The Cleveland Cavaliers landed the fifth overall pick in the 2020 NBA Draft, which should be a solid spot.
No, it probably does not seem likely that the Cleveland Cavaliers will have a realistic chance of landing the Georgia Bulldogs’ Anthony Edwards, James Wiseman, who briefly played at Memphis, or LaMelo Ball, who previously played for the NBL’s Illawarra Hawks. I’m personally not a fan of Edwards for the Cavs, nor Wiseman, though.
Cleveland would feasibly need to target LaMelo Ball, perhaps at number 2 in the upcoming draft, via trade with the Golden State Warriors, who would seemingly be a squad that could be interested in a potential deal.
Golden State, with Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson healthy next season, should be firmly in contention in the Western Conference, and they might not be looking to play a really high pick a bunch, and might rather trade down. If that scenario were to play out, they could acquire a depth piece from the Cavs, to go with Cleveland’s number five pick, for instance.
If the Cavaliers end up staying put, though, I’d still be more than fine with that, as there should be a number of prospects that still could be very productive players for the squad’s near future there. As Forbes‘ Evan Dammarell seemingly wrote in a piece on Friday, it’s actually a really good outcome for the Wine and Gold in landing at fifth in the 2020 NBA Draft. KJG’s Grant Puskar hit on the original news involving the pick before, too.
From here, we’ll suggest two reasons to be optimistic about the Cleveland Cavaliers landing the fifth pick in the upcoming draft.
The first of those two reasons has to do with what Dammarell alluded to as well, in the defensive end of the floor.