B/R NBA's Max 5 Series: Is Tristan Thompson Really a Maximum Contract Player?

This is the third installment in a five-part series where we'll be discussing whether or not five of the NBA's biggest free agents are worth maximum-salary contracts. The first installment covered Chicago Bulls swingman Jimmy Butler. The second discussed San Antonio Spurs forward Kawhi Leonard. Below, we look into Cleveland Cavaliers forward Tristan Thompson.

Not all that long ago, hearing the words "Tristan Thompson" and "max contract" in the same sentence would have sounded completely ridiculous.

When Thompson was selected with the No. 4 overall pick in the 2011 NBA draft, it came as a bit of a surprise. He had been slated to come off the board at No. 8 in the most recent predraft mocks at both ESPN and DraftExpress, and at No. 7 by NBADraft.net.

He was considered an athletic, albeit incredibly raw, prospect who would need a bunch of time to develop, with DraftExpress noting, "There's no question that his skill level has a long way to go."

And as it turns out, those predraft notions were prophetic.

Through the first two years of his NBA career, Thompson proved himself to be consistently above-average at exactly one thing (rebounding); and before his third season, he actually decided to change shooting hands from left to right because he was having so much trouble with his shot. 

Fast forward two years from there, and Thompson has improved by leaps and bounds. He's become a much better finisher, and his defense is well above-average in some areas and damn near elite in others.

He's also coming off a playoff run where he was arguably the Cavaliers' second-best player behind LeBron James. Throughout the postseason, he averaged 9.6 points, 10.8 rebounds and 1.2 blocks per game. If you narrow it down to just the 16 playoff games Cleveland played without the injured Kevin Love, those numbers jump to 10.2, 11.8 and 1.4, respectively. That's a heck of a contract run.

Now, Thompson and his representatives are insisting he will seek a maximum-salary deal this summer, according to Bob Finnan at the News-Herald. That stance should not come as a surprise given that Thompson rejected a four-year, $52 million extension offer last offseason in hopes of playing his way into a max deal, and then had what was likely the best season of his career.

Thompson's been in the league four years and thus is eligible for a maximum contract that starts at 25 percent of the salary cap (Note: this figure is actually slightly lower than 25 percent because the NBA uses a different cap number for maximum contracts), which is projected to come in at $67.1 million for the 2015-16 season. 

What would the full contract figures on that deal look like? Take a peek at the numbers below:

	Re-sign with Cavaliers	Sign offer sheet
2015-16	$15,856,500	$15,856,500
2016-17	$17,045,738	$16,570,043
2017-18	$18,234,975	$17,283,585
2018-19	$19,424,213	$17,997,128
2019-20	$20,613,450
Total	$91,174,875	$67,707,255

The question that must be asked now is this: Is he worth it?

The Hope: Why Thompson Is Worth the Max

Thompson has been one of the NBA's best offensive rebounders since he entered the league. Over the last four years, he checks in eighth in offensive rebound percentage among players who have played at least 4,000 minutes; and two of the guys ahead of him are Reggie Evans and Samuel Dalembert, neither of whom figures to be in an NBA rotation anytime soon.

He's still getting better in that area, too, having set a new career high by snaring 14.5 percent of available offensive rebounds this past season. 

Offensive rebounding is incredibly important. There's a reason it was identified by Dean Oliver in his seminal book Basketball on Paper as one of the four factors of basketball success. You can't score if you don't have possession of the ball, and Thompson's ability to generate additional possessions through offensive rebounding provides tremendous value. 

Just look back at the first three games of the NBA Finals, during which Thompson grabbed 15.0 percent of available offensive rebounds as the Cavs staked themselves to a 2-1 series lead. That played a huge role in helping Cleveland both slow the pace of the game and get extra chances at putting the ball in the basket, which proved extremely difficult for them otherwise. 

Thompson has also shown the ability to recognize his limitations and tailor his game to fit his skill set, rather than what might be expected of a typical No. 4 overall selection. Usually, those types of picks are expected to be foundational offensive players who can create their own shot. That's not something Thompson's particularly good at, so he's learned to excel by doing a few things very well, rather than trying—and failing—to do a lot of things. 

Take a look at these trends:

With each successive season, Thompson has used a lower percentage of Cleveland's offensive possessions (USG%) while on the floor. With each successive season, Thompson has been assisted on a greater percentage of his baskets (% AST). With each successive season, Thompson's efficiency (in the form of true shooting percentage) has risen. And with each successive season, his contribution to wins (in the form of win shares per 48 minutes) has jumped as well. Sometimes, less really is more.

And it's not just Thompson's offense that has improved. As stated earlier, Thompson has become a significantly better defensive player, even just over the last two years. 

In an email earlier this week, here's what Fear the Sword editor David Zavac had to say about Tristan's defensive value and improvement:

"

Tristan's value defensively doesn't come in one area, but from his quick feet and strength. He isn't an elite rim protector, but he gives you some of that. He isn't elite defending the pick-and-roll, but he's good and has made major strides. It seems as though the NBA is moving towards valuing jack-of-all-trades types who can bring multiple things to the table without taking anything off of it. On defense, that's Tristan Thompson. He can get away with switching onto most guards, he can get away with guarding most centers. As he gets ready for his age-24 season, that's not a bad place to be. 

"

Some of those sentiments, particularly the ones relating to his pick-and-roll defense and ability to switch onto different matchups, have been echoed by others in the NBA community. 

"Every Golden State playoff opponent has tried switching bigs onto [Stephen] Curry to prevent seams from opening, but Thompson is the first enemy big since Anthony Davis with the quickness to (maybe) hold his own," Grantland's Zach Lowe wrote before the start of the NBA Finals. "Thompson, always crouched in a perfect stance, might be even better than Davis at this discrete skill."

