Even though a lockout is upon us, one which might last us through until the very end of existence in late 2012, there's still some bookkeeping to be done. July 1st is (or should be) the date on which one season ends and the next one begins, and thus June 30th is an important cut-off date for certain transactions.

Players with player or early termination options had to decide if they were coming back; the few players with team options awaited an uncertain future; players eligible for QO's had to see if they got them. We also had the added bonus of 2012/13 team options for rookie scale contracts being decided considerably earlier than usual - after all, when the usual end of October deadline comes around, the lockout may still be going on.

All the results are in now, however, and there follows a list of who did what before July 1st.

Nothing cheers me up more than heavily contrived and extremely implausible hypothetical transactions for the Chicago Bulls.¹ Taking a team's cap situation, and attempting to maximize the basketball assets that they can get from using it, is what I wish to spend my life doing. It is this love of salary cap manipulation and amateurish talent evaluation that has in the past produced seminal works such as the four team 16 player trade that intended to bring Carmelo Anthony to Chicago whilst getting Denver under the luxury tax in the process², as well as last offseason's equally well-intended multi-faceted shake-up that sought only to avoid signing Joe Johnson, and which bizarrely predicted that the Bulls would end up with half of the previous season's Utah Jazz rotation, but not the half that they actually wound up with.

These are my hobbies.

Ironically, Joe Johnson would be a somewhat perfect fit for Chicago right now. But unfortunately, Joe Johnson still has five years and $107,333,589 remaining on his maximum salary contract given to him by the Hawks, whom he just led to 44 wins and an ultimately rather purposeless second round exit. When the 29 year old fourth best player at his position gets the fifth biggest contract in the history of the sport, consider yourselves outbid.³ It's a shame, in a way, for a player of Joe Johnson's type and talent level would now be an exact fit to the major problem Chicago faces.

Chicago isn't exactly a team awash with strife. They just made it to the Eastern Conference Finals, had the best regular season record in the league, won 62 games, won the Most Valuable Player award, won the Coach Of The Year award, and somehow managed to come both first and third in the Executive Of The Year award, the most recent first-and-third place finish since Hacksaw Jim Douglas in The Love Bug. This isn't a capped-out team that dribbled meekly to a limp 32 wins and a late lottery pick. This isn't Detroit. Indeed, you could make a case that, aside from Miami, this team has the brightest future in the league. It's either them or OKC.⁴

Continuing the lengthy look at training camp invitees league wide, here's part three. Part one can be found here, and part two is here.

Continuing the lengthy look at training camp invitees league wide, here's part two. Part one can be found here.

No matter how much you may think you know, NBA training camp always offers an opportunity to learn more.

In that respect, it rivals summer league and draft night; all three present chances to learn more about players about whom you previously did not know about, and you get to try to understand what the NBA sees in them. If a player makes it as far as training camp, after all, then they must be doing something right, because all these players have signed valid NBA contracts. They're no longer just here for show; they're under contract, and even being paid a small stipend. In some cases, the player's presence is for no reason other than convenience and/or practice purposes, and some are there purely as fodder. Yet even then, it's intriguing. A contract is a contract. And as Jason Richards has proved in the past, even unguaranteed contracts can be lucrative.

There follows both predictions and analysis, if you will, of the upcoming training camp battles in October 2010. This post is so named because I like to imagine that this NSFW speech by Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross actually takes place at every team's media day. If it doesn't, don't tell me otherwise.

There follows a compendium of all players who have signed, or agreed to sign, for 2010 training camp. I could not find such a compendium elsewhere and thus decided to make one. This list also includes earlier signings of players with unguaranteed or partially guaranteed deals. In some cases, such as with Cucumber, certain players will obviously make it, yet they are included for the sake of uniformity. There exists the possibility that any of these signings could yet change - nothing is certain until the date that the contract is signed. This was recently proven to be the case with Jon Scheyer, who was going to camp with Utah as recently as last week, even seen saying so himself here. But then Utah signed Earl Watson and Scheyer/his agent changed their minds. However, with so little time left until camp starts, most of the signings can be assumed to happening now. Some already have.

The transfer markets are pretty much closed. In many places, pre-season has already begun. Euroleague qualifiers begin next week, as does the mighty British Basketball League regular season, and while signings continue to go down, most are done by now. By this time, if you're still a free agent without a training camp invite, you're struggling. Unless you're going to the D-League, of course.

