Cleveland Cavaliers GM Danny Ferry will look to do more with his summer this year as opposed to years past.
If you’re at all like me, you can recall being a young kid and coming back to school in the fall, and on the first day of class, your teacher had no homework to give out, so instead he/she would instruct us to write an essay detailing how we spent our summer vacations. If you’re even more like me, then your essays as a young child detailed a more active summer than any of Danny Ferry’s essays would have been these past 2 years.
After the infamous and lamentable summer of 2005, the Cavaliers have never been in a position to do much in their off seasons. Tied down with lengthy and pricey contracts, Ferry was unable to do much of anything to bolster this team and make it any better. The summer of 2006, Danny Ferry managed to bring in David Wesley (he of the “worst layup in basketball history” fame) and Scot Pollard. One summer later, he signed Devin Brown (a nice complimentary piece, I suppose, but hardly the kind of player who was going to make a real difference on this team). It’s real easy to accuse of Ferry of not being proactive in those summers, but the fact of the matter was, thanks to Ferry’s bad signings the one summer he was actually active, his hands were tied. No cap space and only the MLE at his disposal, Danny Ferry had to try to make do with what he had.
This summer, though, expects to be different…..in theory. Armed with a handful of large, expiring contracts (at this point, it’s as if Wally Szczerbiak isn’t even a person anymore, but instead it’s his contract that people want), this is the year to make the Cavaliers better, or so the logical thinking goes. It certainly hasn’t taken long for the Cavaliers to be mentioned in virtually every NBA Rumor Mill.
The Newark Star-Ledger guesses that the Cavaliers have inquired about T.J. Ford,
“Hottest name on the trade market right now, by a wide margin, is T.J. FORD. The Raps’ pocket rocket has to be moved, and everybody knows it. Toronto must throw a pile of money and a starting job at JOSE CALDERON to keep him happy, and T.J. has already shown he is unable (and unwilling) to be the tempo-changer off the bench. According to his peers, GM BRYAN COLANGELO is getting plenty of June-type (read: insulting) offers so far — probably from Miami, Cleveland and Indiana.”
We wrote about the Raptors’ PG situation a while back. Getting Calderon was never anything more than a pipe dream, but it’s certainly possible that T.J. Ford could be had for the right price. But as a playoff team looking to move up in the Eastern Conference hierarchy, there’s no way the Raptors are trading Ford for expiring contracts. Furthermore, his status as a Base Year Compensation player makes trading for him extremely tricky (if you don’t believe me, try trading for Ford in ESPN’s Trade Machine…the only deal I could make work, salary wise, was Ford and Kapono for Snow and DJ….and the Raptors aren’t doing that trade unless Ferry gets Colangelo liquored up and slips him some GHB….and even then Colangelo would probably STILL find a way to say no).
Michael Hunt of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel writes that Michael Redd is a sure shot to be traded…..but only in exchange for real value, not rebuilding pieces,
“The Bucks also erred in bestowing a maximum contract on Redd. Do that, and the player had better be able to carry a team. Redd is one of the league’s premier scorers – mitigated by the fact the points have to come from somewhere on a bad team – but he could not lift the Bucks to even mediocrity. For the $17 million a year they pay him, the Bucks could’ve finished last without Redd.
So, of course you trade him if there is a chance to improve the product. It’s lunacy to think that anyone from a 26-56 team is untouchable.
But here’s what the Bucks cannot do: They cannot trade him for a handful of palookas in the last year of their contracts merely to achieve payroll flexibility. The franchise is too fragile to sell prolonged rebuilding. The last few fans who still care would set fire to the Bradley Center. If the new regime wants to move Redd, it had better get players it can compete with now.
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It’s doubtful the Pistons would want Redd, but what if they wanted Andrew Bogut? Maybe Detroit wouldn’t trade within the division, but there’s a scenario whereby Redd could stay, matched in a backcourt with Billups instead of another shoot-first guard in Mo Williams. Either Redd or Williams has to go to change the Bucks’ soft jump-shooting personality.
Clearly, Redd is better suited as a complementary player to a superstar like LeBron James, but what does Cleveland have that the Bucks would possibly want? It goes back to the notion that the Bucks, if they want to trade one of their few marketable pieces, had better get a non-Gary Payton value in return this time.”
It’s easy to understand where Hunt is coming from. It’s somewhat similar to the Bartolo Colon trade. After that trade happened, it decimated the team and fans walked away from the Indians and have still to this day refused to return despite two 90-win seasons in the past 3 years. Is that what the Bucks want? Sure, the Indians got a couple guys in Sizemore and Cliff Lee who helped turn the franchise around eventually, but there are no guarantees when you trade for cap space and prospects in either sport.
