Clippers already have a two-way spot committed to rookie big man Moussa Diabate and have multiple undrafted free agents on exhibit 10 deals auditioning for their second two-way spot in Summer League. With a pressing need for a big man for the 15th roster spot, it feels more likely that Brown would compete for that job–although the door is open for him to join on a two-way instead.

Brown has always generated a bit of buzz on NBA Twitter due to his size and play above the rim. Two years ago, he was a consistently featured player on the Oklahoma City Thunder after the trade deadline–remember, the Oklahoma City Thunder have spent the last few years shutting down any capable performers at the deadline and trying to lose games on purpose to get better draft positioning–and put up some huge numbers, including a 21-point/23-rebound effort (in a blowout loss) and an infamous 24-point, 18-rebound, 7-block game against the Clippers… when LAC intentionally threw the final game of the season to manipulate playoff seeding and Ty Lue sabotaged the team down the stretch by running the offense through Daniel Oturu. Overall, his per-minute stats have been staggering, with 15 points and 15 rebounds per 36 throughout his career, including 18 points and 15 rebounds per 36 minutes for the Cleveland Cavaliers late last season when he was signed as frontcourt depth to cover for injuries. Like I opened with, his play above the rim has always generated a lot of hype, with putback dunks and emphatic blocks against hopeless smaller opponents in a fashion reminiscent of former Clipper Boban Marjanovic.

But if you get a layer deeper, things start to get really troubling. Despite his size and highlights, he’s actually not a great finisher around the rim, making just 62.8% of his shot attempts inside 3 feet in his 3-year NBA career (and 64.2% last season with Dallas and Cleveland). For reference, Clippers center Ivica Zubac, who is not exactly celebrated for his above-the-rim finishing, shot 71.5% at the rim last season. When it’s not a dunk, it gets even worse: Brown has only made around 40% of his layup attempts in the NBA, according to basketball-reference, and is a career 29-87 (33.3%) on shots from between 3 and 10 feet (again, for reference, Zubac was 100-194, 51.5% last season). There is really very little offensive skill to speak of aside from being very tall. While his size makes him a legitimately good rebounder and solid deterrent at the rim, Brown has also proven to be a negative defensively at the NBA level due to his inability to defend in space and poor positioning, though perhaps in a manner that is easier to get away with in regular season second-unit and garbage time minutes. At each of his 4 stops, Moses’ teams have been worse with him on the floor, sometimes in significant fashion:

The column on the left is his team’s +/- per 100 possessions when Brown plays, while the column on the right is the difference between the team’s +/- per 100 possessions when he is on the floor compared to when he is off the court. So while the numbers on the left aren’t necessarily his fault–he’s been on some bad teams, including playing most of his minutes on a blatantly taking Thunder squad–it’s notable that every team he’s been on has dropped a level when he’s stepped on the court. Where he does add value, courtesy of his size, is as a roll man and rebounder. He’s just simply too big to ignore diving to the rim on the screen-and-roll, and like former Clippers center DeAndre Jordan (though he has nowhere near the explosive leaping and finishing ability of prime DeAndre) he makes for a pretty big target to just throw the ball up for a dunk if the defense doesn’t stay home. That can open up space for a ballhandler to turn the corner and get dribble penetration, and it has created easy buckets at times–just never consistently enough to actually positively impact games for his teams.

It’s easy to compare Brown to Isaiah Hartenstein–both are younger players coming (if Brown comes) to the Clippers relatively unproven, both are vying to prove themselves in training camp (if that is indeed what Moses’ contract is), both played a half-season for the Cleveland Cavaliers before becoming free agents and coming to LAC. I would resist that urge for a few reasons, first because Hartenstein was a massive success and even imagining that the Clippers could win a buy-low move for Moses in similar fashion is a combination of unrealistic and unfair, but also because unlike Moses, Isaiah had proven his ability to help teams win NBA basketball games but had struggled to stay healthy and find a consistent role behind star bigs. Moses has actually played more NBA minutes than Hart had before joining the Clippers, he just hasn’t been nearly as good in his 1,300 pre-Clippers minutes as Hartenstein was. And we all love Isaiah’s passing ability, so it’s worth noting that Moses had 0 assists in 176 minutes for Cleveland last year.

So while Brown has struggled to be an effective NBA player up to this point in his career, he certainly has intrigue because of his above-average size for an NBA center and above-the-rim play. I’m a little low on him for a full NBA roster spot, especially considering that the Clippers seem likely to only carry two centers next season (they’ll play Nicolas Batum and Robert Covington as the backup “bigs,” but the spot Brown would slot into would be LAC’s only “true big” insurance for Ivica Zubac), but I certainly think the consensus is that he belongs in an NBA training camp and will continue to get cups of coffee in the league, even if he’s probably more of a G-League All-Star than an NBA backup C. At just 22 years old, he certainly has room for improvement, and it’s certainly worth noting that it’s incredibly rare to find this combination of youth and NBA experience in an unrestricted free agent for the minimum salary (the other side of that coin is he could have been a restricted free agent this year, but Cleveland chose to not extend a qualifying offer and replace him with Robin Lopez instead). The disappointing aspect of the upside of signing a 22-year-old is that if it is indeed a training camp deal (which is a one-year, non-guaranteed minimum-salary contract), he’ll be in the same boat next summer that Hartenstein was this year: an unrestricted free agent with no bird or early bird rights. That means LAC wouldn’t be able to retain him if he’s a completely different player next year and impresses them enough to be kept.

They could offer him a two-year contract instead, but that’s not typical for training camp invitees–basically, if a normal player on a non-guaranteed deal gets injured, his salary becomes guaranteed, and since teams don’t want to be stuck paying a random guy who they never intended to keep past camp anyway, they include a clause in camp contracts called Exhibit 9 that means the salary is not protected in case of injury (shitty, right?). Exhibit 9 can only be added to one-year, minimum-salary deals. Other than that, there’s no rule prohibiting the Clippers from giving him a two-year, non-guaranteed, minimum-salary deal that allows them to cut him in camp if he loses the camp battle or keep him for up to two seasons if they like him, at which point they’d at least have early bird rights. The only downside would be that if he gets hurt, they’re on the hook for paying him his salary this year (and the luxury tax penalty for it) even if they choose to cut him and keep whoever his competitor is.

NBA Free Agency: Clippers extend offer to Moses Brown
Lucas Hann

As was heavily rumored earlier this week, free agent point guard John Wall has officially signed with the LA Clippers, his agency Klutch Sports announced Friday morning. His contract is worth $13.2M over 2 years, the value of the Clippers’ non-taxpayer mid-level exception.

I wrote a bit about the decision-making process with the taxpayer MLE yesterday when the Clippers lost Isaiah Hartenstein, a valuable member of last year’s team who could have only been re-signed using this tool (although there’s no guarantee it would have been accepted, since Hartenstein got more money from the New York Knicks). Wall’s contract being finalized gives us a couple of data points: first, it confirms that he is indeed taking the tpMLE instead of the league minimum despite making over $40M from Houston this season; but it also gives us the key detail that Wall will sign a two-year deal at that number instead of just a one-year deal.

