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Do IT this week: Layering
Cavaliers can't rely on trade to improve
By Patrick McManamon
Beacon Journal columnist
Published on Wednesday, Feb 20, 2008
CLEVELAND: The Cavaliers played like a bunch of stumblebums Tuesday night against the Houston Rockets.
Which meant they lost.
Badly.
But never fear.
Anything can happen in the NBA.
This is the league, after all, where a team can acquire a superstar by trading a guy who hasn't played in more than 18 months.
The day that the Cavs looked so outclassed against the Rockets was the same day that the NBA approved the Jason Kidd trade. In that trade, Keith Van Horn left the happy world of retirement so he could sit on the bench for the rest of the season with the New Jersey Nets — and earn more than $4 million.
It's all within the rules, which makes things more preposterous than they appear. Any league that allows this kind of occurrence needs to take a hard look at its rules.
Van Horn retired after the 2005-06 season.
But because he never filed papers with the league and because the Dallas Mavericks never renounced his rights, the Mavericks were allowed to sign him and include him in the trade for Kidd so that salary figures would match. (The Cavs, apparently, couldn't — or didn't — offer Brad Daugherty and Craig Ehlo for Kidd.)
Ever the modern athlete, Van Horn wrangled a guaranteed $4.3 million out of the deal. Imagine that . . . $4.3 million to agree to give up retirement for a few months to sit on an NBA bench.
This is a guy not exactly hurting for cash, either. Van Horn might have made $100 million in his career.
But who knows . . . maybe the family room needed new knotty-pine paneling. So there goes Van Horn with his wheelbarrow full of cash to New Jersey.
This deal sums up the Cavs situation as they ponder ways to improve their team for a playoff run: They apparently have renounced the rights to Jim Chones, and Paul Mokeski must have filed his retirement papers last week.
With the 3 p.m. Thursday trade deadline looming, the Cavs lack, as they now say in the NBA, ''tradable assets.''
Some might say that allowing a guy to come out of retirement to be included in a trade makes assets out of the league, but that's a separate issue.
Right now, the Cavs do not have enough ''expiring contracts'' to include in a deal.
Consider the latest rumored trade, as reported by ESPN.com.
It has the Cavs acquiring Mike Miller, a fine shooter and player, and Kyle
Lowry, a backup point guard, for Ira Newble, Donyell Marshall, Shannon Brown, Cedric Simmons, Dwayne Jones and a first-round draft pick.
In terms of one-sided trades, this one would rank right there with the Pau Gasol gift to the Los Angeles Lakers — another example of the ludicrous nature of NBA dealing, as the Memphis Grizzlies gut their roster and forfeit this season in hopes for the future.
Miller is a solid all-around player, a guy averaging 16.9 points per game and shooting 40 percent on 3-pointers.
He couldn't guard James when the teams played in Memphis earlier this season, but if the Cavs got him, he wouldn't need to. Except in practice.
Lowry, drafted one pick ahead of Brown in the 2006 draft, would be a viable backup point guard.
Alas, as it was with Van Horn, there's a catch with this rumored trade — and that is that the Cavs would have to take Brian Cardinal and the $13 million remaining on the final two years of his contract. This $13 million figure ranks near as high on the highway robbery scale as Van Horn's $4.3 million.
But the Cavs, according to this one report at least, would be willing to take the $13 million in future salary to make the trade happen.
See, if an NBA team does not have tradable assets, it must do other teams a favor and take their . . . ummm . . . contracts.
Even with that, the trade would be a good one for the Cavs.
Problem is, other teams also are bidding for Miller and Lowry, and the Grizzlies very well might have better offers.
Just like they had when they traded Gasol, a player whom the Cavs also tried to acquire.
The Cavs do not dislike their team.
They believe that even with the clunker Tuesday against the Rockets that they can compete with anyone in the Eastern Conference when healthy.
Tonight the Cavs play in Indianapolis, which starts a stretch in which nine-of-10 games are against teams with losing records.
If improvement doesn't come in the next day via trade, it had best come in this stretch of games — from the inside.
Because until the Cavs figure a way to get Darius Miles to come back and sign a deal to be traded, they probably lack the assets needed to make an improvement from the outside.
Patrick McManamon can be reached at pmcmanamon@thebeaconjournal.com.
CLEVELAND: The Cavaliers played like a bunch of stumblebums Tuesday night against the Houston Rockets.
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