{"id":8161,"date":"2017-07-02T12:01:52","date_gmt":"2017-07-02T16:01:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lwosonnba.ms.lastwordonsports.com\/?p=8161"},"modified":"2017-07-02T12:05:19","modified_gmt":"2017-07-02T16:05:19","slug":"taj-gibson-agrees-contract","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2017\/07\/02\/taj-gibson-agrees-contract\/","title":{"rendered":"Report: Taj Gibson Agrees to Contract With Minnesota Timberwolves"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Minnesota Timberwolves have agreed to sign unrestricted free agent power forward <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/g\/gibsota01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Taj Gibson<\/a><\/strong> to a contract worth $28 million over two years.\u00a0The deal cannot officially be signed until the end of the NBA\u2019s moratorium period on July 6th.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Shams Charania<\/strong> of <em>The Vertical<\/em> broke the news late Sunday morning:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Free agent Taj Gibson has agreed to a two-year, $28M deal with Minnesota, league sources tell The Vertical.<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ShamsCharania\/status\/881542012008370176?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">July 2, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2><strong>Taj Gibson Agrees to Two-Year Contract With Minnesota Timberwolves<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Gibson&#8217;s new contract will take him through the 2018-19 season.<\/p>\n<p>Gibson averaged 10.8 points and 6.2 rebounds per game last season as a member of both the Chicago Bulls and Oklahoma City Thunder. The Bulls dealt Gibson just before February&#8217;s trade deadline, along with <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/m\/mcderdo01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Doug McDermott<\/a><\/strong>, for <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/p\/payneca01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Cameron Payne<\/a><\/strong>, <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/m\/morroan01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Anthony Morrow<\/a><\/strong>, and <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/l\/lauvejo01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Joffrey Lauvergne<\/a><\/strong>. Gibson immediately made an impact for the Thunder, starting in 16 of the 23 games that he played. Though Gibson&#8217;s counting stats went down after being traded, so did his minutes, dropping from 27 to 21 per game in the Thunder&#8217;s crowded frontcourt.<\/p>\n<p>Gibson is a tough and proven veteran with playoff experience that could help any team, regardless of whether or not it&#8217;s a contender. Gibson will certainly bring that veteran presence to Minnesota and help mold the T-Wolves&#8217; younger players. He&#8217;s also heading into a familiar situation, having played several seasons under Minnesota&#8217;s current head coach, <strong>Tom Thibodeau<\/strong>, in Chicago.<\/p>\n<p>Heading into his 10th season in the league, Gibson played his first eight and a half with Chicago before being traded to the Thunder midway through last season. The Bulls selected Gibson 26th overall in the 2009 NBA Draft.<\/p>\n<p>Check out the LWOS 2017 NBA Free Agency Tracker for all of your NBA free agency coverage, and be sure to <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/LastWordHoops?lang=en\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">follow @LastWordHoops<\/a> on Twitter to stay up-to-date with the latest NBA news.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Main Photo:<\/p>\n<div class=\"getty embed image\" style=\"background-color: #fff; display: inline-block; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; color: #a7a7a7; font-size: 11px; width: 100%; max-width: 594px;\">\n<div style=\"padding: 0; margin: 0; text-align: left;\"><a style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.ca\/detail\/629057222\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><\/div>\n<div style=\"overflow: hidden; position: relative; height: 0; padding: 82.996633% 0 0 0; width: 100%;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"display: inline-block; position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; margin: 0;\" src=\"\/\/embed.gettyimages.com\/embed\/629057222?et=FPivPTXbSkliZ4jYI6TtOw&amp;tld=ca&amp;viewMoreLink=off&amp;sig=eJV4XJrdRloDpwEUB-FA8vEOI3_vW8qX4PgCDWENTC4=&amp;caption=true\" width=\"594\" height=\"493\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"margin: 0;\">\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Taj Gibson agrees to a contract with Minnesota. He averaged 10.8 points and 6.2 rebounds per game last season, playing for the Chicago Bulls and OKC Thunder.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1982,"featured_media":8255,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[21,2,62,3,22],"tags":[65,96,297,202,54,673],"class_list":["post-8161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-timberwolves","category-featured","category-nba","category-news","category-thunder","tag-basketball","tag-nba","tag-nba-free-agency","tag-nba-news","tag-oklahoma-city-thunder","tag-taj-gibson"],"modified_by":"Lior Kozai (Managing Editor)","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1982"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8161\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}