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He cleared waivers! No team under the cap bothered to claim Metta World Peace before 5 PM Eastern, so he is now an unrestricted free agent. I'm not sure why he cleared waivers-- Is he serious about the China thing, or did he just succeed in making it seem so?-- but he's now welcome to join the Knicks if both parties are interested. And both parties are at least somewhat interested:
Metta World Peace has cleared waivers. Agent Marc Cornstein was just talking with Grunwald here.
— Marc Berman (@NYPost_Berman) July 14, 2013
Knicks considering World Peace, and vice versa, but nothing certain and (at this point) nothing expected to happen tonight.
— Howard Beck (@HowardBeckNYT) July 14, 2013
We'll wait and see. For what would probably be a minimum signing (why not? He gets the same amnesty money either way.), World Peace would be quite a pickup and a pretty easy fit. I hope the Knicks can get this done. Updates as they come.
Update: Zwerling hears Metta wants to be a Knick. We shall see!
Update (7:38 PM): Woj says World Peace will meet with the Knicks in Vegas soon, likely working toward a minimum deal of one or two years.
Update (12:42 AM): Woj now says (same link, just updated) the Knicks are offering World Peace the rest of the mini MLE. As I understand, this would actually be worth it to World Peace, because now that he's cleared waivers, the money the Knicks pay him will stack on top of of the Lakers' amnesty payout, as opposed to LA making up the difference. Otherwise, it'd be really, really weird for the Knicks to pay him more for no reason.