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2018 NBA Free Agency: Kevin Durant, Paul George Make Waves While the World Waits for LeBron

LeBron James has said family considerations will be a major factor in his next move. Ezra Shaw/Getty Images

Make sense of the start of N.B.A. free agency by thinking about it this way: The last few weeks have been the longest Christmas Eve ever, with trade and signing rumors popping up like stolen peeks in the presents closet. Now Christmas is here, but it doesn’t really begin until Santa Claus arrives — and this summer, like most summers, the bearded man everyone is waiting for is named LeBron James.

All eyes are on James and Kawhi Leonard, who are both reportedly interested in the Los Angeles Lakers, while news about two other big-name stars has already shaken up the N.B.A.

The latest reports have Paul George re-signing with the Oklahoma City Thunder on a — very surprising — four-year $137 million deal. Then there’s Kevin Durant, who plans to sign a two-year maximum deal with the Golden State Warriors. He’ll have a player option for the second year, according to New York Times columnist Marc Stein.

Free agency officially opened Sunday at 12:01 a.m. Eastern. Teams can begin negotiating with players and reach verbal agreements, but nothing can be signed until July 6.

Here’s what happened in the first few hours of free agency:

One More Thing

Is Boogie a Big-Enough Name for Lakers Fans?

The New Orleans Pelicans would surely like to have DeMarcus Cousins back next season — Anthony Davis has made that clear — but now the Lakers are trying to pull the former Sacramento King back to the California:

Marc Stein: The Lakers are in the midst of the most unsuccessful run in franchise history — five consecutive non-playoff seasons and counting. But all is not lost in Lakerland. L.A. is the overwhelming favorite in Las Vegas to win the LeBron James Sweepstakes and just might sign DeMarcus Cousins to a lucrative one-year deal to gamble on the All-Star big man who is still in the midst of his rehabilitation from a season-ending Achilles tear.

LeBron and Boogie?

Could Lakers fans live with that as their summer after all the talk of Paul George and Kawhi Leonard?

Benjamin Hoffman: Wilt Chamberlain. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Oscar Robertson. Elgin Baylor. Charles Barkley. Those are the five players other than DeMarcus Cousins to finish a season with averages in excess of 25 points, 12 rebounds and 5 assists a game. When people talk about Boogie they bring up the drama, on and off the court. They bring up the fouls, the messy breakup with Sacramento and the word “frustrating” gets thrown around a lot. But if you want to talk about pure talent, there are few men in the history of the game that can match his size and skill.

The size, though, is the really intriguing thing for Cousins as he is reportedly meeting with the New Orleans Pelicans and Los Angeles Lakers to decide on where he will play next season. Coming off a rupture of his Achilles tendon, there is no real way of knowing how a player as immense as Cousins will react. Someone as lithe and athletic as Kobe Bryant struggled to come back from the injury — though Bryant was far older than the 27-year-old Cousins — and with a listed weight of 270 pounds, that is a lot of work for a tendon that will never again be 100 percent.

The only players of a similar size who have sustained a similar injury and come back are Mehmet Okur and Maurice Taylor and both of them essentially had their careers ruined. Admittedly neither of those players was even close to as athletic as Cousins, but while it is easy to see why teams would be all-in on the talented big man, there is plenty of historical evidence that his road back to superstardom is going to be a rough one.

Robbing the Piggy Bank to Pay Paul

Marc Stein: One disclaimer on Oklahoma City’s evening of triumph: The Thunder’s luxury-tax bill will be ENORMOUS when the signings of Paul George and Jerami Grant are made official. As covered in the most recent edition of The Times’ weekly N.B.A. newsletter, Thunder offcials are going to have to give real thought to releasing Anthony with the waive-and-stretch provision. It’s too late for deep math, but the savings could exceed the $90 million threshold for next season.

NINETY million, people.

There are long-term implications to going the waive-and-stretch route with Anthony, since it would stick the Thunder with a salary-cap hit of $9.3 million over the next three seasons, but the immediate savings are so steep that the organization might not have a choice.

No Word from LeBron

The rest of the N.B.A. hasn’t waited for LeBron’s announcement to make their own moves, as many expected. But the teams who want to sign him — they’re the ones waiting:

Sixers Strike Out With Vets

Marc Stein: Quietly a rough night for the 76ers. Ersan Ilyasova is leaving Philadelphia to return to Milwaukee. Marco Belinelli is leaving Philadelphia to launch his own reunion tour with San Antonio. So the Sixers, just like that, lost two of the key veteran additions that a young squad so badly needed.

Reports via ESPN.

Timberwolves Want to Lock Down Jimmy Butler

Marc Stein: As with other top free agents in 2019, more money is available to Butler if he plays out his contract and proceeds to the open market next summer, but Minnesota’s bid to sign him is no surprise. Butler and a Karl-Anthony Towns extension are the Wolves’ off-season priorities.

