3 NBA teams that could use Iman Shumpert

The Brooklyn Nets are reportedly going to waive Iman Shumpert, who provided solid defensive work for their second unit, and he could help some NBA teams.

According to Shams Charania of The Athletic, the loser of the numbers game for the Brooklyn Nets will be veteran wing Iman Shumpert, who signed with the club on Nov. 13, shortly after Caris LeVert went down with a right thumb injury that will sideline him for at least four to six weeks. Charania reported Thursday morning that Shumpert will be waived by the Nets.

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Brooklyn signed Shumpert to a 16th roster spot made available by Wilson Chandler‘s 25-game suspension for using a banned substance. The Nets (13-11) next play at Toronto on Saturday, which will be the last game of Chandler’s banishment and, thus, the end of the roster exception.

Shumpert had been signed to a veteran’s minimum, non-guaranteed deal. That was ultimately the tipping point for Brooklyn management — the Nets already have 15 players signed to guaranteed deals and, operating with a hard cap this season due to acquiring free agent Kevin Durant via sign-and-trade, the franchise just isn’t in a position to eat a lot of guaranteed dollars.

But the veteran who won a ring with the Cleveland Cavaliers back in 2016 showed he has value to a team needing a defensive presence on the wing. Brooklyn was 9-4 after activating Shumpert for their Nov. 16 game at Chicago. Was all of that due to Shump? Of course not. But there are some numbers that are telling.

In 11 games before Shumpert joined the active roster, Brooklyn was 4-7 and ranked 25th in the NBA with a defensive rating of 111.0 points allowed per 100 possessions. Not great. Over their last 13 games, the Nets have gone 9-4 with a defensive rating of 108.0, 14th in the NBA, so that’s a noticeable difference.

Those numbers weren’t necessarily represented by Shumpert’s personal on-off splits, as Brooklyn was a net minus-10.1 points per 100 possessions for the 241 minutes Shumpert was on the floor.

But that was primarily due to the offensive end, where the Nets had an offensive rating of 99.8 with Shumpert on the court and 112.5 with him off. Defensively, Brooklyn’s rating fell from 111.3 to 108.7 when Shumpert was there.

Offensively, he’s a train wreck at this point in his career, in his ninth NBA season and having turned 29 during the last offseason. With the Nets, he averaged 4.2 points and 2.6 rebounds in 18.5 minutes per game shooting 32.8 percent overall and a dismal 24.2 percent on 2.5 3-point attempts per game.

His field goal percentage has declined in each of his past three seasons, from 41.1 percent in 2016-17 to 37.9 percent in 2017-18 to last season’s 37.4 percent. But in his limited playing time, Shumpert picked off 12 steals in 13 games and made the team’s perimeter defense better.

There are a few teams with playoff aspirations that could use a defensive presence on the wing. One of those is not the Houston Rockets, however, if only because they had Shumpert for the final two months last season after getting him from the Sacramento Kings in a three-team deadline deal.

He averaged 19.1 minutes per game over the 20 appearances he made during the regular-season for the Rockets before taking three DNP-CDs during the playoffs and averaging just 13.6 minutes per game when he did get on the floor. Shumpert declined Houston’s contract offer in mid-September, according to a report from Charania.

So where could Shump fit?