CLEVELAND, Ohio — In this episode of the Wine and Gold Talk podcast, Ethan Sands and Jimmy Watkins debate the effectiveness of small moves versus major changes needed to elevate the Cavs’ success in the near future with Donovan Mitchell’s player option looming.
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Takeaways:
- The Cavs are focusing on internal improvement as their best path forward.
- Koby Altman expressed pride in the team’s offensive identity despite playoff failures.
- Evan Mobley is seen as a key player for the Cavs’ future success.
- The team needs to develop mental toughness to succeed in the playoffs.
- The Cavs’ contention window is considered wide open, but they must prove it, as it could be narrower than perceived.
- Donovan Mitchell’s future with the team hinges on their playoff success in the next two years.
- The conversation highlights the importance of evaluating player performance and team dynamics.
- Max Strus is crucial for the Cavs’ locker room culture.
- The Cavs need to assess which players they can afford to lose.
- Trade strategies must consider the financial implications of the second apron.
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Read the automated transcript of today’s podcast below. Because it’s a computer-generated transcript, it may contain errors and misspellings.
Ethan Sands: What up Cavs Nation? I’m your host Ethan Sands and I’m back with another episode of the Wine and Gold Talk podcast. And on today’s episode, joining me, the Take artists, the columnist cleveland.com Jimmy Watkins and we are just wrapping up getting to talk to Koby Altman, president of basketball operations for the Cavs in his end of season press conference. And me and Jimmy were talking about this before the show began just how many different areas he discussed. It was a 45 to 50 minute press conference where Koby Altman kind of went through the nuances of this season where he thinks they are the different emotions that not only him but the organization is feeling. Obviously frustration but also pride in where they are and feeling like they’re on schedule even if they have had some playoff failures. Jimmy, I know you have some interesting thoughts about what Koby Altman went into today laid on us what you thinking?
Jimmy Watkins: So I want to start by saying that it is a perfectly reasonable approach for the Cavs to believe that internal improvement is their best path forward, especially given our new CBA reality and how hard it would be to make prospective trades, the kind of players the Cavs might be willing to shed and the value they carry on the open market. We’re talking about your Jared Allen is probably the most likely player that they would be willing to part with. Koby basically said today like be careful what you wish for shopping him around out there. It’s hard to do better for Jared Allen without giving up something else. You’re like, I agree with that. I agree with all those things. But I don’t necessarily buy all the hope that Koby was selling today out of this season. So let’s call this a list of grievances to start the pod. I was taking notes as Koby was talking today, so I’m just going to read off. He started by saying a lot of room for upward mobility because the average age of the starting lineup is 26 point something, whatever it is, and it looked like it against the Pacers. We’ve been talking about maturity as something that we need to see more of. Yes, that comes with time. But this idea that the Cavs have Koby said on multiple occasions they wide open contention window again because we live in a second apron world. The Cavs are going to be a second apron team with the Evan mobile trick. I mean they can, they can try to get under with, you know, moves along the margins and Isaac Kokoro here, maybe a max Stru there. You got to take very little salary in return. I digress. They’re probably going to be a second apron team. The second apron does with all of its restrictions is basically it forces you better believe you have a championship contest contender on your hands if you’re gonna lock in. I mean you might not get your mid level exception. You might not be able to get aggregate salaries and trades which you can’t do for two for one down the road. Your first round pick might get pushed back to the end of the first round. I think that’s three years in a row on the second apron. That’s how that goes. So you have to like there are. It just gets harder for you to add to your team. So you have to be sure that you have championship contender on your hands. And the Cavs just lost in the second round in five games to that point. Koby Altman said that this was a big, big success of the season was discovering this offensive identity. Best offense in the league, second best offensive rating of all time in the regular season and then you get to the second round of the playoffs. You were, I believe the fourth best offense in the second round out of eight teams and your offensive rating would have ranked about 20th in the regular season playoffs. So what does that even mean? I don’t know. It’s. It’s a small sample, but it’s the sample that matters the most. Koby Altman also said that they maintained their defensive principles and evolving their offense until the second round of the playoffs when the Cavs were the worst defense in the second round of the playoffs with a defensive rating that would have ranked bottom five in the NBA. 3. And again, small sample size. Just the smallest. The sample size that matters. This offensive rebounding tangent that he went up on where he, you know, the Cavs won the possession game and they, they did better than the Pacers in offensive rebounds is like a hustle stat. The Pacers don’t try to get offensive rebounds. We’ve been over this on the pod. Like what, what point are you making there? I continue. I meant to do the research on this. I will next pot. I promise I will have a rundown of the amount of playoff games that the Pacers have played in versus the amount of playoff games the Cavs. I just don’t