The Indiana Pacers visit the Cleveland Cavaliers in Ohio on Friday night, for their second preseason game of the 2021-22 NBA season.
While the Cavs have been a lousy team the last three seasons, they do have one player who is a household name to NBA fans.
Kevin Love.
He's a five-time NBA All-Star and played with Kyrie Irving and LeBron James to help lead the Cavs to the 2016 NBA Championship.
He could end up being a Hall of Famer.
Yet, he has kind of become irrelevant, and I think that needs to change.
According to ESPN's list, Love will be the 29th highest paid player in the NBA upcoming season ($31,258,256), and according to Spotrac, the Cavs will owe him $28,942,830 the following season.
After that, his contract expires and he becomes an unrestricted free agent.
Never say never in the NBA, but for a 33 year old who only played 25 games last season, and is owed that kind of money is as tough as a contract to trade as there is.
In those 25 games, the 13-year veteran averaged 12.2 points, 7.4 rebounds 2.5 assists and shot over 36% from the three-point range.
Those are very solid numbers.
However, there just is not going to be value that comes back in return to Cleveland if they trade him.
In fact, they'd possibly have to add in a sweetener (young player or draft pick) just to get another team to absorb that contract.
The Cavs are a young team that is trying to develop players right now.
They don't need Love anymore.
What they should do, is exactly what the Detroit Pistons did with another veteran All-Star.
The Pistons and Blake Griffin parted ways during the middle of last season, and Griffin gave some money back that was owed to him as part of a contract buyout.
The details can be seen in a Tweet from The Athletic's Shams Charania from March 5 below.
Charania reported that Griffin had $75 million remaining and two years left and he gave the Pistons back $13.3 million.
The deal worked for both sides.
The Pistons got to save a substantial amount of money, and Griffin got to choose his next destination.
Griffin joined the Brooklyn Nets and played in 26 regular season games for them last year (starting in only ten) and averaged 10.0 points, 4.7 rebounds and 2.4 assists per game for Brooklyn.
He also shot over 38% from the three-point range.
Suddenly, Griffin became relevant again.
He went from an aging star on a team going nowhere that season to becoming a productive player for one of the NBA's hottest teams.
Griffin is 32 years old around the same age as Love.
The question will become how much would Love be willing to give up if anything, and would the Cavs let him go?
I think both sides should give a little to get a little.
The Cavs could hit the reset button, and Love could save his career.
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