According to Adrian Wojnarowski of The Vertical, the Nets have signed restricted free agent forward Donatas Motiejunas to a 4-year, $37 million offer sheet.
Since the Nets delivered the signed offer sheet to the Houston Rockets — for whom Motiejunas last played — tonight, Houston has three days to match, resulting in a Monday night deadline.
Donatas Motiejunas’ four-year, $37M offer sheet with Nets includes two non-guaranteed years on back end, league sources tell @TheVertical
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@WojVerticalNBA) 3 December 2016
Woj reports that — like the offer sheets the Nets had signed by Allen Crabbe and Tyler Johnson — Motiejunas’ offer sheet is slightly frontloaded. But, the final two years of it are non-guaranteed.
The 26-year-old Motiejunas, who is listed at 7-foot, was drafted 20th overall in 2011 by the Minnesota Timberwolves out of his native Lithuania. The next day, he was traded to Houston with former lottery pick Jonny Flynn for Brad Miller and the draft rights to Nikola Mirotic, now a member of the Bulls.
Motiejunas has played 214 NBA games over his first four seasons with Houston, averaging 7.8 points and 4.0 rebounds on .475/.308/.612 shooting. However, he played just 37 games last season due to a back injury that scuttled a potential trade to the Pistons at the trade deadline. Detroit physicians had the deal reneged after Motiejunas’ physical.
The Rockets are currently above the soft salary cap but are under the luxury tax threshold, so it’s unknown whether Houston will match the offer sheet. If the Rockets match, Motiejunas will be the third restricted free agent Sean Marks has signed to an offer sheet in his short Nets tenure that will return to his previous team.
If the Nets do get Motiejunas, though, they’ll likely have to make a permanent roster move. With his size, he would give Kenny Atkinson the option to split power forward evenly between he and Trevor Booker, which might push Luis Scola or Anthony Bennett off the roster.
The signing also wouldn’t hamstring the Nets’ financial state too much, both because of the non-guaranteed third and fourth seasons and due to Brooklyn’s exorbitant cap space (around $18 million).
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