The Miami Heat recently used their amnesty clause on Mike Miller, meaning that any team with salary cap room can place a blind bid on him. According to Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports, the Cleveland Cavaliers are one of the teams considering making a bid for Miller.
The Cleveland Cavaliers are strongly considering making an amnesty waiver bid to claim former Miami Heat forward Mike Miller, league sources told Yahoo! Sports.
Cleveland has made several free-agency signings, including center Andrew Bynum, guard Jarrett Jack and forward Earl Clark, with a focus on returning to the playoffs next season. Miller is close friends with LeBron James, and the Cavaliers are planning to make a run to re-sign him in 2014 free agency.
Woj seems to think that the Cavaliers would be making this move in attempts to better their odds of getting LeBron James next summer. I'm not exactly sure how this would work because it's unclear just how much salary cap room the Cavaliers will have once Andrew Bynum is officially under contract. A quick look at the numbers make me think that the Cavs could clear close to $2 million by waiving Chris Quinn and Kevin Jones. C.J. Miles also has a non-guaranteed contract if the Cavaliers were really intent on going after Miller. I would be strongly against them doing this.
The process to get a player off of amnesty waivers means that any team with cap space can make their blind bid and the highest bidder is awarded the player. That team then pays however much money they bid each year for the remaining seasons on his contract while the former team pays the difference. Miller has two more seasons on his current contract. Cutting a productive player like CJ Miles in order to merely have a blind chance at getting Miller seems foolish. Miller has been plagued with injuries over the past couple of years and the amount of impact that he could actually have on the Cavs appears to be minimal.
As Woj notes in his report, the deadline for placing an amnesty claim is Thursday at 5 PM Eastern.