With the Cleveland Cavaliers having their season end, the players will go their separate ways for the offseason. Some will return, others will wear new jerseys next season. Former Utah State star Sam Merrill could be among them.

The former Utah State star has been a staple of the Cavaliers’ rotation for each of the last two seasons. Between this year and last, Merrill has appeared in 132 games, averaging 18.7 minutes per game, 7.5 points, 2.1 rebounds, 1.6 assists and shooting 38.8 percent from three. In this year’s playoffs, he appeared in eight games, making three starts.

However, Merrill’s contract, signed in March 2023 as a follow-up to a 10-day contract he signed with the Cavaliers, ends with the conclusion of the 2024-25 season. And while Cleveland has had little qualms with Merrill’s performance the last two years, the stars may not align for him to return to the franchise that gave him his big break.

Cleveland’s cap situation is not great. The newly crowned Defensive Player of the Year, Evan Mobley, is set to receive a massive raise. The versatile big-man will go from a cap hit of $11.2 million to $46.4 as he transitions from his rookie scale contract to a five-year extension. That raise, along with other rising contracts, gives the Cavaliers at $217.8 million on the books, though non-guaranteed deals and team options give them the option to shed $11.4 million of that.

That total will put Cleveland well over the NBA’s salary cap ($154.6), the luxury tax ($187.9) and first apron ($195.9). If more salary isn’t taken off the books, the Cavaliers could end up on the wrong end of the second apron ($207.8) which carries significant penalties that franchises have gone to great lengths to avoid.

That makes Merrill, and fellow Cavs free agent Ty Jerome, the two biggest offseason questions for the franchise. Virtually the entire rest of the rotation is under contract. And while both players were valuable members of the rotation, can Cleveland manage to keep them? The club’s president of basketball operations, Koby Altman, said those two players raised their value while with the team.

“When guys find that confidence in this system, their value gets driven up,” Altman said. “Same thing with Sam Merrill. You want to call these guys end-of-bench players before that have become real rotational players and valuable within the ecosystem, not just us.”

Cavs GM on retaining players like Jerome & Merrill:

“When guys find that confidence in this system, their value gets driven up”

“Same thing with Sam Merrill…that have become real [valuable] rotational players”

“The good news is they’re going to do really well for themselves” pic.twitter.com/5XE4oVGn0F

— Utah State Filmroom (@usufilm) May 22, 2025

Merrill very much made a name for himself with Cleveland. Before the 2023-24 season, his NBA career was in a dire state. Through his first three seasons, Merrill appeared in more G-League games (48) than regular season NBA ones (41). Signing a 10-day deal with the Cavaliers in 2023 was just about his last chance to get his career off the ground.

The contract that Merrill just completed paid him a total of $5,012,231. According to a report from Chris Fedor of cleveland.com, Merrill is aiming for another multi-year deal in the range of $6-8 million, a modest raise from his contract with the Cavs. The trick will be whether Cleveland is able and willing to allocate its limited resources, such as the taxpayer mid-level exception worth $5.7 million, to re-sign Merrill. Fedor also reported that re-signing Jerome was the priority for the team, so it’s possible Cleveland may look to used its mid-level exception elsewhere. It’s also possible another team could swoop in and offer Merrill more than the Cavaliers are able to anyway and he’ll find a new home.