CLEVELAND, Ohio — In this episode of the Wine and Gold Talk podcast, hosts Ethan Sands and Chris Fedor touch on Ty Jerome’s potential departure from the team and the financial considerations that come into play.
Takeaways:
The Cavs are committed to developing Sam Merrill as a key player, which is reflected in his new contract.
The team is focused on creating a dynamic and chaotic offense.
Ty Jerome’s performance in the playoffs raised concerns for the Cavs.
Financial implications play a significant role in player decisions.
The Cavs are prioritizing championship readiness in their roster decisions.
Lonzo Ball’s addition provides valuable playmaking and depth.
The Cavs’ front office is strategic in their approach to free agency.
Cleveland’s current roster is one of the best opportunities for a championship.
The emotional dynamics of player relationships impact team decisions.
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Transcript
NOTE: This transcript was generated by artificial intelligence and could contain misspellings and errors.
Ethan Sands: Foreign what up Cals nation? I’m your host, Ethan Sands and I’m back with another episode of the Watch and Gold talk podcast. And with me, per usual, you know you love him, Chris Fedor. And Chris, we had to do an emergency podcast on the weekend to get out some information like guarding a trade for Isaac Okoro and the Cavs acquiring Lonzo Ball. And I thought our day was almost over, right? I’m over on the softball field playing my weekly game on a Saturday with my computer in hand after rushing to get it on YouTube and all those things with you. And as my game is wrapping up, of course, the Cavs going ahead and Extend Sam Merrill 4 years, $38 million. What do you think this re signing means for the Cleveland Cavaliers? To me it’s basically the Cavs saying this is a perfect fit for Kenny Atkinson. We love how Sam Erra operates in his offense and we need that spacing and that switch out kind of role with Max Strust. And he’s the perfect guy to filling so many of these roles.
Chris Fedor: I think there are a couple things here, Ethan. I think it is true that they do like Sam a lot. They’ve invested a lot of time and resources in developing Sam into the player that he has become. A guy who is worth a four year, $38 million contract. A guy who is going to have a lot of suitors in the free agency market because he is considered one of the best on the ball movers. He’s considered one of the best cutters. He’s considered one of the most prolific outside shooters. No matter what his shooting percentage says, the attention that he attracts from an opposing defense and his ability to make difficult shots on the move, catch and shoot opportunities, all of those kinds of things. He was going to have a market. There were going to be teams that were interested in Sam. So I do think you have to start with the fact that the Cavs like him. Kenny Atkinson has talked about him throughout the course of his time here. The gravity, the spacing, the movement, the cutting, the shooting. He’s said he saw him kind of like a Joe Harris type. A Joe Harris, a guy that Kenny Atkinson had in his system when he was with the Brooklyn Nets. And what do the Cavs want to do offensively? They want to push the tempo. They want to shoot threes. They want to be one of the most prolific, random, chaotic offenses that there is in the NBA. And. And, Sam Merrill certainly fits that. Beyond all that, this is a guy that the Cavs made the first pick of the G league draft a couple of years ago. So they scouted him, they liked him. I remember having a conversation with somebody in the Cavs front office the day that they did draft Sam Merrill with the number one pick and, and brought him to the Cleveland Charge. And just the excitement that was surrounding that decision, the excitement that was surrounding that pick in a G league draft. I remember telling the person, I was like, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. Is he ever going to make it to the NBA? Like