There follows a list of the whereabouts of all the players featured on NBA summer league rosters this year. Summer league is a terrific catalyst for the worldwide basketball market; it's not just NBA teams who find their next players here. GM's, scouts and agents the world over find players here, and thus these moves often form the basis of the international import market. With that in mind, here's who has gone where. In the instances of players quite obviously under NBA contracts, I've tried to write something really interesting instead.

No attribution is given for these transactions for the simple reason that there's too damn many of them.

The worst part about maintaining the internet's premier NBA salary information resource is that the information is never static. It is ever-changing. Due to things such as conditional guarantees, trade kickers and the like, rarely do contracts ever stay the same. This is particularly true because of the science of performance incentives.

Performance incentives can be included in contracts for almost any reason, including (but not limited to) All-Star selections, championship, or team wins. The only rules are that any numerical definitions are specific, and that they are for positive achievements only (although God knows why you'd want it otherwise). For example, Kirk Hinrich has performance incentives based on any First Team All-Defensive placements that he gets, and Matt Bonner's just-expired contract was based around his three point and free throw percentages.

These incentives are deemed by the league to be either "likely" or "unlikely". If they are deemed "likely", then they appear on a team's cap number for the upcoming season; if they are deemed "unlikely", then they are not. This is why this information is important to cap space calculations and the like. The likehood of incentives is decided by the league using one simple criterion; whether the player achieved the incentive last year or not. In the case of team-based incentives such as team win totals, this can be changed when a player is traded to a new team; this is perhaps most famously demonstrated by the case of Devean George, whose team win-based incentive went from "likely" to "unlikely" when he was traded from Dallas to Golden State, thereby costing him $200,000. Such is the risk.

Cap hits based on performance incentives are modified during the moratorium, due to a re-evaluation of their incentives. (That's what the moratorium is for - bookkeeping.) Some previously deemed "unlikely" were met, and are now deemed "likely" - some unlucky players have had the opposite happen. There follows a list of all player's salaries that have been modified for the 2010/11 season due to performance incentive changes, and by how much. Details of why these incentives have changed (i.e. what they are based on) are not listed, in part because I don't know them all.

This is an update of the update of the earlier post that detailed the amount of cap room teams will have. It is updated to reflect everything that happened at the draft, including, in the case of the Kirk Hinrich trade, things that haven't happened that soon will.

More importantly, it is updated to reflect the fact that we now know where the salary cap is going to be; with the calculations all down, the NBA has announced that the salary cap for the 2010/11 season will be higher that expected, coming in at $58,044,000.

After all that, it went up from last year.

Other than those things, this is a carbon copy of the initial post. In this edition, there are no entries for teams irrelevant to cap space, because I can't be bothered. If those teams make moves to become relevant, they will get mentioned later.

Thank you for your patience as we resolve the issues that have plagued this website in recent days. We're on top of it now. Sort of.

The free agency season is upon us, and a lot of housekeeping had to be done before we could get going. Players with player or early termination options had to decide if they were coming back; the few players with team options awaited an uncertain future; players eligible for QO's had to see if they got them. All the results are in now, however, and there follows a list of who did what before July 1st.

- Not everyone changes teams in the summer. It seems like they do, but some stay on where they are. Those who have signed extensions with their current clubs include Slovakian scoring machine Radoslav Rancik, who has signed a two year deal with Galatasaray, and ex-San Diego State forward Mohamed Abukar, who signed a two year deal of his own with the Swiss champion Lugano Tigers. Dimitris Diamantidis snuffed out the 1% possibility of him ever joining the NBA as he signed a three year extension with Panathinaikos, and Mengke Bateer has re-signed with Xinjiang, staving off his retirement (and inevitable subsequent move into full-time acting) for at least one more year. Ex-Raptors draft pick Roko Ukic took a buyout from Milwaukee part way through last season to join Turkish team Fenerbahce, and he's just signed for two extra years there. And another Raptors draft pick, Giorgis Printezis, has taken a pay cut in signing a two year extension with Unicaja Malaga. For some reason.

