Cavs President Koby Altman Explains NBA Trade Deadline Stance

Cleveland Cavaliers president of basketball operations Koby Altman met with the media after the NBA trade deadline, touching on a number of subjects.

With the Cleveland Cavaliers preparing to take on the Brooklyn Nets in the second half of a back-to-back and the NBA trade deadline passing, team president Koby Altman spoke with the media to discuss his view on where the wine-and-gold sit and his optimism with the group moving forward.

"I think for us, the bulk of the work was done in the offseason. We really wanted to address our shortcomings we felt from last year's playoffs, so free agency was a big point of focus for us to make some valuable additions," Altman said to a group of media gathered on Zoom. "And then also internally, we had some really good development this offseason and into the season as well. While those aren't acquisitions at the deadline, they're certainly really important parts of our roster. 

"We're really happy and pleased with how we've been playing. Sometimes, you know me, I'm very active and do a lot of volume, but sometimes you don't want to mess up a good thing. And so, we're gonna roll with what we have and we're excited about the group."

Compiled a clip of the #Cavs messing up each other’s interviews and distractions in the background in the locker room last night.

Hardly anything new, but still hilarious 😆 pic.twitter.com/M0bsBKMYxm

— Spencer Davies (@SpinDavies) February 6, 2024

Altman delved further into the chemistry of the group, noting that standing pat is indeed a vote of confidence in this current roster to compete with the best the league has to offer.

"You take feedback from the coaches, from the players. Obviously, I'm around. I get the look and the feel of the team from a day-to-day basis. We're obviously in the trenches, so you have that human component to it," Altman said. "But we're one of the hottest teams in basketball. You can't get too high, can't get too low in this business; a week from now, we might be crying mercy. But I can see these are not just flashes. 

"There's some really good basketball that's being played over a long stretch of time, and that's how we've envisioned this thing looking like. This kind of style of basketball. This selfless basketball that's being moved around. And then you add dynamic talents within that system, and then you're defending at such a high level. So it's hard to say go out there and make a lateral move that's gonna make you better, but do you detract from the vibe, the atmosphere, the continuity that's being built? That's not something I wanted to mess with."

Oct 2, 2023; Cleveland, OH, USA; Cleveland Cavaliers general manager Koby Altman talks to the media during media day at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse. Mandatory Credit: Ken Blaze-USA TODAY Sports / © Ken Blaze-USA TODAY Sports

Here are some key details and quotes from the meeting.

Cavs are essentially viewing Darius Garland and Evan Mobley as their acquisitions. Altman expects both to have minute restrictions up until NBA All-Star weekend.

"After the All-Star break, hopefully we lift all these minute restrictions and we're back to fully healthy and that's where we're gonna see real — hopefully, knock on wood that we're healthy — but we're gonna see a lot more consistency on the rotations and minutes," Altman said. "And then, everyone will get a little more comfortable. When you know exactly when you're coming off the bench, you know exactly what minutes are coming, that's when you get more comfortable."

"But right now, it helps to be winning as well. It helps to be winning. I think that everyone has bought into their role because of the wins and how fun it is, and it could be anybody's night any given night. We have guys off the bench that can help you win games, and that's really exciting as well. It's hard to scout us when we're this deep and this talented."

More on Garland and Mobley getting back into the mix:

"We're still getting up a ton of threes with Evan and Darius back," Altman said. "We hit 23 threes the other game, which is close to a franchise record. We've always wanted Darius to take more threes, so he fits. We want Evan to take more threes, so he fits and he can pass. Look, these are two selfless, All-Star-caliber players and they're gonna fit into what we're doing. 

"They're not gonna detract from what they're doing. It's a great problem to have, to try to figure out how to reintegrate Darius Garland and Evan Mobley. We're gonna try to continue to keep our pace, try to continue to keep launching our three-balls. But we can play some half-court basketball, we can slow it down, we can defend at a high level. We've proven to be successful at both, so if we trend a certain way for a game, that's okay."

Donovan Mitchell and Jarrett Allen are deserving of much more praise.

"We have to acknowledge Donovan Mitchell's playing the best basketball of his career. He's one of the best players on the planet," Altman said. "He had the best year of his career last year and you look up this year, and he has career-highs in points, rebounds, assists and steals. This is what I want to make sure we get across: Donovan Mitchell's making his teammates better. That's the testament of a great player. So what you saw the past six to eight weeks was an MVP-caliber player elevating the franchise, elevating his teammates and really captivating an entire city on top of it. 

