The Cleveland Cavaliers are the TEAM TO BEAT in the East! | Cavs TRIED to TRADE for Kevin Durant?!

The Cleveland Cavaliers are the TEAM TO BEAT in the East! | Cavs TRIED to TRADE for Kevin Durant?!

on today’s show the offseason is here and it’s a big one for the Cavs because something that happened in game seven means the East better run through Cleveland next year that’s all straight ahead on today’s edition of Locked on Cavs you are Locked on Cavs your daily Cleveland Cavaliers podcast part of the Locked On podcast network your team every day what’s up everybody my name is Danny Cunningham you might know me from my time covering the Cleveland Cavaliers places like my substack The Inside Shot Cleveland Magazine 923 The Fan and a number of other stops along the way i want to say thank you to you for making Locked on Cavs your first listen today and every day you can find the show anywhere you get your podcasts Apple Spotify anywhere else make sure you drop us a fivestar rating leave us a nice review of course be a friend tell a friend about Lockdown Cavs make sure you’re subscribed make sure a friend is subscribed as well and if you’re watching the show on YouTube do me a favor hit that thumbs up button for me click subscribe and hit that notification bell so you don’t miss the latest locked on caps content proud part of the Locked On podcast network your team every day of course today’s show brought to you by Monarch Money take control of your finances with Monarch Money use code lockdown NBA at monarchmoney.com for 50% off your first year the offseason is here for all 30 teams the NBA finals concluded on Sunday night and I had a episode essentially taped i had a bunch of stuff that I wanted to say and then I was going to use the third segment to talk about what the finals meant the results of the finals at least what that meant for the Cleveland Cavaliers and then the first quarter starts Pacers get off to a good start tyrese Hallebertton scores nine points in the first seven minutes and goes down with a right Achilles injury and I am going to assume based on what it looked like on the floor based on the reaction based on the way that this is being handled that Tyres Hallebertton and tore his Achilles tendon and it’s very unfortunate i think it’s a heartbreaking injury for a guy that I think if there was a NBA playoff MVP Tyrese Hallebertton might win that award this year like think about how the NHL does it where they don’t have a finals MVP they have a postseason MVP i think Hallebertton might have gotten that award for how good he had been for the Pacers this year but he is of course now going to be out I would assume most of if not all of next season and that is going to make the Indiana Pacers a very different team they’re not going to be a team without Tyresese Hallebertton that is capable of going back to the finals they’re not going to be a pushover they’re not going to be terrible they’ll be fine but they’re not going to be a championship contender next year without Tyrese Hallebertton that is the unfortunate reality of the situation and Hallebertton’s injury is heartbreaking it It really is it sucks you hate to see it but you also add it to the list because Damen Lillard same thing happened i don’t think Milwaukee was very good this year did not think Milwaukee was going to be very good next year before that injury happened but I think Damen Lillard having his Achilles tendon tear cemented them next season as not being very good jason Tatum of course in the conference semi-finals he tears his Achilles he’s going to miss most of if not all of next season the Boston Celtics will be good next year but they will not be a team that is a true threat to get out of the Eastern Conference so I say all of that to say this the Cavs this year had a great situation to go out and win the East they failed to do so they came up terribly short they did not come anywhere near their postseason expectations but now the real pressure is on them i think that the way this happened on Sunday not Oklahoma City winning because I do think the Thunder were for most of the year the best team in the NBA you probably say the first month and a half of the season it was the Cavs considering they started 15-0 it’s probably a fair fair thing to say there but from that point on I think it’s fair to say OKC was the best team very worthy champion but in the Eastern Conference next year the Cavs are going to be the favorites and I think it was one thing to say “Oh the Cavs are going to be the favorites but they have to get past an Indiana team that beat them the year before.” Because you know if Tyrese Hallebertton would have been healthy the Pacers were going to be very good again next year and be a very formidable challenge not only for the Cavs but everybody else in the Eastern Conference but now the Eastern Conference is a bunch of unproven teams the New York Knicks I don’t think were the typical level of a normal conference finalist and I don’t think the New York Knicks thought they were considering they fired their head coach after they did after they reached the conference finals they showed Tom Fibido the door that tells me they didn’t think they were actually that