76ers’ Sign-and-Trade With Miami Hits a Snag

By Matt Gregan, Sports Talk Philly Staff

In the overnight hours of the opening night of the NBA’s free agency period, the sign-and-trade between the Philadelphia 76ers and Miami Heat that would send Jimmy Butler to Miami in return for Josh Richardson has hit a snag, according to multiple reports. 

completing this for the record: the deal is off. at some point, there was a misunderstanding with the parameters. miami was certain it was dragic. dallas had been saying olynyk/jones all week. up to miami to salvage it, probably with another team.

— Tim Cato (@tim_cato) July 1, 2019

Miami needed to clear some cap space to fit the addition of Butler, and they had planned on getting rid of Goran Dragic ($19.2 million cap hit) to help achieve that. They had an agreement to send Dragic to the Dallas Mavericks, until that agreement fell apart due to poor communication from both sides.

The deal has for all intents and purposes been put on hold until Miami finds another trade partner to take on one or two of their bad contracts.

Goran Dragic is the player Miami is determined to move to make the Butler salary-cap math happen and believes it can find a workable trade construction elsewhere that ultimately lands Butler with the Heat on a four-year, $142 million max deal

— Marc Stein (@TheSteinLine) July 1, 2019

There is only a limited number of teams that have enough cap space to take on the contract of say someone like Dragic’s $19.2 million cap hit. According to Keith Smith, a Yahoo Sports NBA contributor, only the Clippers, Lakers, Mavericks, Knicks, Hawks and Kings have over $10 million in cap space available. Obviously, the Clippers and Lakers are waiting on Kawhi Leonard to make his decision, so that leaves only four teams with cap space available that the Heat could attempt to negotiate a deal with. 

However, it would be shocking if Miami isn’t able to come to an agreement with another team to complete this trade over the next day or two.