The Washington Wizards waived third-year guard Ron Baker on Monday, per ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski. The Wichita State product was on a non-guaranteed deal, and with the league-wide guarantee date looming on January 10, the Wizards smartly cut bait instead of taking the cap hit.

Washington has waived Ron Baker, league source tells ESPN.

— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) January 7, 2019

Aside from losing Baker’s fantastic lettuce, the move is a plus for Washington. The team now have two empty roster spots, creating ample flexibility to take in players via trade or simply sign guys with more upside.

Marginal transactions like this one, it should be said, rarely make a noticeable difference to a franchise. The Wizards have to sign at least one guy in order to make the league roster minimum, so they won’t save any money by clearing off Baker’s salary. And with a losing record and nothing to offer beyond minimum deals, DC won’t be a marquee destination for buyout candidates.

Baker wasn’t a part of the team’s future, though. The 25-year-old logged 857 minutes in his rookie year with the New York Knicks, but that figure dropped to 385 last season and just 152 so far this year. His career shooting numbers: 35.8 percent from the field and 26.5 percent from three. Yuck.

Baker is a combo guard who cannot play off the ball at the NBA level. His playmaking, as you can see in his career BBall Index talent grades below, is fine, though still nothing amazing. So is his perimeter defense. But players who are so poor at so many different offensive actions need one or two elite skills to compensate. Baker graded D+ or below in everything but playmaking, and he’s turning 26 in March:

Players filling 14^th roster spots are, by definition, fringe NBA players. So you may as well sign fringe guys with one or two clear skills and the potential to develop over the coming years. They may be lottery tickets, sure, but acquiring older players (i.e. Baker) is like not buying a ticket at all.

This thought process isn’t anything new. Listen to one episode of Dunc’d On and you’ll probably hear Nate Duncan or Danny Leroux say similar things about someone else chilling on an NBA bench. Plus, Washington has experience with end-of-the-bench success stories. Thomas Bryant is now the team’s starting center – averaging almost 9 and 5 on 67 percent shooting this year – after the Wizards acquired him off waivers last summer.

Bryant, not Baker, is the profile the Wizards front office should look to as they scour the free agent market. Raw, overlooked, young players with upside exist all throughout the G-League. They’re not unicorns.

Six years ago, when I was prepping for SAT vocabulary in high school, someone told me to choose the word I’d never seen over the recognizable one that I knew didn’t quite work for the given question.

It would behoove the Wizards – how’s that for SAT vocab? – to use the same logic. Don’t worry about known quantities who have failed to impress elsewhere. And don’t be scared of the lesser-known youngsters looking for their first chance to shine.