close to being a championship contender the Orlando Magic have not gotten out of the first round they haven’t they’ve not proven that they can be a true playoff winner i’ve got serious questions about their offense i think it’s fair to until you see it you can keep going down the list the Pacers are not going to be great next year they’ll be fine they’re not going to be great the same can be said for Boston the Miami Heat are not going to be very good the Milwaukee Bucks as I mentioned not going to be very good you can look up and down the Eastern Conference and it’s really difficult outside of the Cavs the Knicks and the Orlando Magic right now to make a true case for any other team to come out of the East and I think that while none of those three teams are perfect I do think that the Cavs are certainly the best of that bunch and I would pick them to beat and of course it is 11:33 on June 22nd right now so there is a lot that can change between now and next postseason but the pressure is on the Cavs because they’re not going to have an opportunity quite what like this one maybe ever again this is how it was when LeBron was here the second time where they were such heavy favorites to get out of the Eastern Conference every year and sports gambling was not as widespread at that point at least not publicly accepted at that point is probably a better way to put it so I don’t know what the line was or or what the odds were for them to win the Eastern Conference or to win the finals at the start of the season certainly probably would be lower than what it is right now considering those teams had LeBron and these Cavs teams are improving but the Cavs are going to be the favorites on FanDuel on every sports book you can find to win the Eastern Conference they are going to be the number two team to win the NBA Finals behind Oklahoma City the Thunder are going to be the favorites the Thunder should be the favorites but that brings forth a lot of pressure the Cavs are in a situation where they’ve not proven they can actually get it done in the playoffs but we are entering a specific point in time where they’re not an old team by any stretch of the imagination but they’re not a bunch of young pups either they have guys that have sort of been there they’ve been to the second round of the playoffs they’ve come up short they’ve got their playoff scars at this point i think that’s a fair way to look at it they are at a point now in their trajectory where if they don’t make the finals next year it’s not a success it’s not that’s where the Cavs are they are going to be heavy favorites in the Eastern Conference because one they’re really good they won 64 games and and came up short of course in the postseason but they were are still a really good team that doesn’t just go away because they didn’t succeed in the playoffs the way that we thought they would but two because the rest of the Eastern Conference is in shambles it is i cannot think of an Eastern Conference that is going to be or that has been maybe weaker than what next season’s East projects to look like and of course things can change between now and then there will be trades i suspect there are going to be a lot of them this week there was one of them on Sunday that I’m going to talk about in a minute but I don’t know how many moves out there are that can turn a bunch of teams in the Eastern Conference that right now I don’t view as contenders into contenders i don’t know what trades are out there that’s going to change the way that I feel about the East or that you feel about the East i think we are at a point right now where the fourth best team in the Eastern Conference are the Detroit Pistons and I really like Detroit’s young core but I don’t take them seriously next year as a championship contender maybe two years from now but they’re not at this point yet i really do think that if the Cavs don’t win the East next year and I understand that it sounds a little ridiculous to put these expectations on them before free agency starts before the NBA draft on Wednesday even gets here but that’s kind of what happened on Sunday night when Tyrese Hallebertton went down yes incredibly sad i feel very badly for him considering that if this was not the NBA finals he would have been nowhere near a basketball floor because he very clearly was dealing with that calf injury that turned into everybody’s worst nightmare and it’s it’s it’s terrible there’s it’s really hard to put into words how much that stinks but if you look at this from a Cavs angle that injury I think and there was a lot of pressure on this team already but that injury ramped it up another couple degrees because if the Cavs don’t win the East this upcoming year I don’t know that they’re ever going to have a better chance moving forward they’re really good they need to find a way to get better because this opportunity is probably better than any opportunity they’re going to get not to say they need it to be the best opportunity possible but it would feel like an opportunity wasted if it doesn’t happen now the Cavs were mentioned on the other big thing that happened on Sunday that other big thing Kevin Durant the Cavs were a wildcard team according to