Cavaliers trade Jordan Clarkson to Utah, Dante Exum to Cleveland

The Cleveland Cavaliers traded Jordan Clarkson to the Utah Jazz for Dante Exum and two future second-round selections Monday night.

The 6'4 Clarkson is averaging 14.6 points off the bench for Cleveland in a sixth-man role and recently scored 33 points against Memphis on Friday night, so this could have been a sell-high situation on the 27-year-old former Missouri Tiger.
Clarkson will be a free agent at the end of the season, so Cleveland did well in getting something for him before an injury could have occurred that would have reduced his value.
Clarkson is shooting thirty-seven percent from the field and with Utah missing Mike Conley from their lineup due to hamstring issues, Clarkson should enter the lineup and receive starter-level minutes for the Jazz.

Cleveland's second-round picks obtained will be arriving from San Antonio (2022) and Golden State (2023) as the Cavaliers continue to add second-round draft picks, which rarely result in players but are often shuffled around in trades or used to take European players that will seldom play in the league but can still have value in having their rights moved around in trades.
The Cavaliers also traded four future second-rounders in the draft-day trade that allowed them to select Kevin Porter, so this allows them to recoup two of them immediately.

Dante Exum is an interesting player that was very highly thought of at one time but has seen his star dim.
Exum is averaging just two points a game in eleven games and at just 24 would appear to be a bust.
The Jazz selected Exum with the fifth overall pick in the 2014 draft and Exum has spent the last five years with Utah after being drafted from Australia.
Exum has suffered many injuries since turning pro, which includes a torn ACL that cost him the 2015-16 season and a shoulder injury along with a patella tendon injury that would limit Exum to only 56 games over the two seasons before this one.

Exum. the son of former North Carolina big man Cecil Exum was compared by some (Ok only Chad Ford)  to Kobe Bryant entering the year he was drafted, has been anything but as his shooting has been far from special and his many injuries listed above.
One thing that Exum that could excel with is his defensive game as he has a long wingspan for his size and is dedicated at that end of the floor, so at worst he's going to help as a rotational defensive player.
Exum is under contract for the remainder of this season and for the 2020-21 campaign, so he will have time to prove himself with the Cavaliers.

On the whole, I'm kinda "meh" with this trade.
Dante Exum is a candidate for a fresh environment and he would not be the first player that picked up his game after being a disappointment in his first pro stop.
I understand the second-rounders as a need after trading the four in the Kevin Porter trade, but I'm never excited with round two picks moving around in trades.
It always feels like you are moving around junk bonds to me.
I'm not sure that Jordan Clarkson could have fetched more than this from another team, but it feels a bit light to me for now.

Back later with yesterday's fights from Yokohama, Japan.

Cavaliers cutting waste at the deadline-Part One

It was pretty clear that whatever the Cleveland Cavaliers were trying to build for the 2017-18 season wasn't working, and with Kevin Love injured, things didn't appear to be getting better soon, despite an overtime win on Wednesday over Minnesota.

That made deadline day in the NBA even more important than usual and Cleveland under Koby Altman or whoever you believe is running the show (the names vary according to which NBA columnists you read) felt compelled to swing into action and when the smoke cleared in Cleveland-three trades were finished, six players were on the road out of Cleveland with four new Cavaliers headed into Northeast Ohio over the course of a frantic deadline day that saw even more dealings than anyone could have expected.
I'm going to write about one major deal now and hopefully the other major deal later tonight.

The flashiest deal was the Cavaliers punting the Isaiah Thomas trial by shipping the malcontented point guard along with veteran big man Channing Frye and the Cavaliers' first-round pick in this year's draft (Not the Nets pick obtained in the Kyrie Irving trade) to the Los Angeles Lakers.
The return was a popular one as point guard Jordan Clarkson and forward Larry Nance Jr. are coming to Cleveland.
Clarkson was averaging 14 points a game in 23 minutes as he was the first player off the Lakers' bench and brings the type of scoring that you'd expect from the modern point guard, with a playmaking ability that should be welcomed after watching Thomas and his struggles over his Cleveland tenure.
Nance returns home after growing up in the area as the son of Cavalier legend Larry Nance Sr, with averages of eight points and just under seven rebounds a game.

Like his father, Nance can play above the rim and will insert his share of highlights into game recaps, but most importantly, he can guard 4's and some 5's and will be able to give bulkier frontcourt opponents fits with his athleticism on both ends of the floor.

Both players are 25 and both are signed through next season, with Clarkson signed for two seasons, so this is not a temporary fix for the Cavaliers as they not only get younger and quicker for the present, they hedge a bet in case of a revamp if LeBron James walks away..

As far as the departed Cavaliers go-
Isaiah Thomas doesn't seem to be completely healed from his hip injury and although I cannot give him enough credit for trying to play through the pain, he clearly didn't fit into the Cavaliers system (or the locker room culture reportedly) and when you are a player that has to have the ball in his hands and being the top option in a team's offensive setup, your skills are going to be a difficult mesh with that of LeBron James.
I will miss Channing Frye, who was a plus in the locker room and when he occasionally got into one of those outside shooting rhythms, it was a pretty sight to see, but Frye was only playing a dozen minutes a game and his game on the defensive end isn't going to bring what Larry Nance will.
The first rounder was part of the price of doing business, and hopefully, these changes will enable that pick to be near the bottom of round one.

I plan on being back in a few hours with some thoughts on the other two trades by Cleveland and just how they could affect the stretch run.