Mike Miller Chooses Cleveland Cavaliers
Sorry, Denver Nuggets fans. As much fun as it would have been to have Mike Miller High-Life in Denver, the LeBron James Effect means he’ll be taking less money to play elsewhere.
As first reported by ESPN’s Jeff Goodman, Mike Miller will join his close friend LeBron on the Cleveland Cavaliers. Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports quickly reported the details of the deal for the 34-year-old sharpshooter: two years, $5.5 million. The second year will have a player option.
Super cheap. Good GMing by LeBron RT @WojYahooNBA Miller will sign a two-year, $5.5M deal with Cavs, league source tells Yahoo Sports.
— Ethan Strauss (@SherwoodStrauss) July 15, 2014
In his 14th NBA season, Miller averaged 7.1 points in 20.8 minutes per game with the Memphis Grizzlies while also shooting 48 percent from the floor and 46 percent from three-point range. Even more impressively, Miller played all 82 games of the season, which was quite a feat for a a guy who hadn’t cracked 60 games in any of his four prior seasons.
The addition of Miller gives the Cavs another helpful bench piece who can light it up from deep. As the Oklahoma City Thunder found out in the 2012 NBA Finals, Miller can be a troublesome presence on the court, especially when defenses will have a hard enough time keying in on LeBron, Kyrie Irving and Andrew Wiggins (or Kevin Love, if that trade ever happens). Defenses have to pick their poison with lineups like that, and Miller has proven himself capable of being the beneficiary of open three-point looks.
Last year Mike Miller feigned back injury when he heard Cavs might claim him off waivers. Today he signs with them despite larger offers.
— Brian Windhorst (@WindhorstESPN) July 15, 2014
Miller is a career 41 percent shooter from downtown and adds three-point shooting off the bench to a team that will need it to stake their claim for an Eastern Conference that feels pretty wide open at the moment.
The Houston Rockets and Dallas Mavericks were also pursuing Miller, per ESPN’s Marc Stein, but the Denver Nuggets were Cleveland’s closest competition after offering him a three-year, $12 million deal. But with the Miami Heat paying Mike Miller $6.6 million next season to play with LeBron after amnestying him, not to mention the fact that he’ll get to play with the game’s greatest player, it’s no surprise Miller opted for Cleveland over the money the Nuggets were offering.
Miller Time won’t be joining the Nuggets any time soon, but they’ve got plenty of shooters already and Denver’s more about Coors anyway.