The NBA Trade Deadline will be decided by the Cleveland Cavaliers.
That's a wild statement on its face, and perhaps has a bit of hyperbole mixed in. However, Eric Koreen at The Athletic recently pointed to the Cavaliers as one of three teams that will dictate the pace and volume of deals at this year's Trade Deadline, which is set for February 6th.
The Cavaliers may decide the Trade Deadline
December 15th officially kicked off "trade season" in the NBA, and immediately two trades went down. That would seem to signal that this year will be a busy one when it comes to transactions. We highlighted earlier this week that the Cavaliers looked like they would have a lot of competition among buyers leading up to the deadline.
That may be true, but there is a problem that most of those buyers have: the new Collective Bargaining Agreement, or CBA. That document tells teams what they can and can't do in managing their rosters, signing and trading players. The new CBA harshly punishes expensive teams in the name of maintaining parity, and that includes restricting trades for teams with large payrolls.
Those new rules have made it extremely difficult for many (most) teams to make trades, as often they cannot take back more money than they send out, or otherwise are limited in how they can build a deal. That means that many of the teams who most want to make a trade -- from the Denver Nuggets to the Golden State Warriors to the Miami Heat to the Milwaukee Bucks -- all have similar restrictions in place to stop them from making those deals. That doesn't make it impossible to pull off a trade, but it certainly becomes more difficult.
What is rare in the NBA these days is a contending team without those restrictions because their team salary is low enough to avoid the luxury tax aprons entirely. Depending on how you define the term, there are just three teams around the league with plans to compete deep into the playoffs who are not running afoul of trade restrictions. The Oklahoma City Thunder have the best record in the Western Conference and an incredible amount of salary flexibility. The Memphis Grizzlies are having an excellent bounceback season this year and have plenty of options on the trade market.
The third team? The Cleveland Cavaliers.
The Cavaliers are currently just over the luxury tax line, with space between them and the first luxury tax apron. That means they can take back money in a deal, or aggregate multiple players together in a trade. They don't have a lot of draft capital to include in a trade, as they still owe multiple year's worth of picks to the Utah Jazz from the Donovan Mitchell trade, but they can trade one first-round pick, a swap and perhaps one of their young players if they want to go out and make a significant deal on the trade market.
That's why Koreen and others are pointing to the Cavaliers as a team that will dictate the volume of trades this season. If Cleveland goes out onto the trade market and decides to push its chips in for a trade, they will likely have their pick of the available players because they have salary flexibility other suitors simply do not. That balances out the volume of bidders on the other end of the see-saw, and the outcome may be an affordable trade market for the Cavaliers.
The "who" for the Cavaliers to target is still unclear, especially with the entire rotation balling out for the Cavaliers and no obvious need. Do they combine two of those impressive bench players to consolidate? Do they try to chase another star? Whatever they decide to do, their salary flexibility will give them a path to getting a deal done that other teams just don't have.
The Cavaliers have a lot going for them this season, and their wise and careful spending this past summer has set them up to be one of the teams who could decide the NBA Trade Deadline -- and ultimately, the NBA championship.