Former Clemson star big man PJ Hall has been released by the Denver Nuggets
According to Tony Jones of The Athletic, Denver is releasing Hall, who spent this past season on a two-way deal with the Nuggets. His departure opens up a two-way roster spot as the Nuggets prepare for the offseason.
Hall, a 6-foot-10 forward, saw limited action at the NBA level during his rookie campaign, appearing in 19 games and averaging 1.7 points and 1.2 rebounds while logging about 3.5 minutes per outing. He connected on 58.3 percent of his shots in that stretch. The 23-year-old also suited up for the Grand Rapids Gold in the G League, where he put up impressive numbers — 19.2 points and 12.5 boards per game, along with 1.8 assists and just over a block per contest.
After going undrafted in 2024, Hall joined Denver's organization and reunited with another former Tiger, Hunter Tyson, who joined the Nuggets by way of a second-round pick and trade in 2023.
At Clemson, Hall left his mark as one of the program's top big men in recent memory. He became just the 14th player in school history to be named first-team All-ACC and wrapped up his final season averaging 18.3 points and 6.4 rebounds. His 659 points that year set a new single-season record for the Tigers, and he finished his college career 10th on Clemson's all-time scoring list with 1,702 points.
Hall will now look for a fresh start as he hopes to continue carving out a role at the professional level.
Contact us @Clemson_Wire on X, and like our page on Facebook for ongoing coverage of Clemson Tigers news and notes, plus opinions.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Fox News
26 minutes ago
- Fox News
ESPN star slams WNBA players' treatment of Caitlin Clark amid All-Star ranking controversy
ESPN broadcaster Dick Vitale came to the defense of Indiana Fever star Caitlin Clark after her WNBA peers voted her as the ninth-best All-Star guard. Clark's ranking was a shock to many across the social media landscape. She was named one of the captains for the All-Star Game and received more than 1.2 million fan votes. The WNBA determined All-Star starters based on fan rank, media rank and player rank. The total weighted score helped determine the starters. The second-year guard was ranked ninth among her fellow All-Stars, "It is ABSURD the way that a # of players in the @WNBA have treated @CaitlinClark22! So sad but I bet they love the CHARTER FLIGHTS -the increase in SALARIES - the CROWDS -the TV Ratings since she arrived from @IowaWBB. No doubt she is THE BEST - thing to happen to the WNBA," he wrote on X. He was far from the only one who voiced his opinion on the issue. One potential reason why Clark's peers ranked her so low among guards is due to playing only nine of the Fever's 16 games this season. Clark has been dealing with injuries in her sophomore season, which continues now as she's missed the last two games. Clark had been struggling lately as well, going just 13-of-47 from three-point territory in her last three games. Still, Clark is averaging 18.2 points, 8.9 assists, five rebounds and 1.6 steals over 33.3 minutes per game this season. Only the Phoenix Mercury's Alyssa Thomas – who could be among the 12 All-Star Game reserves, which will be selected by the league's head coaches and announced this Sunday – has more assists per game (9.3), and she's touched the hardwood in 12 contests this season. While Clark has been integral in the rise of the WNBA's popularity since breaking rookie and league records last season with the Fever, there have been many contentious moments with opponents. All the incidents became the talk of the sports world for a few days. But Clark and Minnesota Lynx star Napheesa Collier will be the ones drafting players to their All-Star squads, and now they know who will be starting with them at the Gainbridge Fieldhouse, Clark's Fever home, on July 19. Follow Fox News Digital's sports coverage on X and subscribe to the Fox News Sports Huddle newsletter.
