Cavs: No, Andre Drummond isn’t getting bought out

The Cleveland Cavaliers are off to a strong start so far this season with a 9-9 record and early playoff aspirations. We’re only at the one-quarter mark, but they’ve thrived on defense for the majority of the season so far. A demolition at the hands of the Boston Celtics hurt their numbers, but they still have the NBA’s seventh-best defensive rating at 108.0, and Andre Drummond has been a piece of their puzzle so far.

Drummond is putting up characteristic stats this season, leading the NBA in rebounding with 14.7 per game and a career-high 18.9 points per game. He also has a complicated outlook for the rest of the 2020-21 season because his contract is expiring and his $28.7 million salary is going to be hard to move, and the Cavs brought on Jarrett Allen in the four-team trade that sent James Harden to the Brooklyn Nets.

The Cleveland Cavaliers might not be able to trade Andre Drummond

The Cavs don’t need both Drummond and Allen, and it’s clear that they plan to sign Allen long-term in the offseason. Ideally, Drummond could be traded for something of value, but his salary is onerous and hard to match.

This is a situation the Detroit Pistons dodged a year ago when they traded him to the Cavs at the last minute before the deadline in exchange for a 2023 second-round pick and John Henson and Brandon Knight’s expiring contracts. Both of those players are currently out of the NBA, but the Pistons wanted the cap space those contracts would afford them.

Now the Cleveland Cavaliers have redundancy at the center spot between Drummond and Allen and an outsized salary that is going to be hard to match even for teams that really want him.