3 potential trades Cavs can make with the Sacramento Kings

Potential Kings Trade 2: Buddy Hield

The Cavs have a truly fearsome defensive combination in Jarrett Allen and Evan Mobley, but the pairing comes with a specific challenge: spacing. Mobley is not such a threat from deep that he consistently pulls his defender out with him, and Allen provides elite vertical spacing but no horizontal spacing.

To solve this problem in the short-term, head coach J.B. Bickerstaff has been starting Lauri Markannen at the 3, which seems crazy to do with a 7-footer but was necessitated to get shooting on the court. Yet Markkanen is hitting just 34.2 percent of his 3-pointers and might be out for an extended period after suffering an ankle injury over the weekend. Without Markkanen, the prospect of starting the non-shooting Isaac Okoro at the 2 becomes even more difficult.

Trading for a wing shooter who can consistently knock down outside shots would fill a significant need, and Buddy Hield is such a shooter who seems available on the trade market. He is a career 40.2 percent shooter from deep, hitting 38.1 percent this season, and his 9.1 attempts per game are more than Markkanen and Okoro combined.

Hield would probably need to come off of the bench for the Cavs, as he does for the Kings, but they could try him out at both the 2 and the 3. His defense leaves much to be desired, but playing alongside players like Mobley, Allen and either Okoro or Lamar Stevens will help mitigate that. He isn’t an appreciably worse defender than Markkanen, although his smaller stature makes him less impactful than the 7-foot Markkanen.

This package would be in a similar realm to the deal for Barnes, but with the Cavs not wanting to give up a second first-round pick, some money needs to be shifted around to balance the value. Hield is likely fairly paid on his contract, but Tristan Thompson is mostly dead weight on his. The Cavs move Osman, a less impactful version of what Hield will bring, and in return take on the money of Thompson to give the Kings more wiggle room in making other deals.