Cleveland wants Kevin Love, that much is clear. On Tuesday, the Cavaliers traded Carrick Felix, $1 million and a future second-round draft pick to the Utah Jazz for John Lucas III, Malcolm Thomas and Erik Murphy, according to Yahoo! Sports' Adrian Wojnarowski.
Cavaliers trade for Utah’s John Lucas III, Malcolm Thomas and Erik Murphy
With Kevin Love up for the taking, Cleveland has started to make moves.
Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports
Utah's trading John Lucas, Malcolm Thomas and Erik Murphy to Cleveland for Carrick Felix, future 2nd and $1M, sources tell Yahoo.
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@WojYahooNBA) July 22, 2014 Lucas, Thomas and Murphy are all on non-guaranteed contracts, making them valuable assets in a trade as SB Nation’s Mike Prada outlined earlier on Tuesday. Together, the three make up $3.6 million in non-guaranteed money that an incoming team -- Minnesota -- could immediately waive in order to clear cap space.
Although there was some confusion on Twitter about the order of operations, Mark Deeks of ShamSports.com tweeted on Tuesday that since the Cavaliers are under the salary cap, it allows them to immediately trade all three players again. Of course, Cleveland could keep one or all three of them.
#Cavs source insists they like all 3 players acquired, not necessarily stepping stones to bigger deal. But certainly provides options
— Jason Lloyd (@JasonLloydABJ) July 22, 2014
Meanwhile, the Timberwolves are mulling over Cleveland's trade offer that reportedly involves Andrew Wiggins. Chicago jumped back into the discussion on Tuesday afternoon, and as the Cavs look to build around LeBron James the impetus to include more assets to fend off a division rival has grown even larger.
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