Report: Tristan Thompson made significant sacrifice as part of new deal with Cavs

Cleveland Cavaliers big man Tristan Thompson reportedly sacrificed his right to veto a trade as part of his new deal with the team.

“Thompson also waived his right to veto a trade as part of his deal with the Cavs, Hoops Rumors has learned,” Luke Adams wrote. “Players who re-sign with their previous teams on one-year contracts are typically awarded veto rights for the season, but the player can forfeit that right as part of his agreement with his club. Thompson is the 12th player this season to do so, as our tracker shows.”

Thompson’s one-year deal also reportedly isn’t guaranteed, according to HoopsHype’s Michael Scotto.

Thompson returned to the Cavaliers — the team he played the first nine seasons of his NBA career with — ahead of the 2023-24 campaign after he spent some time playing for a number of other squads around the league.

But Thompson’s 2023-24 season with the Cavaliers was impacted when the NBA handed him a 25-game suspension after he violated the league’s anti-drug policy.

Across 49 games played (zero starts) in the regular season, Thompson provided the Cavaliers with interior scoring and rebounding chops in spot minutes off the bench. He averaged 3.3 points per game on 60.8 percent shooting from the field along with 3.6 rebounds per game, and 1.5 of those rebounds came on the offensive glass.

He also appeared in 10 games with Cleveland during its time in the 2024 NBA Playoffs, which ended in the second round at the hands of the Boston Celtics.

While Thompson had his moments of productive play and was a valuable presence in the locker room last season, he was a much more impactful player during his first stint in Cleveland.

Earlier on in his NBA career, Thompson was a consistent threat to rack up double-doubles. Across 619 total regular-season games in the first nine seasons of his pro tenure, he averaged 9.4 points and 8.7 rebounds per contest. Plus, he averaged a double-double in each of the 2018-19 and 2019-20 seasons.

Thompson was fortunate enough to be part of plenty of great Cavaliers teams as well. The Cavaliers reached the NBA Finals in every year from 2015 through 2018, and the team won its first title in franchise history in 2016.

It will be fascinating to find out whether the 33-year-old’s decisions to waive his right to veto a trade and sign a non-guaranteed deal will come back to bite him at all during the 2024-25 season and if he will still be with the team by the end of the campaign.