Cavs Set To Renounce Ilgauskas, Harris

[Karma]

With Wednesday's decision (Robert Traylor) and the expected release of shooting guard Lucious Harris in the next 15 days, the Cavaliers will have reduced their roster to just seven players. When the free-agency signing period begins -- currently scheduled for July 14 pending the NBA lockout -- it is expected the team will renounce the rights to Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Jeff McInnis, DeSagana Diop, Dajuan Wagner, Scott Williams and Traylor.

That will leave the team with just $24 million committed in salaries for next season. Last season's salary cap was $43 million, but it is expected to climb to between $47-$50 million once the new collective bargaining agreement is settled. It would give the club a chance to sign two or three impact free agents.

The Harris decision was definately expected, as it was with Ilgauskas. This doesn't mean Ilgauskas is gone, as all it does is add flexibility to our free agent quest. July will be an interesting month with around 7 players needed to fill our roster.

 

[Fundamentals]

Cavaliers waive Lucious Harris

By TOM WITHERS, AP Sports Writer
June 16, 2005
CLEVELAND (AP) -- The Cavaliers cleared out more salary cap space Thursday by waiving reserve guard Lucious Harris, who never found his shooting touch during a dreadful season in Cleveland.

Harris' release comes one day after the club declined to pick up forward Robert Traylor's $1.76 million option for next season. Harris would have made $2.75 million, a portion of which would have been guaranteed if he was still on the roster July 1.

The Cavaliers have eight players on their roster, accounting for a $23.3 million payroll. Last season's salary cap in the NBA was $43 million, but could go up by several million next season whenever the issues surrounding the new collective bargaining agreement are resolved.

The league is facing a possible lockout at the end of the month.

Meanwhile, Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert will be giving his next general manager plenty of money to spend on free agents. Gilbert has interviewed several candidates for the job but is waiting to see what Detroit coach Larry Brown's plans are before finalizing Cleveland's front office.

Brown has had preliminary talks with Gilbert about joining the team as its president of basketball operations.

Harris signed as a free agent in October with Cleveland after playing seven seasons for the New Jersey Nets. The 6-foot-5 guard was picked up by the Cavs to help their woeful outside shooting.

However, Harris didn't help much. He shot less than 40 percent from the field and only 32 percent on 3-pointers -- a drop from his career average in both categories. Harris averaged 4.3 points and 1.7 rebounds in 73 games, scoring in double figures only seven times.

In his 12-year career, he has averaged 7.2 points and 2.3 rebounds in 800 games.

http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news?slug=ap-cavaliers-harris&prov=ap&type=lgns

 

[Karma]

Farewell Lucious. It's a shame it didn't work out as his leadership and "shooting" could have been handy. However even this waned as the season wore on. Basically he just disappointed on all levels.

 

[Glen Infante]

Good bye to Lucious. I had high hopes on that guy. What a dissapointment he turned out to be. Man...

All this cap talk is starting to pump me up a bit. I can't WAIT to see who the new Cavaliers are going to be.

 

[NarlCavs]

Gilbert and the Cavs have to make big moves with all this cap space. If major additions are now not made than this whole salary clearing process will be a failure.

I'm surprised Harris was waived now. The Cavs supposedly had until July 1 to make a decision. Harris could have had some value since he has a non guaranteed contract. The problem might have been no team had the cap space to take on his contract before waiving him off their roster or the Cavs would have had to take back a contract that they didn't want to take.

The Cavs have a lot of spots to fill to complete thier roster. They might end up with quite a few veteran minimum players to fill out the final roster spots.

 

[Pioneer10]

I was hoping Harris's contract could have been used as trade bait. I doubt any trades are being planned now: it's all about the FA market

 

[E-Light]

I think the only reason we would cut harris so early is because we have no intention on making trades that could bring on more hold. If we trade harris for a pick, we automatically have a hold. We are going all out in free agency is the only reason I can think of not waiting the full amount of time.

 

[jason436]

I don't really see where Harris would have helped us in a trade. The closest thing I can come to is that the team we're trading with would actually get a player in a trade. We can still trade with a team that's trying to dump a player and we can take back the whole salary because we're under the cap. So if the player is making 2 mil our cap space would be reduced by 2 mil and the team we're trading with would lower their payroll by two mil. I'm not sure but would they pick up a trade exception too?

A contract like Harris is much more useful if the Cavaliers would be over the cap. If this was the case we could trade Harris to a team that is trying to dump salary and might be willing to part with a useful player. In this transaction we could trade Harris for the player, our cap figure would be about the same but the team we trade with could decline the option and lower their salary. This is similar to how the Knicks acquired Marbury, all though to a much lesser extent. The Knicks knew their weere going to be over the cap for a long time to come so they could trade some over thier ending contracts (which wouldn't help them get under the cap) for a player that's better then what they're giving up.

 

[LyXo]

I think this is a good move. It might be shining the path that we want to buy back in to the draft, as opposed to trading back into it. Hopefully we'll snag it from Memphis for under 3 mil.

 

[King]

Im glad to see Lu gone. If he could have actually hit those open shots we kept getting him like he used to in NJ, we would probably have a few more wins on our record. Too bad we wasted all those minutes on him instead of giving them to Sasha. At least we get some more cap space out of him for the offseason.

 

[DawgOnKing]

Amen. Goodbye Lu Harris. Best of luck and all, but I'm certainly glad to see you off. Not a bad move bringing him in, but he never found any sort of rythem in the wine and gold.

 

[Glen Infante]

His offense definatly stunk during the season, but I am pretty sure that the coaches put him ahead of Sasha because of his experience on defense.

Sasha usually makes a couple bone headed fouls in a matter of minutes after checking in the game.

 

[West Remy]

His offense definatly stunk during the season, but I am pretty sure that the coaches put him ahead of Sasha because of his experience on defense.

Sasha usually makes a couple bone headed fouls in a matter of minutes after checking in the game.

While Sasha makes mistakes, he also makes positive things happen as well. Lucious avoided making youthful mistakes but he never ADDED anything. At best, on a good night, Lucious was breaking even while Sasha could actually contribute. Unless you're a great team with a few positions you can throw away with "break even" type of guys, you need every guy out there to be fiesty, courageous and gutsy. I just don't like the mild sauce type of guys like Harris.