NBA Free Agency: Luc Mbah a Moute Returns to Clippers on One-Year Deal

According to Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN, the Clippers and Luc Mbah a Moute have agreed on a one-year deal to bring the defensive stalwart back to Los Angeles.

Luc’s contract will be a one-year, $4.3 million deal. The Clippers have no cap space and this is more than the bi-annual exception is worth, so it’s coming out of L.A.’s mid-level exception. The MLE is worth a total of 8.6 million and was also used to sign Mike Scott, so I expect that Luc and Mike are splitting the MLE evenly.

Mbah a Moute was a Clipper for two seasons, from 2015-2017, before joining the Houston Rockets in free agency last summer.

Luc seems to pretty squarely round off the Clippers’ forward rotation, as he’ll likely play off of the bench behind Tobias Harris and Danilo Gallinari, as well as alongside Mike Scott. However, signing another adds more complexities to the Clippers’ roster spot shortage. The team now has 14 guaranteed contracts, three non-guaranteed contracts, and two restricted free agents with qualifying offers. Assuming that the team keeps at least Beverley and Harrell from those groups, they would need to either make a trade to consolidate talent, or cut one guaranteed salary from their roster. At this point, Sam Dekker appears to be the likely candidate for such a move.