DeAndre Jordan, after verbally agreeing to a new four-year max deal with the Dallas Mavericks last week, has made an about-face, agreeing to re-sign with the Los Angeles Clippers in a deal that could be completed as early as Thursday morning at his house in Houston.
The contract with the Clippers was also to be a four-year max deal that will be worth an estimated $84 million, sources told ESPN.com. The deal will include a player option in Year 3, after which he can return to free agency.
The Clippers tweeted a message five minutes after midnight ET trumpeting the deal.
A Clippers’ contingent that included coach/team president Doc Rivers, owner Steve Ballmer, and star teammates Chris Paul and Blake Griffin descended en masse on Houston to get Jordan back, meeting him at his house.
Several of the Clippers’ contingent remained after the conclusion of the meeting, staying until he was to sign the deal, which the center was first able to do at 12:01 a.m. ET Thursday when a league-wide moratorium was lifted.
But the meeting didn’t last long, a source said. The group talked about the issues at hand and then the atmosphere changed to resemble a locker-room scene, including cards and video games.
New Clipper Paul Pierce and veteran guard J.J. Redick were also among those to join Wednesday’s meeting, sources said, with Pierce tweeting a photo of what appears to be Jordan signing the deal.
Jordan did not respond to any of the Mavs’ attempts to contact him Wednesday, including phone calls and text messages, and sources said Mavericks owner Mark Cuban resultingly notified several people within the organization that Jordan would be staying with the Clippers.
Sources told ESPN.com the unprecedented fluidity of Jordan’s free agency had convinced the Clippers they needed to stay at Jordan’s side until he formally signed the new contract given that Jordan had already changed his mind once in this process.
Jordan had verbally committed with the Mavericks to a four-year, $80-plus million max deal.
A Clipper source said Jordan initiated his change of heart a few days ago.
“He reached out to us and said I changed my mind. There was no convincing here,” the source said.
Jordan was scheduled to leave on a 10-day Caribbean cruise Thursday.
Cuban and lead Mavericks recruiter Chandler Parsons arrived Wednesday in Houston along with Jordan’s primary agents from Relativity Sports — Dan Fegan and Jarrin Akana — who sources say were excluded from the Clippers’ early evening meeting with their client.
Sources said Jordan reached out to Griffin and Rivers on Monday to say he had changed his mind about joining Dallas, prompting L.A.’s late push.
Free agents are traditionally considered off limits once they strike verbal agreements with teams during the NBA’s annual moratorium period.
Paul cut short a Caribbean vacation with LeBron James and Dwyane Wade to make the meeting.
Paul was emotional during the meeting, a source in the room told ESPN’s Chris Broussard. Paul told Jordan he had no idea he felt negatively about him and that he thought they were “brothers.”
Paul said he’d work to get Jordan more involved in the offense and that the Clippers couldn’t move forward without him.
Cuban arrived in Houston on Wednesday as Dallas tried to fend off the Clippers’ threat, sources said. The Mavs, sources said, had been promised another face-to-face meeting with Jordan at some point Wednesday before he made a final decision.
On Monday, though, Jordan had called Griffin and said he’d been having second thoughts about his decision over the weekend. Griffin urged him to call Rivers, who then began calling Clippers players and organizing a meeting Wednesday, in the hopes of getting Jordan to change his mind before the leaguewide moratorium ends at midnight.
Griffin flew to Houston on Tuesday to have dinner with Jordan, sources said.
Paul — whose reportedly strained relationship with Jordan has been pinpointed as a factor in the center’s initial decision to take Dallas’ offer — was among those pushing hardest in recent days for Jordan to change his mind, sources said.
The NBA’s moratorium period at the start of July every year is designed to allow the league to calculate the precise new salary cap and luxury-tax figures for the coming season.
But teams and players are allowed to come to verbal agreements during the moratorium starting July 1. The first seven days of 2015 free agency produced a frenzy that has seen roughly 70 free agents come to terms on new contracts.