The Point Four-ward: Live Life and Let Griffin

Four points I’m thinking about the Cleveland Cavaliers…

1.) One thing I keep coming back to when looking at the Cavs roster with their bevy of free agents, both restricted and non, and a couple of preferable, if not glaring, holes to be filled before the team tips off their new season around Halloween 2015: if I can predict it, that probably means it’s not going to happen.

I’m not talking about the obvious moves here. I’m not talking about whatever deal the team gives to Kevin Love… or Tristan Thompson… or LeBron James. Those are all likely to happen and they’re likely to happen in one of only a few different ways.

James will (most likely) sign another two-year deal featuring a player option for the second year that will allow his Highness, The King, to continue to maximize his maximum contract status as the salary cap grows over the next several years.

Of course, he could sign elsewhere. But not really.

Or he could sign a multi-year contract. But, again, not really.

James will, as expected, remain a Cavalier… a fact that, admittedly, would have been quite unexpected to imagine writing at this time last year.

2.) Love and Thompson both have similar decisions to make. First off, Love can decide to play elsewhere. That could happen. Any team in the LaMarcus Aldridge sweepstakes who misses out on the seems-to-be-former Portland star will make a run at Love, including the Trailblazers themselves. He could sign a five-year roughly $110 million max deal to stay in Cleveland. Or he could, similar to James, sign a shorter deal in order to squeeze every drop as the salary cap lemon tree grows.

Reports are that the Cavs will offer Love a five-year deal at the maximum salary allowed and Love is likely to accept it.

Whether or not that’s what I expect (spoiler alert: it is), there just aren’t that many different possible outcomes.

If the Cavs offer Thompson a deal close to the max for him — a deal that will start at over $15 million a year — look for Thompson to gladly sign it. Thompson proved his importance to this team and showed that he’s still getting better as a player, but it’s difficult to imagine an NBA — even with how the inflating salary cap will alter the relative value of every player’s deals — where Thompson approaches being a $20 million a year player. Though, again, had you told me this time last year that not only would Thompson have passed up a long-term deal worth over $11 million per but there’d be some debate over whether he’d even consider signing a deal worth over $70 million in total, I’d have likely laughed you out of the comments section.

3.) Now, honestly, I could see any of the troika of post-season gladiators — Matthew Dellavedova, Iman Shumpert and J.R. Smith — leave as easily as I could see them return. Shumpert has already drawn some interest and, despite showing that his offense is about as fluid as a two-wheeled tricycle, he’s probably the one who could get an offer big enough to make the Cavs a bit queasy. If Monta Ellis leaves Dallas, is J.R. Smith a fit for the Mavericks? Dellavedova’s agent will look for $4 million per but will probably end up taking just under $3 million. That would suit the Cavs just fine.

But, again, as much as the Cavs have stated their interest in keeping most of this team intact, usually when you have this many free agents to deal with someone falls through the cracks. And I expect someone to fall through. I just don’t know who.

Still, these are still the obvious moves.

4.) The moves get a lot less obvious when it comes to how the team fills out the last couple of roster spots and what the heck GM David Griffin will do with Brendan Haywood’s non-guaranteed $10 million contract. These are the moves that make me pour over the free agent lists, stay up with all the rumors — all the various reports from people’s sources — and, in the end, just have to… well, live life and let Griffin.

It’s these moves that will really dictate how big of an upgrade the 2015-16 Cavs are from the version that just made the NBA Finals. But I could no more have told you that Chris Grant was going to sign Andrew Bynum going into the 2013 offseason than I could have told you that sometime in the summer of 2014 David Griffin was going to trade Carrick Felix for three players on non-guaranteed contracts who would all later be shipped to the Boston Celtics for Keith Bogans… who would (only a few days later) be traded to the Philadelphia 76ers for a protected 2015 second rounder and a trade exception that would later allow the team to acquire favorite daytime bar patron, Timofey Mozgov. See, sometimes its not the move so much as it is the move that sets up the move. Or, you know, sometimes it’s just the move.

Transaction season, right? Whew…

Haywood’s contract, in particular, is not going to work out the way that any of us think it will.

That’s my one off-season guarantee.