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After LeBron's departure, the Cavaliers have had a very quiet offseason. They extended Kevin Love to consolidate his value, but have otherwise largely stood pat, and the above three remain with the team despite their large contracts. Each of these contracts runs through 2020, yet each also has a very large expiring portion on their 2019/20 salary, making them essentially expiring if so desired. This in theory also gives them good trade value, as those salaries can be used to facilitate trades. Given their inaction, it remains to be seen what strategy the Cavaliers will choose to employ to find a path back to competitiveness; right now, it appears as though the aim is to tread water until next summer. And with that in mind, if any or all of these three make it beyond the February trade deadline with the team, they all become very strong candidates for March buyouts.
Kyle Korver SF - 6’7, 212lbs - 37 years old - 15 years of experience
The usual stuff for Korver. A lot of motion, a lightning quick release, a lot of made threes, absolutely no ball handling except for the occasional single escape dribble when chased down well, and plenty of defensive activity.
It is to his very great credit that he is able to keep up these levels of activity and motion with 15 years of tread on the tyres, especially since those 15 years have all been spent running away from defenders. He is showing no signs of significant slow-down, and just returned pretty much exactly the same campaign this season as last.
Thing is, down the stretch of the season, the consistency of it all was Korver’s individual undoing. In the NBA Finals, a well coached, well scouted, high IQ Golden State Warriors team knew which screens Korver was to be run off and when, and gave him no room to breathe as he came off of them. If he is not running off of down screens and whatnot, Korver is just sort of standing there – considering that this is also what J.R. Smith and George Hill were so often doing alongside him, this became a big problem.
As weakside shooters go, Korver is great, but he not should be limited to just that. The Cavaliers couldn’t get him open enough. If LeBron stays, diversification of this playbook so as to better get looks for Korver should be a part of the process. And if LeBron goes, Korver should go too. He will have a good many suitors, naturally.
Player Plan: Two years and $15,060,000 remaining, with only $11 million of that remainder guaranteed. As with Hill, that unguaranteed portion has more trade value this year than next year, should they go that route — unlike with Hill, however, Korver is wanted, and playing up to the value of his contract. I imagine he plays it out.
Kyle Korver SG/SF, 6’7, 212lbs, 36 years old, 14 years of experience
Not the impact that was hoped for. Still putting in effort to get open, but is getting slower, and the margins are very tight between being slightly open and not being open at all. Korver’s acquisition did not help with the team’s consistently poor transition defence, as his was as bad as anybody’s, and the only way to redeem the value given up in the first round pick will be to re-sign him, despite his age.
Player Plan: Expiring $5,239,437 salary, and although a first round pick was just spent to bring him in, his age, his slowing speed, his poor transition defence and how easy he seems to have become to defend may not mean getting much beyond that going forward. Worth re-signing, especially with Bird rights to do it, but doing so does not suffice alone.
[...] Instead, they got more shooters. They gave more roster spots to LeBron’s friends, heaped up on wings, left themselves without a tertiary playmaker, trusted Chris Andersen’s knees would suddenly lose ten years of wear and tear, and brought back pretty much the same already-aging unit as last year, except this time without any backup point guards or centres. They entered the season with little rim protection, with Channing Frye at backup centre, with no backup point guard except a young Kay Felder who they promptly did not trust with rotation minutes, and ultimately put themselves in a situation where Kyle Korver, Richard Jefferson and James Jones took up three roster spots to do pretty much the same thing.
Although they spend most of their assets before and during the season on marginal shooting improvements, Cleveland did nonetheless obtain a top three shooter in the world in the form of Kyle Korver. It was the ridiculousness of Korver that looked as though it had bailed the Cavaliers out, his three-pointer putting them up 119-118 on an after-timeout play that briefly stopped a nasty rot. That option is always there. Korver is always there. He needs only one screen and half a second. A shooting team has an elite shooter. Why, therefore, did they only once use him while Rome burned around him, and never once in open play?
Only Kyle Korver, then, provided good quality outside shooting. Yet he himself was handcuffed by that. Too many Bulls possessions involved Rose or Watson pounding the ball at the top for 14 seconds, waiting for Korver to get over off of staggered screens, then having to improvise after Kyle is unable to do so. By being the only good shooter, he was the only player defenses had to play as a shooter. All too often, Korver would come off the screen on the wing, and face a double. All he could do then was refeed the point guard. And nothing would come of it. Korver did his thing anyway, hitting 120 three pointers at 41.5%, but he and the whole offense would have been helped by extra spacers.12 Attempts to get J.J. Redick for this role were an unsuccessful acknowledgement of such.
Lords Of The Unguaranteed this offseason were Chicago. The contracts they gave to all three of C.J. Watson, Ronnie Brewer and Kyle Korver all have unguaranteed third seasons. Watson's and Brewer's are evidential of the aforementioned delayed-team-option thing, fully unguaranteed contracts that become fully guaranteed if not waived on or before July 10th. Korver's is different; he has $500,000 in guaranteed compensation, yet has no contract guarantee date (save for the league-wide guarantee date of January 10th), and will thus be an incredibly useful trade chip that summer because of reason 3 above. It is largely for this reason that unguaranteed contracts are so en vogue right now.
[...] That leaves a market with few shooters on it. And those that are good shooters are either unsuitable or unavailable. Mike Miller's days of being able to defend opposing guards are pretty much over. Kyle Korver can't really do it either. I wouldn't want Quentin Richardson to attempt it. Anthony Morrow is desirable, but is not easy to get. J.J. Redick is also desirable, but he's restricted, and owned by a team who has spent extremely generously in the last two years. Roger Mason is OK, but he's no starter. And then there's Ray Allen, who, while an absolutely perfect fit for Chicago's roster, is setting records for Boston in the NBA Finals. He should be considered unavailable until further notice.
