{"id":2298,"date":"2013-07-11T14:51:00","date_gmt":"2013-07-11T14:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/staging.stub.com\/hq\/news\/watson-signs-on-with-portland\/"},"modified":"2013-07-11T14:51:00","modified_gmt":"2013-07-11T14:51:00","slug":"watson-signs-on-with-portland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/watson-signs-on-with-portland\/","title":{"rendered":"Watson signs on with Portland"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Portland, OR (Sports Network) &#8211; The Portland Trail Blazers bolstered their bench on Thursday by signing free agent veteran guard Earl Watson to a contract.<\/p>\n<p>Per team policy, terms of the deal were not disclosed.<\/p>\n<p>Watson, a 12-year veteran who spent his last three seasons with the Utah Jazz, holds career averages of 6.5 points, 4.5 assists, 2.3 rebounds and 1.02 steals per game.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Earl is a consummate professional and one of the most competitive players I have ever been around,&#8221; said Trail Blazers general manager Neil Olshey. &#8220;His leadership, command presence and ability to affect games with his defense are attributes we value highly, and specifically targeted in our search for players at his position.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The 34-year-old will provide backcourt depth and compete for playing time with reigning Rookie of the Year Damian Lillard and first round draft pick CJ McCollum.<\/p>\n<p>Watson was drafted by Seattle in 2001 and has also played for Memphis, Denver, Oklahoma City and Indiana over the course of his career.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Portland, OR (Sports Network) &#8211; The Portland Trail Blazers bolstered their bench on Thursday by signing free agent veteran guard Earl Watson to a contract. Per team policy, terms of the deal were not disclosed. Watson, a 12-year veteran who spent his last three seasons with the Utah Jazz, holds career averages of 6.5 points, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[237,236,238],"class_list":["post-2298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nba","tag-portland","tag-portland-trail-blazers","tag-trail-blazers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2298\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}