Andrew Bynum

Andrew Bynum’s time in Cleveland is all but over. After a poor first few months on the court, in which he has looked awful at times in trying to recover from serious knee problems, a recent suspension for off-court behaviour has seen him essentially placed on gardening leave, while Cleveland tries to find a new home for him and his contract. And they likely will.

Cleveland signed Bynum for two reasons. Firstly, to potentially land themselves a quality player at a position of weakness – Bynum's interior game on both ends once made him one of the best big men in the league, and based on age alone, he should still be short of his prime. And secondly, for the value - even at $24.6 million dollars over two years, Bynum nevertheless represented value if he didn't work out on the court, based on the nature of his contract. Primarily, though, they wanted him to produce.

Bynum, however, has not been able to produce. Save for a couple of strong outings, he has mostly looked like a shadow of his former self, still playing in severe pain and looking just as painful as he is said to be feeling. His inability to play through the kind of severe pain that would lead to most of us taking several months work has unfortunately led to ugly (and apparently open season) speculation about his ‘love’ of the game, for it is always easier to blame someone for things, yet whatever we think of Bynum’s commitment to the game, one thing seems apparent by this time – the former Andrew Bynum, the second best centre in the league, is not coming back.

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Cleveland - Andrew Bynum, C.J. Miles, Matthew Dellavedova and Henry Sims: Dellavedova has played well in a third string point guard role and will surely survive. Miles may only be the best of a poor bunch at small forward, yet it will cost only about $1.3 million to keep him, an acceptable amount for a team with playoff ambitions. Sims may get cut considering that he will spend much of his time under contract on assignment in the D-League anyway, although he is ever improving and may stick. As for Bynum, he may be traded first, but waived anyway.

Unguaranteed or partially guaranteed final seasons are becoming quite the trend in the NBA, and they are quickly replacing team options. In fact, there are only 11 team options in the entire league, belonging to Chase Budinger, Jermaine Taylor, Andrew Bynum, Sam Young, Andres Nocioni, Hakim Warrick, Goran Dragic, Pooh Jeter, Francisco Garcia, Solomon Alabi and C.J. Miles. In contrast, there are so many partially or fully unguaranteed contracts in future years that I can't be bothered to go through and list them all. And considering the length of this post, and all the things I could be bothered to do, that should signify something.