Free agent power forward D.J. Wilson will sign a 10-day contract with the Raptors via a hardship exception, per Shams Charania of The Athletic (via Twitter).
The 25-year-old was drafted with the No. 17 pick out of Michigan by the Bucks in 2017. He was traded to the Rockets during the 2020/21 season. In 142 games, the 6’10 big man holds career averages of 4.3 PPG and 3.1 RPG, across 12.3 MPG.
Wilson was most recently with the Thunder’s NBAGL affiliate, the Oklahoma City Blue, averaging 13.9 PPG and 9.7 RPG.
Josh Lewenberg of TSN notes (Twitter link) that Wilson will be Toronto’s fifth replacement player added to address the team’s wide array of absences. The team has also reached deals with Brandon Goodwin, Tremont Waters, Juwan Morgan, and Nik Stauskas.
Per our COVID-19 tracker, the Raptors have seven players in the NBA’s health and safety protocols: Precious Achiuwa, Dalano Banton, Scottie Barnes, Malachi Flynn, Pascal Siakam, Gary Trent Jr., and Fred VanVleet.
Additionally, Khem Birch and David Johnson remain absent with injuries, while Justin Champagnie is dealing with a non-COVID illness. Veteran point guard Goran Dragic is away from the team indefinitely for personal reasons.
Its a joke that NBA canceled the last scheduled Raps/Bulls game with Bulls having COVID outbreak and now will not cancel upcoming game with Raps outbreak. Also last scheduled game for Raps was canceled due to Orlando COVID outbreak.
That’s because the NBA has updated their rules regarding replacement players since then
So Raps will go into tomorrow’s game with 4 roster players + replacements against a full Bulls roster when the reverse happened last Thursday and the Raps/Bulls game was cancelled. Also raps game with Orlando was cancelled yesterday when Orlando pleaded outbreak. Thanks for the updated NBA “rules”.
Prior the updated rules, replacements were not required to be signed in time for the upcoming game. Thus, teams could use an outbreak as rationale for a postponement when shorthanded. The NBA made the updates yesterday to curtail this sort of behavior.
I didn’t create the rules; I’m just providing an explanation
With all the players recently signed I was surprised to see D.J. Wilson still available. I know he’s not necessarily a game changer, but he comes with a reasonable amount of experience. A team could do worse.
Didn’t someone claim he was going to be the prize in the trade that sent Tucker to the Bucks?