Texas Basketball: 3 best former Longhorns in the NBA in 2019-20

2) Best Texas basketball players in the NBA in 2019-20: Tristan Thompson

The Cleveland Cavaliers have an important to make this offseason as to whether they decide to part ways with the former Longhorns top 10 ranked high school recruit in the nation and 6-foot-9 and 255 pound power forward/center Tristan Thompson. The final year of Thompson’s current contract runs up this offseason, and he’s likely to hit the free agent market in the very near future.

There’s not much motivation for the rebuilding Cavaliers, who are building a decent young core, to pay Thompson a lot of money to keep him around in a weird role through some of the prime years of his career. Thompson would be best utilized at this point on the roster of a playoff contender in a starting or sixth/seventh man role in a frontcourt rotation.

Nonetheless, Thompson didn’t get enough credit for hanging tough with the lowly Cavaliers during the 2019-20 campaign. He was one of the lone bright spots on that team in the season that was. Thompson played in 57 games during the shortened 2019-20 regular season with the Cavs (starting in 51 of them).

He averaged 12.0 points per game, 10.1 rebounds, 2.1 assists, 0.6 steals, and 0.9 blocks. And Thompson shot 51.2 percent from the field, a dramatically improved 39.1 percent from beyond the arc, and 61.5 percent from the free-throw line. That amounted to a -1.5 box plus/minus rating, 0.2 value over replacement player rating, .085 win shares per 48 minutes, 54.0 true shooting percentage, and a 16.8 player efficiency rating.