CLEVELAND, Ohio — In this episode of the Wine and Gold Talk podcast, Ethan Sands, Chris Fedor and Jimmy Watkins explore how Ty Jerome’s rise has shifted his market value, what the Cavs can do to retain him, and how fit, opportunity, and leverage could all influence his next move.
Takeaways:
Cavaliers’ Long-Standing Interest: The Cavaliers have wanted Ty Jerome for years, valuing his ability to reduce the ball-handling burden on Darius Garland and Donovan Mitchell.
Financial Implications: Paying Jerome $14.3 million in 2025-2026 would add approximately $80 million in luxury tax penalties, requiring confidence in his value.
Market Value: Industry sources suggest Jerome’s market value is between $12-14 million annually, inflated by a weak free agent class.
Cavaliers’ Ability to Match Offers: Despite second apron restrictions, the Cavaliers can match offers for Jerome, preferring a deal around $12.5 million.
Limited Competition: While 24 teams have the mid-level exception, only a handful realistically pursue Jerome, with the Nets potentially offering more.
Orlando Magic as a Contender: The Magic, with the full mid-level exception, are in contention for Jerome due to their need for a point guard.
Jerome’s Career Trajectory: Jerome’s remarkable turnaround and ambition suggest he won’t easily accept a discount after proving himself.
Mutual Interest: There’s mutual interest between Jerome and the Cavaliers, influenced by established relationships and Coach Atkinson’s trust.
Playoff Performance Concerns: Concerns about Jerome’s playoff performance might make the Cavaliers hesitant to commit significant money.
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Transcript
NOTE: This transcript was generated by artificial intelligence and could contain misspellings and errors.
Speaker B: What up Cavs Nation? I’m your host Ethan Sands and I’m back with another episode of the Wine and Gold Talk podcast. Joining me today, Chris Fedor and Jimmy Watkins, cleveland.com’s finest. And there was a report that came out from Bleacher report and also ESPN’s Brian Windhorse said that the Cavs are going to be wary with the Ty Jerome contract because of how much he might be worth and it could take the full mid level exception. When we talk about a guy like Ty Jerome and we talk about what he was able to accomplish in the regular season but what he fell short of doing in the playoffs, knowing that the possibility to keep Darius Girl in and then also as we mentioned, trading for a guy like Lonzo Ball or any of these different situations. Do you still think that is one of the top priorities to bring back Ty Jerome for the Cavs? And will they be willing to match what some teams are saying the Sacramento Kings might be willing to offer him or other teams that we mentioned as well?
Speaker A: Well, here’s the thing. When it comes to Ty, the Cavs like him and Ty likes it here. And there is a preexisting relationship between Ty and president of basketball operations Kobe Altman that goes back more than a decade. And the Cavs have wanted Ty Jerome for years. They wanted him in the draft in 2019, couldn’t get him. They wanted him in free agency. At one point he decided to go to the Golden State warriors on a two way contract. So this is somebody that they like. This is somebody that’s been on their radar for, for a number of years and they need what Ty brings to the table and for all of his shortcomings during the playoffs and all of the questions about how he would fit in a seven game series against a team, team like Indiana, maybe against a team like Orlando, maybe against a team like Boston, depending on who’s available for Boston and who’s even on that roster, like Boston’s not just going to crater here. Boston’s not just going to turn into the Chicago Bulls here. Yes, Jason Tatum’s missing, but they have other pieces on that team that, that will make them at least competitive. So I think when it comes to Ty, for all the questions about him as a potential playoff performer, you got to get there and you need somebody to help you get through the grind of an 82 game regular season and not put too much on Darius Garland, not put too much on Donovan Mitchell. So the Cavs understand that being short a point guard or being short ball Handling is very, very problematic. And now that they have a reliable six man type on this roster, I do think they want to keep that. I do think they’re motivated to keep that. And the whole thing about the money that people can offer. If you are not a cap space team, and there are very few cap space teams, if you’re not a cap space team, the only thing that you can, the most you can offer is the mid level exception, which is going to be about $14 million. Guess who else can offer a contract very similar to that? The Cavs can. Because for all of the limitations that they’re going to have when it comes to team building, for all of the restrictions that they’re going to have because they’re projected as a second apron team, as its current currently standing right now, now