Cleveland Cavaliers: What The Dion Waiters Trade Means For Cavs

The Cleveland Cavaliers were short-handed going into Philadelphia to take on the 76ers on Monday night. Already missing Kyrie Irving, LeBron James and Anderson Varejao, the Cavs found themselves with an even shorter bench just before tipoff.

In a reported three-way trade involving Cleveland, the Oklahoma City Thunder and New York Knicks, the Cavs pulled Dion Waiters, Alex Kirk and Louis Amundson from their lineup, of course due to their involvement in the possible trade.

Waiters was in his hometown and was expected to start with Irving sitting out with back spasms.

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If the deal goes through, the Cavs will receive Knicks swingmen J.R. Smith and Iman Shumpert, along with a future protected first-round pick from OKC, with Dion Waiters going to the Thunder.

The Knicks would receive Amundson, Kirk and a 2019 second-round pick from Cleveland, as well as forward Lance Thomas from the Thunder.

As far as team grades go, HoopsHabit already broke that down, which you can read here.

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR CAVS

Before the 2014-15 season began, Dion Waiters was marked as perhaps the most important piece for a Cleveland team that was revamped entirely over the course of just a couple of months.

It was more like the biggest question mark. We all knew the talents of LeBron James, Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving, but the jury was still out on Waiters.

Whether or not he could fix his attitude and adjust his game to being more of a team player, and coexist with other ball-dominant players on the court.

Now it’s 2015, and the Cavs are struggling and limping into the new year.

They’re now 1-2 in their first three games of the year after their loss Monday to the Philadelphia 76ers by a score of 95-92, and losers of six of their last eight games going back to Christmas.

So what did they do? They made a trade. A pretty big one.

The trade gives the Cavaliers a solid two-way player in Shumpert who can step in and start at the shooting guard position when he returns from his shoulder injury.

He should be seen as the main prize for Cleveland here, with his defensive skills and intensity filling a huge need on the perimeter. With the lack of rim protection, the Cavs have to do everything they can to bolster their perimeter defense to make up for it.

Smith, on the other hand, is something that the sports world is kind of shaking their heads at:

"HEY WE GOT A CHEMISTRY PROBLEM AND A SHOOT FIRST PG. LETS GO GET JR"

With that being said, the Cavs, at this point in time, have yet to fill their most glaring need for a center who can protect the rim. Many thought that Samuel Dalembert would be the biggest asset for the Cavs in a trade with the Knicks, but that wasn’t the case Monday night.

Dalembert is set to be waived by the Knicks before the Jan. 10 deadline for non-guaranteed contracts to become guaranteed for the rest of the season. New York will save about $2 million by waiving him. He should have been included in the deal for Cleveland, and will certainly be sought after by them on the waiver wire.

Although he may not have solved all their problems, he would have been a nice fill-in for a while.

All in all, it’s a solid trade for the Cavs.

They get a prolific scorer off the bench in Smith, and a good defending 2 guard who can guard multiple positions in Shumpert. They also did something many thought was necessary for them to succeed and have the chemistry they needed to compete at a championship level: get rid of Dion Waiters.

Going back to the reports last season of conflict and fights between backcourt mates Irving and Waiters, to this past summer with questions of him accepting a bench role in coach David Blatt’s offense and his new team, it was only a matter of time before he found himself on a new roster.

However, the most important thing here is that the rim protection need for Cleveland was not resolved. It actually got worse. As the trade becomes official, the Cavs will have only three players on their roster who are 6’9″ or taller: Kevin Love, Tristan Thompson and Brendan Haywood. 

In terms of rim protection, there’s essentially none there, other than Thompson. But as Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports reported after the three-team trade, Cleveland is still in pursuit of a big man: 

"Cleveland remaining in pursuit of center Timofy Mozgov, but Denver still reluctant to deal him, league sources tell Yahoo."

It’ll be interesting to see if the Cavs make another move in the coming days or weeks with their newly acquired players and assets.

The season and title hopes for Cleveland depend on their ability to do what’s needed and add a rim protector before the trade deadline. If they can’t, they’ll have to hope their new additions of Smith and Shumpert can help them simply outscore everyone else.

I’m not a betting man, but I’d bet my house they go with the first option and trade for another center.

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