CLEVELAND, OH - The Cleveland Cavaliers and Kevin Love agreed on a reported four-year, $120 million contract extension. With the signing, it would appear the post-LeBron Cavs have voluntarily signed themselves up to be one of those teams stuck in the middle -- not good enough to compete for anything beyond a lower-seed playoff spot, yet with a likely All-Star in Love, an exciting rookie in Collin Sexton and some leftover parts from the LeBron era, potentially not bad enough, particularly in the lowly lower half of the Eastern Conference, to secure a high-leverage lottery pick.
These days, we tend to evaluate teams, at least from the outside, through an extreme prism: Either you're a true title contender, or you're not -- in which case, some would argue, your best course of action is to start making moves to become one, whether that be flat-out tanking, trading big-money stars with whom you've seemingly plateaued, or at least not exacerbating the problem by signing any more high-priced talent that isn't going to take you to the next level.
Hello, Pistons and Blake Griffin.
This is why we've heard at least rumblings for a while that the Wizards might be willing to trade John Wall. This is why we started hearing Damian Lillard's name in trade rumors, because the Blazers, perhaps, could be feeling increasingly stuck in the middle. Or maybe they fear Lillard himself might start feeling this way, and they're scared of losing their star for nothing -- the new great fear around the league.
Either way, there is little glory in being just a good team anymore. The Raptors were clearly sick of it when they sent DeMar DeRozan to the Spurs for Kawhi Leonard because Kawhi gives them a chance -- even if for just one year -- to be great. And if it doesn't work out, they officially start moving toward being bad. No more middle.
It's a shame in the sense that each year in the NBA there are maybe four or five teams, at the most, that can really consider themselves title contenders, and if every team that wasn't on that list started going the other way, you'd have 25 teams, in some capacity, throwing in the towel. The Cavs may still end up moving Love. In fact, with him locked up long-term, there is a reasonable scenario in which a team with cap room -- one that strikes out on the big free-agent class next year -- would be happy to acquire Love, and would, in turn, give Cleveland an asset or two to ramp up its seemingly inevitable rebuild.
