NBA free agency live updates (2024)

LeBron James plans to sign a two-year, $104 million maximum deal to return to the Los Angeles Lakers, league sources said Wednesday. The Athletic previously reported that James intended to opt out of his $51.4 million player option for next season.

The new deal comes after news that James’ son Bronny, who was drafted at No. 55 by the Lakers last month, is planning to sign a standard NBA roster contract with multiple guaranteed seasons.

Read more here.

If the Golden State Warriors send Gui Santos to Philadelphia and sign second-round pick Quinten Post to a rookie minimum deal, that leaves them about $14 million under the tax apron for Buddy Hield. But the only way I can see to import him at that salary is to incorporate Hield and Kyle Anderson into the same sign-and-trade that sent Klay Thompson outbound, turning it into a five-team mega trade between Charlotte, Dallas, Minnesota, Golden State and Philadelphia.

Why Santos? Philadelphia acquiring him into cap space would mean the Sixers could aggregate him into a trade immediately. That, perhaps, would allow them to combine his salary and Paul Reed’s to acquire a player not attainable with Reed's salary alone, such as Cleveland's Caris LeVert or Sacramento's Kevin Huerter.

The Golden State Warriors are in serious talks on a sign-and-trade deal to acquire Buddy Hield, league sources told The Athletic.

The Warriors and the Philadelphia 76ers have been in deep discussions, and are working to finalize the deal for one of the NBA's best three-point shooters.

Hield, 31, averaged 12.2 points in 32 regular-season games with the Sixers, shooting 42.6 percent from the field and 38.9 percent from 3.

Draymond Green shared multiple revealing quotes on his podcast Tuesday, saying he nearly signed with the Memphis Grizzlies last year.

"Last year, during free agency, I called Klay (Thompson), and I called Steph (Curry). Separate calls. And Steve (Kerr). And I was just telling them, like, 'Yo, I'm leaving. I'm going to Memphis,'" Green said on "The Draymond Green Show."

Green returned to the Golden State Warriors on a four-year, $100 million deal. He said on his show, "Obviously, we got it figured out. Shout to the Lacobs and Mike Dunleavy, his first free agency."

Green additionally discussed Thompson's departure and the recent trade talks between the Warriors and Paul George, who is joining the Philadelphia 76ers on a four-year, $212 million max contract, league sources said Monday.

"Paul George was gonna come to the Warriors. ... The Clippers didn’t really want to play ball," Green said. "Didn’t want to help him get to where he wanted to go, so in turn, they get nothing back."

The Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday that the Clippers have an interest in free agent forward Miles Bridges, and The Athletic can confirm via team and league sources that both sides are exploring a move.

While the player is interested in joining the Clippers, per those sources, it does not appear likely at this time that a transaction is imminent.

Bridges averaged 21 points and 7.3 rebounds per game in 69 games with the Hornets last season. He missed the first 10 games of the season serving a suspension after being arrested in June 2022 and pleading no contest to a felony domestic violence charge that November. He received three years of probation but no jail time as part of a deal with prosecutors.

The NBA issued the suspension in April 2023. Twenty games of the suspension were considered served in the 2022-23 season, meaning Bridges — a restricted free agent at the time of the incident who was not signed in 2022-23 — had 10 games remaining on the suspension to start this past season.

I wrote about about the mechanics of a Jonathan Isaac renegotiate-and-extend with Orlando in today's piece. It appears the Magic tacked on $10 million to his 2024-25 salary with their cap room, declined him by the maximum 40 percent to $16.44 million for next year, and then had the maximum 8 perent declines in the out years to take him down to $12.9 million by 2028-29. The total would be $85.3 million, of which $67.9 million is new money.

Orlando then used the remainder of its cap room to re-sign Mo Wagner on a two-year, $22 million deal. The Magic still have their room exception remaining and one open roster spot.

The Warriors had to sign-and-trade Kyle Anderson into the trade exception from the Klay Thompson move to Dallas because they already used their non-taxpayer midlevel exception on De'Anthony Melton. The Warriors can only take back about $7 million more into the Thompson exception if they carry it into the season. However, if they can rope in another contract and make this a multiteam trade with Dallas and Minnesota over the next few days, they can take back considerably more.

As a more practical matter, this is unlikely unless they also dump another contract, as staying below the luxury tax and the first apron is likely to limit them more than the size of the trade exception.

The center market was thin, but I don’t really get Utah paying Drew Eubanks $10 million over two years. The Jazz haven't played their cap space cards yet.

Less than three months after the Cavaliers traded for Donovan Mitchell, I began hearing rumors swirling around his future.

He doesn't want to be in Cleveland. He wants to be in New York. This isn't going to last. The Cavs will eventually have to trade him.

Powerful agents, executives from other teams, and even players around the league whom I spoke to all agreed. The idea of Mitchell remaining in Cleveland long-term just didn’t seem feasible to anyone who actually worked in the league.

That's what makes Tuesday such a significant milestone for the Cavs and the city of Cleveland. The trade for Mitchell may have been the single-biggest gamble in the history of the franchise. His signature on a three-year, $150 million extension this week made it all pay off.

