After a surging 2024-2025 season, the Detroit Pistons are adding to their squad, signing veteran guard Caris LeVert to a short-term deal. LeVert has reportedly agreed to a two-year, $29 million deal with Detroit, per ESPN’s Shams Charania.
The 30-year-old guard was traded to the Atlanta Hawks in February in a deal that sent De’Andre Hunter to the Cleveland Cavaliers. LeVert’s two-year deal with Cleveland expired this offseason, leading him to sign with the Pistons as a free agent.
LeVert will serve a similar role as Schröder, both as a leader and as a threat in the backcourt. The guard averaged 12.1 points, 3.2 rebounds and 3.4 assists last season, putting in just under 25 minutes per game.
As an added bonus, the signing also marks a homecoming of sorts for LeVert, who played for Michigan from 2012-2016 before going pro.
After a surging 2024-2025 season, the Detroit Pistons are adding to their squad, signing veteran guard Caris LeVert to a short-term deal. LeVert has reportedly agreed to a two-year, $29 million deal with Detroit, per ESPN’s Shams Charania.
The 30-year-old guard was traded to the Atlanta Hawks in February in a deal that sent De’Andre Hunter to the Cleveland Cavaliers. LeVert’s two-year deal with Cleveland expired this offseason, leading him to sign with the Pistons as a free agent.
LeVert will serve a similar role as Schröder, both as a leader and as a threat in the backcourt. The guard averaged 12.1 points, 3.2 rebounds and 3.4 assists last season, putting in just under 25 minutes per game.
As an added bonus, the signing also marks a homecoming of sorts for LeVert, who played for Michigan from 2012-2016 before going pro.
The former Milwaukee Bucks center has agreed to a two-year, $18 million contract to join the Los Angeles Clippers, ESPN’s Shams Charania reports.
A 3-and-D center who retooled his game late in his career as one of the league’s best-shooting big men, Lopez adds a valuable skill set to a Clippers team that’s looking to improve its standing in the loaded Western Conference.
Can Lopez impact Clippers like he did Bucks?
Lopez played seven seasons with the Bucks and was a key player as a 70-game starter during Milwaukee’s run to the 2021 NBA championship. A former 20-point scorer, Lopez accepted a secondary scoring role in Milwaukee behind Giannis Antetokounmpo and Khris Middleton as a floor spacer on offense while honing his role on defense as an elite shot blocker.
In seven seasons with the Bucks, Lopez averaged 13 points, 5.2 rebounds and 2.1 blocks per game while shooting 48.7% from the floor and 35.7% on 4.9 3-point attempts per game. His shooting ability was key in creating space for Antetokounmpo to attack the rim.
The Clippers are surely hoping that Lopez can contribute to similar opportunities for James Harden and Kawhi Leonard to work around the basket.
Twin towers in Los Angeles?
Lopez will join a roster that also features Ivica Zubac, who had the best season of his career at 27 years old last season while averaging 16.8 points, 12.6 rebounds and 1.1 blocks per game. The 7-foot center earned second-team All-Defensive Team honors and gave three-time MVP Nikola Jokić trouble in a first-round playoff loss to the Denver Nuggets that went to seven games.
The combination of Lopez and Zubac alongside seven-time All-Defensive Team forward Leonard will provide the Clippers with one of the more intriguing defensive front lines in the NBA.
For Milwaukee, Lopez’s exit signals the loss of another key player ahead of a season in which Damian Lillard will miss most, if not all of the season with a ruptured Achilles tendon. Questions, meanwhile, continue to swirl around Antetokounmpo’s future with a Bucks team that is not built to compete for a championship.
The former Milwaukee Bucks center has agreed to a two-year, $18 million contract to join the Los Angeles Clippers, ESPN’s Shams Charania reports.
A 3-and-D center who retooled his game late in his career as one of the league’s best-shooting big men, Lopez adds a valuable skill set to a Clippers team that’s looking to improve its standing in the loaded Western Conference.
Can Lopez impact Clippers like he did Bucks?
