The Rockets have released Tyler Honeycutt in order to clear room on the roster for Aaron Brooks, tweets Mark Berman of FOX 26 Houston. Honeycutt had come to Houston along with Thomas Robinson and Francisco Garcia as part of the team's six-player deadline deal with the Kings.
Honeycutt, 22, was drafted 35th overall by the Kings in 2011, but played in just 24 games in a season and a half with the club. Upon joining the Rockets, the 6'8" forward was assigned to the team's D-League affiliate, the Rio Grande Valley Vipers. In two games with the club, Honeycutt averaged 19.0 PPG and 10.0 RPG.
The Rockets will be on the hook for the rest of Honeycutt's salary this season, but his minimum-salary contract for 2013/14 was mostly non-guaranteed, so the team will only have to pay $100K of that amount.
The Rockets announced that they have signed center Tim Ohlbrecht to a multi-year deal. Ohlbrecht's deal is for three years with team options for the final two, according to Jonathan Feigen of the Houston Chronicle (via Twitter). Our own Luke Adams predicted earlier today that the center would get that type of deal, similar to the structure of Greg Smith's contract.
Houston is one of 14 NBA teams with at least one open roster spot, so they will not have to waive a player to make space for the big man. Ohlbrecht has spent the season playing for the Rockets' D-League affiliate Rio Grande Valley Vipers.
In 32 games for the Vipers this season, the 6'11" German averaged 13.4 PPG and 7.4 RPG in 26.6 minutes per contest. He also earned a spot in the D-League's All-Star Game earlier this month.
Agent Tyler Glass told Emiliano Carchia of Sportando last week that Ohlbrecht had turned down a 10-day contract offer from the Celtics, which makes sense given the multi-year opportunity being presented to him by the Rockets.
In a related move, the Rockets announced that they have assigned Tyler Honeycutt to the Vipers. The forward was acquired by the Rockets from the Kings prior to the deadline in the Patrick Patterson deal.
A complete recap of trades that were completed before Thursday's trade deadline:
The Rockets have finalized a pair of deals they agreed upon Wednesday night, sending Marcus Morris to the Suns for a second-round pick and trading Patrick Patterson, Cole Aldrich, Toney Douglas and $1MM to the Kings for Thomas Robinson, Francisco Garcia and Tyler Honeycutt. The second-rounder heading to Houston is Phoenix's own 2013 selection. The Suns, who were at the roster limit of 15 players going into the trade, waived Luke Zeller to make room for Morris.
Houston was reportedly deciding between a pair of deals for Morris, whom the Rockets held out of their win against Oklahoma City on Wednesday. With Houston's top two power forwards gone, it looks like a pair of rookies, in Robinson and Terrence Jones, will man the position as the team fights to hold on to the final playoff spot in the West. One of the motivations to trade Morris was to free up time for Jones, according to HoopsWorld's Steve Kyler.
As Grantland's Zach Lowe points out via Twitter, the pair of moves will save Houston approximately $1.6MM for next season if they decline their option on Garcia. Lowe surmised earlier that Houston would look to cut between $1.5MM and $2MM to clear room for a max deal to land Dwight Howard, who'll be a free agent this summer. The Rockets also get the No. 5 overall pick from this past June's draft in Robinson, who's seen just 15.9 minutes per game as a reserve for the Kings this year. Nonetheless, Robinson is grabbing 4.7 rebounds in his limited action, which would extrapolate to 10.6 rebounds per 36 minutes.
Sacramento had appeared unlikely to make a deal as their ownership situation remains in limbo, but they flipped Robinson for two expiring deals and Patterson, who will enter the final season of his rookie contract next year. The move was all about cost-cutting and not something the Kings current management wished to do, tweets Marc J. Spears of Yahoo! Sports. The Chris Hansen/Howard Ballmer group from Seattle that has a deal in place to buy the Kings was briefed on the trade before it went down, according to fellow Yahoo! Sports scribe Adrian Wojnarowski (Twitter link). It's unclear exactly where the directive to make the trade came from, though SB Nation's Tom Ziller indicated Wednesday night that co-owner Gavin Maloof and Geoff Petrie are the driving forces in the Kings front office at the moment.
The Suns considered trading a first-round pick for Morris when the Rockets drafted him 14th overall in 2011, but wound up nabbing him for a second-rounder, currently projected to be the 35th overall selection. Now the power forward will reunite with his twin brother, Markieff Morris, whom the Suns took 13th overall in 2011. With the next pick that year, the Rockets drafted Marcus.
Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports (All Twitter links) initially broke the news of both trades. Sam Amick of USA Today (All Twitter links) and TNT's David Aldridge (Twitter link) contributed additional details.
We'll keep track of all the day's D-League moves right here. As always, you can reference the season's comings and goings with this post.
The Kings are making this year's first D-League assignment, as they've announced via press release that they're sending Tyler Honeycutt to the Reno Bighorns tomorrow. Honeycutt, whom the Kings drafted with the 35th overall pick in 2011, spent 10 games with Reno last season, almost as many as the 15 games he played with the big club in Sacramento. The move comes as little surprise, since Kings coach Keith Smart said last month he wanted to have Honeycutt go through training camp with the Bighorns, which begins in a few days, tweets Jason Jones of the Sacramento Bee.
The 6'8" small forward from UCLA has yet to appear in a regular season game for the Kings this year, and got in only one of the team's preseason contests, thanks in part to a stress fracture in his right fibula. He saw only 88 total minutes for Sacramento last season, and in 12.8 minutes per game at Reno, he averaged 5.9 points and 2.9 rebounds. Honeycutt is on a fully guaranteed contract for about $810K this season, with another partially guaranteed year on the deal for 2013/14.
Honeycutt is available for tonight's game against the Pistons, but will report to the Bighorns by Friday, the team says.
As training camps begin to start all throughout the league, here are few bits of injury related news.
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