SEPTEMBER 21ST, 6:15pm: The Rockets formally announced the signings of Cummings, Livingston and Walker (Twitter link). Houston waived Yusuf on Friday without ever formally recognizing his signing.
SEPTEMBER 9TH, 6:59pm: Walker has officially been signed, Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders reports (Twitter link).
SEPTEMBER 5TH, 8:10am: Cummings and Livingston have signed contracts with the Rockets, according to the RealGM.com transactions log.
12:09pm: The signing of Yusuf has taken place, and it’s a non-guaranteed contract worth the rookie minimum salary, reports Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders (Twitter link). That means it wouldn’t count against the hard cap the Rockets would impose upon themselves if they signed No. 32 pick Montrezl Harrell for more than the minimum or for longer than two years, as I explained earlier.
11:24am: Feigen has corrected his earlier report, omitting Wood’s name from his revised list (Twitter links). Wood’s status with the Rockets thus appears unclear.
SEPTEMBER 3RD, 11:00am: The Rockets are close to signing Denzel Livingston, Will Cummings, Christian Wood, Remi Yusuf and Chris Walker for training camp, a source tells Jonathan Feigen of the Houston Chronicle (Twitter link). A deal with Wood, who went undrafted out of UNLV this year, has apparently been in place since June Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo Sports reported that the Rockets had agreed to sign him, but the other four names appear to be new additions for Houston.
Livingston, a 6’4″ combo guard who played his college ball at Incarnate Word, also went undrafted this year. He saw a smidgen of playing time with Houston’s summer league squad, averaging 2.0 points in 7.5 minutes per contest across three appearances. Cummings, a point guard from Temple, was another college senior passed up in the draft this June. He saw more extensive time for the Rockets in summer league, compiling 10.0 PPG in 22.8 MPG, though his 3.3 assists against 2.8 turnovers per game isn’t an encouraging ratio.
Walker, a once-heralded prospect whose stock plummeted at Florida, put up 4.2 PPG in 8.8 MPG for the summer Rockets. The forward/center declared for this year’s draft after his sophomore season with the Gators. Yusuf is a somewhat more surprising addition, since he didn’t play NBA summer league ball. The guard, a native of Nigeria, played at Texas A&M-Kingsville before going undrafted in 2006, and he spent time last season playing with SKP Banska Bystrica in Slovakia.
Curious to see if Cummings can carve out a niche in the NBA. He was a very solid college career with the Owls.
Will be interested to see if Cummings can carve a niche in the NBA. He had a very solid college career with the Owls.