For the Cleveland Cavaliers to further progress in their rebuild, they’ll need to make tough decisions.
The Cleveland Cavaliers, just like any team in a post-LeBron James era, have found themselves stuck in a rebuild after the King left their team after his second stint with them. In both years after LeBron went to the Los Angeles Lakers, the Cavaliers have finished with one of the worst records in the league.
Cleveland, who had the league’s second-worst record heading into the novel coronavirus-induced hiatus at 19-46, was not one of the top 22 teams invited to Orlando for the NBA season’s resumption at Disney World later this summer.
On a positive note, however, those two years’ records resulted in very high draft picks and valuable pieces to rebuild the roster and hopefully can bring the team back to the forefront of the NBA, and/or postseason contention.
Looking at where the team’s roster is currently, there is a lot of work for general manager Koby Altman and the rest of the Cavs front office to do to make this rebuild happen, and that’s clear.
Regarding that, there are three big things that can happen in the upcoming season and/or next offseason, and the 2020 NBA Draft that can get the team headed in the right direction.
One of those we’ll touch on now.
The Cleveland Cavaliers need to eventually trade costly veterans
One of the three ways that the Cavaliers can jumpstart their rebuild is to trade or at least attempt to trade some of their veterans and other players on awful contracts in exchange for young talent and/or draft picks.
As it is certain that the team will not be making a major push for a championship in the near future, moving on from older players in return for players they can still mold and develop or draft is very valuable for the team. In the near future, one of the two players that the Cavaliers should trade in that realm is Andre Drummond.
For clarification, Drummond is reportedly likely to pick up his $28.8 million player option for the 2020-2021 season and it is very unlikely that any other team would offer him anywhere near that kind of money if he did not. While Drummond is a very good team defender on the interior/in the paint, and arguably the best rebounder in the entire NBA, he does not fit with the current roster and the timetable of the team’s core.
There should be a market for a player like Drummond near the next trade deadline, though, with him being one of the best centers in the league, and in his brief Cavs stint thus far, he had a solid 17.5 points, 11.1 rebounds, 1.5 blocks and 1.4 steals per game.
With him being a proven commodity inside, the Cavs should easily find a suitor and in return could get a package of perhaps a few players that could improve from a change, and be attached with future draft capital. Drummond would appear to be a quality trade chip as likely an expiring player by next deadline.
Next is Kevin Love, whose name has been one that has been in trade rumors for most of his time with the Cavaliers. It is likely as a result of the salary cap expected to decrease more going into next season due to COVID-19 that trading Love will be extremely difficult before next season and mid-next season.
Statistically, he is beginning to regress and is much older than the players the Cavs are building around. Along with that, Love likely wants to be in a situation in which he can compete for a championship during perhaps the final stretch of his career. He currently has three years left on his deal for a total of $91.5 million.
With that being the case, he is a player that will continue to take up a major portion of the team’s cap space and could possibly inhibit them from re-signing the budding stars that the team currently has to the contract extensions they deserve, and that seems to be Collin Sexton down the road, and feasibly Kevin Porter Jr.
Looking at the 2021 offseason, with Love only then having two more years left on his deal, if there is not a major drop off in his level of play in the 2020-2021 season, it should not be too difficult to find a contender that would be thrilled to have his services.
That’d be realistically after the loaded 2021 free agency period, as Forbes‘ Evan Dammarell suggested.
While Love is no longer an All-Star player and he could feasibly have a bit of a decrease from his 17.6 points per game next season, he still is a good passing big that had 3.2 assists per game in 2019-20, and he’s still a really productive defensive rebounder.
He’s one of the game’s best floor spacing bigs that shot 37.4 percent from three-point land last season, too, but again, seemingly next offseason, need to deal him to move forward.
The second way the Cleveland Cavaliers can further progress in their rebuild is related to their approach in the 2020 NBA Draft.
