re: Stiemsma has been waived, Melvin Ely signed

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The addition of a future unguaranteed season of salary is favoured by teams because it allows them to control a player's destiny over the start of the free agency period, fix their price should they decide to keep them, but most pertinently of all, add a future trade chip. An unguaranteed minimum salary contract can be dealt in trades come the summer time, often serving as helpful filler in bigger deals and valuable to the recipient team because of the ability to cut them immediately and potentially save significant money.

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As seen in the Hopson post, signing a veteran at the very end of the season to a deal with a future season can make for a significant cap hit the following season for minimal cost in the previous. New Orleans, then, have demonstrated exactly what it was Cleveland could and should have done.

As for why it was Ely in particular - well, why not Ely? He was in the D-League and thus available, he has many years of experience and is thus suitably expensive, and he has been out of the NBA for long enough that any opportunity to get back into it is to be welcomed. Ely will almost certainly not feature in the Pelicans plans as anything other than a contract to use in trade permutations, as a team in their position has no need for a nearly 36-year-old center whose only NBA caliber skills are four foot hook shots with both hands. However, he served that purpose well, earns a few thousand for sacrificing his freed for two months, and gets to enjoy being able to say he is back in the NBA, however briefly.

A win for all parties, then. Except for Greg Stiemsma.

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