It was recently reported that the Xinjiang Flying Tigers were aggressively looking to part ways with Kenyon Martin. They simply wanted to waive the underachieving NBA veteran, but the CBA was threatening punishment if they were to go through with it. So, they found another solution: a buyout of his contract. Yahoo! Sports was first to report…
Kenyon Martin has severed ties with the Xinjiang Guanghui Flying Tigers of the Chinese Basketball Association, but he won’t be able to secure a FIBA letter of clearance to return to the NBA until the team’s season ends sometime in February or March, sources told Yahoo! Sports.
The regular season runs through mid-February for Xinjiang, but the Flying Tigers expect to qualify for the playoffs.
For Martin and Xinjiang, the breakup was simply a chance to end a partnership that hadn’t been productive. Martin, who turns 34 on Dec. 30, had been nothing resembling a dominant force in the CBA, averaging 14 points and seven rebounds in a league with few NBA-level big men.
After playing out his contract with the Denver Nuggets last season, Martin is an unrestricted free agent. There are NBA teams interested in him, but clearly they’ll take a close look at his knees and try to understand why he struggled to find his past explosiveness in China. Was he simply not playing hard enough, or is he not healthy?
Well I’d be happy to answer that question for NBA teams: he wasn’t playing hard. He did have a few minor injuries that seemed to be nagging him, but right from the get-go he looked like a different, far less energetic and enthusiastic basketball player than we’ve seen over his 11 years in the NBA. His 14-point average came on 48% from the floor, a shooting percentage worse than he posted in all but 4 of his 11 NBA seasons. He’d apparently decided that he was going to be the Dirk Nowitzki of China, attempting 12 three-pointers in the same number of games, only to miss every single one of them. He didn’t play aggressively on the offensive end, settled for an awful lot of jump shots, and didn’t crash the boards as hard as I feel that he could have, despite a 9.5 RPG average (not nearly as impressive in the stat-crazy CBA as it would be in the NBA). I expected Kenyon to make the biggest difference on the defensive end, but that never came to fruition either.
All of this boggles my mind a bit, to be honest. Kenyon has always been a competitor. I’m surprised his pride didn’t force him to exert a little more effort in these CBA games. He was handily out-played by former D-Leaguer Charles Gaines in his first regular season contesnt, resulting in a 22-point Xinjiang loss. Upon arrival he confidently declared his goal–to win the Flying Tigers the title that has eluded them despite three consecutive finals appearances.
What happened? I followed this situation as closely as possible, yet I have no idea where exactly things went wrong. All I can say is that K-Mart rarely looked like the K-Mart you’ve all seen in the NBA. Flashes of dominant ability on either end of the floor were extremely few and far between.
I suppose none of that matters anymore. I expect that Martin will still get plenty of offers from NBA contenders in need of frontcourt depth and continue on with his NBA career this spring. The only questions left for Martin are when and where.
Xinjiang is currently 8-4, and I imagine they’ll seek out a K-Mart replacement to pair with Patty Mills, who has been as good as Martin was bad. Barring unforseen circumstances they will certainly be a playoff team, and probably one of the stronger ones. The regular season ends on February 15th, but the final game of last year’s championship series wasn’t played until March 27th. The season did start 20 days later in 2010, so the worst case scenario for Martin appears to be a return some time around the first or second week of March.
I keep reading things like ”this sets the standard for potential buyouts involving Wilson Chandler, Aaron Brooks, and JR Smith.” Uh… no. You see, they aren’t playing poorly, and why would they wish for a buy out if they won’t be able to get a letter of clearance until the season wraps up anyway? They may as well continue to collect money over there if they can’t over here. Kenyon Martin’s buyout only happened because he wasn’t playing well and his team wasn’t happy. Guangdong (Brooks), Guangsha (Chandler), and Zhejiang (Smith) are in second, third, and fourth in the standings right now.