buy. We do need to give the Pacers credit. We do need to respect them. But like that’s a team the Cavs should have beat. I don’t buy the Pacers as like these, these playoff sages who just out IQ’d the Cavs or just have so much playoff wisdom and experience that of course they were Going to be more composed tyres Halliburton’s play like 20 something playoff games, man. It’s not that big of a difference. He’s the most important player. Benedict Matheran, who had a great series. What? I’ve made these points before, but I’m reiterating them now because I just don’t understand that line of thinking. Okay, this comparison, this one is key. Cavs for two years now have also brought up the same bunch of teams. When preaching patience and using these teams as models for patients. They’ve talked about the Denver Nuggets. They’ve talked about the Boston Celtics. They’ve talked about the Oklahoma City Thunder. Two issues I have with that. Number one in Boston and Denver’s case, part of their quote unquote patience included conference finals. Those teams broke through. Their, their glass ceiling wasn’t quite as, as low as the Cavs. The Cavs have just not broken through. They continue to disappoint. They continue to fall short of their own expectations. The other thing about all three of those teams, including the Thunder, who obviously just broke through into the conference finals, is that they all made big moves outside of what they started with. The Denver Nuggets traded for Aaron Gordon. Without him, they don’t win a championship. You want to argue that DeAndre Hunter can be the Cavs Aaron Gordon, I’ll listen to you. Another year of it of DeAndre in the program. Give him some training camp. Remember, he didn’t have a ton of time to practice with the team in the aftermath of the trade until the playoffs. I’ll hear you. The Boston Celtics traded Marcus Smart, arguably the soul of their franchise, in order to get better. They added Derrick White, they added Joe Holiday, they added Kristof Porzingis, all before they won a championship. Those are big boy moves. Okay? I would argue that all of those moves individually are bigger moves than the DeAndre Hunter trade, particularly given what the Celtics had to give up for each of those players. And then the Oklahoma City Thunder. Yes. Young guys, yes. Breaking through against the Nuggets in the second round. But right before they did that last year, they were bad in the second round. They didn’t have enough. So what did they do? They went out and spent like $150 million in free agency to get Alex Caruso and Isaiah Hartenstein. And I’m telling you, as someone who watched it and thoroughly enjoyed every, every wink of that series that I could, they don’t win that series without Alex Caruso. Naj Hardenstein, the last thing I’ll say, because I’m rambling already. Koby mentioned injury, quote, misfortune at least five times. That’s. I did the word search in our. In our Koby Google Doc at least five times. And there were other references to the injuries. And he would. And he keeps saying, I don’t want to use that as an excuse. Then stop bringing it up. Okay. When talking about the injuries today, Koby sounded like Ricky Bobby saying, with all due respect, Mr. Denton, I can’t say the end of it. Basically, Ricky Bobby insults his boss in the. In Talladega Nights, one of my all time favorite movies. And because he says with all due respect, he believes that it’s all good. Just because Koby is saying we can’t use these as an excuse doesn’t mean that they’re not doing that. Okay. They brought it up a lot. It was one of the first ideas out of Koby‘s mouth in response to a couple of questions. And that is not what I was looking to hear from the cab. It’s a, yeah, we need to grow up, but this happened. No, no, no, no, no. There’s no buts. Need to grow up. You’d get mentally tougher and you need to be open to that coming from the outside. Even though I understand a GM is never going to come out and say that, yeah, we’re shopping our core players. I rest my case.
Ethan Sands: For now, I did some of the research that you were looking for while you were rambling, doing your take. Artistmanship, you know. So before this season, Tyrese Halliburton had played in 15 playoff games. That’s it. Evan Mobley, coming into this season, had played in 17 playoff games. Coming to this season, Darius Garland had played in 17 playoff games. That’s dating over two years, obviously. 2022, 2023 and 2023. 2024. According to the ESPN stat that I’m looking at right now, Tyrese Haliburn only has played in two years of the playoffs, including. Including this year where they’ve already played in 10 different contests. So I understand the experience point that you’re making to me and I think it’s a valid one. Obviously the other one, which I think is more so where people are drawing the line at is Myles Turner. He had a good amount of playoff experience, but to that end, all of them, other than last year, ended in the first round. Seven game series in 2016, four game sweep in 2017, seven game series in 2018, four game sweep in 2019, four game sweep in 2020. He hadn’t made it out of the first round until last year. Right. And I think we can make this comparison. I think it’s fair to do so. The Minnesota Timberwolves. Chris Finch was kind of making the reference to his team, especially at the beginning of the season, like, are you a Western Conference finals team or did you just make the Western Conference finals? Right. And I think the Indiana Pacers wanted to prove themselves in that narrative as well this season, especially coming off a season where they went through a whole lot of injury filled teams to get to the Eastern Conference finals last year. Then Tyrese Halliburton gets hurt and unable to play in the final two games of that series and they fall and now they have the opportunity to kind of be like, hey, maybe last year, if Tyrese doesn’t get hurt, this is a different story. But that’s not what we’re focusing on right now. We’re focusing on how the Cavs need to take the