The Pacers have waived Damien Wilkins

With the leaguewide cutdown date looming, the Pacers made a roster decision on wing Damien Wilkins.

The Indiana Pacers announced today that they have waived veteran wing, Damien Wilkins.

This decision comes on the heels of Wilkins getting his first start as a member of the team. In the absence of Bojan Bogdanovic, Wilkins played 22 minutes and 14 seconds in a win over the Chicago Bulls. He scored a season-high 11 points while also grabbing two rebounds and adding one assist and one block.

On the season, Damien Wilkins has averages of 1.7 points, .8 rebounds, and .5 assists while shooting 33 percent from the field. The Pacers official press release also references a few of these statistics:

"The Indiana Pacers announced Sunday they have requested waivers on forward Damien Wilkins. The 6-6, 37-year-old Wilkins played in 19 games, starting one, and averaged 1.7 points per game."

Kevin Pritchard and the front office waited as long as they could to make this decision. All contracts in the NBA become fully guaranteed on January 10th. However, for a player with a non-guaranteed contract to have their salary fully removed from a teams cap sheet, they have to be waived by 5 o’clock on January 7th. This is so that they can fully clear the 48-hour waiver process by the January 10th date.

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The Pacers will incur a cap hit of $1,016,617. The team saves about $455k against the salary cap, meaning they have $5.8 million of cap space for the rest of the season.

In terms of actual payments, Wilkins received $1.02 million for his service in Indiana, but because he was waived and his contract was non-guaranteed, he does not receive the rest of his $2.11 million dollar salary.

The Pacers also gain a roster spot because of the move. This will allow them to sign another player for the rest of the season, or sign players to a 10-day contract if they so choose. What Kevin Pritchard does with the roster spot will be something to monitor.

Next: Pacers score more points than Bulls in Oladipo’s return

For more information on the waiver of Damien Wilkins, read Ryan Eggers piece from last week about the decision. We hope the best for Wilkins in the future and hope he is able to find employment soon.