An EXCITING idea for the Cleveland Cavilers!

A bunch of reporters said that the Cavs and Timberwolves have a plan in place to trade Kevin Love for Anthony Bennett and Andrew Wiggins once Wiggins to eligible to be traded. This means that the Cavs will probably have a wheat thresher offense next year. Lebron and Love and Kyrie are all hyper capable three point shooters and Lebron kills with space, Love is a tremendous offensive rebounder and outlet passer, Kyrie blessed with a multi-facted pick and roll partner. It may take time to melt together, but it will and it will be a nightmare to defend.

But Cleveland is going to lack talent on the defensive end. Lebron is usually a terror over there, but Kyrie has been a disaster, and Love can probably learn to blow up pick and rolls up top but his arms aren't long enough to protect the rim. A rim protector would help. Here is a solution:

Varejao is probably going to be the stopgap center for the Cavs this year. He is good at rebounding and passing and defending pick and rolls, but he isn't a rim protector. Larry Sanders is. Even when he was wallowing through a shitty year on the shitty Bucks, his plus/minus numbers were obscene: ESPN's DRPM metric, rated him a +6.29 on the defensive end, the second best defensive player in the league by the measurement. The year before, Sander's extraordinary rim defense was at the center of Kirk Goldsberry's paper on rim protection. 

Sanders has had a lot of trouble in the last year. He broke his hand in a bar fight and got a citation for leaving his dogs out in the cold. These are bad and concerning. After that, he got tagged by the league for testing positive for marijuana. If you are an owner, you should not care about this in particular, because pot being legal is dumb and everyone knows it. Sanders even came out after he got suspended and flat out said that marijuana helps him cope with the stress of being an NBA player. Better smoking pot in your own house than breaking your hand at a bar. Positive marijuana tests are the new market inefficiency. 

Also, his offense has been very bad. Offensive RPM rated him a -4.47. His hands haven't been terrific on catch and dunks and he isn't a post up player, but he's not out there trying or anything. But, Christ: you're trotting out Irvin, Lebron James and Kevin Love, you can take a little tag on this end for someone that could plug up that many holes in your defense. His coach also hated him and and him ride pine. Was this justified? Who knows!? NBA office politics are insane!

Would Milwaukee do this? Yeah, probably. Sanders has a lengthy contract and they're in a place of restarting with Parker and Giannis. Varejao would give them good production then expire at the end of the year and clean out their cap to sign some big man in the summer. Would Cleveland? Nahh. Sanders is a perceived risk with a pretty long contract. They've already signed NBA Champion Brendon Haywood to play some center minutes and will probably scoop someone else up: Emeka is a good risky option, Aaron Grey a not as good but less risky one. But who knows? Maybe someone over there's a gambler.

DEUS DEXUM

I've seen Dante Exum play  before, but I honestly didn't remember at all. He and I were both in attendee at the 2013 Nike Hoop Summit, him as a player and me as a spectator, but I was more interested in Wiggins and Parker and Dennis Schroder, who was absolutely awesome in that particular game.

Exum was the mystery in this draft. The subject of hyperbole you wouldn't believe. "Mentally, he is built like Kobe, except he passes." "This kid can play three positions, and if you get him against short enough dudes, five positions." "Dante Exum has in himself an orb of pure basketball energy. When he gets to the NBA he will either harness that orb and dominate for twenty years, or it will become unruly in his fragile human flesh and eat him alive, right there on the court." There were the skeptics, too: "Sure, he looks great playing against Australian high school boys, but that's not a level of competition that lends itself to a real knowledge of his true skills." "He is going to get MOWED DOWN by NBA competition. He's too skinny and he can't shoot! He has never shot!" "He is made from candy and he will get the hardwood all sticky. Drafting Exum is basically tantamount to pouring hot candy all over your floor. His summer league debut was HOTLY ANTICIPATED. What would happen? Would he blow everyone away, ushering in the new era of Exum? Or would he grab the ball and burst into tears; "I'm sorry everyone, this was a scam. I have never played basketball. I will collect my paychecks from the Jazz and retire to a life of shame in darkest Australia." Anything was possible!

