Needing to make a decision whether to guarantee his contract for next season, the Sacramento Kings have elected to waive forward Anthony Tolliver.
While the focus has been on the upcoming 2017 NBA Draft for the Sacramento Kings, the roster moves keep on coming.
On Thursday afternoon, Adrian Wojnarowski of The Vertical reported that the Kings have waived forward Anthony Tolliver. The move was confirmed by the Kings not long after.
The basis behind the move was due to Tolliver’s contract holding a guarantee date as his $8 million salary for next season was only partially guaranteed at $2 million. With the deadline being yesterday, the Kings opted to cut ties with the 32-year old journeyman.
For the Kings, waiving Tolliver is just another move that helps create further flexibility for them this summer and beyond. As Bobby Marks of The Vertical points out, they can opt to decrease Tolliver’s cap hit even further by choosing to stretch his salary over the next three seasons.
Aside from the financial aspects of the move, the Kings will certainly feel the effects of moving on from Tolliver both on the court and in the locker room.
In his lone season with Sacramento, Tolliver was a solid contributor in his role primarily coming off the bench.
Averaging 22.7 minutes per game this year, Tolliver averaged 7.1 points per game on 44.2 percent shooting from the field and 39.1 percent shooting from three-point range, which made for the second-highest effective field goal percentage of his career at 57 percent.
Losing a legitimate weapon like Tolliver from beyond the three-point line this year will certainly leave a hole for the Kings to fill moving forward.
The same rings true for the impact Tolliver had off the court and in the locker room as well.
With such a radical shift in the team’s direction after the DeMarcus Cousins trade, Tolliver was always the pro’s pro, even as his minutes started to dwindle in favor of the team’s more inexperienced frontcourt players.
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But with the Kings having their eye on the future, those minutes would only increase next season for the likes of Skal Labissiere, Georgios Papagiannis and any potential addition the Kings make in their frontcourt via the draft or in free agency.
From that standpoint, it would have been hard to imagine Tolliver’s role being prioritized as much as it was with the Kings trying to lay the groundwork for a promising future.
Now with free agency less than a month out, Tolliver will be an interesting name to watch on the market as he’s shown that he can certainly help a team that’s in need of three-point shooting and veteran leadership.
For the Kings, similar transactions will be on the horizon as they’ll face the same situation with guard Arron Afflalo over his $12.5 million salary, which is only guaranteed at $1.5 million for next year.
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As necessary as it was for the Kings to cut ties with Tolliver, the void he leaves behind is one the Kings will have to make sure they can successfully replace both on and off the court.