That makes a little more sense. Having a second season on the initial signing of a buy-low free agent is advantageous for the same reason that the Clippers just lost Hartenstein–it’s much easier to re-sign overachieving guys after 2 seasons with your team than it is after 1. Let’s say that John Wall has a good year for the Clippers. He doesn’t have to magically regain his All-Star form at 32 years old after major injuries, but let’s just say this gamble works and he is a significant contributor. If he had signed a one-year deal at the taxpayer mid-level, the Clippers would have only been able to offer him a new contract starting at $7.7M next year–less than the non-taxpayer mid-level exception and likely not enough to retain him. If he had signed a one-year deal for the minimum, that number would have been even less, below $4M. On his current 2-year taxpayer MLE deal, the Clippers will have the option to re-sign Wall with his early bird rights (the same contract Reggie Jackson and Nicolas Batum have gotten) for up to $11.7M in the 2024 off-season, which should be right around full MLE offers that he might get from elsewhere. Early bird status also comes with a built-in advantage with raises: after one year, a player can get 5% annual raises; after two, he can get 8%.

There’s also the immediate value gain, again in the scenario where the Wall gamble pays off and he plays well, of just having a second year of him at 6.7M before he hits free agency again and you have to worry about it at all. Between that and the aforementioned re-signing tools, the Clippers have put themselves in a position where they have insured their gamble/investment in Wall a bit more than they have been able/willing to with other signings in the past. And from Wall’s perspective, while the increase from a $2.9M vet’s min deal to the $6.4M tpMLE salary this season feels negligible for a player that has made $232M in salary (before endorsements) to date with another guaranteed $40.8M coming from Houston this year*, guaranteeing himself another $6.7M next year is a bit nicer of a perk. Not only does he get that marginal gain over the vet min again, but it guarantees another year of drawing an NBA paycheck, which isn’t always a given for injury-prone players in their 30s. He could suffer another major injury and still get that cash next year. There’s also something to be said, from Wall’s perspective, of signing with a front office that is clearly going out of its way to give themselves a path to keep you long-term and make you feel like a part of the organization moving forward and not just a rental.

*As a side note, some people have asked me about if Wall’s money from Houston will be reduced at all based on his new contract with LAC. The answer is really that we don’t know–the NBA does have a “set-off” rule where, when a player is waived, the amount his old team owes him is reduced by 50 cents for every dollar he gets above the one-year veteran’s minimum on his new deal (not the 10-year, $2.9M number he would have actually gotten had he signed for the minimum). So, for Wall to come in at $6.5M, set-off would reduce the money Houston owes him by about $2M… except that while set-off is the law of the land in straight-up waiving of guaranteed deals, in buyout situations like Wall’s, where a player negotiates his freedom by giving money back, the set-off provision is a negotiable part of the deal. As far as I know/have seen reported, there has been no indication as to whether or not Wall’s money will be subject to set-off or if Houston agreed to get rid of that right as part of the buyout agreement.

Beyond the contract analysis, Wall brings a serious amount of experience and pedigree to the Clippers’ roster, with a higher upside that anyone else available at this price point. It’s not every day that you get to add a player with All-NBA, All-Defense, and All-Star awards in his trophy cabinet for so cheap–although when players that decorated do become available for cheap, it normally is under these circumstances: in their 30s and/or after major injuries. After making the All-NBA 3rd Team in 2016-17, Wall played just 41 games in 2017-18, 32 in 2018-19, 0 in 2019-20, 40 in 2020-21, and 0 in 2021-22. Last season, he was not out due to injury but rather away from the team due to an understanding with the Houston Rockets that they were focusing on developing their younger talent but didn’t want to insult Wall by benching him or cut a $40M+ contract with multiple years remaining. However, not playing is still not playing–and while he didn’t have the chance last year, he still hasn’t proven that he’s physically capable of playing a full NBA season without significant injuries.

Known in his prime as perhaps the fastest player in the league, a blur with the ball in his hands who was elite at blowing past defenders and surging forward in transition to collapse defenses and either finish at the rim or find open teammates, Wall’s athleticism has inevitably declined as he’s dealt with injuries and aging, but he will still be able to get downhill with the ball in his hands to some extent, which is sorely needed on a Clippers roster that, while talented, does certainly lack a bit of on-ball juice. With Paul George hopefully playing a full season, Kawhi Leonard returning, and Norman Powell properly integrated, the Clippers should have an easier time creating advantages on offense than they did a year ago, when their attack built around Reggie Jackson and Marcus Morris was one of the worst offenses in the league. Wall is another piece of that puzzle, perhaps no longer a standout at creating dribble penetration but still capable, and immediately the best pick-and-roll playmaker on the team by default.

There is little question that Wall will be able to create offense with the ball in his hands, the question is moreso how efficient that offense will be, and what he does when he doesn’t have the ball. In the 40 games he played two years ago in Houston, Wall put up 20.6 points and 6.9 assists per game, but on very poor efficiency. He had the highest three point attempt rate (how many threes he takes vs twos) in his career, which is not a good thing for a poor shooter like Wall, because he struggled to create dribble penetration at the same prolific level as in his youth, and he had the worst assist to turnover ratio of his career. But he was on a truly dreadful Rockets team that went 12-28 in the games he played and a staggering 5-27 in the games he didn’t (which is why they asked him to sit out 2021-22 while they tanked) and playing his first games back from an Achilles injury. It’s perfectly fair to expect that he would both be better on a better team, where he isn’t forced to have the ball in his hands constantly and settle for many of the inefficient jumpers he took in Houston because he now has teammates to pass to, and it’s also reasonable to note that it can take a full year or so for a player to really round back into form after returning from an Achilles tear.

The Wall that the Rockets got in 2021 is fine at the taxpayer mid-level–he can run the second unit offense and carry reps on nights when other guys are out through the regular season, even if his efficiency and off-ball struggles keep him from being a major piece of the team’s rotation when fully healthy and in the playoffs. If he does in fact play better for the Clippers than he did for Houston in 2021, there is the potential for him to be a core piece of this team, but it becomes a matter of degrees and fit. First of all, how much better is he than he was two years ago? And perhaps more importantly, how does he fit around Paul George and Kawhi Leonard when those guys have the basketball? Wall is a historically poor three-point shooter, though his numbers are misleadingly low due to taking a high number of difficult, off-the-dribble threes as a ball dominant star. He’s been an adequate catch-and-shoot guy, but he’s not a shooter–he’s more at Terance Mann’s level as a floor spacer than Reggie Jackson’s or Norman Powell’s, let alone Luke Kennard’s. On the other end of the floor, will Wall’s athleticism return enough for him to be a high-impact defender? If so, he could solve a lot of LAC’s problems and be a major piece, relieving Terance Mann of some of the point of attack defensive load. But if he’s only mediocre as a floor spacer and point of attack defender, then in the biggest moments Ty Lue is almost certainly going to prefer going with a better shooter (Jackson, Powell, Kennard) or defender (Mann or bringing another of Batum/Covington onto the floor) over Wall’s self-creation.

