Cavs: Pluses, minuses of potentially trading for Chris Paul

The Cleveland Cavaliers could reportedly get involved in Chris Paul trade discussions, at least theoretically.

It’s tough to say for certain as to the Cleveland Cavaliers‘ outlook would be for next season. The squad has a ways to go before becoming legitimate postseason threats, let alone contenders.

Cleveland’s set to begin the third year of their full-rebuild, and internal growth, one would think, is crucial for them looking onward, and the progression of youngsters such as Darius Garland, Collin Sexton and Kevin Porter Jr. is paramount. Unfortunately for the Wine and Gold, them not participating in the NBA’s Orlando-area bubble restart was tough, in relation to player development.

The Cavaliers didn’t get to see much of Andre Drummond game action with the squad, either, due to the novel coronavirus-induced hiatus/ultimately the end of the past season for Cleveland. The Drummond sample size has been just eight games with the Cavs, as a result.

And though Drummond is reportedly undecided about exercising his $28.7 million player option for next season, it’s still difficult to foresee him not eventually opting into that. Albeit it doesn’t seem likely that Drummond is going to be a long-term piece for Cleveland, given that the sides are reportedly far apart on potential contract extension talks.

It also seems evident that Drummond could very well be moved by Cleveland at some point, and as far as a possible deal, ESPN’s Brian Windhorst noted that a deal for Chris Paul with the Oklahoma City Thunder could be in-play. He alluded to how it could be from Drummond and Cedi Osman in a package for Paul, at least in a hypothetical sense.

As far as what he said on a recent appearance on the Wine & Gold Talk Podcast with Cleveland.com’s Chris Fedor and Hayden Grove, though, let’s hit on the context here.

This was as was transcribed, at least in terms of Windhorst’s key comments, following Fedor/Grove comments, by Cavs superfan and very knowledgable fan, at that, Twitter user Brayden Ballin. That was in response to Ti Windisch of the Gyro Step podcast.

As Ballin alluded to, Windhorst make it clear as day that there have been no proposed trades involving the Cavs and Oklahoma City Thunder centered on Chris Paul to this point. Windhorst put that out there as a caveat.

But in the case that the Cavaliers/Thunder were to engage in talks, this deal of Paul for Drummond and Osman would eventually lead to Steven Adams and Drummond both being rostered by OKC, which wouldn’t be great for OKC.

One would assume they’d look to deal one and/or the other near the deadline/one being much earlier, anyhow, although for Cleveland, a potential Paul-centric trade with Adams, too, wouldn’t realistically work. Albeit Windy’s suggested deal was centered on Osman and Dre for Paul, to reiterate, but one would think OKC could get better from the Milwaukee Bucks, for example.

At any rate, here, we’ll look at the pluses and minuses of the Cavs potentially trading for CP3.

We’ll start with the pluses.