experience that they’ve derived from the previous seasons, from previous failures, and build on those. And I think a lot of that goes to Evan Mobley. And I know that Evan is a quiet guy and I wrote about this for cleveland.com in the morning. Like, he is a guy that is not vocal. And Chris uses the. The term, the verbiage. California Cool, Right? Just because he is so focused on himself. He’s not outgoing. And it’s hard to get a really good quote out of him because he’s so laid back and doesn’t want to give you too much. Keeps a lot to the vest. But Donovan Mitchell said multiple times throughout the season, the reason this team is different from the Utah team that he was on when he was the number one seed and they lost. The biggest reason that he feels like this Cavs team is different is Evan Mobley. And then Koby Altman again today reiterated that statement saying, hey, Evan Mobley, we need more from you. Because we believe, and they’ve said this on countless occasions, that not only can you be a top 15 player in the league, we think you can be a top five player in the world in this entire NBA league, not just for your position, all of these things. And I think that’s a lot to put on a 23 year old’s shoulders, but that’s what they drafted him for. They’ve been having these conversations with him. Like they understood that there was potential, but there’s no more time for like if, ands or buts about this potential. It’s, you gotta do it and you gotta show me. And Jimmy, I asked this question to you and Chris, the other day about, do you think the Cavs will win a championship in the next two years? And the reason I’ve specified the next two years is because after the 2027 season, Donovan Mitchell has a player option. And I think you get the understanding and everybody around this organization has that feeling again where it’s like, we know he’s going to be here for two years, but if we don’t do nothing in the next two years, does Donovan then say, I don’t know if this is the place where I can get over the hump? That has been Donovan Mitchell’s goal since arriving in Cleveland. He came to this group, this core feeling like he could get to the next step, the next level, get past the demons of the second round, that in his eight years, eight postseasons, he has never gotten past that. And Donovan looks to Evan Mobley, praises Evan Mobley, leans into Evan Mobley throughout the entire season. And Koby Altman referenced it today. I think he, he might have been listening to the podcast. You cannot have Evan Mobley be limited to 13 field goals a game in all of the playoffs. Like, he never shot more than 13 field goals in a game. And you’re supposed to be the number two option. We know Darius Garland, we know how important he is. You’re not the number two option on this team, really. Especially when we talk about this offseason and potential for moves. Obviously, Koby Almond said he wants to keep with the core. That was something that he kept reiterating how he, he loves the foundation. But it felt like Jimmy, there were indications in different times where he would leave out a particular member of the core four in those conversations. What did you think about that? And then also he did later into his session talk about the importance of that player and how that helps Evan Mobley out.
Jimmy Watkins: Yeah, it did feel a little bit during the first half of this press conference like I was reading LeBron James I’m coming home story in Sports Illustrated and just looking for, hey, hey, wait, where’s Andrew Wiggins his name in here? Oh, he’s not in there. That’s kind of strange. Maybe just an oh, he’s being traded for Kevin Love. Okay, interesting. It was a lot of Koby saying unprompted, don’t give up on Darius Garland. At 25, you’d be crazy to give up if you don’t see it with Evan Mobley. You’re just not paying attention is basically what Koby said. Because typically if you’re an all time great player, there’s a mini leap earlier in your career and then there’s a bigger one in the middle of your career when you kind of make it to your final form, so to speak. Jared Allen had to get asked about. Okay, and now look. Jared Allen is clearly the fourth most important part of the core of the core four. He would tell you that himself. He’s not the same. He’s 27, so he has less upward mobility than guys like Darius and Evan. And Donovan is what he is. He’s established as a. As a top 10 to 15 player in the NBA. So there’s not as much to say about those guys. But it was notable to me that Jarrett was. And while Koby gave an impassioned defense of Jared Allen, called him the easy target. But it’s not. It’s not fair to put to draw all your ire toward Jared Allen for what happened in the playoffs, even though he wasn’t good in those last two games. And I have said on this podcast before that Jared Allen is a function of his surroundings, and his surroundings were bad in the Pacers series. So I see Koby‘s vision on that. I do want to. On the Donovan point, I think he made a really good one there. Ethan. Again, this concept of the window being wide open and Koby saying, they have a really long Runway here. We’re kind of back where we started when they first traded for Donovan. He’s got two guaranteed years left on the team. But as we all know in NBA circles, that last year can get a little weird. What were we talking about for portions of the early part of the season? Feels a little different. Knowing that Donovan’s going to be sticking around now that the Cavs don’t have to worry about, you know, is he staying? Is he going? There’s less pressure on the team. Things don’t go well next year. Right back where we started in that regard. And frankly, you want an uncomfortable truth about why Donovan. I think Donovan. Cleveland has caught Donovan by surprise. Cleveland has won his heart. He likes living here. He loves Evan Mobley. He loves Darius Garland. All these things are true. But another reason Donovan stayed in Cleveland decided to sign the extension of Cleveland last summer. He looked around and