213Hoops is an independently owned and operated L.A. Clippers blog by Clippers fans, for Clippers fans. If you enjoy our content, please consider subscribing to our Patreon. Subscriptions start at $1 a month and support from readers like you goes a long way towards helping us keep 213Hoops sustainable, growing, and thriving.

NBA Free Agency: Clippers sign John Wall to 2-year contract
Lucas Hann

Clippers free agent center Isaiah Hartenstein is headed to New York on a 2-year, $16.7M deal, reports Kelly Iko of The Athletic.

Hartenstein had a stellar season for the Clippers as their backup center in 2021-22, but the team had very limited avenues to re-sign him and as his strong play continued throughout the season, it seemed increasingly likely that he would be able to leverage his success as a Clipper into more money elsewhere. The absolute most that the Clippers could have offered him was their taxpayer mid-level exception, worth a maximum of $20.1M over three years–or, to compare to the deal he took with the Knicks, $13.1M over two years. Frankly, I expected Hartenstein to be able to find a little more money, or at least more long-term security at this price point, and I’m a bit interested in him going to the Knicks basically the instant free agency opened instead of letting the market develop, with multiple teams rumored to be looking for backup centers with their non-taxpayer mid-level exception. However, NBA teams are often reluctant to invest long-term money into players who haven’t established themselves as consistent, year-in, year-out impact players, and Hartenstein is still establishing himself as a rotation guy. It’s possible that he accepted a 2-year deal instead of pushing for more specifically because he believes that after two more solid seasons building a name for himself, he will be able to secure a bigger/longer contract.

There were reports that Hartenstein was very happy with the Clippers and looking for a way to stay with the team, but it’s hard to know exactly what extent he would have been willing to leave dollars and opportunities on the table to do so. Even if the Clippers offered him that comparable 2-year, $13.1M deal, $3.6M could still have been enough to sway him away from taking the paycut, especially considering he has only made about $5.5M so far in his NBA career. It’s also possible that he found the potential opportunities in front of him with the Knicks more appealing–it’s no secret that the Clippers are committed to starting C Ivica Zubac (who they just gave a 3-year extension to) and are overstocked with big, veteran forwards who fit into head coach Ty Lue’s preferred smallball units. More minutes, more shots, a chance to earn a starting spot and maybe be a part of a core going forward–these are all things that could come in New York and were less likely to be found in Los Angeles, considering team contexts.

However, it’s also possible that Hartenstein never even got to choose between the two offers, as it is rumored that the Clippers will be giving that taxpayer mid-level exception to John Wall. We certainly don’t know the order of operations here–and we might never know–but we can’t rule out the possibility that LAC chose Wall over Hartenstein at that price point. It’s certainly a justifiable decision, but if that were true it would also change the rubric for evaluating the John Wall signing over the course of the next year due to an increased opportunity cost. For now, I’m going to operate under the tentative assumption that the taxpayer MLE was not going to be enough to keep Hartenstein and the Clippers knew that and pursued Wall after Isaiah’s departure was a foregone conclusion. Teams, players, and agents do exhaustive work in the weeks and months leading up to free agency to get a feel for how the market will develop, which teams will be interested in which players at what price points, what type of money/role players are looking for, etc. By the time Wall negotiated his buyout with Houston earlier this week, I feel like the Clippers likely already knew that Hart was a goner. I would certainly feel more confident in that analysis had his new contract been more lucrative–say, the full mid-level exception worth 4 years and $45M–but I still find it fully plausible that the smaller raise and bigger opportunity in New York was enough to lure him away regardless.

213Hoops is an independently owned and operated L.A. Clippers blog by Clippers fans, for Clippers fans. If you enjoy our content, please consider subscribing to our Patreon. Subscriptions start at $1 a month and support from readers like you goes a long way towards helping us keep 213Hoops sustainable, growing, and thriving.

NBA Free Agency: Isaiah Hartenstein signs with New York Knicks
Lucas Hann

According to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, the Clippers have res-gined Amir Coffey to a 3-year, $11 million contract. The 25-year-old versatile wing was a restricted free agent after playing the last three seasons with the Clippers.

In today’s wing-focused NBA, this is a fantastic below-market contract for the Clippers. It’s likely that Coffey’s status as a restricted free agent–meaning the Clippers had the right of first refusal to match any offer from another team and retain him–coupled with Clippers owner’s Steve Ballmer’s notorious willingness to spend limitless cash on the team left the market rather calm for his services. As such, he was left negotiating with the Clippers and the team was able to secure a bargain. Getting the third year on this deal is really fantastic for LA, though, as it keeps a quality rotation player on the team on a cost-controlled deal heading into a three-year stretch where the luxury tax cost of keeping the team competitive around Paul George and Kawhi Leonard will be enormous. I was concerned that the Clippers would have to match a much higher offer for Amir, or even that they wouldn’t (even Ballmer’s platinum card has a spending limit somewhere, we just haven’t found it yet). This is a home run deal and it’s great news to have a fan favorite and homegrown developed talent staying in the fold.

213Hoops is an independently owned and operated L.A. Clippers blog by Clippers fans, for Clippers fans. If you enjoy our content, please consider subscribing to our Patreon. Subscriptions start at $1 a month and support from readers like you goes a long way towards helping us keep 213Hoops sustainable, growing, and thriving.

NBA Free Agency: Clippers re-sign Amir Coffey to 3-year contract
Lucas Hann

According to Yahoo Sports’ Chris Haynes, the Clippers have re-signed veteran forward Nicolas Batum to a 2-year, $22 million contract.

It’s a perfect number for Batum, who took a paycut last season to give the team more flexibility and now is able to sign a more lucrative deal with the Clippers having his early bird rights. Those rights allow the team to pay him up to 105% of the league average salary, which is right around these estimated numbers. Early bird contracts must run for at least two seasons before any options, which is why this is a common deal for returning veterans who have been with teams for two seasons–and the same exact deal the Clippers signed Reggie Jackson to last summer. Batum was expected to be courted by numerous teams, but it never seemed likely that there would be a legitimate threat to lure him away from the Clippers. The veteran forward will turn 34 this December and the team will hope to keep him in the mix with a low minutes load throughout the year before turning to him more heavily in their small-ball postseason lineups.

213Hoops is an independently owned and operated L.A. Clippers blog by Clippers fans, for Clippers fans. If you enjoy our content, please consider subscribing to our Patreon. Subscriptions start at $1 a month and support from readers like you goes a long way towards helping us keep 213Hoops sustainable, growing, and thriving.

NBA Free Agency: Clippers re-sign Nicolas Batum to 2-year contract
Lucas Hann

According to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, Clippers forward Nicolas Batum is going to decline his player option in order to become a free agent this summer. It’s an expected move for the 33-year-old veteran, who can get significantly more than the $3.3M salary he opted out of by signing a new deal with the Clippers or soliciting offers from other teams.

