Cleveland Cavaliers: Do The Cavs Need J.R. Smith?

Many Cleveland Cavaliers fans feel J.R. Smith isn’t worth bringing back at any price, and their reasoning makes sense: Smith was horrendous in the 2015 NBA Finals and has a history of being high maintenance while not being high effort in his career. Which begs the question, do the Cavaliers need J.R. Smith?

In last year’s Finals, Smith shot a meager 31.2 percent from the field and checked in at a rate of 29.4 percent from three. His counterpart, Iman Shumpert, was even worse chucking at an abysmal rate of 25.6 percent from the field overall, and less than 17 percent from inside 10 feet.

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This combined performance earned the not-so-dynamic duo the moniker “trash brothers,” which quickly became heavily circulated on social media as the finals concluded.

Using the new Free Agency Quotient metric founded by Point After, Shumpert measure out at 12.4 on a scale of 0-100. FAQ uses a player’s PER from the previous season, their career PER, Win Shares from last season and their age to project their future value via a weighted formula.

So how does one explain Shumpert getting paid the same amount as San Antonio Spurs vital rotational player Danny Green? After all, $40 million seems like an awful lot of money for anyone so low of any scale of 0-100.

Smith’s FAQ rating is 24.3, landing him squarely in the middle of the tier of “decent role player.” His rating notches him 18 slots higher among qualified free agents this year than his backcourt sibling.

Shumpert is still only 25, while Smith is creeping up on his 30th birthday, so perhaps the Cavaliers leaned heavily on age.

However, when digesting what FAQ is — a blunt projection of future performance based on the most broad-spectrum and almost universally accepted stats to gauge the value of a free agent — the Cavaliers may have shot themselves in the foot here.

The signing of Mo Williams will aid in bench scoring but Williams is a 32 year old point guard that can’t defend wing players. Smith also doesn’t figure to start this year either as the Cavaliers are likely to run out a starting five of: Kyrie Irving, Iman Shumpert, LeBron James, Kevin Love, and Timofey Mosgov.

After spending most of his career as a sixth man, Smith became a valued starter during the Cavaliers regular season run last year for the first time since being a rookie. The role seemed to help him play harder, and may not be one he’d like to relinquish so easily.

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“I just want to be somewhere I can make a difference,” Smith told Grant Wieman of the Pacific Daily News during his trip to Guam to aid Cavs Director of Player Development Phil Handy with a camp.

“I don’t want to be somewhere I can’t have an affect on the team” and “I would love to be a starter,” Smith elaborated.

Smith serves as a bit of a cautionary tale — in more ways than one — but for the sake of this article the focus is on his free agency strategy. After turning down a $6.4 million player option with the Cavaliers after the 2014-15 season ended, Smith will very likely end up getting paid less this year.

Although the Cavaliers picked up 35-year-old Richard Jefferson to bolster their roster’s wing depth, Jefferson is hardly someone who can start if pressed into action anymore. Realistically, the team can’t count on him to give them much more than 20 minutes per game in a pinch.

When you factor in: Shumpert’s FAQ and the money they paid him, lack of usable and efficient depth at the wing positions, and LeBron James’ career timer ticking — yes, the Cavaliers absolutely need to re-sign J.R. Smith.

Will Reeve is a contributing writer for HoopsHabit, you can follow him on Twitter @WillReeveJr or connect with him on Facebook here.

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