Thompson was a restricted free agent in this off-season and had the option to sign with any other National Basketball Association team though the Cavaliers had the right to match any offer sheet.
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Once you consider that Thompson is young and the Cavaliers are contending for a title, the deal’s not even bad by current considerations. Their talent will have to grow into the system and their roles, which will likely be fine-tuned and adjusted this year and beyond. While he’s an important player, he’s not that good.
Thompson has been working out on his own, but Blatt said this week he’d have to get Thompson into the facility and see what type of shape he’s in before knowing how quickly he’ll go back to his typical level of production.
With that, it’s time to review what we learned from this four-month exercise. Though the tax won’t be calculated until the end of the season and the Cavs currently only have 14 guaranteed contracts, they are now currently in line to pay in excess of $60 million in luxury tax, which would be the second-highest amount on record.
Five years of championship chasing in Cleveland? His effort to get this done is unimpeachable.
Well stop it. Stop it right now. The Cavs’ previous offers had been for five years and $80 million.
The report also noted that the signing will officially place the Cavs at the top of the league’s payroll list with $ 115 million. Nine million dollars is not nothing. The deal Thompson signed is also what the Cavs reportedly offered at the beginning of free agency and it seems like Thompson was never going to sit this year out.
If you hadn’t recognized it by now, Dan Gilbert is all in, which makes the slogan of the Cleveland Cavaliers truer than ever before.
They better start winning some championships real soon, though. I’ll write it again. But it’ll be there, just in case. With Love back, Thompson, who averaged 9.6 points and 10.8 rebounds in the postseason, is expected to come off the bench for coach David Blatt.
And they’re getting a player who if he keeps improving, could even end up looking pretty cost appropriate come the latter end of his deal. It takes only something as seemingly small as Thompson’s former contract situation to cause a club to internally combust.
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Thompson does it really well. Moving between on the ball and off it, spotting up, crashing in the post, and running high pick-and-rolls more judiciously (and often after an initial action sent the defense scrambling) is what let him break the norms of that relationship between usage and efficiency. Guys like the “Greek Freak” Giannis Antetokounmpo along with the return of Jabari Parker from his knee injury that cut a rookie year very short and the addition of Greg Monroe, this team looks to only get better. The margin is slim at the top, and Thompson moves the needle just enough to nudge Cleveland above anyone in the West.
