The Jazz have agreed to sign veteran point guard Patty Mills to a one-year contract, sources tell Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN.
Wojnarowski says it’s a $3.3M deal, which is equivalent to Mills’ minimum salary for 2024-25 ($3,303,771). It will be fully guaranteed, Woj adds.
Mills, who turned 36 on August 11, will be entering his 16th NBA season this fall. The 2009 second-round pick has appeared in 892 total regular-season games for five teams and spent most of his prime years in San Antonio, where he won a title in 2014 and overlapped with current Jazz head coach Will Hardy from 2015-21, when Hardy was an assistant on Gregg Popovich‘s staff.
Mills has seen his playing time and production fall off in recent years. In 2023-24, he appeared in 32 games for the Hawks and Heat and averaged just 4.0 points, 1.1 assists and 1.1 rebounds in 13.0 minutes per game while shooting 35.1% from the field and 27.6% from the beyond the arc, far below his career averages of 42.4% and 38.6%, respectively.
However, the Australian showed during this year’s Paris Olympics that he still has something left in the tank. He averaged 16.5 PPG with a .409 3PT% over the course of the Boomers’ four games.
Mills figures to serve as a locker room leader and a mentor for the Jazz’s young players, including second-year guard Keyonte George. He projects to fill the 15th and final spot on Utah’s roster, providing depth at point guard.
The club is carrying 14 other players on standard guaranteed contracts, as well as three players on two-way deals. While it’s possible the front office will continue to wheel and deal during the rest of the offseason and preseason, the team’s roster will essentially be regular-season-ready once Mills is officially signed.
