Cavs: A counter to Piston Powered’s CLE-DET trade proposal

Why the Pistons would be wise to consider that deal with the Cavs

From the Pistons’ perspective, in our suggested deal, they’d get Taurean Prince, who, like Cory Joseph, is an expiring player.

Prince did have his share of injury struggles with Cleveland following his trade acquisition from the Brooklyn Nets, namely with a left ankle and left shoulder sprain. Prince ended up having his season end because of left ankle surgery, but leading into that, was in a great shooting rhythm in predominantly a bench role for the Cavs.

I do think that Prince should be able to be ready to go before next season though, or mostly set to be available/good to go early on.

And for the Pistons in this hypothetical, the on-floor value for Prince is that he’s a more than capable catch-and-shoot player for you, and hit 41.5 percent from three-point land with the Cavaliers last season. For his career, his deep shooting clip has been 37.0 percent on 4.9 attempts per contest, and he’s had a decent 11.3 points per contest in his career overall.

He could be able to fill in for stretches off the bench as a capable rotational shooter in minutes at the 3 and 4, or in spurts, at the 2 for the Pistons.

Also from there, if the Pistons were to look to move the 27-year-old wing, I’d think he could be a deadline trade piece for them too, if that’s what they’d be looking to do.

And secondly, the Cavs could seemingly in this scenario look to attach their own 2023 second-round pick to aid in potentially landing Joseph. Could they look to add a protection to that?

Sure, but either way, with Cleveland’s need for a capable veteran backup point guard to ease some burden on Darius Garland, and to feasibly move Prince for a quality player, attaching a 2023 2, when the Cavaliers should be further along, doesn’t seem outlandish.

Now, I get that Detroit wouldn’t love bringing back Prince via his $13 million deal for next season, and Joseph’s deal is only $2.4 million guaranteed by he’s waived by at/by August 1, but are they going to be huge players in the East next season? I wouldn’t expect that, but Prince could help them some, and they could flip him again before/during next season and feasibly pick up another asset to go with the one suggested by us.

Next, we’ll examine why the Cavs would be wise to consider this suggested trade.