- Speaking of Malaga; in contrast to previously reported news, it transpires that they did not actually retain the services of Omar Cook after all. Cook is a quality point guard in Europe, and he shouldn't have problems finding new work. Additionally, as initially reported, David Logan has joined Caja Laboral on a three year deal. He replaces Carl English, who has left the team. And Le Mans quickly found a replacement for Marc Salyers, bringing in former Detroit Mercy forward Ryvon Covile. Ryvon averaged 9.4 points and 4.8 rebounds for Entente Orleans last season.

- But the big news here is that of ex-Rider big man, Steve Castleberry, who has moved from Czech Republican team Podebrady to Czech Republican team Basketball Brno. Last year for Podebrady, Castleberry was 7th in the league in scoring, 2nd in rebounds and 6th in block, but Podebrady finished only 10th out of 12 teams. One place behind them was Brno, who has the dubious honour of not coming last, but only because the team behind them went 3-41. Maybe now, with the pedigree of Castleberry on board, they can begin to fly up the table.

You don't get this kind of news elsewhere. You should, but apparently most other sites find LeBron James's free agency more interesting. The simple-minded fools.

- In Italy, Bucks draft pick Szymon Szewczyk signed a two year extension with Air Avellino. He ranked second the team in rebounds last year behind Chevon Troutman, was second in points behind Dee Brown, and also managed not to get arrested in a drunken car wreck unlike the other two. Another NBA draft pick signed in Italy, Petteri Koponen, is to remain in Bologna for at least one more season. And ex-NBA player Jumaine Jones is staying with Pepsi Caserta for at least one more season, which really crippled this otherwise infallible post.

- Another ex-NBA draft pick to have signed in Italy is Milovan Rakovic, whose rights are owned by the Magic. Rakovic was one of the best players in the Russian Superleague last year, averaging 15.2 points and 6.4 rebounds in 25 minutes per game for Spartak St Petersburg. He's cashing in on that and moving to Italy to play for Italian powerhouse Montepaschi Siena. There's lots of upheaval in Russia at the moment; the Superleague teams have all signed a pact vowing to break away from the current governing body, with whom they are thoroughly disenfranchised, and to begin running operations on their own. Amidst this upheaval, many players have left; Spartak also released James White (14.8/3.7) and Goran Suton (played 94 minutes all season). Additionally, Unics Kazan have released veteran Lithuanian jumpshooter Saulius Štombergas, and Lokomotiv Kuban have released their imports James Gist, Andre Owens and Gerald Green. It's probably fair to say that Green will not be returning to the Dallas Mavericks.

- Not everyone is suffering, though. Khimki have taken advantage of the situation by signing ex-Blazers forward Sergei Monia from cash strapped rivals Dynamo Moscow, and have also signed ex-Nets guard Zoran Planinic from the other Moscow team, CSKA. CSKA can probably afford to spare Planinic; they have made 8 consecutive Euroleague Final Fours, and danced their way to a Russian Superleague title, going unbeaten throughout the postseason (beating Khimky in the final). It is not immediately official who the two replace in Khimky, but one of the team's Spanish national team point guards (Raul Lopez and Carlos Cabezas) figures to go, and it will probably be Cabezas.

This is an update of the earlier post that detailed the amount of cap room teams will have. It is updated to reflect the Kings/Sixers traded that was just completed (Andres Nocioni and Spencer Hawes for Sam Dalembert), to reflect some exercised options, and to edit the fact that I typoed a bit in the Timberwolves entry.

It's a carbon copy of the initial post, save for those tweaks.


    Atlanta Hawks


Committed salary for 2010/11: $47,630,214 (view full forecast)

Projected cap space: None


If Atlanta renounce (or lose) Joe Johnson, renounce Josh Childress, renounce their four remaining free agents (Joe Smith, Mario West, Jason Collins and Randolph Morris), and sell or renounce their first round draft pick (#24, cap hold of $963,600), they will have a cap number of $49,524,640 (the committed salary plus four minimum salary roster charges of $473,604 for having less than 12 things on the cap). Barring trades, that's as low as they can get. And yet it's not enough for cap room; if you add on the value of the Bi-Annual Exception ($2.08 million) and the Mid-Level Exception (not yet known exactly, but will be about $5.7 million), the Hawks are over the cap.

- David Noel, who was mentioned in the previous post as leaving French team Roanne, has landed another gig in the same country. He has signed with Paris-Levallois.

