Cleveland Cavaliers point guard Maurice "Mo" Williams strongly consider to retire from the NBA. Last season, he played an important role to help Cleveland Cavaliers win the first NBA championship title in the team history. His departure will give Cavaliers opportunities to pay less penalty, but he played important role for the team as a veteran.
Williams is a 13-year veteran and former All-Star. During his long career, he has played for eight different teams including Milwaukee Bucks, Los Angeles Clippers, Utah Jazz, Portland Trail Blazers, Minnesota Timberwolves and Charlotte Hornets. He was also Le Bron James' teammate since 2008 in Cavaliers, before James moved to Miami Heat in 2010.
Many sources told cleveland.com that he considered to announce retirement this week. If Williams retire this week, according to NBA rule, Cavs will have the opportunity to use the stretch provision on his salary. This would make Dan Gilbert as Cavaliers' owner to pay less luxury tax penalty, as the deadline for stretch provision is on Aug. 31.
Currently, Cleveland Cavaliers has a payrol of $117.6 million. This is over the NBA salary cap of $94 million, and the luxury-tax threshold's $113.2 million. Meanwhile, Cavaliers also have to re-sign JR Smith this year.
Williams signed a $4.3 million contract for two years last season. Therefore, waiving him before the deadline would allow Cavaliers to pay Williams $2.2 million, and reduce his tax burden to the team by several million dollars.
By waiving Williams, Cavs will only have Kyrie Irving and Matthew Dellavedova as point guards. Recently, they have acquired another point guard by selecting Kay Felder in second-round draft pick.
However, as CBS Sport reported, Cavaliers must have enough power to allow Felder a crack at backup point guard without being too much of a risk.
Although Felder is one of the best scorers in college basketball last season and the top assist, but he has no experience yet to play in higher level competition like NBA. Therefore, putting him as a backup point guard instead is very risky.
Cavaliers have not made any decision whether to waive Williams or not by the deadline of stretch provision on Wednesday.