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Washington Wizards Free Agency 2015: Where Seraphin, Butler, Bynum Could End Up

By Ben Mehic

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The Washington Wizards have a full roster heading into next season. With fifteen players under guaranteed contracts, it’s likely that Washington won’t be making any more additions to their team before training camp starts.

Before the start of the free agency period, the Wizards had four players that became unrestricted free agents. They quickly added Jared Dudley, Alan Anderson and Gary Neal to their roster, which shrunk their free agents’ chances of returning for another season. Drew Gooden is currently the only free agent they decided to re-sign.

So, where could the other three end up next season?

Kevin Seraphin

Seraphin is probably the best player the Washington Wizards have remaining in free agency.

After the top big men — LaMarcus Aldridge, Marc Gasol and DeAndre Jordan— made their decisions, the rest of the bigs were supposed to find new NBA homes. Many were quickly scooped up by teams that missed out on their first choices, but Seraphin remains unsigned.

He’s been linked to the Dallas Mavericks, Los Angeles Lakers and Wizards

As I mentioned previously, the Wizards will likely end up finding a new team for Seraphin through a sign-and-trade.

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Acquiring another trade exception would give the Wizards some flexibility for the future instead of having to clear a roster spot for another player immediately.

When they lost Trevor Ariza to the Houston Rockets, the team worked out a deal where they received a large trade exception back which they used to acquire Kris Humphries from the Boston Celtics.

Washington also did this when they traded Andre Miller to the Sacramento Kings for Ramon Sessions.

Ernie Grunfeld used the exception he obtained to acquire Jared Dudley this off-season from the Milwaukee Bucks.

Both the Mavericks and Lakers have their starting big men.

Zaza Pachulia will likely start for Dallas while Roy Hibbert will start for Los Angeles. Still, both teams can give Seraphin the playing time he desires. Washington added several swing men this off-season and will play more small-ball next season, which leaves Seraphin on the bench.

There’s a small chance Seraphin returns to the Washington Wizards, but he’ll likely end up playing NBA basketball outside of the nation’s capital next season.

The other two free agents have a more uncertain future.

Rasual Butler

Butler was an afterthought long before last season. He somehow got a training camp invite from the Washington Wizards and unexpectedly made the roster following a few solid performances during preseason.

His contract was unguaranteed, but for most of the first half of the season, Butler was atop the league in three point percentage. His hot shooting earned him a one-year deal from the Wizards, but unfortunately, his shooting inevitably starting to regress around the All-Star break.

Butler eventually lost his spot in the rotation to Otto Porter and never found a way back in.

At 36-years-old, Butler will likely end up playing just one more season in the NBA.

The Portland Trail Blazers, San Antonio Spurs and Golden State Warriors were all reportedly interested in signing the veteran shooter.

He won’t be expected to contribute much at this point in his career. Instead, Butler will serve as a veteran in the locker room. The Blazers have lost four of their five starters and will begin to rebuild their team. They added several young players to their roster and having veterans on the team is extremely important.

The Spurs and Warriors, on the other hand, could just be looking to fill out the rest of their roster with players on veteran minimum deals. Butler is someone who’s been around the league for years and both teams know what they’d get from him. It’s essentially a low-risk, high-reward move for both.

Expect Butler to get another training camp invite from a team before signing a guaranteed deal.

Will Bynum

Will The Thrill is an NBA caliber point guard, and I think he proved that in certain moments during the NBA Playoffs when John Wall missed time due to a broken hand/wrist.

Washington hoped to add a scoring spark off the bench and signed Bynum after he finished out the season in the Chinese Basketball Association. Bynum isn’t very efficient nor is he capable of defending at a high level, but his quickness and high volume scoring is appealing to some teams.

With that said, Bynum has become a fall-back option for teams around the league. Instead of hoping to find a training camp deal, Bynum will likely take a lucrative deal overseas. That will allow him to make serious dough overseas and then return to the NBA after the All-Star break, just like he did this past season.

Barcelona is reportedly interested in signing Bynum.

As the summer is winding down, expect these three former Washington Wizards to find deals for next season.

Next: Oubre Is Exactly Who We Thought He Was

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