Batum has a rather unique financial situation. After never quite living up to a 5-year, $120M deal signed with Charlotte, he found himself out of the Hornets’ rotation in 2019-20 (the fourth year of that contract) and then released before the beginning of the 2020-21 season, despite being owed a bit over $27M that year. That $27M was “stretched,” meaning the Hornets paid Batum $9,043,478 to play for the Clippers each of the last two years, and will pay him the final $9M due on that contract this upcoming season. That subsidization from Charlotte makes it a little easier for Nico to be flexible and take paycuts–which is exactly what happened last summer.
After playing just one year with the Clippers on a minimum-salary deal, Batum hit free agency in 2021, but the team only had what are called his “non-bird rights,” meaning the biggest contract they could offer him was 120% of the minimum salary. Despite playing at a level that would have priced a new deal somewhere between $8M and $12M, Batum took a paycut to return to the Clippers on a one-year deal worth $2.6M with a player option for $3.3M in 2022-23. Now, after a similarly successful second season as a Clipper, the team has Batum’s “early bird rights,” which allow them to offer him a more lucrative contract–up to around $10.9M starting salary. That should easily be enough to keep Nico, whose free agent market would cut off at the non-taxpayer mid-level exception, worth $10,349,000 this summer.

Remember that Batum will still get that final $9M from the Hornets this year as well, which would presumably make maximizing his salary this off-season less of a priority. However, at 33 years old he could look to leverage these two good seasons with the Clippers into what is likely his last shot at a lucrative, multi-year deal. Would LAC put up a 3-year, $34M offer to retain Batum’s services? The team already owes veteran power forward Marcus Morris $33.5M over the next two years and just gave veteran power forward Robert Covington a 2-year, $24M extension, and even the high-spending Steve Ballmer has to have a tipping point on green-lighting luxury tax expenses. Still, in this case, I would expect that Batum will be back on a 2 or 3-year deal. He seems to have very little interest in playing elsewhere and has been one of the team’s most versatile and valuable role players in the last two seasons.

Report: Nicolas Batum to decline player option
Lucas Hann

According to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, the Clippers have agreed to re-sign veteran point guard Reggie Jackson to a one-year deal. Jackson signed with the Clippers mid-season last year after being bought out of his contract with the Detroit Pistons, and was with the team in the Orlando bubble.

Jackson got off to a strong start with the Clippers in the regular season playing alongside Lou Williams on the team’s second unit, but struggled with his decision-making in the bubble and was ultimately unable to stay in the playoff rotation. Originally starting at point guard for the injured Patrick Beverley in the first round against the Dallas Mavericks, he was benched for young shooting guard Landry Shamet and ultimately played himself out of the rotation entirely against the Denver Nuggets when Beverley returned. Offensively he was regularly over-aggressive, forcing bad shots and turnovers instead of deferring to the Clippers’ better players. Defensively, he was energetic but ineffective as former coach Doc Rivers seemingly miscast him as someone who was a defensive asset rather than a defensive liability.

While he shot the ball well from deep with the Clippers–41.3% in 17 regular season games and 53.1% in his 12 playoff appearances–his career average is just 33.7%, so expect some steep regression over a full-season sample size if he is a mainstay in the Clippers’ rotation. Speaking of being a rotation mainstay, don’t put too much stock in Woj’s use of the word “prominent” to describe Jackson’s anticipated role. While Reggie would figure to be a bigger part of the Clippers’ plans if Lou Williams were to be traded, this isn’t a strong enough indication to suggest a move might be coming. Contract leaks routinely come from agents who want to make it sound like they got good deals for their clients. For a veteran point guard like Jackson, who is in his theoretical prime at 30 years old and has been a starter for most of his career, a minimum-salary deal for a third string role has to be less than he was hoping for. Until we actually see Ty Lue overplay him, I’m willing to gamble that “prominent role” is just agent spin.

This one-year deal for Jackson is almost certainly for the veteran’s minimum, as the Clippers have very limited money left available to them under the league’s hard cap. While LAC technically has Reggie Jackson’s non-bird rights to offer him a contract similar to the one they gave Patrick Patterson, they simply do not have the hard cap flexibility to offer it to him unless they were to make a trade that reduced their salary obligations. Instead, this is likely a veteran’s minimum contract that will carry a $1.6M cap hit. Along with the impending addition of Nicolas Batum after he clears waivers, the Clippers now have basically one obvious path to entering the season under the hard cap: cut Joakim Noah, cut Ky Bowman (who was recently signed to a non-guaranteed deal for training camp), and add Jackson and Batum into those two salary slots.

213Hoops is an independently owned and operated L.A. Clippers blog by Clippers fans, for Clippers fans. If you enjoy our content, please consider subscribing to our Patreon. Subscriptions start at $1 a month and support from readers like you goes a long way towards helping us keep 213Hoops sustainable, growing, and thriving.

Clippers Re-Sign Reggie Jackson to One-Year Deal
Lucas Hann

After The Athletic’s John Hollinger reported that Patrick Patterson was signed to a one-year, $3M deal instead of the veteran’s minimum, I figured a quiet afternoon in the NBA was a good opportunity to look at Patrick Patterson’s new contract and explain why he got it and what it means for the Clippers’ plans.

The Veteran’s Minimum

Briefly, let’s talk about the vet’s min and why it’s rather significant that Patterson didn’t get one here. The NBA has a set scale for minimum salaries based on how many years a player has been in the league, increasing from about $900k for rookies to $2.6M for players with 10 or more years of experience. Patterson played his 10th season with the Clippers last year, so his minimum salary for next season would have been $2,564,753. As it is, he signed a deal worth $3M, so why are we fretting about what amounts to less than $500,000?

Well, in order to stop teams from overlooking veterans in order to save money on salaries, when a team signs a player with more than 2 years of experience, the NBA reimburses them for the difference between that player’s minimum and the 2-year minimum (this only applies to one-year minimum deals, not two-year). So, while Patterson would have made $2,564,753 on a minimum deal, the Clippers would have only paid $1,620,564. More important than who writes the check is the issue of cap hit–the smaller number would have counted against LAC’s hard cap, as well as have been the number used for trade math purposes.

Non-Bird Rights

Most NBA fans are familiar with bird rights, the tool that allows teams to exceed the salary cap to re-sign their own players. This helps prevent teams from losing their stars in free agency because they don’t have the cap room to pay them, originating with Larry Bird. However, full bird rights–which allow deals up to the league maximum salary running for up to 5 years with up to 8% raises–only apply to players who have gone 3 years without changing teams as a free agent (so if you are acquired via trade or a waiver claim, your bird rights come with you, and if you re-sign with your prior team, your bird rights persist). For players who have only gone two seasons, there’s the slightly lesser “early bird rights,” which allow teams to give a player the greater of 175% of their prior salary, or the league average salary (currently around $10M). These contracts are limited to 4 years and 5% raises (remember this next summer when Kawhi Leonard is an Early Bird free agent with the Clippers and signs a 1+1 deal instead of a long-term renewal; he’ll angle to hit free agency again in 2022, when LAC will have his bird rights and can give him the longer contract with maximum raises).

