would i stay as a cavs player or waer other jersey next season?
how did i perform in my current team? can i excel if i will be playing for a different team?

al of these questions (more in the future…) needs to be kept in the balance
you know… the force just not work overnight

Dissed in C-Land

Yes. As it stands, the Cavs are currently on the hook for around $20 million without LeBron. That includes Mo Williams, Delonte West, JJ Hickson, Daniel Gibson and Darnell Jackson. Those first four guys are probably guys they’d want to keep. If you assume a cap of $60 million, that leaves $40 million to sign LeBron, another star and then fill out the roster with $1 million-type guys.

The main problem with that theory is that for all those current contracts to expire, you’re going to have a number of guys – Wallace, Z, Varejao, Pavlovic – playing in the last year of their contracts the year before LeBron can opt-out. This is not conducive to championship-level basketball. The Cavs might still be good, but if this roster stays intact, I wouldn’t think that they’d have a very good chance to win a title because half the team will be thinking about where they’d be in a year (including LeBron).

Barring a title (or maybe a Finals appearance) in the spring of 2010, I think the LeBron camp will make its decision next summer.

Um…why not? Clearly, you don’t want to trade him, but the bottom line is, if the Cavs lose LeBron for nothing, they’ll sink to the bottom of the league and once again be one of the most irrelevant teams in the NBA. Is that overstating the situation? Maybe, but as a Cavs fan I remember just how pathetic this franchise was before LeBron arrived and without LeBron, this current team would be mediocre at best.

A small-market team like the Cavs simply can’t afford to lose (arguably) the best player in the league without getting something in return. If the signs are pointing to LeBron bolting during the final year of his deal, the Cavs would be doing their fans a disservice if they didn’t at the very least gauge the trade market for their superstar to see if there would be a good fit. With the way the team has been playing, I actually have a little more hope these days that he’ll end up staying, and if they end up making the Finals or even winning a title, those chances would seem to improve. But who knows how the landscape will look come 2010? If the Cavs are still floundering and he gets a max offer from a team that offers him a better chance to win multiple titles, he’s gone.

That said, I believe the Cavs may actually have the cap space in 2010 to not only re-sign LBJ but also potentially sign another superstar like Bosh. JP, is that right?

The only way Cleveland keeps LeBron is if they make the Finals again in the next two years. It would help if they didn’t get swept again.

The only other possibility is a blockbuster sign-and-trade that would bring Bosh, Amare or Wade to the Cavs. Something like what the Gasol trade meant for the Lakers.

I like the conspiracy theory that LeBron is making all this noise about potentially leaving in order to get other teams to make bad trades to clear cap space to make the Cavs path to the title easier. It’s an intriguing theory….