July has become a great month for the NBA.
Considered the start of the offseason, July begins with the moratorium, when teams can’t do any official business but rumors and reports fly fast and furious. There are summer leagues in Orlando and Las Vegas, and NBA-TV fills countless programming hours by televising these games for hoops junkies.
Sin City and its triple-digit temperatures has become the unofficial summer home of the league, hosting the Players Association meetings and Team USA’s training camp. It was also where LeBron James met with Pat Riley and ultimately made his decision.
But it is now August, which is the start of the NBA’s true offseason. Free agency has slowed from a trickle to a drip, with most teams capped out, near their roster limit, or both.
For NBA fans, this is the best time of the year to catch up with friends, take out the wife for a night on the town and mention to your children how much they have grown. You have about a month until the World Cup begins August 30 in Spain.
To keep you occupied, we have come up with this quiz to test your knowledge of how much you were paying attention to the NBA this summer. We have 10 questions with a mix of multiple choice and short answer, plus a bonus question.
Gook luck.
QUESTIONS
1. Entering the offseason, there were only six players still eligible for the amnesty provision. Which team had three of them?
A. Miami B. Oklahoma City C. Memphis D. Atlanta
2. Which player has been traded twice and waived since the end of the season?
3. Which of these players who signed a deal this summer did not become his team’s highest-paid player?
A. Carmelo Anthony B. Gordon Hayward C. Channing Frye D. Chandler Parsons
4. Who was the only free agent this offseason to sign a contract for which he received maximum money, raises and years?
5. Who is the first player to join the Charlotte Hornets after playing for the New Orleans Hornets?
6. Which team has been the last to sign its lottery picks for the second straight year?
7. As of today, which of these players draws the lowest salary as the highest-paid player on his team?
A. Thaddeus Young B. Avery Bradley C. Jeff Teague D. Goran Dragic
8. Which was the only team to make the 2014 playoffs without a single player drawing an annual salary of eight figures?
9. Which team will pay more than $14 million combined to four waived players this season?
A. Cleveland B. Philadelphia C. Orlando D. LA Lakers
10. Three teams missed the 2014 playoffs despite having three players drawing an annual salary of eight figures. Who were they?
EXTRA CREDIT: The player who took the biggest pay cut from last season and the player who received the biggest pay raise from last season are on the same team. Name the team and the players.
ANSWERS
1. Oklahoma City has Kendrick Perkins, Nick Collison, Kevin Durant eligible for amnesty.
2. Anthony Randolph was traded from Denver to Chicago, Chicago to Orlando and waived by Orlando.
3. Carmelo Anthony. Amar’e Stoudemire remained New York’s highest-paid player at $23.46 million, almost $1 million more than Anthony.
4. Chris Bosh received a five-year contract with 7.5 percent raises totaling nearly $119 million from Miami.
5. Brian Roberts (Hat tip to NBA.com’s John Schuhmann).
6. Philadelphia 76ers.
7. Goran Dragic is Phoenix’s highest-paid player at $7.5 million.
8. Toronto with DeMar DeRozan as its highest-paid player at $9.5 million.
9. Orlando is paying Glen Davis, Al Harrington, Jameer Nelson and Anthony Randolph a combined $14.23 million this season.
10. New York (Carmelo Anthony, Amar’e Stoudemire, Tyson Chandler, Andrea Bargnani), Denver (JaVale McGee, Danilo Gallinari, Ty Lawson), Boston (Kris Humphries, Rajon Rondo, Gerald Wallace)
EXTRA CREDIT: The Dallas Mavericks with Chandler Parsons and Dirk Nowitzki.
SCORING
9 OR MORE CORRECT: Outstanding. Also borderline insane. Stop reading NBA money websites when you should be producing TPS reports and try to get out more.
6-8 CORRECT: You have a sane understanding of the importance of finances in the NBA. Now what do you want? A cookie?
3-5 CORRECT: You know just enough about the topic to sound like an idiot. Kinda like this guy.
2 OR LESS CORRECT: Awful. But you probably don’t care because the first NFL exhibition game is Sunday.
Chris Bernucca is the managing editor of SheridanHoops.com. His column appears every Monday during the season. You can follow him on Twitter.
#10 should include the Pelicans (Holliday, Evans, Gordon)
#8 could have also been the Hawks since the only player on the team with an 8 figure salary (Al Horford) was not on the playoff roster.
You were obviously paying attention, Edgardo. Thanks for reading.
I always pay attention to this fantastic site! Thanks for writing! True NBA heads know whats up.