NBA Trade Deadline 2016: 10 players who are off limits
By John Buhler
6. player. 156. . Small Forward. Cleveland Cavaliers. LeBron James
The Cleveland Cavaliers organization will do anything to win an NBA championship. Well maybe not one thing. The Cavaliers are never going to trade their superstar point forward LeBron James if they want to win a title in the next decade.
Cleveland has already seen James win two titles in four years with the Miami Heat. The Cavaliers will figure out how to win an NBA Finals with James as their centerpiece. Even if Cavaliers general manager David Griffin was offered a once in a lifetime bundle of assets for James, he would not trade him for both sentimental and karmic purposes.
James isn’t the best player in the NBA any more, but he’s still the best point forward in the game. He makes everyone of his teammates better when he is on the floor. Outside of a surging Toronto Raptors team, the path to the NBA Finals again in 2016 seems very realistic in the East for James’ Cavaliers.
It’s more likely than not that every other starter and rotational piece currently on the Cavaliers would be traded before James this NBA trade deadline in an extreme hypothetical. The Cavaliers and James are dead set on winning an NBA Championship together in the next few years. The narrative has already been outlined and it’s waiting to be written in for basketball lore.
Next: 5. John Wall