Cavs, Raptors Eye Will Cherry
Will Cherry‘s strong summer league showing for the Cavs this month has Cleveland strongly considering a more substantial arrangement with the free agent guard, and the Raptors also have serious interest in him, reports Marc J. Spears of Yahoo! Sports (Twitter link). It appears as though the teams are envisioning him as a training camp invitee, though it’s conceivable he could wind up with at least a partial guarantee, given the competition for his services.
The 6’1″ 23-year-old averaged 12.8 points and 4.0 rebounds in 25.3 minutes per game in five appearances for the summer Cavs in Las Vegas. Cleveland is also familiar with Cherry from his work for its D-League affiliate last season, when he notched 11.6 PPG and 3.7 RPG in 30.4 MPG. He also dished out 4.5 assists per contests in his time with the Cavs affiliate.
Cherry went undrafted out of Montana in 2013, and he wasn’t in an NBA camp last fall. The Raptors have 13 guaranteed contracts and the Cavs have only 12, but Cleveland’s roster is in flux as a potential Kevin Love trade looms, leaving it uncertain whether Cherry would have a better shot in Cleveland or Toronto.
And-Ones: Love, Harris, Marble, Monroe
The market for Kevin Love is likely less active than reports have been indicating, observes Sam Amico of Fox Sports Ohio, who suggests that Flip Saunders probably isn’t deciding between a multitude of remarkable offers, but is instead patiently waiting, hoping for an exciting proposal to come in soon. Here’s tonight’s look around the NBA..
- One league source told Amico that the flux of rumors based around a potential Love/Wiggins swap is “textbook Flip,” implying that Saunders is leaking information that he thinks could benefit the Wolves’ return on a Love deal. Amico wouldn’t confirm or deny the source’s speculation, however.
- Joe Harris‘ deal with the Cavs and Devyn Marble‘s with the Magic are structured almost exactly the same way, reveals Mark Deeks of ShamSports (on Twitter). Each rookie will make $884,879 in the first season, $845,059 in the following campaign, and $980,431 during the third and final year of the deal. However, unlike Harris’ agreement, Marble’s contract becomes non-guaranteed past the first season, according to Deeks.
- Lang Greene of Basketball Insiders looks at the options on the table for restricted free agent Greg Monroe. Greene thinks that like all of the game’s best big men, Monroe will get a hefty pay day eventually; it’s just a question of when it’ll be. Should Monroe decide to sign his qualifying offer this summer, he’ll be forfeiting potential earnings for the upcoming season but opening up the door to become an unrestricted free agent next offseason.
Eastern Rumors: Harrington, Wiggins, Love
The Wizards would like to have Al Harrington back, and the matter of whether he plays for the team next year is essentially up to him, according to J. Michael of CSNWashington.com. The 34-year-old has decided to play in the NBA next season after contemplating retirement. More from the Eastern Conference:
- Andrew Wiggins‘ name has come up in trade talks with the Wolves, but the Cavs haven’t offered him as part of any proposal for a Kevin Love trade, tweets Sam Amico of FOX Sports Ohio. That nuanced accounting of the discussions might illuminate some of the conflicting reports about Cleveland’s true willingness to part with the No. 1 pick.
- Terry Pluto of The Plain Dealer thinks the Cavs shouldn’t trade for Love unless they receive full assurance that he will commit for at least two years to the team, considering how difficult it would be to transition from a young, sub-.500 club to a championship contender in just one season. Love is reportedly agreeable to remaining with Cleveland alongside LeBron James, but hasn’t indicated a willingness to opt in for next season’s player option in order to delay his free agency for another year.
- The Celtics haven’t completely given up hope of landing Love, but they’re prepared to move on, a source tells A. Sherrod Blakely of CSNNE.com. That’s why Boston is among the teams trying to function as the third team in a swap that sends Love elsewhere.
Chuck Myron contributed to this post.
Cavs Sign Andrew Wiggins
The Cavaliers have signed No. 1 overall pick Andrew Wiggins, the team announced. The move triggers a 30-day period in which Cleveland can’t officially complete a trade involving him. The Timberwolves have demanded Wiggins be a part of any package involving Kevin Love, and while there are conflicting reports, many of them indicate Cleveland is willing to include him.
It’s a virtual certainty that Wiggins will receive a salary of slightly more than $5.5MM this season, as our table of salaries for 2014 first-round picks shows. That amount would help salaries match in a trade should the Cavs decide to pull one off after the 30 days are up. Still, the Cavs could have traded his rights immediately had they held off on signing him, using other players to help balance the salaries.
