Spurs waive former lottery pick Josh Primo five games into 2022-23 season

Saturday update: According to ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne and Adrian Wojnarowski, the Spurs released Primo after allegations surfaced of him exposing himself to multiple women. Primo will be a free agent Monday if no team claims him through waivers but this is a development which will give plenty of franchises some pause. Primo himself acknowledged the need to work through some things in his previous statement but now there’s more clarity on the situation with this report.

Update: Primo has issued the following statement and it seems he’s dealing with some stuff outside of basketball which requires some time away from the game. It’s still not a reason to release him, so the Spurs are going to have some explaining to do here.

The San Antonio Spurs unexpectedly decided to waive guard Josh Primo five games into the 2022-23 NBA season. Primo was a lottery pick for the team in the 2021 NBA Draft but never quite clicked in his limited opportunities in his rookie season.

Primo averaged 5.8 points, 1.6 assists and 2.3 rebounds per game in his rookie season with the Spurs as he largely played behind Derrick White and Dejounte Murray. Devin Vassell eventually saw more time as those guard were both traded, but Primo couldn’t latch on in the rotation. With San Antonio adding more guards through this draft, Primo being on the way out made sense. However, waiving him five games into a season is ridiculous business. The Spurs could’ve attempted to find a trade partner or tried to see if he could fit in the rotation before cutting bait at the deadline. We’ll see where Primo catches on next.