NBA News: The Cleveland Cavaliers Are the Team to Watch in This Year's Trading Deadline

Cavaliers have assets they can use if they want to bring in more talent for their upcoming postseason run

By John Paul Sunico, Christian Post Contributor Friday, January 19, 2018

The Cleveland Cavaliers are coming off three straight NBA Finals appearances, losing to the Golden State Warriors in 2015 and 2017 but also winning against the same team in-between those years.

The Cavaliers would very much like to head for the Finals for a fourth straight time. However, the way things are going right now, it is not hard to imagine other teams in the Eastern Conference managing to take that championship series berth away from them.

It has now reached the point where the members of the Cavaliers' front office will have to make some very important decisions as the Feb. 8 trade deadline approaches.

Recently, some prominent/marquee players on the Cavaliers, who opted to remain anonymous, talked to Cleveland.com, ESPN and The Athletic and shared their concerns that the issues currently affecting the team may no longer be fixable.

Among those issues are ones that pop up when the Cavaliers are asked to defend.

As seen on Basketball Reference, the Cavaliers are near the very bottom of the league in terms of defensive rating and it may be tough for them to get anywhere near the elite level just through internal improvement.

Those defensive issues are contributing to why the Cavaliers are being mentioned as a team that could look to bring in reinforcements.

Rumors have been linking them to big men like DeAndre Jordan and DeMarcus Cousins - players who may at least help them out a little on the defensive end of the floor.

To make things more interesting, the Cavaliers even have some assets on hand – the Brooklyn Nets' first round pick and their own first round pick – that they could probably use to at least entice a team to negotiate with them on a trade.

There is no guarantee that the Cavaliers will make any move, however.

With incumbent superstar LeBron James remaining uncommitted to stay with the team past this season, the members of the Cavaliers' front office are left facing quite a dilemma.

Do they trade their valuable draft picks now and give this current roster the best possible chance of competing for a title, or do they hang on to those and use them to help build a post-James foundation for the franchise?

The Cavaliers have choices to make this trading season, and it will be interesting to see which path they decide to take.

More news about the latest NBA trade rumors should be made available soon.