like, where am I going? There weren’t many other options. There weren’t many other options. The Knicks that he coveted for for a long time, they had found their guy. They got Jalen Brunson. They were moving on to bigger and better things. They were about to trade for Karl Anthony Towns and Macau Bridges, and they had just grabbed Ogn and Obi. Like, where they get. Where are they Getting all this ammo, he can’t go there. A lot of other teams, big markets established or thought they were established or didn’t have the assets or didn’t have the cap space or didn’t have the roster that appealed to him. Cleveland was the best option for him, but almost by default. Okay, so I am interested to see if next year the Cavs show similar playoff shortcomings. Exhibit similar playoff shortcomings. How Donovan will react to that, particularly because this next contract that he’s going to sign is going to be his last big one for all intents and purposes. And by the way, if you’re the Cavs, I mean, maybe you just have to grin, bear it and say we love Donovan Mitchell at age 31. So we’re just going to bite the bullet and pay Donovan Mitchell when he’s 35 for what he can do for us when he’s 31. It’s happened before. It’s not the worst thing in the world. But I will just point out that I did some research today for a column that I’m going to write later this week about this stuff as it pertains to Donovan and the history of players who have been all NBA caliber past age 30 at or around Donovan size. It’s not long. Eight players since 2006, three or smaller age 30 or older. Eight players have made all NBA now some have done it multiple times. Steph Curry, you know, Tony Parker, Chris Paul Curry and Chris Paul had whole, whole frickin hall of Fame careers after age 30. Okay, but we just don’t. You just don’t know. You don’t know how guys are going to age. And this, and this is not even, not even a conversation about, oh, Donovan’s kind of gotten banged up the last two plays. Nothing to do with that. Just saying Father Time’s undefeated and it affects everyone in a different way. So it’s not only a. You need to appease Donovan and reconvince him that this is the best place for him to win a championship. You, you have him for probably two of his best years remaining. I don’t want to call him the remainder of his peak years. But like once we start talking 30 with these smaller guards, you don’t know. You don’t know.
Ethan Sands: And Evan Mobley is going to turn 24 this summer. Obviously Darius is going to be 25 until January of next year. And I think when we’re talking about peaks, it’s not the peak performance. Right. It’s the peak mentality that you have to have going into the season. And I referenced this the other day and I actually found the video that I was referencing. But in Game 15 against the Toronto Raptors in the 2016 season, you see the Toronto Raptors dance team literally doing their performance at half court. And the starting unit for the Cavs are just in their spots, ready for tip off, ready for the game to start. And I’m not saying that you gotta be the 2016 Cavs, right? You simply can’t. You’re not LeBron James. You don’t have a LeBron James. And I’ve said this multiple times, LeBron James is more than likely not walking through that door. But the reality of the situation is there was a mental toughness there. And that was the key word that was used over and over and over again by Keddie Atkinson, by Donovan Mitchell, by Max Strusch, and now by Koby Op. Right. It’s not necessarily the physicality. And all of those guys, I think Kenny Atkinson and Koby Altman the most pushed back on the physicality narrative. It wasn’t necessarily physicality. We didn’t get out toughed. Right. We didn’t get bullied in this series. Albeit there were times where Jared Allen didn’t look as successful on the boards. Right. Obviously the last two games, you point to those two. But the mental toughness is where they feel like the overarching roster needs to grow. And this is where I’ll go with this. Jimmy and I asked this to our subtexters earlier today after the press conference. Do you think the Cavs can win a championship with a small move to improve around the margins? Because that feels like what Koby Altman is saying. That’s the indication that they’re going to do like. He didn’t even want to talk about Ty Jerome. He asked the PR representative that was standing next to him, am I allowed to talk about Ty? Well, yeah. He’s under a restricted context.
Jimmy Watkins: That was strange. That was strange.
Ethan Sands: Super strange. So I think there will be moves. I’m just trying to figure out what moves are large enough to make a significant impact. Because if the Cavs learn from this last run, sure, they’re going to empower their depth and continue with the Kumbaya, Kenny. But it feels like the minute allocation is going to be a little bit less, especially at the end portions of the regular season. Again, regular season is not going to matter next year. As Donovan Mitchell said, they could go 820 and nobody’s going to care unless they have success in the playoffs. For me, I don’t know how Kenny is going to operate with this. And I do think Koby Altman made a great point with this. Kenny Agatha had to get off a flight from France to come do his introductory interview and then fly across the world either to go see some of his players and meet up or go back to France to be with Team France and try and bring home a gold medal in the Olympics last year. But I mean he’s going to be summer camp Kenny now, right? We have regular season Kenny, we have playoff Kenny now we got summer camp Kenny, training camp, regiment Kenny. He’s going to be bringing the mental toughness, he’s going to bring the physicality. And I know for a fact after that Pacer series that these boys are going to be running. But Jimmy, do you think that the Cavs can win a championship with a small move? And what small move do you think would help them or do you think around the margins isn’t enough for this team to get to where they want to go?