- In other French league news, Le Mans have released Marc Salyers, who had an uncharacteristically average season. Salyers averaged only 11.7 points and 4.5 rebounds per game in the French league - good numbers, but not the star they assumed they were getting. The team also released Zach Wright, the best rebounding 6'2 guard you ever saw (26.9 mpg, 8.9 ppg, 5.6 rpg, 4.4 apg) while choosing to sign former Gonzaga big man J.P. Batista (13.4 ppg, 5.2 rpg) to a two year extension. And fellow ProA side Vichy signed Villanova forward Curtis Sumpter, who had previously been with Belgian team Dexia Mons-Hainaut.

- The man Sumpter replaces in Vichy is Brent Petway, the athletic Michigan alum who has spent time around the NBA in summer leagues, training camps, the D-League and the like. He's taking the strange step of moving down a level, going to French second division side Clermont for next season. Not many decent players play in the ProB, but another one who will be is Marcus Campbell, the ex-Mississippi State big man and training camp veteran who has spent almost all of his career in the American minor leagues, and who has had NBA training camp contracts from the Rockets and Bobcats.

- Rather than going to France, Mouhamed Sene is leaving it. Sene led the French league in both rebounds and blocks season and was named a joint winner of the Defensive Player of the Year award, but he's making a lateral move to Belgium to play for Charleroi. Sene was playing in Belgium before his NBA career began, and hopefully he can improve upon the 4/5 averages that were deemed enough to get him picked 10th overall in 2006. Also in Belgium, Xavier guard Stanley Burrell has switched teams, moving from Sene's former team Verviers-Pepinster to Generali Okapi Aalstar. He averaged 10.8 points and 4.6 assists last season.


- In Cyprus, North Carolina State streak shooter Courtney Fells has switched teams, going from AEL Limassol to Keravnos. Hopefully next season, statistics from Cyprus will be available. Israeli team Bnei Hasharon have signed Dan Grunfeld - one time Knick and Ernie's Romanian son - to pair up alongside former Alabama guard Ron Steele and former Duquesne forward Shawn James, the latter of whom led Israel in blocked shots by quite a long way. And Polish Euroleague team Prokom Gydnia elected to keep former NBA guard Daniel Ewing, helping to offset the loss of David Logan, whom they could not retain. Logan is reportedly about to sign with Caja Laboral; if he does, it'll be a pretty lucrative gig, as Caja Laboral just won the ACB.


As always, if you want to keep tracks of transactions, use the transaction indexes for all three of the NBA, D-League and the world at large. Every relevant transaction is in there. Even the Taiwanese ones.

Lots of people and lots of places are claiming knowledge of the cap space of various NBA team in anticipation of this summer's free agency bonanza. Most, if not all, have done so misleadingly inaccurately.

Without wanting to sound too douchebaggy (sorry), let's try to get this right. 100% accuracy is not guaranteed, but 99.7% accuracy is. All salary information is taken from this website's own salary pages.

NOTE: All cap space amounts are calculated to an estimated salary cap of $56.1 million. This inexact figure is the most recent (and thus accurate) projection released yet, and will have to suffice for now. When the actual amount is calculated/announced, the sums below will be altered accordingly.


    Atlanta Hawks


Committed salary for 2010/11: $47,630,214 (view full forecast)

Projected cap space: None


If Atlanta renounce (or lose) Joe Johnson, renounce Josh Childress, renounce their four remaining free agents (Joe Smith, Mario West, Jason Collins and Randolph Morris), and sell or renounce their first round draft pick (#24, cap hold of $963,600), they will have a cap number of $49,524,640 (the committed salary plus four minimum salary roster charges of $473,604 for having less than 12 things on the cap). Barring trades, that's as low as they can get. And yet it's not enough for cap room; if you add on the value of the Bi-Annual Exception ($2.08 million) and the Mid-Level Exception (not yet known exactly, but will be about $5.7 million), the Hawks are over the cap.

- Maccabi Tel-Aviv declined their contract option on former Warriors draft pick Stephane Lasme. The Raptors are said to have been scouting him, alongside his Maccabi frontcourt teammate D'Or Fischer. Granted, the Israeli press are notorious for making things up, and the now-27 year old Lasme is coming off a bad year and has hardly added the missing dimensions to his somewhat one dimensional game. But then again, Amir Johnson becomes an unrestricted free agent in three weeks time. Coincidence? Maybe. Maybe not.

