Cleveland Cavaliers 2015 offseason news and rumors – Is Tristan Thompson playing his cards right?

For LeBron James, ridding his palate of another championship loss won't happen by taking the Scope mouthwash challenge.

Training camp ahead of the 2015-16 NBA season had to start early, and it had to start in Miami where James led the Heat to back-to-back titles before dropping back-to-back titles each of the last two seasons, the latter coming in his Cleveland homecoming.

King James summoned returning Cavs' teammates and coaches earlier this month fully aware at least one player wouldn't be lulled by the idea of a week-long stay in South Beach.

Tristan Thompson and the Cavaliers are about $14 million apart in what each side believes the 24-year-old reserve power forward deserves once his rookie contract expires. Cleveland's front office is pushing a five-year, $80 million deal that mirrors deals given to Golden State's Draymond Green and Toronto's Jonas Valanciunas. The proposed $16 million a year offer comes as Cleveland balances an NBA-high $95-million salary cap that will only rise when James' and Kevin Love's paychecks increase next June.

Thompson isn't even slated to take nightly opening tip-offs; starting duties belong to Russian center Timothy Mozgov, and he'll be spelled by Anderson Varejao, if Varejao can stop mimicking a life-sized "Operation" board set.

Regardless, Thompson wants a max contract.

Cleveland initially offered Thompson a four-year, $52 million deal last January. Around the same time, they cut a deal for Mozgov, who started at the one-stop upon arrival. Thompson's points per game dropped from 9.8 between October and December to 7.5 in the season's last three months. Minutes fell from 27. 4 to 24 in the same span.

The Toronto native recovered with a stellar playoff campaign, hitting the hardwood longer than anyone outside James and a trio of Warriors. He led all players in offensive rebounds and came up just 22 short of the overall rebounding lead. Thompson, in that short 20-game window, became an elite defender.

He wants to be the sixth-highest paid big man in the league, based on average annual salary, and won't settle for anything less than $94 million. That's an astronomical cash bump for a four-year veteran who's predominately played a backup role last year, but it's one that may be justified for two reasons: the lack of young bigs under expiring contracts and the ability of teams to sign these young bucks when salary caps expands by $20 million next summer.

According to ESPN's Brian Windhorst, Thompson may sign the club's one-year qualifying offer of $6.9 million, but he'll do so without negotiating an extension. Maybe this was his plan all along.

Sheridan Hoops writer Michael Scotto reports three teams are waiting to offer Thompson a max contract. Speculation is that Toronto will make a play for the impending free agent as part of an effort to recruit Canadian nationals. They already grabbed Thompson's teammate on the Canadian National Team, Cory Joseph, and covet Minnesota's Andrew Wiggins to the point that they're already looking at his next move, if Wiggins ever decides to leave the Twin Cities.

This is a bold risk for Thompson considering he's likely relegated to ride the pine unless someone suffers another freak injury. He isn't even expected to get a significant bump in playing time with Love and Varejao heading to camp relatively healthy.

Last postseason's performance won't matter if Thompson is cheerleading through Cleveland's next title run, giving teams' less incentive to offer Thompson max money when he's posting 7.5 PPG in limited court time.

James has purposefully kept mum about Thompson's contract situation, and with cause: he publically said Thompson should be a Cavalier for life. Anyone within the greater Cleveland area should heeds LBJ's words, including Thompson, because that level of respect has a ceiling.

Once Thompson's contract situations starts affecting the team it starts affecting James, and once it affects James, he loses the entire front office's support. In some ways, it has already begun.

"LeBron's goals don't change relative to Tristan Thompson or anyone. Be as good as we can be for as long as we can be," a source close to James told Cleveland.com's Joe Vardon.

As Vardon put it, the nuclear option - of James giving the Cavs an ultimatum about signing Thompson - appears to be off the table. Thompson was a no-show to the Miami minicamp and he'll likely skip training camp when it officially opens Sept. 29.

Thompson has until Oct. 1 to either sign an extension or agree to a one-year deal. Skipping James' camp may have made his decision that much easier for the Cavs to stomach.