CLEVELAND — The Cavaliers acquired Andre Drummond for what is being called a "rock-bottom" price—fitting for where they find themselves these days.
A Drummond-Cavs marriage doesn’t have to offer long-term promise to understand this trade from the Cavs perspective. Giving up John Henson, Brandon Knight and a 2023 second-round pick is such a small-cost move that Drummond need not sign here long term (though he could) for the Cavs to justify the deal.
Seeing development under John Beilein in this 13-39 season requires a sympathetic eye, or maybe a touch of glaucoma. Adding Drummond’s size and shot blocking can only help a struggling first-year head coach (once he has a chance to revamp his offense).
If you’re worried this move could vault the Cavs into the dreaded NBA "middle" where teams are not serious contenders or lottery beneficiaries you haven’t been watching.
Would Drummond be open to staying beyond this season? He could exercise an option that pays him $28.8 million next season if he loves it here or wants to wait a year until suitors have more cap room.
Okay, so maybe he’s not ready to fall in love again anytime soon and will pursue free agency.
The market for Drummond won’t be a fertile one this summer for various reasons, including style of play. It’s fair to question whether the Cavs should even want to commit long-term to a back-to-the-basket center, but again, they won’t need to justify what they gave up Thursday.
The Cavs must be creative in how they acquire talent. I mean, LeBron James is not walking through that door again, not without a cane anyway.
- The Philadelphia 76ers continue to disappoint, especially on the road where they’ve now lost four straight.
So Charles Barkley had this to say on TNT’s pre-game show: "Let me just go ahead and vent now. You know I picked the 76ers to get into the Finals. I think they are the softest, mentally weakest team that had a bunch of talent. They are the Cleveland Browns of the NBA."
Welcome to Cleveland (Part II), Kevin Stefanski
- LeBron James chose Lakers teammate Anthony Davis with the first pick in the All-Star game draft; Giannis Antetokounmpo countered by choosing the Sixers Joel Embiid.
Advantage? James.
James then completed a crazy strong starting five that included Kawhi Leonard, Luka Doncic and James Harden. One of James' reserves is Russell Westbrook.
Not saying Giannis got worked, but if he were picking for the Cavs at a certain stretch in their history apparently he would’ve made top six picks out of DaJuan Wagner, Anthony Bennett and Dion Waiters, too.
- A Christian activist is suing the NFL, claiming the halftime show featuring Jennifer Lopez and Shakira in revealing dress damaged his chances of getting into heaven.
"Could I go into a courtroom and say, 'Viewing what you put on that screen put me in danger of hellfire'?" Dave Daubenmire said on his podcast called "Pass The Salt."
"Could the court say, 'That doesn’t apply here because the right to [produce] porn overrides your right to [not] watch it'? Yeah, well, you didn’t tell me I was gonna watch it! You just brought it into my living room.
"You didn’t tell me there were gonna be crotch shots! That’s discriminatory against the value I have in my house. You can’t just do that. I wanna sue them for about $867 trillion."
First of all, that red button on the remote turns the set on and off.
Secondly, shouldn’t this guy’s podcast be called "Pass The Smelling Salts"?
I will give him this: The $867 trillion in damages sounds just about as reasonable as the rest of the suit.
- The White House announced the Kansas City Chiefs would be visiting Washington "very soon."
After a White House Tweet initially congratulated the state of Kansas on the Chiefs win, no wonder if the Chiefs had to fight the urge to say they were looking forward to touring all those government buildings in Olympia.
- Mike Clevinger, spoke to Nick Camino & I on WKYC.com at Tribe Fest on the Astros cheating.
"We knew something was going on every time we went to Houston since I’ve been in the big leagues," Clevinger told us. "We knew something was going on. Me and TB [Trevor Bauer] knew something was going on, but we didn’t have the smoking gun in hand.
"I didn’t want to look like a hippie conspiracy theorist and he didn’t want to look like a bad Twitter monster. Me and Trevor Bauer have had these talks since 2017. We said the whole time, ‘there’s going to be some guy they don’t sign back, somebody they don’t give the money to. They can’t hold this glue together. Someone’s going to snitch eventually, that’s inside, that had the stuff,’ and sure enough…"
Hippie conspiracy theorist? Bad Twitter monster?
The severity of the Astros cheating scandal and the MLB punishment handed down is being debated around baseball. What isn’t debatable is that Clevinger would be a great interview if all he did was read his grocery list.
Have a weekend.
'UNBELIEVABLE OPPORTUNITY': Cavaliers GM Koby Altman couldn’t pass on trade for Andre Drummond