Miami Heat Rumors: Trade interest for J.R. Smith in salary move

Per The Athletic’s Shams Charania, Miami Heat rumors abound that the team is interested in acquiring J.R. Smith from the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Trade talks are starting to ramp up as we near the draft and free agency, and as a result we’ve got Miami Heat rumors to discuss. According to Shams Charania of The Athletic, the Heat have “expressed an interest in a salary-designed trade of J.R. Smith“.

Smith took most of the 2018-19 season off and expressed an interest in getting out of Cleveland as he didn’t believe the organization was interested in winning. He played just 11 games last season, starting only four of them.

As expressed in the quoted text, the Heat are most likely interested in acquiring Smith for the purposes of salary relief. He has an expiring $15.68 million contract for the coming season, but only $3.87 million of that salary is guaranteed. This means that if the team that has the rights to that contract can waive him before June 30th and will save $11.81 million.

The Miami Heat also have Ryan Anderson under contract, another player with a hefty unguaranteed salary for the 2019-20 season. Anderson’s upcoming salary is $21 million, but he and the organization agreed to reduce the guaranteed amount to just $15.6 million. This means if the Heat opt to stretch and waive him, he would instead be owed $5.2 million in each of the next three seasons instead of the whole amount this season.

Combined, the Heat could acquire J.R. Smith and then waive both Smith and Anderson and free up just over $22 million. Given that the Miami Heat are an onerously expensive team, that still wouldn’t be enough to actually get cap space to spend on premiere free agents, but it gets them far away from the luxury tax at the very least.

The Heat do have a number of contracts which could closely match Smith’s own salary for trade purposes, including James Johnson, who makes $15.3 million in 2019-20 and Kelly Olynyk, who makes $13 million next season..