9 Cleveland Cavaliers that never played a single minute

Jordan Bell is a name known to the Cleveland Cavaliers, but it’s not because of his time in Cleveland. Bell was a second-round pick in the 2017 NBA Draft, going 38th overall to the Chicago Bulls, who promptly traded him to the Golden State Warriors.

Bell would become a rotation big for the Warriors over the next few seasons, including a rotation role in the 2018 Finals when the Warriors swept the Cavaliers in four games. Despite being undersized at 6’8″ he had explosive athleticism and tended to live above the rim on both ends of the court.

The Warriors didn’t retain Bell’s services in the summer of 2019, and he began to ping pong around the league for the next few seasons. He would technically be on eight teams over the next three seasons, playing a total of 36 games for five of them. That included a brief stay in Cleveland; he signed as a free agent in June of 2020, then was traded before he ever played a game to the Los Angeles Lakers in return for JaVale McGee.

There is another connection between Bell and the Cavaliers as well, dating back before the former Oregon Duck was ever drafted. The 2017 second-round pick that would be used on Bell was traded to the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2011 in the J.J. Hickson trade, then sent to Chicago for Luol Deng in 2014.