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Cavaliers reserve SG Joe Harris will likely undergo surgery in the next week to remove a bone in his right foot that could end his season, per Dave McMenamin.
Harris hasn't played much for the Cavaliers this season. making it onto the court in only five games and logging a combine 15 minutes, zero of which I recall. The Cavaliers have been active sending him down to play with the Canton Charge, their D-League affiliate, and he's averaged 16.4 points but only has hit 32.3% from distance in his 10 games with the Charge this season.
This news is a bit of a bummer for the Cavaliers, as they were hoping to offload his guaranteed $1.25 million in a trade to save money on the luxury tax for a player who doesn't play much for them.
It's also a bit of a bummer for Jared Cunningham, who played his way ahead of Harris in the rotation and has been a surprisingly useful contributor for an end-of-rotation rotation. The Cavaliers have until Friday to decide whether they'd like to keep Cunningham for the rest of the season, thus guaranteeing his salary. As McMenamin says, Cunningham's $981,348 salary doesn't seem like much, but with taxes, it could end up costing Dan Gilbert around $4 million.
If the Cavs had been able to unload Harris, it would have made Cunningham's outlook much peachier, but there's still seemingly a good chance that the Cavaliers keep him around.
As for Harris, it's a bummer. He's fallen completely out of the rotation, and his spot there is sort of indicative of how different the Cavaliers were up to this point in the season last year. Through January 5, 2014, Harris was averaging 11.5 minutes per game and during one notably rough game for David Blatt, played the final 19 minutes of an NBA game for a would-be title contender.
As it stands, the title contending Cavaliers don't need him on the court, and he's going to have to turn into a sharpshooter if he wants to stick in the league, and it's beginning to look like that might not be with the Cavaliers. Here's hoping he figures things out and gets healthy in the process.