4:02pm: The Celtics have officially waived Yabusele, the team announced this afternoon (via Twitter).
11:08am: The Celtics will release former first-round pick Guerschon Yabusele, reports Chris Haynes of Yahoo Sports (via Twitter).
Yabusele has a $3,117,240 cap hit for the 2019/20 season, per Basketball Insiders, so a team with enough cap room or a trade exception big enough to absorb that number could claim him. Otherwise, he’ll become an unrestricted free agent and the Celtics will be on the hook for that dead money. Boston wouldn’t owe him his $4,781,846 salary for 2020/21, since that’s a team option that has not yet been exercised.
Yabusele, the 16th overall pick in the 2016 draft, remained overseas for a year before joining the Celtics in 2017. The 6’8″ power forward didn’t make much of an impact for the club in his two seasons in Boston, averaging 2.3 PPG and 1.4 RPG in just 6.6 minutes per contest (74 games).
As Keith Smith of RealGM notes (via Twitter), waiving Yabusele will create some extra roster flexibility for the Celtics, who had been projected to have 15 players on guaranteed contracts. The club now has an open regular-season roster spot available for a 15th man.
Commentators were just saying he needed to show something in summer league. He doesn’t look like an NBA player in games I’ve watched.
Tacko Time!
Agreed. Fall has been dominant in Vegas.
Tacko is already a fan favorite @ NBA Summer League. Fans were cheering when he was about to enter the game.
They thought they were getting the next Draymond, but instead got the next Caboclo
Have you seen Caboclo play lately?
Haha yeah I would have been happy if that’s how Yabu was playing
Did you see Caboclo’s first 3+ years in the league?
Well caboclo was extremely raw and was extremely new to the game of basketball. Plus he changed positions from the 3 to a 4/small ball 5 and it has paid dividends. Caboclo should have stayed overseas but he wanted to learn the NBA game instead.
Nice draft pick Danny Boy. Dude hoards draft picks and then ends up with Bums like this. Add him to the list with James Young, RJ Hunter, Fab Melo. Could’ve been packaging all them picks to do something. Straight trash.
Sullinger too. He didn’t have a single good draft pick between Bradley and Smart if I recall.
Bradley was in 2010 and Smart was in 2014 (C’s earliest pick in years) so not like he was picking early in the draft
The real bad thing is that when your bookend “good” picks are Bradley and Smart, well that kind of says it all.
Bradley, Moore, sullinger, smart , rozier, brown, tatum were/are all average to above average nba players. 7 out of 27
Don’t forget Olynyk. Not bad for #13
This guy (GY) and Young are his only bad picks in the top 2o in recent memory, and both were late teens in weak drafts. He got Olynyk and Rozier in about the same place in two other drafts.
He does appear to like trading for picks more than making them, and I do think he gets conservative late in drafts. But the draft can’t be viewed in isolation. His teams haven’t had a lot of PT to offer up young players, and he went into the FA market twice for a max guy (Horford and Hayward). Zizic and GY were both staying overseas for a year, and that might have made them the choices vs other guys that might have been a cap space problem.
In earlier days, when his roster could accommodate high ceiling mid-teen and later picks, he drafted Al Jefferson, Rondo, Perkins, Joe Johnson – all in the teens or later. Langford is mega-talent, a boom or bust guy at #14. So, he will do it.
Overall, I don’t see a problem in his draft acumen.
What happened to Sullinger? I mean he actually put up decent numbers in limited minutes and then just basically disappeared off the face of the earth!? lol I mean no he wasn’t great, and it doesnt disprove your point (I agree Danny has had some trouble with the mid-1st Rd picks – like anything between 12-20 are certainly not his Forte) but I also kind of just wonder what exactly went wrong for Sullinger that he just never really got another shot at it.
Chill a bit.
No GM has a 100% draft success rate; not even close.
#16 is not going to land a stud.
He took a chance on a raw player.
It didn’t work.
Oh well.
He’s drafted two guys this decade who look like they can actually be better than average. To only get two players with 30 draft picks? That’s awful.
Yup and if you can’t hit at a better success rate than that then don’t sit on all your picks and just trade them like the Lakers, Toronto, and Clippers did!
Tatum, brown, smart, Edwards, time lord, grant Williams… these are to name a few he has hit on many more than u give credit for. Leon Lowe until injured, tony Allen, big al, perk, even the dude that banged LeBrons mom (i forgot his name )….. you have little knowledge about his draft picks so why talk trash… all these names were serviceable players for quite some time in the nba…..
Oh please you can’t count Edwards or Williams yet. And he also said in THIS decade, which rules out everyone except Tatum, Brown, and Smart. If you want to call Rozier a win I could see that, but if the criteria is above average, it’s only Tatum and Brown, and likely Smart.
Delonte West!
Tell that to the GM’s of OKC, SA, GS, etc who do far better than Boston drafting in both the low 1st and 2nd rounds even though Ainge and his son seem to be at every college and Euro leave game scouting and racking up flyer miles.
Yabusele and Young are the bad picks because they’re top 20. Missing on RJ Hunter at #28?
Tough to be too critical of any picks taken that last in round one.
Weren’t Sullinger and Fab Melo before 20? And I’d argue Olynyk was a miss that high even though he was decent.
Sullinger was 21 Melo was 22
Getting a player who’s still a rotation guy this many years later is a win at #13. Olynyk was a good pick (just looks awful to be a couple picks before Giannis, but nobody saw him coming)
RJ was on never going to make it when he got selected by the celtics. The team was too deep and that ruined his confidence. Plus you’re on a team that expects to contend, teams will rush your development process.
Yabusele looked horrible in Summer League
Picked 10 spots ahead of Siakam. Lol
Easy to be critical of a teams drafting when the picks are being made in the late teens or 20’s and after and missing on players. Unless you are selecting in the top five you are often left with less than desirable talent. Now if Boston was selecting top five and routinely missed on picks, then you’d have a point about Ainge. But as is he’s no different than any other GM. They all get lucky once in a while and miss a whole lot. Unless you’re the Knicks of course. Sorry Knick fans for the jab.
TACKO
He is still young and skilled, but time was coming up for him on that rookie contract. He needs to lose 10-15 pounds, and I think he has a chance to catch on somewhere else
Hope this paves a way for Tacko to stick around. Guy will be a fan favorite quick
The Celtics don’t need fan favorites or quirky players like Tacko or Yabu. They need talented winners because they’ve only won 1 title in 30 years and ownership group promised Red Auerbach when they took over that the Lakers would never catch Boston in titles.