NEW YORK: When free agency began at 12:01 a.m. on July 1, 2013, former Cavaliers General Manager Chris Grant was knocking on Kyle Korver’s front door. It took a few years, but the Cavs are on the doorstep of acquiring Korver again.
The Cavs and Atlanta Hawks are nearing agreement on a trade that would send Korver to Cleveland, two league sources confirmed. The Vertical first reported the deal. The deal could grow to include another team, but the Cavs are committed to moving Mike Dunleavy and a future first-round pick.
Korver fits the Cavs’ plans to surround LeBron James and Kyrie Irving with as many shooters as possible. He’s shooting 41 percent from 3-point range this season and is a career 43-percent shooter from deep. He made 221 3s and shot 49 percent two years ago and made the All-Star team when the Hawks won 60 games.
Korver, who turns 36 in March, is making $5.2 million in the final year of a four-year, $24 million deal he signed with Atlanta in the summer of 2013 after turning down the Cavs’ pitch.
Korver warmed up, but did not play in the first half Thursday in New Orleans as the two teams finalized the terms of the deal.
Dunleavy, 36, has been a disappointment this season. The Cavs acquired him last summer virtually for nothing from the Chicago Bulls, who were trying to dump his money to clear space to sign Dwyane Wade. Dunleavy is averaging a career-low 4.6 points and shooting 35 percent from 3, his worst percentage in seven years.
Dunleavy was expected to provide more shooting for the Cavs, but has struggled getting off the bench. He was the only healthy player not to play in Wednesday’s loss to the Chicago Bulls. The Cavs’ injury-ravaged roster could use some reinforcements. They are in New York to start a six-game road trip Friday at the Brooklyn Nets.
The Cavs are negotiating with the Portland Trail Blazers, to rework a previous deal, a league source told the Beacon Journal. The Cavs would like to give the Blazers their 2017 first-round pick and get back the 2018 first-round pick they previously sent the Blazers in last year’s Anderson Varejao trade.
Since league rules prohibit teams from trading all of their first-round picks in consecutive years, by reacquiring their 2018 pick the Cavs will be free to use their first-rounders in 2019 and 2021 in future trades.
Cavs start road trip
The Cavaliers departed Thursday for their longest road trip of the season not knowing who will be available when the trip begins Friday at the Brooklyn Nets. That did not seem to please James, who fought through illness to play Thursday while Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving again rested.
Asked if this was a good time for the six-city, cross-country trip that will total roughly 6,500 air miles, James said it will depend on who is playing. That might be an indication that he’s seen about enough of the end-of-bench replacements he has played alongside for the past week.
“I don’t know if it’s going to be a good time or not until we know who’s active and who’s playing,” he said. “See what happens.”
Injuries and illness ultimately strike every team at some point, the Cavs are just getting theirs out of the way all at once. Coach Tyronn Lue sounded hopeful Love would be well enough after his bout with food poisoning to return Friday at the Barclays Center, although he offered no timeline for Irving and his right hamstring after the Cavs lost to the Chicago Bulls on Wednesday.
Lue has been forced to cancel practices and shootarounds because of the lack of healthy bodies. James admitted it’s weeks like this that can grind guys down in the course of a long and tedious season.
“It slows our process down just a little bit,” he said. “We’re not able to practice the way we would like to. We’re already a team that don’t practice much and now we only have [10] bodies, it’s even harder for us to get better every day on off days. That’s the part for me that kind of eats me alive. I’m all about putting in the work when no one is around and we can’t do that right now.”
The last three games without Irving have exposed the Cavs’ lack of depth at point guard. Lue has pieced together backcourts involving Jordan McRae, DeAndre Liggins and Kay Felder the past couple of games. Each has had bright spots, but the Cavs committed eight turnovers without an assist during the fourth quarter of Wednesday’s loss — the first game the Cavs have lost with James in the lineup in more than a month.
The Cavs totaled just 13 assists Wednesday, and James had seven of them. He went into attack mode in the fourth quarter, however, and committed three of their eight turnovers.
James called the lack of a point guard “obvious from Day One.”
“We don’t have a reliable, veteran backup point guard,” he said. “Kay’s in the process of learning on the fly. He’s a rookie and is going to have his mistakes. It’s tough on him because we’re a franchise trying to win a championship. He has to have a fast-track mind. But we don’t have a backup point guard. Us having 13 assists is not who we are. I had half the team’s assists and that’s not good for our team because we’ve got guys who need the ball in their hands and put the ball in the right position and the right spots for them to be successful. It’s tough for us.”
All-Star voting
James and Irving rank first in second, respectively, in All-Star voting both in the Eastern Conference and overall according to numbers announced Thursday by the NBA.
James leads all frontcourt players with 595,288 votes and Irving leads all guards with 543,030 votes. Love ranks third among Eastern Conference frontcourt players with 250,347 votes.
Golden State Warriors forward Kevin Durant is the top vote-getter in the Western Conference with 541,209 votes, and teammate Steph Curry leads Western guards with 523,597 votes.