12:36pm: Brown confirmed the team is waiving Jackson, Cooney tweets.
11:06am: The Sixers will waive Pierre Jackson today, the last day teams have to cut down to 15 players, reports Keith Pompey of the Philadelphia Inquirer (Twitter link). Bob Cooney of the Philadelphia Daily News spotted Jackson leaving the team’s practice facility this morning while the rest of the team was practicing inside (Twitter link). Philly is letting go of Jackson even though he has a fully guaranteed salary of $750K for this this season. He’s one of 20 Sixers still under contract, so the team has at least four more cuts to make today.
The subtraction of Jackson would leave only 11 Sixers with full guarantees for this season. T.J. McConnell, Scottie Wilbekin and Christian Wood have partial guarantees, while Robert Covington, Jordan McRae, JaKarr Sampson, Hollis Thompson and J.P. Tokoto are without guaranteed money. Covington and Thompson are candidates to start, but while their places on the roster appear relatively safe, the same can’t be said for the others. Philadelphia is also reportedly thinking about claiming Ish Smith off waivers from the Wizards today.
It appears that it will be the second straight year that Philadelphia has signed and waived Jackson prior to the start of the regular season, as the team gave him a $400K partial guarantee last season before cutting him even though he’d already torn his Achilles tendon. The 24-year-old dealt with groin issues this year, and he wasn’t 100% during the preseason even as he made it onto the court, as coach Brett Brown said last week, according to Brian Seltzer of Sixers.com.
Jackson, who took part in a wide-open preseason competition for Sixers point guard duties, averaged 2.0 points, 2.3 assists and 1.7 turnovers in 14.3 minutes per game during three appearances this month. The Sixers signed Jackson to a four-year deal in July, but only this season’s salary was guaranteed. His D-League rights belong to the affiliate of the Jazz, so the Sixers can’t make him an affiliate player, notes Adam Johnson of D-League Digest (Twitter link).
Who else do you think the Sixers will end up cutting? Leave a comment to let us know.
The most obvious cuts include Jackson, Wilbekin, Landry, Tokoto and McRae. If they land Nick Johnson and Perry Jones, then that’s Isaiah Canaan and Furkan Aldemir’s spots.
That’s a shame, he gets buckets in 2K.