- Chase Hughes of NBC Sports Washington poses five questions for the Wizards now that the All-Star break has passed. Among the topics Hughes addresses is Kristaps Porzingis‘ potential role, specifically how much he’ll play. The 26-year-old has only appeared in 34 games this season due to injuries.
12:37pm: The Spurs have officially waived Satoransky, the team announced in a press release. He’ll clear waivers on Monday, at which point he’ll be free to sign with Washington.
11:19am: Veteran guard Tomas Satoransky is preparing to sign with the Wizards after agreeing to a contract buyout with the Spurs, Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN tweets.
Satoransky is in the final year of a three-year, $30MM contract and it’s safe to say he’ll clear waivers.
Satoransky appeared in 32 games with New Orleans and one game with San Antonio this season. He was involved in two deadline deals — he was traded from the Pelicans to the Trail Blazers in the CJ McCollum blockbuster, then was shipped to the Spurs in a three-team swap.
Satoransky played his first three seasons in the league (2016-19) with Washington. With Bradley Beal out for the season and Spencer Dinwiddie having been traded to Dallas in the Kristaps Porzingis deal, Satoransky should jump right into the Wizards’ rotation.
The Spurs previously bought out another player they acquired at the trade deadline, Goran Dragic. As a result, they’ll have two open spots on their 15-man roster once they officially waive Satoransky — they’ll have two weeks to go back to the NBA-mandated minimum of 14 players.
- The Wizards traded for Kristaps Porzingis on February 10, but it sounds like they’ll continue to have to wait for his debut. He wasn’t a full participant in practice Wednesday or Thursday and coach Wes Unseld Jr. says Porzingis will be ramped up over a period of time, going from one-on-one to three-on-three then five-on-five. He has no definitive timetable for a return and is considered day-to-day going forward (All Twitter links from Chase Hughes of NBC Sports Washington).
The Hornets find themselves armed with a freshly-minted All-Star in point guard LaMelo Ball and a 2022 Most Improved Player candidate in forward Miles Bridges. Scott Fowler of the Charlotte Observer wonders if the club will be able to maximize Ball while he remains in his prime.
Fowler is skeptical of that happening this season at least. The 29-31 club has lost nine of its last ten contests, due in part to the absence of small forward Gordon Hayward and a few other key players. Fowler notes that the shorthanded Hornets are struggling to close out games.
“The way we are right now, we’re in a place of confusion a little bit at times during the game,” forward Kelly Oubre reflected following the team’s seventh straight home loss. “More veteran teams come in and capitalize on that.”
There’s more out of the Southeast Division:
- In an interview with Dotun Akintoye of ESPN, Hawks All-Star point guard Trae Young discussed his rise through his college run at Oklahoma to the ranks of the NBA’s best. Head coach Nate McMillan praised Young. “I think he has a special talent that we haven’t really seen at that position, his ability to score, as well as facilitate,” McMillan said.
- The Heat could benefit from the addition of another stretch four to help space the floor and draw opposing big men away from the basket, writes Ira Winderman of the South Florida Sun Sentinel. Winderman cautions that the buyout market is currently somewhat barren. 36-year-old starting power forward P.J. Tucker fulfills that role at present, though given his advanced NBA age, is only playing 28.6 MPG. The 6’5″ veteran is connecting on 45% of his 3.1 three-point attempts per game.
- The Wizards‘ front office may want to make power forward Kyle Kuzma, who is thriving in the first year of a reasonable three-season, $39MM contract, part of the team’s long-term future, opines Josh Robbins of The Athletic. Kuzma has a player option for the 2023/24 season, but if he keeps up this output, Robbins anticipates that the forward will opt out to test the free agent market in 2023. The 26-year-old is averaging 16.3 PPG, 8.8 RPG and 3.1 APG on .452/.334/.703 shooting splits this season.
- Wizards forward Rui Hachimura scored 14 fourth-quarter points to defeat the Nets on Thursday, reminding the team of his upside, Chase Hughes of NBC Sports Washington writes. Hachimura finished with 20 points in 27 minutes off the bench, shooting 8-of-15 from the floor. “Rui, he’s just got the joy back… I can see that smile again, I can see that laugh, I can see that joy,” teammate Ish Smith said. “Rui’s a special player. He’s been a special player the first two years I was here with him and now you guys are seeing him just continue to grow and get better.”