Jimmy Watkins: So I don’t think it is enough. And I also just don’t know what that small move looks like because I’m looking at the Cavs cap sheet for next year and your top five guys, Donovan, Darius, Evan, DeAndre Hunter in terms of cap hitter, all 20 million or more against the cap. I think you have to. If we’re not talking major, quote unquote major moves, you have to be. It has, you have to look further down the list than that. It’s Max Stru set 15, it’s basically 16, Isaacoro at 11, Dean Wade at 6 and then your Jaylon Tysons, Chumo Kiki, Craig Porter Jr. Naquan Tomlin types. I mean those are just sweeteners. So I have, I have two questions here. Which of the players I just read Max Drew’s list onward, do you think the Cavs can most afford to lose? Number two, which of them, if any, if any, do you think would bring something back meaningful in return? Because I would argue that Max Struus is the frickin heartbeat of this locker room. He is a culture setter. Him and Donovan, they wear that responsibility really, really well. He is not anyone’s idea of a primary defender. I don’t think it would kill the Caps to have him come off the bench in certain playoff settings. If it’s Max Strust comes off the bench or Max Stru is your primary perimeter defender, I’m putting Max Struss on the bench. No disrespect, he tries really hard. He’s just, he’s not as good as some of these other guys on the defensive end. Aza Kakoro is that guy for the Cavs. They can, you know, turn loose as a perimeter stopper. And if they lose him, I think in theory, if you’re trading Isaac, you’re trying to get more shooting back, right? I guess what I’m coming down to here is for the kind of money that we’re talking about. And remember, the Cavs are either looking to cut money or break it even. They basically can’t. They basically can’t go any. That has to be a pretty even trade. When you’re in second apron land for the kind of money we’re talking about, you’re getting other one way players because you’re sending out one way players for the most part and you’re sending out one way players that are important to you, at least in the regular season. Dean Wade. Dean Wade has had massive stretches for this team at different points over the last three seasons as the core of the same thing. Max Schrooz I think is an important playoff piece. Talking about mental toughness as a reason why they lost the playoff series. And then you get rid of Max Schrooz. I don’t know about that one. I don’t know about that idea. Or do you send away one of the big pieces? Jared Allen, DeAndre Hunter, Darius Garland, I don’t know. Those are the kind of guys that will get you real things in return if you want to meaningfully change this roster. I think those are the kinds of moves you have to make. I mean, I guess you can try and get creative and go like, what about Max Truce and a future first down the road. That’s a big risk, particularly given the uncertainty facing the Cavs as it pertains to Donovan right now. You know, throw in one of these younger players as a sweetener. I don’t know what they’ve shown you. Find someone who liked them in the pre draft process. I’m scraping the barrel here. I’m starting at the baseline that the Cavs are not close to winning a championship because that’s what they’ve shown me over the last three years. So I don’t think any of these moves on the margins are going to help you very much. I would also we also need to like if Tyler Jerome resigns for middling number. You know, maybe that’s another contract that, that Koby can play with, but that, I mean, you either have to sign and trade him or you have to wait to trade him. So that’s another complicating factor.
Ethan Sands: Yeah, I think it’s extremely difficult because they’ve praised their defensive identity throughout the entire season. And yet I feel like the two most logical pieces would be Dean Wade and Isaac Okoro. And you made the point like, who are you getting back for that? And I think that’s, that’s fair, right? Because obviously Dean Wade has improved his shooting, Isaac Okoro has improved his shooting. But like a lot of teams aren’t trading for guys who aren’t willing to shoot the basketball in the playoffs. That’s the biggest portion of what we’ve talked about with Dean Wade specifically. If you have multiple games where you’re throwing up donuts, field goal shots, attempt wise, like your only value. And this makes it difficult on him, right? Your only value is defensively and rebounded. And Kenny Atkinson, at one point, I believe it was like in game one of the Pacers series, scolded Dean because he didn’t get a rebound and had to take him out. So what are other coaches going to see and think from that experience and knowing all of these things? And Obviously Dean Wade, 6 foot 10, 6 foot 9 and a half, whatever, like, he is one of the premier defenders in the NBA. But it’s very hard to get minutes in this league if you can’t produce even an inkling of offense, right? And my thing, my biggest thing with Dean Wade, and we’re obviously big fans of Dean Wade on this podcast, he does a lot of things well. But if you’re on a team that is begging you to take shots, asking you consistently to take the ball and put it up and like having conversations, even yelling at you at a time, what is that going to mean for your confidence when, like you’re on the floor and you’re simply not going to touch the ball on a different team because they don’t want to have confidence in you because they don’t know if you’re going to either shoot the ball or just give it away. Isaac Okoro is a little bit different. I think his offensive growth has been good. He had some garbage time minutes where there was some offensive production. But you need point of attack defenders like Isaac, you need guys like him. And I think that makes him a little bit more attractive than Dean Wade potentially, just because of his foot speed and his point of attack defense against guys like Jalen Brunson, Damian Lillard, you name it. These star guards that are shifty, Shay, Giddis, Alexander, right? Like these guys that are able to dribble the ball well, penetrate to the basket, all these things are physical, tough. Isaac’s your guy for those kinds of defensive setups. I think you ask a really good question though, Jimmy, about the starting lineup for next year. Right. And I’m right there with you. With getting rid of Max Drew after talking about mental toughness all summer would be the wrong move to me and it would devastate the locker room. Right. Max Struz, when George Nang and Caris Avert got booted to Atlanta, was clearly upset and that was the camaraderie that they had built. But good for him. He got on the horse and was able to make a relationship with DeAndre Hunter. But there’s also a toughness portion to that, right. George Niang wasn’t going for no BS from nobody. Right. He had that mental toughness. Caris LeVert kind of the same way, the experience. Right. But Jimmy, do you think because of Max True’s status on this team, standing with this team, understanding that he came to Cleveland knowing that he was going to be a significant piece and likely a starting player, now you have DeAndre Hunter in the fold. We talked about this a lot during the regular season. We were a little bit upset with Teddy Atkinson for not using this lineup more, especially in the playoffs. I think there was a point maybe like game three or game four, where there was a stat that came out like this potential starting lineup for next year. Darius Donovan, DeAndre Hunter, Jarrett Allen, Evan Mobley had played like 12 possessions together in the playoffs in the Eastern Conference semifinals. That to me was astounding, ridiculous even. Obviously they going in and out of these lineups with Jared Allen or Evan Mobley being substituted in for DeAndre, generally it was Jared Allen. What do you think about this potential for DeAndre to step into the starting unit next year from the get go and what that means for Max Struz, not only as a player, but not only as somebody who came here for that reason, but also just the mental toughness aspect of it with him.