Patrick Patterson was released by Oklahoma City during the 2019 off-season, cleared waivers, and signed with the Clippers as a free agent. That was just one season ago, so he’s eligible for the most restrictive version of free agent rights–the “non-bird rights.” These allow a team to pay a player up to 120% of his previous salary or 120% of his minimum salary, whichever is greater. For Patterson, that number comes out to $3,077,704. Based on Hollinger’s tweet, it’s unclear if LAC paid him up to that threshold or the two sides simply struck a deal at an even $3M. Either way, by using non-bird rights and foregoing the league reimbursement LAC structured Patterson’s deal so that he hits the cap for about $1.4M more while only being paid about $500k more.

How Does This Effect The Hard Cap?

Well, my prior calculations assumed that Patterson would be on the vet’s min, and gave the Clippers about $5.2M in room under the hard cap with 3 open roster spots (Joakim Noah and Ky Bowman, who have non-guaranteed deals, aren’t included in those figures). With Patrick Patterson’s contract estimated at 3M instead, the margins tighten. Here’s how it looks:

As you can see, the Clippers are projected to be over the hard cap with 14 players on their roster (technically, Daniel Oturu hasn’t signed his deal yet). Cutting one of Bowman or Noah would get them under, but whoever is cut has to be replaced, as the team is required to carry 14 players on their roster. So, if you cut Bowman, who counts as $1.6M against the hard cap, and replace him with a min deal that counts as $1.6M against the hard cap, you haven’t made any progress. Essentially, Joakim Noah is guaranteed to be released by the Clippers at some point before the season begins.

The maximum room that LAC has under the hard cap would be $3.9M if the cut both Bowman and Noah. They do still have the $3.6M BAE at their disposal, but remember that they have to sign at least two more players. With the minimum cap hit being $1.6M, there really aren’t many options available to LAC besides cutting Noah, choosing between Bowman’s non-guaranteed deal or a replacement min player for the 13th spot, and signing a new min player for the 14th spot. Technically, the team could re-sign Joakim Noah to a new min deal if he clears waivers, but the current depth chart has quite a few big men and no second-string small forward. Given the wait, it seems likely to me that the Clippers are in the front of the line to pursue Charlotte Hornets forward Nicolas Batum, who is likely to get cut this weekend. Other top options remaining on the board are Glenn Robinson III and Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, but if the Clippers were going to sign one of those guys it seems like they would have already. That they’re waiting for Batum feels like the most logical explanation.

After reaching that 14-man roster, the Clippers will have about $600k in flexibility to manage their 15th spot during the season. I wrote on Wednesday about some of the creative ways they can utilize that roster spot and cash–like signing a G-League player to a non-guaranteed deal on the day of a game when Kawhi Leonard is load managing and then releasing him after the game, paying him $11k for the day while ensuring you have third-string depth available. Bowman’s non-guaranteed contract can be released at any time through February 27th, and he would only count against the hard cap for the days he spent on the roster. Better yet would be trading Bowman mid-season to remove his entire $1.6M hard cap hit. LAC would then have $2.2M in hard cap wiggle room and two open roster spots, but the rest-of-season deals they’d sign a new free agent to would be pro-rated, costing less than $1.6M.

Does Patrick Patterson’s Contract Help Trades?

Honestly, not really. There’s some idea that having Patterson at the $3M number compared to the $1.6M number could help the Clippers with salary matching in trades. In normal circumstances, that would be true–taxpaying teams like the Clippers can bring in salaries that are within 125% + $100,000 of the salaries they send out. So, for example, Lou Williams’ $8M deal + Patterson at the $1.6M min would be able to bring in up to $12,125,705, while Williams + Patterson at $3M can bring back $13,850,000. Veterans like Thaddeus Young and Patty Mills, who could come up in deadline trade talks, make more than the first number but less than the second.

Here’s the problem, though: the hard cap takes priority over trade math. Just because you can take back Mills’ 13.3M under NBA trade rules doesn’t mean you can exceed the hard cap to do so, and with the Clippers’ aforementioned $600k of wiggle room after signing their last two players, they find themselves far more restricted in terms of trade logistics than they would be under the trade math rules themselves. That can be slightly alleviated mid-season by shedding salary via trade–let’s say the Clippers move Bowman halfway through the season and sign a replacement that makes $810,282 (the minimum pro-rated for exactly half of the season). Now they’ve got $1.4M in wiggle room to make a trade work. Williams, by himself, can bring back $10.1M–adding $2.1M to team salary. Patterson’s contract is still unhelpful.

In that scenario, his inclusion wouldn’t help facilitate a trade, but would take his $3M off of the Clippers’ books. But paying him above the minimum only has value if it helps a trade, not if you need to dump him. For trade math purposes, it would be more advantageous to have him on the minimum and have the extra $1.4M in flexibility.

Additionally, Patterson has an implicit no-trade clause. Players who are signed to one-year deals who will be eligible for Early Bird or Full Bird free agency the next summer have the right to veto any trade that they are included in. That means the Clippers can’t trade him without his permission. His above-minimum contract will be harder for another team to take back in any deal than a minimum salary (which can always be absorbed) would be. Between the hard cap limiting viable scenarios for his salary to be useful trade fodder, his above-minimum deal making it harder for other teams to absorb him, and his implicit no-trade clause, this $3M deal makes Patterson substantially harder to trade and less likely to be traded, not the other way around.

So… Why? Is He Worth It?

In a vacuum, I actually do think Patterson is worth something like $3M. Let’s not forget that he was legitimately useful for the Clippers last year. In 800 regular-season minutes, largely in actual rotation minutes and not just garbage time appearances, he shot 39% from three on 8 attempts per 36 minutes and posted an above-average Win Shares/48, a positive Box Plus-Minus, and a positive VORP. When the Clippers’ signing of Patterson was reported last weekend and expected to be a minimum deal, I wrote that “if a minimum-salary player gives you 800 solid regular-season minutes with an above-average Win Shares/48, a positive Box +/-, and a positive VORP, you got more than your money’s worth.” He was better last season than a minimum-salary player.

It’s also likely, given the timeline of free agency, that this represented a little bit of a conservative play for the Clippers’ front office. By the time on Friday evening that the Patterson deal was announced, it would have already become clear to folks inside LAC’s front office that they would not be able to afford to re-sign JaMychal Green and Marcus Morris while also keeping the MLE open for Serge Ibaka. Having decided to not pursue backup center Montrezl Harrell and having resigned themselves to losing Green in order to pursue Ibaka, but with no commitment yet from Ibaka that he would join the team, the Clippers secured a commitment from Patterson to ensure they’d have some veteran continuity and shooting in their backup frontcourt. We’ll never know the little details of which teams were offering what, but it’s completely realistic to me that teams would look at Patterson’s 800 minutes last season and be willing to pay slightly above the minimum to get that kind of shooting at their backup power forward spot next year.

On balance, though, it was probably a regrettable choice given the way the next 48 hours played out, with the Clippers landing Ibaka and at once both reducing the need for Patterson as an insurance policy and hard capping themselves, increasing the sting of paying him more than the minimum. The additional $1.4M tied up in his deal is a limiting factor for the Clippers as they attempt to fill out their roster in free agency, and it will continue to limit their options at the trade deadline and during buyout season. While he’s a reliable guy to soak up regular-season minutes, his lack of defensive mobility makes him unlikely to feature regularly in the playoffs or make a significant positive impact when he does (he played just 10 total garbage time minutes across two appearances during the Clippers 2020 playoff run). Adequate alternatives existed at the minimum, like Solomon Hill (took a minimum deal in Atlanta), Frank Kaminsky (who took a non-guaranteed minimum deal in Sacramento), Anthony Tolliver (who remains unsigned), and Rondae Hollis-Jefferson (who remains unsigned and is better than Patterson, just not a shooter).

