Hey JR Smith, Make Up Your Damn Mind!

Well isn’t this a shocking turn of events. Remember just yesterday when it was reported that JR was unhappy and he was considering taking time away form the team after falling out of the rotation? He responded by saying this

What? He chose to stay, for what a day only to then request a trade? Is that what’s happening here? I mean we have no reason to not believe Joe Vardon who is a senior reporter who covers the Cavs for The Athletic. It’s just the perfect JR scenario if you ask me. Try and deny you wanted out, only to immediately request a trade so you can get out. That’s great.

The problem is, what exactly is JR’s market? In terms of his contract, he is making $14.7M this year, and next season he has a salary of $15.6M, but only $3.8M is guaranteed if he’s not waived by 6/30/19. Who out there has the pieces/money to move that also has a need for what JR can bring. While streaky, I suppose he’s a legit option from deep for a team that needs shooting, and you’re looking at teams like NO/DET/LAL/MEM/MIN as decent teams that could be looking to upgrade in that area. The problem is, what can those teams give up to make the money work? The easy bet is that LeBron forgives him for his Finals mistake and he finds his way to LA. The problem there is they don’t have the money to make it work unless they can figure out a third team, and given NBA rules they can’t trade any of their new players just yet. So that’s probably out when you consider they don’t want to carve into next year’s cap space either, especially for JR.

Now if he were to get cut and could sign for like the minimum or something that’s different, but I would find that extremely unlikely as well. That’s the problem with JR’s deal, it’s hard to move especially with teams wanting to be flush with cash as we enter next summer. There’s no doubt he can help someone, it’s not as if he’s washed or anything, the market is just tough for a player with this kind of salary right now. Now maybe someone like the Kings could figure out a way to make it work, they have 11M in cap space as it is and do have some contracts they could move to get the money close. They’re 24th in 3PM as it stands now, so JR would in theory provide help in that department.

We’re yet to see JR publicly deny this report like he did yesterday, so that tells me it’s legit. Sadly though I feel like he’s stuck in CLE for the time being, who knows maybe things change by the trading deadline in February, but this was something the Cavs should have handled over the summer when they were in the process of their “rebuild”. LeBron made them give that contract, and sadly now they’re stuck with it.