Washington Wizards front office signed its first player of the offseason on Sunday, coming to terms on a two-year deal with guard Jodie Meeks.
Reports say that the Wizards have made their first signing of the 2017 offseason, inking guard Jodie Meeks to a two-year deal. The deal was first reported by Shams Charania of Yahoo’s The Vertical.
Free agent Jodie Meeks has agreed to a two-year, $7 million deal with the Washington Wizards, league sources tell The Vertical.
— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) July 2, 2017
The two-year, $7 million deal for Meeks fits into the Wizards biannual exception. The move won’t turn a lot of heads, or lead to large wagers being placed on the Wizards to make the conference finals, but it is a step in the right direction as the team looks to improve its bench.
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Meeks will be 30 at the start of next season and spent last year in Orlando, playing in only 36 games and starting 10. He missed six weeks with a dislocated thumb on his shooting hand, and missed the first month or so of the season after surgery to repair his broken foot that caused him to miss five months, and play in only three games the season before.
In those games, he averaged 9.1 points and shot 40.9% from three. This is exactly what Washington is hoping for. The team needs more scoring off the bench, and Meeks should provide that at a low cost.
Meeks has lost much of the positive momentum he had earlier in his career, mostly due to injury. In the 2013-14 season, he averaged 15.7 points per game for the Lakers, in 77 games. Since then, his scoring averages have dipped.
For his career, Meeks has averaged 9.8 points in 24 minutes per game, and shot 37.6% from three. His career high is 42, which he scored back in 2014.
The signing of Meeks seems to mean the end of the line for Bojan Bogdanovic in Washington. Bojan has received interest from at least three teams this offseason, and his offers may be too expensive in the Wizards’ eyes.
Hmmm. This has got to mean that Bojan Bogdanovic is not coming back. https://t.co/xnBUFyudrD
— Candace Buckner (@CandaceDBuckner) July 2, 2017
Meeks is certainly a downgrade, and Washington may be taking the approach of replacing Bojan with multiple cheaper options.
Hopefully Meeks can stay healthy and return to his productive scoring performances of the not too distant past.
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Everyone, welcome Jodie Meeks to Washington.