If Cleveland is attempting to acquire non-guaranteed salary to include in a deal for Love, it is, most likely, because they are essentially trying to trade Love for Wiggins straight up, but the salaries won’t match. If they were to trade Love for Wiggins (30 days after Wiggins signed his contract), they would need to send an additional $5.2 million if such a trade would leave Cleveland under the luxury tax (which, given their current roster, it would), or an additional $7 million if such a trade would leave Cleveland over the luxury tax (possible if they add another vet or two between now and then). There are no players on Cleveland’s current roster who isn’t a veteran (and thus someone LeBron wants to stay, namely Varejao) that can make up that $7 million difference, and only one who can make up the $5.2 million difference – Anthony Bennett. While Bennett was relatively disappointing for a #1 overall pick, he still has positive value, and it makes sense they would balk at Minnesota demanding both Wiggins and Bennett. But since the deal won’t work due to the CBA without Bennett, Minnesota gets to keep asking for the pair.
So Cleveland needs to come up with $5.2 million in non-guaranteed contracts, so they can offer Wiggins and the filler for Love. These contracts need to stay non-guaranteed until at least 60 days from when they are acquired, as that is the earliest these contracts can be added into a deal for Love. Furthermore, Cleveland doesn’t have much, if any, cap room left, so these contracts, for the most part, need to be for the minimum salary, since you’re allowed to take on as many minimum contracts as you want (as long as you’re not breaking some other rule about roster size or the hard cap). Below is a list of contracts, by team, that meet the following requirements:
1) Cleveland can acquire them (are a minimum salary, has enough cap room (less than $2 million,) didn’t recently trade them like Henry Sims)
2) Are completely non-guaranteed through October 1st
3) Are not a player that the current team values highly (like Patrick Beverly), as those aren’t the right kind of players to use as simply salary filler
(All data from shamsports)
Boston: Chris Johnson ($915,243), Chris Babb ($816,482) – Total: $1,732,725
Brooklyn: Jorge Gutierrez ($816,482)
Houston: Josh Powell ($1,310,286)
Milwaukee: Chris Wright ($915,243)
Orlando: Dewayne Dedmon ($816,482)
Philadelphia: Casper Ware ($816,482), Hollis Thompson ($816,482), Brandon Davies ($816,482), Elliot Williams ($981,084) – Total: $3,430,530
Toronto: Diante Garret ($915,243)
Utah: Malcolm Thomas ($948,163), John Lucas III ($1,600,000) – Total: $2,548,163
(Note: John Lucas III may make too much to fit in Cleveland’s cap room, since he’s not a minimum salary player.)
Anyway, we either have the second or third most amount of non-guaranteed salary for Cleveland to use. However, our non-guaranteed plus Philly’s still does not get Cleveland to the magic number of $5.2 million – they’re short by under $100k. Philly also has Jarvis Varnado, who has $75k of his $915,243 salary guaranteed – that’s a nominal sum that probably gets made up by a team sending the other cash. Accordingly, Cleveland probably does best if they acquire all of Philly’s and Utah’s non-guaranteed deals, but if they can’t absorb Lucas, taking Babb and Johnson plus all of Philly’s (including Varnado’s) would work for them too. It likely would cost them some second round picks to encourage the teams to play along.