This Gordon Hayward trade may help solve the Cavaliers’ woes

The Cleveland Cavaliers should target Gordon Hayward this offseason.

The Cleveland Cavaliers had a disappointing end to a generally good season. The team went 9-19 in their final 28 games to fall from the fourth seed to the seventh. Thanks to the NBA’s dumb new “play-in tournament”, the Cavs ended up getting bounced from the playoffs out of pure luck. The Nets were not the eight best team in the East, despite being matched up with the Cavs, and the Cavaliers’ defense just collapsed against the Hawks, and with few true scoring threats on the court at any given time, the team couldn’t keep up.

Not playing Kevin Love past the first half made no sense. I’m a supporter of JB Bickerstaff, but that decision was just dumb. I’m not on board the whole “coaches need to be perfect or they should get fired” bandwagon, so I by no means am calling for Bickerstaff to lose his job like some over-reactionaries. Yet, not playing Love, who was great offensively all year and good defensively is a mind-boggling decision.

It also highlighted the biggest issue with Bickerstaff’s defensive first scheme; what happens if you can’t stop anyone or retaliate? It’s one thing to give up two points if you respond with three. That’s not how the Cavs played though. They tried to limit teams to missed shots and then relied on Darius Garland for 60% of the season. That’s part of the reason the offense fell apart without Ricky Rubio, he wasn’t able to spell Garland and the team over-relied on him.

Garland is an All-Star player, no doubt, but is he an All-NBA guy? No, at least not yet. To be fair, I wanted him gone after his rookie year due to how bad he was and he has since gotten much better. The kids improving, and we haven’t seen his peak yet. So the Garland hot-takes need to calm down.

That doesn’t mean that the Cavs don’t have issues, and it doesn’t mean that Garland wasn’t part of the issues, at least against the Hawks. He shot just 33% from the floor, an inexcusable number considering how hot Lauri Markkanen was in the first half.

Markkanen had 10 shots in the first half and just six in the second, but it gets worse. He had six shots in the first quarter alone. The very same quarter the Cavaliers dominated. That isn’t a coincidence. Getting away from Markkanen, whos been shooting lights out since he returned a few months ago from injury, clearly sunk the offense and also exposed a glaring issue within the Cavs;

The team has no real direction offensively.

The goal should be to make this a Garland-centric offense, where Garland can drive and kick, but consider the assets on the floor with that in mind. You have Caris LeVert, who can’t shoot threes, then there’s Evan Mobley who can shoot threes for a big but not in general, then you have Jarrett Allen and Isaac Okoro who can’t hit anything outside of the paint.

You can’t really stretch the offense unless Markkanen is on the court. So how do you rectify the inability to shoot outside of the point, while also bringing in a creator who can get his own shot, and work Garland open from behind the arc?

You trade for Gordon Hayward. That’s how.

The Cleveland Cavaliers need to make a trade for Gordon Hayward

Hayward isn’t a long-term piece, but then again if you look at all three players the Cavs are sending over, they aren’t either. It doesn’t matter how you feel about Okoro, he’s always going to be limited offensively. He’s great in transition offense, as he can finish with the best of them in the paint. Yet, if your defense fails and you aren’t running in transition, then Okoro basically stifles the offense.

LeVert never fit in offensively, and frankly doesn’t give the Cavs an upgrade over Collin Sexton or Rubio. They should prioritize trading him while they have his contract to play with. It’s an expiring one and that’s a very attractive option.

Dylan Windler is a borderline NBA guy, who hasn’t shown to be a great shooter and a subpar defensive option. The problem with the Cavs is that subpar defensive option is still better than guys like Cedi Osman on defense. Osman needs to be better on defense in 2022-2023 if he wants to keep his gig in Cleveland.

Hayward may not be the most attractive option but he’s as good as LeVert on defense (for whatever that’s worth), a better shot creator than LeVert, a better option to stretch the offense, and can facilitate the offense better than him as well. He’s not much of an upgrade in most of the factors you would look at, but he is a huge improvement as a pure shooter.

If you get Hayward, you can start him as the shooting guard and give yourself an offense an incredibly different look right out of the gate. Then you do everything you can to re-sign Rubio and Sexton, then use those draft picks on real talent.

The trade makes sense for both squads, Cleveland, well that’s obvious. Yet, for Charlotte, Hayward wants out. He’s not happy with his role on the team. This gets the Hornets back something for him, pieces they can use to an extent and get better. Keep in mind, that Cleveland and Charlotte are at different places in their rebuild. Cleveland was a Top-4 team in the East at one point, Charlotte is, well not.

Not only that, but the Levert deal gets Charlotte out of a lot of owned money from Hawyard’s part a year early. So there’s a cap flexibility incentive as well.

I don’t know what you can get that late in the draft, but if the Cavs get lucky and somehow get a higher pick thanks to the lottery, that would be massive. The team would keep its core in place and would upgrade the offense, without losing too much defensively, assuming you bring back Rubio.