- Other guys not being invited back include Steve Burtt Jr, who will not stay with Ukrainian team Ferro-ZNTU. French club Roanne are not retaining ex-Bucks draft pick David Noel, and another ex Bucks player Jiri Welsch is leaving Unicaja Malaga after four seasons. Malaga simultaneously exercised a contract option on Omar Cook, which was always going to happen.

- Two players who left their clubs midway through last season, only to return, have now left them again. Australian international Brad Newley left Besiktas towards the end of last year as the team had fallen more than the allowable amount behind on his payment schedule - it is customary for teams to be allowed to fall a certain amount behind on payments before a player is allowed to break the contract with all obligations, both future and outstanding, still owed to them. Newley did this once the team had fallen several thousand dollars behind on his pay, and agreed to sign with AJ Milano for the remainder of the Serie A season. However, due to paperwork errors, FIBA blocked the transfer and Newley had to return to Besiktas for the remainder of the season. With it now over for good, Newley has left the team again and signed in Lithuania for Lietuvos Rytas (who, incidentally, elected to keep Milko Bjelica for next year as well). Additionally, the wolf man Vuk Radivojevic has left the destitute Crvena Zvezda for good this team. He was said to have left the team towards the end of last season, but returned to play the remainder of the season, presumably doing so unpaid. He really has gone this time, though, signing with Turkish team Trabzonspor for next season.

- In Germany, Rickey Paulding of EWE Basketa Oldenburg and Torrell Martin of Bremehaven both signed extensions with their teams. Paulding re-signs for his fourth year with the team; last year he took six three pointers a game and hit only 33% of them, but must have done something right if they wanted him back. Meanwhile, in his first Bundesliga season, Martin averaged 11.3 points and 5.3 rebounds per game, helping Bremerhaven reach the semi-final stages, where they lost 3-2 to Frankfurt. Martin scored only 4 points in 39 minutes of the elimination game, which Frankfurt won 56-52. Sounds like it was bloody fascinating.

Oldenburg have also brought in German national forward Robin Smeulders, who just finished his collegiate career at Portland. Someone tell Kevin Pelton.


As always, if you want to keep tracks of transactions, use the transaction indexes for all three of the NBA, D-League and the world at large. Every relevant transaction is in there. Even the Taiwanese ones.

Summer is here, and players are a-moving. The NBA free agency period has not yet begun - and should be pretty epic once it does - but this hasn't stopped players moving the world over. Here are some of the transactions that may interest you.


- Teams in Australia's NBL tend to sort out their rosters nice and early, and so even though we're several months away from the 2010-11 season tipping off, many rosters are all but complete already. Despite him winning the NBL MVP trophy last season, the Townsville Crocodiles have released Corey "Homicide" Williams, and have not named a replacement import, although they have brought in former St. Mary's big man Ben Allen (who is also currently trying out for the Australian national team.) The Melbourne Tigers have brought home from America another big Aussie centre (Luke Nevill), and have signed Eric Devendorf to score from them after his hugely successful offseason in New Zealand (at least basketball wise; Devendorf managed to get arrested for breach of the peace in there as well.) And the Sydney Kings are returning to the NBL after a season out due to financial difficulties, bringing with them Taj McCullough, who had previously been in Latvia with VEF Riga.

- Arvydas Macijauskas, the star Lithuania shooting guard whose NBA career was a short-lived epic fail, has retired aged only 30. Macijauskas was an All-Euroleague first teamer in 2004-05 while playing for Tau Ceramica, which led to a big money three year contract with the New Orleans Hornets; however, he was barely used, and when he was used it was only as a third string point. Since that time, Macijauskas has spent the last two seasons on the shelf, rehabilitating an assortment of injuries including left Achilles and calf injuries, as well as a spinal hernia. Macijauskas has also been embroiled in an unpretty contract dispute with Olympiakos that lasted over a year and was only resolved last Autumn. He says he may move into coaching.

