Cavs further separate themselves from East pack by adding Korver
At last year's trade deadline, the Cleveland Cavaliers made what seemed like an innocuous move by nabbing aging stretch big Channing Frye. It proved to be anything but.
As the beneficiary of countless LeBron James kickouts and open looks out of the pick-and-pop, Frye went haywire in the postseason, shooting 56.5 percent from 3-point range and stretching opposing Eastern Conference bigs past their breaking point as the Cavs blitzed to the Finals and eventually won the title.
The Cavs probably didn't need Frye. He scored just two total points in the Finals, after all, and Cleveland assuredly still would've won the East without him. But he offered them an important bit of insurance. He helped them sweep the Atlanta Hawks and detroit Pistons, and comfortably bury the Raptors, when those series might've been just slightly more difficult otherwise. In a season that came down to a Game 7 decided by four points, every little edge mattered.
This season, even as they lap the East field again, the Cavs just went out and got another sharpshooter - a wing this time - to put that much more distance between themselves and the rest of the conference. And let's be clear, adding Kyle Korver is far from an innocuous move. It's a considerably more impactful one than the Frye trade. He may be pushing 36, but Korver is about as perfect a complementary piece as this version of the Cavs could ask for: a marauding space-hunter who was born to catch and shoot; a guy with a liquid quick release, who flies off screens, never stops moving, and generally thrives away from the ball. Korver's a headache to keep track of on his own, but running alongside Cleveland's deadly offensive brigade, he might as well be a shadow.
The Cavs finally found their identity midway through last season, and they've since taken off (stylistically and substantively) by embracing their most logical strategy: surrounding LeBron with shooters, and letting them bomb away. They've been both more accurate and more prolific from distance than even the Golden State Warriors this season. Only the historically trigger-happy Houston Rockets are launching more 3-pointers, and only the San Antonio Spurs are shooting them at a better clip. (Perhaps they'd have gotten to this point sooner if they'd been able to acquire Frye and Korver when they first dreamed of it: as long ago as 2008, according to ESPN's Brian Windhorst.)
Even with J.R. Smith injured (and ineffective before that), the Cavs are shooting 39.1 percent from beyond the arc as a team. They're shooting 40.8 percent on catch-and-shoot threes, a mark that only figures to improve with the addition of Korver - who's shooting 43.7 percent on such shots in a system that likely isn't generating near as many open looks as Cleveland's will. He's going to make the offense - already a pick-your-poison nightmare - functionally unstoppable. (How does one defend, say, a LeBron-Kevin Love pick-and-roll/pop that's flanked by Korver, Frye, and Kyrie Irving? Your best option might honestly be to just let LeBron rumble down the lane for a dunk. At least then you're only giving up two points.)
In short, the Cavs have effectively filled Smith's role with a supercharged version of him, and somehow all they had to surrender in the bargain was a protected 2019 first-round pick and a broken-down Mike Dunleavy. (They're only allowed to trade that pick thanks to a bit of sly genius from GM David Griffin, who crafted a separate deal with the Portland Trail Blazers in which the Cavs sent out their 2017 first-rounder in exchange for having their 2018 pick returned). Given their roster, cap situation, and the options available, that's nothing short of a heist.
The Cavs were probably going to win the East with or without Korver, but there's never any downside to improving your odds. Besides, they have bigger fish to fry, and while repeating as champs will take some serious doing, they just gave themselves a significant boost.