Ty Jerome Agrees to Two-Year, $5 Million Deal With Cleveland Cavaliers

Ty Jerome will be a Cavalier once again

Ty Jerome will be a Cavalier once again. 

The former Virginia men's basketball star point guard reportedly agreed to a two-year, $5 million deal to join the Cleveland Cavaliers, as first reported by ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski on Saturday evening. Jerome, who spent the 2022-2023 season with the Golden State Warriors, received a $1.7 million qualifying offer from the Warriors a couple of days earlier to make him a restricted free agent. Ultimately, though, the Cavaliers priced out the Warriors and offered a multi-year deal to Jerome that Golden State couldn't match. 

The Warriors liked the idea of having Ty Jerome stick around on the roster despite recently making a deal to acquire Chris Paul to pair with/back up Stephen Curry. And even though Jerome could have undoubtedly learned a lot by spending so much time with the two Hall of Fame point guards, there will admittedly be a shortage of playing time available at the point guard position this season when both Paul and Curry are healthy. 

Curry's injury troubles allowed Jerome to have a nice run leading Golden State's bench unit last season. In his fourth season in the NBA - and first and only with the Warriors - Jerome averaged 6.9 points, 3.0 assists, and 1.7 rebounds in 18.1 minutes per game while shooting 38.9% from three and a career-high 48.8% from the floor. Jerome only played 45 games because of the logjam of guards on Golden State's roster, but he certainly helped the Warriors survive when Curry was injured. 

Now, Jerome is headed to Cleveland, where he joins another guard-heavy roster, but one which provides a much more direct path to playing time at the point guard spot. The Cavaliers have Darius Garland, Donovan Mitchell, Caris LeVert, Ricky Rubio, and Max Strus, all guards who typically play significant minutes. Garland is the team's starting point guard and Ricky Rubio, who would ordinarily serve as an experienced point guard off the bench out of that unit, is coming off of ACL surgery and will be turning 33 in October. Jerome should be in good position to battle with and potentially take minutes from Rubio. He certainly has more upside than the aging veteran, so there should be a solid opportunity for Jerome to carve out a decent role for himself on what could be a top 5 team in the Eastern Conference. 

The Cavaliers went 51-31 in 2022-2023 and earned the No. 4 seed in the Eastern Conference Playoffs, but fell to the New York Knicks in the first round in five games. Ironically, Jerome had his best game of the season playing at Cleveland on January 20th, scoring 22-points on 9/13 shooting and 3/4 from three-point range and recording eight assists to just one turnover in a road win for the Warriors over the Cavs. 

As he enters his fifth season of professional basketball, Ty Jerome will look to take the crucial next steps towards becoming a high-caliber point guard and find more permanent footing on the depth chart as he joins the Cleveland Cavaliers. 

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