Lopez played seven seasons with the Bucks and was a key player as a 70-game starter during Milwaukee’s run to the 2021 NBA championship. A former 20-point scorer, Lopez accepted a secondary scoring role in Milwaukee behind Giannis Antetokounmpo and Khris Middleton as a floor spacer on offense while honing his role on defense as an elite shot blocker.
In seven seasons with the Bucks, Lopez averaged 13 points, 5.2 rebounds and 2.1 blocks per game while shooting 48.7% from the floor and 35.7% on 4.9 3-point attempts per game. His shooting ability was key in creating space for Antetokounmpo to attack the rim.
The Clippers are surely hoping that Lopez can contribute to similar opportunities for James Harden and Kawhi Leonard to work around the basket.
Twin towers in Los Angeles?
Lopez will join a roster that also features Ivica Zubac, who had the best season of his career at 27 years old last season while averaging 16.8 points, 12.6 rebounds and 1.1 blocks per game. The 7-foot center earned second-team All-Defensive Team honors and gave three-time MVP Nikola Jokić trouble in a first-round playoff loss to the Denver Nuggets that went to seven games.
The combination of Lopez and Zubac alongside seven-time All-Defensive Team forward Leonard will provide the Clippers with one of the more intriguing defensive front lines in the NBA.
For Milwaukee, Lopez’s exit signals the loss of another key player ahead of a season in which Damian Lillard will miss most, if not all of the season with a ruptured Achilles tendon. Questions, meanwhile, continue to swirl around Antetokounmpo’s future with a Bucks team that is not built to compete for a championship.
Newest Laker Jake LaRavia, right, was with Sacramento last season. (Sara Nevis / Associated Press)
The Lakers lost a key role player when forward Dorian Finney-Smith agreed to a deal with the Houston Rockets, but they quickly moved onward by agreeing to a deal with forward Jake LaRavia when NBA free agency opened Monday afternoon.
According to people not authorized to speak on the matter, Finney-Smith agreed to a four-year, $53-million deal with the Rockets. Finney-Smith had opted out of his $15.3-million deal with the Lakers.
The Lakers kept moving forward by getting wing player LaRavia to agree to a deal for two years and $12 million. The 6-7 LaRavia averaged 6.9 points, 3.9 rebounds, 2.4 assists and shot 47.5% from the field, 42.3% from three-point range with Memphis and Sacramento last season.
The Lakers acquired Finney-Smith from the Brooklyn Nets in December for three second-round picks and players. He was close to Luka Doncic from their time together in Dallas and Finney-Smith was a big contributor for the Lakers during the season, someone Lakers coach JJ Redick leaned on to play multiple positions and to be a defensive stopper.
The Nets are trading forward Cam Johnson to the Denver Nuggets for forward Michael Porter Jr. and a first-round draft pick.
The draft pick does not carry any protections and is in 2032, as first reported by ESPN’s Shams Charania. The deal can not be completed until July 6.
Porter appeared in 77 games (all starts) last year in Denver, averaging 18.2 points on 50.4 percent shooting (13.6 attempts) with 7.0 rebounds, 2.1 assists in 33.7 minutes. In an up-and-down playoff performance, he averaged just 9.1 points on 39.2 percent shooting (8.6 attempts) with 5.5 rebounds in 31.1 minutes. Porter, who turned 27 on Sunday, was much better during the Nuggets’ run to an NBA title in the 2023 postseason when he averaged 13.4 points and 8.1 rebounds in 32.7 minutes over 20 games.
Back issues have bothered Porter in the past, including causing him to miss his rookie campaign after he was the 14th overall selection in the 2018 draft, after back surgery held him to just three games in college. A third back surgery limited him to just nine games during the 2021-22 season.
Porter is due to make $38.3 million for the season and $40.8 million for the 2026-27 campaign before he would become an unrestricted free agent.
