Cavs’ Core Intact? Insider Preaches Calm Amid Trade Rumors

June 10, 2025

You’ve heard the rumors and allegations. They say the Cavaliers must trade All-Star point guard Darius Garland to Team X or Y. They demand that the Cavs get better defensively. They want to know why the Indiana Pacers, and not the Cavs, are in the NBA Finals.

All fair points. But also fairly panic-induced and perhaps even lacking reason and perspective. ESPN insider Tim Bontemps tried to bring some of both when addressing the state of the team with Ken Carman and Anthony Lima on 92.3 The Fan.

So, does Garland need to be traded?

“No, I don’t think he has to be,” Bontemps said. “I think the Cavs have to become a more capable team defensively on the perimeter, which doesn’t mean they have to get rid of him. I do think they need to upgrade (and find) guys who can defend on the perimeter.

“When you saw the way Indiana attacked them in that second-round series … that was a question I had about this team all the way through. It was a problem that came up in that series.”

And that is hardly all on Garland, who played with a left toe injury that eventually required surgery.

“Darius Garland was not really healthy at any point in that series,” Bontemps noted. “I’m sure the Cavs would argue that if he were healthy, they could’ve potentially outscored the Pacers in that series. And they might’ve been able to — the Cavs had an unbelievable offensive team all season long.”

That said, there have been whispers that Evan Mobley can’t be all he could become with two All-Star guards in Garland and Donovan Mitchell in the same lineup. Sounds silly, right? Bontemps thinks so.

“I don’t think the argument to trade a guy is that we have too many good offensive players,” he said. “The argument should be if you want Evan Mobley to have the ball more, find ways to get him the ball more. He took very meaningful strides forward this year offensively. There’s still room for him to grow into the player that the Cavs hope he can be.

“He’s a guy who could be truly a top five-ish player in the league. … I would say that he’s on a very good path right now, and I wouldn’t say that you need to trade another good offensive player (for Mobley’s usage to increase).”

Along with all that, trading Garland (or Jarrett Allen) right now may not come close to getting you what you’d want in return.

“Here’s what I would say: There’s a lot of point guards in the league, and there are a lot of centers in the league,” Bontemps said. “So if you’re trying to trade for defensive length, you’re probably not trading for value if you’re trading a point guard.

“So I think part of the thing about the way the Cavs are built is that, you know, you could argue that they have two point guards and two centers. Now, Evan Mobley is kind of a combo big, Donovan Mitchell is a combo guard. But they essentially have two point guards, or two lead guards, and two centers.

“So if you start asking what should the Cavs do trade-wise, you’re probably not going to get the value back that you think you should get because of the positional value of where things are at around the league. If you’re trying to trade Darius Garland today, his value is probably not what it could be.”

Given the remarkable regular season under first-year coach Kenny Atkinson, and the fact that the Cavaliers’ core is still relatively young, the best option again may be to just stand pat.

“The Cavs just won 64 games and had one of the best seasons in the history of the franchise, they lost in the second round to what is a very good Pacers team, and one of their better players was compromised the whole series in Darius Garland,” Bontemps said. “I would say a reasonable thing to do is to try to upgrade on the margins, run it back next year, see how the team looks, and then go from there.”

Bontemps went on to emphasize that the worst thing the Cavaliers could probably do is make a panic move.

“It’s not like the Lakers, and you’ve got LeBron James at 40, and you’ve got one last gasp at breaking through,” he said. “The Cavs’ (best players) are all in their 20s, they’re all under contract, there’s a ton of runway with the team. So I don’t think this should be a massive panic situation. But it does bring up some interesting questions about how the season ended, how you should approach the summer and how you should approach next season.”

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