After the Cleveland Cavaliers and Minnesota Timberwolves agreed on a trade that would allow teams to swap Kevin Love and Andrew Wiggins (and Anthony Bennett), fans immediately began to draw parallels between this Cavs team to the Miami Heat team that LeBron James spent the last four years on. Their comparison? Having three max players on the roster, limiting flexibility for the future as the core ages.
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While they are similar, the Cavaliers are in a much better situation than the Heat were and that starts and ends with Love agreeing to an extension in the summer of 2015 rather than carry over to the summer of 2016. And according to Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports, that seems to be the plan for Love and the Cavs.
"Cleveland is making the deal with Minnesota with a firm agreement Love will opt out of his contract in 2015 and re-sign with the Cavaliers on a five-year, $120 million-plus contract extension, league sources told Yahoo Sports."
By signing the extension in 2015 instead of 2016, Love’s deal could come prior to the expected leap in salary cap after the NBA renegotiate their television contracts. If the NBA is able to cash in on their worldwide growth as experts expect them to, the salary cap will take a hefty rise in the summer of 2016, lessening the impact of Love’s max deal, ultimately creating flexibility going forward. The same also applies to the recent Kyrie Irving five-year extension.
The future for the Cavaliers is bright. If the cap makes the leap it’s expected to, the future could get even brighter as David Griffin and company would be in prime position to put solid players around their ‘Big 3’–a movement that could begin as early as 2015.