Yahoo and The Vertical’s Adrian Wojnarowski (the famous purveyor of the “Woj Bomb” for his ability to break news) reported Monday morning that the New York Knicks will be waiving backup point guard Brandon Jennings.
Sources: Knicks waiving Brandon Jennings, signing Chasson Randle. @WojVerticalNBA report on @TheVertical. https://t.co/W44yzgALMH pic.twitter.com/QAOsvCHZki
— Ball Don’t Lie (@Balldontlie) February 27, 2017
As you can see in the tweet above, the move was made in order to acquire recently waived point guard Chasson Randle, who appeared in 8 games for the 76ers this season after going undrafted in 2015.
It is kind of odd that the Knicks didn’t just move Jennings for a second round pick before the trade deadline as there are definitely teams trying to hit a cap floor that could have used his salary to do so and then waive him, or would have been willing to rent him for the remainder of the season before his contract expires.
Jennings averaged 8.9 points and 4.6 assists in 24.6 minutes per game this season while shooting 38 percent from the field and 34 percent from three.
He signed a one year contract for $5 million with the Knicks this off-season in what many saw as a “prove it” season for Jennings to show he had fully recovered from the Achilles injury he suffered in January of 2015.
Jennings has struggled to have much of an effect for the Knicks this season and the Knicks chose to bring in a younger player to earn more minutes at the position behind Rose instead of giving those minutes to Jennings, who clearly wasn’t going to be back for the Knicks next season.
Randle will have a contract for the rest of the 2016-17 season and a partially guaranteed contract for the 2017-18 season.
Expect teams looking to make a playoff push to look to acquire Jennings in the coming days in order to fill a back up point guard role.
