1:35pm: The signing is official, the team announced.
12:13pm: It is indeed the qualifying offer that Dellavedova will sign, McMenamin writes in a full story, which puts his reporting in agreement with that of Mannix.
10:56am: The Cavaliers will re-sign Matthew Dellavedova to a one-year deal worth about $1.2MM, reports Dave McMenamin of ESPN.com (Twitter link). Chris Mannix of SI.com indicates that the Bill Duffy client is taking his qualifying offer (Twitter link), which is worth $1,147,276. Either way, it’ll likely cost the Cavs nearly four times as much in luxury tax penalties. The restricted free agent nonetheless appears to be taking a sharp discount from the $4MM he was reportedly seeking.
Dellavedova, who went undrafted in 2013, quickly established himself as an NBA player and further proved his worth in this year’s playoffs, and especially in the Finals, when he served as a fill-in for the injured Kyrie Irving. GM David Griffin made it clear he wanted him back, but Cleveland’s tax concerns appeared to slow negotiations. Dellavedova wanted to move on a deal at this point in part because of a desire to have his future settled before he starts playing for the Australian national team this summer, as Marc Stein of ESPN.com hears (Twitter link). The Cavs can make him a restricted free agent again next summer, since he’ll only have three years of service.
The deal puts a further squeeze on J.R. Smith, who remains unsigned, though Dellavedova’s willingness to sacrifice ostensibly leaves more flexibility for the team to pay Smith what he would like to make, depending on just how much tax owner Dan Gilbert wants to shell out. The Cavs sliced their projected luxury tax bill to little more than $4MM when they agreed to trade Mike Miller along with Brendan Haywood to the Trail Blazers, but that doesn’t include what they’d have to pay for Dellavedova’s salary, nor does it take into consideration a new deal for Tristan Thompson, who remains a restricted free agent.
Is this a fair deal for Dellavedova, or should he have held out for more? Leave a comment to tell us what you think.
It’s good depth signing. I hope Delly has practiced this offseason on his shooting. He needs to be more confident in his jump shot to be effective on the floor. Teams don’t respect his shot enough to guard him thus they play the lanes expecting him to pass.
Confidence? really? Delly lack confidence? That guy puts it up as soon as he touches it. I agree they play lanes because he doesn’t shoot well enough, but when he gets his shoot he takes it. I’ve often watched Delly thinking, wow for guy of his skill level he sure plays with a lot of confidence.
Yep. When his shot is off, and that’s often when you consider his sub 40% FG rate, he stops shooting. The problem is, he’s not passing on contested shots like the wild ones JR puts up, it’s wide open shots. Or when he is forced to take it to the whole, you know that the majority of the time he goes to lob it up for one of the bigs. It was even commented on during the playoffs. Teams really didn’t D him and instead just played the passing lanes.
There were just a lot of games where he just wasn’t a factor offensively and seemed to only serve a purpose of bringing the ball up the court, and even that wasn’t something he did well against the press.
However, I do like Delly but clearly he is on this team to play defense and get those “hustle” balls. I’d like him to be more aggressive on those open shots so his man has to at least defend him.
He is a great teammate great practice player but major LIABILTY on offense he should b happy with deal he had no other offers
He’s an asset defensively but I agree. We still exist in a world where tangible production supersedes “hustle”.
True, but at the base of it you have a great defensive player who can pass really well and manage a game. If he can get even a semi-consistent 3 point shot I can see him playing a similar role to a Kirk Heinrich or George Hill.
It looks about right for him, as of now. Good deal for both sides, in my opinion. Maybe he could have got slightly more, but not enough that you turn down a chance to be in the position he is in with the Cavs. He’ll be all the more important, with kyrie and mo Williams both being liabilities defensively
If Delly improves his shooting I can see him getting around 6M per great move by both, Cleveland resigns a fan fav and delly gets the chance to help his stock next off season
He shouldn’t even be allowed to play in the nba with all the trouble he caused last year in the playoffs against the bulls and hawks. The incident with Gibson, Korver, and the attempt to hurt AL horford as well.. he’d a joke and a dirty player.. if he plays when I’m in town I’m getting tickets just to throw garbage at him because that’s what he is. Dirty garbage.
Hard working blue collar type. He will bring Great back up defense.