they could make other moves. We know that they could trade Dean Wade, they could trade Isaac Okora, that could change the math. But as of right now, they’re projected as a second apron team. The second apron becomes prohibitive when it comes to external improvements. Internally, if the Cavs want to bring back Ty Jerome, they can do it. Internally, if the Cavs want to bring back Ty Jerome and Sam Merrill, they can do it. The second apron doesn’t come into play and it’s not as strict when it comes to those things. When it comes to other free agents outside this organization that aren’t currently theirs, that they don’t have the rights to, the only thing they can offer is the veterans minimum. So the situation that the Cavs are in, they like Ty, Ty likes it here. And some team out there is going to have to make it more appealing either from a situation standpoint or from a financial standpoint to really get Ty’s attention. And from a financial standpoint, there’s only like one team that can do that and it’s Brooklyn. There are other teams that have projected cap space, but we’ve talked about why those teams aren’t really a fit for Ty. So if Brooklyn doesn’t offer more than the mid level exception, then I don’t think he’s going to Brooklyn. And then you’re talking about the mid level exception. That’s where the other playoff caliber teams come in. Dallas, Golden State, San Antonio, those kinds of teams I think would be appealing to somebody like Ty and they can offer the mid level exception. Sacramento maybe would be appealing because of the opportunity and they can offer the mid level exception. But there’s only one team out there, only one that can and maybe would be willing to offer more to Ty Jerome than what the Cavs can. And it’s. So I think that has to be pointed out here. Other than that the Cavs are in the same financial situation that some of these other potentially desirable locations are as well. I think the Cavs would prefer to get them on a little bit of a discount. If they can get them like two years, 25,000,012.5, a little bit below the mid level exception, I think they’d be okay with that. I think they’d be willing to go there. But the truth is, if they’re going to bring back Ty and the other pieces are going to stay in place, Dan Gilbert’s going to have to pay a luxury tax check. He’s going to have to be confident that Ty is worth that luxury tax check and that this team is worthy enough of cutting that luxury tax check. But like this whole conversation about, oh my God, there are these other teams out there that could offer more than than the Cavs can, that’s just not true.
Speaker C: Tell you what it is, though. It’s good agenting. It’s good agenting for Tajerome’s people to be out there standing sharks in the water. Big banks are out, checkbooks are coming to Ty Jerome’s house. But that little bit of a discount that Chris mentioned, that’s the truth. That sets you free here. I think to me, that’s the whole entire thing. The Cavs, I think, might be a little shook by Ty’s Indiana series. And they’re thinking, really, they’re still going to have to kind of bite a bullet on this guy’s contra after that. After that. I think, Chris, that would be ideal. The Cavs would just like to look, Ty, we got your best friend on the team. We helped you make the leap that saved your career. You got Donovan Mitchell here. We all love you. Can’t we just come to some sort of agreement? And to a certain extent, I think they’re right. That is a good situation. You’re playing with your. Your best friend and your childhood friend. Sounds good to me. You have a coach that trusts you. I mean, until the end of the Indiana series, implicitly. Like Kenny, let Ty play through a lot of those struggles. Didn’t have a lot of choice. A lot of the time they were injuries, but gave him a long, long leash for a lot of the season. Okay, yes, Brooklyn could give money, sure. But the only team that’s like on par ish with the Cavs that would make me raise my eyebrow is Dallas. Just because Kyrie’s out and There’s a big vacuum there for ball. So, like, Ty Jerome, what do you want? That’s the question, right? That will determine that comparison. To me, it’s like, does Ty Jerome think there’s even more? It wouldn’t surprise me. This dude, we know how much this dude believes in himself. And by the way, he was just proven about as right as he. Like, he basically told us during the season that, like, the warriors just didn’t give him a chance. And that’s why we hadn’t seen this before. I’m picturing Ty Jerome watching Steph Curry and Clay, two of the greatest guards of our generation. And he’s just thinking, man, if I got my chance, they would see. They would see. And guess what they kind of saw last year. So who are we to say that there’s not more me on the bone? And if Dallas were to give him that Runway and he was going to be able to play with Anthony Davis and Cooper Flagg. Yeah. Think about it. I think it’s worth thinking about if you think there’s. There’s another level for your