Kevin Loves Cleveland... and Money
Congratulations Cleveland Cavalier fans. Everybody is staying! At least every big man who played a significant role for the Cavaliers is staying. Shawn Marion is retiring and James Jones is an unrestricted free agent. Yes, that one player named LeBron is, technically, not under contract, but if he leaves then that's a completely different story.
It's being reported that both Kevin Love and Tristan Thompson have resigned with the Cavaliers. Thompson's deal will be a five-year $80 million contract and Love's deal will be five-year $110 million. Love even wrote something on the ThePlayersTribune.com talking about why he's staying. He referenced the Finals, his teammates and, of course, the city of Cleveland. He didn't reference how much he's getting paid but that's why we have insiders at every major company.
This move makes sense for Kevin Love, Tristan Thompson and the Cavaliers. For Love and Thompson they gets their money and a chance to win a ring. The hopes of a title were never guaranteed if Love went to Boston or Los Angeles and Thompson's ability to get seemingly and offensive rebound helped the team out a lot down the stretch.
Love can also now be viewed as someone who stayed with the Cavaliers instead of hopping from team to team in hoped of winning a ring. We as fans look down on that.
As far as the Cavaliers go this is perfect for them. Even though LeBron is, by his own words, the best player in the world, there's no guarantee that a big name free agent was coming to Cleveland. Seriously, who have the Cavs ever gotten as a free agent who wasn't on the team the year before? Larry Hughes… yikes. These two contracts give them flexibility depending if they want to play closer to the basket (Thompson) or stretch the floor (Love).
Now, alongside LeBron James and Kyrie Irving you keep the third piece that got you the number two seed in the Eastern Conference last year. It's a win-win for them all.
Now, the problem comes when you have to figure out who to play and when to play them. Kevin Love and Tristan Thompson both play the power forward positon and sometimes can play center. LeBron James can play the power forward position if you need him to. Timofey Mozgov plays center for the team and you still have Anderson Varejao making $29 million over the next three seasons.
If you take a look at just the frontcourt for the Cavalier next year the numbers are pretty insane.
Thompson will make $16 million.
Mozgov will make $5 million.
Love is making $22 million and Varijao is making $9.7 million.
For giggles let's say LeBron makes $20 million. Maybe that's low (He made over $20.6 million last year) but it's a nice round number we'll go with.
Oh, and I almost forgot about Brendan Haywood having a player option for a little over $10.5 million. Yeah, he's taking that.
Now, if you add all of those contracts up you have six guys who are at least are 6'8 making a little over $83 million. According to the BlazersEdge.com the salary cap may reach as high as $69 million. The team still has to sign guards like Matthew Dellavedova, Iman Shumpert and JR Smith. All of them are restricted free agents and could possibly leave the team. If they want to pay them then Dan Gilbert, the Cavaliers owner, will have to spend well over the salary cap. If Gilbert goes over the cap then he has to pay more money as a penalty. They could easily approach $100 million after everyone is signed.
Then again, if it means keeping LeBron James, Kevin Love, Kyrie Irving and everybody else on the team you should do it. LeBron led the team to the Finals without Love and a hobbled Irving. This team is loaded now. Now you just have to hope everyone stays healthy.