Shortly after Thursday’s trade agreement with Boston involving Daniel Theis and Dennis Schroder, the Houston Rockets made it clear that veteran big man Enes Freedom (formerly Kanter) would not be sticking around. His inclusion was simply for salary matching reasons and to ease the financial burden on the Celtics from their 2021-22 team payroll.
Yet, as of early Monday, Freedom had yet to be formally waived by Houston, per the NBA’s official transaction wire. There’s a reason for that: The trade, while announced, had yet to be finalized until late Sunday, owing to the process of completing physicals and paperwork.
In conjunction with the original announcement, the Rockets released DJ Augustin and Armoni Brooks, since they were taking in three players in the deal (Schroder, Freedom, and Bruno Fernando) while sending out only one (Theis). Yet, they are only planning to keep two of those three from Boston. While Houston obviously never planned to keep Freedom, they could not formally “waive” him until his trade was fully complete.
