The Cleveland Cavaliers have a bright future. They have a young core that already consists of two All-Stars plus a generational defensive star in Evan Mobley. Their team last season made a huge leap up the standings and seems to have a positive culture in place. No one would blame the Cavs for standing pat and keeping the current group together.
Yet complacency is how good teams fail to become great, and the Cavs have an opportunity this summer to add to this core. Darius Garland will almost certainly sign a maximum rookie extension this offseason that will kick in next summer. The time is now to make a move to raise this team’s ceiling even further.
The Cleveland Cavaliers should be open to every move to make their core better. Could a blockbuster sign-and-trade for Zach LaVine raise the Cavs’ ceiling?
The Cavs could look to trade for a player under contract, but a greater opportunity is to recruit a player heading into free agency. Cleveland won’t have the cap space to sign a player outright, but they could execute a sign-and-trade and send back value to the team in question to make it worth their while.
One player to target is Chicago Bulls guard Zach LaVine. The two-time All-Star had an excellent season as part of a Bulls team that finished sixth in the Eastern Conference and will now hit unrestricted free agency. While many assumed he would return to the Bulls, and he certainly still could, LaVine has made it clear he intends to test the waters of free agency and could certainly land with a new team for next season and beyond.
Is Zack LaVine the kind of player the Cavs should pursue? How might the team bring him aboard if he does want to play with Darius Garland and the rest of Cleveland’s core? Let’s break down this potential blockbuster move for the Cavaliers this summer.
Zach LaVine to the Cavs: How good is Zach LaVine?
Per NBA.com’s John Schumann, four players have averaged 20 points per game in each of the past four seasons while shooting at least 55 percent from the field: Giannis Antetokounmpo, Joel Embiid, Devin Booker (all top-4 in MVP voting this past season)…and Zach LaVine. He has made the past two All-Star Games and ascended into one of the league’s best wing scorers.
This past season was a slight step back in efficiency as he battled a knee injury all year, but the hyper-athletic guard also made the playoffs for the first time in his career. LaVine was a key performer on the Gold Medal Olympic squad for Team USA last summer as well, another notch in the career ascendancy LaVine is on.
LaVine is an excellent finisher inside with both the explosion to the rim for thunderous dunks and the body control for crafty finishes in traffic. He has also taken huge strides as an outside shooter, hitting 38.9 percent over five seasons in Chicago on a high number of attempts. Although not an elite passer, he is perfectly deployed alongside another plus playmaker and has averaged at least four assists per game in each of the past four seasons.
Defensively LaVine is not a positive, but at 6’5″ he has the size not to get obliterated. He would be miscast as any sport of a wing stopper, but with a solid defensive foundation around him — something he has never had in his career, although the Bulls made strides last season — he could absolutely hold up at the 2. Given that LaVine is still just 27 years old, he should continue to be a perennial All-Star and sometime All-NBA guard for the entirety of his next contract.
Zach LaVine to the Cavs: What the trade would look like
Zach LaVine will be an unrestricted free agent this summer and can instantly sign with any team that has maximum cap space. That’s a very small list, but if LaVine’s preferred destination is on it then no further action needs to be taken. Most likely, however, the team signing LaVine will need to execute a sign-and-trade to bring him aboard.
That brings two hurdles that need to be cleared. First, the Bulls have to be incentivized to take part; why would they help another team sign away their star? Teams in a similar position who have helped facilitate a sign-and-trade include the Charlotte Hornets, who got back Terry Rozier when Kemba Walker signed with the Boston Celtics, and the Golden State Warriors, who added D’Angelo Russell when Kevin Durant signed with the Brooklyn Nets. If the Cavs were to bring on LaVine they would need to make it worth the Bulls’ while.
The other hurdle is matching salary. Because LaVine’s next contract will almost certainly be a massive raise on his current $19 million salary it will count at a lower amount in matching for the Cavs than it will to balance out for the Bulls. That will require some careful machinations to find the right salary balance in a deal.
The Cavs can get there by sending back a free agent of their own, Collin Sexton. If he were under contract he is probably too valuable to “sweeten the pot” for the Bulls here, but if Sexton would like to start the Bulls would be an avenue to both get paid and start in an ecosystem with the guard defenders to survive Sexton’s shortcomings. If Sexton signs for around $25 million per season, and LaVine signs a maximum deal, the above trade would balance out.
The Cavs would get LaVine and take a flier on Coby White as a backup guard before deciding whether to pay him next summer. The Bulls would get a young dynamic scorer in Sexton, a defensive wing in Isaac Okoro and take a flier of their own on Dylan Windler. The future first-round pick further balances things out in case they balk at that contract number for Sexton, which is necessary for the money to work.
Zach LaVine to the Cavs: Examining the fit
The Cleveland Cavaliers have the luxury of three studs making up the core of their team, both now and for the future. Darius Garland, Jarrett Allen and Evan Mobley are all pre-prime and already making All-Star level impacts for the Cavs. That’s a great place to be for an organization.
The difficult those three present for team building is that all three are locked into their positions. Garland has to be the team’s smallest guard, while Mobley and Allen have to be slotted at the 4 and the 5. Any major pieces added have to be wing players; the Cavs can’t pursue an available big, for example; they wouldn’t be able to add enough value behind Mobley and Allen.
LaVine would be an excellent fit offensively, and at 6’5″ he is the right size to play 2-guard. A backcourt of Darland and LaVine would have defensive issues, but certainly less so than starting Collin Sexton and Garland would. LaVine and Garland are both excellent play creators for themselves and others, and their outside shooting would let either excel off-ball. LaVine is a good enough shot-creator to run the offense whenever Garland sits.
The Cavs would need to find the right small forward pairing to check an opponents’ best wing player each night, but having a frontcourt pairing of Mobley and Allen makes LaVine’s defensive fit less scary. He would immediately raise the floor and ceiling of the Cavs on offense, and his defensive limitations aren’t any worse than playing Sexton or Caris LeVert.
This is a longshot of a move; Zach LaVine will be courted by every team in the league that can feasibly find a path to adding him. If he were interested in Cleveland, and hitching his wagon to some exciting young stars, then this framework could set up one of the best backcourt pairings in the league and set the Cavs on a championship trajectory.