Right now, Jerome is in the middle of a ridiculous three game stretch to start the season where he’s leading the league in scoring. I write this not because it’s completely sustainable, but because the most eyes are on him now.
I will never not feel as though keeping Ty was an incredibly obvious decision, and the entire Cavs fanbase was told a lie and then largely bought it despite obvious evidence of the contrary.
You still hear that the Cavs were forced to choose between Sam Merrill and Ty Jerome, and this is just plainly false.
In 25-26, the Cavs were going to be over the second apron for the first time, realistically no matter what they did. Really, the only benefit of not keeping Ty last season was to Gilbert’s pockets, and saving him tens of millions in tax. Gilbert is worth $30 billion.
The playoff series against the Pacers understandably lowered his value, but it also took it from them probably not being able to afford him with the approximately $14,000,000 MLE (the most they could offer) to Ty going for less than 9 million per year. Aside from a three or four game stretch in that series, he honestly looked like one of the best offensive guards in the league during the minutes he played for most of the year. There was really nothing stopping the Cavs from signing Ty for roughly 2 years, 20 million, or even slightly more.
Because Gilbert has done a lot of great for the Cavs, especially compared to other Cleveland owners, I think people have had a hard time admitting exactly what happened here.
Gilbert didn’t want to pay more in the tax than he was already paying, so ownership put the team in a hole at backup PG, forcing them to rely on the corpse of Lonzo Ball, who hadn’t been good in Chicago post-injury. Plainly, Cavs ownership hurt the team by trying to save money, and letting a unique offensive talent go out the door in the process.
