OCTOBER 17: The Rockets have waived Favors, the team confirmed today. Houston’s roster is now set for the regular season.
OCTOBER 14: The Rockets plan to waive veteran big man Derrick Favors, sources tell Shams Charania of The Athletic and Stadium (Twitter link).
As Charania notes, Houston still needed to make one more cut with 16 players on guaranteed standard contracts. Favors will be the odd man out.
According to Kelly Iko of The Athletic (Twitter link), the Rockets are “huge fans” of Boban Marjanovic, another veteran center who may have been competing with Favors for the last roster spot. Iko says the team holds Marjanovic “in high regard as a locker room presence” and he’s “universally loved by his teammates,” in addition to having situational use as a backup.
The Rockets will be on the hook for all of Favors’ $10,183,800 salary in 2022/23 assuming he goes unclaimed on waivers, which is almost certain to happen. If he’s officially waived today, the 31-year-old will become a free agent on Sunday.
Favors was acquired by the Rockets in an eight-player trade with the Thunder at the end of last month, and all four players Houston acquired will have been waived before the season starts (the Rockets essentially took on extra expiring money this season to land a future second-round pick and received some cash to help offset the salary differences).
The third overall pick of the 2010 draft, Favors has appeared in 790 regular season games (503 starts, 24.3 MPG) with averages of 10.6 PPG, 7.1 RPG and 1.2 BPG while shooting 53.4% from the floor and 66.3% from the foul line. His mobility and production have declined in recent seasons, averaging career-lows of 5.3 PPG and 4.7 RPG in 38 games (18 starts, 16.7 MPG) with the Thunder in ’21/22, but it would be surprising if he doesn’t land with a new team soon after becoming a free agent.
Congratulations Derrick, you are a Laker.
Rockets took on like 16 million worth of dead money for one second round pick? Lol.
The Thunder included quite a bit of money on their end, so no.
I think the most you can trade is 5 million. Still a lot for one second rounder.
Could’ve sworn the numbers worked out where it was less money for the Rockets, but I can’t find it now so maybe you’re right.
But regardless, I did think they’d keep Maledon and trade Favors for a little something, so in that sense the deal is a little less consequential.
If the thunder couldn’t trade favors over the past year, what made you think the rockets were going to be able to?
They one thing Houston could have done was aggregate his salary with Eric Gordon to take on an unwanted contract in return for an expiring one.
Time to come on back home to the A big fella… #DFave #Zone3Legend link to m.youtube.com
Couple of years ago, I would have really loved to have him with the Heat, and I’ve been a fan of him for a long time, but they have Dedmon now.
Brooklyn, Boston, Denver, Clippers should at least be interested
And Dedmon at least can bury a 3 on occasion while Favors can’t.
Favors is a step up from Vonleh and Kornet, and the Nets, and Clippers lack bigs.
Cavs/ suns make good sense. Miami too
Maybe I’m biased as a Denver fan, but I sort of judge how useful a player is as a big man by how much trouble he gives Jokic and I’ll tell you that Favors always gave Jokic way more trouble than Gobert did. So if I’m any Western conference contender I’m snapping up Derrick and parking him on my bench.
Not many give him more trouble than Clint Capela
In the past he certainly did I feel like Jokic solves everyone eventually and the Nuggets actually have point of attack defenders this year which should help Jokic not have to work twice as hard in the spread pick and roll.Also the team actually has shooting this year having MPJ, KCP and Jamal Murray out on the 3pt line ought to free up a lot more space than Jeff Green, Austin Rivers and Facu Campazzo did
Nuggets are gonna be extremely tough this yr & obv much better thanlast yr but no matter who their teammates are Clint has always guarded Jokic well. This goes back even before they were drafted. Clint is long, athletic, strong & very agile/quick for his size. Pretty much everybody struggles against him. Embiid is the main exception but he still plays Embiid better than most
Nets? Claxton too frail…
HOU couldn’t have foreseen cutting all 4 guys without a buyout. Or at least they wanted a look see. No team gives up 7.5 mm in cap space for a protected 2nd rounder, even if most of it is paid for by incoming cash. OKC not only got off the tax line, but got to TPEs, including a nice size one for Favors.
I do not understand the trade at all indeed.
For OKC, this trade was great and makes total sense.
But if they are just going to waive Favors, their return will have been very low. They will have paid one million and given up cap space for nothing it seems. Nwaba doesnt have any guaranteed money next year, only a team option, right?
Maybe some transaction occurred on a swiss bank account?
Rockets certainly have cap room to do that but, Favors is way better than WCS, HELLO? Another charity move for sure.
Brooklyn has to be a favorite to sign him. They need a big badly
Some bad moves by the Rockets.
Bulls should be giving him a call.
Ak and Eversley on line 1
Favors is too good of a defender to not land somewhere. Top notch person too.
Boston makes all the sense add favors move kornet
I’ll like to see Derrick Favors go to a contender.
Welcome to the Boston Celtics!!
So the Rockets took a salary dump from the team that had the lowest payroll or very close to it?
The Thunder had the lowest payroll last year, but after accounting for the SGA extension and all their incoming first-round picks, that was no longer the case this year — they were actually getting kinda close to the tax line before making the trade with Houston.