Tristan Thompson: How much is left in the tank?

Thompson returns for his 14th season and 11th with Cleveland.

It was announced late in the offseason that the Cleveland Cavaliers decided to bring back their veteran big man Tristan Thompson on a one-year deal. Thompson suited up for 49 games and put up 3.3 points and 3.6 rebounds per contest in 2023-24.

The Cavaliers were in a similar spot regarding positional needs last year. Coming off a season where Robin Lopez was their backup big, the team needed more stability off the bench. Damian Jones was supposed to be the answer, but that didn’t pan out. Thompson quickly replaced Jones as he came in and had some quality games early on. Then the league announced in January, that Thompson would be suspended for testing positive for using performance-enhancing drugs.

With Thompson gone, the Cavaliers’ frontcourt depth went from shallow to empty due to Evan Mobley’s injury. This problem can repeat itself in the 2024-2025 season. While I do not expect Thompson to decide to take PEDs again (you never know), the more likely scenario is that the elder statesman doesn’t have the athleticism left to be on an NBA floor.

Thompson as a locker room guy makes sense. All teams have players who are there simply to keep a culture in place. No one looks at Taj Gibson anymore hoping that they can see minutes from him on a night-to-night basis like the Cavs will need to do with Thompson if one of their bigs gets injured again.

Jarrett Allen and Evan Mobley are the team’s true fives. Allen starts and Mobley moves to center while Allen sits. If one of those players falls to injury, they have no way to replace them with a similar style player and will likely need to look outside of the organization to do so if it’s a long-term absence. Although Thompson did well in spurts last season, he wasn’t the same after returning from suspension.

Thompson went from averaging 4.9 points and 4.8 rebounds in January, his best month, to returning in March with 2.2 points and 3.2 rebounds. His play then bottomed out in April and he wasn’t very helpful in the playoffs with Allen out.

While Thompson is a franchise legend and the team seems to like him, Cleveland is betting on him not being needed much on court. That doesn’t seem to be a wise gamble considering Allen and Mobley missed 50 combined games last season.

This wouldn’t be an issue if there were another five on the roster where Thompson became an emergency usage type of player. With the backup options barren, Thompson has to pan out.