ESPN of course they didn’t get them but what does their involvement in the KD sweep stakes say about where the Cavs are at we’re going to talk about that next right here on Locked on Cavs today’s show brought to you by Ollipop i am somebody that I love soda and Ollipop is a new kind of soda and I have been drinking uh pop as we call it we don’t typically call it soda we call it pop in Northeast Ohio um I’ve been drinking pop my whole life i have been um it is a guilty pleasure of mine if you will sometimes there’s just nothing better than that cool crisp refreshing taste that you can get but there is almost always something better for you well what if I told you you could mix 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Lollipop right now by just buying any two cans in store and they will reimburse you for one head to drinkolipop.com/lockdown NBA to claim your free can and find Olop near you again that is drinklyop.comnba thank you again for making Lock on Cabs your first listen today and every day you can find us anywhere you get your podcast Apple Spotify or anywhere else and Sunday afternoon news broke that the Phoenix Suns traded Kevin Durant to the Houston Rockets durant was traded in exchange for Jaylen Green Dylan Brooks the number 10 pick in Wednesday’s draft and five second round picks and of course that doesn’t pertain to the Cavs other than the fact that this could have been an opportunity for the Eastern Conference to get stronger maybe Kevin Durant would have been traded to Miami would that have made the Heat more formidable maybe a little bit i don’t think it would have like turned them into some contender because I think that Heat roster is very very flawed anyways but nonetheless another superstar stays out west so that is one impact on the Cavs but number two was if you read the report by ESPN’s Shams Shirania he talked about the wild card teams in the Kevin Durant sweep stakes and he mentioned the Denver Nuggets he mentioned the LA Clippers and he mentioned the Cleveland Cavaliers and I don’t necessarily know what the avenue would have looked like for the Cavs to get Kevin Durant i really think that while it’s likely they made calls here because I do think that this is a front office that does its due diligence um and I don’t think that they land somebody like Donovan Mitchell via trade unless they’re doing their due diligence because if you think back to that time the Cavs were never mentioned as a potential trade partner with the Utah Jazz when they traded for Donovan so I do think that Kobe and the rest of that front office are going to make the call when guys become available and I suspect that’s what happened with Kevin Durant now I don’t know what a trade would have looked like because the Cavs are in the second apron they would have needed to aggregate salaries in order to get Kevin Durant being a second apron team they cannot be in the second apron and aggregate salaries so would they have traded for Kevin Durant they would have had to shed a significant amount of money i don’t necessarily know that it’s possible i don’t know that that would have been worth it for Kevin Durant that’s not the point here the point here is that the Cavs are being aggressive that is what you should take away from this is that the Cavs are being aggressive just by being tied to Kevin Durant even though they were never going to get him I don’t think that the Cavs were ever going to be able to trade for Kevin Durant but the fact that they saw that as an opportunity to get better the fact that they thought they needed to get better the fact that they’re willing to see what it would take to play ball in that type of trade situation I think should be looked at as a good sign for the Cavs i do because this is the team and I just talked about how the opportunity right now in the Eastern Conference is better than it may ever be for the Cavs this could be and I I suspect Evan Mobley is gonna have a very long very prosperous NBA career and I would think a lot of it if not all of it’s going to be in Cleveland with the Cavaliers this could be the best chance that he has to win the Eastern Conference and it’s not to say that he won’t win it multiple times with the Cavs because that could happen certainly but the way that East is shaking out this is a real opportunity and of course all of this stuff happened before Tyrese Hallebertton’s injury on Sunday night in game seven against the Thunder but for the Cavs to be connected to Durant and again I don’t think this was ever going to happen but for them to be connected to Durant it tells you that they know running it back completely and totally is probably not the avenue that they should be trying to go down they should probably be trying to make changes to the roster whether they’re big changes like adding a Kevin Durant certainly would be or smaller changes on the edges the Cavs are in a spot where they need to shake things up at least a little bit and I do take this just being mentioned again in these talks i do take this as a good sign i take this as a sign that the Cavs know one what the opportunity in front of them is and two that what they had previously was not good enough they need to become a