- Speaking of Olympiakos, their annual summer turnover has begun. They have announced that they will not bring back backup centre Nikola Vujcic, as well as American point guard Scoonie Penn. Vujcic performed well when given minutes in the twilight of his career, 7.4 points, 2.7 rebounds and 1.7 assists in the Euroleague, and 6.8/2.3/1 in the Greek A1. However, Penn, also in the twilight of his career, struggled mightily for the team. Despite the presence of Milos Teodosic and Theo Papaloukas in front of him, and with NBA draft Patrick Beverley and hot prospect Kostas Sloukas also fighting for point guard minutes, Penn was in the rotation whole year and even got the start in the Euroleague Final against Barcelona. God knows why; Penn averaged all of 1.6 points and 0.6 assists in 17 minutes per game in the Euroleague, alongside 3.9 points and 1.7 assists in 21 minutes per game in the Greek league. For PER fans, that's 14.8 in Greece (due to his 45% 3PT FG), and 2.6 in the Euroleague (due to his 16% 2PT FG). The Scoonie Penn of Olympiakos 2010 was not the Scoonie Penn of Olympiakos 2007; he wasn't even a fifth of him.

- Ex-NBA guard Orien Greene was suspended for two years (with one year considered already served) after trying to avoid a doping test by using a team mate's urine at the end of the 2008/09 season. (Don't know the ins and outs of how he did this, nor do I want to know.) The team mate, Teddy Gipson, was also suspended for six months. The team they were both playing for, ABC Amsterdam, have not yet been sanctioned but may be soon. Both players had long since left the team; Jannero Pargo's friend Gipson averaged 16.2 points and 5.3 assists to lead fallen French giant Pau Orthez back to the ProA, and Greene spent the year in the D-League with the Utah Flash before going to Venezuela for some summer money. He'll have to make that D-League salary stretch quite a long way now.

- After a bad season, ASVEL Villerbanne are cutting salary. To celebrate their first Euroleague campaign for five years, the team spent Tony Parker's money bringing in reinforcements with pedigree - Curtis Borchardt, Rawle Marshall, Mindaugas Lukauskis. Unfortunately, they never made it out of the group stage, and they didn't even break .500 in the ProA either, finishing in 9th place with a 14-16 record. Therefore, Borchardt and Marshall have been released, Victor Samnick has moved to Nancy, and Ali Traore might soon leave the team as well. ASVEL have already brought in replacements; Clemson guard Cliff Hammonds comes over from Peristeri in Greece, and draft prospect Edwin Jackson has returned from two years on loan, fresh with a new cut fastball that breaks late away from the right hander. But there is no replacement size yet.

- Good news, Oklahoma City Thunder fans! Former Sonics draft pick Paccelis "Patch" Morlende is back in basketball after a year and a half out due to injury. Patch resumed training in the new year, attending practice with Dijon, the team with whom he began his career. And although Dijon did not sign him at any point - probably because they were too busy getting relegated - Hyeres-Toulon have just done so, giving Patch his first playing gig since an unsuccessful run in Russia in December 2008. With Kevin Ollie's impending retirement, this news could not come at a better time.

- Bad news, Portland Trail Blazers fans! Federico Kammerichs has re-signed for a second season with Regatas Corrientes. You'd better hope LaMarcus Aldridge lives up to that contract.

A while ago, I wrote about Anthony Morrow's impending free agency, breaking down how much he could sign for and why. If you have not read it, please do so, and I won't stab this puppy.

Morrow's situation is not unique, for his is a situation that arises every offseason. Lots of players's first contracts are two year minimum salary deals, and those who manage to make it to the end of them are usually worthy of new contracts at that time. Others in Morrow's situation this season include Jawad Williams, Will Bynum, Bobby Brown and Nathan Jawai; I mentioned Morrow specifically only because he is the one deemed most likely to get the largest contract offer this summer, and therefore his is the one that gets asked about most.

A similar situation to those of Morrow et al is to be found in the situations of those who signed one year minimum salary deals, and who will be restricted free agents to a team with only non-Bird rights on them. It's a situation that will apply this offseason to Mario West, Anthony Tolliver, Chris Hunter, Mustafa Shakur, Patrick Mills, Jon Brockman, Cedric Jackson and Cartier Martin; however, the most intriguing player to whom it applies is free agent Jazz swingman, Wes Matthews, for the simple reason that he's the most likely of the bunch to command more than the minimum salary.