Cleveland Cavs: What the Andre Drummond trade means for the future
By Chad Porto
The Cleveland Cavs made a huge trade during the last hour of Thursday’s trade deadline that saw Detroit Piston’s big man Andre Drummond get shipped.
The Cavs are sitting pretty, shockingly enough, after the trade deadline came and went. The move to make was Tristan Thompson to anywhere but the Cavs balked at all offers and instead went in a vastly different direction. They shed two expiring deals in John Henson and Brandon Knight, alongside the lesser of a second-round pick, to acquire the Piston’s best player Andre Drummond. Drummond is a double-double machine, averaging 14.4 points and 13.9 rebounds during his career in Detroit.
The move comes completely unexpected after months of NBA “insiders” claiming that the Cavs would move not just Thompson but fellow big-man Kevin Love in deals to shed salary and get younger. Both Love and Thompson are having strong seasons, and their value might not be higher. Thompson is a free agent to be, with an expiring deal and Love is under contract for another two and a half seasons.
The move seems to be counter to what many expected the Cavs to do in 2020, with many thinking they’d shed salary and get even younger. With the addition of Drummond however, there is now a more realistic possibility that the Cavs go into the off-season with a vastly different mindset. Perhaps Cavs GM Kolby Altman is tired of all the journalists and ESPN “experts” talking about tanking and getting younger and draft capital and blah-blah-blah. Maybe he saw what Oklahoma City is doing and went “By George, I think they got it!”
There will be many articles to come about the fantasy of this situation, but this piece will look at what’s likely to happen.