The Cleveland Cavaliers need to figure out what to do with Isaac Okoro.
The fourth-year wing has proven to be an elite defender and a restrictive offensive player, and this year’s playoffs showed that such a player is too unbalanced to play when the games matter the most. Opponents can confidently leave Okoro to constrict the paint, strangling the Cavs’ offensive attack.
In signing Max Strus and re-signing Caris LeVert, the Cavaliers have communicated the pecking order for their wing rotation. Okoro will still get minutes this season, especially because of the need for his on-ball defense, but his role has been marginalized and it’s going to take a huge step forward as a shooter or ball-handler for him to survive as a part of this team’s core.
That means Okoro is almost certainly firmly on the trade block, especially with players like Lamar Stevens and Cedi Osman out the door as trade chips. He is young enough to still have value to rebuilding teams and the Cavs could use him as the salary in a deal to bring back a player who can better help them in the playoffs.
Let’s look at one trade recently pitched and see if this would make sense for Cleveland as a way to upgrade on Okoro.
Finding a deal for Isaac Okoro is a difficult proposition, not because there is any shortage of options in his price range but because it’s hard to identify what would constitute an upgrade on what Okoro is providing the team. Ideally, they would turn him into a top-flight defender who can also shoot, but why would a team give up such a player for one half as good?
That means the Cavs will likely need to find their backcourt defense elsewhere and flip the defense-minded Okoro for an offense-boosting option. That’s what Zach Buckley of Bleacher Report had in mind when building a deal between the Cavaliers and the Detroit Pistons:
Alec Burks spent last season as the productive veteran presence on a lottery-bound Detroit team, consistently elevating lineups filled with role players and teenagers. As the Pistons give the ball increasingly to those young players such as Cade Cunningham and Jaden Ivey, it seems likely that Burks’ role, and trade value, will go down as the season plays out.
That could make now the right time to move him, and while they certainly would prefer a first-round pick this would give them three seconds and a young player to add to their collection of projects. They have been one of the league’s worst defenses over the past couple of years, and by drafting Ausar Thompson and trading for Isaac Okoro they could begin to turn that around.
If the Pistons came to the Cavaliers with this trade, would Koby Altman and the organization say yes?
Darius Garland is not a great defender. Donovan Mitchell is long and athletic but has never put those things together to be a consistent stopper on the wing; Paul George he is not. Ty Jerome plays hard but isn’t a lockdown guy. Ricky Rubio, if he returns to the Cavaliers this season, is past the part of his career where he was locking up opposing guards. Max Strus is fine defensively.
Isaac Okoro fills a very real need on this team, and trading him for a player who falls more in the Strus / Mitchell category of defender (average with some flashes) means the Cavs don’t have a guy they can put into the game to lock up an opposing guard who is on fire. Okoro was that guy. Even if his role is marginalized due to his offensive shortcomings, losing that arrow from the quiver will hurt the Cavaliers’ defensive versatility.
The hope here is that the offensive benefits outweigh the defensive loss. Burks is a dynamic scorer both on-and-off the ball, and last season he made the offense sing for the Pistons despite their poor spacing and inconsistent youngsters. The Pistons actually had a positive point differential when he was on the court, and they finished with the worst record in the league.
The key area where Burks can help is as a shooter; he shot 41.4 percent from deep last season, his third-straight season hitting over 40 percent, and he got up 7.7 3-pointers per 36 minutes. Adding Burks and Strus to their wing rotation would turn a weakness into a true strength.
Ultimately, however, Burks is 32 years old and heading into the final year of his contract, and the Cavs don’t have many bullets left to spend. Burks is a better shooter than Caris LeVert but isn’t altogether that different of a player, and their need for a 3-and-D forward with size should get the lion’s share of their remaining second-round picks. It’s hard to justify adding another similar player; if they could simultaneously move Caris LeVert for that larger two-way forward, suddenly a move for Burks makes more sense.
This deal is fine, and it seems fair, but the Cavaliers have to be judicious with their resources. This is probably too much of a luxury for them to pull the trigger.
Grade: C+