Yahoo
34 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Phillies' Rob Thomson Reveals Andrew Painter Will Be Shut Down for All-Star Break
Phillies' Rob Thomson Reveals Andrew Painter Will Be Shut Down for All-Star Break originally appeared on Athlon Sports. The Philadelphia Phillies have one of baseball's best starting rotations. What makes it even better is the fact that multiple starters aren't even pitching yet. Aaron Nola is on the injured list, and the 5th ranked prospect in baseball, Andrew Painter, is still working things out in the Minor Leagues. Advertisement Painter was invited to the MLB Futures Game, but Phillies manager Rob Thomson announced that Painter wouldn't pitch in the game. According to Todd Zolecki of Thomson is sticking to the team's plan to shut Painter down during the All-Star break. Thomson and the Phillies are being extra careful with Painter after his injury, which knocked him out all of 2024. This decision, to keep him shut down during the All-Star break, could also point to a future decision from Thomson. If the Phillies stick to their other plan, which is bringing Painter up sometime in the second half of July, this shut-down period could be a good chance to see how Painter's body reacts to time off. Advertisement The Phillies' rotation is strong, and there isn't much room for Painter at the Major League level. With that in mind, Painter might have to go a decent amount of time between starts. Philadelphia Phillies manager Rob Thomson (59) looks on from the dugout against the Pittsburgh Pirates at PNC LeClaire-Imagn Images Even if he takes over for Mick Abel, Nola is right in line with Painter for his return to the mound for the Phillies. Painter might be looking at a less straightforward call-up to the big leagues, as the Phillies' rotation is too good to break up at the moment. Regardless of when Painter is called up, this plan from Thomson to sit Painter in the Futures game is one to monitor. If Painter reacts well to time off, then there will be more optimism going forward when they eventually bring him up to the Major Leagues. Advertisement Painter is one of baseball's most anticipated MLB debuts waiting to happen. As the Phillies plan to be careful with him, Painter is set to be shut down during the All-Star break and not pitch in the MLB Futures Game. Related: Phillies Make Bryce Harper Announcement Before Padres Game Related: Dream Phillies Trade Idea Lands Twins Superstar for Ascending Mick Abel This story was originally reported by Athlon Sports on Jul 1, 2025, where it first appeared.
Yahoo
40 minutes ago
- Yahoo
With Damian Lillard's time in Milwaukee coming to an abrupt end, what's next for the star guard?
The Milwaukee Bucks are waiving superstar point guard Damian Lillard, using the stretch provision in the NBA's collective bargaining agreement to wipe the final two years and $113 million of his contract off of their balance sheet, ESPN's Shams Charania reported Tuesday. The dramatic move comes just over two months after Lillard, who turns 35 in two weeks, ruptured his left Achilles tendon during Game 4 of Milwaukee's first-round playoff matchup with the Indiana Pacers — an injury that's expected to keep him sidelined for most, if not all, of the 2025-26 NBA season. Advertisement It will also create the salary-cap space for the Bucks to sign free-agent center Myles Turner, who helped lead the Pacers to the 2025 NBA Finals, to a four-year, $107 million contract to man the 5 spot next to Giannis Antetokounmpo — giving Milwaukee's two-time MVP a new floor-spacing, rim-protecting frontcourt running buddy after the similarly styled Brook Lopez, Antetokounmpo's partner for the last seven seasons, agreed to terms to join the Los Angeles Clippers on Monday, after the start of the NBA's 2025 free agency period. The waive-and-stretch brings an abrupt end to Lillard's 21-month tenure in Milwaukee — a time that seemed poised to produce one of the great inside-out partnerships in recent NBA history, but that wound up, due to a combination of ill-timed injuries, inconsistency and awful luck, leading to zero 50-win campaigns, zero postseason series victories, and just three total playoff game wins over two seasons. Viewed through one lens, it's a brutal twist of the knife for Lillard, who finally pushed his way out of Portland after 11 seasons as the Trail Blazers' standard-bearer in pursuit of greener championship-contending pastures, but whose best-laid plans never came to fruition. Advertisement Lillard produced, because he always does: 24.6 points on .604 true shooting, 7.0 assists and 4.5 rebounds in 35.7 minutes per game across two seasons in Milwaukee, finishing 10th in the NBA in points and assists per game and 11th in offensive estimated plus-minus last season. But he never quite found a rhythm in the two-man game with Antetokounmpo, never quite established the short-hand that can help make a team more than the sum of its all-time great parts, and never quite proved to be the order-of-magnitude offensive upgrade that justified moving on from defensive title-winning stalwart Jrue Holiday — a realization that proved particularly painful when Holiday got re-routed to Boston and immediately became a vital two-way contributor to the Celtics' 2024 NBA championship. The ending feels particularly devastating for Dame considering all that precipitated it. He'd been diagnosed with a blood clot in his right calf in late March, mere weeks before the end of the regular season, an affliction that many expected would sideline him for the remainder of the Bucks' season. But he fought his way back in time for the second game of Round 1 against Indiana, a quicker recovery than 'has [ever] been seen before' … only to tear