11:10am: The Cavs made it official and have announced that Cooley has been signed and Johnson has been waived.
9:15am: The Cavaliers have reached a deal with unrestricted free agent power forward Jack Cooley, Shams Charania of Yahoo Sports reports (Twitter link). The details of the agreement are not yet known, but Cleveland is over the luxury tax line and limited to offering just the league minimum. The Cavs currently have 20 players on their roster, and Cleveland will waive Chris Johnson to clear room to ink Cooley, Chris Haynes of The Northeast Ohio Media Group tweets.
Cooley, 24, was in training camp with the Jazz on a non-guaranteed deal, but Utah waived him on Tuesday. The forward made 16 regular season appearances last season for the Jazz, averaging 1.7 points and 1.6 rebounds in 5.4 minutes of action per night. While Cooley provides additional frontcourt depth, Cleveland could be bringing him in as insurance in the event Tristan Thompson‘s holdout is a prolonged one, though that is merely my speculation.
Johnson, 30, went undrafted out of LSU back in 2009, and is not to be confused with swingman Chris Johnson out of Dayton. The Johnson whom the Cavs are cutting last appeared on an NBA regular season roster back in 2012/13, when he made 30 appearances for Minnesota. His career NBA averages are 2.9 points, 1.9 rebounds, and 0.6 blocks to accompany a slash line of .562/.000/.699. He spent the 2014/15 campaign playing in China.