The NBA season ended on Monday night, meaning the draft, free agency, and trade season is upon basketball fans around the country.
That means we will see if Cavs’ president of basketball operations was serious when he said the wine and gold were not going to make big changes this summer.
There is some truth that Denver was patient throughout the past few seasons and reaped the benefit by winning the title, and the Nuggets have indeed built around Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray, two players drafted by the team.
The counterpoint to that is the newly crowned champs are built traditionally. Yes, they have one of the best players in the world in the two-time MVP, but they have size in the backcourt, Murray is 6’4 and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope is 6’5″.
As we have written many times since the Cavs were eliminated by the Knicks, Cleveland has a very small roster, with only Evan Mobley bigger than most players who play his position. And to be fair, Jarrett Allen is the height of most NBA starting centers.
So standing pat is kind of banking on every going the same way for the Cavs in the 2023-24 campaign. And can that way work in the playoffs?
Help isn’t going to come in the draft, so the Cavaliers have to rely on free agency and the trade market in order to improve. The question is do they have the resources to make the improvements needed to compete in the playoffs next year?
Sure, you can trade players like Cedi Osman, Isaac Okoro, or Lamar Stevens, but what is that going to get you? They don’t have enough room under the salary cap to go out and get a big-time free agent. Most teams in the league don’t.
Now, if Altman and GM Mike Gansey really think the Cavs just played a team that was a bad matchup in the first round, and they just need to run it back, okay. There is merit to that. Let’s say, Cleveland would’ve played the Nets in the first round, they likely advance to the conference semifinals.
Many people have speculated that Allen is the most likely to go, but the Cavs are already devoid of big men. Most of these people have the belief that either your power forward or center must be able to shoot threes to win in today’s NBA.
Our counter to that is yes, it does open up the floor, but it doesn’t have to be beyond the arc. If Allen and Mobley can be respectable from 15 feet, that would be very helpful.
And if other teams think the same way as Cleveland, then what kind of return would the Cavaliers get for Allen?
We still think it will be difficult, not impossible to win with a pair of small guards getting big minutes. We said this when Collin Sexton and Darius Garland were the starters, and raised the point when Donovan Mitchell was acquired.
You can’t move a guy like Mobley who has size, is a great defender, being able to guard on the perimeter as well as the post. He’s exactly the kind of versatile player needed in today’s game.
So that means another revamp of the backcourt.
Does the front office have the stomach for that? Two years ago, the Cavs experimented with three seven footers on the front line. Last year, they were a small team. Do they see if they can get to the conference finals with a second year of this group?
We’d like to see the experimental phase end. Even in today’s NBA, size wins. That’s Altman’s challenge this summer.
Cleveland Sports Perspective 