Jimmy Watkins: I think Max Truce is a winner and will do everything that needs to be done to win, even if that means accept a smaller role. And by the way, if Max Struz was taken out of the starting lineup, that would not preclude him from closing games at times, which, as we have talked about in the past, is the most important, more important role. I’d rather close than start a game. I think most players would rather close and start a game. It’s got to be worth a try because what you did this year didn’t work and that’s not even close to being all Max Struus fault or all the starting lineup’s fault. Not Max Drus on the list of guys you want to get mad at for this playoff run. Max Drew stunk in Game 5, but he was pretty darn good for the rest of these playoffs. He was knocking down shots. He was making a lot of hustle plays. He was exhibiting plenty of intangibles out there. He has the right mindset. He took full accountability for everything that went wrong and he’s a leader. He will I have no, no questions about that. I will say to our point about mental toughness, I’m not saying that DeAndre Hunter doesn’t have it. I just think we have a limited sample size and he was when the Cavs were getting steamrolled out there with some, with some of these runs, he wasn’t stemming the tide like we were saying during the regular season. Just need more data on that sort of stuff. Needs, needs to be tried. At the very least, DeAndre Hunter is a key swing piece for this franchise. He is. I think Koby Altman would view him as their Aaron Gordon type acquisition, their last piece of the puzzle. He gives them versatility. He gives them an offensive jolt. As we were talking about with Evan Mobley and with DeAndre Hunters, a different conversation because he could barely grip a basketball for part of that Pacer series. But it did feel like he was the odd man out on offense at times. Again, he didn’t practice with the team a lot. It just seemed like he had to get his own for a lot. So I think there can be like with the offseason, with a full training camp, there will be more time for Kenny to when he’s putting together his vision board of what the Cavs offense looks like, include more DeAndre Hunter stuff in there. Now, part of the reason that DeAndre ends up creating shots for himself is because that’s one of his best skills. It’s okay to also just throw him the ball a little bit more. Again, what you did in those playoffs wasn’t working. So whether it’s Evan Mobley, whether it’s DeAndre Hunter, like they get, all that stuff can be on the table. We were talking about the Cavs had an offensive identity, Koby said. The Cavs discovered an offensive identity and they basically abandoned it once they got into the first hard series they encountered. Right. Like the whole, and I get it, injuries. Donovan Mitchell may have been correct in reading the room and saying, hey, this team needs everything from me that they can get. But as that series wore on, it was clear there was not a second pitch beyond Donovan Mitchell or not one that they felt as confident going to, which, again, I’m confused because Donovan Mitchell is a really good fastball, but Evan Mobley seemed like a pretty good breaking pitch. And DeAndre Hunter can be. He’s a nice change up every now and again here, too, once he’s. If he’s healthy. But you got it. You got to take a look at it at the very least with DeAndre Hunter.