you’re excited about the number one pick in the G League draft and then about five months later they bring him up for a 10 day contract and they quickly give him a standard NBA contract. So their affinity for Sam Merrill goes back a couple of years. I think the other layer to this whole thing, Ethan, is that the options that the Cavs were looking at to potentially replace Sam in free agency just weren’t as appealing to them. They certainly weren’t as appealing to them as, as the free agent point guard market. On top of that, you know, getting somebody like Lonzo Ball, who can be a secondary playmaker, who can organize the offense, who can do some playmaking, great vision, cerebral passer, it gives you another ball handling option. That trade for Isaac Koro, bringing Lonzo here, it diminishes the opportunities or it cuts into the opportunities of a guy like Ty Jerome. So if, if they had an internal option and they did in, in Lonzo Ball to kind of like take some of those playmaking responsibilities from Ty, when you have an internal option like that, you don’t feel like you need as much from the external options in saying that like the point guard market in free agency is more appealing than the shooting guard market in free agency. So if Sam would have left, if somebody would have given him the kind of contract and the Cavs would have lost him, they would have been, I think, scrambling more to try and replace him. And the things that he does for this team and they just aren’t out there. You know, Nikhil Alexander Walker is going to get paid. Malik Beasley got arrested. You know, Bruce Brown is not that type of player. Seth Curry is 35 years old, injury prone, no, can’t guard anybody. So they’re just like Landry Shamit is probably the closest player to replicating the stuff that Sam Merrill does for the Cavs. If the Cavs would have lost Sam. So I think that factored into it. And then you can’t overlook the, the beaming light that, that’s right in front of you, that is blinking at you, which is Sam Merrill was cheaper than Tajiro. He was always going to be cheaper than Ty Jerome. Everybody that I talked to in preparation for free agency, they were talking about Sam Merrill Probably 6 to 8 million annually, maybe 7 to 9 million annually. And with Ty Jerome, it’s 12 to 14 million annual. So you might not think that’s a big deal, but everything with the Cavs, given where they are with their salary cap situation, is 6x. So take the number and multiply it by 6. Okay? So if you’re talking about the financial difference between Ty Jerome and Sam Merrill, Sam Merrill’s contract’s going to start right around 9ish million dollars. Let’s just use that because that’s a round number. Ty Jerome’s contracts probably going to start right around 14 million. 14-9 is 5. 5 times 6 is 30. That’s a $30 million difference in terms of luxury tax that Dan Gilbert would have to pay. So that’s a big part of it as well.
Ethan Sands: We’ve talked all summer about they could pay both of them, they could bring back both of them if Dan Gilbert wasn’t going to get pocket shot, if Dan Gilbert was willing to pay to bring back Ty Jerome, knowing if Dan Gilbert believed in what Ty Jerome was going to bring to the table for this team.
Chris Fedor: And there’s this. If the Cavs felt it was in the best interest of, of. Of the franchise, both in the short and the long term. Right. Like the more that you spend, the more limitations that you’re going to have when it comes to roster building, the more that you spend and the deeper into the luxury tax and far above the second apron that you are, the more harsh the penalties are going to be, the more the restrictions are going to be there staring you in the face, and the harder it’s going to be to get out of the second apron. So you can’t discount those things.
Ethan Sands: So, Chris, I wanted to ask you this question point blank, straight up. Do you think the signings of Lonzo Ball and Sam Merrill will usher out the tenure of Ty Jerome with the Cleveland Cavaliers?
