This is what I get from reading an insane number of articles. The Cavs gambled that Jonas would slip and he did not, huge mistake.
You obviously missed the one article on this forum by W&G where he said that deals like that are made in advance. The teams agree to the trade, we take the guy the Kings want, and then the Kings take the guy we want. The only case it doesn't happen is if the guy the Kings want isn't there when we're on the clock, or if none of the guys we want are guaranteed to last until when the Kings are picking. You see, it doesn't work unless there are multiple guys we'd be happy taking with their pick.
But as we know the deal didn't happen, neither did a deal with the Wizards, or the Bobcats ... so the only thing that tells you is that the player *they* wanted was not there at #4, or they were just blowing smoke screens and felt confident the guy they really wanted would fall to them.
Now maybe you're saying the goal was to trade JJ such that we ended up with Jonas and TT? And that we got cold feet because Jonas was off the board? That too seems unlikely because getting the #7 pick in this draft seems pretty good compared to getting a future non-lottery or late lottery pick in the unknown future - even if we didn't get the pair of players we wanted.
And if we're going to believe all these draft sites that had Jonas rated over Tristan, why don't we believe them when they say that Thompson was going to last until the #7 (Sacramento) or #8 (Piston's) pick?
And finally, how does any of this make sense when the Kings had already traded the #7 pick before the draft?
Are we supposed to believe that we were actually going to get the #10 pick that the Kings used to take Jimmer?
If that's the case, then how could any sane GM do the deal expecting JV to slide all the way to #10?