Johnson, in 57 games last year for the Nets, averaged a career-high with 18.8 points per game, 47.5 percent shooting, 13.1 attempts per game, and 31.6 minutes per game. He averaged 4.3 rebounds and 3.4 assists while battling several injuries during the season, his sixth in the league.
Johnson played parts of the last three seasons in Brooklyn after he was acquired at the 2023 trade deadline in the four-team deal that sent Kevin Durant to the Phoenix Suns and also brought Mikal Bridges and four first-round draft picks. He signed a multi-year extension with the Nets the following offseason.
The move takes Brooklyn about $17 million below the cap, which includes the $12.1 million free agent hold on Cam Thomas, according to ESPN’s Bobby Marks.
Ty Jerome enjoyed a breakout 2024-25 season in Cleveland, and it earned him a nice payday as a free agent. (Photo by Jason Miller/Getty Images)
Jason Miller via Getty Images
Ty Jerome has agreed to a three-year, $28 million contract with the Memphis Grizzlies, according to ESPN’s Shams Charania, taking a sought-after scoring and playmaking guard off the market early in the NBA’s 2025 free agency period.
Jerome, who turns 28 on July 8, is coming off a breakout season in Cleveland, where he averaged 12.5 points on pristine 52/44/87 shooting splits in 19.9 minutes per game across 70 appearances for a Cavaliers team that lit up scoreboards all season long en route to 64 wins and the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference.
All of those numbers represented a quantum leap for a player who bounced around from Phoenix to Oklahoma City to Golden State to Cleveland during his first five NBA seasons, rarely lingering long in the rotation before an ankle injury that required surgical repair cost him nearly all of the 2023-24 campaign.
Jerome issued one hell of a reminder last season, marking himself as one of the NBA’s top reserves and most improved players — and a free agent who earned a significant payday.
The Virginia product’s combination of high-efficiency shooting and complementary playmaking fit perfectly in head coach Kenny Atkinson’s uptempo, ball- and player-movement-heavy offensive system, leading to one of the most productive seasons for any reserve in the NBA. Only six other players who logged at least 1,000 minutes posted a true shooting percentage north of .600 while dishing assists as frequently and committing turnovers as rarely as Jerome did: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Tyrese Haliburton, Jimmy Butler, Jalen Brunson and Tyler Herro.
That’s not to say that Jerome’s necessarily ready to start waltzing onto All-Star and All-NBA teams. It’s worth noting that he’d never logged 1,000 minutes himself before last season, owing to a combination of injuries, inability to crack rotations and the defensive shortcomings that became more pronounced in Cleveland’s second-round playoff loss to the Indiana Pacers — all of which are the sorts of things that might give a would-be suitor pause before making a significant offer in free agency.
Even after that pause, though, Jerome’s still a 6-foot-5 guard who’s a threat to knock down 3-pointers both off the catch and off the dribble; an excellent in-between player with an elite floater and a strong midrange pull-up game; a high-level pick-and-roll facilitator with a career assist-to-turnover ratio just south of 3-to-1; and a quick processor with good vision and anticipation who can contribute on and off the ball.
Those attributes make Jerome the kind of player who, when healthy, can energize and optimize any backcourt. Combine them with the kind of commitment and attitude that allowed him to persevere through inconsistency and injury and come out on the other side, and you’ve got someone worth betting on.
“He’s such a great dude,” former Warriors teammate and two-time NBA MVP Stephen Curry said of Jerome. “He’s such a great teammate and locker room guy. He’s a competitor. He’s a dog. Doesn’t have any of the attributes that would jump off the page. But he’s a hooper with the ultimate confidence in himself.”
The Denver Nuggets struck a deal to send Porter to the Brooklyn Nets on Monday shortly after the NBA’s free-agency period began, ESPN’s Shams Charania reports. In exchange, the Nuggets will receive Cam Johnson. The Nets will also get an unprotected 2032 first-round draft pick.
The deal signals the end of an era in Denver as the Nuggets ship off a core player from their 2023 championship team in an effort to clear up salary-cap space. Denver makes the move as it looks to retool its roster and salary distribution to compete with the champion Oklahoma City Thunder in the West.
