The Hawks are signing restricted free agent center N’Faly Dante to a two-year, $4.5MM offer sheet, league sources tell Michael Scotto of HoopsHype (Twitter link).
The Rockets — Dante’s incumbent team — will have two days to match the offer sheet. However, Houston doesn’t currently have enough room under its first-apron hard cap to match the contract Dante agreed to with Atlanta, according to Keith Smith of Spotrac (Twitter link).
As Danielle Lerner of The Houston Chronicle notes (via Twitter), the Rockets already have three players signed to two-way contracts, so evidently they were prepared for Dante’s departure.
A native of Mali who went undrafted in 2024 after a standout college career at Oregon, Dante signed a two-way deal with Houston last summer. The 23-year-old only made four NBA appearances for the second-seeded Rockets as a rookie, with three occurring during the final three contests of the regular season. The 6’11” big man averaged 6.0 points, 5.3 rebounds and 1.3 blocks in 12.8 minutes per game.
While his NBA contributions were limited, Dante had an excellent season for Houston’s G League affiliate, the Rio Grande Valley Vipers, averaging 15.1 PPG, 9.8 RPG, 1.0 SPG and 2.2 BPG while shooting 74.3% from the field in 42 games (26.8 MPG).
As our Luke Adams recently outlined, two-way restricted free agents rarely sign offer sheets with other teams. But clearly the Hawks like Dante, who will provide frontcourt depth behind Onyeka Okongwu and Kristaps Porzingis — assuming the Rockets don’t make additional moves to position themselves to match.
Dante’s deal will likely be for the veteran’s minimum, which would be worth $4,459,584 across two years.