Cavaliers trade for Rajon Rondo

   The Cleveland Cavaliers ailing backcourt was shored up to a degree with the trade with the Los Angeles Lakers for veteran point guard Rajon Rondo.

Cleveland sent reserve Denzel Valentine to the New York Knicks (the Knicks and Lakers swapped some draft rights for a few European players and the Knicks adding some cash considerations)  for the thirty-five-year-old Rondo, who averaged three points and three assists off the bench for the Lakers in eighteen games.

Rondo is well past his prime but the hope is that he can still be somewhat productive in increased minutes with the second unit after Darius Garland returns.

Rondo's arrival will hopefully offset some of the lost production from Ricky Rubio's knee injury that cost Rubio the rest of the regular season and left Cleveland with only Kevin Pangos and recent ten-day signee, Brandon Goodwin, as the reserves behind Darius Garland when Garland returns from Covid protocol.

Cleveland is continued to be rumored as interested in Boston guard Dennis Schroeder to continue to improve their backcourt, which took another blow in the Cavaliers win over Indiana when Isaac Okoro was lost for two to three weeks to a sprained elbow.

Schroeder would be an upgrade over the aging Rondo and would bring averages of sixteen points and a bit under five assists a night but would be a rental as he would be a free agent at the end of the season.

The Cavaliers are also consistently mentioned as one of the teams that have been persistent in their pursuit of the Philadelphia 76ers Ben Simmons but I'm not sure that Philadelphia would be interested in a package that didn't include either Darius Garland or Evan Mobley, which would defeat the purpose of adding Simmons.

LeBron leaves again and where the Cavaliers go next?

I've given myself a few days to reflect on the loss of LeBron James and by the time that my thoughts had been sifted through and filed away, it was a pretty easy finale' to say I'm OK.

Don't take that the wrong way -it is a huge loss for the city of Cleveland and a larger one for the Cavaliers organization, however, it feels far different from when the first defection to Miami occurred.
On that occasion, I felt anger toward LeBron James.
This time, it's a two-pronged feeling- Relief and Confusion.

Relief, because finally the Cavaliers and their fans can move on from the constant drum of counting down when LeBron James could test free agency and begin the long process (More on that later) of the second rebuilding after a LeBron James departure.
Confusion because unless this move to the Los Angeles Lakers is all about post-career ambitions and has little to nothing to do with basketball (and it may be just that), this decision to pick Los Angeles just doesn't add up to a smart one from a basketball viewpoint.

From a basketball viewpoint for LeBron, he leaves a team that would be the third seed at worst in the Eastern Conference (Boston and Philadelphia) for a team that would be the fifth seed at best in the Western Conference.
The Lakers haven't done a great job in attracting talent around James as most of their major targets have signed elsewhere and to my surprise allowed restricted free agent Julius Randle to leave the team to create the space to sign the often-mercurial Rajon Rondo.
I'd think that bringing in James, Rondo, Lance Stephenson (Can't wait to see how that works out) and JaVale McGee with holdovers Brandon Ingram, Kyle Kuzma, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Lonzo Ball will be more than enough to turn a lottery team into a playoff team, but I don't see how one can rank them above the Spurs and maybe even the Jazz, let alone the Warriors, Rockets, and Thunder as the Western's elite squads.

As for the Cavaliers, life after LeBron looks to be one that will hinge on one decision- will the team attempt to make the playoffs, which in the East still might be possible despite the loss of James or will the Cavaliers begin revamping the roster?
Cleveland's constant assuaging of James has placed the team in a salary cap situation that ranks as quite dire and some of these contracts would be very difficult to move, even if another team was motivated to add some of the players that would not be part of a long-term project.
The Cavaliers have three options that are plausible and reasonable, it simply depends on the selection and direction that they take.

Option number one:
If the team decided to try to contend, they do have some parts that could be enough to make the playoffs with a few veterans and a handful of interesting younger players.
They could run the offense through Kevin Love as the number one option and hope he returns to the form that he displayed in Minnesota. hope that Rodney Hood flourishes after settling into Cleveland, first rounder Collin Sexton turns out to be the player that they hope he is, use Kyle Korver and George Hill as solid veterans and hope that they can get anything out of J.R. Smith to enable them to make the playoffs.

Option number two:
They do all of the above with Love, Korver, Hill, Smith and Tristan Thompson, but they do so not to try to make the playoffs, but to increase their marketability at the trade deadline to accumulate assets for a team that will have to send a first rounder to Atlanta, if they finish with a higher pick than 10th in the draft and should they finish in the lottery, would have to send the following years number one to the Hawks.
This could mean a possible awful sign to the fanbase as if those players play well, the Cavaliers could be jettisoning players that could have the team in the playoff hunt at the time before trading the veterans away.

Option number three:
The Cavaliers decide now to start their revamping of the organization and start trading everyone in sight before the season and build around Rodney Hood ( a restricted free agent, but likely to have any offers matched), Larry Nance Jr, Collin Sexton, Cedi Osman and maybe Ante Zizic.
The Cavaliers would likely be well under .500 and a lottery team, but the rebuild would start sooner and there would be some excitement with watching the young players develop and yes, take some lumps.

I'm not sure which option that the Cavaliers will decide to choose, but I lean towards the second option.
That gives the team some flexibility to decide at the deadline in what direction to head and would give Cleveland more options than either one or three.

In any event, I understand that Cleveland fans have hurt feelings and will now watch their team take a significant step back to among the pack from the best four year run of basketball that the almost fifty-year franchise has had in its history.
Still, for all the drama that consistently surrounded LeBron James for his skill as a player and lack of such in player personnel, he'll be missed and at the same time, a sense of normalcy will set in.
Normalcy is when you don't have the best player in the game and you have to build in the same manner as every other team that doesn't have the best player in the game- slowly and smartly.

Back later with some boxing notes and coming soon- my weekend in Ohio.

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.