- Though Bradley Beal is sidelined, the Wizards have been playing better since the trade deadline, Chase Hughes of NBC Sports Washington notes. Kyle Kuzma believes players are settling into roles now that the fear of getting traded has passed. “I think we’re great chemistry-wise,” he said. “I think we’ve got a pretty good understanding of roles right now on the team. Everybody’s gelling, fitting in. Everybody’s just doing what they’re supposed to do.”
- Kristaps Porzingis‘ Wizards debut is likely to happen next Friday (February 25) against San Antonio, Hughes tweets. “I anticipate he will, but once again we’ll just have to see,” coach Wes Unseld Jr. said of Porzingis, who was acquired from Dallas at the trade deadline.
The Mavericks decided to trade Kristaps Porzingis to the Wizards last week because they determined he couldn’t be an effective second star with Luka Doncic, Tim Cato of The Athletic states in a discussion of the deal. Porzingis was in his third season in Dallas, and all three had been disrupted by injuries, leading to concerns about whether he would ever be reliable to stay on the court. The Mavs are 13-9 in the games he has missed this season, so the front office felt it was safe to move on from his contract.
Cato is skeptical about Dallas’ return in the deal, although he says Spencer Dinwiddie will be a welcome addition for a team that has trouble driving to the basket and the Mavericks believe Davis Bertans is a better defender than his reputation would suggest. They plan to use him in larger lineups where his lack of rebounding will be less important.
There’s more NBA news from Texas:
- The Spurs are focused on making the play-in tournament and reaching the playoffs, even though their 22-36 record indicates that they might be better off maximizing their first-round draft pick, writes Tom Orsborn of The San Antonio Express News. Dejounte Murray and Devin Vassell both talked last weekend about the importance of getting to the postseason, and coach Gregg Popovich repeated that message on Monday. “If you put yourself in the situation, more as a coach than any other position in the organization, besides players, you can’t go to your team and ask them to lose,” Popovich said. “You can’t do that. It’s an impossibility for all of the logical reasons you can think of on your own. So, you go play your best, you keep teaching, you keep doing what you do. And if you lose and wind up with a high draft pick, well, you accept it and you are glad you got a high draft pick. But it can’t be because you didn’t push them or teach them or demand from them.”
- Goran Dragic gave up $819,835 in his buyout agreement with the Spurs, tweets Keith Smith of Spotrac. The amount is equal to a 54-day minimum-salary contract for Dragic, so he’ll make up roughly all that money once he signs with a new team.
- The Rockets used part of their mid-level exception to sign rookie guard Daishen Nix to a four-year contract, according to Smith (Twitter link). Nix will make $612K for the rest of this season and $1,563,518 in 2022/23. The final two years of the deal are non-guaranteed at $1,836,096 and $1,988,598, and the last season is also a team option.
Whether the Wizards push hard for a play-in spot down the stretch or resign themselves to a lottery berth and vie for draft positioning, developing their young players will be a top priority the rest of the way, writes Chase Hughes of NBC Sports Washington.
As Hughes outlines, if youngsters like Deni Avdija, Rui Hachimura, Corey Kispert, and Daniel Gafford thrive in the second half of the season, that will give the Wizards more options in the offseason — they could decide to build around those players or could try to trade one or more of them for a more established player.
Avdija, who is averaging 7.5 PPG on the season, has looked good as of late, scoring double-digit points in all three games since the trade deadline and grabbing a career-high 15 rebounds in Monday’s win over Detroit. However, Hachimura’s developmental process may have hit another temporary snag during Monday’s victory.
As Hughes writes in a separate NBC Sports Washington story, Hachimura left the game in the first half due to a right ankle sprain. Head coach Wes Unseld Jr. said after the game that he’s hopeful the sprain isn’t too severe, but it still might make sense for Washington to hold out the third-year forward until at least after the All-Star break.
Here’s more on the Wizards:
- Unseld said on Monday that there’s hope Kristaps Porzingis will be able to make his Wizards debut before the All-Star break (Twitter link via Hughes). Washington plays in Indiana on Wednesday and Brooklyn on Thursday, so we’ll see if Porzingis – who is day-to-day with a right knee bone bruise – is available for either of those games.
- Although general manager Tommy Sheppard insisted a few weeks before the trade deadline that the team felt no need to move Spencer Dinwiddie, it was obvious something was “dramatically off-kilter,” writes Josh Robbins of The Athletic. Dinwiddie, who struggled to produce alongside Bradley Beal, never seemed comfortable with his role on the team, Robbins adds, noting that the point guard was “oddly passive” and probably didn’t have the ball in his hands enough.