Chris Fedor: I do, yes. I think Ty is going to be gone. I think the Cavs got the sense over the last couple of days as, as free agency has gotten closer and closer and closer, that there were multiple suitors out there for Ty that were going to give him the kind of contract that would have made the Cavs a little bit queasy, both in terms of overall price, in terms of annual salary, and I think in terms of how many years that contract is going to be. So those are two things that the Cavs had to look at when it came to Ty. They could, if they wanted to, they could get to the same kind of number that some of these teams are going to get to when you talk about the mid level exception. But is that in the best interest of the team? Is that fiscally responsible given the salary cap situation that they’re in? So I think there was a number in terms of annual salary where the Cavs were comfortable just in their general outlook. And I think there were a number of years where the Cavs were comfortable. And my guess is that, you know, when free agency opens Up Monday at 6pm Ty Jerome is, is going to reach a contract figure with somebody out there that is going to be one that the Cavs wouldn’t have been as comfortable with, probably more lucrative in terms of annual salary and probably a little bit longer in terms of just how much that’s going to stay on your books for how many years that’s going to stay on your books than what the Cavs were comfortable with. And now I also think there’s this too, Ethan, for, for them, it’s about winning a championship and it’s about finding guys that they believe in when you get into a playoff run. It’s about finding guys that you can trust when you get into a playoff run. And I think the series that Ty had against Indiana, a very, very good team in the Eastern Conference, the kind of team, the caliber of team anyway, if not that specific team, but that caliber of opponent that the Cavs are going to have to get through to win an NBA championship. I think the series that he had against Indiana, I think it raised some doubt with team decision makers about the kind of playoff performer that Ty could be. And Sam Merrill didn’t raise those same doubts. Sam Merrill isn’t somebody that Kenny Atkinson felt like he had to go away from in the first half of game five. And we can sit here and we can debate whether Kenny was right to do that, whether he should have trusted Ty a little bit more, whether Ty earned a longer leash. But there were people inside the organization that saw the defensive numbers of Ty Jerome in that series against Indiana and they were terrified. They were terrified about what that could look like moving into the future. And I think there was some hesitancy to make that kind of financial commitment to somebody where they’re legitimately wondering how much can we trust him in a playoff series or in a playoff run. And for, for all the things that you can say about what Ty did better than Sam Merrill throughout the course of the season. Look, Sam Merrill wasn’t third in six man of the year voting. I think there’s more confidence in Sam being able to hold up during a playoff run that he’s not going to be the same kind of defensive liability that Ty Jerome was in that series against Indiana. I mean, I had somebody in the NBA that, that looks at these numbers and they get better numbers than what we can get access to. And they said he was historically bad on the defensive end of the floor in that series against Indiana. And I think that was a little bit troublesome to the Cavs. I think that was a little bit worrisome to the Cavs. And I don’t think they have those same doubts about Sam Merrill as, as a potential playoff performer. And I think that factored into the decision making process for this team. And those are the kinds of things that have to come to mind because this is about winning a championship again. This isn’t about winning a first round series. This isn’t about against the worst playoff opponent that has ever gotten into the playoffs, the Miami Heat. This is about winning a championship and the kinds of players that you believe you’re going to need throughout the course of an extended playoff run to win 16 games in spring when it matters the most. And I just think there was some worry in, in this organization about what Ty could bring in that kind of environment and if that was going to be worth Dan Gilbert paying $80 million in terms of luxury tax.
Ethan Sands: I think this kind of comes full circle, Chris, when we talk about the Sam Merrill conversation, because at the beginning of the season, we were talking to Kenny Atkinson about Sam Merrill and him coming back from a wrist injury and his shooting numbers being down and all these things. And Kenny says, well, I’m not worried about the shooting. He can play defense.
Chris Fedor: And we were all like, what the hell are you talking about?
Ethan Sands: 100%. And that goes into what you were talking about with the advanced statistics that we don’t even have access to that more analytically driven players and coaches and all these different scouts have. And you realize that there’s not only confidence within Kenny Atkinson, but there’s reason for that, right? Not only analytically, but we saw the development of what Kenny Atkinson was talking about defensively for Sam Merrill throughout this entire 2024, 2025 season. And it was kind of a similar situation to Darius Garland. We’re not going to hide Samuel. We’re not going to allow you to think that you can just drive past him, no body up, do what you can, slow him down and keep your feet in front, right? All of these things that Kenny Atkinson was trying to tell us earlier into the season have now become into fruition and that kind of gets into the story that I’m writing for tomorrow for the website. The Cavs are building this team that fit perfectly into exactly who Kenny Atkinson want them to be. Lonzo Ball, Tyrese Proctor, right, run the floor, play defense, play hard, have high IQs and are going to do everything they can to be moving at all times. The Cavs have one of the best offenses in the league in league history last year, and it was because of the offensive tactical mind of Kenny Atkinson.
Chris Fedor: And what he was able to do.