postseason team does adding Kevin Durant make you a postseason team i don’t know i think that his track record aside from being with the Warriors would tell you no it doesn’t and I don’t know that KD would have necessarily been a great fit here for as much of a talent as he is but the the thing that you should be taking away from this is just that the Cavs were mentioned because this is going to be from everything that we have heard from anybody who talks about the NBA is what this is going to be a wild couple of weeks the NBA draft is Wednesday and Thursday of this week and then of course free agency is at the start of July and there’s been a lot of conversation speculation about the next 10 days or so and how much moving and shaking there’s going to be across the NBA and that is something that I do think can benefit the Cavs and one thing that I look at here and maybe I do wonder too is as as part of the Cavs being a wild card here is if they were making calls to potentially be a third team to help facilitate a deal and that is an area where the Cavs have had some success in terms of building the roster if you think about how they acquired Jared Allen they were the fourth team in a deal they jumped in which was also a deal that sort of affected Kevin Durant because that was a James Harden trade but they jumped in and they got Jared Allen for very very cheap at the time just I believe in Milwaukee Bucks first round pick they got which was the 30th overall pick in the draft if I’m not mistaken but they jumped in and they got Jared Allen as an add-on to just make things work could I see situations where they do that could that be something as part of this trade i don’t know probably not my instant thought was because I don’t know if Dylan Brooks is going to play a game for the Phoenix Suns my instant thought was I wonder if the Cavs could trade for Dylan Brooks like does Jared Allen for Dylan Brooks work and of course Dylan Brooks makes about a million and a half more than Jared Allen this year so you can’t trade that one for one which makes this a much more difficult exercise because Dylan Brooks is certainly not a player that is worth cutting salary that much salary for in finding your way into the first apron as opposed to the second so that is a thing that I would be surprised at but I do think now as we are going to start to see maybe as soon as today we are going to start to see more moves in the NBA i think this is going to be a crazy week i think that the next two weeks are going to be very very crazy weeks but I do think the Cavs are going to be an aggressive team as far as things go right now i think they’re going to be a team that whether or not they are the ones trading for the star players in a deal I would doubt but I do think that they’re going to be the ones that are trying to help make things happen for other teams and by trying to help make things happen for other teams they can get better in the short term if they can make a move that maybe a a team doesn’t want a certain player in a trade the Cavs can take that player on if they feel as if he’s going to help them if it fits in for them financially that is a thing that I think would make a lot of sense for the Cavs to do of course we don’t know who these players would be we don’t know what trades are going to happen but the fact that they were connected even just as a wild card in a deal that I don’t think was ever going to happen just the fact that they were connected to Kevin Durant I think is a really good sign if you’re looking for Kobe Alman and the rest of this Cavs front office to be aggressive this postseason the fact that they were listed as a wild card for Kevin Durant I think is a really really really good sign now on tomorrow’s show I’m going to talk a little bit about things that I think do need to happen this off seasonason for the Cavs but I want to talk a little bit about Evan Mobley leading into that conversation next right here on Locked on Cavs today’s show is brought to you by Monarch Money do you ever check your bank account and wonder where did all my money go between dining out online shopping entertainment it can be easy to lose track of all that cash well that’s where Monarch Money comes in because they’ll be your personal CFO giving you full visibility and control over your finances monarch Money not just a budgeting app it is a complete financial command center where you can track all your 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locked on Cavs content so I said I was going to talk about it immobily well I changed my mind i’m going to talk about that on tomorrow’s show i want to talk about what the Cavs are perceived as nationally because I do think that we’re in a space right now where a significant chunk of the fan base is down on the Cavs and maybe that’ll change as time rolls along but I do think it’s worth remembering here what things look like nationally so the Cavs went into Sunday with the second best odds on FanDuel to win the NBA title in 2026 those odds were plus 900 and then the Houston Rockets traded for Kevin Durant they acquired him from the Phoenix Suns i went over the trade earlier in this and we talked about KD and the Cavs at that