Sunday night saw another win notched in the Cleveland Cavaliers’ belt, a 112-98 road victory over the Phoenix Suns that saw the Cavs pull away in the fourth quarter. Isaac Okoro had the best shooting night of his career, tying a career-best with four 3-pointers on just six attempts.
The rest of the team, however, shot just 7-of-23 (30.4 percent) from deep. That’s a one-game sample, sure, and Donovan Mitchell is having one of the best shooting seasons in the league. Yet the reality is that other than Mitchell, Darius Garland and Kevin Love (an uncharacteristic 0-for-5 against the Suns) the Cavs’ rotation is filled with unreliable 3-point shooters.
The Cleveland Cavaliers need to look for upgrades to their shooting.
One way to address that issue is via trade, and the Cavaliers apparently have their eyes on a couple of solutions. On NBA Insider Jake Fischer’s podcast “Don’t Aggregate This” Chris Fedor of Cleveland.com shared a pair of the Cavs’ trade targets. One is Bojan Bogdanovic of the Detroit Pistons, and the other is the Dallas Mavericks’ Tim Hardaway Jr.
Tim Hardaway Jr. is the son of Hall of Fame guard Tim Hardaway and has been an impressive player in his own stead at times during his career. He is currently averaging 12.3 points for the Mavericks, shooting 36.4 percent from 3-point range on a high volume of attempts.
What would a potential trade for Hardaway look like?
Building the trade for Cavs target Tim Hardaway Jr.
There is a group of players on the roster who are the realistic options for any trade. The core four stars aren’t going anywhere, Kevin Love and Ricky Rubio are key veterans for the bench, and Dean Wade and Lamar Stevens are inexpensive rotation players. That group of eight is very unlikely to be involved in a trade.
That means to build a deal for another player there are two main routes. The first is to use Caris LeVert’s large expiring contract ($18.8 million this season) and the second is to build a deal with the contracts of Isaac Okoro, Cedi Osman and Dylan Windler.
In a potential trade with the Dallas Mavericks for Tim Hardaway Jr., the Mavs will almost certainly demand LeVert as a secondary ball-handler to meet their team’s biggest need. Here’s what that trade could look like:
The Mavericks are currently fourth in the Western Conference, just as the Cavs are in the East, but it’s not directly comparable. The Mavs are three games worse than the Cavs, have a significantly worse point differential and are only 4.5 games out of 13th. They could stand to make a change themselves.
After letting Jalen Brunson go in the offseason for nothing, the Mavericks are dangerously thin at ball-handler, with Luka Doncic, Spencer Dinwiddie and…well, that’s about it after cutting Kemba Walker. Adding Caris LeVert would give them a third option and shore up that weakness, and the Mavs have an interest as they have tried to acquire LeVert previously. They would probably accept this trade, putting the ball in Cleveland’s court.
Would the Cavs trade for Tim Hardaway Jr. from the Mavs?
We should probably start by jumping the gun on our own analysis: per Chris Fedor’s reporting, the Cavs do want Tim Hardaway Jr. and would probably say yes to this deal. Given the cost of Hardaway’s contract for the next two seasons it’s likely they ask for some compensation coming alongside THJ; we made it a 2025 second in this iteration.
Why would the Cavs want to do this trade? The big reason is the shooting that Hardaway provides. Hardaway is shooting 36.4 percent from 3-point range this season on 7.9 attempts per game (9.9 per 36 minutes). Per Marc Stein ($$), in the 21 games entering Sunday since Hardaway became a starter he is hitting 40.5 percent from 3-point range.
Hardaway is a decent ball-handler and can attack defenses in rotation, so he provides an escape valve if Donovan Mitchell or Darius Garland are double-teamed. The improvement over Caris LeVert is that when he doesn’t have the ball Hardaway remains a weapon. The downgrade is that LeVert is having the best defensive season of his career, but the Cavs are one of the teams best equipped to make up for that issue.
So do the Cavaliers make this trade? Yes, they probably do. If the Mavericks don’t find a better ball-handler on the trade market, and the Cavs don’t make a move for another wing, this is a deal that has a great chance of happening by the February Trade Deadline.