Former Trail Blazers forward Jaylen Hoard had a brief stint on the Thunder‘s training camp roster, but has since been released. While photos tweeted by the Thunder on Sunday showed Hoard participating in camp, the NBA’s official transactions log indicates that the team waived him on Sunday.
Hoard, 21, signed a two-way contract with Portland in July 2019 after going undrafted out of Wake Forest. He spent the entire 2019/20 season with the club, though he didn’t see much action at the NBA level, logging just 103 minutes in 13 games.
The Blazers don’t have their own G League affiliate, so Hoard spent time as a rookie with the Texas Legends. He averaged 16.2 PPG, 6.9 RPG, and 1.8 APG in 24 games (27.6 MPG) for Dallas’ NBAGL affiliate.
The Thunder have been turning over the spots at the back of their 20-man roster during the last week, having also released Antonius Cleveland and Melvin Frazier shortly after signing them. The moves are presumably being made with G League rights and/or Exhibit 10 bonuses in mind.
A report from French outlet L’Equipe first indicated last week that Hoard would sign an Exhibit 10 deal with the Thunder. Interestingly, that L’Equipe report also suggested that big man Vincent Poirier will be heading to the Sixers in the still-not-official deal involving Al Horford, Danny Green, and Terrance Ferguson.
Poirier’s inclusion in that deal has been speculated by cap expert Albert Nahmad, among others, since his contract is a perfect fit for salary-matching purposes and would allow the Thunder to keep their recently-created $27.5MM trade exception. The trade will likely be completed this week once the salary aggregation restrictions on Green and Poirier lift.
I would have kept him if I were OKC
Seems like he’s worth less than the first round draft pick they might get for taking on somebody else’s bad salary into the $27 million exception.