Memphis traded for Jordan Hawkins on September 8. Memphis was done with Jordan Hawkins by October 2. Twenty-four days, zero regular season games, and a former No. 14 pick is back on the open market.
ESPN’s Shams Charania reported that the Grizzlies and Hawkins mutually agreed to part ways, which is the polite framing for a waiver that lets the player go find something better. Once he clears waivers, the 24-year-old guard is free to sign anywhere.
The trade that lasted three weeks
New Orleans sent Hawkins, Micah Peavy, a future second-round pick and a future second-round swap to Memphis. The Pelicans got back A.J. Johnson and Taj Gibson, who is 41 and was always likely to be waived.
The Pelicans were not really shopping for talent in that deal. They were clearing roster space and salary room to finish a two-year, $16 million signing of Bennedict Mathurin. Hawkins was the cost of doing paperwork.
Memphis then ran into its own math problem. Facing a roster crunch and prioritizing the development of Jaylen Wells, Scotty Pippen Jr. and Cam Spencer, the Grizzlies decided the guy they had just acquired was the odd man out.
How a 2023 first-rounder gets here this fast
Hawkins went 14th overall to New Orleans in 2023 out of UConn, where he was a national champion and one of the best movement shooters in college basketball. The scouting report was simple and it was good: an elite shooter who never stops moving, and a player who needs a system built to find him.
Three seasons later the line reads 8.0 points and 2.3 rebounds across 174 games with the Pelicans. That is a real NBA career for a specialist. It is also not enough production to survive a roster squeeze when you are the newest name on the sheet.
The brutal part is that Hawkins never had a stable situation to be good in. New Orleans cycled through coaches, injuries and roster directions during his three years there, and then moved him in a deal that was openly about cap space. Memphis acquired him while pivoting toward youth after sending Ja Morant to Portland.
Nobody in either building ever sat down and designed an offense around what he does well.
Where he lands next
Shooters this specific always get another phone call. Somebody will want a guard who can relocate off the ball and get a jumper off in half a second, and the price is about to be very low.
Another chance was never the hard part for Hawkins. The hard part is landing somewhere that went looking for him on purpose, instead of a team that received him in an envelope with a second-round pick attached. He has spent three years as a line item in other franchises’ plans, and the Memphis stop barely lasted long enough to unpack.
There is a version of this that works out quickly. A contender with a shooting problem signs him for the minimum, slots him into a corner, and gets 15 good minutes a night out of a guy two teams just gave away. That has happened to better players than Hawkins and to worse ones.
He is 24, which is young enough that none of this has to define him. The first three years of his career were about other people’s cap sheets. The next contract he signs should be the first one that is actually about him.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.