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Patrick Patterson’s New Contract, Explained
Lucas Hann

Lost in recent discussions of a looming trade or the best available free agents is a third path: the Clippers can prioritize flexibility this week, leaving themselves with avenues to access room under the hard cap to add salary in a deal at the trade deadline or sign rest-of-season contracts. There’s no guarantee that desired upgrades will become available mid-season, but if the Clippers are uninspired by their remaining options in free agency it would make sense to wait and keep money open for potential later moves.

The Hard Cap

The decision to use the non-taxpayer mid-level exception on Serge Ibaka effectively hard caps the Clippers, meaning that at no point can their team salary for next season exceed $138,928,900. For now, while Ibaka remains technically unsigned, the team is able to go over that threshold if necessary–but they’d have to get back under it in order to sign him, and stay under it from that point on.

If my projections–which include a rookie minimum deal for Daniel Oturu, a veteran’s minimum deal for Patrick Patterson, the release of Joakim Noah’s non-guaranteed deal, the full MLE for Ibaka, and a 4-year deal for Marcus Morris that would pay him exactly the reported $64M with maximum annual raises–are correct, then the Clippers have about $5.2M of effective wiggle room underneath the hard cap for 12 players. If you consider Ky Bowman likely to make the roster, they have just under $3.8M–though they can cut him at any time, even after the season begins.

Some notes on the hard cap:

• Roster Size: The team is required to roster 14 players during the regular season, excluding two-way contracts. They can temporarily drop below 14, but there is a two-week limit before they must add another player to get back to the 14-player threshold, and they must remain at that threshold for two weeks before being allowed to potentially drop below it again.

• Trades: When a mid-season trade is agreed to, the entire salary of the incoming player is added to your cap sheet and the entire salary of the outgoing player is removed. For example, trading Lou Williams’ $8M deal for George Hill’s $9.6M deal would add $1.6M to the Clippers’ books whether the deal is executed now or at the trade deadline–they would not receive hard cap savings because they only have the higher salary for half of the season. The flip side is that the team can shed money this way–last year, they kept Derrick Walton Jr. on the roster for over half of the season, and then paid the Atlanta Hawks to eat his contract for nothing via mid-season trade. The entire cap hit was removed from the Clippers’ books.

• Minimum Contracts: The two-year veteran’s minimum is $1,620,564. All players with two or more years of experience signed to one-year minimum contracts (more on this in the next section) are paid this amount by the team. Additionally, rookies or players with one year of experience have this number as their cap hit, even though their actual salary is lower. This is to prevent teams from passing over veterans for the hard cap savings presented by the lower rookie minimum. The exception is for players signed as draft picks–which is why Oturu (33rd in 2020) and Mann (48th in 2019) have hits lower than the vet’s min. If the Clippers were to sign Amir Coffey–or indeed, Ky Bowman–to a minimum-salary deal, they would carry the $1.62M hard cap hit as a free agent.

• Exceptions: The Clippers’ TPEs and BAE do not count as cap holds against the hard cap, meaning that LAC can hold on to them for later use.

• The Math: Based on those details, it seems pretty straightforward: with their $3.8M under the hard cap after cutting Noah, the Clippers can sign two more players to minimum deals. Due to Bowman’s contract being non-guaranteed, they could bring in additional non-guaranteed deals to training camp to compete for the final roster spot(s).

• Summer Contracts and Exhibit 9: “But Lucas, if the Clippers sign multiple non-guaranteed contracts won’t that take them over the hard cap?” Not exactly. Players who are signed to “summer contracts” that have no salary protection do not count against the hard cap until they actually make the opening night roster and begin being paid. Technically, LAC could sign 5 players to summer contracts on non-guaranteed minimum deals–pushing team salary well above the hard cap–and as long as they released enough of them before opening night to bring team salary below the hard cap, they’d be in the clear.
  
  Typically, however, there is some risk associated with this strategy. When a player gets injured in training camp, and the team cuts him, they’re on the hook for his full-season salary. The last thing the Clippers need is to have a random undrafted free agent who came to training camp cost them $1.6M against the hard cap because he pulled a hamstring in practice. Teams use Exhibit 9 in player contracts to relieve this salary obligation. However, Exhibit 9 is only applicable to one-year minimum salaries. Typically, you would apply it to deals for undrafted free agents like Jordan Ford and Malik Pitts, but a “priority” non-guaranteed guy like Ky Bowman is likely to have a second non-guaranteed season on his contract to extend the team’s ability to keep him around on a cheap deal if he has a breakout year, making him ineligible for Exhibit 9.

The Veteran’s Minimum

As discussed above, the veteran’s minimum means that all free agents (not draft picks) signed to one-year minimum deals have a cap hit of $1.62M. In terms of actual salary, players make more or less based on their years of experience (a full table is available on Larry Coon’s website). For example, Patrick Patterson, who has over 10 years of NBA experience, will make $2,564,793 next season, but only count as $1,620,564 against the Clippers’ hard cap (the difference is paid by the league, not the team).

Note that this only applies to one-year deals. The Lakers recently signed Marc Gasol to a minimum deal, but a second guaranteed season was added to his contract. That increased his hard cap hit to the higher $2.6M number, forcing the Lakers to trade a second-round pick in a money-saving deal where they dumped JaVale McGee’s contract. Given the Clippers’ limited hard cap wiggle room, this has to be considered carefully on a player-by-player basis. If Glenn Robinson III, one of the better remaining free agents, demanded a second-year player option if he were to accept a minimum deal, his cap hit would be $2,028,594 instead of $1,620,564 due to his 6 years of NBA experience. That extra $400k is certainly affordable within the Clippers’ wiggle room if they choose to sign Robinson, but it’s an important factor.

This creates an advantage for signing younger players–potentially extending team control. Take, for example, new Clipper Ky Bowman. Because Bowman only has one year of NBA experience, there’s no difference between his hard cap hit on a one-year minimum deal and a two-year minimum deal. The Clippers can give him the second season without any repercussions–and if they like him enough that he sticks around for both years, he’ll even be eligible for restricted free agency. Derrick Walton Jr., who has two years of NBA experience, would also have the same cap hit on a one-year minimum deal as on a two-year minimum deal. But a slightly more experienced depth point guard, like Shabazz Napier, who has 6 years of NBA experience, adding a second season would cost the team $400k.

Non-Guarantees, 10-Days, Two-Ways, Rest-of-Season Deals, and the Bi-Annual Exception

If the Clippers choose to conserve as much of their $5.2M in wiggle room for mid-season transactions as possible, they can do so through a variety of mechanisms. We’ve already seen them utilize a non-guaranteed deal for Bowman, and if they do indeed choose this avenue I doubt he’ll be the only one. They also have two two-way players, and later in the season can sign 10-day contracts and rest-of-season deals to save money against the hard cap.