Read the rest of my story here.

Kyle Anderson is joining the Warriors on a three-year, $27 million contract, team sources confirmed to The Athletic. The third year of the deal is fully non-guaranteed. Anderson will join the Warriors via sign-and-trade, sliding right into the just-created $15.8 million traded player exception from the Klay Thompson sign-and-trade to Dallas. The Warriors received two second-round picks in the Thompson deal. They sent out a second-round swap to the Timberwolves.

Anderson can essentially be considered the return for Thompson's departure. They had negotiations with the Mavericks in recent days, which included the possibility of taking back Josh Green or one of Dallas' other mid-tier contracts in exchange for Thompson. But the Warriors didn't prefer those options, team sources said, so they generated the traded player exception and used it on Anderson, a long, smart, slow power forward who should add size to a roster that needs it and fits well into Steve Kerr's system. The Warriors get Anderson for his age 31 and 32 seasons before that third-year non-guarantee.

Anderson appeared in 79 games for the Timberwolves last season and was a 15-minute member of their playoff rotation, which is about the role he should slide into in San Francisco.

Looking just at birth certificates, the moves made by Detroit to add Tobias Harris and Washington to add Jonas Valančiūnas can leave you puzzled. Are these teams rebuilding or what?

In reality, part of rebuilding is having just enough talent on hand, and in the right spots, that younger players can develop in a legitimate basketball environment. Valančiūnas prevents rookie Alex Sarr from getting mashed by bigger, stronger matchups in his first year and lets all the other Wizards play next to a real center. Harris is a legitimate scoring threat to put around Cade Cunningham so he isn’t facing five defenders with a foot in the paint as he did as year ago. Even bad teams need players like that around.

There were secondary considerations, of course. Harris' contract, in particular, is ideally set up to be a trade piece a year from now, when his $26-million-a-year deal becomes expiring money. Valančiūnas, meanwhile, was among the few centers on the market at this price point, so Washington couldn’t be too choosy.

I think both the Pistons and Wizards were taken aback by just how bad they were a year ago. It's one thing to take your lumps and develop, but these two were expecting to lose somewhat honorably. Instead, they went a combined 29-135 when nobody was even tanking. Yikes!

Xavier Tillman Sr. has agreed to a two-year, fully guaranteed minimum contract with the Celtics, league sources told The Athletic. Boston has now re-signed all three of its free agent centers as it prepares for Kristaps Porziņģis to miss extended time recovering from ankle surgery. Boston re-signed Luke Kornet to open free agency and Neemias Queta to a multi-year deal, in addition to locking in max extensions with Jayson Tatum and Derrick White.

The Celtics traded two second-round picks to Memphis for Tillman back at the trade deadline, anticipating that they would be unable to sign rotation-caliber bigs this summer because the second apron limits them to just the minimum exception. The 38-year-old Al Horford is entering the final year of his contract, so Tillman, who turns 26 this upcoming season, could serve as a long-term replacement should Horford retire next summer. Tillman averaged four points and 2.7 rebounds in 20 regular season games after being traded to Boston but played limited minutes during the championship run.

San Antonio’s addition of Chris Paul might seem a bit odd, given that the Spurs are rebuilding and Paul is 39 years old. Even given the team's need at point guard, other targets were available, and San Antonio had the money to chase them — most notably Tyus Jones, brother of incumbent point guard Tre Jones.

However, there may be something here beyond the long-term lovefest between Gregg Popovich and CP3. By signing Paul to a one-year deal, San Antonio gives itself the chance to profit from his contract twice. Paul will be an expiring deal come February, at which time Spurs could either aggregate it if they wanted to use their cache of future picks to hunt for a big star or sell off less dramatically for a second-round pick or two if he’s playing well and the Spurs are out of the hunt.

It's perhaps not the most dramatic thing the Spurs could have done, and their offseason still feels incomplete pending other moves. But Paul was possibly the best player they could have brought in at that position, the money is reasonable and the contract is highly portable.

Phoenix has painted itself into an impossible corner, and it seems likely the only way out will inevitably be trading Kevin Durant and Devin Booker, whether that's at the 2025 trade deadline or 18 months from now. Nonetheless, as long as the Suns are putting up the good fight of trying to stay in contention, they played their hand about as well as they could.

Mason Plumlee was the best center they could have brought in on a minimum deal and an upgrade on the departed Drew Eubanks. Re-signing Bol Bol and (eventually) Josh Okogie at raises on their minimum deals keeps their two best internal improvement candidates in the mix.

As for Royce O'Neale’s deal? Not great, Bob. Four years and $44 million for a 31-year-old player is a big chunk of change. But the Bird rights trap bites hardest on second-apron teams like the Suns that have no means of replacing the player for more than the minimum. O'Neale almost had to come back, and the Suns had zero leverage.

The endgame of this is staggering: The Suns will have the league's most expensive roster this year and likely will in 2025-26 too. They will have their 2032 and 2033 draft picks frozen for being over the second apron and will have the 2032 pick moved to the end of the first round if they can’t get under the second apron by 2026.

But for now, at least, they're alive — just barely — in the contender conversation once again.