The 6’8″ swingman entered his freshman season at Kansas last year as far and away the top prospect for the 2014 NBA draft, but an underwhelming performance allowed others, including teammate Joel Embiid, to contend for the top spot. Embiid seemed the odds-on favorite until he broke his foot, and Wiggins prevailed over Jabari Parker of Duke, to whom the Cavs also reportedly gave strong consideration.
Wiggins averaged 17.1 points and 5.9 rebounds along with 34.1% three-point shooting in 32.8 minutes per game for Kansas this past season, earning consensus All-American honors. The 19-year-old chose agent Bill Duffy of BDA Sports as his representative.
Cavaliers Sign Joe Harris
THURSDAY, 2:56pm: The contract is official, the team announced.
TUESDAY, 7:20pm: The deal will reportedly be for $2.7MM over three seasons, tweets Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders.
6:55pm: The Cavaliers will sign second-round pick Joe Harris to a three-year rookie deal, a source tells Shams Charania of RealGM.com (Twitter link). The deal will be guaranteed over two seasons with a team option in the third year, Charania adds. Since the arrangement stretches over three years, the Cavs will use cap space to complete the transaction, as neither the minimum-salary exception nor the room exception allows for a contract that long.
The small forward from the University of Virginia was the 38th best prospect in the rankings that Chad Ford of ESPN.com compiles but just 49th with Jonathan Givony of DraftExpress. He had a slightly reduced role this past season as a senior after notching 16.3 points per game in his junior year. He put up just 12.0 PPG this time around, but he maintained 40.0% three-point shooting, so he shapes up as a long-distance threat for Cleveland.
Harris spoke to Zach Links of Hoops Rumors prior to the draft, crediting Virginia coach and highly touted NBA coaching prospect Tony Bennett for helping him improve defensively.
How The Cavs/Jazz Trade Worked Financially
It seemed from the moment that news of Tuesday’s trade between the Cavs and Jazz surfaced, the deal was somehow more significant than a swap involving four backups normally would be. The Cavs reportedly see some value in John Lucas III, Malcolm Thomas and Erik Murphy as players rather than simply as non-guaranteed contracts, but an earlier report indicated the team had been looking for non-guaranteed deals specifically to strengthen its bid for Kevin Love. The trio doesn’t represent an overwhelming step toward Love, but the move gives the Cavs more options they can present to the Wolves, which might make the difference as Minnesota president of basketball operations Flip Saunders sorts through several competing packages.
A key part of the trade involves a separate transaction. The Cavs struck a deal that same evening with No. 33 overall pick Joe Harris worth precisely $2,710,369 for three years, including a guaranteed $884,879, according to Mark Deeks of ShamSports. That it runs three years indicates that the Cavs need to use cap space to complete the transaction, since neither the minimum-salary exception nor the room exception, the two vehicles other than cap space the Cavs have for signing free agents, allows for contracts longer than two seasons.
The Cavs have yet to officially announce their deal with Harris, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they haven’t officially signed him. Sometimes teams never make official announcements when they sign draft picks, for any number of possible reasons. The Bulls never announced having signed 2008 No. 1 overall pick Derrick Rose to his rookie scale contract, as Deeks pointed out earlier this month (on Twitter). The RealGM transactions log shows the Harris signing as having taken place, and the presence of his salary figures on Deeks’ database is further indication that the Harris signing is official. That means the signing had to have taken place prior to the trade, which the Cavs did officially announce, since Cleveland wouldn’t have had the cap room necessary to sign Harris to his deal had they executed the trade first.
The Cavs entered Tuesday evening with $56,030,677 in salary and a cap hold of $4,592,200 for Andrew Wiggins, who remains unsigned. That left them with $2,442,123 worth of space beneath the $63.065MM cap. The Harris signing brought that room down to $1,557,244. The Cavs, as the NBA allows them to do, then appeared to split the Jazz trade into two parts. The first involves taking on Lucas’ $1.6MM salary and Murphy’s $816,482 salary in exchange for Felix’s $816,482 salary. Murphy and Felix essentially cancel each other out, so it amounts to an absorption of the $1.6MM Lucas salary, putting the Cavs over the cap by $42,756. The NBA lets teams complete trades that take them as much as $100K above the salary cap without conforming to salary-matching rules, so the Lucas salary just barely squeezes in under this requirement.
