OKC Thunder Sign Mustafa Shakur - To Keep Him In Tulsa?

Mustafa Shakur is expected to sign for the rest of the season with the Oklahoma City Thunder according to this tweet from Yahoo!'s Adrian Wojnarowski.

Shakur is averaging 20.4 points, 7.1 assists and 4.6 rebounds (as well 2.3 steals) while shooting 50% from the field and 40% from beyond the arc for the Tulsa 66ers.  He may still be able to add to those averages, however, because Kevin Henry reports on 66ers Nation that Shakur "will likely be assigned to Tulsa to finish out the current NBA Development League season."

Essentially, this seems to be in the same vain as the Spurs calling up Curtis Jerrells last week - "We don't want you to go to another team, but we don't really have much use for you anymore this season, so we'll pay you NBA money to continue to develop in our system in the D-League as well as getting an extended look at you this Summer."

While I don't have any evidence of this being the case, I wonder if the Washington Wizards didn't plan to call him up (they eventually called up Cedric Jackson) or the Sacramento Kings didn't come calling, but Shakur gave the Thunder an option to match before accepting another team's offer.  Like I said, I have no evidence that that was indeed the case, but it would make sense.

This is an excellent move from the Thunder and, essentially, the point of owning a D-League team.  I'd like it if the next collective bargaining agreement allowed these teams to not have to pay D-League players the full NBA salary to keep their rights while playing in the D-League, but if teams are willing to dish out the cash to do this already, I guess I can't complain.