The March 25th trade deadline is rapidly approaching. It’s still over a month away, but trade talks are already beginning to heat up. Teams are emerging as candidates to make moves, both buyers and sellers. The Cavaliers again fall into the seller category, headlined by Andre Drummond.
Drummond doesn’t appear to have much trade value, and given his $28.7 million contract, teams are more interested to wait and see if he’ll hit the buyout market. The frontrunners for destinations via trade are Toronto, Dallas, and Brooklyn. Anywhere else isn’t very realistic.
Given the estimated trade value and potential candidates, I’m not sure if a trade will end up being the best option. I don’t want to take on guaranteed money for next year unless we’re getting an asset. Since Drummond is on an expiring, we could buy him out and not add any additional salary for next year. If we have to take on long term money, like the contracts of Dwight Powell or Deandre Jordan, I wouldn’t do it without getting a young guy or draft compensation.
The other player I would like to see on another team by the deadline is Javale McGee. Best case scenario would be to get a shooting guard that can be a ballhandler and shot creator off the bench. Austin Rivers fits that mold perfectly, and is the ideal target of a McGee trade. However, that would leave us without a backup center. With everyone healthy, ideally all power forward and center minutes would go to Kevin Love, Larry Nance, and Jarrett Allen. However, right now that’s not possible because Nance and Love are both injured. Love participated in most of practice Wednesday, and appears to be close to returning from the injury he sustained in the third game of the season. However, Nance is out for longer. He’s scheduled to return from his hand injury right before the March 25th deadline.
Optimally, Love would take all the backup center minutes, in addition to his minutes at power forward. However, given his defensive shortcomings, it would be ideal to always have Nance playing at power forward next to Love when he’s at center. That obviously won’t be possible for a while. One option would be to wait until Nance comes back before trading Javale, so that Javale could play backup center and have Love play power forward. The other option is to wait until only Love returns, and have him take all the backup center minutes and replace Nance’s minutes with Lamar Stevens and Taurean Prince. It would also be a good idea to find a decent third string center in case of a Love injury.
Given the urgent need for guard help, it might be better to trade Javale for Rivers as soon as Love is back in the lineup. Looking at the trade from the Knicks standpoint, it makes a lot of sense. Mitchell Robinson broke his hand recently, and will be out for a while. In the 3 games since the injury, they’ve played Nerlens Noel a ton of minutes as their starter and are giving Taj Gibson 16 mpg at backup center. Despite Thibs’ relationship with Taj, they’ll probably be better off having Javale play those minutes. Looking at what they’ll be giving up, they’ve played 5 games since trading for Derrick Rose. In those 5 games, Austin Rivers has played a total of 5 minutes. He’s completely fallen out of the rotation, making him pretty expendable. It shouldn’t take more than Javale and a 2nd rounder or two to get Rivers from the Knicks. Denver is also looking for a backup center, so they could trade for Javale and send different assets to New York in a 3 team deal if the Knicks think they’re fine with playing Taj until Robinson returns.
Cedi Osman also might be moved at the deadline. He’s been bad this year but has reportedly drawn interest from teams. If he brings in any sort of asset in return, I’ll be happy.
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