- Within that same story at The Athletic, Tim Cato considers what Porzingis can bring to the Wizards, suggesting the big man has reemerged as a strong defender when healthy this season and is no longer an obvious target for switches. However, Porzingis hasn’t been a reliable outside shooter in 2021/22, and his frequent injury-related absences resulted in some awkward readjustment periods when he’d return to the lineup after missing several games, says Cato.
Several NBA teams typically end up with newly-opened roster spots following the trade deadline. This happens for a variety of reasons. Some teams make two-for-one or three-for-one trades; some acquire players in cap-related deals and immediately cut them; others buy out or release players they weren’t able to move at the deadline.
Whatever the reason may be, there are plenty of available roster spots around the NBA, and it’s a good bet that most of them will be filled before the end of the regular season. Contending teams will want to fortify their depth for the playoffs, while lottery-bound clubs will take fliers on prospects willing to accept multiyear deals that aren’t fully guaranteed beyond this season.
Here, with the help of our roster counts page, is a look at the teams that have open roster spots as of February 14:
Teams with open 15-man roster spots:
- Atlanta Hawks
- Boston Celtics (3)
- Charlotte Hornets
- Denver Nuggets *
- Detroit Pistons
- Houston Rockets
- Miami Heat (2)
- Milwaukee Bucks (3) *
- Minnesota Timberwolves
- New Orleans Pelicans
- Orlando Magic
- Philadelphia 76ers
- Toronto Raptors
- Utah Jazz
- Washington Wizards
* The Nuggets (DeMarcus Cousins) and Bucks (Greg Monroe) each have a player on a 10-day contract. We’re counting those roster spots as “open” because Cousins’ and Monroe’s deals will expire this week.
If we count the Nuggets, exactly half of the NBA’s 30 teams have at least one 15-man roster spot available. Twelve of those clubs have a single open roster spot, while the Celtics, Heat, and Bucks have multiple openings.
Since teams are only permitted to dip below 14 players on standard contracts for up to two weeks at a time, Boston, Miami, and Milwaukee will all have to get back to that league-mandated minimum before the end of the month.
The other teams on this list aren’t under immediate pressure to add a 15th man, and some may hold off for a little while for financial reasons — or just to wait to see who else becomes available on the buyout market in the next couple weeks.
Some of these clubs – including the Heat with Caleb Martin, the Pelicans with Jose Alvarado, and the Raptors with Justin Champagnie – might use their open roster spot to promote a player on a two-way contract who has earned regular minutes.
Teams with open two-way spots:
- Boston Celtics
- Dallas Mavericks
- Oklahoma City Thunder
- Phoenix Suns
- Utah Jazz
The Celtics (Sam Hauser) and Thunder (Aaron Wiggins) have each promoted a two-way player to the 15-man roster since the trade deadline. The other three teams on this list released a two-way player in January, creating an opening.
In the past, teams haven’t been able to sign players to two-way contracts after January 15, but that restriction doesn’t exist this season, so I expect we’ll see some – if not all – of these teams fill their open two-way slots sooner or later.
Wizards center Daniel Gafford won’t be available for Monday’s game against Detroit, but he’s listed as out due to return to competition reconditioning, meaning he has exited the NBA’s health and safety protocols, tweets Chase Hughes of NBC Sports Washington.
That news is notable because Gafford had been the lone player remaining in the league’s COVID-19 protocols after Pelicans big man Willy Hernangomez was cleared last week. Now that Gafford has been cleared too, none of the 30 teams have a single player in the protocols.
It’s a stark contrast to where the league was at just six weeks ago. At the end of December and the start of January, there were well over 100 players in the health and safety protocols. Most teams needed to sign multiple replacements to 10-day contracts to withstand COVID-19 outbreaks, and even then, several games had to be postponed.
Of course, just because there are no players in the protocols right now doesn’t mean there won’t be more players affected going forward. It’s safe to assume individuals will continue to enter the protocols here and there, and there’s no guarantee there won’t be more team-wide outbreaks before the end of the season. But we’re hopeful that the worst of those outbreaks are behind us for the 2021/22 campaign.
We set up a tracker in December to keep tabs on which players were entering and exiting the health and safety protocols, and we’ve updated it daily since then. However, we’re putting that tracker on ice for now and will only resume updating it if the number of players affected starts climbing rapidly again at some point in the coming days, weeks, or months.