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Former Philadelphia 76ers guard Shake Milton has agreed to a two-year, $10 million deal with the Timberwolves, per Adrian Wojnarowski. Milton spent the first five years of his career in Philadelphia, where he averaged 9.3 points, 2.7 assists and 2.4 rebounds. Last season, he was the Sixers’ fourth rotation guard behind James Harden, Tyrese Maxey, and De’Anthony Melton, though barely saw the floor in the playoffs when they shortened the bench. He should presumably have more opportunity with Wolves.

Milton is a useful complementary ball-handler, playmaker and floor-spacer (36.5 percent from deep for his career). At 6’5 with a 7-foot wingspan, he loves to wield hesitations and changes of pace as a slasher and will burrow through or around undersized defenders. Thirty-eight percent of his shots were at the rim in 2022-23 (83rd percentile among combo guards, per Cleaning The Glass) and he converted 63 percent of them (58th percentile). However, he’s a bit stiff and upright defensively, which complicates his screen navigation and viability at the point-of-attack.

His playing time was erratic at times with the Sixers, but he seemingly always delivered when called upon. In 11 starts last year, he averaged 20.3 points (61.8 percent true shooting), 7.2 assists and 4.8 rebounds. His most prolific campaign came in 2020-21, averaging a career-high 13.0 points, along with 3.1 assists and 2.3 rebounds. The 26-year-old is a legitimate rotation player and will help invigorate Minnesota’s cast of guards for the foreseeable future as he enters his prime.

Milton joins Troy Brown Jr. as the Timberwolves biggest additions to start free agency, as they also re-signed Nickeil Alexander-Walker and, most crucially, Naz Reid days before free agency began.

Joe Ingles made his return to the court in the middle of the 2022-23 season after rehabbing for nearly a full calendar year following a torn ACL that ended his tenure with the Utah Jazz. After signing with the Bucks last offseason, Ingles returned to being a reliable catch-and-shoot threat, knocking down 40.3 percent of his threes in Milwaukee while averaging 6.9 points, 3.3 assists, and 2.8 rebounds per game in 46 appearances in the regular season.

Ingles returned to the free agent market this summer having shown he still can provide value as a shooter and secondary ball-handler, albeit one with some defensive deficiencies at this point in his career. Still, for teams seeking out veteran help, Ingles figured to have legitimate interest from a number of hopeful contenders around the league, as well as a potential return to Milwaukee. In the end, though, Ingles was able to command a substantial investment from the Orlando Magic and he agreed to a two-year deal for $22 million.

As noted by ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, Ingles will bring experience to a young Magic team, and he is also an established high-end shooter. While Orlando invested a lottery pick in Jett Howard, the Magic need ready-made floor spacing for the upcoming season, and Ingles has also acted as a secondary creator in the past.

The Magic appear to be seeking a tangible step forward for the 2023-24 season around budding standouts in Paolo Banchero and Franz Wagner. Ingles may not change the entire dynamic for Orlando, but he does check several boxes for a team trying to improve.

The Brooklyn Nets went into the 2022-23 season trying to build around a pair of superstars in Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving, which made it incredibly important that the team was able to surround them with good, cheap role players. One such player who ended up being a nice contributor alongside Durant and Irving was Yuta Watanabe, who had stints in Memphis and Toronto to start his career before getting to Brooklyn last year.

After Durant and Irving saw their respective tenures with the Nets come to an end around the trade deadline, Watanabe found playing time harder and harder to come by, to the point that he did not play in the team’s final three games of the postseason. Still, he flashed enough as a savvy role player who could hit open shots around those two that he figured to have some sort of market entering free agency. On Friday, we learned Watanabe will reunite with Durant in Phoenix, as he became the sixth player in the first 90 minutes of free agency to agree to a minimum deal to join the Suns, as they fill out their roster around their quartet of stars.

Watanabe, a former undrafted free agent who will turn 29 in October, appeared in 58 games last season for the Nets, which included one start on the final day of the regular season. He averaged 5.6 points and 2.4 rebounds in 16 minutes per game, and knocked down a career-high 44.4 percent of his attempts from behind the three-point line.

Kyrie Irving will be back in Dallas for at least two more seasons, as the star guard who the Mavs acquired in a trade at the deadline agreed to a 3-year, $126 million contract with a third-year player option as free agency opened on Friday.

For the Mavs, bringing Irving back was their top priority after trading Spencer Dinwiddie, Dorian Finney-Smith, and a first round pick for him. After doing some wheeling and dealing during the Draft, the Mavs also have the mid-level at their disposal to try and make another addition, but Irving had to be back because they simply didn’t have any other alternatives to replace him without taking a step back. Still, not everyone was a fan of the deal they handed out, because it was a lot of money that gives Irving a lot of power, which doesn’t always work out for teams.

