NBA Trade Deadline Portfolio 2018: Cleveland Cavaliers
Imagine that you are now Koby Altman. First things first: I’m sorry. Even though you likely have more money than any of the rest of us will ever see, you are a figurehead at the behest of the world’s best, and sometimes most frustratingly passive-aggressive, basketball player, LeBron James. You are the general manager of the Cleveland Cavaliers, nominally speaking.
You are — again, nominally, because we know who is in charge here, and it’s not the guy who fires off self-flagellating memos in Comic Sans — at the helm of the team with the third-best record in the Eastern Conference, a team many predicted would cruise to its fourth consecutive NBA Finals appearance. This is the power of LeBron, yet again playing like an MVP fifteen seasons into his career.
Your squad has run into a bit of trouble lately, losing seven of their last ten (as of Jan. 19th) as the Toronto Raptors and Boston Celtics continue to cruise. Somehow, the Miami Heat are nipping at your heels. On Martin Luther King Day, your Cavaliers lost a game to Silicon Valley’s band of hyper-efficient Monstars. It was a ten-point loss, but it felt much more distant.
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In your first move as general manager, you traded All-Star point guard, Finals hero and amateur geophysicist Kyrie Irving, at his request, to your primary intra-conference rival and received an injured star point guard, some role players and a vital, potential high lottery draft pick. Many viewed it as a victory, contingent upon the health of Isaiah Thomas.
As it stands now, Thomas has played six games. He is averaging about half the points he did a season ago (14.8 to 28.9), albeit on a minutes restriction, while shooting 25 percent from 3-point range and 37 percent overall. Thomas, however, is far from the only problem.
J.R. Smith’s scoring is nowhere to be found, as he is averaging the lowest points per game total of his career, despite averaging more minutes than he did last year, partially due to taking the fewest shots per game he’s averaged since the New Orleans Hornets spent a season in Oklahoma City. Jae Crowder hasn’t been the 3-and-D dynamo Cleveland expected when he was packaged with Thomas in the trade from Boston.
Dwyane Wade is a 36-year-old who sometimes plays like he’s 66. Tristan Thompson has struggled with injuries, but he hasn’t looked like himself when he has made it to the court. Derrick Rose has struggled with his own identity. The list goes on, and that doesn’t even bother to mention that your Cavs have the second-highest payroll in the league and are cap-strapped for the foreseeable future. There is immense speculation surrounding LeBron’s imminent free agency. What are you to do?
It is a question of time, the most important asset. It is also a question of the Nets’ draft pick, the second-most important asset, but we’ll get to that in a minute. Mortgaging the future in an attempt to either a) win now, or b) entice LeBron to stay, if the Cavs don’t win this season, is the conundrum. The Cavs are noticeably bereft of young talent — they have exactly three players under the age of 25, and, nothing against them personally, but none of them are exactly inspiring franchise-saving confidence.
Being the yang to the Warriors’ ying requires constant self-examination by comparison. The Houston Rockets are the only team that can keep up with Golden State’s obscene offensive machine. The Cavs have a great offense, but one Golden State run can sink anybody by the third quarter.
Upgrading on defense would seem to be the most practical approach, especially considering that Cleveland has the third-worst defense in the NBA by defensive rating. Only the moribund Sacramento Kings and Phoenix Suns, both likely headed to the lottery, are worse.
Given the need for defense, Thompson’s injury issues and Kevin Love’s inability to fill the paint on defense in his place, the rumor mill has pointed to DeAndre Jordan as a potential trade target. Somehow, however, his Los Angeles Clippers are hanging onto the No. 8 seed in the West in their first year post-Chris Paul. It is unclear if they would care to call the season, ship Jordan away and avoid a certain Golden State buzzsaw in the first round. Trading for a player on the other Los Angeles team might be a worthwhile pursuit; Julius Randle would be an enticing get, at the right price, although that likely wouldn’t dodge a swift exit against the Warriors.
Another area of concern is their point guard situation, which remains tenuous from the jump due to Thomas’ health. The Cavs barely have a starting point guard, and secondary ball-handlers are few and far between on their roster. Age has reduced Wade’s time as the Flash to blips. Rose is arguably not an NBA-level player. Iman Shumpert has been ineffective and injured.
With Friday’s news that Charlotte has apparently made Kemba Walker available, he could be a target. George Hill of the going-nowhere-fast Kings also comes to mind. Although he does not address the secondary ball handler situation, another Hornet, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, is a great defensive wing who can switch across four positions and, despite his beyond-irreparable jumper, makes himself useful on offense with smart cuts and hard screens.
As for what they have to offer, the answer is, simply, not much, depending on their own feelings concerning Kevin Love and Tristan Thompson. The most valuable asset they have is the aforementioned Brooklyn Nets pick, which, despite the Nets’ surprisingly robust campaign thus far, may still very well end up as a top-five pick. Losing that for anything less than a bona fide star — if, for instance, the Thunder suddenly panicked and made Paul George available, what with his own free agency upcoming — would be a failure of reason and borderline malpractice.
Love and Thompson are both varying degrees of “solid NBA big,” Love having amped up his production in the wake of Irving’s departure and Thomas’ injury. Shumpert’s reputation for defense exceeds his output on that end. Trading Thomas now would be a cruel twist on a rough last calendar year for one of the NBA’s most beloved figures and teammates.
Next: The 20 best players available at the NBA Trade Deadline
You, Koby Altman, face troubling waters for the time being. Losing LeBron for nothing this summer would propel the Cavs to the garbage pit of the Eastern Conference and, again, into that ever-so-familiar irrelevance. Trading the Nets pick must guarantee true contention with the Warriors over a seven-game series. Standing pat likely guarantees the opposite, assuming a major jump from somebody stuck in mediocrity doesn’t happen.
What do you do? The choice is yours, even if it isn’t.