Cleveland Cavaliers NBA Trade and Roster Rumors: Tristan Thompson Will Continue to Start at Center
With Isaiah Thomas likely to miss a significant amount of time next season due to a hip injury, the Cleveland Cavaliers will need someone to step up and help LeBron James carry the scoring load. Fortunately, they have four-time All-Star Kevin Love on their roster and he's more than willing to take on the responsibility.
Cavaliers head coach Tyronn Lue spoke with ESPN last week and he talked about making Love more of a focal point of the offense next season. They want to give him a more prominent role and play him more at center to get the best out of him. However, it looks like Tristan Thompson is going to keep his starting job for now.
In an interview with cleveland.com, Lue reiterated that they want to give Love more touches this season, but he said Thompson would continue to start at center.
"Right now we're just trying to get all of our pieces together and right now Tristan's our starter. I'm just thinking we're going to run a lot more stuff through Kevin, more at the elbows, like we've done the last year and a half. Just trying to figure out with our new pieces and our new players and just see what works best for us," Lue said in the interview.
Well, that should clear things up.
After Lue's interview with ESPN, a lot of observers have speculated that instead of a traditional lineup featuring two big men, the Cavaliers might start Love at center in a small-ball lineup featuring James and newly acquired defensive stalwart Jae Crowder at the forward positions to space the floor more.
The lineup will give them more flexibility on offense, but it seems that they are not ready to relegate Thompson to the bench.
Who knows, maybe Lue will change his mind in the coming weeks because they still have a lot of time to experiment in training camp and the preseason.
