Sixers swingman Jason Richardson has opted in to the final year of his contract, reports Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders (Twitter link). The move was thoroughly expected, as it enables him to collect slightly more than $6.6MM next season in spite of a troublesome left knee that hasn’t allowed him to play since January 2013.

Richardson has appeared in only 33 games for the Sixers since he came to Philadelphia as part of the four-team Dwight Howard trade in August 2012. He averaged a career low 10.5 points per game in his lone season of action with the Sixers, well off his scoring average of 17.3 PPG over the course of 12 years in the NBA.

The Sixers still have plenty of cap flexibility this summer, as Richardson’s contract becomes part of only about $26MM in commitments for 2014/15, not counting their pair of first-round picks. It’s unlikely that Philadelphia embarks on a free agent spending spree, but the ability to open plenty of cap space gives the club a mechanism to absorb salary in an unbalanced trade.