The Cleveland Cavaliers’ front-office will be a busy bunch come July 1: there are major decisions to make on Kevin Love, Tristan Thompson, J.R. Smith, Iman Shumpert, and oh yeah, that LeBron guy.
James will reportedly take his time and carefully assess what the Cavs do with free agents before he commits to anything.
Cleveland’s braintrust has maintained that they expect to re-sign both Love and James this summer.
Per the NEOMG:
The contract situations of Kevin Love, Tristan Thompson, J.R. Smith, Iman Shumpert and to a certain degree Brendan Haywood are expected to be resolved before the Cavaliers’ re-sign the world’s most dominant player. […] James’ course during the free agency period will be to take a wait-and-see approach while the Cleveland Cavaliers tend to executing housekeeping matters, league sources said.
The four-time MVP has a player option deadline of June 29 that he’ll decline. […] The belief is James wants to observe how management goes about retaining and accumulating assets that not only keep the organization in win-now mode, but also enriches the roster from top to bottom.
The chances of James bolting the city of Cleveland for a second time is far-fetched, but the method employed would allow him to assess the Cavaliers’ moves prior to re-signing and it would also apply immense pressure on the organization to do whatever is necessary to strengthen the team. […] For James and his agent, Rich Paul of Klutch Sports Group, it’s a shrewd and forward-thinking business tactic. There’s no telling how many prime years James has left and the impression is that he wants to ensure he’s surrounded by a supporting cast that’s championship material throughout the duration of his supreme basketball days.
