Cleveland Cavs: Grading the tradable assets at mid-season

Despite only being six games out of the 8th seed for the NBA Playoffs, the Cavs seem destined to trade off any and all quality talent.

The Cavs aren’t even that far out of the playoffs, only six games, and it feels like 30. The team isn’t playing well, the ball isn’t being distributed as well as it should be. Point guard Darius Garland, who was labeled as an “elite-level passer” has looked anything but and the other highly touted guard of Collin Sexton has somehow managed to become the team’s least popular player in the eyes of many.

Garland isn’t bad, and most point guards are terrible in their first year. The odds of getting a Chris Paul are rare, but look at Jason Kidd and Steve Nash? Two of the five greatest and both of them started slow. So don’t worry about Garland. Maybe worry about Sexton though, with how well he can cut to the basket, you’d hope he could distribute a bit better.

The team isn’t lacking on talent either, besides the two young starters, there’s also perennial All-Star Kevin Love and suddenly thriving Tristan Thompson.  Both men have shown their worth and if they had better bench scoring, this team would be chasing the playoffs in earnest. That’s not the case however and it’s time to admit that. This team is, obviously, not going anywhere. Not that anyone thought they would. Though there were some who were hopeful after the first ten games.

With the mid-year in the books for the Cavs, it’s time to see what the tradable assets look like, and what kind of haul you can expect from them. There are potentially five players who have value to a team in a trade that the Cavs would consider parting ways with. Obviously the likes of Garland, Sexton and Cedi Osman have a lot of value in trades, but they’re not assets the team is looking to get rid of. So we’re just looking at the talent that fans will most likely believe could go.