Hickson trade made with long-term focus in mind

Remember when J.J. Hickson and Zydrunas Ilgauskas were too steep a price to pay for Amare Stoudamire? And now the Cavs have Omri Casspi. My times have changed in Cleveland.

I’m not sure where it all came off the rails with Hickson, but his inconsistency was maddening and more and more the effort was not there on defense. Hickson is not a smooth and fluid ballplayer. He has to work hard to get his shot and his value was in offensive rebounds and hustle around the basket. If he’s dogging it, he’s just taking up space - preventing others from getting to the rim and a clear liability on defense. When he was on the floor, the Cavs surrendered an additional 6.8 points per 100 possessions. In an increasingly numbers-driven basketball world, negative stats like this can be crippling. Increasingly so for a guy with a body built to defend in the NBA.

He still has the potential to be a very good player in the NBA, particularly if the effort and attention is there. Take nothing away from his skills but its clear he was not ready for the post-LeBron era and the additional responsibility that came with it.

Cavs fans aren’t necessarily disappointed in the Hickson trade because of what they lost but in not understanding what they’ve gained. Casspi remains a relatively unknown quantity aside from his place in history as the first Israeli-born player in the NBA. According to John Hollinger’s PER (Player Efficiency Rating), Casspi’s PER of 11.76 is less than Hickson’s slightly above average 15.67 (an average player in the NBA gets a 15.00 and Dirk Nowitzki rates a 23.52). Even with the conditional first-rounder thrown in, this trade still favors the Kings.

But this trade was not based on past performance. Casspi projects as a solid starting small forward in the NBA and that was not going to happen in Sacramento with the majority of the possessions going to Tyreke Evans, DeMarcus Cousins, and Marcus Thorton. The thinking is Casspi is on the cusp of breaking out and becoming a 16-8-type guy from the small forward position. Given the Cavs were outproduced at the SF position by 6.6 points (16.6 PER for opponents vs 10.0 PER for Cleveland), the loss of production from Hickson should be mitigated with the play of Tristan Thompson at PF and Omri Casspi at SF. Even average performances from the two should compensate for the marginal value of J.J. Hickson.