his Achilles just six minutes into Game 4. While plenty of observers saw the injury as an inflection point for Lillard — a moment that could come to define the final act of the career of one of the 75 greatest players in NBA history — I'm not sure anyone expected it to be followed, barely two months later, by the Bucks cutting bait on him. Everyone knows the NBA is a business; every once in a while, though, you're reminded just how cold it can be. If you view it through that lens, that is: While we wait to see where Lillard lands, the Bucks move on. Advertisement The stretch provision allows NBA teams to waive a player by taking the amount of guaranteed salary he's owed and spreading it out over a period of twice the number of years remaining on his contract, plus one more season — provided the stretched amount does not exceed 15% of the salary cap. (This, as Fred Katz recently explained at The Athletic, is why the Suns can't stretch what's left of Bradley Beal's deal; in combination with the previously stretched contracts of E.J. Liddell and Nassir Little, going that route would leave Phoenix with an amount of dead money larger than 15% of this season's cap line.) Lillard was just about to start the two-year, $112.6 million extension he signed with the Portland Trail Blazers back in the summer of 2022. Stretching that amount creates a dead-money charge just north of $22.5 million — about $680,000 south of 15% of the cap, according to ESPN's Bobby Marks — and the Bucks will have to carry that historically large number on their books in every season through 2030. That unmovable $22.5 million annual charge looms as a mammoth roster-management impediment for Milwaukee over the next half-decade — the kind of prolonged and protracted dead weight that can make maneuvering in pursuit of title contention through the back end of Antetokounmpo's prime even more difficult than it already figured to be. But with Giannis only guaranteed to be under contract in Milwaukee for two more seasons — he holds a $62.8 million player option for 2027-28 — the only future the Bucks can realistically plan for is the one right in front of their faces. Advertisement And so: yet another incredibly aggressive win-now move from the team that brought you the trades for Holiday and Lillard (not to mention like a decade's worth of second-round picks for Nikola Mirotić and Jae Crowder). General manager Jon Horst and the rest of the Bucks' braintrust decided that attempting to avoid wasting the first of those two guaranteed Giannis seasons on a gap year while Lillard, now essentially a $54.1 million dead cap hit for next season anyway, rehabilitates — that moving on from him in a fashion that allowed them to replace Lopez with a younger championship-caliber 3-and-D center in Turner, and hopefully putting themselves in position to remain in the playoff picture in an Eastern Conference ravaged by injuries and roiling in uncertainty — was worth swallowing hard and taking that $22.5 million year-over-year hit. After all, Antetokounmpo is 30 years old, still performing at an MVP level, and very clearly focused on continuing to pursue a second NBA championship. He is the face of the franchise, the prime mover in all things Bucks, the greatest player Milwaukee has seen since Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the one who brought the organization back to the mountaintop after 50 years away; if you're not doing everything you can to make him happy, to make sure he wants to stay, to give him a team that he believes he can lead back to that summit, then what are you really doing? Advertisement Whether Tuesday's breathtaking revision of the Bucks' financial and on-court future accomplishes those goals — making him happy, making sure he wants to stay, giving him a team he can believe in — remains to be seen. Some reporting suggests that Antetokounmpo didn't like the Bucks moving on from Lillard in this manner; some suggests that Antetokounmpo and Turner 'valued the opportunity to partner together on the court,' and that Giannis effectively recruited Turner to Milwaukee. Your mileage, as ever, may vary. The Bucks exited the regular season looking to be all but out of options to construct a contending roster around Antetokounmpo over the balance of Lillard's deal. They exit the first two days of free agency having added Turner in Lopez's place, brought back Bobby Portis, Gary Trent Jr., Kevin Porter Jr., Taurean Prince and Jericho Sims, flipped Pat Connaughton's contract (with a pair of future second-rounders) for Serbian guard Vasilije Micić (who's reportedly heading back to Europe, the savings from which should finish the job of creating the room to add Turner), and landed Gary Harris as another backcourt shooter off the bench to join holdovers Kyle Kuzma and 2024 second-round pick Tyler Smith, with A.J. Green, Andre Jackson Jr. and Chris Livingston all on non-guaranteed deals, and Ryan Rollins lingering in restricted free agency. It feels like you have to squint awfully hard to see that core contending for an NBA championship. In a decimated East, though — with the Celtics shedding starters for luxury tax relief, with the Pacers now down the starting point guard and starting center from their Finals team, with the Knicks still lacking a head coach — you might be able to convince yourself that, with Antetokounmpo leading the charge, this revamped version of the Bucks has as good a puncher's chance as some of the other reloaded outfits (Orlando, Atlanta) that are now taking aim at the top of the conference. And if that's the way Giannis feels — if he sees this as a step in the right direction, despite the discomfort of bidding Dame adieu — then it's the path the Bucks had to walk.