"Him and Jarrett Allen, who we're a little disappointed is not in the All-Star Game. We used to think that winning was a precursor to being on the All-Star team, and where we are now, second in the East, we thought we deserved two. Certainly, Jarrett was a huge part of that as well. But just want to make sure that everyone understands how special Donovan really is for us and what he's becoming league-wide I don't think is talked about nearly enough."

J.B. Bickerstaff is finding ways for Cleveland to adapt to different styles.

"We really wanted to be able to diversify our offense, our plan of attack. I really want to give J.B. a ton of credit and his coaching staff a ton of credit on navigating the early adversity of the season," Altman said. "Certainly with the injuries, figuring out a way to play really successful basketball and really sort of changing how we play. We had the personnel to do it, so figuring out a way to get up those threes and play at a faster pace, a lot more spacing out there. So really want to give J.B. credit for elevating the talent level that's been on the roster. 

"And now we're 10 deep, legitimately 10 deep. So we can go deep into the bench, we can play different ways. I love that we can slow it down in the half-court and have two all-world dynamic ball-handlers with play creation. We can toggle those and do the one 5 with shooters around [him]. There's different ways that we can play for sure, and so that's the exciting part. That's what went into the offseason. How do we diversify our attack? How can we play multiple, different ways and constantly put pressure on the opponent?"

Balancing their own priorities while seeing other teams make moves.

"You're tracking everything," Altman said. "You're monitoring the Woj's, the Shams', the Chris Haynes' of the world and seeing what's going on. You're putting up on your board, you're changing rosters, you're looking at the outlooks of teams from a financial standpoint and you're bringing it back to your strategy for, 'How are we gonna make this sustainable? What does this look like for us?' And also realizing that you can only control what you can control. 

"I do know the sentiment from the guys are meaningful to me. When they're saying we have enough and when they're saying that we're excited about the group that we have, that's meaningful to me. Outside of our projections, outside of how we forecast from two-to-three years down the road, this group is really locked into the present and how we continue to get better, so I'm good with that. We can't control everything that's going on around us, but I can also from a subjective standpoint feel the human piece. I've felt that a lot recently from our guys."

Responding to question of title expectations and whether or not this is a contender.

"When we did acquire Donovan, we wanted to make sure of setting expectations that it wasn't championship or bust, certainly not last year. And it's not this year either," Altman said. "But we do think that we have the talent level to compete with the best. I think we've shown that, this year and last year, we were able to compete with the best teams in the league, and we're doing that now. 

"We're still young. Obviously,, playoff experience is something that we need to add to this group and go further past the first round or rounds of the playoffs. Those are really hard. The NBA is really difficult. The parity is difficult. But we feel we're right in the mix of some of the best teams in the world right now, and we're gonna continue to compete for that."

Internal improvements by the Core Four's rotational players.

It means the world for us. When we set out to rebuild this roster and this franchise, we were gonna do it through the draft and player development," Altman said. "That's still a really big focus for us, how we track that, how we monitor that. Each player has their own plan from performance to basketball to nutrition to wellness. Each player has their own specific plan to get better and their own metrics to get better. If they buy in to that, they're gonna get good 'cause we're gonna pour endless amounts of resources into their development.

"When you have an undrafted story like Dean Wade that's now contributing to the roster, it's huge. Sam Merrill — 60th pick in the draft, bounced around, first pick in the G League draft by our then-G League general manager Brendon Yu — and the story continues on into a summer league finals/championship and now he's on the roster and contributing greatly to our success. Isaac [Okoro] has been, since day one, we drafted him at five, we knew his work ethic. He was gonna continue to plug away, plug away, plug away, and every single year he's gotten better at his shooting and now you have to close-out to him."

Those are the success stories that he and his staff believe will separate the Cavs from the rest.

"This is what's gonna help us be sustainable into the future," Altman said. "We're not gonna have a ton of draft picks and we're not gonna have cap space, so you're gonna have a core that's really talented of All-Star-level players and then that group around them, we have to continue to pour a lot of resources into to make sure they can continue to be great complementary pieces and help us win games."

Plans to fill out the roster.

"There's a few different pathways there for our roster spots," Altman said. "We could do another 10 day, a couple 10 days. Certainly the discussion of potentially converting a roster spot with one of our two ways is a conversation and then monitoring the buyout market.

"So we have to make a decision on a 14th roster spot very soon, but that won’t take away from potentially doing a buyout [or the] buyout market as well. So something's going to come soon. In terms of that 14th roster spot, it has to, but we'll figure out what to do for the rest of the season and in short order."