The Thunder has been injury plagued and was in need of veteran leadership, and they compensated for some of their short-handed roster and lack of experience by signing Sebastian Telfair mid-July.
Russell Westbrook went down during OKC's second game of the season, and so emerging point guard Reggie Jackson and Telfair were forced in roles with bigger minutes at the one. Both Jackson and Telfair embraced their increase in play time and thrived in the Thunder's complicated situation. Over his time in OKC, Telfair averaged 8.4 points per game and 2.8 assists per game, while playing 20.5 minutes as a nightly average.
During a Thunder win on Wednesday night against the Utah Jazz that snapped a six-game losing streak, Marc Spears of Yahoo! tweeted that the Thunder have waived Telfair:
The Thunder say they waived point guard Sebastian Telfair. He averaged 8.4 points and 2.8 assists in 20.5 minutes per contest in 16 games.
— Marc J. Spears (@SpearsNBAYahoo) November 27, 2014
This move could be a result of doctors clearing superstar point guard Russell Westbrook to return to action on Friday, as many rumors have been swirling around about a potential return of both Russ and Kevin Durant on Black Friday. With Westbrook back, OKC will have no more use for Telfair, and so they thought the best decision was to waive him and hope a team will claim him and relieve the Thunder of the cap room he drains. After all, they did have to use an exception to sign guard Ish Smith, who was also acquired to deal with the injury situation in Oklahoma City. Smith may be the next man out.
Telfair could get picked up mid-season by any number of teams depending on which players go down to injury and which teams aren't getting enough production at the one.