3 reasons why the Cleveland Cavaliers should not trade David Nwaba

Reason #2: The Cavs can play faster with Nwaba in the rotation

The Cleveland Cavaliers have not been able to push the pace much this season, which has been disappointing for their offensive efforts. This year, the Cavs have played at the league’s second-slowest pace, per NBA.com.

With Kevin Love only active in four games this year at this point due to reported toe surgery, Cleveland’s offense has been especially hampered in the halfcourt.

Only three teams in the Association have had a worse true shooting percentage than Cleveland, but when the Cavs have been able to get out and run more, their key younger pieces in Sexton, Osman, Larry Nance Jr. and Clarkson have been able to get easier baskets.

So how does Nwaba help that? With his ability to make deflections and blocks on the defensive end of the floor, it allows Cleveland to have more chances to get easy offense from live-ball turnovers.

Nwaba’s ability to rebound the ball effectively on both ends also is a great boost; for his career, Nwaba has averaged 6.7 rebounds per 36 minutes (per Basketball Reference), which is really good for a guard that is often guarding the opponent’s best playmaker.

When he pulls down defensive rebounds, he can go coast-to-coast and make things happen, and even if he misses near the rim, that can at least lead to more offensive rebounding opportunities for Tristan Thompson (when he’s healthy) and others to clean it up.

Now with Nwaba on the floor, the Cavs’ pace has not been noticeably higher, but it seems that when he’s out there, Cleveland is attacking more and not settling for contested jumpers.

Nwaba himself does a good job of consistently getting to the free throw line from straight-line drives in halfcourt situations (as evidenced by his career 48.4 percent free throw rate, per Basketball Reference), and he’s a great cutter when diagonal cutting to get easy buckets as well.

When Nwaba is on the floor, there’s more of a sense of urgency, and you can see it on both ends of the floor. His net rating of 2.6 (per NBA.com) shows that, and that is pretty good on this Cavs squad, even with a smaller sample size.

Nwaba does all the little things in games well, and that’s essential for a role player to truly have value on an NBA team.

The third reason why Nwaba should not be traded and stick around at least for next season is that it likely won’t cost Cleveland much.