On December 18, Beijing time, according to The Athletic's famous Shams-Charania report, the Rockets have cut Chinese player Zhou Qi. Subsequently, the Rockets officially released the news and officially cut the Chinese player Zhou Qi. Since landing in the NBA in the summer of 2017, Zhou Qi has played only 19 games in total, averaging 1.3 points, 1.2 rebounds and 0.7 blocks in 6.6 minutes per game.
As a second-round show for the 2016 season, Zhou Qi signed a four-year contract worth $5.57 million with the Rockets. However, only the first year of this contract is a guaranteed contract, and the remaining three years are non-guaranteed contracts:
2017-18 season: 820,000 (guaranteed contract)
2018-19 season: 1.38 million (non-guaranteed contract)
2019-20 season: 1.62 million (non-guaranteed contract)
2020–21 season: 1.75 million (non-guaranteed contract)
Under the terms of the contract, Rockets can choose whether to convert Zhou Qi's contract to a fully guaranteed contract before January 10, 2019. Now it seems that the Rockets do not intend to leave Zhou Qi! In fact, from D'Antoni's attitude towards Zhou Qi this season, Chinese fans should have thought of this long ago.
This season, Zhou Qi played only one game for the Rockets (home against the Blazers on October 31), a game in which he played the last 57.3 seconds and scored 2 points on 1-of-1 shooting. After the game, Zhou Qi was sent to the Vipers. Some fans concluded: No one in the inner line can not use Zhou Qi, and the injured person is about to come back without Zhou Qi; the record is bad without Zhou Qi, and the record recovery still does not need Zhou Qi.
For the result of Zhou Qi's cut, I believe that many Chinese fans have made psychological preparations. According to the NBA's labor terms, Zhou Qi already has great hopes of staying in the NBA. Within 48 hours of his being cut by the Rockets, the rest of the NBA teams could come out and claim Zhou Qi's contract. If no one claims, Zhou Qi can be called a free agent and sign any team!
Not long ago, Zhou Qi himself took the initiative to break the news and replaced the AMERICAN agent, and it seems that he has already begun to plan ahead. According to the well-known NBA commentator Yu Jia, some teams have already asked Zhou Qi's newly replaced American agent about Zhou Qi's status. "Today at nine o'clock to broadcast the rocket, the result is that the rocket and Zhou Qi can not continue to go on, two seasons for Zhou Qi has a lot of gains and accumulation, and now is the time to start another new journey." There are already some teams asking Zhou Qi's newly replaced American agent about Zhou Qi's status, let's look forward to it together. ”