On NBA TV’s free agency coverage, former Suns general manager Ryan McDonough — who know a thing or two about making a deal you later regret — torched the Mavs for giving Irving this deal when they were seemingly bidding against themselves.

“I think they are crazy. Kyrie Irving has been unhappy over the last six years on a winning Cleveland Cavaliers team, a winning Boston Celtics team, and a Brooklyn Nets superteam that he chose to go four years ago today as a free agent with Kevin Durant. So why would you give him this kind of money? Why would you give him a player option in the third year? $42 million a year is insane for Kyrie Irving combined with a player option. Who were they bidding against?”

McDonough goes on to note the only possible threat for Kyrie was Houston, which is still sitting there waiting on Fred VanVleet’s decision and would have $64 million to spend if he chooses to stay in Toronto. There’s definitely truth to what McDonough is saying, as Kyrie’s market was a mid-level somewhere or Houston and that’s it. However, Dallas’ issue was less the free agency negotiation and more the situation they put themselves in by trading for Irving, and giving up so much that they had no choice but to give him the deal he wanted.

While Irving didn’t get the four-year max he absolutely wanted, a three-year deal with a player option at that money is about as good as he could’ve hoped for. It’s a credit to him and his agent for making it happen, but McDonough notes what many around the league will think, which is the Mavs overpaid simply because they allowed themselves to enter this summer with no leverage after making the trade.

Taylor Swift is gearing up to drop her next re-recorded album, with Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) getting announced during her first Nashville Eras Tour show a few weeks ago. Time has truly flown, though — and fans can hear it sooner than they might think.

Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) arrives next Friday. Fans will be able to listen to it around the globe at midnight in their local time zone.

Swift previously revealed the full tracklist — containing the original Speak Now songs and six new From The Vault additions. (These are songs she created around the time of each original album that never made the cut.) There are also two collaborations on the re-recorded version: Fall Out Boy on “Electric Touch” and Paramore’s Hayley Williams on “Castles Crumbling.”

“Since Speak Now was all about my songwriting, I decided to go to the artists who I feel influenced me most powerfully as a lyricist at that time and ask them to sing on the album,” Swift said about the two collabs.

Fans discovered, shortly after the first glimpse of “Back To December (Taylor’s Version)” was used in The Summer I Turned Pretty series, they could see how long the songs were on iTunes too. Considering many of the other vault tracks, including “Timeless” and “Foolish One,” run over five minutes, Swift is sure delivering for this updated Speak Now era.

Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) is out 7/7 via Republic. Find more information here.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Miami Heat guard Gabe Vincent made himself a whole lot of money during the NBA playoffs. Vincent, one of the many undrafted free agents who have turned into important players in Miami, entered this summer as an unrestricted free agent on the heels of taking over the team’s starting point guard job during the stretch run of the regular season and for the entirety of the team’s surprising run to the NBA Finals.

The expectation was that the 27-year-old Vincent — who went to UC Santa Barbara, went undrafted in 2018, and started his career within the Sacramento Kings’ G League setup — would be able to get paid handsomely this summer, as he was able to join any team he wanted. On Friday, we learned what the future holds for Vincent, as he will leave Miami in a bit of a surprise to join the Los Angeles Lakers as they give him most of their mid-level with a 3-year, $33 million deal, per Shams Charania.

While Vincent was certainly not a bad player prior to the 2023 playoffs, he ended up becoming an indispensable piece of the puzzle as Miami made its way through the Eastern Conference postseason. After averaging 9.4 points and 2.5 assists in 25.9 minutes per game during the regular season, Vincent averaged 12.7 points and 3.5 assists in 30.5 minutes a night during the playoffs, and started all 22 games in which he appeared.

The Lakers could use a point guard with his shot creation skills as well as his abilities on the defensive end, and this seems like a very nice usage of the mid-level by L.A. The Heat will now have to replace Vincent and likely Max Strus, which will put their roster building skills to the test if they want to remain a contender. This would seemingly be the last major addition for L.A., which used its bi-annual exception earlier to bring in Taurean Prince after he was waived by Minnesota. They still have some of their own free agents to make decisions on, with Austin Reaves and Rui Hachimura as restricted free agents and Dennis Schröder, D’Angelo Russell, and Lonnie Walker IV as unrestricted free agents. Adding Vincent takes some of the pressure away to bring both Schröder and Russell back, adding another interesting twist to the point guard market.

The San Antonio Spurs have already won the offseason by landing Victor Wembanyama in the NBA Draft, but they entered free agency with a lot of money they needed to spend but were certainly not looking to clog up their cap sheet long-term.

