Mo Williams has been claimed off waivers by the Denver Nuggets, Marc Stein of ESPN reports (Twitter link). Denver is expected to immediately waive Williams, opening up a roster spot to retain Alonzo Gee on a 10-day contract, per Stein (Twitter link).
Williams, thought to be retired, has been involved in a number of transactions over the last month. The 34-year-old was dealt from Cleveland to Atlanta as a part of the Kyle Korver trade, and then flipped to Denver for the draft rights to Cenk Akyol. Williams was then waived, claimed by Philadelphia on January 20, and claimed once more by Denver today.
If the Sixers want to claim Williams off waivers again this week, they’ll have to either terminate Chasson Randle‘s 10-day contract early or waive one of the other 14 players on their roster — the team no longer has an open roster spot at its disposal.
As Bobby Marks noted in an article for The Vertical, the newly agreed upon CBA would make this type of transaction obsolete. As of July, the player’s days of service will determine his cost against the minimum team salary; not his full cap hit. Williams’ circumstance is the type of “loophole,” Marks describes, in which teams will keep low payrolls on the roster only to make waiver claims or trades in an attempt to reach the salary floor.
I really just want to hear mo’s reaction to being on 4 teams this season and not playing for one of them
basketball needs to get it together with their transactions stuff, guy is retired
Force him to sign the paperwork and give back the 2.3M?
Its just, in every other sport a guy gets waiver claimed or traded to deepen the roster or make it better, in basketball, half the transactions are to dance around salary laws, they just need to simplify it is all
Everything is literally b/c of the salary matching. I’m assuming somewhere along the line before salary matching there were trades for a bag of balls for a superstar or something. So salaries of dead-salary players are valuable. I know SMH.
Lol. Such gamesmanship! Sixers haven’t used Randle really except for 1 game and he’ll get cut anyway when the Sixers make a trade to take on an expiring contract. It’ll be interesting to see how much they really want to get to the Cap Floor. The only penalty is to redistribute among players on the roster at the end of the season. Not really much of a penalty.
So is mo getting paid 2 mill every time this happens?
No, he’ll make the same amount (about $2.2MM) for the season no matter which roster he’s on (or even if he’s a free agent, since his contract is guaranteed). The only thing changing for him is that parts of his salary are being paid by a bunch of different teams now.
He’ll have a bunch of W-2 forms to fill out around tax time