That move puts Cleveland over the cap, leaving the Cavs to execute the rest of the trade, a simple acquisition of Malcolm Thomas, using the salary-matching rules required of a capped-out team. The incoming $948,163 salary of Thomas is obviously greater than nothing, which is what Utah is getting in this side of the deal, but fortunately for Cleveland, players on minimum-salary contracts don’t count as incoming salary in the NBA’s matching game. Thomas makes the minimum, so the trade is kosher.
The Jazz needn’t worry about splitting the transaction or dealing with any salary-matching requirements, since they were well under the cap before the trade and are even further beneath it in the aftermath of the deal. The Cavs must continue to deal with the ripple effects of having landed over the cap. By all appearances, that bars them from aggregating Thomas in a subsequent trade for two months. While the Cavs can trade Thomas by himself, no trade limitation applies to either Lucas or Murphy, since Cleveland acquired them while under the cap. Cleveland nonetheless appears ready to sign Wiggins, triggering a 30-day waiting period before he can be traded, and since the Wolves are insistent that Wiggins be a part of any deal for Love, it doesn’t appear as though Cleveland is in any position to rush to make a Love trade official.
All of this hinges on the Harris signing truly having already taken place, as all indications suggest. If it weren’t official, it’s possible the Cavs could have structured the trade differently with the intent of later opening up the cap room necessary to formalize the Harris signing. Still, it appears as though deft management of timing gave Cleveland the opportunity to sign its second-rounder to a three-year deal, which is significantly more valuable to the team than a two-year contract would be, as I explained last year. The Cavs did so while still acquiring non-guaranteed contracts that they can flip, sooner or later. Utah receives some more cap space, as well as Felix, ostensibly the player with the most upside in this transaction, having been picked 33rd overall just a year ago. Time will tell if it was indeed a trade that helped both teams, but the deal has the makings of being just that.
Contract Details: LeBron, Deng, Carter, Gasol
The idea that the Cavs would trade LeBron James sometime during his two-year contract is outlandish, but just in case it happens, the deal includes a 15% trade kicker, according to Mark Deeks of ShamSports. Deeks has updated his salary database with plenty of new information on deals signed within the past few weeks, so we’ll pass along some of his noteworthy findings. All links to go the relevant salary page at ShamSports.
- Luol Deng, LeBron’s replacement with the Heat, also has a 15% trade kicker, as do new Grizzlies swingman Vince Carter and Knicks signee Jason Smith.
- The last year of Pau Gasol‘s three-year deal with the Bulls is a player option.
- The final season of the contract Joe Harris signed with the Cavs is non-guaranteed.
- Eric Griffin‘s three-year, minimum-salary contract with the Mavs is non-guaranteed, with the exception of a $150K partial guarantee for this coming season.
- Jodie Meeks‘ deal with the Pistons was originally reported to be more than $19MM, but it actually checks in at $18.81MM.
- Damjan Rudez will make $3.449MM over the life of his three-year deal with the Pacers, which includes a team option for the final season. Shayne Whittington‘s partial guarantee with the team this year is worth $25K.
- Russ Smith‘s deal with the Pelicans runs three years at the minimum salary, but only the first season is fully guaranteed. Fellow Pelicans rookie Patric Young‘s two-year deal is non-guaranteed, save for a $55K partial guarantee this year.
Ray Allen Mulling Retirement Amid Cavs Pursuit
JULY 23RD: Allen is leaning towards returning for a 19th season to join LeBron with the Cavs, sources tell Gary Washburn of the Boston Globe (via Twitter). We heard earlier tonight that Allen will be making a decision once he gets MRIs on his legs.
JULY 12TH, 9:46am: If Allen plays another season, it will be with the Cavs, sources tell Sam Amico of FOX Sports Ohio. Amico notes that Cleveland has been in contact with Allen’s agent as their efforts to add familiar veterans around LeBron James intensify.
2:51pm: The Cavs haven’t had contact with Allen yet, according to Alex Kennedy of Basketball Insiders (Twitter link).
1:13pm: Allen’s priority is to keep playing with LeBron, wherever LeBron chooses to go, tweets Bleacher Report’s Ethan Skolnick.
JULY 9TH, 10:10am: The Cavs are trying to woo free agent Ray Allen, reports Chris Broussard of ESPN.com (on Twitter), but the shooting guard is strongly considering retirement, as Alex Kennedy of Basketball Insiders hears (Twitter link). The pursuit Allen would appear to be part of Cleveland’s effort to entice LeBron James to sign there after the Cavs agreed to a trade this morning that will give them enough cap room to accommodate a max contract for James.
