Cleveland may need to attach additional assets to salary dump Okoro.
The Cleveland Cavaliers’ front office has several important decisions to make this offseason. They can’t feasibly avoid being a second-apron team, but they can lessen their luxury tax bill by unloading some salaries in positions where they have multiple rotation players already.
Moving on from one of their many shooting guards is a logical place to start.
The most natural position for Donovan Mitchell, Max Strus, Sam Merrill, Ty Jerome, and Isaac Okoro is shooting guard. Having that much depth at one position in a salary cap league isn’t the best allocation of resources.
According to Chris Fedor of cleveland.com, Okoro is seemingly the odd man out. The only problem is, teams don’t appear to be lining up to take on the nearly $23 million he’s owed over the next two seasons.
Fedor said on the Wine & Gold Talk podcast:
“This front office is canvassing the NBA right now and figuring out what’s possible for them this off season. From everything that I’m told, they’re having a hard time finding anybody that has legitimate interest in Isaac Okoro, unless Isaac also comes with some kind of sweetener from the Cavs, some kinds of assets attached to his contract.
Because I think there are teams out there that are looking at Isaac, and they’re saying, ‘We’d be doing you a favor by taking on his contract. So make it worth our time to do that. Make it worthwhile for us to do that. Give us future second round picks. Go find a first round pick somehow that you can trade to us, along with isaacoro. Then we’ll help you out.’”
Fedor also mentioned that similar conversations are happening with Dean Wade and the $6.6 million contract he’s potentially owed next season. It’s worth noting that not all of Wade’s money this upcoming season is guaranteed.
Spotrac currently projects the Cavs to have a $97.9 million tax bill. This is with just 11 players under contract and does not include possible extensions for Jerome and Merrill. Moving Okoro would allow the ownership group to save some money on that bill.
The decision could come down to whether they want to re-sign Merrill or keep Okoro on his current deal. Given that Merrill seems to fit better with head coach Kenny Atkinson’s system and would likely make less money, he would seem to be the clear choice over Okoro.
There is, however, a basketball cost for making a pure salary dump move. The second-apron prohibits the Cavs from aggregating contracts in trades, and they’re prevented from signing free agents to deals that are more than minimum contracts.
That means that salaries like Okoro’s and Wade’s could be useful for matching salaries in a trade that includes one or multiple draft picks attached. Trading that player into salary, like Fedor is suggesting, would lessen the luxury tax burden, but would be closing off an avenue for finding a suitable replacement for that salary slot. And, it could cost the Cavs some assets they’d otherwise use to improve their team to do so.
These are the difficult decisions Koby Altman and the rest of the front office will have to make this summer. This group isn’t far away from winning a championship, even though the second-round exit was tough. But how to improve that team and the financial burden that comes with keeping this nucleus together as currently constructed, makes staying at the top of the league difficult.
The front office has potential moves to make, but their margin for error is slim right now. We’ll see if they can find possible trades for Okoro and/or Wade that would put the team in a better position to compete for a championship this upcoming season and for years to come.