Links to the Present: Mike Miller edition

Rounding up the news from the last few days…

In the biggest news of the day for Cleveland fans, the Cavs are rumored to be delaying the signing and introduction of Andrew Bynum in order to make an amnesty bid on Mike Miller.  Mary Schmitt Boyer of the Plain Dealer has the story, here. CBS Sports counters with the rumor that Miller is considering back surgery for a bulging disk, which may cause teams to balk.  Personally, I don’t believe it. The revelation continues the string of would be amnesty candidates saying crazy stuff so that no one will place a claim on them and they can then go where they want (*cough* *cough*, Metta World Peace).

The Cavs are delaying the Bynum signing so that they can clear room for Miller by waiving the contracts of Quinn, Kevin Jones, and/or C.J. Miles, if necessary.  Those contracts are not guaranteed for the coming season.  If Cleveland signed Bynum first, they’d have to waive those contracts before they bid on Miller.  In a vacuum, I’d rather have C.J. Miles , but the chance to add Miller as a locker room presence and as a +1 for recruiting LBJ next summer probably pushes Miller ahead of Calvin Andre.  The deadline for amnesty claims is 5 PM this evening.

Speaking of this evening, the Cavs summer league team plays their first Las Vegas Summer League playoff game at 4:00 EST versus the Spurs summer league team on NBATV.  You can get the App to watch it live for $4.99, and have access to all the other summer league games, here.  There are also less reputable sites on the internet for streaming in case you want to add your computer to a Chinese botnet.

The summer Cavs have added Scoop Jardin, formerly of Syracuse, to their squad since Kevin Jones and Chris Quinn have concussions.

Not on the Summer League squad, but still doing yeoman’s work, Sergey Karasev led a stacked Russian team to a gold medal over Australia in the World University Games on Wednesday.  In the gold medal game, Karasev played 32 minutes, and posted a Dion like line of 4-12 from the floor, 1-5 from three, 6-8 from the line, for 15 points, 6 boards, 3 dimes, 3 turnovers, 2 blocks, and 2 steals.  Way to fill up that box score , Sergey.  Karasev was possibly the best player in the tournament with a 19/5.8/4 (points/rebounds/assists) per game average in 24.8 minutes with .567/.455/.759 shooting splits.  Whoa. Karasev is scheduled to play with the Russian Euro Championship team in September.

There’s all sorts of fun stuff over on cavs.com, including interviews with Cavs summer leaguers.  Meet Carrick Felix in this interview.  Also, check out Carrick’s summer league blog, here.

Conrad Kaczmarek over at FearTheSword has a couple of interesting tidbits, including an interview with Anthony Bennett’s UNLV coach, Dave Rice, and summer tales of Tristan Thompson practicing jumpers right handed.

Let’s wrap up by checking in with the always entertaining Dion Waiters twitter page…  First, Saint Weirdo’s scaring the crap out of someone in a video on instragram (warning PG-13).  Second, he’s pushing his August 4th Basketbowl fundraiser on August 4th at the Corner Alley on Euclid Avenue in Cleveland.  Tickets  and details here.  Awesome poster, here: