Grade the Trade: Cavs get castoffs in awful trade idea

Garbage trade for the Cavs

The Dallas Mavericks are a team built around a heliocentric star in Luka Doncic, and the role players around him get on the court primarily for their ability to play off of him. Doncic has been incredible this season, neck-and-neck with Nikola Jokic for the MVP, and yet the Mavs have had an up-and-down season because the role players have not had a great year.

Those struggling role players are exactly who the Mavs would be sending back to the Cavaliers in this trade. JaVale McGee is entirely out of the lineup and at age 35 might be cooked, but has two seasons of guaranteed money left on his deal. Reggie Bullock has had a disaster of a season, ranking in the first percentile in the league in estimated wins added. Tim Hardaway Jr. is shooting the ball well from outside, but he is unable to generate offense or score inside the arc. He makes another $34 million over the two seasons after this one.

Trading two of this team’s best perimeter defenders and its best backup big for flotsam and jetsam taking up space on the Mavericks’ cap sheet is a disaster. It’s solving one problem by causing a host more, from frontcourt depth to perimeter defense to future cap flexibility. Not in a million years should the Cleveland Cavaliers say yes to this trade.

Grade: F- (can you give out an F minus? Well we just did)