The Hawks intend to decline their fourth-year team option on the rookie scale contract of John Jenkins, Shams Charania of RealGM reports (Twitter link). If Atlanta had exercised the option they would have been on the hook for Jenkins’ 2015/16 salary of $2,228,025, but now he’s set up for unrestricted free agency next summer. The Hawks can still try to re-sign Jenkins, but they won’t be able to offer him more than the amount of his option, and this also would go for any team that acquired him by trade during the 2014/15 season.
Atlanta has approximately $41,215,385 in guaranteed salary on the books for the 2015/16 season, including the $1,763,400 third-year team option for Dennis Schröder which the team had picked up earlier this evening. Jenkins isn’t a big part of the Hawks’ rotation, and the team may feel better served in keeping as much cap space free as possible heading into next summer’s free agency period, when they also will have to make a decision regarding Paul Millsap, whose team-friendly $9.5MM deal expires at season’s end.
In 74 career games since being selected with the 23rd overall pick in the 2012 NBA draft, Jenkins’ numbers are 5.6 PPG, 1.6 RPG, and 0.96 APG. His career slash line is .438/.365/.851.