Benjamin Hoffman: There is no guarantee that Jimmy Butler will take the contract extension the Minnesota Timberwolves are reported to have offered, but it is not hard, at all, to see why they are trying. Two years ago, even with Tom Thibodeau at the helm, the T’Wolves seemed lost and needed someone on the court to implement their coach’s plans. Butler, who Thibodeau had personally molded into a star in Chicago, was the perfect fit.

With Butler in town, just about everyone on the roster seemed to suddenly be better at their jobs, even if a guy like Karl-Anthony Towns saw his scoring average go down a little.

Andrew Wiggins will continue to confound the game’s number-crunchers, and the desire to make the team a retirement home for all of Thibodeau’s old players from Chicago — bringing back Derrick Rose is a bad move, but their rumored interest in Joakim Noah is far worse — has been over-indulged. But if they can keep Butler around, let Towns develop even more, and hopefully at some point learn to trust Tyus Jones, the Timberwolves are easily a 50-plus win team, and would be the kind of team that could step into a Western Conference finals spot, or even the N.B.A. finals, if the top contenders had some poor luck with injuries.

Rockets Lose a Wing

Trevor Ariza struggled from the field in the playoffs, shooting only 28.6 percent on 3-pointers, but he has made some key plays for Houston. And now it looks like he’s moving on:

Marc Stein: Really interesting night in Houston. The Rockets managed to secure an agreement to bring back Chris Paul on a four-year, $160 million contract — one season and $45 million less than Paul, 33, could have commanded. But they’ve also lost a key veteran to a team not known as much of a free-agent player in recent seasons: Phoenix. The Suns snagged Trevor Ariza with a fat one-year offer worth $15 million that has to widen the gap slightly between the Rockets and the Western Conference champion Warriors.

Benjamin Hoffman: The Suns have stockpiled quite a collection of enormously talented youngsters who hope to grow into one of the league’s better cores over the next few seasons, but with the signing of Trevor Ariza, Tyson Chander, the team’s elder statesman, will have someone to talk to.

Ariza, a 33-year-old forward, has spent the last four seasons with the Houston Rockets. He’s a 3-and-D specialist who has lost a step or two but was still a productive player for a terrific team last year, and probably has enough in the tank to help teach the young Suns how to win. Appearing in just 67 games last season is a bit of a red flag, as are his rebounding and assist averages having declined on a per-minute basis, but he agreed to just a one-year contract, so at the very least the Suns will be able to get rid of him next year if the decline steepens.

If he’s healthy and motivated, the deal will almost certainly be positive for Phoenix, and there’s almost no way it is a negative considering the short commitment. If anything, it’s a major blow to Houston, a team that doesn’t have the financial flexibility to easily replace a player of Ariza’s skill set.

Paul George Deal is a Stunner

Earlier reports had George staying with the Thunder on a two-year deal, with a player option on the second year. Now a report from Adrian Wojnarowski at ESPN has him signing up for four years, with an option to leave after three.

And it could be pricey:

Paul George Staying in OKC

The band is back together, at least for now. It looks like Paul George is sticking with Russell Westbrook in OKC:

Carmelo Anthony has already opted in for the coming season.

Benjamin Hoffman: Everyone knew Paul George was going to Los Angeles, but it turns out everyone can be wrong. The quiet forward liked playing with Russell Westbrook — and there is plenty of statistical evidence that Westbrook did everything he could to make George’s life on the court easier — and the atmosphere may have appealed to him more than the thought of going into the pressure-cooker of Los Angeles where not only would he be playing in his hometown, but he would be on a team where anything less than a title would be a total failure.

The problem, of course, is that the Thunder were a mess last season. Carmelo Anthony didn’t deserve to be on the court with Westbrook and George — and he has been fairly emphatic about not considering himself to be a role player off the bench — and a team that seemed like it could be special ended up losing in the same round of the playoffs that it had in the year before it acquired George and Anthony.

While maybe not being on equal footing with Golden State or Houston, there is still reason for optimism for this move. Andre Roberson, the heart and soul of Oklahoma City’s defense, will be back next year, and should the Thunder turn Anthony into a bench scorer (or use the stretch provision to release him), they could dramatically increase their efficiency. Westbrook’s flaws may continue to haunt them, and the team may be consigned to being a fairly good second-tier squad, but George will continue to be a star and Westbrook will continue to make that easy for him. And that’s not nothing.

