The Boston Celtics traded guard Rajon Rondo to the Dallas Mavericks on Thursday night, but should the Cleveland Cavaliers tried to make a push to acquire him?
When the Cleveland Cavaliers brought back LeBron James, the last thing anyone thought we’d be doing this far into the season would be considering trades to correct things and make the team as good as it can be. After a slow start to the season Cleveland has had almost no consistency and that’s something that needs to change.
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The only person who the Cavaliers seemingly won’t move is LeBron James, which made Kyrie Irving trade rumors a thing when Cleveland was struggling back in the early part of the season.
But with the recent trade of Rajon Rondo to the Dallas Mavericks, many are wondering if a straight up trade of Kyrie for Rondo would have been a good idea in terms of correcting what is wrong with this team.
So, should the Cavaliers have traded for Rajon Rondo?
The easy answer is yes but the right — and harder answer — is no.
Yes, it would have been wonderful to see a Big 3 of LeBron-Love-Rondo, but the price would have been tremendously too high. Kyrie Irving inked a max deal this offseason which makes trading him difficult from a technical standpoint but even in NBA2K15 world, that trade is hard to make for moral reasons.
Kyrie is just too young and has too bright a future ahead of him to justify trading him for an aged Rajon Rondo who you’re not sure which version of him you’re getting. To boot, he’s a free agent at the end of the season who can only commit to re-signing and nothing more. At the end of the year literally everyone needs to be re-signed, starting with Kevin Love.
LeBron and Kyrie are the two pillars of the roster, but swapping out Kyrie for Rajon Rondo means there’s just LeBron and little money to play with.
Rajon Rondo would have opened up the offense, sure, but Kyrie Irving can still do that if he adjusts his game. There may come a time where he doesn’t need to adjust anything, as LeBron will quarterback the offense, making Kyrie a deadly scoring threat.
It would have been interesting to see Rajon Rondo on this Cleveland Cavaliers team, no doubt. But the price of seeing that happen and the risk involved was just too high to get that excited about trying to see it happen, as the Cavaliers staying out of Rajon Rondo trade talks was a very wise thing to do.
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