Dion Waiters, J.R. Smith, Others Reportedly Dealt in Three-Way NBA Trade

The year 2015 is five days old and the Cleveland Cavaliers season continues to get more interesting by the second. Monday night the Cavs pulled Dion Waiters from the starting lineup before the game in Philadelphia against the 76ers in an apparent trade setting off all sorts of speculation on NBA Twitter.

Turns out the (still-evolving) deal, as reported by Adrian Wojnarowski involves a three-way trade between the Cavs, Knicks and Thunder. This much sounds confirmed: J.R. Smith is landing in Cleveland, which should be, interesting. The Cavs also get Iman Shumpert to play some wing defense.

Waiters, meanwhile, goes to the Thunder.

Early speculation linked Thunder guard Reggie Jackson to the Knicks, but Wojnarowski shot that down, as did ESPN’s Marc Stein. Steve Popper of The Bergen Record tweets the Knicks will get Lance Thomas, Alex Kirk and Lou Amundson, the latter two from Cleveland — and waive all three for salary cap relief. Popper also reported the Knicks will waive Samuel Dalembert and also acquire a future second-round pick from the Cavs as part of the trade.

Got all that? The deal apparently “broke” Twitter sometime around 7:50 p.m. Eastern.

One of the questions going forward is how much influence in player personnel did LeBron James have in the deal. Cleveland has sputtered out of the gates to a pedestrian 19-15 start. Obviously all the teams issues, well more accurately “issues” can’t all be the now-departed Waiters fault, who said he didn’t want to come off the bench.

UPDATE — Via multiple reports, the Thunder also sent a protected first-round pick to the Cavs.

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