Ethan Sands: We talked about a lot of this with Chris, right? And I know if he was here, he would want me to say this. He had better numbers when he was coming off the bench for DeAndre Hunter. Right. He’s a guy that played a lot of starting minutes for the Atlanta Hawks and then switched over to the bench role and almost won sixth man of the year, Right. So there is viability for bringing him off the bench. Max Schruse is a great fit when it comes to being alongside Donovan, Darius, Evan and Jarrett in the starting unit. But as Jimmy mentioned, if things aren’t working, you have to try something different. And it’s not necessarily saying that the net rating wasn’t good for the starting unit, but could it have been better? We don’t know, because the sample size with DeAndre Hunter with the starting five was very minimum. I mean, I’m just thinking about it spitballing, right? Say Max Schruse comes off the bench instead of Darius and Jarrett staying in the game. You have Donovan maxed DeAndre, Evan and who else? You have another three to throw in there. Say Sam Merrill’s still on the team. You have now two shooters, two defensive players at the point of attack. You have a true scorer in Donovan Mitchell. You have a true stopper in DeAndre Hunter who can guard the best player on the floor. Sam Barrel also wants to take that challenge. I’m not going to put it past him after his numbers this year. And then you got the rim protector of Evan Mobley. So that’s still the five out lineup. And you’re not feeling like you’re losing too much defensively. So I would use that as a second unit, too. There’s different viability. There are different roster moves, there’s different lineups that Kenny Atkinson will toy with. And that’s what I was getting at earlier in the podcast. Having him here for the entire summer is going to be extremely helpful. But you also had 82 games with these guys, and obviously they didn’t practice a whole lot. They did rest in recovery. They didn’t want to overwork them. They weren’t trying to do some of the stuff that J A Baker staff had implemented. They wanted a new culture change. We’re here, Jimmy. This is the last question I’m going to ask you, and it pertains to that. Obviously the Cavs had this minute allocation plan, they had this rest plan. They had these different plans set up coming into the season to be ready for the playoffs. Obviously there’s a little bit of luck and unluck and as, as Koby Altman was saying, multiple different times, right? Misfortune, fortune. But do you think that the Cavs need to create a different, better plan coming into this season? But the better question is what do you think from last season that you would adjust going into this next year that you feel like will help them take their game to the next level or just be ready more for the playoffs? Or again, do you just think that it comes down to luck, which I know you don’t.
Jimmy Watkins: I mean there’s certainly the way the Cavs got suffered their injuries was bad luck. That’s true. Evan Mobley stepping on Miles Turner’s ankle, that’s just a bad break, man. Donovan Mitchell turning the ankle and dealing with the calf injury, you know, that’s.
Ethan Sands: Bad break stepping on somebody in the last week of the regular season.
Jimmy Watkins: DeAndre Hunter, you know, got fouled hard. Even for getting fouled hard, he had to fall a certain way on his hand for it to go that way. That’s a bad break. Honestly, I agreed with their approach for most of the year. The idea that when it comes to injuries, yes, there’s a lot of that is out of your control, but what you can control, you should control. And it didn’t hurt them in their pursuit of regular season wins. Kenny got asked this after game five and he was talking about how, I mean, look, in a couple of situations we did have a plan to push Donovan a little bit further in some of these regular season games, but we were up by 20. Some of that stuff is going to naturally take care of itself because the Cavs were such a dominant regular season team this year. That’s a hard thing to keep up year over year. Generally speaking, just law of averages type stuff. Some of that stuff’s going to swing back a little bit. It’s hard to win 60 games two years in a row. It’s hard to be that as healthy as they were in the regular season two years in a row. Now add in the fact that we have this specter that everyone is leaving the building this season, saying nothing we do in the regular season next year matters again. Some of that stuff is going to take care of itself. I don’t think the Cavs, I think they have, they certainly have the talent to stack regular season wins again next year. But I don’t know that they will be this juggernaut because while Koby said that there was a newness and a freshness to this team because of Kenny, and again, I will just say that I want to reiterate, I agree that there’s a case to be made that internal improvement is the way to go here. The Cavs led for half the series, essentially 119, almost 120 minutes out of 240. In the Pacers, they lost by five. That’s hard to do. If you take out the game that got blown out, it’s 119 out of like 172 minutes that they were leading and they lost three of those four games. That’s hard to do. Law of averages, you might get a bounce here or there if you played this series all over again, but you didn’t. It feeds into a narrative that we have. Again, it’s not a narrative anymore. It feeds into a recurring problem that your team has shown over and over again. And so now it’s going to be really hard to summon the same level of intensity, aggression regular season. If everyone knows that nothing that we do in the regular season can change anyone’s mind, then obviously I think it’s human nature for there to be a little bit of a drop off next year. They’ll still have plenty of people to prove wrong. There’ll still be plenty of motivation for them. I’m not saying this is like going to go south or anything like that. I’m just saying that I think they might save up a little bit more of that energy for the playoffs, which is how it should be, and we’ll see how it works out.
