The Cleveland Cavaliers are not the buzziest team in the NBA rumor mill. The future landing spots of players like Damian Lillard, Karl-Anthony Towns and Draymond Green are the hot-button topics right now. Even so, that doesn’t mean they aren’t being discussed, and specifically what they might do with All-Star center Jarrett Allen.
It’s not that the Cavaliers have to trade Allen, nor that he is unhappy in Cleveland. The greater NBA community just understands both the difficulty of building a balanced lineup with two non-shooting bigs, and the challenge at finding a high-level two-way forward with limited assets. Trade proposals are therefore popping up that would help the Cavs address both issues.
Ryen Russillo has a trade proposal of his own
Ryen Russillo of The Ringer recently jumped into the fray, when he and Bill Simmons discussed some potential trades around the league on “The Bill Simmons Podcast” last week. Simmons had an idea of his own to send Jarrett Allen to the Phoenix Suns in a “challenge trade” for Deandre Ayton that we discussed last week.
Russillo’s deal was more in the vein of most fake trades, where the Cavaliers send out Allen and receive back a player who could start at small forward. It’s a deal I haven’t heard pitched before, and would be a creative option for two teams to trade from strength to upgrade a weakness.
The trade partner is the Oklahoma City Thunder. Would the Cavs be willing to work out a deal? Let’s take a closer look.
What was the trade Russillo proposed?
The Oklahoma City Thunder used the No. 2 pick last year on Chet Holmgren, who missed his entire rookie season with a Lisfranc injury. In his stead the Thunder were playing undersized bigs at the center position, rotating between Dario Saric, Jaylin Williams and Jeremiah-Robinson Earl, all of whom lack the size, bulk or both to be a true rim-protecting force.
If the Thunder were interested in adding a high-end traditional center, Allen would give them a lockdown rim protector in the middle, able to take on the towering centers in the Western Conference and set up their perimeter players for success by giving them a trustworthy back line. Holmgren could come along slowly and even play in some double-big lineups.
Who would the Thunder trade to Cleveland? Here’s the deal that Russillo pitched:
“Lu” Dort is technically just 6’3″ tall but routinely plays small forward for the Thunder, as he has a mammoth wingspan and incredible strength. He takes the toughest defensive assignments for Oklahoma City, serving as more of a lockdown option on the wing than a defensive playmaker. On offense he can do some creation with the ball in his hands and is unafraid of taking shots.
The two teams could add other players to this deal, and Allen does make five million more than Dort, but since the Thunder have cap space they could easily eat the remainder and give Cleveland a little more cap under the luxury tax and apron to build out the rest of the roster.
The Thunder have a theory for making this deal, whether or not they would pull the trigger. If they are in, do the Cavs say yes?
Would the Cavaliers make this trade?
On the podcast where he pitched the idea, Ryen Russillo thought that the Cavaliers would make this trade. In the aftermath of the playoff series with the New York Knicks, Russillo felt the Cavs needed to understand that Allen was (1) not a huge value on the trade market, and (2) that Cleveland couldn’t go to war with Allen after he looked so bad against the Knicks.
The issue here is that Russillo is falling victim to both a lack of information and recency bias. Allen shouldn’t be judged simply on five games where the Cavs played in the playoffs for the first time with this group, not when there is a long track record of Allen’s impact on both ends of the court elevating them into the top tiers of the league.
Russillo, and many of those talking about the NBA, don’t have the bandwidth to watch every game or even many games for these players; instead, he is going off of the nationally-televised playoff series, where a poor matchup, a coach with limited experience and limited options, and a small sample all cast Allen in a poor light. The Cavaliers can’t trade Allen based on one series.
At the same time, they shouldn’t simply refuse to trade Allen if the right deal comes up. Is this the right deal? No, it probably isn’t. Luguentz Dort is a stout defender but he doesn’t actually solve any of the Cavs’ issues. If Cleveland wants a guard defender who will be ignored by playoff defenses, they can simply keep starting Isaac Okoro. Dort has more heft to guard up the lineup than Okoro, but he isn’t a realistic option on combo forwards, and there is still the issue of his shooting. Dort will take shots, but he doesn’t make them.
In summary, this is the kind of deal that works on a surface level – “trade a big for a wing” – but when you look any closer it falls apart. Allen is a better player, he is more valuable than Dort, and trading him would cause problems and not solve any. There are deals out there that work; this one does not.
Grade: D