The Cleveland Cavaliers have a full roster of 15 players, all of them worth keeping, so they won’t be making any changes to their team between now and the playoffs. Their next transaction may not come until after the season is over, be that in late April or, hopefully, mid-June.
There is one move they can make right now, however, and that is signing the newly-acquired Keon Ellis to a contract extension. The NBA’s “trade-and-extend” rules allow for Cleveland to offer him a three-year, $52 million contract that would pay an average of $17.3 million per season.
Ellis was the apple of the league’s eye leading into the trade deadline, with well over a dozen teams expressing interest in the young wing. The onetime Alabama star made an impression in his second season, carving out a rotation role and going off in the Play-In Tournament to take down the Golden State Warriors. The following year, he shot 43.3 percent from deep and played in 80 games, starting 28 of them.
Yet for some reason, Ellis fell out of favor with Sacramento Kings head coach Doug Christie once he took over for former Cavaliers coach Mike Brown. Ellis averaged just 17.6 minutes per game this season as he was passed over by the likes of Russell Westbrook and Dennis Schroder in the backcourt and Nique Clifford on the wing.
Keon Ellis was the perfect trade target
With Ellis making only $2.3 million this season, contending teams saw him as the perfect trade target. They could easily match his salary, add a 3-and-D wing to their rotation, and then re-sign him to a reasonable contract moving forward. With Cleveland willing to take on the contract of Dennis Schroder and holding a player in De’Andre Hunter that the Kings somewhat surprisingly wanted, the Cavaliers won the competition and landed Ellis.
Cleveland can offer Ellis that extension immediately, and perhaps they already have. For the Cavaliers, the extension is an opportunity to lock Ellis in at a known number rather than face th eunknown of free agency this summer. If Ellis proves himself in the playoffs, he could be looking at an even higher number -- a difficult proposition for a Cavs team grappling with the second luxury tax apron.
Yet paying him now is also a risk, because the reasons that he fell out of favor in Sacramento could reveal themselves and he may not prove to be a trustworthy rotation player. With Max Strus and Sam Merrill on multi-year contracts at the same position, investing another long-term contract could prove problematic if Ellis isn’t everything that they hope he can be.
For Ellis, the gamble is similar. Does he take the surefire money now, or does he bet on himself on a real contender to earn a larger payday? Given that he has only made around $5 million in his career thus far, it probably makes sense for him to lock in life-changing money now -- but that’s no guarantee.
Ellis and the Cavaliers can agree to the extension anytime this season, so it could be that both sides wait and test the waters a bit before agreeing to a deal. But wih Cleveland’s roster otherwise set, this is the obvious next move for the team -- if they can get a deal done.