What’s next for Cavaliers? How payroll could force Cleveland’s hand after early playoff exit

What just happened? Less than two weeks ago, the Cleveland Cavaliers were fresh off of the greatest offensive series in NBA history. They won 64 games in the regular season, had the NBA’s No. 1-ranked offense and the Defensive Player of the Year in Evan Mobley. With newly crowned Coach of the Year Kenny Atkinson leading the way, an Eastern Conference finals duel with the Boston Celtics felt preordained. The franchise’s first trip to the NBA Finals without LeBron James was in reach. And now it’s just… over?

This is how cruel the NBA can be at its worst. The Cavaliers were largely competitive in their second-round series with the Pacers, at least outside of Game 4’s blowout, but the playoff margins are razor thin. All it took were a few poorly timed injuries, one minute of botched officiating and some nasty shooting variance. Cleveland might have been able to endure one or two such variables. But everything going wrong at once? It was too much. Suddenly, one of the most promising regular seasons in recent memory has come to an abrupt end, and with it, potentially an entire chapter in this team’s history as well.

In the old world, cooler heads might have prevailed. Cleveland has a 64-win roster whose four best players are between the ages of 23 and 28. On paper, they are primed for an extended run. The entire Eastern Conference landscape changed on Monday when Jayson Tatum tore his Achilles tendon. There’s no obvious favorite next season. Everything went wrong in this series. Just hold it together and maybe things go right next year. Maybe it’s the other team that gets hurt or goes cold or loses on bad calls. Why even consider messing with a team this good and this unlucky?

Minnesota Timberwolves fans probably asked themselves the same question last fall when Minnesota traded Karl-Anthony Towns after a trip to the Western Conference finals. The defending champion Celtics were reportedly preparing to shed some money even before Tatum went down. The 2023 collective bargaining agreement made it almost impossible to keep a team like Cleveland’s together indefinitely.

Donovan Mitchell and Darius Garland are already on max deals. Mobley starts his next season, and because he won Defensive Player of the Year, it kicks off at 30% of the salary cap rather than 25%. Jarrett Allen and De’Andre Hunter are both making starter money. Max Strus and Isaac Okoro are earning eight figures each, and Sixth Man of the Year finalist Ty Jerome isn’t even under contract for next season. Neither is key sharpshooter Sam Merrill. This is not financially sustainable.

Cleveland has nearly $218 million on the books for next season. The projected second apron for next season is $207.8 million, and Cleveland only has 11 players under contract. Even if Jerome and Merrill walk, next year’s Cavaliers would still face a gargantuan tax bill if everyone else comes back. Dan Gilbert has happily paid those bills in the past, but he did so with LeBron James on the team. Making the finals was a given. Apparently, it isn’t for this group.

Staying above the second apron for a year, while not ideal, is doable. You get two of them in a five-year span before frozen draft picks automatically move to the end of the first round. That’s probably the breaking point for even the most ambitious of owners. The restrictions that come before that are pretty onerous in their own right. How comfortable would the Cavaliers be without the ability to aggregate salaries in trades? Or sign free agents for anything above the mid-level exception? The buyout market is off of the table in apron world. So are trades in which you take back more salary than you send out. As long as Cleveland keeps this team together, it’s more or less stuck. Most avenues for external improvement are blocked off.

That’s what makes this year’s exit so devastating. This was the affordable season. Mobley was still on his rookie contract. Jerome and Merrill are making peanuts. They could afford to keep their core four together and supplement them with an army of versatile wings. The Hunter trade wouldn’t have been legal for a second-apron team. They’re probably about to lose Merrill and Jerome. Net rating god Dean Wade expires a year later even if the Cavaliers keep his non-guaranteed money on next year’s books. They can’t be replaced with market-value free agents or trade acquisitions if the four-man core plus Hunter is all getting paid appropriately. Cleveland has found diamonds in the rough before. Maybe it can do so again. But ask the Suns how reliable minimum-salary free agents are. Top-heavy rosters are falling out of vogue.

The Hunter contract is the one they’d probably like to move. Good luck with that. They got him for the price they did because the Hawks were eager to shed that money as well. It was a worthwhile gamble on a possible championship, but it’s a contract they might be stuck with because of his injury history and inconsistency. There aren’t many cap space teams even capable of absorbing it. Detroit could clear the money, but will likely prioritize keeping its own players. The Nets can do whatever they want, and should aim a good deal higher.

