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Trade Grades: Clippers save some dough, Pelicans get a wing

Harry How / Getty Images Sport / Getty

It may not have been the earth-shaking deal we were anticipating on the eve of the NBA season, but a trade is a trade. Wesley Johnson's now a New Orleans Pelican, while Alexis Ajinca is a free agent after being acquired and waived by the Los Angeles Clippers.

Pelicans receive: G/F Wesley Johnson
Clippers receive: C Alexis Ajinca (waived immediately)

Let's give out some grades for this minor move:

Pelicans: B

Johnson barely registers as a meaningful acquisition, but for a Pelicans team that's perilously thin on the wing, flipping Ajinca - a redundant big who missed all of last season with a patellar tendon injury and still hasn't been cleared to return - for a serviceable swingman is a perfectly fine piece of business.

Johnson doesn't bring the kind of long-range accuracy you'd like for someone at his position (he's a career 33.9 percent shooter from deep and hit just 34 percent of his catch-and-shoot threes last season), especially because he lacks any other viable offensive skills. But he can capably defend the two or three (at least when he isn't on the receiving end of the world's most disrespectful stare-down), and given he'll likely slot in behind E'Twaun Moore, Darius Miller, Ian Clark, and Solomon Hill on the bench-wing depth chart, he shouldn't be asked to do much more than that.

The Pelicans were already over the cap and comfortably under the luxury-tax threshold, so swapping Ajinca's $5.3-million expiring deal for Johnson's $6.1-million expiring deal doesn't change their accounting this year. It also won't really move the needle on the court, but Johnson was essentially acquired for free and provides a bit of injury insurance - cold as that comfort may be. You can never have too much depth on the perimeter.

Clippers: N/A

The Clippers, by all accounts, were going to waive Johnson anyway, as they needed to trim their roster from 17 to 15 players by Monday's 5 p.m. ET deadline.

And even though Johnson started 40 games and played more than 20 minutes a night for the team last season, there wasn't room in a wing rotation featuring Tobias Harris, Avery Bradley, Lou Williams, Sindarius Thornwell, Tyrone Wallace, and rookies Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Jerome Robinson.

By trading Johnson for Ajinca and then waiving the Frenchman, the Clippers save a bit more than $800,000. There's no greater significance. The move wasn't designed to duck the tax, which they were already under, and they can simply pocket the money. Good for them, but the front office doesn't need a pat on the back (or scorn, for that matter) for lightening Steve Ballmer's 2018-19 bill.

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