Derrick Rose in serious talks with Cavs on one-year deal

The Cavaliers have had a less-than-inspiring offseason, but Brian Windhorst and Adrian Wojnarowski are reporting that they’ve got their eye on a certain former MVP to play backup point guard for them.

Well, that’s certainly interesting. Rose had a good season by basic box score numbers last year, averaging 18 points, 4.4 assists and 3.8 rebounds per game in just over 32 minutes per game. That said, he was a big contributor to New York’s nightmare season, often freezing out Kristaps Porzingis and causing trouble off the court, like when he no-showed a game with literally no explanation. He was also a disastrously bad defender and his advanced metrics don’t look nearly as good as his pure box score numbers.

Rose was hoping for another monster contract this summer, and the market was decidedly frigid and any teams left with space clearly have no interest in the former MVP.

That seems to leave Rose two options: take a smaller contract for a couple years from a team, or try to rehab his value by joining a contender on a minimum deal. It’s clear Rose has chosen the latter, as negotiations are close.

From the Cavaliers perspective, there’s some unjustified and some justified bristling about the idea of this move. It’s certainly splashy, and would represent the Cavaliers deciding to fill their final roster spot with a player who is not particularly popular.

An ugly civil lawsuit for rape hasn’t done wonders for how anyone views Rose as a person. He also isn’t close to the player he was prior to several serious injuries, and not unlike Deron Williams last year, might not have much left to give.

He certainly is better than Jose Calderon, and though it may be frustrating to spend a total of $18 million in tax and salary to employ both Calderon and Rose, it’s probably a good thing to not let the Calderon mistake prevent you from signing a better player on a minimum deal.

The “minimum deal” is the operative factor here. Rose might not be worth a max contract anymore (like, he literally isn’t), but for a paltry veterans minimum? It’s absolutely worth a shot.

We’ll see if this gets done, and we can all shout at each other about it later.