Kings send Travis Outlaw, Quincy Acy to Knicks for Wayne Ellington, Jeremy Tyler, 2016...

[Yahoo! Sports - NBA -]

[gets roused from deep August slumber] Hey, a trade happened! Neat! [peruses the details of the report from Sam Amick of USA TODAY Sports ] Oh. Well, it's something, at least! According to Amick, the New York Knicks have agreed to ship shooting guard Wayne Ellington and power forward Jeremy Tyler to the Sacramento Kings for forwards Quincy Acy and Travis Outlaw. This ends Ellington's illustrious Knicks career before it ever actually began; he joined the team in the June trade with the Dallas Mavericks that brought Ellington, Jose Calderon, Samuel Dalembert and Shane Larkin to New York in exchange for Tyson Chandler and Raymond Felton. Oh, well. Once a Knick, always a Knick. The deal also includes the Kings gaining full, free-and-clear ownership of the Knicks' 2016 second-round draft pick. New York originally shipped that selection to the Portland Trail Blazers in the July 2012 sign-and-trade that brought Felton back to the Big Apple (and essentially escorted Jeremy Lin out of Madison Square Guarden ). It was later re-routed to the Kings in last summer's three-way deal that sent Robin Lopez to Portland, Tyreke Evans and Jeff Withey to the New Orleans Pelicans, and Greivis Vasquez to Sacramento. Before Wednesday, the pick was scheduled to stay with New York if it fell between the 31st and 37th pick in the 2016 draft; now, all protections have been lifted, and it goes to Sacramento no matter what. Knicks president of basketball operations Phil Jackson recently told reporters that he felt the New York roster was “short big and long in the guard corps," and said he had "to do roster management there." With Iman Shumpert, J.R. Smith and Tim Hardaway Jr. likely to sop up the bulk of the minutes at shooting guard, Ellington — something of a throw-in element in the Mavericks deal after playing just 393 minutes for Rick Carlisle in his lone season in Dallas — was the odd man out. He may soon be one again; Amick reports that the Kings "could use the stretch provision on Ellington, who is owed $2.77 million next season, to improve their salary cap situation," although a final determination on the former North Carolina standout's status hasn't yet been made. Ellington's next team will be his fifth in six seasons, and while the last couple of years of free-agent market-watching suggest that a 26-year-old swingman capable of knocking down long range shots at a better-than-average clip (38.6 percent for his career, with marks of 39 percent or higher in four of his five seasons) will probably get another chance somewhere, his inability to do very much else with any regularity thus far in his pro career suggests that we shouldn't hold our breath for him to walk into a well-paid significant role on a team of consequence.

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