career if you want to potentially become a starting point guard. Plus, in the NBA, that’s one thing I think we can all say with confidence. That’s not going to happen here. Even if the Cavs move off of Darius Garland, there would be somebody coming back or whatever package they got for Darius Garland, the Cavs would move that package for somebody else that would fill another heavy ball handling role. Tightrooms just probably maxed out he. His role in Cleveland. He could do more of it. He could do it in the playoffs, but he’s going to be a six man here. But like Golden State, San Antonio, they have essentially the same role to offer. And a worse situation like San Antonio has Dear and Fox, and they might draft Dylan Harper. What? That doesn’t make any sense. Golden State, they need relief for Steph Curry, but Brandon Pujemski dribbles the ball, too. Okay. Jonathan Kaminga, I don’t know what those warriors are going to do with Jonathan Kaminga. He loves dribbling. Jimmy Butler, he’s a primary playmate. He’s not a point guard, but he has the ball a lot. It still comes down to me that the Cavs can’t unless without some very tricky maneuvering that I don’t foresee. They can’t replace Ty if they lose him.
Speaker A: Right.
Speaker C: And Ty doesn’t seem to have a better option on the table. And the rest is just noise. The rest is Ty’s agents saying, oh, you might have to pony up. And then the Cavs saying, yeah, we’ll let you go out there. Which means what Chris said, we’d like to get you for less money. It’s negotiating.
Speaker B: And as I was pointing out at the beginning of this, I wasn’t posing any of this, I was just bringing it to your attention from takes and reports from other sources and the wariness that some may have said about the Cleveland Cavaliers and the contract that could be bitten by the Cavs for a tight room. As Chris mentioned, it’ll be better to get him a little bit under that mid level exception range. And Sacramento is a place that was mentioned because they need another backup point guard. And if you believe that Keon Hurts is going to be there for long as well.
Speaker A: I think the Sacramento thing’s interesting. Sacramento has the full mid level Exception which is 14.1, but there’s another team. You know, we talked about the Orlando move a lot and the Desmond Bain thing and the domino effect of that. They were projected as a first apron team. They are no longer projected as a first apron team. They are projected as an over the cap team. So that means all of a sudden instead of Orlando basically only having the. Not the taxpayer mid level exception, I should say the taxpayer one, which is about 5.6 million and you take yourself out of the range of, you know, even the second tier free agents at that point in time, they now have access to the full mid level exception. That’s my understanding of the Orlando situation. So not only did they add Desmond Bain, but now they become more of a player in free agency and they still do need a point guard like Ty Jerome, somebody that can organize the offense, somebody that can get them into their stuff. I don’t know that he’s an ideal fit for a tough, physical, defensive minded team, but with the addition that they’ve made of Desmond Bain, like they might become a little bit more free flowing offensively. They might be able to be a team that is willing to sacrifice a little bit of defense for the gains that they could potentially make on the offensive end of the floor. So from a financial standpoint, Orlando was not going to be competitive for, for Ty Jerome before the trade for Desmond Bain or free agents. The caliber of Ty Jerome before the trade for Desmond Bain, My understanding is now they can be. So that’s another team that’s in the mix and I think there are about close to 20 teams that have the non taxpayer mid level exception. And yes, Sacramento definitely is one of them. And some of those teams that that have the non taxpayer mid level, the 14.1 million, some of them are playoff teams, other ones are, I think, non starters for somebody like Ty, who is about winning and wants to compete in the playoffs and loved the fact that he was on the number one team in the Eastern Conference throughout the course of the regular season. So I think from those 20ish teams that have access to the non taxpayer mid level, you can probably cut them in half just as a starting point of who would have a legitimate interest in, in tie. And if those teams are going to use the full mid level on tie, that’s the only offseason move that they can make basically in terms of free agency. So those teams would have to be incredibly motivated and believe that Ty would be an ideal fit for them to say, okay, the avenue that we have to improving our team externally this offseason is the mid level exception and you are the guy that we’re going to give all of it to. And I don’t know that that list is all that long because I don’t know that Ty Jerome is a priority free agent for all of those teams that have the mid level exception.
