Eight-year NBA veteran Shavlik Randolph has signed with the Liaoning Flying Leopards of the Chinese Basketball Association, according to Sportando’s Enea Trapani. Randolph played this past season with the Suns, Celtics and Nuggets but spent parts of the previous three seasons in China.
The 31-year-old power forward, who’ll turn 32 in November, saw little action in his three NBA stops during 2014/15. He averaged 1.1 points and 1.8 rebounds in 6.0 minutes per game across 21 appearances, none of which came during his brief Nuggets stint. Denver claimed him off waivers from the Celtics in April in large measure to defray the shortfall payment that the Nuggets had to make to their players for failing to reach the minimum team salary. Boston had acquired him as part of the trade that sent Austin Rivers to the Clippers, and the Celtics let Randolph go to sign Chris Babb, who later wound up in the David Lee trade.
Randolph never averaged as many as 20 minutes per game in college at Duke, but he’s nonetheless continued to hang on the fringe of the NBA picture since going undrafted in 2005. His numbers in China have helped his cause, as he averaged a whopping 32.0 PPG and 14.5 RPG in 36.9 MPG for Guangdong Foshan in 2012/13, his last full season there.
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