TUESDAY, 9:06am: Buycks is joining the Tianjin Steel, a source tells Sportando’s Emiliano Carchia (Twitter link).
MONDAY, 10:25am: Former Raptors point guard and recent Lakers workout participant Dwight Buycks has struck a deal with a Chinese team, reports David Pick of Eurobasket.com (Twitter link). The identity of the team is unclear. It’s the second time since Toronto waived him in July that he’s decided to take a deal to play overseas, though there appears to have been persistent interest from NBA clubs.
The Relativity Sports client has been a free agent since engineering a buyout from Valencia of Spain, the team that had signed him to a one-year deal over the summer. The Lakers and Clippers had non-guaranteed contracts on the table for Buycks when he went to Spain, Pick reported then, telling Hoops Rumors that Buycks and the Nuggets had been close to a deal. Sportando’s Enea Trapani identified the Suns as an interested party in July. Buycks was in talks with the Thunder in November, and the Grizzlies reportedly gave him a look around that time, though a source told Pick even then that there was a strong chance that the 25-year-old would end up in China. Still, the Lakers worked him out twice, both times head-to-head against Gal Mekel, though neither landed a deal with the purple-and-gold.
Last season was the first in the NBA for Buycks, who put up 3.1 points in 10.4 minutes per game across just 14 appearances, even though he was on Toronto’s roster all season. The Raptors let him go this summer just days before his non-guaranteed minimum salary would have become fully guaranteed for the season.