Pelicans Sign John Salmons

AUGUST 12TH: Salmons has finally signed his deal, tweets Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders. The team has yet to make an official announcement. It’s indeed for $2MM, all of which will count against the cap for the Pelicans this year, even though $500K of the payout is deferred, as Pincus adds in a second tweet.

JULY 14TH: The Pelicans will ink a deal with swingman John Salmons, whom the Hawks waived last week after acquiring him from the Raptors, tweets Marc Stein of ESPN.com. New Orleans appears to be choosing a deal with him over Omri Casspi, whom the Pelicans are reportedly likely to release after the trade that brings him and Omer Asik to New Orleans is finalized. It’ll be a one-year, $2MM deal for Salmons, reports Chris Haynes of CSNNW.com (Twitter link). Presumably, it’ll come out of the team’s $2.732MM room exception.

The Joel Bell client split this past season between the Kings and Raptors, receiving a similar amount of playing time with both teams. He averaged 5.2 points in 22.1 minutes, but his 38.7% three-point shooting was a career high outside of his 41.7% mark in 2008/09.

The 34-year-old’s name was reportedly a part of predraft trade talks between the Raptors and Grizzlies, but Memphis apparently wasn’t too motivated to advance the discussion further. It seems like he’ll nonetheless stand a decent chance of starting at small forward for New Orleans, which renounced its rights to incumbent starter Al-Farouq Aminu and has little other means to acquire a replacement.


(hoopsrumors.com)