Former Mountain Brook High School star Trendon Watford has re-signed with the Brooklyn Nets for the 2024-25 season, the NBA team announced on Tuesday.
In the 2023-24 season, Watford played in 63 games for Brooklyn after spending his first two NBA seasons with the Portland Trail Blazers. The 6-foot-9 forward averaged 6.9 points, 3.1 rebounds and 1.3 assists in 13.6 minutes per game last season.
Watford’s role expanded late in the season. In the Nets’ final 11 games, when Watford made his only two starts of the season, he averaged 12.9 points, 5.7 rebounds and 2.2 assists in 25.4 minutes per game.
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Watford joined the Nets on a one-year contract on Aug. 3, 2023, after being released by Portland on June 30, one day before his $1,836,096 salary for the 2023-24 season would have become guaranteed.
Watford became a restricted free agent this offseason, but he had a qualifying offer from Brooklyn that gave the Nets the right to match any offer from another team. Watford signed Brooklyn’s offer on Tuesday, locking in a $2.727 million guaranteed salary for the 2024-25 season and putting him on course to become an unrestricted free agent next offseason.
At Mountain Brook, Watford earned first-team All-State recognition three times as the Spartans won the AHSAA Class 7A boys’ basketball championship in each of his final three seasons.
The Alabama Sports Writers Association chose Watford as the state’s Mr. Basketball in 2018 and 2019 as he set the ASHAA career rebounds record with 1,909.
Watford caught on with the Trail Blazers as an undrafted rookie in 2021 after he’d averaged 16.3 points and 7.4 rebounds for LSU in the 2020-21 season.
In two seasons with Portland, Watford averaged 7.5 points, 4.0 rebounds and 1.9 assists in 18.6 minutes across 110 games, with 22 starts.
Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter at@AMarkG1.