• Non-Guaranteed Deals: When a player has a guaranteed contract, cutting them doesn’t really do anything for your cap sheet–it only clears a roster spot (the exception is if the player’s contract is claimed off of waivers by another team). When a player has a non-guaranteed contract, you can cut them and only owe them for the days that they actually played for you. Since the upcoming shortened season is projected to be 146 days long, that means a player on a non-guaranteed $1.62M deal will hit the cap for about $11,100 every day they’re on the team. Let’s say that the Clippers have a shooting guard sprain an ankle in training camp, and they choose to keep a non-guaranteed camp player around for the first two weeks of the season for depth. He’d make $155k for those 14 days, and then the team could cut him without owing him the balance of his contract. As a result, he only eats up a small fraction of a regular minimum deal’s worth of LAC’s hard cap wiggle room.
  
  Players can also be cut, and then signed again, over and over as long as they keep agreeing to new deals. They also have to sit on waivers for 48 hours every time that they’re cut, where they could be claimed by another team if they’re playing well. Let’s say the Clippers carry 14 players on their roster this season. They could potentially sign a G-League wing, like Malik Fitts, to a non-guaranteed deal in their 15th spot when Kawhi Leonard sits out a game for load management. He’d be on the roster for one day for garbage time or injury insurance, and then they could cut him after the game. He’d make his $11k for the day (not a bad deal when a standard G-League contract pays $35k for the entire season), clear waivers 48 hours later, and be available next week when the Clippers need a one-night depth piece again on their next back-to-back.
  
  The downside of these arrangements is that once a player is cut, his cap hit–whether $155k for a two-week stint to start the year, or $11k for a one-night appearance, or any other amount–is stuck on your books. If the Clippers sign, cut, and re-sign Malik Fitts ten times next year, that $110k isn’t going away. But as I mentioned above, trading a player can totally remove their cap hit from your books. Let’s say Fitts (Malik is just an example as a wing who LAC will have in training camp) is on the roster for the first two weeks of the season and counts as $155k against the hard cap. Then, the team cuts him, but two weeks later they have an injury and end up bringing him back. They keep him until the deadline, when they give another team cash to absorb his deal. His second contract with the Clippers, pro-rated to not include the 28 days of the season that passed before he was signed, only has a hit of about $1.3M–and that comes off the books when he’s traded. The $155k from his first stint stays.
  
  In a normal season, all non-guaranteed contracts become guaranteed for the rest of the season on January 10th. This year, due to the adjusted schedule, I believe that the cut date is February 27th. At that point you either have to cut your non-guaranteed deals, trade them to someone else (who can cut or keep them), or allow them to become guaranteed (you can still get off the cap hit later by trading them, as the Clippers did with Walton last year).

• 10-Day Contracts: After February 27th, you can no longer sign non-guaranteed contracts. Instead, the 10-day contract period begins. Players are eligible for 10-days as extended tryouts, still paid the same $11k per day to bring the cap hit for each 10-day to $110k. These contracts can’t be traded, so you’re basically just eating the $110k in hard cap wiggle room if you use one. Each free agent is eligible for two 10-day contracts before they must be signed to a rest-of-season deal to continue playing for your team. Let’s say the Clippers are using a guy like Fitts for a role like depth on load management nights while they bide their time until buyout season. They can sign him to the aforementioned series of one-day contracts mentioned above up until February 27th. They could then bring him in on one or two 10-day contracts to bridge the gap between then and buyout season, which will happen in March after the trade deadline.
  
  They’d have to eat the money for the days Fitts is on the roster–let’s say 10 one-day deals and two 10-day contracts totaling $330k–but would still leave open most of their wiggle room to either add salary in a trade or sign rest-of-season deals.

• Two-Way Contracts: Players on two-way contracts have some special rules for the 2021 season. They’re allowed to spend 50 games on the active roster, up from the typical 45, and they’re paid a flat rate of $449,115 instead of the typical system that pays them based on the number of days they spend with the NBA and G-League teams. Two-way contracts have no cap hit, so Amir Coffey and Jayden Scrubb won’t contribute to the Clippers’ hard cap difficulties.
  
  I’m considering Scrubb, the 55th pick overall who came straight to the NBA from junior college, essentially a redshirt player (that’s fine–let’s give him time to develop with LAC’s new staff). Coffey, however, looked serviceable in depth minutes last season and figures to be a part of LAC’s third string this season. Last year, Amir played in 18 games in his role. Even with an increase this year, the 50-game cap should pose no issue for the Clippers.
  
  There’s one more little rule that could come into play: teams are limited to 80 total active roster appearances by two-way players on nights when they only have 14 NBA contracts on their roster. To explain that as succinctly as possible, if Coffey and Scrubb are both active for the same game, it counts as 2/80 appearances. However, if the Clippers were to sign Fitts to a contract in the 15th roster spot and pay him his $11k for the night, Scrubb and Coffey could both be active and not count towards the 80-appearance cap–even if Fitts is on the inactive list.
  
  Two-way contracts can also be converted to rest-of-season deals, and the team and player can negotiate multiple additional seasons. If the Clippers don’t fill all of their roster spots in buyout season, and Coffey plays well in a depth role on his two-way contract, look for the Clippers to convert him to a full NBA contract late in the season with additional non-guaranteed years on his contract.

• Rest-of-Season Contracts: When a player signs a contract mid-season, their salary is pro-rated for the days remaining in the year. For example, last season Reggie Jackson and Joakim Noah made $734,025 and $434,704 on their rest-of-season deals, respectively.
  
  That means that if the Clippers sign a minimum deal at the start of March–73/146 days through the season–it would only count as $810,286 against the hard cap compared to $1.62M for signing a minimum deal now, before the season begins. That margin buys them a little bit of breathing room if they do end up adding a little salary in a trade or needing to make other cap-negative deals (theoretically, if a deep-bench guy gets a season-ending injury after his contract has been guaranteed and you can’t dump his cap hit because the trade deadline has passed, you’d like to be able to cut him and replace him).
  
  The pro-rating also helps them save money on Coffey, even if they plan on using him for all 72 of their games this season. He could use his 50 allowed two-way appearances in the team’s first 50 games while counting as $0 against the hard cap, and then be converted to a rest-of-season deal to appear in the final 22 games. While we don’t know exactly how much the hard cap would be for that deal because we don’t know how many days LAC’s last 22 games will cover until the schedule comes out, but it would be closer to $500k compared to the $1.6M cap hit of putting him on a full minimum deal from opening night. That’s $1.1M in hard cap savings with no negative impact on Coffey’s availability to help the team and only an opportunity cost of not signing a different player to his two-way slot.

• The Bi-Annual Exception: The Clippers have their bi-annual exception this off-season, worth $3,623,000. But they don’t really have space to use it underneath the hard cap. With Bowman’s non-guaranteed deal, the Clippers are just $924,218 under the hard cap. Once they cut Joakim Noah, that number will be $3,617,209–just under the bi-annual exception. Sure, the Clippers could just sign someone for $6k less, but they would be at the hard cap for 14 players, without room to even sign someone to a 10-day contract unless they eventually moved money in trades. And if the signing doesn’t work out, the BAE would be substantially harder to dump for nothing mid-season than minimum deals.
  
