Should the Cleveland Cavaliers trade the Brooklyn Nets' first-round pick -- almost certainly a lottery pick, perhaps a high lottery pick -- to improve their chances of winning a second championship before LeBron James becomes a free agent?
What the Cavaliers do with the Nets' pick, acquired from the Boston Celtics in last summer's Kyrie Irving trade, is one of the most fascinating questions leading up to the Feb. 8 trade deadline.
In the wake of Cleveland's home loss to the Golden State Warriors on Monday, ESPN's Dave McMenamin reported along with Cleveland.com and The Athletic that several prominent players expressed doubt that the team's problems could be solved simply through patience and improved health. The strong implication is that outside help is needed.
How much could trading the Brooklyn pick improve the Cavaliers' chances of competing with the Warriors? Enough to make up for the loss of the best pick Cleveland has had since James returned to Northeast Ohio? Let's take a look.
What do the Cavaliers need?
Specifically, the prominent players who spoke to Cavaliers beat writers identified three problems with the team's roster: aging players, defense-challenged personnel and a glut of redundant role players.
The first complaint is inarguable. Weighted by minutes played, Cleveland's average age (based on players' ages as of the end of the regular season) is 32.0, the oldest in the NBA by nearly two years. (The Houston Rockets are next at an average age of 30.3.) The Cavaliers would currently have the sixth-oldest roster weighted by minutes played since the ABA-NBA merger:
The trouble is that, led by James, Cleveland's older players have generally been more effective than the younger alternatives. Of the six Cavaliers who rate better than replacement level by my wins above replacement player (WARP) metric this season, only Kevin Love (age 29) is younger than 30. Beyond that, odds are a trade won't do much to make the roster younger, since the kind of rebuilding teams likely to trade a star player want to hold on to their own young talent.
Redundancy concerns seem overstated. Yes, Derrick Rose appears superfluous now that Isaiah Thomas is back healthy and LeBron and Dwyane Wade are around to serve as lead ball handlers. And now that Love is largely playing in the middle (per NBA.com/Stats, 85 percent of his minutes this season have come as a 5), having three other centers on the roster (Channing Frye, Tristan Thompson and rookie Ante Zizic) is unnecessary.
Still, it's not as if Cleveland is lacking for options at the forward spots and shooting guard, and there's a thin line between redundancy at those positions and the interchangeability that teams seek to match up with Golden State. More than anything, the Cavaliers just need the players they have there to play better. If Jae Crowder and JR Smith were shooting as well as they have in the past, granting that Smith might simply be aging out of starting-caliber production, Cleveland's wing rotation would look flush with talent.
That leaves defensive limitations as the one unquestioned weakness of the Cavaliers' roster that can't be solved internally. While Cleveland could help its cause with better transition defense, a major weakness against the Warriors both Monday night and throughout previous NBA Finals meetings, the team's lack of rim protection won't go away simply with better effort.
According to NBA.com/Stats, opponents are making 66.7 percent of their attempts inside five feet against the Cavaliers, the league's fifth-highest mark. Only one Cleveland player, James, is holding opponents to less than 60 percent shooting when he's the nearest defender within five feet. (He's at 53.9 percent.)
Who can the Cavaliers get?
What Cleveland needs is only half the equation. The other half is what's available, and that's where the Cavaliers might be wise to take the Nets' pick off the table. The big names who could potentially have become available as impending free agents (New Orleans Pelicans center DeMarcus Cousins and Oklahoma City Thunder wing Paul George, for example) now appear overwhelmingly likely to stay put, with the Pelicans in the playoffs if the season ended today and the Thunder having stabilized after a poor start.
Barring a surprising possibility like Memphis Grizzlies center Marc Gasol becoming available, that leaves DeAndre Jordan of the LA Clippers as the only realistic trade candidate that even merits debating the possibility of offering the Brooklyn pick. After all, while the Nets are playing better than expected, projections based on ESPN's Basketball Power Index still give their pick a 40 percent chance of landing in the top five. Even if you want to adjust that downward to some extent because Brooklyn has no incentive to tank, that's still not worth dealing for a marginal upgrade.
Surprisingly, Jordan's rim protection stats aren't that impressive for a former All-Defensive first-team center. Opponents have hit 63.6 percent of their shots inside five feet with Jordan as the nearest defender this season, per NBA.com/Stats, up from 58.7 percent in 2016-17 and 53.8 percent in 2015-16. That squares with the observation that Jordan hasn't been as active or engaged defensively this season. While Cleveland could hope that Jordan regresses to the mean, how much are the Cavaliers willing to gamble on that possibility?
Adding Jordan would also mean committing to changing styles midseason, moving Love back to a primary role as power forward. Cleveland coach Tyronn Lue seems committed to using Love strictly as a center against Golden State, so should the teams again meet in the NBA Finals, he'd either have to reverse course and find a hiding spot for Love against the Warriors or take one of him or Jordan off the court entirely.
Given those concerns, I don't think adding Jordan would help the Cavaliers' title chances enough to sacrifice a pick that could help jumpstart the rebuilding process if James leaves in free agency. Frankly, given the limited value of centers on the trade market, Cleveland might not even need to offer the Brooklyn pick to make the best offer for Jordan or another possible trade candidate. (Though it's worth noting that not getting the Cavaliers' best asset could be an obstacle for negotiations, as it seemed to be for the Celtics when they held multiple picks from the Nets.)
If I were in first-year Cleveland GM Koby Altman's position, I'd hold the line on Jordan and look for a smaller deal that could yield much of the benefit of dealing for Jordan without nearly as much cost. For example, I'd see what kind of draft pick the rebuilding Atlanta Hawks would require to swap Frye (in the last year of his deal) for Dewayne Dedmon, who has a modest $6.3 million player option for 2018-19.
Such a deal would save the Cavaliers nearly $5 million in luxury tax and give them a strong rim protector off the bench. (Opponents have made just 54.3 percent of their shots inside five feet against Dedmon this season, and just 48.9 percent in 2016-17, when he played for the San Antonio Spurs.) Dedmon has even added 3-point range this season, a nice benefit for a team in need of spacing. So instead of a blockbuster trade, I'd rather have Dedmon and the Brooklyn pick.