Is Cleveland The Mystery Team Of My Dreams?

It’s a new day, which of course that means there’s more coming out surrounding Jimmy Butler. What you thought football meant that we could take some time off from Woj alerts? Wake up. Last night I talked about how at the end of the day I hope Butler goes to some mystery team we haven’t even heard about. The this morning Woj came out with his initial list of teams that called MIN and they consisted of Brooklyn, Detroit, Houston, the LA Clippers, Miami, Philadelphia, and Portland. I would say Portland was the only one that was a bit of a surprise.

But now, now that we have word that Dan Gilbert and Glen Taylor are talking, I feel like I’m almost ready to put CLE as a favorite to land Butler. As we know these two already pulled off the Wiggins/Love deal, and it would make a whole lot of sense as to why Gilbert gave Love all that money instead of blowing it all up post LeBron. Gilbert has made it clear he’s rather live in NBA purgatory than truly blow it up and start from scratch, and now that LeBron is out of the East, I don’t blame him for that line of thinking.  I would say Sexton/Butler/Love is a hell of a lot better than what they were working with the first time they had to rebuild. So what could Gilbert have offered? Well let’s look at what type of salaries the Cavs are dealing with

Butler is at about 19-20M, so there are a couple options. If you believe the rumors that PHX is trying to snag Tyrus Jones, that means MIN is going to be in the PG market. What if they did something like Cedi/Hill/Picks? Or maybe Cedi/Clarkson/Picks? Those are probably not deals MIN fans want to hear, but I think it’s time to accept you may not be getting a Kawhi type of package for Butler. It also wouldn’t shock me if the Cavs were maybe also trying to unload Tristan Thompson or JR’s money either. I would say the only untouchables are obviously Love and Sexton, and if they were able to pull it off I would feel comfortable in saying that trio should have the Cavs in a Top 8 seed, especially in the wide open East.

My guess is we’re only a day or two away from the official Woj Trade Bomb from dropping, but I think it’s time we all start putting a little more stock in CLE’s chances.