point the Rockets jumped ahead of the Cavs because that it’s a little bit of an overreaction and then Tyresese Hallebertton gets hurt in game seven and the assumption of course is that he’s going to miss all of if not most of next season and the Pacers will not be the same threat in the postseason next year that they were this year so then the Cavs went back in front and the Cavs got down as low as minus 650 to win the title next year and as I record this it’s around 1:00 in the morning on Monday June 23rd just for to time stamp this the Cavs are plus 800 to win the title next year that is the second best odds in basketball behind only Oklahoma City and the market is now opened for the Eastern Conference winner the Cavs are the favorites at plus 270 followed by the New York Knicks at plus 300 the Orlando Magic at plus 410 the Boston Celtics at plus 460 and then there’s a giant drop off between Boston and Philadelphia i think some of that stuff for Boston baked in there’s maybe Jason Tatum could be back i wouldn’t necessarily expect that but it could happen but I say all of that to say this i’m going to echo a lot of what I said in the first segment here but this is an opportunity that the Cavs need to take advantage of this is their year there’s no more well it’s just another step in the development there’s no more we were a year early no that stuff is gone right now this upcoming year is the year for the Cavs i’m not saying they’re going to win the title but I think anything short of reaching the NBA Finals is a failure and I think that’s how we should be operating with how we talk about this team with how we judge this team and of course I know that the interest in the regular season is not going to be the same as it was barring them winning 74 games next year because it’s going to be a team that needs to prove it in the playoffs and that is exactly what they need to do but this is an opportunity I think for them to within the constraints of the Second Apron go out and be aggressive now is the time for the Cavs to push all of their chips in i don’t know exactly what moves Kobe Alman’s going to be able to make the Kevin Durant stuff tells me they’re going to be aggressive tells me that they are going to want to get better that they’re going to be a team that goes into this summer knowing what is at stake for them next postseason everything they should be doing between now and next April should be about getting this team to the finals because I recognize it if you’re watching this video or listening to this via podcast you probably recognize it i think a lot of people on social media recognize it fanduel recognizes it this is a massive massive door that’s been opened for the Cavs i think regardless of the outcome tonight the Cavs would have been favorites but I do think the Pacers would have been obviously right there in the end and that would have been a tough challenge for the Cavs i don’t think that’s going to be the case anymore the Cavs at this point should be considered the favorites and anything anything other than reaching the finals next year is not going to be good enough that is evident on June 23rd that’s a lot of pressure to play under that’s a pressure the Cavs are going to have to live with all season but they have an opportunity I think unlike anyone they’ve had without LeBron on the roster probably in franchise history and it’s an opportunity they might not ever get again and it’s one they absolutely cannot afford to squander thank you for making Lock on Cabs today your first listen thank you for making it your first listen every day like I said earlier you can find the show anywhere you get your podcast apple Spotify anywhere else make sure you drop us a fivestar rating leave us a nice review of course be a friend tell a friend about Act on Calavs make sure you’re subscribed make sure a friend is subscribed as well and if you’re watching the show on YouTube hit that thumbs up button for me as we get out of here click subscribe and hit that notification bell and I will be back tomorrow talking about what the Cavs need to do this off seasonason to make sure they get to the finals

On this episode of Locked On Cavs, Danny Cunningham (The Inside Shot, 92.3 The Fan, Cleveland Magazine) examines the Cleveland Cavaliers’ improved prospects for the upcoming NBA season. He analyzes the impact of Tyrese Haliburton’s Achilles injury and other setbacks to key Eastern Conference players, highlighting the unprecedented opportunity for the Cavs to dominate. Cunningham discusses the team’s reported interest in the Kevin Durant trade, interpreting it as a sign of their aggressive approach to improvement. He explores the Cavaliers’ potential strategies for capitalizing on their position, including involvement in multi-team trades. The podcast concludes with an analysis of the Cavs’ updated odds to win the NBA title and Eastern Conference, emphasizing the pressure on the team to reach the NBA Finals in what Cunningham describes as a “massive door that’s been opened for the Cavs.”
Check out Danny’s Substack, The Inside Shot: https://theinsideshot.substack.com/
Email the show: LOCavsmailbag@gmail.com
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