Ethan Sands: With the Ocean offense and all those things. So I think it’s important to note that it’s not just Sam Merrow can shoot and come off screens and but as Chris was getting into, Sam Merrill is a better defender than Ty Jerome, even if it doesn’t seem like it when you’re watching back the film. Sam Merrill held his own and has been getting praised by the entire Cavs organization for his growth defensively over the last year. And that is coming from a guy who was the last pick in the draft. Chris, that might be the biggest thing for me here. Sam Merrill was the last pick in the draft, then the first overall pick in the G League draft, as you mentioned, and now you’re getting a multi year, multimillion dollar deal that is one of the best stories you can have for a player. And the representation of players at the end of the draft that feel like they don’t have a chance or might not have as much of a chance as a first rounder to get paid and all these things. We were talking about a once in a lifetime payday for Ty Jerome. Feels like Sam Merrill might have got one.
Chris Fedor: So here’s the other thing about Ty, and you can’t diminish the value that he brought to the Cavs throughout the course of the season. And he was really good in the Miami series as well. So you can’t diminish that either. Look, he finished third in sixth man of the year. He was a perfect fit in Kenny Atkinson’s system, especially on the offensive end of the floor. His ability to play pick and roll, his ability to stabilize the second unit, his ability to organize the offense, his ability to shoot threes at a high volume too, at such a high percentage. We’re talking about somebody who is basically 50, 40, 90 throughout the course of the season for The Cavs, you can’t ignore those kinds of things. But the question that the Cavs are asking themselves is how much is that kind of guy worth? Especially if he’s only going to play 19 minutes a night. Especially if you have a primary ball handler in Darius Garland and a primary ball handler in Donovan Mitchell. And the need for, for somebody like Ty Jerome and somebody with his skill set, it’s not as high as it was when the season ended for the Cavs because they did draft Tyrese Proctor. And you can say what you want to about the 49th pick and second round pick. Cavs like him, Cavs believe in him. The Cavs saw him as sort of a first round talent. So he’s not going to be tie right from the very beginning. But having another option that can do that, Craig Porter Jr. Another option that can do some of the Ty Jerome type things. And then like I said, the trade involving Isaac Okoro getting Lonzo Ball here, the need for Ty Jerome changes when these guys come to the organization. And beyond all of that, like I said, this is how the front office has to look at it. $14 million annually for Ty Jerome or $3 million for Spencer Dinwiddie. $14 million for Ty Jerome or $3 million For Tyus Jones, $14 million for Ty Jerome or$3 million for Corey Joseph. And none of those guys that I brought up are as good as Ty or they’re going to be as impactful as Ty was. But can you get enough of the good things that Ty brought to you at a fraction of the cost? And if they look at it and they say yes, and again, some of those guys are going to have other opportunities to go elsewhere, but you can keep going down the list. Monte Morris is another name maybe you want to look at Delon Wright. Can you get enough of the stuff that, that Ty brought to you for $11 million less that’s just in salary cap, and then 60 million less in terms of the luxury tax check that you would have to cut? You know, that’s a pretty significant thing that you really would have to justify to Dan Gilbert and he would be asking those same kinds of questions, well, wait a minute, can we find somebody that can do the Ty Jerome stuff for much cheaper than that? And I think when you look at the names in free agency, depending on who’s going to get paid, who’s not going to get paid, but not all of these guys are going to get paid. Some of these guys are going to have to settle for the veterans minimum and that’s what the Cavs can offer. So let’s let this play out a little bit. But I think that’s everything. That’s the landscape that was out there in, in front of the Cavs, and they kind of determined, okay, putting all of that together in one big bucket. If. If we have a pessimistic view about bringing back both Sam Merrill and Ty Jerome, we have to start making that list, the pros and the cons. We have to start looking at the other options for us in free agency. We have to start looking at the other. At the other internal options that we have already in this organization. We have to look at some of the trade possibilities that exist to us out there as well. And I think all of that combined led them to this idea that they thought Sam needed to be the priority.