Ethan Sands: You talked about it a little bit there, Jimmy. They’re still going to try and pursue the number one seed, especially with the Boston Celtics not knowing exactly what they’re going to do this offseason. Milwaukee and Giannis not knowing how that’s going to pan out. And they understood the value of being the number one, number two seed, right? Home court advantage is huge. But then in the Eastern Conference semifinals, you lose three games at home. So I think the understanding has to be that there are changes that need to be made. Whether that’s internally, whether that’s externally. My thing is the only excuse that I didn’t like that Toby Altman made because this dates back to what he said last year. He reiterated something that literally he was like, oh, this is only year three or year two at the time of the core four. Then he said it this year, this is only year three of the core four. Obviously Jimmy mentioned it referencing the Boston Celtics who took seven years to do these things. Right. And I wrote about this a little bit in my article about Evan Mobley. Kawhi Leonard didn’t become a 20 point scorer until year five of his career. Giannis made all NBA team in year four. Anthony Davis didn’t truly carry a team in the playoffs until his sixth season and they didn’t even get out of the semifinals. Right. So there is this trajectory that the Cavs are on, but there also feels like there’s a slight complacency because sure you had this core group that’s now been together for three years. Oh, but we added a new coach. The new coach got you to 64 wins in one of the best offenses in NBA history. So the translation into the playoffs shouldn’t be an excuse. Right? You had all this time to work it out. I understand it’s a new wrinkle. I understand Kenny Atkinson did not have the same amount of playoff experience as Rick Carlisle. Remember what Jimmy was saying earlier, if you want to compare the players times in the playoffs, sure Miles Turner has a lot more experience than some of the Cavs players, but other than that, their key guys weren’t that often in the playoffs either. The two real big collision course that they were on that the Indiana Pacers had the advantage on was coaching Riccarl Kenny Atkinson. Kenny Atkinson is a great coach, tactical genius. But Rick Carlisle was able to figure out how he ticked because of their relationship. But also just knowing how to coach the game in the playoffs. It’s something that everybody has to take into account. And I think Koby Altman, he said a lot of good things for the Cavs today, but I think you can’t keep going. Oh, it’s only year blank, right. Especially when you have this championship window as he said was wide open to me. I think you got to do it in the next two years if you’re going to do it. We had this conversation on a different podcast. I think if they can get over the hump, it has to come in the next two years. Especially with all of the movement going on in the Eastern Conference. And you never know injury wise how things are going to shape out. So the importance is to take advantage of A core that you have until maybe you realize that the core that you have isn’t getting the job done and you have to go away from it.
Jimmy Watkins: Evan Mobley is a great reason for optimism for this franchise. Your points about the late bloomer guys or the late herbloomer guys, the Anthony Davis is of the world. That’s someone that Evan Mobley gets compared to an awful lot. His offensive game was developing behind his defensive game. That’s all great, but the clock is ticking. The Donovan clock is ticking. The second apron clock is ticking. And you don’t know, obviously it looks like right now the Cavs even, you know, let’s say Donovan either, you know, they have to trade him down the road or they resign him and he’s just an all star instead of an all NBA guy. As much as much as it seems like Donovan, Evan Mobley, Darius Garland could play together for the next five years, you just never know. The Boston Celtics two weeks ago thought that they had a fricking five year window again. And even they, the defending champions who were favored to win the east again, were thinking about, yeah, we were going to have to make some, some decisions with our roster because of the second apron. Even they were thinking that way regardless of what happens in the playoffs. And obviously Tatum’s injury adds another wrinkle to that. But I’m just telling you, it can change on a dime. Most teams don’t have a wide championship window. No matter how wide you think it is, it’s always a little bit more narrow than that. And again, I will just say this to close here. Championship window. You’ve never been out of the second round. I get what you’re saying. It’s a contention window right now. Championship window. You gotta win two playoff series before we can start using that word. Just my two cents.
Ethan Sands: Gotta end this with some background knowledge on the CBA and on the second apron, which the Cavs are in. Especially since we talked about Evan Moatley so much. Evan Mobley signed a max extension last summer with a Rolls rule provision that pays him 30% of the cap if he wins Defensive player of the year, which he did, or if he makes an all NBA team. So he could do both this season.
Jimmy Watkins: He’s going to do both, right?
Ethan Sands: It just depends on if it’s first team or second team. And that adds nearly $8 million to his cap hit. Next year he was projected to make 38.7 million. He’s going to be up to $46.4 million. Also, the Cavs are $27.3 million over the projected 2026 luxury tax line with only 10 players under contract. So the Cavs will be roughly $34 million over the tax and $15 million over the projected second apron line of 207 PER. And we talked about this, but I’m going to briefly go through it really quickly. The second apron. It means that the Cavs can’t sign any free agents for more than the minimum, can’t make any trades that aggregate salary or take on more money than is sent out, can’t sign and trade their free agents, and can’t use cash in trades to incentivize salary dumps. So all of the big moves that we were trying to talk about, that’s why Koby Altman was talking about how hard it’s going to be to make those and maybe marginal moves is where they have to stay. But the summer is long and we’ll have to see what the Cavs end up doing. But with all that being said, that’ll wrap up today’s episode of the Wine and Gold Talk podcast. But remember to become a Cavs insider and interact with Chris, me and Jimmy by subscribing to Subtext. We know you miss Chris on today’s episode. He was on daddy duty and he’ll be back tomorrow for a hey Chris episode to send in your questions so we can answer them and to have your voice heard, maybe even a shout out on the podcast, sign up for a 14 day free trial or visit cleveland.comcavs and click on the blue bar at the top of the page. If you don’t like it, that’s fine. All you have to do is text the words stop. It’s easy, but we can tell you that the people who sign up stick around because this is the best way to get insider coverage on Cavs from me, Chris and Jimmy. This isn’t just our podcast, it’s your podcast. And the only way to have your voice heard is through subtext. Y’ all be safe. We out.
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