Courtesy of USA Today Sports: Festus Ezeli's progression could make Andrew Bogut expendable.

The Portland Trail Blazers waived veteran center Festus Ezeli on Friday, the deadline for the team to move on from him before guaranteeing his entire 2017-18 salary.

The Ezeli experiment was a tremendous waste of time and money for Portland. The team signed him to a two-year, $15.1 million contract last summer. This, despite the fact that he was coming off an injury-plagued career with the Golden State Warriors.

In the end, Ezeli did not play a single game for the Blazers this past season while dealing with more injury issues to his knee.

This means that Portland paid Ezeli a grand total of $8.4 million for his presence on the bench throughout the 2016-17 campaign.

Ezeli, a first-round pick of the Warriors back in 2012, put up his best performance during the team’s run to NBA Finals back in 2015-16. That season saw him average 7.0 points and 5.6 rebounds per game.

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An editor here at Sportsnaut. Contributor at Forbes. Previous bylines include Bleacher Report, Yahoo!, SB Nation. Heard on ESPN ... More about Vincent Frank