7:29pm: The Rockets have officially claimed Jeffries, according to a team press release.
4:28pm: The Rockets will claim former Kings forward DaQuan Jeffries off waivers, Shams Charania of The Athletic tweets.
Jeffries, a 23-year-old shooting guard, is under contract through next season. He was placed on waivers Saturday by Sacramento.
The Rockets had an open roster spot after waiving Ben McLemore.
Jeffries signed a two-year, $3MM contract in November which included a $1.7MM team option on the second season. Houston can take a look at Jeffries the rest of this season and see if it wants to exercise that option.
Jeffries missed time this season due to a Grade 3 ankle injury and fell out of Sacramento’s rotation. He averaged 3.1 PPG and 1.6 RPG across 17 games for the Kings this season after appearing in 13 games as a rookie on a two-way contract last season.
He had a season-high 18 points against Milwaukee on February.
They already had an open roster spot after releasing Ben McLemore on Saturday.
Why not take a good look at a young player.
He is 23. Think that’s exactly what they are doing. I don’t expect more than a handful of Rockets next year will be over 27 other than Wall and Olynyk.
There will be a handful like Gordon (32), Augustin (33), and House (28 in June). They will probably re-sign Nwaba (28) and could very well pick up a quite reasonable $5.9M team option for Avery Bradley (30).
Yes a better risk than McLemore, 27, who needs others (Harden) to open up the floor.
His chances of sticking around next season aren’t any better than McLemore’s, which were basically zero. Jeffries was undrafted and will need to be extremely impressive over the next 20 games for the Rockets to even consider picking up his option this summer, even though it is minimal. He won’t be in the rotation so any minutes he gets will be in garbage time. DJ Wilson’s chances of making what will be a much improved roster next season are much better than this guy.
He went to my school