NOVEMBER 21: The Pistons likely won’t use the stretch provision on McGruder after all, according to Edwards (Twitter link). The team will save some money in its trade for Delon Wright and no longer needs the extra space that waiving and stretching McGruder would provide.
NOVEMBER 20: The Pistons have made a flurry of reported free agent moves and they’ll apparently clear cap space by using the waive-and-stretch provision on two recent acquisitions.
They’ll waive center Dewayne Dedmon and use the stretch provision to ease the cap hit, according to Vincent Goodwill of Yahoo Sports (Twitter link). They’re likely to do the same with Rodney McGruder, James Edwards III of The Athletic tweets.
Detroit officially acquired Dedmon from the Hawks on Friday in exchange for Tony Snell and Khyri Thomas. Dedmon was slated to make $13.33MM in the upcoming season with an identical contract number that was only guaranteed for $1MM for the 2021/22 season.
The Pistons acquired McGruder from the Clippers in a three-team trade that became official on Thursday. McGruder had a guaranteed $5.2MM contract for the upcoming season with a non-guaranteed salary of $5MM for 2021/22.
Those non-guaranteed years are significant because they allow Detroit’s front office use the stretch provision for five years instead of three, Eric Pincus of Bleacher Report notes (Twitter links). Since only the guaranteed money counts, Dedmon would only count $2.9MM against the Pistons’ cap over the next five seasons, while the cap hit on McGruder would be just over $1MM in those years.
The Pistons made the trade with Atlanta because it allowed them stretch Dedmon’s contract over five years, rather than stretching Snell’s $12.2MM expiring contract for three years, Edwards tweets.
Those moves will allow Detroit to ink free agents Jerami Grant and Mason Plumlee, as well as completing a sign-and-trade with Houston involving Christian Wood.