Cavs: 2 things the team is getting with Kevin Pangos
By Dan Gilinsky
The Cleveland Cavaliers hadn’t had the most notable offseason heading into the last couple of weeks, but they have added some players since.
Cleveland acquired then-restricted free agent Lauri Markkanen via sign-and-trade from the Chicago Bulls roughly two weeks back, and a few hours before the 2021 NBA Draft, they acquired Ricky Rubio via trade from the Minnesota Timberwolves.
Since the Markkanen addition, they’ve signed the likes of Tacko Fall, Tre Scott and RJ Nembhard to training camp deals, and Cleveland is reportedly expected to add Mitch Ballock via camp deal.
Moving past the Markkanen move/the camp signings, Cleveland reportedly signed point guard Kevin Pangos, who has played in Europe since his last collegiate season with Gonzaga in 2015, on Wednesday. Per ESPN’s Bobby Marks, who first reported the deal, that was via two-year, $3.5 million deal, with the first season being fully guaranteed for roughly $1.7 million.
In relation to Pangos’ European career, he first was with club Herbalife Gran Canaria in Spain, then Zalgaris Kaunas in Lithuania, FC Barcelona Lassa (Spain) and most recently with Zenit St. Petersburg (Russia). He’s spent ample time playing in Euroleague competition, and has proven himself in recent seasons to be a very effective lead guard in his Euro career.
Last season, Pangos was also named First-Team All-Euroleague with Zenit St. Petersburg, as Fear The Sword’s Chris Manning pointed out. In that 2020-21 play, Pangos had 13.5 points and 6.6 assists per contest, and knocked in 39.0 percent of his three-point attempts, of which were 5.8 per game.
So what are two things that the Cavs could be getting with this Pangos add?
We’ll take a look at two that come to mind here, with the first being ability to at times run some offense in spurts if needed.