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February 5, 2016Though the Cleveland Cavaliers are sitting atop the Eastern Conference and will have their entire coaching staff in Toronto for the league’s impending All-Star Weekend, general manager David Griffin is not resting on his laurels and has been one of the most active participants in preliminary trade discussions in advance of the mid-February deadline. According to ESPN’s Brian Windhorst, who was on ESPN Cleveland’s “Hey Windy!” show on Friday morning, not only would the Cavs love to improve their roster before the NBA postseason, but one player of interest is veteran swingman Jared Dudley.
The Cavs would love to get their hands on Jared Dudley. They kicked around trading for Dudley last summer, the Bucks basically gave him away. He plays for the Wizards. He’s shooting over 40 percent from three-point range, quality defensive player, quality locker room guy on the last year of his contract.
The problem is, the Wizards have the easiest schedule in the league after the All-Star break. So even though they’ve been a disappointment to this point, the difficulty is they still feel like they can make a run because of what their schedule is and they’re going to be healthy. So right now, he’s not available.
The Cavs, as presently constructed, do not need to make a deal, which is a spectacular position to be in. With Griffin, however, the team has a general manager who is persistently looking for ways to improve, even if it means changing head coaches in the middle of the season. Dudley is the type of player who has the exact skillset that the team has been coveting in the way of a versatile and athletic “three and D” guy. Dealt from Milwaukee to Washington this past offseason, the 30-year-old has immediately stepped in and produced a career-best 45.9% conversion rate from three-point range. As a bonus, Dudley also ranks 19th among all small forwards in ESPN’s Defensive Real Plus/Minus metric.
Like Windhorst says, the Wiz have little desire to trade a guy who could conceivably help them over the course of the second half. They are, however, five games under .500 and Dudley is in the final year of a contract that pays him roughly $4.4 million this season.1 In order to obtain any player, the Cavs could absorb them as a part of their pair of Traded Player Exceptions2, noting that it would cost them considerably more due to the luxury tax implications of doing so.
The league’s trade deadline is February 18.