Speaker B: I think it’s so interesting to go into all of that, especially because we just went from like a small margin to 20 teams. But also like what Jimmy was saying, the opportunity and the drive and the competitive nature and the confidence that Ty Drum has. We talked about Dallas and the opportunity if Kyrie Irving worked to retire in a couple years, the opportunity for Todd Jerome to then slide into that starter role, that opportunity. Right. Sacramento. Keon Ellis, could you outplay Keon Ellis to become a starter caliber point guard? And then you mentioned Orlando and it made me chuckle, Chris, because I just remember getting the leaked audio from the Orlando Magic and Cleveland Cavaliers game where Ty Jero was talking smack. Kapalo Van Carroll. I would start on your team. I would start on your team. Don’t talk to me about what I can’t do because I would start on your team. So I don’t know if there’s animosity there. Obviously, I think it’s just good smack talk and I think it’s good back and forth. So there’s nothing that I would say was too much there, but like the potential to prove yourself right? The potential to be like, hey, maybe Jalen Suggson better as a player, more like TJ Machado, more like Alex Caruso coming off the bench and having those defensive assignments, who knows? But I think this is a conversation that needed to be had about Ty Jerome not Only because of what he might have played himself into, but also the value of all of these point guards around the league and how he has elevated himself to different conversations that he wasn’t in just a year ago. Imagine just a year ago he played two games, guys. Now we’re talking about teams willingly giving him all of their non taxpayer mid level exceptions to get him on the roster. The possibility, the potential. And now the Cavs are in a bidding war. And as Jimmy was saying, the agents are at hand in trying to figure out what his actual value is around the NBA, even though fit might be the best in Cleveland. And I agree with you on that. I just think the options is something that is so interesting to discuss in this conversation where a player was almost played out of the league a year ago.
Speaker A: So for accuracy and clarity, there are 24 teams projected to have access to the non taxpayer mid level exception, which is 14.1 million. And I’ve talked to multiple people over the last couple of weeks to try and really get a sense of, of what Ty’s market is going to be like and what kind of price range we’re looking at. And a majority of the people that I’ve talked to about this, they all kind of fall the same way when it comes to Tai and they all use the same numbers, which is 12 to 14 million annually for somebody like Ty. In part because this free agency class is due to and. And because of that, Ty is one of the people like Kyrie’s not going anywhere. James Harden’s not going anywhere. Fred Van Vliet’s probably not going anywhere. So Ty is actually one of the people that opposing executives around the NBA wonder about changing destination. Not that they think he’s motivated to get out of Cleveland. Not that they think the Cavs won’t offer him the kind of contract because they’re queasy about going in the luxury tax, but because of the things that Jimmy was talking about. Could there be a different opportunity out there for Ty? Could there be a different situation out there for Ty? And I guess like he’s looked at as more available than some of these other point guards that are also free agents. If you’re not going to get Kyrie, if you’re not going to get James Harden, if you’re not going to get Fred Van Vliet, and there’s really not a whole bunch of quality free agents out there to actually give $14.1 million to. And if it’s your PAT pathway to improving externally, you got to give it to somebody Right.
