Cavs Trade Rumors: 4 teams, 4 Cedi Osman trade offers

Cavs Trade Rumors: San Antonio Spurs

Why Spurs are Interested: The San Antonio Spurs are not a team that makes many in-season trades, nor even that many trades overall. Yet they are reportedly one of the four teams asking after Osman, and it makes some sort of sense. The Spurs have six young guards all between 6’4″ and 6’6″ but none of them are natural fits at the 3.

Osman isn’t a perfect fit at the 3 either, but at 6’7″ he fits the archetype a little better. He could pair with Doug McDermott to provide the Spurs with similar options in the flow of the offense, with Osman coming in behind McDermott and serving as his clone of sorts.

Yet at the end of the day, he doesn’t move the needle as a long-term star, and the Spurs are almost certainly going to be bad for another couple of seasons. Dejounte Murray has been a breakout player this season, but he isn’t an All-NBA candidate. This mis-mash of 2-guards around him has yet to be sorted out. Won’t Osman just be another person to join the morass?

Would Cavs say yes? The Cavs would love to find a defense-minded young point guard to lock up at a small salary to play behind Darius Garland, a yin to his yang, a thunder to his lightning. Ricky Rubio was a supercharged version of this, but even a player like prime Dellavedova would have a role on this team.

Enter Tre Jones, the fourth member of the Zion – Barrett – Reddish freshman class at Duke. The Spurs also have the Detroit Pistons’ juicy 2022 second-round pick which would be a sweetener to take on the contract of Juancho Hernangomez to make the salaries work.

This deal has very little flash, and it’s ultimately not enough to move the needle for the Cavs. They likely value Osman’s role too much and don’t trust Dylan Windler enough. Yet long-term this could have been an interesting pairing of Garland and Jones, forming a similar partnership to Ja Morant and Tre’s older brother, Tyus Jones.

Verdict: Highly unlikely.