Despite heading to the Finals for the fourth consecutive year this past season, the Cleveland Cavaliers are heading into potentially one of their roughest patches as a team over the next few years.
With LeBron James heading into free agency this summer, the Cavs run a real risk of losing James again, and would it be much of a surprise this time around? Without LeBron, this year’s Cavaliers would have had no chance even making the postseason with the roster they had, and were extremely lucky LeBron was there to carry them to the Finals these playoffs.
With all the moves Cleveland has made however to keep LeBron happy, a lot of them are going to come back to bite them if LeBron does indeed leave and the Cavaliers return to the bottom of the Eastern Conference.
Not only will they be devoid of talent without LeBron, they’ll be paying a lot of money to keep players they probably don’t want to keep during a rebuild.
The Cavs are in for some fun in terms of salary for the next two years. They owe Tristan Thompson, George Hill, Jordan Clarkson, J.R. Smith, and Kyle Korver a combined $144.4 million over the next two seasons. #NBA pic.twitter.com/UDp4mUtGKh
— . (@TheNBACentral) June 12, 2018
That’s right. The Cavs will be paying the likes of J.R Smith — who forgot the score in a critical Finals game — Tristan Thompson — who was outrebounded by Steph Curry AGAIN these past Finals — and Jordan Clarkson — who put in one of the worst postseason performances of all-time — almost half of their entire payroll next year.
It doesn’t get any better the season after either, with Smith, Thompson, Clarkson, and Korver all earning more than the year before thanks to their contracts.
So, by trying to keep LeBron on the roster and happy, the Cavaliers have, in turn, made it almost impossible to bring in any other high-level talent from free agency for the next two seasons at the least.