The Cleveland Cavaliers need to select another lead guard in the next draft
The Cavaliers have drafted a point guard with their lottery picks in the past two straight seasons, but, in terms of pushing the current rebuild along, it could be in the teams’ best interest to draft another one in this year’s draft as well.
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While it is uncertain where the Cavs will pick in the 2020 NBA Draft at the moment, it will at worst be sixth overall, per Tankathon, meaning that there should definitely be one of the best ones left on the board when it is Cleveland’s time to pick. Two guards the team should be looking at in that regard are Tyrese Haliburton and Killian Hayes.
One thing that the Cavaliers desperately need on their team is a high-end playmaker and Haliburton is arguably the best passing guard in this draft.
In his final year at college with the Iowa State Cyclones, he averaged 6.5 assists per game, which is indicative of him having a high ceiling in the playmaking sense at the NBA level.
He is a great three-point shooter as well, as evidenced by him hitting 42.6 percent from deep in his two seasons, per Sports Reference, which would lead to more floor spacing for the Cavaliers and more driving lanes for slashers on the team like Collin Sexton.
Also, he has great size for the point guard position, as he is listed at 6-foot-5, and his 6-foot-8 wingspan should help early on in the team sense, at minimum.
Albeit there are some questions about Haliburton that raise a couple of red flags. The first is that he is only 175 pounds, which is very light. He needs to get stronger, to help prevent injuries or at the very least, he could have trouble playing through contact.
The final concern is the form of his jump shot/slow release. While he was a great collegiate three-point shooter, many wonder if he will be able to get his shot off as often or as easily as he had in college, and that does need to be taken into consideration.
The other prospect the Cavs should be eyeing this year is Killian Hayes. To get a deeper look as to why the Cavaliers should draft Killian Hayes I did a deep dive on the topic earlier in the NBA shutdown. Hayes is another playmaker with a really high ceiling in that realm at the NBA level. Besides their passing ability and height, with Hayes standing at 6-foot-5 as well, the players are polar opposites.
Hayes is a left-handed player who scoring-wise thrives closer to the basket, having a wide assortment of floaters and other moves to get past defenders. The key issue is, he does struggle from the three-point line.
While he has a good looking shot, he struggles to shoot consistently and is not natural as a perimeter shooter; he shot only 29.4 percent in his 2019-20 play across all leagues for German club Ratiopharm Ulm, per Real GM.
This shooting ability is what will be a make-or-break aspect about Hayes’ career and will make it worth choosing him where the Cavaliers are in the draft or not.
Lastly, the third way Cleveland can further progress in their rebuild has to do with admitting fault from the 2019 NBA Draft.
The Cleveland Cavaliers need to limit Darius Garland to a bench role
In the previous NBA draft, the Cavaliers used their lottery pick to select Vanderbilt point guard Darius Garland. To many, he had a very disappointing rookie season with the Cavs and there is clearly a lot to improve on; 12.3 points was underwhelming for him. The main focuses are being a more effective off-ball player, playmaking, and playing with consistency.
At this point in time, Garland would be best coming off the bench for the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Currently, in a starting role, his ball-dominant play style clashes with the style of Sexton and creates an offense of seemingly two black holes with little ball movement; Garland leading the Cavs in assists per game with 3.9 was not anything noteworthy, from an objective outlook.
Garland has had problems getting the offense going and had issues getting Kevin Love the ball this past season in his preferred spots often, for example.
If Garland is moved to the bench, though, he will have more free reign with the offense and could even possibly see more shots in key stretches of games and chances to get his own as a scorer if he accepts a bench role.
With Garland moved to the bench, Sexton would be brought to his natural position of point guard, while Kevin Porter Jr. or if the Cavs pick a guard, whoever that player is would be in contention for the starting shooting guard position.
With Garland as perhaps a sixth man on the roster, it’d make the Cavs bench already exponentially better than it already is, and if they are looking to make a playoff or even championship run at the end of this rebuild, depth will be a necessity.