With Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving both out for the remainder of the playoffs, the Cleveland Cavaliers are relying on depth to get a championship and so far it is working. Outside of LeBron James, the team has had several players emerge as real stars while the team is up 2-1 in the NBA Finals. One of those players is Matthew Dellavedova who was a relative unknown before the postseason. Now he is looking at a nice pay raise some next year.
Dellavedova will be a restricted free agent this upcoming offseason and the Cavaliers must determine if they will give him a $1.1 million qualifying offer before the June 30 deadline. The backup point guard has done a lot to raise his stock in the league during the postseason and there is a chance another team will make a bigger offer on him. Will the Cleveland Cavaliers match it?
According to the Akron Beacon Journal, the Cavaliers plan on doing everything possible to keep the current roster together which means keeping Dellavedova. The question is whether or not that is possible. Last season, Patty Mills was the Dellavedova of the playoffs. His increased play earned him a three-year, $3 million contract which could be the type of deal that Dellavedova earns if the Cavaliers can make the salary cap work in their favor.
The biggest concern right now for the Cavaliers is Love and Tristan Thompson. Love has a player option the team would ideally like him to opt into. The forward as made it clear he fully intends to return to Cleveland next season, but has yet to say whether or not that will on a long-term contract or his player option. Thompson is a restricted free agent this offseason and if the Cavaliers are unwilling to give him a max contract, another team will.
According to ESPN's Brian Winderhorst, there is a chance that the Cavaliers will have to pick between Love and Thompson if the forward opts out of his $16 million option. If Love wants a long-term deal now, Thompson will not get his and vice versa. The same could easily be said for Anderson Varejao and Timofey Mozgov. The Cavaliers benefitted from the rise of unknown stars, but the issue is most of them have uncertain contracts for next year. Picking up Mozgov's team option seems like a no-brainer, but with new deals needed for JR Smith, Iman Shumpert and potentially even James, something has to give for the Cavaliers.
