The Cleveland Cavaliers are very serious about making a roster that can truly compete for an NBA championship. They showed that by re-signing Kyrie Irving, getting LeBron James and trading for Kevin Love. Many assumed those were the final moves the Cavaliers were planning to make for the year. However, the losses started to pile up forcing the Cavaliers to get very aggressive as the trade deadline nears. Is the team done making moves?
The Cavaliers needed size and defense badly. After losing Anderson Varejao to a season-ending injury, the team attempted to fill his hole with a tandem of Tristan Thompson and Love, but that clearly did not work. Now, the Cavaliers announced a trade for Denver Nuggets center Timofey Mozgov, a player they had been heavily interested in since the start of the season. The center was not cheap. They sent two first-round draft picks to Denver in exchange for Mozgov, but could end up getting a second-round draft pick in return depending on the order.
Mozgov was an obvious choice for the Cavaliers. The center has a strong history with head coach David Blatt as the two played with one another on the Russian national team that won a bronze medal in the 2012 London Olympics. He is currently averaging 8.5 points and 7.8 rebounds as both a starter and bench player this season. If things work out, Mozgov could return to Cleveland next season. He has a team option worth just $4.95 million.
The trade for Mozgov capped off an eventful, but potentially productive week for Cleveland. At the beginning of the week, the team traded Dion Waiters for both JR Smith and Iman Shumpert from the New York Knicks. Smith will be a scoring threat off the bench and a better spot-up shooter than Waiters. Shumpert will help with wing defense when he returns from a shoulder injury. All three players certainly fit a need for Cleveland and when James returns from sitting with knee soreness, the Cavaliers could start to look like the threat they are supposed to be.
"It's something that we need," James said, via ESPN.com. "It's something that once Andy went down, it was something obviously we needed to get bigger in the interior and adding a guy like that who can protect the rim, it will help our team as well. So, we'll see. Those are three pieces that can help us, but until we all get healthy and get on the floor together, we won't be able to know."
For now it appears the Cavaliers are done making moves. There were rumblings of potential deals for players like Tristan Thompson, but that talk is likely over after the Cavaliers got the rim protector they desperately needed. Now it remains to be seen if the team can put it all together.
