Roster building is a balance of talent and fit.
Too much talent, and there is a risk of overlapping skillsets and an ill-fitting roster.
Focus too much on fit and your team’s ceiling may be capped as top-end talent is required to win at a high level in the NBA.
The Cavs find themselves at the intersection of talent and fit and may be forced to evaluate if resources are properly allocated.
The roster is filled with talent however as the season has progressed the talent is seemingly heavy in the backcourt and lacking in the frontcourt. The talent is there but the fit may not be.
Start with your two of your cornerstones: Donovan Mitchell and Darius Garland. Between the two, they average 71 minutes per game. With 96 minutes available in the backcourt, that doesn’t leave much for any players behind them.
Coming into the season, Caris LeVert and Isaac Okoro were penciled in as first off the bench in the backcourt/wing. LeVert has averaged 30 minutes during his Cavalier stint, while Okoro has averaged 23 minutes over the last two years.
Add in newcomer Max Strus, who has averaged almost 35 minutes thus far and the math doesn’t math.
Injuries can bring out the worst at times, but they can also bring about opportunities. Enter Craig Porter Jr. and Sam Merrill.
With Ty Jerome only being health for a few games, all CRAIG! has done is ball out. When given 10+ minutes a game, Porter Jr has averaged 10.7 pts, 4.7 ast, 3.7 reb, 1 stl, on 50 FG%, and 33 3P%. There have been times when he has looked like the best player on the floor and done the most on the Cavalier team to impact winning. It’s no surprise he is right behind Dean Wade as having the best net on/off differential despite being a rookie undrafted point guard.
Entering the year on a non-guaranteed contract, Merrill was though to be a potential trade salary filler. But, when given an opportunity all Merrill has done is knock down shots. Including a 27-point game, he has shot 44 3P% on 4 attempts per game. The percentage and volume have been there to make for a quick-trigger weapon off the bench.
Having players step-up when opportunities are provided is typically a good thing. However, it has highlighted the available production that may not see regular minutes because of the resource allocation.
Part of the larger issue at hand is the Cavaliers backcourt players are not position flexible enough to make the glut of talent work.
Garland and Porter Jr are point guards who can play in two guard lineups. If Garland is to play in a two guard lineup, it would be best suited with another larger and/or defensive strong player.
Merrill is a 2-guard only player who cannot guard up and is limited to guarding down in situations.
Mitchell is 2-guard who can play point in a pinch but would put the small in small forward in small ball lineups.
LeVert and Okoro can theoretically play all three perimeter spots however they are ideally suited as 2-guards. Put them at the one and their talent is not best utilized; put them at the 3 and they are giving up size defensively.
Strus is more along the lines of LeVert and Okoro however he’s able to fit better at the 3 and is more of an emergency point guard option if injuries hit.
This isn’t even mentioning Jerome, who has an unknown recovery date, Emoni Bates, who is a 2/3 blend, and the possibilities of Georges Niang and Dean Wade playing SF in bigger lineups.
Further conflating the problem is none of the Cavs backcourt or wing talent possess the ability to size up, or play small ball 4. If they did, it would alleviate the minute issues and allow additional opportunities in the backcourt. But as it stands, the lack of positional versatility is creating talent logjams.
Going into next off-season, the Cavs currently stand at $161M in committed salaries. That does not account for Bates, Isaiah Mobley or Porter Jr being converted. It does account for Ricky Rubio’s salary being on the books which will be resolved soon.
The $161M does not account for a potential Okoro extension. We mapped that scenario out and found a $7M-$15.6M per year range of outcomes. Take the middle ground of the salaries at $11M and that would put the Cavs up against a projected $172M luxury tax threshold.
Dan Gilbert has been willing to spend but recent reports have the Cavs evaluating if/when to enter the luxury tax given the repeater penalties.
So how does this all get back to the talent and fit discussion?
Well, the Cavs have a lot of resources tied up in their backcourt which presents positional versatility issues and is further confounded with the lack of minutes available to all the viable NBA talent.
The Cavs have some upcoming financial decisions to make. It is hard to see the same level of investment in the backcourt given the aforementioned position they’re currently in.
On the other side of the coin, the Cavs lack a long-term backup center option, unless Khalifa Diop develops soon, and also lack a viable big wing 3&D option to guard the likes of Jaylen Brown, Jayson Tatum, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Khris Middleton, Jimmy Butler, Paolo Banchero, Franz Wagner or any other legitimate wing in a playoff series.
It only makes sense if the Cavs have an overabundance of resources in the backcourt, to shift those resources to the frontcourt where there is a need.
Okoro’s upcoming free agency and the emergence of CRAIG! and Merrill, with respect to LeVert’s role, provide the first real inflection point. Okoro and LeVert are also two of the more tradeable assets on the team and could be just enough to bring back and the wing and/or frontcourt depth they lack.
Porter Jr’s emergence brings this discussion to the forefront, as there’s viable evidence to support a regular rotational role. There is also a discussion to be had whether LeVert’s skillset is needed at his salary with Porter Jr providing a similar approach at a fraction of the cost.
With all this said, depth is never a bad thing. You need depth to weather an NBA season, and it also can come in handy when foul trouble or other issues arise in the playoffs. But with upcoming financial decisions, and talent being blocked, Koby Altman has a path ahead of him that highlights the need for asset reallocation.
With the contracts at play and what is at stake this season and next, the reckoning time for those decisions is quickly approaching.
All stats reflective of January 1.