Marc Stein: So many moves are happening that I’m sure you’re struggling to keep up. But you have to take a step back in admiration of what the Thunder pulled off tonight. They didn’t just convince Paul George to spurn the Lakers — and possibly LeBron James. George committed to a four-year deal with the Thunder that means he will be with them through at least the next three seasons. For Thunder General Manager Sam Presti and the much-maligned Russell Westbrook, this night is a huge triumph. The conventional wisdom around the league held that any deal George took from the Thunder would contain an option to return to free agency after two seasons and thus position the former Indiana Pacer to sign the highest possible max deal.

Checkbooks Are Out

Marc Stein: Money is so tight in this market that we’re seeing lots of verbal agreements struck tonight even though LeBron James has yet to formally announce his free-agent decision. It’s a reflection of just how limited teams’ ability to spend is.

Must Be in Texas ...

DeAndre Jordan is back on his emoji game, suggesting he will indeed be signing with the Dallas Mavericks:

Benjamin Hoffman: DeAndre Jordan agreeing to a deal with the Mavericks — again — is a lot of things. Chief among them is it being fairly funny considering the entire history of their relationship (we’re still waiting for the sources confirming Mark Cuban was driving around Houston looking for him). But it’s also not likely to be all that important.

Jordan, who is 29, is certainly still productive, but he’s lost some of his defensive edge, even if his rebounding has stayed strong. At his peak he averaged 2.3 blocks a game over a three-season period — in which his defensive rating was a stellar 98 in each season — but last season he was down to 0.9 blocks a game and his defensive rating had shot up to 105.

A lineup of Jordan, Dirk Nowitzki, Harrison Barnes and the young guard duo of Dennis Smith Jr. and Luka Doncic should be a lot of fun to watch, and will certainly improve on the Mavericks’ 24-win showing last year, but it would be irresponsible to pretend this makes them any sort of real contender in the West.

Report: Chris Paul Signing 4-Year, $160M Houston Rockets Deal

ESPN is reporting that Paul is re-signing with the Rockets.

Here’s what Paul is saying:

Paul, 33, has spent 13 seasons in the league: six with the Hornets (then in New Orleans) and six with the Los Angeles Clippers before joining James Harden and the Rockets for 2017-18.

Benjamin Hoffman: At exactly midnight, Chris Paul posted confirmation that he was staying in Houston, with the deal believed to be a four-year max contract for $160 million.

It’s not hard to see why the Rockets would want to bring him back after the veteran guard helped lead them to the best record in the N.B.A. — and perhaps more important, they are well aware how much they fell apart once he was injured during the Western Conference finals — but this move carries some risk considering Paul’s age and injury history.

The point guard just turned 33 on May 6 and has missed a combined 45 regular season games over the last two years. It’s hard to believe that in the second half of this contract, when he’s 35 and 36, he’ll be able to justify the $40 million-plus he’ll be earning a year.

But this move is about the next two years, and the combination of Paul and James Harden will continue to make the team the greatest threat to the Golden State Warriors in the Western Conference (barring something like a super team developing around LeBron James in Los Angeles).

Stein: DeAndre Jordan Meeting With Mavs at Midnight

Marc Stein: Sources close to DeAndre Jordan say he is eager to join the Mavericks and has made that known to some of his potential new teammates, having declined his $24.1 million option with the Clippers for next season to ensure he had the ability to land in Dallas.

No Room for LeBron in L.A.?

What to Expect as the N.B.A. Free Agency Period Begins

• Warriors forward Kevin Durant plans to remain in Golden State on a two-year deal that will pay him $30 million in the coming season and allow him to become a free agent again in July 2019, New York Times columnist Marc Stein reported late Saturday night. [Read the full story here.]

• Yes, we’re all waiting to hear about LeBron, but there are other big names to keep your ears open for: Kawhi Leonard, Paul George, DeAndre Jordan, Dwight Howard, Chris Paul and DeMarcus Cousins.

[Read: The N.B.A. Has the Hottest Stove. LeBron James Is the Flame.]

• Oklahoma City Thunder guard Russell Westbrook and team officials are, according to multiple reports, hosting a party Saturday night to convince George, who is a free agent, to re-sign with the team. George, a Southern California native, has been open about his desire to play in Los Angeles.

• San Antonio Spurs forward Kawhi Leonard wants out. The Spurs have been fighting to repair their relationship with him, even sending Coach Gregg Popovich to San Diego to talk to the former Defensive Player of the Year, but lately, they seem to be realizing that it’s time to let Leonard go.

[Read: San Antonio Spurs Almost Ready to Cut Ties With Kawhi Leonard]

• Multiple reports say LeBron plans to join the Los Angeles Lakers, whether or not Leonard and George are headed that way, too. Here’s what it means to have James on your team — or have him leave:

[Read: How LeBron James Controls Fortunes]

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Read Again https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/30/sports/nba-free-agency-lebron-james-updates.html

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