Allen, who’s 11 days shy of his 39th birthday, has been leaning toward returning for another season with the hope of playing with James for another season, but it’s unclear whether he wants to follow the four-time MVP from Miami to Cleveland should James elect to move north. The Jim Tanner client remains one of the league’s better three-point shooters, though his accuracy from behind the arc slipped to 37.5% this past season, his lowest mark in four years after three straight seasons in which he bettered his career percentage of 40.0%.
Cavs, Andrew Wiggins Near Deal
WEDNESDAY, 2:59pm: The Cavs expect that they’ll receive a signed contract from Wiggins on Thursday, tweets Jason Lloyd of the Akron Beacon Journal.
SUNDAY, 6:25pm: The Cavs are planning to sign No. 1 overall pick Andrew Wiggins to a contract in the coming week, a source close to the process tells Brian Windhorst of ESPN.com. Wiggins, of course, has been linked to the Kevin Love talks, but the hold up in the deal reportedly wasn’t related to those discussions.
The Cavs, sources say, are merely exploring options for using their estimated $1.4MM in remaining cap space before signing Wiggins to a contract that will pay him in the neighborhood of $5.5MM as a rookie. The Cavs and Timberwolves have been discussing a Love trade since the return of LeBron James, with sources saying that Minnesota is insistent on getting Wiggins back in any deal that sends Love to Cleveland. Once Wiggins signs, though, league rules stipulate that the Cavs must wait 30 days before trading him.
One option under consideration for the Cavs, sources say, is using their leftover salary-cap space to create long-term contracts for recent second-round picks Joe Harris and Dwight Powell. Signing Wiggins first would preclude such moves.
Once the Cavs exhaust their cap space and sign Wiggins, they are expected to officially sign free agent Mike Miller to a two-year, $5.6MM deal. The Cavs also remain interested in free agent Ray Allen, but they’ll only be able to offer him a $1.4MM veteran’s minimum contract.
Bulls Offer Gibson, Mirotic, McDermott For Love
12:45pm: The Wolves contacted the Bulls within the last 24 hours to tell them that Cleveland’s proposal was their favorite but that it wasn’t enough to convince them to trade Love just yet, a source tells Joe Cowley of the Chicago Sun-Times. The Bulls responded with their offer, Cowley adds, having heard that Chicago put Gibson, McDermott and a few other assets on the table for the Wolves. Cowley’s source couldn’t confirm whether Mirotic was part of the offer, but regardless, the Wolves are giving the proposal strong consideration, the Sun-Times scribe writes. The Bulls are confident, after reaching out to Love through backchannels, that he will commit to staying in Chicago for the long term, Cowley adds.
11:32am: The Bulls are offering a package of Taj Gibson, Nikola Mirotic and Doug McDermott for Kevin Love, as a source confirms to Darren Wolfson of 1500 ESPN Twin Cities (on Twitter). Chris Sheridan of SheridanHoops.com was the first to report the offer. Sheridan hears the Wolves like Chicago’s package best among those on the table, but Wolfson contends that Minnesota would prefer a deal that nets them Andrew Wiggins from the Cavs (Twitter link).
Still, there’s confusion around the league about why the Wolves haven’t agreed to a deal with the Cavs if Wiggins is truly available, Grantland’s Zach Lowe tweets. Some close to the situation said prior to the report of Chicago’s offer that Love would likely wind up with the Bulls, according to USA Today’s Sam Amick (on Twitter).
The general belief has been that the Wolves would seek Gibson, Jimmy Butler and other assets from the Bulls, as Marc Stein and Brian Windhorst of ESPN.com reported Tuesday, and Wolfson noted at the time that the Wolves are high on McDermott, too. Neither McDermott nor Mirotic can officially be traded until the middle of next month, since both signed their rookie contracts in the past few days. That’s true of Mirotic even though he didn’t sign a rookie scale contract. The same complication will exist regarding Wiggins once Cleveland signs him, as expected.
Amick heard yesterday from the Cleveland camp that the Wolves still weren’t showing urgency to complete a deal for Love (Twitter link). In the same vein, the Bulls have continually told Gibson not to worry about trade rumors, as Gibson told reporters today, including K.C. Johnson of the Chicago Tribune (Twitter link). Mirotic, while in the midst of finalizing a buyout from Real Madrid of Spain before he signed with Chicago, reportedly sought assurances from the Bulls that they wouldn’t trade him, but it’s unclear if Chicago made any such promise. The Warriors and Nuggets also reportedly remain in the mix for the All-Star power forward as the Wolves seek the involvement of a third team and clubs line up to help make any Love swap a multiteam transaction.