Cleveland Cavaliers
Cavaliers Receive: Kemba Walker ($34.3M 2020-21 Salary), Romeo Langford ($3.6M), Grant Williams ($2.4M), BOS 2021 2nd Round Pick
Celtics Receive: Kevin Love ($31.2M), Collin Sexton ($4.99M), HOU 2022 2nd Round Pick (via CLE), CLE 2024 1st Round Pick (Top 10 Protected)
Trading away Kemba Walker and some young bench players in exchange for Kevin Love and Collin Sexton would immediately prove beneficial for the Boston Celtics. Jayson Tatum has been playing power-forward in a small lineup for Boston over the years and if they can acquire Kevin Love to play the power-forward position and move Tatum back to where he is used to playing on the wing, it would open the Celtics offense tremendously instead of a lot of one-on-one play.
Collin Sexton and Kevin Love are two big time shooters and with Tatum and Brown taking on all the scoring pressure for the Celtics now, Sexton and Love can come in and give the Celtics two reliable shooting options. With Gordon Hayward gone, Boston’s best three-point shooters on the roster for this upcoming season are Tatum and Brown, the two guys who predominantly have the ball in their hands every position.
By having guys like Collin Sexton and Kevin Love, the Celtics will be able to not only move the ball a lot easier on the perimeter, but their offense would not have to focus on the idea of, “who has not shot the ball in a while?” Last season, the Celtics offense ranked 9th in the NBA, but seemed to become stagnant in the fourth quarter of games. A lot of the struggles were because of the fact that Kemba, Brown and Tatum are so ball-dominant.
None of those three guys can really play off-the-ball and as a result, the Celtics were easy to defend and this ultimately led to their demise in the Eastern Conference Finals. Getting Kevin Love in exchange for Grant Williams is a major upgrade in scoring and rebounds at the power-forward position and acquiring Collin Sexton for Kemba Walker & Romeo Langford gives the Celtics a young guard who can continue to grow into an All-Star talent next to Brown and Tatum.
From the Cavaliers’ perspective, they have had back-to-back seasons with 19-wins. Although Collin Sexton has been great in his first two seasons in the NBA, moving him and an aging veteran in Kevin Love, whose contract eats up 25% of their total team payroll, would prove beneficial for the future success of the organization. With Kemba Walker at the helm and cap space to spend over the next few years, the Cavaliers can use this to their advantage to acquire talent via free agency and through the trade market.
Other players such as DeMar DeRozan and Victor Oladipo could be on the move this season and with Andre Drummond’s future with the Cavaliers in question, Cleveland could be in a position to pull off two major trades this offseason to put them in the mix in the Eastern Conference.
