I had a feeling that today's game was going to end badly for the Cavaliers, but I had no idea that it was going to be this bad. Despite 20 points from Alonzo Gee and his first career double-double from Kyrie Irving, the Cavaliers still fell drastically short to the Atlanta Hawks, getting blown out 103-87 to stretch their current losing streak to three. With New Jersey coming up tomorrow, things look promising for the Cavaliers to cap it at that, but it's still clear that Cavaliers need to make some serious adjustments before they can hang with the elite teams in the league.
And that brings us to tonight's Twitter reaction, coming from Michael A. Young (@RealMYoung23). He proposed an interesting question:
So let's hear it Cavs fans. If you were the front office and had to cut five guys from this current roster, who would it be?
Personally, if I were Chris Grant, I'd be buying out Antawn Jamison and Anthony Parker. Neither really have a long-term future with the team and both are currently keeping some promising youngsters from getting court time (Tristan Thompson, Samardo Samuels and Manny Harris in particular). And at least in the case of Jamison, he's also won the Cavaliers some games that have put them in the precarious position of potentially playing into the 8th seed and missing the lottery in a stacked draft, so losing him can have the ancillary benefit of improving our draft stock.
With these hypothetical moves, Tristan Thompson would be back at his native PF and could be backed up by Samardo Samuels. This alleviates the need for Luke Harangody so the Cavaliers could also buy him out and not bat an eye.
From that point, things get a little trickier, though. Ryan Hollins and Semih Erden seem like no-brainers, but which one gets the cut? The veteran who's seemingly capped out or the youngster that shows little promise? If it were up to me, I'd cut Hollins, but that's based only on the fact that I've bumped into Semih Erden at a bar downtown and he seemed cool. This is why I'm not a GM people. I just don't have it in me to make the hard decisions.
But then who's the fifth and final cut? It's tough as seemingly everyone else has some sort of upside (Boobie's under-rated defense) or haven't played enough to really evaluate (Donald Sloan).
Wait, what's that? We traded for Luke Walton? Oh yeah, forgot about that. Cut him. No questions asked.