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What Happens If LeBron Stays?

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What do the Cavs do?


  • Total voters
    69
  • Poll closed .
I feel like trading the pick is almost a guarantee. But there are so many other variables that would have to be determined before I know for sure what I'd want to do.

I wouldn't trade Love just to trade him. But if it got us a better star player or made us clearly better overall, then I'd do it without question. I also wouldn't trade the 8th pick just to trade it, we need to get a worthwhile return or just keep it. What is a worthwhile return is debatable.

Best case scenario, I think if we can acquire 2 legit star talents, that would be the best possible option by far. It just may be very, very hard to do. When I say legit star, there are different levels of talent. There is the PG13, Cp3, Cousins, Kawhi level type star. But even acquiring a tier down or two level talent would likely be worth it like McCollum, Wall, Beal, Lillard, Kemba etc. Which is still great talent. If we can pull 2 of any of those guys, that would be huge for the future of the team. And obviously some are way better than others as far as skill and fit.

We need at least one new star talent. Which is doable, but I'm worried about overpaying and not being able to do anything else with the roster. We have to clean house on the low IQ players as well and get real depth.
 
Option #1 for me is making every possible effort to get a All-NBA caliber talent like Kawhi, Butler, CP3, KAT, PG13, Lillard. I think it's more valuable to get a special talent like that than to cobble together a fringe all-star and a handful of decent starters/roleplayers, even if it requires paying a high price.
 
Trade love to sa for kawhi

Cedi and pick 8 for boogie
 
You all have a lot of faith in Cousins. Im more scared that he won’t be able to play in 2019 than him being an all-star. This is a bad injury for such a big guy. It’s not like an acl/mcl injury.
 
Greg Ostertag
 
The only scenario in which I see Lebron staying is:

PG opts-in and Cavs give OKC Kevin Love for him. That trade makes sense for both sides since PG wanted to play in Cleveland last year and Kevin Love would be more likely to sign another deal with OKC to play alongside RWB. Also, Love might be the only player in the NBA who can easily adapt to RWB's ball dominance, since he's been dealing with it for four years between Lebron and Kyrie. That trade might also involve Carmelo, which I don't think would be a total disaster.

Then, you use some combination of 8th pick, Cedi, and Zizic, and Nance to try and get a McCollum, Middleton, Walker, Cousins, or other 2nd-tier all-star. Hood would fit great into these scenarios since he's an asset and can eat some salary as a RFA, but the timing doesn't work.

In these cases, you're likely needing to move a lot of existing salary and it would have to come from JR, TT, Korver, Hill, and/or Clarkson.

Those don't seem like unrealistic scenarios and could be executed quickly after the finals so it all comes together at the draft. The keys are:

1) Lebron willing to stay

2) PG willing to take a Chris Paul one-year discount

If those two things are true, these are easy moves.
 
The only scenario in which I see Lebron staying is:

PG opts-in and Cavs give OKC Kevin Love for him. That trade makes sense for both sides since PG wanted to play in Cleveland last year and Kevin Love would be more likely to sign another deal with OKC to play alongside RWB. Also, Love might be the only player in the NBA who can easily adapt to RWB's ball dominance, since he's been dealing with it for four years between Lebron and Kyrie. That trade might also involve Carmelo, which I don't think would be a total disaster.

Then, you use some combination of 8th pick, Cedi, and Zizic, and Nance to try and get a McCollum, Middleton, Walker, Cousins, or other 2nd-tier all-star. Hood would fit great into these scenarios since he's an asset and can eat some salary as a RFA, but the timing doesn't work.

In these cases, you're likely needing to move a lot of existing salary and it would have to come from JR, TT, Korver, Hill, and/or Clarkson.

Those don't seem like unrealistic scenarios and could be executed quickly after the finals so it all comes together at the draft. The keys are:

1) Lebron willing to stay

2) PG willing to take a Chris Paul one-year discount

If those two things are true, these are easy moves.

So LeBron's going to basically play the 5 all year? Or maybe that's TT/Nance job if you're not trading everyone else on the roster?

I do everything I can to keep Love.

If we can get Kawhi and Lillard (by trading Love and #8 etc) I'd do it....just don't see that likely. Because Love is criminally underrated in here.
 
I think Love is underrated and he's clearly stepped it up in the post and effort.... but you build for the Warriors and nothing else and I don't think Love is a big plus against them.
 
Im about to save the Cavs on my lunch break.

PAY ATTENTION KOBY!

(trade scenarios to follow)
 
Any of these trade scenarios will require a lot of back-filling, which could be difficult since we'll be over the luxury tax and will have limited use of exceptions. If we "lose" JR in a trade, how realistic is it that would could land a shooter like Reddick? He's not likely going to have a huge market and might want to join a contender now that he's in the final stages of his career.
 
If LeBron stays, we need to do a few key things.

One - don't wait to make moves. One of our biggest issues of the season was deciding to entirely overhaul the roster with almost no time to gel. Clearly our chemistry has been horrible, even with existing players.

Two - upgrade the coaching staff. They might realistically be the worst coaching staff in the NBA. I know we brought together a bunch of ragtag players, but these guys have gotten much worse ever since coming to Cleveland. I don't see them as a supportive coaching staff which allows players to build confidence. They're so focused on "brand names" that they don't allow players who haven't been in the NBA as long to even attempt playing, unless there is an injury. And they're so slow to react. How we can't defend McGee after 3 games of him dominating us on cuts is beyond me.

Three - Stop relying on LeBron. We need to make roster moves that will allow LeBron to rest and not seem like the burden of the world is on him. If we trade Love and the pick, we need to make sure the guys coming in can get their own shots at the very least. I would actually love to get Lillard and George here. But that's still not enough. I really don't know how we're going to make additional upgrades but the only guys I'd want to keep from the current roster are Nance, Cedi, Hood and Korver. The reason I want to keep Hood is because a real NBA coach can get a lot out of him. Dude has all the skills to be 6th man of the year. Hell, he could even be our starting 2.

These are all incredibly tough tasks. The coaching staff is the only easily achievable thing, and I think if LeBron leaves we're going to just see LD take over for a few seasons until we can get our shit together.
 

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