If the Cavaliers are going to get their books in line, it’s probably going to mean jettisoning at least one core player. Mitchell is untouchable in this respect. He was the only thing that went right against Indiana. Mobley, given his age, has to be untouchable as well short of a surprise run at Giannis Antetokounmpo. Besides, he probably has the most room to grow in the event of a blockbuster. He’s still playing out of position as a power forward.

That’s the primary appeal of an Allen trade. As much as Allen brings to the table as a rim-protector and lob-threat, he’s forcing Mobley to play a suboptimal position at power forward. Part of what doomed Cleveland against Indiana, at least as the series progressed, was how much the defense struggled with two big men on the floor against a five-out Pacer offense. Playing Mobley at center solves that problem while creating another for opponents. Think of how much he grew offensively this season. If Cleveland was the NBA’s No. 1 offense this season with Mobley’s shooting and playmaking at power forward, just imagine what it could be with another shooter on the floor in place of Allen. It’s not as though they’d lose the lob threat he presented. Mobley can do that too.

Allen would have a market. The question is whether or not there’s enough demand for non-shooting centers right now to get Cleveland anything it might actually want. The Lakers would kill for a big man like Allen, but let’s say Austin Reaves is off of the table. The Mark Williams package of Dalton Knecht, a first-round pick, a swap and some expiring contracts probably doesn’t move the needle much for Cleveland. Maybe Phoenix could use whatever it gets for Kevin Durant to make a compelling offer, but without knowing what that trade looks like, it’s not worth speculating.

Garland would probably be easier to move. There tends to be more demand for shot-creators than high-end role players like Allen, and as he’s the more expensive of the two, the theoretical financial benefits of moving him are greater. You wouldn’t have to look far to find suitors.

Get Orlando on the phone, now. Anthony Black has two years left on his rookie deal and the Magic control all of their picks, which Cleveland can redirect for win-now help as needed. How about New Orleans? They just traded for Dejounte Murray, but he was playing poorly even before he tore his Achilles, and the Pelicans have a new lead executive in Joe Dumars. Some sort of swap centered on Herb Jones or Trey Murphy would help Cleveland fill the wing void their lost depth is about to create. The deal could easily be expanded to include De’Andre Hunter and C.J. McCollum. After all, the Pelicans would suddenly be guard-heavy and the Cavaliers would need a secondary shot-creator. McCollum makes more now, but has only one year left on his deal.

The post-Garland Cavaliers would be a defensive juggernaut. Ideally, a trade would bring back a high-level perimeter defender. Even if it doesn’t, playing two small guards together has really been Cleveland’s only defensive weakness since landing Mitchell. Just getting bigger in the back court makes a difference there. But Cleveland has tolerated that vulnerability because having two elite shot-creators has powered their two-big offense. They just had the second-best offense in NBA history. Removing Garland, especially without Jerome and Merrill in place, hurts it significantly. The burden on Mitchell, who’s had injury issues of his own, would be substantial. Mobley would basically have to be a no-questions-asked offensive star to make this work, depending on who comes back. As much as he improved this year, that’s asking a lot.

These aren’t questions the Cavaliers wanted to ask. They justifiably thought they could win the championship here and now. Doing so would have made this easy. They would have kept who they could and run it back knowing they had the core they needed. The way they lost is remarkably frustrating in that respect. A year ago, everyone told them this core needed to be broken up. They spent the regular season disputing that, but the manner in which they lost takes them right back to where they were a year ago. If Cleveland had stayed healthy and made its shots and still lost to Indiana, well, that would have answered the question for them.

Instead, the Cavaliers were hit with the perfect storm of playoff snags and were knocked out before they could find out how close they really are. If they could afford to just try again next year, well, they’d probably prefer to do so. But this was the last relatively cheap season in their contention cycle. They’re going to be navigating the aprons from here on out, and just as Minnesota had to make a hard decision when confronted with those aprons last season, Cleveland is going to need to now as well. That’s how quickly things can change in the modern NBA. All it takes to go from a possible championship to considering a breakup is two bad weeks.