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Hornets free agency news and notes – At The Hive
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A full 48 hours and some change into the 2024 NBA offseason and the dust is beginning to settle.
Some notable free agents remain unsigned, but cap space is drying up around the league. LeBron James re-upped with the Lakers this morning, Paul George signed in Philadelphia and the 76ers promptly inked Tyrese Maxey to an extension, Isaiah Hartenstein is a Thunder, Klay Thompson is a Maverick (thanks to Charlotte’s help in a three-team sign-and-trade), and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope departed the champion Nuggets for Orlando. After that flurry of signings, there are exactly two needle-moving players left on the market: DeMar DeRozan and Miles Bridges.
The market has ground to a halt over the last 24 hours or so. One can presume that the contract situation and preferred destinations of DeRozan and Bridges are the primary reason–DeRozan just wants to land with a competitive team as his career winds down. Bridges, on the other hand, has a complex situation rife with baggage. Since being convicted of a felony in 2022, missing the entire 2022-23 season and the first 10 games of 2023-24, then playing markedly worse on both ends of the floor than he did as a borderline All-Star in his last full season, it’s been impossible to gauge his true value around the league.
Yesterday, in what might be the first substantiated rumor regarding Bridges’ situation, Broderick Turner of the Los Angeles Times reported that the Clippers are “looking into” in a sign-and-trade for Bridges.
As Turner notes in the article, a Bridges-to-LA deal would almost certainly be a sign-and-trade given the Clippers’ cap situation. After extending James Harden early in the offseason and losing George for nothing, the Clippers effectively lost a max salary slot and have no young players with Bird Rights coming up the developmental pipeline. Moving a high-salary player such as Norman Powell, Terance Mann or PJ Tucker for Bridges (or another free agent) is the only way LA can regain a salary slot that even approaches the max, and also add a third option alongside Harden and Kawhi Leonard.
The Clippers are currently over the cap but under the first tax apron, meaning they are not restricted on the trade market. From Charlotte’s perspective, the ideal sign-and-trade package is something like Powell, Mann and a 2031 first-round pick for Bridges. For the Clippers, it’s probably Tucker in place of Powell or Mann, and second-round picks in 2030 or 2031. Whether or not that gap is bridged and the deal is completed, who knows. But the framework is there, whereas other teams (such as the Lakers) are hard capped at the second apron and have no route to acquiring Bridges unless he takes a pay cut.
Bridges is not the only Hornet whose name is bouncing around in the rumor mill. For the second time this summer, Mike Scotto of HoopsHype has mentioned Nick Richards as a possible target for the Knicks to replace Hartenstein. At $5M per year this season and next, Richards might be on the most team-friendly deal in the NBA. New York needs a quality backup center that can slide into a starting role when needed with Mitchell Robinson’s injury history and Precious Achiuwa’s free agency status.
The Knicks are a second apron team and cannot aggregate player salaries in trades. The only players with a salary that matches Richards’ are Miles McBride and Mamadi Diakite. McBride projects to be a valuable rotation player for New York, who is also on a long-term team-friendly deal, though surely Charlotte is interested in him and uninterested in Diakite and his non-guaranteed deal. It seems unlikely New York would swap McBride for Richards, or that the Hornets would attach a pick to Richards to complete the deal. If the Knicks want to get a deal done, it’ll likely be for Diakite and draft assets.
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Chase Whitney
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