I agree, I don't see how the trade with Utah was about making cap space to sign Lebron's friends. The timing was not right to create more cap space, the trade involved bringing back more salary that we sent out, and the non guaranteed salary we received is still on the books, so no additional cap space was ever created. If anything, the trade did the exact opposite. It ate up any cap space that could have been created for free agents. The only signings that remain on the team from 2014 cap space are Lebron & Harris. Miller got the space MLE. Everyone else got min salary.
My thought at the time was that this trade was designed to convert separate assets that could not be combined in a single trade into a larger, more flexible bunch of non-guaranteed contracts that could get used to pick up a single target via trade before January. 60 days later, it doesn't look like a deal is going to happen any time soon and the Cavs have signed Amundson and Powel, players who may knock Murphy and Thomas off the roster, negating some of the benefits of the trade. ( Amundson should become tradable after 12/15, no? )
So here's the list of reasons that the trade might have happened--
1) Maybe there was a second deal lined up and it fell apart sometime after 7/22. Seems the most likely, but not necessarily the only explanation of what happened. Maybe the Cavs backed out after they saw where Haywood was. Maybe some toher team upped the asking price after the Love trade.
2) Maybe there wasn't a specific deal in place when the trade happened. It could be that this was just to create additional trade options at a future date than the trade exception & player that they had. Giving up cash, a draft pick & Felix to get that done seems like a steep price to create a trade tool that was only viable for about 6 weeks before the team had to start waiving players. Seems like their might have been other ways to do that.
3) Maybe they decided the time was right to move Carrick Felix and Griffin was willing to give up cash and a pick to do it. Carrick did have a kind of funky contract that wasn't likely to be easier to move next year. Maybe Carrick asked for a trade to a team where he had a better chance at getting playing time. Can't rule out the possibility that the Cavs wanted to move Felix.
4) Or maybe Griffin* just liked one of the incoming players more than Felix. Two of the players that they brought in were front court players, so Griffin* did mange to trade small for big, which is often hard to do. Doesn't seem likely, because all the players that came in will likely be playing at min salary if they get another contract.
* not Grant, Griffin
