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| Photo Courtesy: David Liam Kyle/NBAE/GettyImages |
Cleveland moved salary and lost money on another player as they shipped veteran Richard Jefferson and second-year man Kay Felder to the Atlanta Hawks for the rights to two Euro players that I don't know much about and two trade exceptions.
The Cavaliers also included two future second-round draft picks and three million dollars to cover the salaries of Jefferson and Felder.
Atlanta is expected to release both players, which mildly surprises me as I would think the Hawks, who are starting a rebuilding process, wouldn't at least take a look at Felder.
The 37 year old Jefferson averaged just under six points a game last season for the Cavaliers after arriving before the 2005-06 season as a free agent from Dallas.
Jefferson was used as the defensive stopper off the bench and was the main defender against Kevin Durant in the 2017 NBA Finals.
Jefferson's days were likely numbered when Dwyane Wade was signed as Wade is a better offensive player at a similar position and Wade is younger as well.
The question that I have is will Jefferson even play anymore as he considered retiring after the Cavaliers championship so he may decide to retire or at least take some time and wait to see if you catch on with a contender later in the season.
Felder was a second-round pick from Oakland that the Cavaliers acquired before last season, paying 2.4 million to the Hawks ironically and averaged four points in 42 games in a season that saw Felder spend time with both Cleveland and Canton of the "D League".
Felder was the player that the Cavaliers appealed to the league to be allowed to sign one of the new "two-way" contracts between the NBA and D League, but the league turned it down since Felder was already signed.
Cleveland wanted to keep Felder but after that decision Felder was going to be caught up in a numbers game after bringing in Isaiah Thomas, Derrick Rose, and Jose Calderon all during the last off-season, the Cavaliers simply couldn't carry four guards at the point, if they didn't have the ability to move Felder up and down from Canton, where he was ready if needed, but could have used the everyday playing time for his game.
Felder averaged 29.9 (That's not a typo!) points per game for the Charge in eleven games in Canton.
This is what I know about the two European players that the Cavaliers received the rights to.
Dimitrios Agravanis is a 22 year old,6'10 Greek center that averaged four points and three rebounds for his Greek league/Euroleague teams last season.
Sergiy Gladyr is a 28 year old, 6'5 shooting guard from the Ukraine that played in the French league last season and averaged nine points per game.
I wouldn't bet very much (about a penny maybe) that either of these two ever spend a minute in Cleveland.
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