The Sacramento Kings ended their two-year DeMar DeRozan experiment on Monday, waiving the veteran wing and turning one of the league’s most accomplished active scorers loose in the middle of a chaotic offseason.
ESPN’s Shams Charania first reported the move, which reshapes the second tier of the free-agent market and hands every contender still hunting for offense a proven name to chase.
The timing is the whole story. DeRozan doesn’t reach the open market in a vacuum — he lands there while the sport waits on LeBron James, and that connection is the key to understanding where the 36-year-old goes next.
A cap casualty who just became a bargain
Sacramento’s decision was about money as much as basketball. DeRozan was owed $25.7 million for next season, but only $10 million of that figure carried a guarantee, which handed the rebuilding Kings a cheap way out.
By spreading that $10 million across three seasons — a call they have until the end of August to make — Sacramento slips beneath both luxury-tax aprons and finally buys the flexibility it has chased for more than a year.
That structure also explains why a trade never materialized. Rival front offices understood the Kings were likely to release him one way or another, so there was little reason to part with assets for a player they could simply sign outright once he cleared waivers.
The result is an unusual market quirk: a former All-NBA scorer available for nothing but a contract, most likely the veteran’s minimum or a portion of a mid-level exception for a team already operating over the cap.
For Sacramento, the cut is another brick pulled from a roster that never came together. The Kings acquired DeRozan in a three-team sign-and-trade in 2024 on a deal worth roughly $74 million, hoping to pair him with De’Aaron Fox and Domantas Sabonis and push toward contention.
Instead the group fizzled, Fox was dealt, the front office reset, and a lottery-bound season followed. Moving off DeRozan’s number is a formality the Kings had been working toward for months, with Sabonis and Zach LaVine still on the block behind him.
Still a bucket in his 17th season
DeRozan is no longer the 25-point centerpiece he was in Chicago, but he remains a productive shot-maker. He averaged 18.4 points, 2.9 rebounds and 4.1 assists per game across 77 appearances last season while shooting 49.7 percent from the field, according to Basketball-Reference.
His run of 12 consecutive seasons averaging at least 20 points per game finally ended this past year, yet the efficiency and the touch did not. Availability is a real part of the pitch.
DeRozan sat out only five games last season and has appeared in at least 70 in each of the past five years, the kind of durability that matters most to a contender counting on him deep into a playoff series. He owns six All-Star selections and three All-NBA nods, and he ranks among the top 25 scorers in NBA history — a resume that almost never reaches the discount market.
His game also travels better in the postseason than his critics allow. DeRozan lives in the midrange, creates his own shot without needing the ball early in the clock and gets to the free-throw line, three traits that hold up when playoff defenses shrink the floor and possessions bog down.
He won’t stretch a defense from deep, but as a secondary or tertiary option who can manufacture a bucket in a stagnant halfcourt, he fits almost any offense that needs late-clock insurance.
The LeBron dominoes will set his price
Here is why DeRozan’s next move belongs to someone else. When ESPN reported the waiver, it cast his most likely suitors as the teams that eventually strike out in the LeBron James sweepstakes — and that race is nowhere near settled.
James told the Lakers he intends to play elsewhere, and his agent, Rich Paul, has since walked through a whiteboard of roughly 10 possible destinations on his “Game Over” podcast, telling ESPN he has now spoken with 27 teams. Paul framed the decision as one made “strictly for his happiness.”
Until James picks a home, several rosters are keeping their offensive firepower in reserve. The moment he chooses, the teams that miss will need a scorer — and DeRozan is the most credible one still standing. Two of those potential losers look especially motivated.
Cleveland sits near the front of the James race, with Paul pointing to the Cavaliers’ deep front-office ties to LeBron as a genuine hook. If the homecoming doesn’t happen, a Cavs team that leaned heavily on Donovan Mitchell and James Harden to create in the halfcourt could use DeRozan’s shot-making as a steadying second-unit option — precisely the kind of veteran scoring that went missing when their offense stalled in the conference finals.
Miami is the other clean fit. The Heat rebuilt around newly acquired Giannis Antetokounmpo and Bam Adebayo, and Pat Riley’s long habit of adding accomplished veterans on team-friendly terms is well documented. A secondary creator who can work the midrange while two stars punish the paint is exactly the complementary piece Miami tends to value, and the minimum price tag would fit a team with almost no flexibility left.
Golden State, another name on Paul’s board, tracks for the same reason — a veteran who can conjure a bucket without dominating the ball would slot in behind the team’s existing stars. The through line is consistent: DeRozan’s best landing spots are the contenders who wanted a bigger name first and will pivot once the board clears.
What DeRozan wants, and what comes next
The read on DeRozan is that he’s after a real role on a genuine contender rather than the largest possible check — a reasonable priority for a player who has reached the postseason often but never advanced deep with a title favorite. That preference should keep his list short and serious, and it lines up neatly with the very teams currently frozen behind the LeBron decision.
The one variable he can’t control is the clock. As long as James keeps the league waiting, DeRozan’s market stays parked behind him, because the franchises most likely to sign him are the ones who need to learn their own ceiling first.
For the Lakers, meanwhile, the whole sequence is a reminder of how fast the ground shifted this summer as they move into a Luka Doncic-led era.
For now, one of the most reliable scorers of his generation is a free agent for the first time in his career, waiting on a decision that isn’t his to make. When it finally lands, expect DeRozan’s name to follow within days.
