NBA trade season is upon us, and as such the rumors are swirling across the entire league. The Cleveland Cavaliers don’t have any glaring holes in their rotation, especially with Ricky Rubio due back soon, but they absolutely will be engaging in the trade market to look for upgrades to a team that absolutely should be thinking of contention.
After Bleacher Report suggested a trio of trade targets for the Cavs we walked through each of them one at a time. Should the Cavs pass on each of those trade targets, or should they pursue adding them via trade?
More Cavs news
Lamar Stevens missed Saturday’s tightrope win over the short-handed Dallas Mavericks and is out for tonight’s game as well. With Dean Wade also sidelined, Stevens’ absence is a tough one to deal with. The Cavs’ biggest roster weakness is the small forward position, and missing their two best options will strain the rotation. Isaac Okoro started on Saturday; will Cedi Osman or Caris LeVert get the start instead?
The Eastern Conference standings have been made up of four distinct tiers for most of the season: Milwaukee and Boston at the top, then Cleveland by itself in third, then a large group of teams floating around .500, and finally the teams at the bottom.
Now, however, a number of teams are making moves: the Orlando Magic have won six straight to move into the middle tier, and the Brooklyn Nets, Philadelphia 76ers, New York Knicks and Miami Heat have won a combined 21-straight games to fill out from 4-7. Ahead of the Cavs the Bucks and Celtics are only two games away. The best teams in the East are settling into place and it could be a wild race to secure positioning.
NBA news
The Brooklyn Nets have won six-straight games, the latest a comeback victory over the Detroit Pistons where Kevin Durant dropped 26 points in the third quarter! He and Kyrie Irving combined for 81 points and have the Nets just one game back of Cleveland and three games back of the East-leading Bucks.
In Denver Nikola Jokic had yet another historic night, dropping 40 points, 27 rebounds and 10 assists in a win over the Charlotte Hornets; the only other players in NBA history to even approach that stat line were Wilt Chamberlain and Elgin Baylor.
In non-basketball news, Lionel Messi of Argentina scored twice and France’s Kylian Mbappe scored three times in a thrilling World Cup Final. The game went to penalty kicks and Argentina prevailed 4-3 to bring Messi his first World Cup trophy.
Coming up: The Cavs play game three of their six-game homestand by welcoming the Utah Jazz to Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse.