The Cleveland Cavaliers are finally moving on from J.R. Smith. Unable to find a trade partner, the team has waived the veteran swingman, according to a report from The Athletic’s Shams Charania. Smith will now be an unrestricted free agent. According to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, the Los Angeles Lakers will not be a potential destination for Smith, despite his connection to LeBron James.
The move was expected following earlier reports about the Cavaliers’ plans regarding Smith from Joe Vardon of The Athletic, and Chris Fedor of Cleveland.com. Heading into Monday, there was the possibility that the two sides could agree to extend today’s deadline by paying Smith another $750,000, but there was no agreement.
The Cavaliers have been shopping Smith on the trade market for a long time, dating back to the early days of the 2018-19 season when they shut him down from playing on November 19. Despite being uninjured, Smith only appeared in 11 games before the Cavaliers opted to simply sit him.
Smith’s contract was a unique one in which a team could send Cleveland $15 million in bad money and then waive him by July 1, prior to the two sides agreeing to extend that guarantee date, where it would only count as $3.8 million towards their salary cap for the 2019-20 season. General manager Koby Altman spoke of the advantage the Cavs had in possessing Smith as a trade chip, via Evan Dammarell of Forbes.
“We are actually the only team in the NBA that can provide guaranteed cap relief until July 1. We can guarantee that right now and we actually had a phone call (Thursday) on that trade chip, so, we’re going to keep on being aggressive adding those assets because we do eventually want to consolidate and be really good at some point.”
With Smith waived instead of being traded, the Cavs will have wasted the veteran guard as a valuable trade asset.
The 14-year veteran had served as the team’s starting shooting guard since he was acquired from the New York Knicks in a trade package during the 2014-15 season. Smith would go onto to start in four consecutive Finals, including playing a key role in the Cavs overcoming a 3-1 deficit in the 2016 NBA Finals to win the championship.
However, after LeBron James left the franchise prior to the start of the 2018-19 campaign and head coach Tyronn Lue was fired after an 0-6 start to the season, the organization made it clear that they were in an all-out rebuilding mode. Cleveland went on to trade veterans Kyle Korver, George Hill and Rodney Hood during the season.
It is unclear at this time what teams would be interested in Smith, but considering he’s a career 37.3 percent shooter from beyond the arc and shot 37.5 percent from 3-point range as recently as the 2017-18 season, there should be some NBA franchise willing to sign the established veteran for the 2019-20 season.
