Cleveland Cavaliers Paying Steep Price for Desperately Needed Rim Protection
Trapped in the middle of the Eastern Conference, plagued by injuries and lacking size, the Cleveland Cavaliers needed to trade for rim protection.
So, they traded for rim protection—at great personal expense.
Timofey Mozgov is headed to Cleveland, ESPN.com's Marc Stein and Brian Windhorst first reported. In exchange for the 28-year-old big man, the Cavaliers will send the Denver Nuggets two first-round picks.
One of those selections was acquired recently in a separate deal with the Oklahoma City Thunder and New York Knicks. The Cavaliers sent Dion Waiters to Oklahoma City and Alex Kirk, Lou Amundson and a 2019 second-round pick to New York, netting J.R. Smith, Iman Shumpert and a top-18 protected first-rounder (via Oklahoma City), according Yahoo Sports' Adrian Wojnarowski.
Rather than ship any players off to Denver, the Cavaliers will instead absorb Mozgov via a trade exception they created by dealing Keith Bogans, per Wojnarowski. Still, even without the inclusion of tangible talent, the Nuggets are due a king's ransom here.
Two first-rounders are one more than the Boston Celtics received for All-Star point guard Rajon Rondo. No matter how you slice this, the Cavaliers placed a premium on Mozgov's skill set—and there are plenty of ways to slice this.
Big men don't come cheap. If they did, the Cavaliers, who have been linked to countless names over the last few months, would have made a move before now. General manager David Griffin admitted as much ahead of 2014-15.
"Our rim protection is going to be an issue moving forward," he said in September, per Northeast Ohio Media Group's Chris Fedor. "We would definitely like to improve it. I can't just talk people into getting off of centers, but right now it's something that we look at and think that's an area where we can improve."
When looked at collectively, the Cavaliers also didn't get fleeced in their latest trades, as CBS Sports' Sam Vecenie shows:
"I mean, if you look at it as JR Smith, Iman Shumpert and Timofey Mozgov for Waiters and a first, it’s not a total disaster.
— Sam Vecenie (@Sam_Vecenie) January 7, 2015"
Dave McMenamin of ESPN.com puts it another way:
Wojnarowski also provides some context on the value of the two picks Cleveland handed Denver:
Given the wacky protection on that Memphis Grizzlies pick, there's a strong chance it isn't turned over to Denver until 2017. There's also a chance, however slight, Oklahoma City's first-rounder turns into two second-rounders.
But the different ways in which this move can be viewed change little about the price.
First-round draft picks are valuable commodities for capped-out teams like the Cavaliers. Regardless of where they land, the selected players are typically serviceable and, most importantly, cheap.
That's another aspect of all this too: money. Absorbing Mozgov's $4.7 million salary drags the Cavaliers deeper into luxury-tax territory, as Stein points out:
All this for what? For a career role player? For someone who has registered an above-average player efficiency rating just once? For a lumbering big who only further handicaps their already painfully paced offense?
No, this isn't about any of the above. This move wasn't made with regard to the offense, Mozgov's box-score lines or even the future.
This remains all about defense—specifically rim protection.
Opponents are burying 56.5 percent of their shots at the iron against the Cavaliers, tying them with the five-win Minnesota Timberwolves for the league's worst mark. Worse still, there was no solution to their conundrum on the roster.
Anderson Varejao was allowing rival scorers to shoot 54.7 percent at the rim before he went down; Tristan Thompson is relinquishing a success rate north of 51 percent; Kevin Love is at 59.9 percent; and Brendan Haywood is at 53.3 percent after 10 appearances.
Mozgov, in comparison to what the Cavaliers already have, is an elite rim-policer; he's allowing a 48.6 percent success rate at the iron.
Among all players contesting six or more shots at the rim per game, his mark ranks higher than noted iron guardians such as Andre Drummond (49.5), Omer Asik (49.8), Marc Gasol (50.2), Anthony Davis (50.6) and Tyson Chandler (50.9) among others.
There's also this to consider, per ESPN.com's Tom Haberstroh:
Keeping cost in mind, Mozgov is a significant upgrade where the Cavaliers are struggling most. Their defense ranks 23rd in points allowed per 100 possessions and lacks the interior punch Mozgov will provide. That he also has experience playing for rookie head coach David Blatt on the Russian national team is a huge boon in terms of stylistic fit and chemistry.
To that end, this was a move the Cavaliers needed to make.
Past talk of patience and process isn't entirely false, but it is misleading. Rebuilding squads wouldn't have unloaded a top pick like Andrew Wiggins for a superstar flight risk like Love. They wouldn't have ditched a third-year prospect like Waiters less than halfway through a season-long experiment.
They wouldn't be charging through the rumor mill so aggressively, offloading future assets so willingly.
"We knew we would morph into something else over time," one Cavaliers player told Bleacher Report's Ethan Skolnick following the Waiters trade. "We're not waiting around. The plan is to win now, in the next two or three years."
Long-term patience went out the window the moment LeBron James agreed to come home. In an instant, the Cavaliers went from rebuilding to championship-chasing. Their latest actions, though steeply priced, are merely extensions of the win-now edict last summer's good fortune tacitly issued.
*Stats courtesy of NBA.com unless otherwise cited and are accurate as of games played Jan. 6, 2015.
.jpg?w=600 "Colts Release Kenny Moore")