Not only that, but he also excels at scampering back to the roll man and preventing him from scoring. Among the 74 players who defended at least 50 possessions ending with a shot, foul drawn or turnover by a roll man, Thompson tied for eighth (with Marc Gasol) in points per play allowed, per Synergy Sports. He also checked in tied at 18th out of 77 players who defended at least 75 isolation possessions. When defending in open space, he is among the best bigs in the game.

Given his tremendous defensive value, his improving offense and his age (24), one can make the case that Thompson deserves every penny of a potential max deal.

The Doubt: Why Thompson Might Not Be Worth the Max

Let's start here: It's entirely possible Thompson is the third-best power forward and second-best center on his own team.

LeBron James (who should get copious minutes at the 4 spot) and Kevin Love are very clearly superior players. Timofey Mozgov doesn't have the ability to switch pick-and-rolls and defend perimeter players like Thompson does, but he is nearly Thompson's equal as an offensive rebounder and is a far better overall offensive player and rim protector. 

Thompson's deficiency as a rim protector (he ranked 59th out of 120 in Seth Partnow's points saved per 36 minutes metric at Nylon Calculus) throws a kink in the idea of using him as a full-time small-ball center, particularly if he would be sharing the frontcourt with Love, himself a subpar defender. (Small lineups featuring Thompson at center got crushed in the Finals, though obviously those were extenuating circumstances with both Love and Kyrie Irving on the sideline.)

And take a look at these numbers for Cleveland's big-man combinations, from nbawowy.com, which show that those trends also held up over the course of the regular season: 

Lineup	Minutes	O-Rtg	D-Rtg	Net-Rtg
Only Mozgov	97	121.1	104.3	16.8
Love-Mozgov	774	116.2	101.7	14.5
Thompson-Mozgov	284	116.0	106.0	10.0
Love-Thompson	1,083	114.1	105.6	8.5
Only Love	674	108.9	108.7	0.2
Only Thompson	832	110.0	110.9	-0.9

Lineups with just Thompson on the floor were the only ones to show a negative scoring margin. And while the Love-Thompson and Thompson-Mozgov pairings were very strong, the Love-Mozgov unit was far superior to both. Is it really the best use of resources to give a max deal to a player who looks like he might be your third-best big man? 

It might make sense, then, to take a look at a potential max for Thompson outside of the Cavaliers' context. In that case, though, it may become even less appealing. Thompson's strengths lie in offensive rebounding, one-on-one defense and the pick-and-roll. However, as discussed above, he's not a great rim protector, so he usually needs a center next to him who can guard the rim. Players who both protect the rim and space the floor are quite rare.

Pairing him with a rim protector who can't stretch the defense could clog spacing on a team that doesn't have LeBron James to work his magic, especially considering Thompson is not much of a threat to score outside five feet or create his own looks via post-ups or isolations. Just how much of an offensive non-threat is he, though?

Per private data obtained from Nylon Calculus, Thompson only created 12 percent of his own shots this season. On those shots, Thompson had an effective field-goal percentage (eFG%, which accounts for the extra point value of a three-point shot vs. a two-pointer) of 45.5. On the 88 percent of his shots that were created by another player, his eFG% was much better: 54.8 percent. 

There's more. Of his self-created shots, only 32.8 percent of them came from within five feet of the basket, basically the only area on the floor from which Thompson is a true threat. When the shot was created by another player, 71.7 percent of them were taken from within five feet. 

All this tells us Thompson cannot be counted on to create his own looks, and when you try, it usually has very poor results. Stick him on a team without creators like James, Love and Irving, and there's no telling what will happen to his rising efficiency. 

The Market Reality

Let's get one thing out of the way here first: Thompson is represented by Rich Paul. Rich Paul is also the agent and best friend of James, who doubles as Cleveland's best player and at times seems as though he is also the de facto head coach and general manager. We're providing this information to say that if LeBron wants Thompson retained on a max contract, there's a pretty good chance it will happen. 

That said, it doesn't seem like there should be much of a market for Thompson at the maximum salary for any team but the Cavaliers. The very specific set of circumstances under which he can succeed offensively—alongside multiple high-usage players who have the ability to create nearly every scoring opportunity for him—doesn't exist on many other teams, and that fact likely outweighs even the value he brings as a defender if we're talking about a maximum contract. 

Still, Thompson is on the Cavaliers, and he has the implicit and explicit backing of the best player in the world. LeBron was quoted a month ago by CBS Sports' Matt Moore as saying, "Tristan should probably be a Cavalier for his whole career. There's no reason why he shouldn't. This guy is 24 years old, he's played in 340-plus straight games, and he's gotten better every single season. It's almost like 'What more can you ask out of a guy?'"

There's also this to consider: The Cavaliers don't really have an avenue to replace Thompson with someone who might be a better fit. They'd have to re-sign both James and Love if they elect to let Thompson go, and that's before they get around to Iman Shumpert, J.R. Smith and Matthew Dellavedova. The only real way to get value out of Thompson would be with a sign-and-trade, and it's doubtful LeBron and Rich Paul would facilitate one, considering they want him to stay in Cleveland.

Knowing that, it seems incredibly likely the Cavaliers will offer Thompson a maximum contract in the opening days of free agency, and he'll sign it. The only question at that point will likely be whether they do the same with Love.

All statistics courtesy of NBA.com and Basketball-Reference.com unless otherwise noted. Salary-cap info courtesy of ShamSports.