When you know you’re wrong, you know you’re wrong, and J.R. Smith knows he’s wrong.
Sort of.
Rather than opting into the last year of his contract that would have paid him well north of $6 million next season, the Cleveland Cavaliers’ volume chucker elected to hit unrestricted free agency, probably thinking that he, like so many other players, would capitalize on a market hungry for long-term commitments. The salary cap will jump to $89 million next summer, after all, and there was supposed to be an influx of players seeking short-term deals in order to exploit that financial windfall in 2016 or 2017.
But that didn’t happen. LeBron James followed that path, but most others didn’t. The extent of players opting for short-term security consisted of Luol Deng exercising his player option and Dwyane Wade putting pen to paper on a one-year deal. That’s about it.
So where does that leave J.R. Smith?
Unemployed.
At least for the moment.
The market for his services hasn’t exploded by any means, and while he’s bound to find work somewhere, most likely in Cleveland, his next payday won’t be nearly as large as the one for which he could have been gearing up.
From Northeast Ohio Media Group’s Joe Vardon (h/t RealGM):
Free agent J.R. Smith said he will meet with the Cavaliers this week to discuss a new contract and is prepared for the possibility that he could make less than the $6.4 million he walked away from when he declined his player’s option with Cleveland in June.
“That’s always part of the gamble of opting out,” Smith told the Northeast Ohio Media Group on Monday at the Four Seasons hotel in Las Vegas, where the NBA players’ union held its summer meeting.
Smith has kept a low profile during the NBA’s free agency period, which is a bad thing for a player who opted out of his contract to seek a raise. …
Asked if he regretted his decision to decline his contract option, Smith said “Uh, I mean, yes and no.
“No because I’ve gotten offers that I wanted, I mean numbers that I wanted, it’s just different situations,” Smith said. “Right now it’s just a matter of seeing what the Cavs come back to me with. Right now they give me the best opportunity to win.”
This is kind of interesting.
Maybe it’s not so much Smith’s play style, or that he left a pile of crap 15 feet tall in New York, or that he has little to no leverage this late in free agency. Perhaps he’s just being selective.
Leon Rose, Smith’s agent, declined to tell Vardon which teams have tendered his client offers. As such, we have no idea what those offers are worth. If they were in the ballpark of $7 million to $10 million annually, though, you have to imagine that Smith would have jumped at the opportunity and subsequent raise, even if it landed him in a situation that wasn’t ready to contend next season.
Smith’s best bet at this point is probably signing for whatever the Cavaliers are offering, inking a two-year deal with a player option for next 2016-17 that’ll allow him to re-enter the open market next summer if he so chooses. This way, if he has a good year, he can capitalize on it when every team in the NBA has tons of cap space.
If he bombs in 2015-16, well, that’s what the player option is for—provided that, should the situation call for it, he’s smart enough to use it.
