In the past three seasons, Golden State Warriors won twice and Cleveland Cavaliers won once. Golden State Warriors successfully avoided paying luxury tax because of the cheap contract signed by Curry, Thompson and Meng Green earlier, but in order to defend the championship next season, they have exceeded the luxury tax line in the team's total salary.
The Cleveland Cavaliers, however, were not so lucky. Since LeBron James chose to return in the summer of 20 14, Cavaliers boss dan gilbert has fulfilled his promise of unlimited salary and kept giving players in the team one big contract after another. In other words, the Cleveland Cavaliers have paid luxury tax to the league every season for the past three years, especially last season, team owner Gilbert paid a high luxury tax of nearly 60 million US dollars.
However, the Cleveland Cavaliers led by James, Owen and Love still failed to beat the mighty Golden State Warriors to win the championship. Perhaps in the minds of many Cavaliers fans, because the Warriors have four all-star players, and Stephen Curry and kevin durant are MVPs in the regular season, the Cleveland Cavaliers, whose lineup configuration is obviously inferior, lost. After all, it is hard to resist the Golden State Warriors with four All-Stars only by relying on lebron james, the first active player in the league.
So this summer, the Cleveland Cavaliers made a plan to introduce reinforcements again, but neither paul george of Indiana Pacers nor jimmy butler of Chicago Bulls had any fate with the Cavaliers. To make matters worse, the team's second-in-command, Carey Owen, also made a deal with the Cavaliers' management because of the ball rights. In the end, Cleveland Cavaliers chose to trade Owen to Boston Celtics, the eastern giants, in exchange for rich trading chips such as Thomas Jr. and Claude.
However, this summer, the Cleveland Cavaliers still gained a lot, including signing the former regular season MVP Derek Ross with a veteran basic salary contract, which once shocked the outside world. However, it seems that the Cleveland Cavaliers are obviously not satisfied with this. After Carmelo Anthony was traded to Oklahoma City Thunder, Cavaliers management focused on Dwain Wade of Chicago Bulls.
Dwain Wade has now reached a buyout agreement with Chicago Bulls and entered a 48-hour clarification period. But in the eyes of many people, Wade will definitely choose to join the Cleveland Cavaliers as a free agent of lebron james, and the Cavaliers will not only provide him with a veteran basic salary contract of $2.3 million, but also guarantee the position of Dwain Wade as the starting shooting guard, which also means that the Cleveland Cavaliers will form an ultra-luxurious top five lineup in the near future.
In this way, there will be five all-star players in the Cleveland Cavaliers' camp next season: James, Thomas Jr., Wade, Ross and Love. I believe that if we compete with last season's champion Golden State Warriors with such a lineup, the 30-year-old man's fourth title in his life will be safe.