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Clippers Sign Brodric Thomas to Exhibit 10 Deal
In the biggest NBA news of the week, per our friend Law Murray of the Athletic, the Clippers will sign guard Brodric Thomas to an Exhibit 10 deal.
Brodric Thomas was on the Clippers’ 2023 Summer League team, and Lucas wrote a bit about him here. He was undrafted in 2020 after being a four-year senior at Truman State, a Division II school. He was signed to the Rockets’ training camp, and impressed enough to earn a two-way deal. Thomas was waived by the Rockets in February, and was picked up by the Cavs, who also signed him to a two-way. He made it to the 2022 training camp, was then waived, and was picked up by the Celtics, who he was with throughout the 2022 season. It does not seem he was signed anywhere last year.
Across those three teams and two seasons, Brodric Thomas has appeared in 44 games, averaging just 5.0 minutes per game, and averaging 3.3 points, 1.4 rebounds, and 0.9 assists on 37.3/26.5/60 shooting splits. Most of those appearances came in garbage time, or for awful teams (Rockets went 17-55 in 2021, the Cavs went 22-50). He does have 36 games in the G-League as well, where he averaged 16.1 points, 6.3 rebounds, and 3.7 assists on 43.6/38.4/71.4 splits while taking 6.1 threes per game – excellent and well-rounded numbers.
The Clippers now have 20 players reporting to training camp out of the maximum of 21, with 15 fully guaranteed deals, Jason Preston with a partially guaranteed deal (Lawrence Frank said today they’d make a decision on his deal on Sunday), Moussa Diabate and Jordan Miller on two-ways, and Xavier Moon and Thomas on Exhibit 10s. Frank also said the team is always looking to improve, so it’s very possible a deal is done before or during camp/preseason.
It’s hard to have super strong opinions on a Exhibit 10 deal, and I don’t have any on this. Thomas is a bit old as a “prospect” at 26.5 years old, but he has clearly impressed enough to be on the fringes of the NBA, and his G-League numbers are pretty fantastic. However he is a 2, maybe a 3, and those are the positions where the Clippers are at their deepest, so I don’t really think he gets that two-way compared to Xavier Moon, but he is a lot younger and more of an unknown than Moon.
The entire league was just stood on its head by the Damian Lillard trade to the Bucks, and hopefully the Clippers make bigger moves than the Brodric Thomas signing soon.