The Cleveland Cavaliers are making a small piece of history with their handling of Ricky Rubio’s remaining dead-money cap hit, becoming the first team to utilize the “delayed stretch” since the new CBA made doing so possible.
The Cavs were scheduled to have a dead-money cap hit of a little under $1.3 million for Rubio this season. By using the delayed stretch, the Cavs will now have Rubio on their books at a little over $400,000 for each of the next three seasons instead.
The total amount of money is the same, but Cleveland will now have some extra cap flexibility this season.
“The NBA got the first ‘delayed stretch’ of a waived player,” Keith Smith wrote on X. “Under the new CBA, a team can elect to stretch dead money on their books.
“The Cleveland Cavaliers took the ~$1.3M in dead money for Ricky Rubio and turned it into three years of dead money at ~$425K per season.
“Cavs are now about $10.6M under the luxury tax without Isaac Okoro’s QO factored in. With Okoro’s QO factored in, Cleveland is about $1.2M over the tax for 13 players on standard contracts.”
If the stretch rule sounds familiar, that’s probably because teams waiving and stretching players is nothing new. However, under the previous CBA, a team was only able to use the stretch provision at the time of waiving a player.
In this case, the Cavs just chose to stretch Rubio’s contract even though he was waived back in January, hence the “delayed stretch” name.
From start to finish, Rubio had a unique stint with Cleveland. He played a very important role in his first season with the team, averaging 13.1 points, 4.1 rebounds and 6.6 assists per game in the 2021-22 campaign, but his season lasted just 34 games due to an injury. While injured, he was traded away at the 2022 deadline.
In the ensuing offseason, he returned to the team on a three-year deal, but he wasn’t the same in the 2022-23 season, averaging just 5.2 points, 2.1 rebounds and 3.5 assists per game.
In the 2023 offseason, with two years remaining on his Cavs deal, Rubio paused his career to focus on his mental health. He never played another game for the squad, with the two sides ultimately agreeing to a buyout in the middle of the 2023-24 season.
That came with two seasons remaining on his deal: the remainder of the 2023-24 season and the entirety of the 2024-25 season. That 2024-25 season prompted the Cavs to use the delayed stretch provision.
While Rubio is no longer with the Cavs, he certainly had some nice moments with the organization and had a hand in getting the team’s rebuild to move in the right direction.
