Cleveland Cavaliers: Dion Waiters on the Trading Block

Image courtesy of Erik Daniel Drost/Flickr.

Brought to you by our friends at Fantasy Basketball Money Leagues.

With LeBron James, Kevin Love, and Kyrie Irving playing together, the Cleveland Cavaliers can be an exciting team to watch, especially at the offensive side of the court. Many analysts and so called NBA gurus predicted them to start strong and win most of their matches with big margins at the start of new season. Unfortunately, that hasn’t happened. They started out slow and it seems like they are lacking a certain something that could make them a better team.

Defense

The acquisition of Shawn Marion adds something up to their defense, but age is not on his side. Marion is a known lockup defender who can also effectively patrol the perimeter, but sooner or later Father Time catches up with everyone.

For the Cavaliers to acquire some good defensive players, they must trade some of their valuable assets. Some sources say that the Cavs front office is now heavily shopping Dion Waiters. Denver Nuggets center, Timofey Mozgov, is an obvious target and has been linked heavily to this trade before. Mozgov does seem to be the number one target for the Cavaliers since they want someone who can protect the rim. Head Coach David Blatt also reportedly wanted him because of his close ties and familiarity with the Russian center.

Another Cavaliers target is New York Knicks shooting guard, Iman Shumpert. According to an article of Grantland’s Zach Lowe, Shumpert is one of the many possible trade targets of the Cavaliers.

“The Cavs have a $5.3 million trade exception courtesy of the Keith Bogans Memorial Contract, and they’ll likely kick the tires on a number of workable wing defenders who fit into that salary – Corey Brewer, Iman Shumpert, Jared Dudley, Kyle Singler, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Wesley Johnson, Reggie Bullock, an excess Memphis wing, and others,” – Zach Lowe, Grantland.Com

Lowe also noted that the Cavaliers might just do the trade before the deadline “to bolster their 2014-15 title chances”.

“They’ll look at any number of the wings (aforementioned), and they’ll keep calling Denver about Timofey Mozgov.”

The needs for a lock-down defender are becoming obvious for the Cavaliers. They badly need someone to guard the perimeter and stop the dribble penetration of the opponents. They need a rim protector who can also get those rebounds for them.

Right now, I am quite sure that the Cavaliers will move Waiters before trade deadline. It will just a matter of how and who they will get.