Even without much in the way of other suitors, J.R. Smith had leverage.
The Cavaliers have a narrow window to win more championships that only gets smaller with time. LeBron James turns 32 in December, and the team Cleveland vanquished in the NBA Finals added one of the biggest talents in the sport. The result is the type of immediacy that leads to paying $57 million over four years to a 31-year-old shooting guard with a penchant for inconsistency on and off the court.
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Still, Smith makes Cleveland better. Last season, he provided effective offense (40 percent from 3-point range, which accounted for an astonishing 60 percent of his shots) and solid enough defense to be a significant help. Smith’s 2,362 minutes helped stabilize the Cavs’ perimeter rotation during a season in which both Kyrie Irving and Iman Shumpert missed significant time due to injuries.
Compounding matters was Shumpert’s major step back after signing a lucrative contract last summer, posting a single-digit Player Efficiency Rating (8.4) and shooting below 30 percent on 3-pointers while also missing 28 games. Smith outplayed Shumpert last season, but the Cavs need significant contributions from both in order to stay competitive, especially after the departures of Matthew Dellavedova and Mo Williams. Last season, Irving played 360 minutes with Dellavedova (about nine per game they both participated in), and their lack of point guard depth adds even more to the workload of Cleveland’s shooting guards.
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Smith helps the Cavs win, yes, but the bigger factor here is that the reigning NBA champions have extremely limited options to add new talent, which puts the onus on retaining players in order to stay title contenders. Since they started draft night without any picks (before buying the 54th pick to select guard Kay Felder), the main tools the Cavs had outside of Bird rights to keep their own players were their Taxpayer Mid-Level Exception, which they mostly used to keep Richard Jefferson, and minimum contracts. Outside of a few exceptions that prove the rule — like David West the past two seasons with the Spurs and Warriors — that level of salary is insufficient to add starting-caliber talent.
General manager David Griffin used Dellavedova’s departure to create a trade exception big enough to fit veteran Mike Dunleavy, but they now still have a $9.6 million exception from the Anderson Varejao trade. Cleveland likely gave up its 2018 first-round pick in that deal with the Blazers, so Griffin does not have many trade chips to get something better than a salary dump with that Varejao exception. Rival franchises are not exactly clamoring to give the reigning champions rotation players for little return, especially since players making less than $10 million are often good values after this summer’s spending spree.
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Cleveland’s lack of flexibility extends beyond this season. The current projection for the 2017-18 cap is $102 million. James, Irving, Kevin Love and Tristan Thompson are already on their books at a combined $101.5 million for that season. Even without guarantees to Shumpert, Jefferson and Channing Frye, the Cavs would have been working under similar restrictions next summer. If LeBron opts out in 2018 and stays in Cleveland, it will be a similar story then as well.
The NBA’s salary cap deliberately makes it hard for heavy-spending teams to add new talent from the outside. That puts pressure on those teams to use every tool at their disposal in order to put the best squad on the floor, particularly if they are a title contender. Almost exactly one year ago, Cleveland justifiably used that rationale to retain Tristan Thompson. One championship later, they kept their title hopes alive by doing the same with Smith.