Young and restless, Donatas Motiejunas's soap opera with the Rockets continues - Washington Post

Center Donatas Motiejunas did not report for a physical Tuesday, prolonging ongoing drama between the center and Houston. (Patric Schneider)

After an NBA offseason in which more money was spent than ever before, the most bizarre story from this year’s free agent class comes from a player who has yet to play a game this season.

And despite having agreed to a contract last week, it appears that will continue.

When Donatas Motiejunas agreed to an offer sheet with the Brooklyn Nets last week, it seemed as if his five-month odyssey through restricted free agency had finally come to an end. With the offer in hand, it was just a matter of waiting to see whether his old team, the Houston Rockets, would choose to match it.

Then, when the Rockets chose to exercise their right to do so Monday, it appeared that Motiejunas would finally be returning to the court after spending the first six weeks of the regular season waiting to agree to a contract.

But that was before the latest stunning turn in this story, which came when Motiejunas’s camp informed the Rockets that, despite the fact Motiejunas had signed the offer sheet, he wouldn’t be reporting for his physical and return to the team.

“We have our rights,” Motiejunas’s agent, B.J. Armstrong, told the Houston Chronicle in an interview Tuesday. “We’re not going to show up. We’ll see what happens. We’ll see what the Rockets do. We have our rights.”

Armstrong didn’t immediately return a call for comment.

Motiejunas isn’t the first restricted free agent to hold out for this long. In fact, almost nine years ago to the day Motiejunas signed with the Nets, then-Cleveland Cavaliers forward Anderson Varejao signed an offer sheet with the Charlotte Bobcats, which the Cleveland eventually matched, bringing Varejao back to the team.

But the decision by Motiejunas to not show up for the physical — seemingly to try and push the Rockets to allow him to once again become a free agent — has one significant flaw: The decision is no longer up to Motiejunas.

As CBA expert Larry Coon explained, the Rockets have two choices: either keep Motiejunas under the terms of the matched offer sheet, and wait for him to join them for a physical, or allow him to return to restricted free agency.

While returning to restricted free agency seems like it might be the right way to go, the only team that has expressed an interest in signing Motiejunas — and has a need for his services — is the Brooklyn Nets. But now that the Nets have offered Motiejunas a contract, and it has been matched, they cannot sign him for a full year no matter if that offer sheet winds up being pulled or not.

In other words, Motiejunas’s biggest piece of current leverage — having a signed contract in hand — is no longer on the table. And even if the Rockets do let Motiejunas out of the offer sheet (which there’s no reason to think they will), it’s unclear from where a better offer than this would might come. But why Houston would do anything other than offer him the same — or possibly even less — than it did before, given if Motiejunas doesn’t sign he will simply become a restricted free agent again next summer, and this process will begin anew in July?

The seeds of Tuesday’s latest turn of events came all the way back in February, when the Houston Rockets seemingly agreed to a deadline day trade to send Motiejunas to the Detroit Pistons as part of a three-team trade that brought them back a top-eight protected first round pick in the 2016 NBA draft.

It seemed like a perfect fit on both sides, as the Rockets would get a mid-first-round pick and the Pistons — not exactly a high-profile free agent destination — would get control over a young big man who was a perfect fit for the way Detroit Coach Stan Van Gundy likes to play. But then Detroit spent days agonizing over his physical and eventually decided to void the deal because of concerns over the health of Motiejunas’s back.

He wound up returning to the Rockets, however, and played down the stretch and in Houston’s first-round playoff loss to the Golden State Warriors without incident. With restricted free agency looming, it again seemed as if Motiejunas would have a chance to go elsewhere.

But July 1 came and went, and no market materialized, as the concerns about his back lingered. The NBA engaged in an absolute feeding frenzy during the summer, spending boatloads of money, but still Motiejunas was stuck on the outside looking in.

That’s how he and the Rockets found themselves in a standoff over the past several months, with Houston not wanting to commit to a long-term deal because of concerns about his health and Motiejunas expecting to be paid like the multitalented 6-foot-10 forward that he is. So the Oct. 2 deadline for Motiejunas to accept his qualifying offer for this season came and went, and Motiejunas declined to sign it. The Rockets later offered him a contract worth more than $7 million per year, but only the first year was guaranteed, and Motiejunas felt he was worth more.

Eventually, though, the Nets materialized as a potential suitor last week, and it appeared things were finally going to come to a head. Brooklyn had plenty of cap space to sign Motiejunas — about $18 million total — along with a need for a starting power forward and the desire to add a talented player to one of the least talented teams in the NBA.

But once the details of the contract Motiejunas signed began to surface over the weekend after he signed it Friday, the chances of him actually getting to Brooklyn seemed to decrease significantly. The four-year deal, which was worth about $37 million, only had the first two years guaranteed, and whichever team wound up signing Motiejunas could subsequently release him by March 1 in order to get out of the second year.

In other words, it would serve as a three month flier for this season, and then a reasonable $9 million guaranteed for next — a worthy gamble, and a potentially viable asset, for a team like Houston that’s known for constantly working the phones, not to mention the fact Motiejunas is a nice fit in Rockets Coach Mike D’Antoni’s system.

So, predictably, Houston opted to match before Monday’s midnight deadline, keeping Motiejunas in the fold and, presumably, finally ending his five-month journey through restricted free agency. At least, that’s what it looked like before his decision not to show up for a physical Tuesday.

Now the most bizarre free agency of any player in recent memory will drag on — and, barring any sudden changes of heart, seemingly has no end in sight.

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