Shavlik Randolph

Shavlik Randolph - Randolph received $250,000 from the Heat this summer in exchange for absolutely nothing at all. This represents the value of being a midseason pick-up for a team with cap space aspirations the following summer; if they strike gold, they might get drunk and commit money to you, even when knowing you will not make their team. Flush with cash, Randolph inevitably did not make the team, and has not signed elsewhere. He still has not played anywhere except in the NBA since leaving Duke, and looks to be in no hurry to start doing so.

Why Randolph and Hasbrouck have been brought back, and with such a large amount of guaranteed money, is not clear. Both were on the team for the end of last season, yet Hasbrouck didn't play a minute with the team, and Randolph played only 3 games. Both are decent players; Randolph in particular is a good energy with a mid-range jumpshot who sticks around in the NBA for a reason. Yet neither is going to make the team, and so the money Miami gave them just seems excessive. Them being here for a combined five weeks for a combined cost of half a million dollars is essentially the basketball equivalent of making it rain. Slightly overzealous spending by some rather generous and highly satisfied executives, maybe. But good luck to them.

After the Jones buyout came their renouncements. With the team option on Mario Chalmers exercised, the team promptly renounced everyone other than Dwyane Wade [sic] and Joel Anthony. This meant that 10 free agents from the previous season were renounced; Jermaine O'Neal, Quentin Richardson, Udonis Haslem, Dorell Wright, Yakhouba Diawara, Rafer Alston, Carlos Arroyo, Jamaal Magloire, Shavlik Randolph and Kenny Hasbrouck. Some free agents from previous seasons were also still clogging up cap space; namely, Alonzo Mourning, Steve Smith, John Wallace, Wang Zhi Zhi, Gary Payton, Bimbo Coles, Christian Laettner, and Shandon Anderson. In total, before these renouncements took place, Miami's free agent cap holds amounted to a total of $88,184,132, $24,166,800 alone was for Jermaine O'Neal.

Additionally, the Miami Heat waived Shavlik Randolph. The tax paying team had clearly realised that they were paying an unnecessary large amount of money for a player with a non-guaranteed contract to sit on the inactive list, so they waived him and plugged the dam. Until that moment, Randolph had been on an NBA roster every day since leaving Duke early in 2005. He went undrafted, but after three full seasons with the Sixers and one with the Blazers, he'd garnered four years of NBA experience and a few million dollars, being paid a good amount of money to get injured a lot and play very little. So it's not as though leaving early worked out badly.