Wednesday’s NBA free agency kickoff saw a couple of splashes by Detroit. The Pistons ran through most of their $18 million in cap room by signing Chicago’s Ben Gordon and Milwaukee’s Charlie Villanueva. While the signings won’t make headlines in Gainesville, they both have possible implications on some former Gators.

The Bulls are expected to move John Salmons over to the vacated shooting guard spot abandoned by Gordon. The team is also rumored to be shopping combo-guard Kirk Hinrich in hopes of finding a more natural shooting guard.

Last season, Hinrich split time between point guard and shooting guard. His departure would open a hole at backup point guard, as Chicago isn’t expected to retain aging stop-gap Lindsay Hunter to tutor rookie of the year Derrick Rose.

When the team opens summer league play in Las Vegas next week, they’ll be auditioning two former Gators for that spot — Anthony Roberson and Taurean Green.

Roberson was acquired by the Bulls in a mid-season trade and was rarely used down the stretch. Green is fresh off of a season overseas and is looking to catch on with another NBA team after splitting his rookie campaign two years ago between Denver and Portland.

Both players have ties to current Bull and former Gator Joakim Noah. We know that Green and Noah paired up to win back-to-back national championships with UF. Little known is that when Noah took his official recruiting visit to Gainesville, he was hosted by none other than Roberson. The two have remained close ever since.

Meanwhile, the Bucks will be looking for someone to eat up some of the minutes at power forward left behind by Villanueva. While Milwaukee isn’t likely to find an replacement in the waning free agent crop, it may find a contributor currently on its Las Vegas summer roster.

Chris Richard is fully healed from the back injury that cost him most of his NBA Developmental League season and is signed on to play for the Bucks’ summer league team starting next week.

More former Gators are expected to be participating in summer league play. Marreese Speights has already confirmed that he’ll be playing with the 76ers in the Orlando Summer League starting Monday. Several other teams have yet to release their summer rosters.

Summer league games are not televised, but they are streamed live on NBA.com for free.