The Cleveland Cavaliers signed Anderson Varejao to a three-year contract extension prior to the 2014-15 season with the intentions that he would be their starting center. However, Varejao suffered a season-ending Achilles tear forcing the Cavaliers to trade for Timofey Mozgov. Throughout the season, Mozgov thrived in the starting role and will be returning next season. Varejao is now on the trade market, yet no one wants him.
According to ESPN's Brian Windhorst, the Cavaliers are in talks for trade deals involving Joe Johnson of the Brooklyn Nets and Jamal Crawford of the Los Angeles Clippers. While the intention is to give away Brendan Haywood who has a very team-friendly contract, Varejao would likely need to be included and teams are not thrilled at the idea.
Varejao's contract is unwanted. The center is a salary cap hit of $10 million over the next two seasons and this rises to $15 million in the third year. At this point in the offseason, no one wants a contract of that size for a player who has missed an entire season. Keeping Varejao is certainly not the worst move for Cleveland, but his cap hit is likely factoring in to contract talks for Tristan Thompson.
Cleveland's biggest concern right now is not the potential trade deals the team is cooking up, but instead the pending deal for Thompson who is a restricted free agent. The assumption is that Thompson is staying put with the Cavaliers. No team has placed a qualifying offer on him at this moment, but after giving out big deals to Kevin Love and Iman Shumpert, money is tight. Not to mention the Cavaliers still need to sign LeBron James. A trade is the best move they could make in order to ease the money burden.
The interest in both Johnson and Crawford likely means that JR Smith is not coming back in 2015. According to the Northeast Ohio Media Group, the Cavaliers have not given up on the idea of bringing back Smith, but he certainly is not a priority at the moment. There has been little interest around Smith since he opted out of his player in option in hopes of re-signing with Cleveland to a bigger contract. Instead, the Cavaliers gave that bigger contract to Iman Shumpert and now money is tight for Smith.
There likely will not be a team that places an offer on Thompson, so the Cavaliers have some time. Considering the power forward is a restricted free agent, Cleveland can simply match whatever offer is placed on the table. However, it does not appear contract talks are going well which is now delaying a deal for James.