The first order of business for the Spurs was retaining Tre Jones, as the young point guard was coming off a strong season averaging 12.9 points and 6.6 assists per game on 45.9/28.5/86.0 shooting splits. While not much of a deep shooting threat, Jones is a solid two-way point guard with good feel and vision, bringing a floor general sense despite his young age. As such, the Spurs made sure to bring him back, agreeing to a two-year, $20 million deal that gets him a nice payday while leaving San Antonio with the flexibility to make upgrades on the point guard market in the near future.

The Spurs will be very patient with their young core, but know that, at some point soon, it’ll be time to try and take a leap around Wembanyama. As such, you can probably expect whatever other deals they do to be similarly short-term to keep freedom to make bigger roster swings whenever they see fit in the future. For now, they keep a point guard in town who will very much enjoy partnering with Wembanyama and exploring all the various options they’ll have in the pick-and-roll game.

After establishing himself as a stout defensive starting center in San Antonio, Jakob Poeltl was traded back to where he started his career in Toronto at the deadline. For the whole season, Poeltl averaged 12.5 points, 9.1 rebounds, and 1.2 blocks per game, but his presence in the middle wasn’t enough to pull the Raptors out of their season-long funk.

Despite that, coming into this offseason the Raptors were considered the frontrunners to retain Poeltl, largely because they gave up a first round pick to bring him in for 26 games last year. Still, in a center market short on talent, if Poeltl was willing to open up his free agency to more teams, he figured to find a number of potential suitors searching for his caliber of rim protection. In the end, the veteran center reportedly elected to stay in Toronto, with ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reporting a four-year contract for $80 million.

As noted by Wojnarowski, Poeltl’s deal will include a fourth-year player option, further bolstering how well Poeltl and his representation did on this negotiation. Toronto’s overall direction remains in flux, but the 27-year-old Poeltl projects to provide stability as a defensive anchor for the next several years, and this deal also covers Poeltl’s prime years. The next priority for Toronto will be re-signing Fred VanVleet, who is apparently debating between staying in Toronto and a large, short-term deal in Houston.

The biggest name on the restricted free agent this market very well might be Cam Johnson. After starting his career as a member of the Phoenix Suns and going from a widely-panned draft pick to a crucial three-and-D wing, Johnson was part of the package that Phoenix put together get Kevin Durant, which sent Johnson and Mikal Bridges to the Brooklyn Nets.

Bridges’ play was the big story in Brooklyn, but Johnson was a rock solid member of the team’s starting lineup and gave a glimpse into why he was going to end up being such an appealing player on the free agent market this summer. Johnson, who went 11th overall in the 2019 NBA Draft, became an unrestricted free agent, was expected to be one of — if not the — most in demand names out there. However, the Nets made clear they were planning on retaining Johnson, including making a trade to move Joe Harris to Detroit on Friday, which was the leading outside suitor for Johnson.

Rather than letting Cam sit and trying to squeeze him in negotiations, the Nets came correct with a 4-year, $108 million contract offer, per Adrian Wojnarowski, that will keep him alongside Bridges as part of Brooklyn’s young core.

Johnson appeared in 42 games with 41 starts across his stints with the Suns and the Nets last season. While his counting stats were a little higher in Brooklyn and he was slightly more efficient in Phoenix, Johnson averaged 15.5 points, 4.4 rebounds, 1.9 assists, and 1.2 steals in 28.5 minutes per game last season while connecting on 47 percent of his shots from the field and 40.4 percent of his attempts from behind the three-point line.

Khris Middleton made the decision to hit the open market this summer, as the All-Star wing turned down the player option in his contract and became an unrestricted free agent. Despite this, the overwhelming expectation was that Middleton would return to the Milwaukee Bucks, as he’s been a crucial part of the team’s success over the years and is an excellent running mate alongside Giannis Antetokounmpo and Jrue Holiday.

On Friday, we learned what the future will look like for Middleton, as per Adrian Wojnarowski, Middleton will stay with the Bucks on a three-year deal worth $102 million, with a player option on the final year.

Middleton struggled to remain healthy last season, which unsurprisingly led to a year where his production fell off a bit. On the season, Middleton appeared in 33 games with 19 starts — both of which were the lowest he’s registered since joining the Bucks — and averaged 15.1 points, 4.9 assists, and 4.2 rebounds in 24.3 minutes per game while only connecting on 31.5 percent of his attempts from behind the three-point line. He did look more like himself by the time the playoffs rolled around, as he put up numbers that are much closer to what one would expect in the Bucks’ first round loss to the Miami Heat: 23.8 points, 6.4 rebounds, 6.2 assists, 40.6 percent from three. The bet, unsurprisingly, is that now that Middleton is healthy, he’ll be able to get back to that level during the 2023-24 season and beyond.