Aaaaaaand... he was good! Not mind altering Basketshrooms, but you can understand what everyone sees in him. Three assists on the night and he would have gotten more if he was playing with a non Rudy Gobert big man. He exhibited A disgusting crossover that made me ashamed to in out local American crossovers. (Watch Rudy Gobert on that play, requesting a lob instead of a bounce pass. Rudy was actually kind of playing veteran leader all night, a lot of shoulder patting and talking and encouragement to go along with his not totally there yet big man play) His conditioning isn't there yet: Clyde Fraizer, who called the game on NBATV, pointed out that he was "Grabbing his jersey" to get blow before the end of the first half. He jumper looked like it might still be a work in progress, but he did can a three to tie the game with less than two minutes left.

Another thing he almost certainly is is a point player. He was playing pass first all night and he has a really good handle. If Burke ends up being good, it will be fascinating to see how the Jazz handle it. The Bledsoe/Dragic lineups in Phoenix last year might be arrow pointing to the future. They even signed Isaiah Thomas so they could never be without two point guards on the floor at the same time. Shooting guards seem like they're getting more and more terrible everyday. Think about people lusting after Klay Thompson, anything for positional purity, while anyone observing the modern NBA with a clear mind would always prefer two on the court at the same time who can handle and shoot. West and Baylor didn't play in a Point/Shoot dynamic. Maybe that scaffold that was built when they left is league is going to get washed away by chimeras like Exum. If he's any good in the actual NBA, of course.

Ben Grodin, the star of such beloved films as "Midnight Run"

Today, the Orlando Magic signed Ben Gordon to a two year (second year team option) contract worth 9 million dollars. This was surprising, because Ben Gordon was apocalyptically terrible last year…

..and got waived after nineteen games. I hadn’t even thought about Gordon getting signed this early in the free agency period. If you had, for some reason, maybe you're Ben Gordon's agent and you value my horrible opinion, asked me about what was going to happen to Ben Gordon, I would have said that he would probably was going to sign a veteran’s minimum-y contract close to the season, maybe guaranteed, maybe not and spend one year trying to rebuild his value, maybe on a playoff team (The Pacers, for instance, could have used a version of him that was shooting well.).

Instead, the rebuilding Magic signed him to a pretty lucrative deal. Why?

1. The Magic were flirting with the salary floor and Gordon got them over it.

2. When Gordon was traded to Charlotte, they were the worst team in the NBA, and he didn’t do a lot to hide his despondency. He fought with his he was pretty out of shape (For a professional basketball player, I’m not here to fat shame anyone) and it contributed to his poor play on the court. One assumes that the Magic worked him out and thought he was ready to go.

3. But even an ideal 31-Year Old Ben Gordon isn’t going to move the needle for the moribund Magic in any significant way. But an ideal 31-Year old Ben Gordon could be useful on a playoff contending team. I think the Magic have acquired Godron as a rehab project to offload for rebuilding assets.

This is a pretty common practice in baseball, which is a little more “Asset acquisition” driven than the NBA. A team that almost certainly isn’t going to make the playoffs like the 2014 Chicago Cubs, sign a player coming off a rough year like Jason Hammel, in hopes he has a bounceback or breakout. Then when that player establishes himself as a quality player laboring on a terrible team he gets shopped to contenders at the deadline in exchange for prospects. This is an especially common practice with pitchers because their year-to-year performance can vary wildly. Pitchers’ arms get injured a lot or get tanked by forces outside of their control like horrible defenses and bad BABIP luck.

NBA players don’t usually have that kind of wild variation in their year-to-year performance. But, Gordon's performance last year was so abnormally bad that it’s hard to imagine that he couldn’t recover a little. If Gordon can rebuild his value on the Magic, a good player playing for not a lot of money on a contract that is very team friendly would be hyper-tradable for a young player or a pick or both. And if he can’t, if he’s washed or he subcumbs to injury, a one-year contract never broke an NBA franchise.