Porter, 27, has played his entire six-season NBA career with the Nuggets since they selected him with the No. 14 pick in the 2018 NBA Draft. Once projected as a potential No. 1 overall pick, Porter slipped in the draft due to concerns about a back injury that sidelined him for his entire first NBA season.
Once healthy, Porter emerged as a key player for the Nuggets who moved into the starting lineup in his second season and remained there. A 6-foot-10 forward with elite shooting ability (40.6% from 3 for his career), Porter was a key player as the Nuggets made a run to their first NBA championship in 2023.
Why did the Nuggets do this?
But Denver’s roster construction has proven flawed since that title run, and the Nuggets have had little flexibility to retool, thanks in part to the max contracts signed by Porter and point guard Jamal Murray and the supermax deal signed by three-time MVP Nikola Jokić.
Michael Porter Jr. is headed to Brooklyn. (AAron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post)
AAron Ontiveroz via Getty Images
When looking for a spot to retool, the Nuggets ultimately decided that Porter was expendable. Porter is approaching the fourth year of a five-year, $179 million contract. He’s due $38.3 million in 2025-26 and $40.8 million in 2026-27.
By contrast, Johnson has two years remaining on a four-year, $94.5 million deal. He’ll earn $21 million in 2025-26 and $23 million in 2026-27. In Johnson, a 6-foot-8 forward, the Nuggets add another sharp-shooting wing (39.2% from 3 for his career) with size while shedding salary.
The move puts the Nuggets under the first salary cap apron and opens up a $14.1 million mid-level exception that can be used to sign a much-needed role player.
The Denver Nuggets get significant flexibility by swapping Michael Porter Jr. for Cameron Johnson.
-$40 million saved -They get under the luxury tax -They open up the $14.1 million mid-level -$16.8 million trade exception
Denver gave up one of its few tradable assets in the 2032 unprotected first-round pick to open up that salary cap flexibility.
Can Nuggets put salary space to use, return to contention?
The need for a change in Denver was exacerbated during the Nuggets’ second-round playoff series against the Thunder. Denver repeatedly challenged the Thunder in a seven-game series that was OKC’s toughest test en route to the NBA Finals. But Denver’s lack of depth was exposed against the deep Thunder bench that made a significant difference in a series that was won in the margins.
Porter also played injured in the series as a shoulder ailment limited him throughout the postseason. And new head coach David Adelman noted Porter’s defensive lapses more than once after taking over for fired head coach Michael Malone.
Now that Porter and his salary are gone, it will be up to the newly retooled Nuggets front office to put that salary-cap space to use and build out Denver’s bench. The goal for the Nuggets should be to continue to compete for championships as long Jokić remains on their roster.
The Denver Nuggets struck a deal to send Porter to the Brooklyn Nets on Monday shortly after the NBA’s free-agency period began, ESPN’s Shams Charania reports. In exchange, the Nuggets will receive Cam Johnson. The Nets will also get an unprotected 2032 first-round draft pick.
The deal signals the end of an era in Denver as the Nuggets ship off a core player from their 2023 championship team in an effort to clear up salary-cap space. Denver makes the move as it looks to retool its roster and salary distribution to compete with the champion Oklahoma City Thunder in the West.
Porter, 27, has played his entire six-season NBA career with the Nuggets since they selected him with the No. 14 pick in the 2018 NBA Draft. Once projected as a potential No. 1 overall pick, Porter slipped in the draft due to concerns about a back injury that sidelined him for his entire first NBA season.
Once healthy, Porter emerged as a key player for the Nuggets who moved into the starting lineup in his second season and remained there. A 6-foot-10 forward with elite shooting ability (40.6% from 3 for his career), Porter was a key player as the Nuggets made a run to their first NBA championship in 2023.
Why did the Nuggets do this?
But Denver’s roster construction has proven flawed since that title run, and the Nuggets have had little flexibility to retool, thanks in part to the max contracts signed by Porter and point guard Jamal Murray and the supermax deal signed by three-time MVP Nikola Jokić.
