Late this morning the Washington Wizards officially waived Zydrunas Ilgauskas after completing their anticipated buyout of the 7-foot-3 center. With the Wizards already under the luxury tax after trading away Dominic McGuire last week, Big Z had to pay $1.5 million for his freedom, according to a source familiar with the terms of the deal.
“He’s got a year left, maybe this year, maybe he’ll play next year, and I just think that he’s not a guy – [Wizards president of basketball operations] Ernie [Grunfeld] talked to him more than me – and he wanted to be in a situation, whatever it is, wherever he decides to go, he wanted to have a chance to be in a playoff-type situation,” said Wizards head coach Flip Saunders. “Even if he was going to be somewhere where he could build on it for four or five years, there wasn’t a use for him to be here.
“Don’t get me wrong. Would I like to have him? Yeah, because I think he is a hell of a player, and he knows how to play, and he can help younger players. They can learn from him. But it just didn’t work out.”
Ilgauskas could return in 30 days to Cleveland, from where he was traded in a deal that sent Antawn Jamison the other way, but he has drawn interest from Dallas, Denver, Atlanta and Utah, according to a source. Even if Ilgauskas signs with another team for the veteran’s minimum, he stands to lose about $1 million from the $12 million he stood to earn this season.
The buyout completed the shedding of more than $11 million from the Wizards payroll over the last two weeks, and Washington now finds itself about $1.8 million under the luxury tax, putting the franchise in line to receive an estimated rebate of $3.5-4 million that is distributed evenly to the teams under the tax and paid for by teams that go over it.
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