The Jazz are finalizing an agreement with the Thunder on a trade that will send D’Tigers of Nigeria man Miye Oni to Oklahoma City, according to Shams Charania and Tony Jones of The Athletic. The Thunder will also receive a 2028 second-round pick in the deal, per ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski.

The interesting part of this deal is that Oni doesn’t have a fully guaranteed salary for the 2021/22 season, so he can be waived by Friday without his entire $1,782,621 cap hit applying to team salary.

Presumably, the Jazz planned to part ways with Oni before Friday’s salary guarantee deadline and will trade him instead of waiving him so that his cap hit won’t apply to team salary at all for cap or tax purposes. If Utah had released him, Oni would’ve counted against the cap for a prorated portion of his minimum salary and that amount (about $799K as of Monday) would’ve further increased the team’s end-of-season tax penalty.

Instead, the Thunder will be the ones releasing Oni, according to Wojnarowski. They’re well below the salary floor, so adding a little dead money to their cap is well worth acquiring a future second-round pick.

With no players headed from Oklahoma City to Utah in the swap, the Jazz will open up a second spot on their 15-man roster, which they’d have to fill within the next two weeks. The Thunder will have to waive someone in order to make room on the roster for Oni, even though they don’t plan to keep him. Gabriel Deck, who has a non-guaranteed salary, could be the odd man out in OKC, but that hasn’t been confirmed yet

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