Cleveland Cavaliers: 3 takeaways from reported waiving of J.R. Smith

The Cleveland Cavaliers reportedly waived J.R. Smith on Monday, which puts an end to possible trade discussions surrounding the veteran, and his NBA future seems uncertain.

The Cleveland Cavaliers seemed to have plenty of belief that they would be able to acquire a quality asset and/or a valuable future NBA first-round draft pick in exchange for the trading of J.R. Smith and his unique contract.

Smith will instead finally just be waived at this point, though.

Smith, whose full-guarantee date of his contract was set to maybe be pushed back to August 1 (according to Cleveland.com’s Chris Fedor) in order for the Cavaliers to keep pursuing possible trades, was reportedly likely to be waived at some point on Monday, according to The Athletic‘s Joe Vardon, and it was then reported Monday late afternoon that Smith was indeed waived, per Shams Charania of The Athletic and Stadium.

Per Fedor (before the official waiving of Smith), Cleveland likely plans to “waive and stretch Smith’s $4.3 million guaranteed,” (which Charania noted was $4.4 million-plus), but anyway, as Fedor highlighted, “over the next three years.”

Fedor would then go on to note that by Cleveland waiving and stretching Smith over that time period, Smith will count for “$1.4 million against Cleveland’s salary cap for the next three years instead of $4.3 million,” in the 2019-20 season, and then noted how that would keep the Cavs below the luxury tax threshold in a tweet on the matter.

Smith won’t be making the fully-guaranteed $15.68 million (per Spotrac) he was due to make had his contract for next year been played out, due to him being for the most part, an ineffective player based on minutes-share, while also having an injury-riddled 2016-17 season in which he appeared in only 41 games, per Basketball Reference.

So what’s the first takeaway on the situation involving Smith?

#1: The valuable future asset wasn’t there in the Cavs’ eyes

It was widely reported throughout the time that Smith and the Cavs agreed on him not becoming an active member of the team in November until the 2019 NBA trade deadline that Cleveland was hoping to find a good trade partner for Smith, and the same interest was reportedly there in the time leading up to the draft in June and/or up until his first partial-to-full guarantee date that was set to be on June 30 initially.

Cleveland general manager Koby Altman reportedly touched on how Smith’s contract was a “trade chip” in an after-regular season press conference, because it would count for its full $15.68 million amount in trades because of it being negotiated in the last Collective Bargaining Agreement, and Smith’s deal at the time would’ve given a potential trade partner $11.81 million in salary cap relief (the original partial guarantee was for $3.87 million, per Spotrac).

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The Cavs and Smith/his representation (Klutch Sports) would eventually agree to extend the guarantee/partial guarantee date on Smith’s contract to July 15 and potentially, as Fedor mentioned, extend that again to August 1, to give Cleveland more time to find a possible trade partner for Smith that would help out their rebuild.

That being said (again, per Fedor), the Cavs wanted a “future first-round pick,” in exchange for the Smith cap relief, and even would be willing to take on “two-plus years of bad money,” but based on no deal happening, Cleveland did not get back a future draft pick they deemed to be worth it for taking on more bad money and being a “tax team.”

That was the case in relation to Altman/the front office, even though Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert was reportedly willing to take on that bad contract payroll, and in a combination of salaries and taxes, “would’ve resulted in a cost of more than $50 million,” again, according to Fedor.

Cleveland even reportedly tried to trade Smith to the Golden State Warriors in exchange for Andre Iguodala (per Fedor), but Golden State eventually dealt him to the Memphis Grizzlies.

Anyway, I don’t blame Altman and the front office for not making Gilbert pull his teeth out by being a repeater tax team for a club that is probably guaranteed to lose a whole bunch of games again in 2019-20; to Gilbert’s credit, as we’ve mentioned here at KJG time and time again, though, he’s clearly willing to spend to help the team’s rebuild, and that deserves some praise at the very least.

On to takeaway number two involving the Cavs’ waiving of Smith.