Ethan Sands: And it continues to work in favor of Kenny Atkinson’s offense, Kenny Atkinson’s system, and what this Cavs organization is building. And sure, we can talk about how this is a NBA Finals or bust kind of season, or they have to make it past the Eastern Conference semifinals. Wherever fans may stand in that discussion, this is in wide open East. This is the best opportunity the Cavs may have had in all of franchise history outside of when LeBron James is on this team to win an NBA championship. And if they feel like Kenny Hackington’s system was missing a tweak here or missing a player there or missing one little piece or needed a little bit of a shift in mindset or direction, they’re going to go that way. Full throttle in what they believe in is going to make this happen for them. That’s Dan Gilbert. That’s Kobe Altman. That’s Kenny Atkinson. That’s down to the players. And as we’ve talked about it, the locker room can be emotional, the locker room can be understanding. And Ty Jerome may walk away from his best friend and his childhood best friend.
Chris Fedor: I think we also have to say this, too. The Cavs are going to miss Ty. They are going to feel that loss. If everything transpires the way that it looks like it’s about to transpire. The Cavs are going to miss Ty. They’re going to feel that loss, but it’s a loss that I think given everything else, they’re okay enough with.
Ethan Sands: If they make this decision to go away from him and Tajiran goes off and has another breakout season, as we think he might, because all he ever wants is another opportunity, I think Cavs fans are going to look back on this decision that the Cavs are going to make and wonder what would have been, what could have been. And it feels like the city of Cleveland loves to live in that gray area. What could have, should have, would have. Right? And I think that’s why we have to be realistic on this podcast, and that’s why we gotta be realistic when we have these conversations. Chris is right. The Cavs are going to miss him. But in the moment, in the summer of change, where everything is changing around them in the Eastern Conference, the NBA CBA is affecting all these teams. They’re trying to figure out where they’re going to be at. And not just this season, but a few years down the road, what felt best for the Cavs in this moment, in this summer. That’s where they were at. And I don’t think you can look back and your crystal ball and be like, oh, they should have done this instead. That doesn’t really help anybody. Right? Right. Unless if Ty Jerome ends up on the Golden State warriors and it’s like, oh, well, didn’t work out the first time. Let’s see if it works out this time. Right. And obviously they’re one of the teams that could be floating around the idea of trying to get Ty. The Memphis Grizzlies are out there, too. I just think it’s a situation where the Cavs fandom has to understand where this organization is coming from in this decision. Decision. Especially when they’re not the ones footing the bill. And Tim Gilbert has footed the bill quite a lot and has done a lot to try and get the Cavs in the situation they’re in. So if he wants to take a little bit of a break from breaking out of his pocketbook, I’m not going to be the one to fault it.
Chris Fedor: Well, the other thing is, it’s. It’s not entirely the Cavs decision when it comes to free agency. Ty’s the one who’s looking out there and in his. People are looking at the marketplace and they’re saying, what other options are available to us? What other opportunities are there? Is there going to be a bigger role for Ty somewhere else along with the money that he would be getting? That is a lot of money for somebody like Ty. It would be. The biggest contract that he has made in his career to this point is probably going to be the biggest contract that he ever signs. This is his opportunity. There’s only one time in Ty’s career probably where he’s coming off being a finalist for sixth man of the year. And it just so happens that it coincides with him being an unrestricted free agent, you take advantage of that. He’s earned the right to look at other opportunities. He’s earned the right to see if there’s somebody out there that’s willing to give him the kind of contract and is more comfortable giving him that kind of contract, with the length of that contract more so than the Cavs are right now.
Ethan Sands: All right, Chris, we do have more news, but I’m going to leave our listeners on a little bit of a cliffhanger today. Free agency signings are coming up. The Cavs have or have not tendered contracts. We’ll get into all of that in the next 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 Cavs insider and interact with Chris, me and Jimmy by subscribing to Subtext. 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 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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