Any chance a team has  to acquire a proven NBA star they do it without blame being handed their way. The NBA is a star-driven league. Say what you want about a team like the San Antonio Spurs and their ball movement, but they have three Hall of Famers on their roster. A lot of this gets lost in the analysis. So when the Cleveland Cavaliers had the chance to acquire Kevin Love to pair with Kyrie Irving and Lebron James, they had to give up young, unproven yet good potential assets to do it. An NBA title window for a team closes up so quickly. With free agency, salary cap and a strict luxury tax teams had to jump over the opportunity to acquire Love.

Now let’s speed things up. Thee Cavaliers traded Anthony Bennett and Andrew Wiggins to the Minnesota Timberwolves for Kevin Love. NBA trades are always interesting and I have always wondered what goes on in a general managers mind when making or answering these phone calls. I can only imagine being the in the Timberwolves shoes knowing they lost another superstar. But as of right now they have the upper hand in this trade.

The logic for the Cavaliers trading for Love made total sense. Three proven players, one is a two-time NBA champion and the best player on the planet, the other is a young star while you have another cleaning up the backboard and can stretch the floor. But this league is a copycat league, having three stars seems to be the best ingredient to succeed. I understand it, the possibility of re-creating the Miami Heat paradigm with this trio compared to what the Heat had makes sense and who wouldn’t. 

So much gets forgotten when it comes to constructing a team but it is easy to see the flaw in this Cavaliers team where retaining Andrew Wiggins would have help. The Cavaliers still have their issues to work out on the offensive end and it is very similar to what the Miami Heat went through. Trying to spread the ball around to all three of your stars happy is a pretty hard task. But one thing the Miami Heat, the San Antonio Spurs and even the Boston Celtics when they had their big three was they emphasized defense. It was a staple with these team, the ability to create stops while generate points in transition.

Earlier this month, the Cavs made two moves. They traded for Iman Shumpert and J.R Smith in one deal with the New York Knicks and obtained Timofey Mozgov from the Denver Nuggets in other trade. It was obvious they could have used Wiggins as a wing defender. The Cavaliers are not a very good team defensively which is essential to be a great team, the offense comes later.  As of now they are ranked 24th in defensive rating and teams are shooting 47% against them.

The Cavaliers also lack a rim protector. And in the East, you need bodies down low to go up against Joakim Noah/ Pau Gasol, Nene/ Marcin Gortat and Paul Milsap/ Al Horford to name a few and Mozgov being Denvers best defender down lof. But having a good wing defender could alleviate a lot of the Cavaliers defensive woes. During the first year, the Heat were dragging out the corpses of Erick Dampier and Zydrunas Ilgauskas to play down low but the defense started with LeBron James and Dwyane Wade trapping defenders and creating chaos to set up highlight dunks in transition. The season is still young but as of right now the Cavaliers look more like a team that will not advance past the second round and will struggle to get out of the first round. Andrew Wiggins career is still young as well but defense is something you have or don’t and Wiggins as it and trading for Shumpert proves they could have used it.