The Cleveland Cavaliers have an excellent general manager running the front office. Some front offices stumble into good teams, perhaps because of NBA Draft Lottery luck or an important free agent choosing their team because of its location. Not so for Koby Altman, who formed this Cavaliers team with his own hands.
At every step of the way Altman has managed the roster, made trades, signed free agents and drafted the right players to turn this rebuild into a contender in just a few short years. While this group was stomped in the playoffs, they gained valuable experience and had one of the league’s best net ratings this season, with a young core set up to contend for years to come.
How did Altman get this team to this place? Let’s break down the six best moves of the Koby Altman era in Cleveland, starting with one of the smallest but still consequential moves.
No. 6: Signed Dean Wade to a contract
Dean Wade went undrafted in 2019 and signed a two-way deal with the Cleveland Cavaliers. He appeared in just 12 games as a rookie, and while he was good in the G League with the then-Canton Charge, he wasn’t the type of high-scoring player that usually played their way into a full contract.
Nevertheless, Koby Altman saw something in Wade, signing him to a three-year, non-guaranteed contract. Wade proceeded to play 158 games over the next three seasons, starting 60 of them. He has shot a decent 36.2 percent from deep, played excellent defense and largely been a part of wildly successful lineups the past two seasons. He parlayed that play into a three-year extension that will guarantee Wade’s NBA career continues for years to come.
No. 5: Trading Taurean Prince for Ricky Rubio
The Cleveland Cavaliers in 2021 were in desperate need of veteran leadership. Most of the old guard were gone, the Cavs were mostly young and losing tons of games, and Kevin Love was on the team but mostly stuck in his own feels. With the need for a backup point guard also a top priority, the Cleveland front office was able to kill two birds with one stone.
Right at the start of the offseason, the Cavs traded forward Taurean Prince to the Minnesota Timberwolves for veteran point guard Ricky Rubio. Not only was Rubio in his early 30s with plenty of professional experience under his belt, he had a past relationship with Love from their time playing together in Minnesota.
Rubio’s addition worked to solve both issues. He immediately stepped in as a mentor and leader on the team, helping Darius Garland take a leap forward and Love regain his mojo and have his best season in years. On the court he was excellent, not just backing up Garland but demanding minutes alongside him. Rubio had a career year to start to the season…until he tore his ACL and missed the rest of the season.
The Rubio trade was likely a success even if he only played those 34 games for them, but the organization built enough of a connection with Rubio to bring him back in free agency this summer at a reasonable number. While he had a rough year as he returned from the ACL tear, his voice of leadership is still valuable to this team and he should only be better as he fully recovers from his injury.
No. 4: Drafting Evan Mobley in 2021 Draft
The Cleveland Cavaliers had a bad season in 2020-21, continuing the trend of struggling in the aftermath of LeBron James departing. Darius Garland was a bright spot, taking a leap forward down the stretch of his second season, but the Cavs were still figuring out the rest of the team around him.
The 2021 NBA Draft was loaded with talent, and the Cavs went in with the third overall pick. They were saved from making any truly difficult decisions by the Houston Rockets taking Jalen Green second overall, allowing USC big man Evan Mobley fall to third, but they still had to make the right decision in front of them.
Avoiding the temptation of drafting Jalen Suggs or Scottie Barnes, or trading down, the Cavs took Mobley and have been on fire ever since. Cleveland doubled its win total in Mobley’s rookie season, with the young phenom seemingly everywhere on defense. This past season he improved his scoring inside while finishing as a Defensive Player of the Year finalist. No player younger than 23 had ever finished in the Top 3 for that award; Mobley was 21.
The future remains to be written, so it could be that Mobley tops out as one of the league’s best defenders and a middling offensive option; or it could be that in two years he is averaging 22 points, 12 rebounds and three blocks a game as the third banana on a top contender. The sky is the limit for Mobley.
No. 3: Trading for Donovan Mitchell
Trading for a star player is always a risky decision. Sometimes everything works out perfectly, and that star leads a team to a title; think of Kawhi Leonard in 2019, or the Boston Celtics adding both Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen in 2008. Other times it’s an absolute disaster, such as the Brooklyn Nets’ acquisition of Garnett and Paul Pierce, the Los Angeles Lakers adding Dwight Howard and Steve Nash, the Minnesota Timberwolves this year adding Rudy Gobert…it’s a long list.
We don’t know for sure what the Cavaliers will accomplish after their blockbuster trade, but already it looks like a major success for both sides. Last year the Cavs traded five first-round picks (three picks, two swaps), rookie Ochai Agbaji, Lauri Markkanen and Collin Sexton to the Utah Jazz for Donovan Mitchell.
Mitchell has been nothing short of amazing in Cleveland, averaging a career-best 28.3 points as the best player on a 51-win team. He and Darius Garland paired together beautifully as a dynamic backcourt duo. Mitchell’s 38.6 percent from deep tied for his career-best, and his 245 3-pointers set both a franchise record and a personal record.
The individual moments were incredible too, from his 71-point explosion to start the New Year to his dynamic playoff debut. Mitchell finished sixth in MVP voting and will make his first All-NBA team this season. The year didn’t end the way that Mitchell and the Cavaliers hoped, but he will be back next season and appears to have raised the Cavs’ ceiling. It was an expensive trade, but so far it looks well worth it.
No. 2: Jumping into Jarrett Allen trade
The 2020-21 Cleveland Cavaliers appeared to be set at center. Andre Drummond was a behemoth in the middle, JaVale McGee was in town to back him up, and players such as Kevin Love and Larry Nance Jr. were arguably best deployed at the 5. Most teams in that situation aren’t going to trade for a center.
Yet that’s exactly what the Cavs did, leaping into the James Harden blockbuster trade between the Brooklyn Nets and Houston Rockets. They swapped a first-round pick for Brooklyn center Jarrett Allen and the “bad” contract of Taurean Prince, whom they flipped a year later for Ricky Rubio.
The fit with Allen and Drummond was obviously never going to work, and both he and McGee were gone by the end of the season. Allen showed plenty of promise down the stretch and then exploded as a two-way force the next season, anchoring a top-5 defense and earning an All-Star berth.
Trading for Allen meant re-signing him, something that allegedly scared some teams off, but the Cavs boldly handed him a five-year, $20 million contract. That was probably a slight overpay at the time, but even so it looks like a great bargain now with how Allen has been playing. The Cavs would make that deal 100 times out of 100.
No. 1: Drafting Darius Garland in 2019
Heading into the 2019 NBA Draft, the one position the Cavaliers supposedly had locked down was point guard. Collin Sexton had a strong rookie season after he went No. 8 overall in 2018, and presumably, the Cavs would use their No. 5 pick to build around Sexton.
Instead, the team recognized that a team in their situation should be drafting for the best player available, not for fit. That led them to select Darius Garland with the fifth pick instead of going with a complementary player to Sexton. Given that the next players chosen were Jarrett Culver, Coby White, Jaxson Hayes, Rui Hachimura and Cam Reddish, the Cavs look like major winners from the 2019 draft.
The front office had the courage to draft over Sexton, taking a player in Garland that they saw as a future star. They were absolutely right, as Garland is better than Sexton and took the reigns from him a year ago. Garland also boasts the skillset to play alongside another star, which made the fit with Sexton initially possible and has allowed him to thrive with Donovan Mitchell.
Darius Garland made the All-Star team last season and was a strong candidate again this year. The future is bright for DG, and the combination of his development and how close the front office was to disaster in taking another player cements him as the best move Koby Altman has made.