Michael Porter Jr. is headed to Brooklyn. (AAron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post)
AAron Ontiveroz via Getty Images
When looking for a spot to retool, the Nuggets ultimately decided that Porter was expendable. Porter is approaching the fourth year of a five-year, $179 million contract. He’s due $38.3 million in 2025-26 and $40.8 million in 2026-27.
By contrast, Johnson has two years remaining on a four-year, $94.5 million deal. He’ll earn $21 million in 2025-26 and $23 million in 2026-27. In Johnson, a 6-foot-8 forward, the Nuggets add another sharp-shooting wing (39.2% from 3 for his career) with size while shedding salary.
The move puts the Nuggets under the first salary cap apron and opens up a $14.1 million mid-level exception that can be used to sign a much-needed role player.
The Denver Nuggets get significant flexibility by swapping Michael Porter Jr. for Cameron Johnson.
-$40 million saved -They get under the luxury tax -They open up the $14.1 million mid-level -$16.8 million trade exception
Denver gave up one of its few tradable assets in the 2032 unprotected first-round pick to open up that salary cap flexibility.
Can Nuggets put salary space to use, return to contention?
The need for a change in Denver was exacerbated during the Nuggets’ second-round playoff series against the Thunder. Denver repeatedly challenged the Thunder in a seven-game series that was OKC’s toughest test en route to the NBA Finals. But Denver’s lack of depth was exposed against the deep Thunder bench that made a significant difference in a series that was won in the margins.
Porter also played injured in the series as a shoulder ailment limited him throughout the postseason. And new head coach David Adelman noted Porter’s defensive lapses more than once after taking over for fired head coach Michael Malone.
Now that Porter and his salary are gone, it will be up to the newly retooled Nuggets front office to put that salary-cap space to use and build out Denver’s bench. The goal for the Nuggets should be to continue to compete for championships as long Jokić remains on their roster.
The Dallas Mavericks have found their temporary replacement for Kyrie Irving.
The Mavericks struck a two-year, $13 million deal with point guard D’Angelo Russell on Monday afternoon, according to ESPN’s Shams Charania. Russell will have a player option in the second year of the deal, too. The No. 2 pick from the 2015 NBA Draft will now get to join a Dallas team rebuilt around Anthony Davis and rookie Cooper Flagg, and he’ll presumably get significant minutes right away this fall.
Russell has bounced around a lot in recent years. The Mavericks will actually be his fourth team in the past four seasons. He was traded to the Los Angeles Lakers by the Minnesota Timberwolves during the 2022-23 campaign, and then the Lakers sent him to Brooklyn ahead of the deadline last season. He finished out the end of a two-year, $36 million deal there, and then entered free agency this summer.
In total, Russell averaged a career-low 12.6 points and 5.1 assists per game last season across both his stints with the Lakers and the Nets. He also shot a career-worst 39% from the field. Though Russell has struggled over the last several seasons, at least some of that can be attributed to his seemingly constant movement.
Perhaps most importantly for Dallas, though, is that they’ve now landed an experienced point guard to hold things down before Irving comes back. Irving is currently recovering from an ACL injury he sustained earlier this spring, and he’s expected to be sidelined until January or so. Irving is the plan for Dallas long-term, too. He agreed to a new three-year, $119 million extension with the franchise last week.
But until Irving can take the floor again, whenever that ends up being, they need a replacement for him. Russell is a great, and inexpensive, option to fill in there. And, if Russell can prove he can still succeed in the league, he can parlay this stint into a more lucrative deal somewhere else down the road.
The Mavericks went just 39-43 last season and largely fell apart after trading away star Luka Dončić to the Los Angeles Lakers for Davis. But now with Flagg arriving in Dallas after the draft, and a new point guard to bridge the gap for the first few months, the Mavericks appear to be in a position to compete again in the West. While it may not be a long-term spot for Russell, it’s definitely a great opportunity for him too.