Speaker C: Can I say one more thing about what drives Ty Jerome that we’ve learned over the last year or so? Do not mess with prideful players. There’s two things here. One for the cat. Oh, we’d love to get you at instead of 14.1, 12.5, what’s the difference to Dan Gilbert? Many millions of dollars. Luxury tax amplifies every penny.
Speaker A: I get that.
Speaker C: But in the grand scheme, you’re already shoveling money out the window for this roster. Weird time to draw a line in the sand. This would be a weird time to draw a line in the sand. And Ty Jerome in my. By the way, I don’t mean to paint Ty Jerome as like me first. Like he’s an ambitious person, clearly. And ambition has driven him to this point, to a point of success. Ambitious people don’t stop being ambitious when they reach a goal. They just set a new one. So I would caution the Cavs in trying to, hey, we got a good situation. We helped you find your place in the league. Why not skimp a million and a half a year here or there? But because of that, because we know that Ty Jerome believes he has earned what he is going to make. I would also say at 27, this might be a one shot payday for him.
Speaker A: Okay.
Speaker C: I’m not saying like Ty Jerome’s game not necessarily built on speed, analyticism, vertically, anything like that. I think it could age particularly well. It’s just that like rotation, bench, guys, your window for making, you know, balloon payments is very short, very short. And this is like Chris is saying, this free agent class is a unique, uniquely bad free agent class. The environment that Ty Jerome is able to, to be in these kind of $14 million a year conversation, very unique. Not a given that Ty Jerome is going to look the same that he did last year.
Speaker A: Right.
Speaker C: Going forward, this could be a, a one shot opportunity for him to make all NBA players make a lot of money. This is life changing money that we’re talking about here. Okay? So I don’t think he’s going to play about it and I don’t think he should.
Speaker B: I think that’s a great point. And we talked about him rising to this and, and not having this opportunity. I think it might mean a little bit more for him. Right. Having a career where he’s jumped around different places and now you have the opportunity not only to be valued financially, but valued as a player. I think that means a lot as well. And since we’re being specific, as Chris went into the luxury tax and all of the mid level exception teams that could offer Kai drama contract. This is also the luxury tag rules for next season. If the Cavs were to pay the $14.3 million salary in 2025, 2026, it would add an additional $80 million in luxury tax penalties. We talked about Dan Gilbert having to front the bill on that $80 million is not just a few million dollars, it’s a big bill. And again, to reiterate, we’re not saying that Dan Gilbert is going to get pocket shy. We’re not saying that Dan Gilbert doesn’t have the bread to do all of this. The fact of the matter is he has to be confident in the situation and what Ty Jerome is going to bring to this team to be willing to pay this. Because if the Cavs do that, it’s unlikely that Sam Merrill comes back. That’s the other part of this as well. Because of how much money they are willing to give, how much money they are able to give for Todd Jerome. I think we hadn’t done the 24 mid level exception teams yet, so I’m glad we got into that all on today’s podcast. But with all that being said, that’ll wrap up today’s episode of the Wine and Gold Talk podcast. But remember to become a cast insider and interact with Chris, me and Jimmy by subscribing to Subtext so you can have your voice heard. This is where you can have daily conversations with me, Chris and Jimmy. This is where you can get daily texts, whether it be in, whether it be daily reactions and analysis based on trades going on around the NBA and all these things directly to your phone. But you can only get that if you sign up for a 14 day free trial or visit cleveland.comcavs and click on the blue bar at the top of the page. If you don’t like it, that’s fine. All you have to do is text the word stop. It’s easy, but we can tell you that the people who sign up stop stick around because this is the best way to get insider coverage on the Cavs from me, Chris and Jimmy. This isn’t just our podcast, it’s your podcast. And the only way to have your voice heard is through subtext. Y’ all be safe. We out.
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