New Orleans Pelicans to Acquire Tyreke Evans

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Published: July 4, 2013

New Orleans Pelicans and Tyreke Evans

Sacramento Bee writers are reporting that the New Orleans Pelicans and the Sacramento Kings have agreed on a sign-and-trade deal for Tyreke Evans, as expected and noted last evening. The Pelicans will be sending last season’s starting center, Robin Lopez, and starting point guard, NBA’s Most Improved Player Award runner-up, Greivis Vasquez.

Update: The Pelicans sent out Terrel Harris and his unguaranteed contract in the trade, received cash, and Jeff Withey, as well. Here is the post about Withey.

Evans’ deal is reported to be for 4 seasons and a total of $44m, give or take. The reports are unclear at this point in terms of exact value, signing bonus, incentives, options, more boring stuff . . . but none of that matters at the moment. These will affect the Pelicans’ long-term salary and Tyreke’s portability. We’ll get all that sorted in the coming days.

Tyreke Evans is a powerful guard, standing at 6’6″, 220 lb., who will reportedly sign on to be a so-called “super-sixth man” in the the mold of Manu Ginobili on the San Antonio Spurs. He has played both traditional guard positions and some small forward. He has improved his shooting and some other areas of his game last season, but these were hidden partially by the chaos in Sacramento. His assisting has consistently declined in volume in recent years. Whether this is a cause or an affect remains to be seen.

Last season, Ryan Anderson played significant minutes off of the bench. What the Evans trade says for Anderson’s role . . . and Davis’ role . . . in the presence of the former fourth pick of the draft and Rookie of the Year and the absence of Robin Lopez remains to be seen.

New Orleans Pelicans and Free Agency

Like all trades and signings going on, none of these are officially official until the paperwork is signed and filed, and that can not be done until July 10. These seemingly boring detail is actually quite important.

This trade though agreed to after the Jrue Holiday trade, can actually be processed after additional moves to use the existing cap space, which is about $4.5m. The exact amount is unclear due to incentives in Holiday’s deal.

The punchline is: Depending, the Pelicans have ~$5.5m – ~$7m left to spend on a semi-major player.

Skip to the next section if you don’t care about how the sausage is made.

Here’s how it can work:

  • The Noel for Holiday and Jackson trade reduces cap space to around $4.5m.
    • This deal must be processed first. Since the salaries of Holiday and Noel do not match, the team must remain under the cap at this point.
  • This $4.5m and the unguaranteed contracts of Darius Miller, Brian Roberts, and Lance Thomas, totaling $3,346,330, can be used to acquire an ~$7m player or combination of players via a salary dump trade for some cash strapped team or ~$5.5m to spend in free agency.
    • Roberts’ deal will reportedly be $50,000 guaranteed if not waived by July 8, but this does not affect the above materially.
    • This Cap Room vanishes once the Evans trade is executed unless something changes. So, that cap room is “use it or lose it” money.
  • The team can also court players to use the $2,652,000 Room Mid-Level Exception on. This can be split or used on one player, either in trade or free agency, but can not be combined with Cap Room.
  • Further moves would have to then be either trades or the signing of minimum contract players, like Roger Mason, Jr. last season. This would include Pierre Jackson likely if he is not traded away.

The above shows that the Dell can grab another significant asset at the expense of unguaranteed minimum contract players either in trade or by waiving them.

Before you ask: if any of those players are waived or traded away, that player can not return to the Pelicans’ roster this season.

Other notes: This assumes Aminu and Henry’s Bird Rights are waived, and that seems highly likely. They can be signed, included in sign-and-trade, but must be signed using Cap Room, the Room MLE, or take a minimum contract. Same applies to Amundson and Mason, but they don’t have Bird Rights, so whatever. Also, the team can not get the Full Mid-Level Exception this season or the Biannual Exception. The also can not use the Amnesty provision on any player or trade a player to be Amnestied (doesn’t work that way). The difference between the amount of salary that can be acquired in trade compared to free agency is to do the incomplete roster charge.

The New Orleans Pelicans Model

The fact that there is Cap Room to spend does not mean that it should be spent. Dell should stick to the Pelicans Model, not overpaying for players whose value is not depressed. Spending this money can have huge long-term effects three years down the line if the team is bumping up against the Luxury Tax Line. If spending now on an “ok” player may hamstring the team when the set of available moves is shrinking, then Dell needs to consider the near-term expenditure. If he can get a guy that fits the plan in some way . . . as a player or asset . . . then grab’n’go!

The range of salary they Pelicans can offer exceeds the Non-Taxpayer Mid-Level Exception of $5,150,000 by a good amount. This means that the Pelicans can still outbid teams over the Cap who only have the MLE to use to acquire players. Also, since they can take a highly unbalanced trade, they can also offer teams looking dump salary even greater Cap relief than teams over the Cap. Every little edge counts in the Pelicans Model.

If you thought you could unbuckle once Evans was a lock . . . sorry. The clock is ticking. We don’t know if anything will happen. We don’t know how long past the start of business on July 10 that the team make the Evans trade official. We don’t know who the targets are, but we know the areas of need.

Who knows . . . maybe Dell will provide Pelicans fan some extra fireworks as early as tomorrow night.

Laissez les bons temps rouler!

Bonus: Tyreke’s brother thinks he’ll wear “1” on his jersey.

Lagniappe: Tyreke Evans on twitter

Must Have: Dariusz Ejkiewicz, the site’s banner designer and big time Pelicans fan has provided a Tyreke Evans Wallpaper. This is the small preview image. Click the picture or go here to get the real deal.

source: Dariusz Ejkiewicz from LowGravity.pl

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