One week after acquiring him in a sign-and-trade as part of the Karl-Anthony Towns blockbuster, the Hornets have waived guard Duane Washington, as announced in a press release.
This move was anticipated since Washington was included in the Towns trade solely for salary-matching purposes. Without his involvement, the Knicks would have needed to add another active player to the trade to comply with league rules. Although Washington never played a game for the Hornets, the Knicks were able to sign-and-trade him because he concluded last season on a two-way contract with them.
Before the trade to Charlotte, Washington was playing for KK Partizan in Belgrade, Serbia. The Knicks paid Partizan an $850K buyout to make him available for the Towns deal, and it is expected that the 24-year-old will return to the Serbian club on a new contract.
Washington’s salary of $2,162,607 for the 2024/25 season was fully guaranteed and will count against the Hornets’ cap for the remainder of the season. However, Charlotte received $7.2 million from New York in the Towns trade, sufficient to cover Washington’s salary and those of two other players, DaQuan Jeffries and Charlie Brown.
The second and third years of Washington’s contract were non-guaranteed, meaning they will no longer count against Charlotte’s cap now that he has been waived.
With this transaction, the Hornets now have 15 players on fully guaranteed contracts, alongside Taj Gibson, who has a partially guaranteed minimum-salary contract of about $1.08 million. It’s likely that Charlotte will waive at least one of Jeffries or Brown before the regular season begins to create space for Gibson on the 15-man roster.
