One of the most frustrating Cavs of my lifetime is no longer wearing wine and gold. De'Andre Hunter was traded to the Sacramento Kings, Saturday, and in his place arrived Keon Ellis and Dennis Schröder, a man we've joyfully referred to as "The Umlaut" for the shock of white in his hair he often wore and the dots over the "o" in his name. To break down the trade, Nate Smith, Chris Francis, and Eli Kim jumped in the the podcast booth and went through, the pros, the cons, the why's, the optionality the grade brings, and where the Hunter experiment went wrong. There was definitely a difference of opinion on the move.

As a fair warning, this was recorded right before the Cavs' entertaining defeat of the Portland Trailblazers, Sunday night, which saw Jarrett Allen post the best game of his career: a 40/17/5, six stock, zero turnover evisceration of Portland's Donovan Clingan. To say that the Cavs seem to be suffering from the departure of Hunter would be a lie. The ball moved and everyone played more free.

To decide whether trade was good for the Cavs, and whether it might lead to something larger, we broke down Ellis' and Schröder's gamea and how they mesh, and the best (and worst) case scenario for their Cavs' tenure. We got into a lot of other topics too, including the All-Star selections, the possibility of LeBron returning to Cleveland next summer, whether the Cavs will be able to swing for the fences in another trade, whether Giannis gets moved at all this season, Koby's talent development pipeline, news from from around the Association, and so much more.

 

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