  If the Clippers opt not to use their BAE this week, they can still use it mid-season. Like minimum rest-of-season deals, the value of the BAE pro-rates as the year goes on. So a player signed using the BAE 73/146 days through the season would make $1,811,500 for the second half of the season. That hard cap hit is much more affordable for LAC’s purposes, leaving them flexibility to play with the 15th roster spot or take back a little extra money in a trade.
  
  For a veteran with 10 years of experience on the buyout market, a rest-of-season minimum deal for half of the year would pay him $1,282,377 with a cap hit of $810,286. Offering $1,811,500 could put the Clippers in the driver’s seat to land whoever their preferred target is. For players with less than 10 years of experience, the cap hit of a minimum deal stays the same but the actual salary decreases, making the disparity between min and BAE even larger.
  
  The BAE, like the minimum, can also be used to offer a contract for up to two seasons–but the BAE is worth a lot more in year 2 than the minimum is. The Clippers could add up to $3.8M in salary for 2021-22 to a buyout season addition, potentially making it a team or player option as well.

A Scenario

Okay, let’s put what we’ve learned into action. First, the Clippers cut Joakim Noah. Then, they wait for Charlotte to waive Nicolas Batum (I’m guessing Batum is their priority over free agents Glenn Robinson III and Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, based on the fact that they haven’t moved on those guys yet) and sign him to a fully guaranteed veteran’s minimum contract to be their backup small forward. They invite a number of players on summer contracts to training camp, but Ky Bowman wins the 14th roster spot. Spot 15 stays open heading into the season.

On opening night, for 14 players, you have $1,996,645 in room underneath the hard cap. Let’s say that, whether it’s Fitts or a different wing or a player at a different position, the Clippers use a series of short-term minimum deals for players to provide depth support for injuries or load management–20 days in total. Then, when the league switches over from non-guaranteed deals to 10-days on February 27th, they use two 10-day deals to fill the 15th spot while the buyout market materializes. Ky Bowman is kept past February 27th, allowing his contract to become fully guaranteed, but traded with cash before the deadline, removing his $1.6M hard cap hit.

The Clippers would have now spent around $440k on the rotating 15th man, but saved the $1.6M on Bowman’s deal. They enter the deadline/buyout market with 2 open roster spots and $3,177,209 in hard cap wiggle room. By the deadline, the Clippers have assessed their point guard position and decided they want to go after Oklahoma City’s George Hill (clearly, Bowman didn’t perform well enough for the team to feel confident with his abilities in a playoff setting, as they traded him). They can swap Lou Williams and future 2nds for Hill, adding $1,590,602 to their team salary. Williams stays on the team for most of the season, helping them with his regular-season scoring abilities, but Hill comes in at the deadline as a more steady, defensive-minded alternative to Patrick Beverley for the playoffs. Now, they enter buyout season with $1,586,607 in wiggle room and two open roster spots.

Typically, a player has to clear waivers with his original team by March 1st to be playoff-eligible for a new team–this year, that date is April 9th. The aforementioned ten-day contracts can help the Clippers bridge the gap between the trade deadline and April 9th without going more than 2 weeks with fewer than 14 players on the roster. If the Clippers use their BAE on April 9th, they would have that player for 38 regular-season days, resulting in a cap hit of $942,973. The remaining roster spot and $643,634 remaining under the hard cap is the perfect amount for the Clippers to sign a second player on the buyout market to a rest-of-season minimum deal in their 15th spot. If no such target emerges, they can convert Coffey’s contract to a multi-year non-guaranteed minimum in the slot.

Overall, it’s unclear if all the hand-wringing about the hard cap is worth it. Will a player that comes available in March or April be significantly better than the fringe free agents who remain available now? It’s possible, but certainly not guaranteed. Last season, the Clippers’ buyout season prize was Reggie Jackson. I’m unconvinced that he helps you more than Shabazz Napier, who you can get right now for a full-season minimum deal without worrying about the uncertainty of player availability mid-season or onboarding a new player without training camp. But as the Clippers continue to drag their feet on filling out the roster, seemingly waiting for something, it becomes increasingly likely that what they’re really waiting for is the trade deadline.

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Clippers Can Prioritize Flexibility Over Free Agents
Lucas Hann

According to The Athletic’s Shams Charania, the Clippers will sign Ky Bowman to a non-guaranteed contract. The former Golden State Warriors two-way player will have the opportunity to make the Clippers’ roster in training camp, just like Derrick Walton Jr. did last season.

Bowman began last season on a two-way contract for the hard-capped Warriors on what was essentially a one-season hiatus from contention, as Kevin Durant left the team in free agency and Steph Curry and Klay Thompson both missed essentially the whole season with injury. As the team narrowly stayed under the hard cap–walking a similar tight role to LAC this season, but without the burden of expectations to win games–players like Bowman saw plentiful minutes.

Originally signed to a two-way contract before being converted to the 15-man roster in February, Bowman made a total of 45 appearances for the Warriors, averaging 7.4 points, 2.9 assists, 2.1 rebounds, 1.0 steals, and 1.6 turnovers in 22.6 minutes. He shot below-average marks of 41.7% from the field and 30.8% from deep–though it’s only fair to put those numbers in the context of him shouldering an unusual amount of the offensive load for an undrafted free agent playing on a two-way contract. Bowman was a 38.8% three-point shooter in college but made just 31.5% of his open and wide-open threes last season, according to Nylon Calculus. His small contributions came defensively and he was a net-negative offensively.

While Bowman signed a multi-year non-guaranteed minimum contract with the Warriors when he two-way was converted, he was released by the team last week in advance of free agency.

Per NBA minimum-salary rules, any player the Clippers add at this stage will count as $1.62M against the hard cap–even veterans of 10+ years who will make closer to $2.6M in real salary. That decreased cap hit only applies to one-year deals, meaning the Clippers couldn’t put a second year on the contract of a player like Nicolas Batum without a much higher cap hit this season (the Lakers had to dump JaVale McGee’s contract in order to do this for Marc Gasol). However, for younger players (like Bowman, with 1 year of NBA experience) whose real minimum doesn’t represent a raise over the $1.62M hard cap hit, I would expect the team to add a second non-guaranteed season to this deal to act as a team option for them to keep him for cheap next season if they like him. His deal should be worth $1,445,697 this season (it will still carry the $1.62M hard cap hit to prevent the team from prioritizing young players over veterans in cost-saving moves) and $1,701,593 next season. He would then be eligible for restricted free agency.

The move–which comes days after the team’s signing of Serge Ibaka–may be an indication that the team intends to prioritize hard cap flexibility for mid-season roster moves over the remaining pool of minimum-salary free agents.

To hear a short discussion of the Clippers’ decision to waive Justin Patton and sign Bowman to this deal, check out the newest episode of LA Clippers News & Updates.

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Clippers Sign Ky Bowman to Non-Guaranteed Contract
Lucas Hann