Finally, Ira Winderman chimes in on the Jermaine O’Neal Rumors in the Sun-Sentinal,
“Two moves that would make sense: Detroit dealing Chauncey Billups to Denver for Carmelo Anthony, and Cleveland making a run at Indiana’s Jermaine O’Neal.
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The Cavaliers’ need to placate LeBron James could leave them as the lone team willing to gamble on O’Neal’s injury history and massive salary, now that he has elected not to opt out. The shame is last February’s mistake of taking on Ben Wallace‘s salary, with Cleveland holding little in terms of tempting contracts for Indiana.”
Before I even address this, it should be pointed out that, while Ira is one of the most respected NBA writers around, his point about Ben Wallace is folly. The Wallace contract was essentially swapped for Larry Hughes. Does Ira really think that Larry Hughes’ contract is inherently more attractive than Ben Wallace’s? I don’t see it that way at all. The Larry Hughes trade did nothing to affect the financial flexibility of this roster. In fact, you could argue that they acquired an expiring contract (Wally Szczerbiak) that holds way more value than any of the other parts they lost in the trade.
But to Ira’s point, I’m not sure the Cavaliers need to make a deal just to “placate” LeBron. I fail to see how that will help the future of this franchise. If they want to really placate LeBron, they need to build a winning team filled with solid complimentary pieces for LeBron to rely on. Sure, Jermaine O’Neal could be that guy if he somehow were to miraculously return not only to health, but also to his All-Star form of his youth. In that scenario, yes, O’Neal could be the answer to the Cavaliers’ prayers. But what if he’s not that guy? What if he remains a slow, injured, broken down version of himself? Then the Cavaliers will spend next year paying him $21.3 million and the year after $22.995 million. It will sink the franchise and LeBron will surely walk away in 2010.
With all these outside rumors involving the Cavaliers, though, it would seem common sense to think that the Cavs will surely do something. Not so fast, says Brian Windhorst. Regarding the O’Neal trade rumors, Brians says,
“There have been plenty of Internet rumors linking the Cavs to Pacers’ center Jermaine O’Neal. But for the moment, they all must be coming from outside Cleveland. The Cavs don’t have interest at this time.”
In fact, Brian says that the bizarre nature of the Central Division could end up hurting the Cavaliers chances of pulling off a trade. He writes,
“Now, though, the division is staring at some major restructuring and it might hamper what the Cavs are hoping to accomplish this offseason. They are expected to be firmly engaged in the summer’s trade market with their assortment of assets, but the sellers might be a little close to home.
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In general, teams in the same division avoid making trades with each other. It’s not an ironclad rule — the Cavs and Bulls made a huge deal in February — but that was an exception.
This could especially affect the Cavs’ position. They do have some young talented pieces that could be on the market, but their best assets are expiring contracts. Teams who trade stars for expiring contracts — and it is something that happens every year, even if it doesn’t always seem prudent — often try to send their players not just out of the division, but out of the conference.
Just look at the Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen and Shaquille O’Neal trades from last season as the most recent examples.
So every player on the Bucks, Pacers, Bulls and Pistons could be available. The Cavs have some ammo, but that simply doesn’t mean it will happen.
NBA trades already are hard to pull off because of the salary-matching requirements, but there is also this political layer to deal with. Both facets are very real and play a part in who gets traded where.”
Perhaps this is a major factor of all these rumors that we have all been overlooking. The Milwaukee Bucks do not want to strengthen the Cavaliers. Nor do the Detroit Pistons or Indiana Pacers. The Cavaliers are not going to get a good deal from any of those teams. They will demand more in return from the Cavaliers than they will from Western Conference teams. It’s a simple reality.
So where does this leave the Cavaliers? I personally still think the Cavaliers should make a serious run at Baron Davis. See if they can get Golden State to bite on something. Remember, the trading out of conference factor works in the Cavaliers favor on this one. If Golden State doesn’t want to move Baron, then there’s no harm in holding off until the trade deadline. To be perfectly honest, the Cavaliers expiring contracts will have far more value in February than they will in June or July. And even then, if the Cavaliers can’t find a favorable deal, then there’s still no harm in letting those contracts expire and using the freed up cap space themselves to go get an unrestricted free agent.
There’s no doubt that the Cavaliers are on the clock and the pressure is squarely on Danny Ferry to improve this team. We all want to see that happen. But the one thing Ferry absolutely cannot do now is make a wrong move, and that includes making a trade just for the sake of trading (which is precisely what the Jermaine O’Neal rumor feels like), because there simply won’t be enough time to fix it before LeBron has a chance to leave. Ferry made one mistake with the Hughes and Marshall signings. Both guys have now been traded and Ferry for the first time in 3 years has the ability to make some calls and put forth some real offers for guys. Only time will tell if he will succeed in finding the right trade partner and can bring in the right player to take this franchise where we all want to see it go.