The Cleveland Cavaliers continue to look for ways to accelerate their rebuilding program and their latest proposals may include Pistons’ veteran shooting guard Rip Hamilton.
According to ESPN’s Chris Broussard, the Cavs may be looking to acquire the #2 overall pick in next months NBA draft and to do so would look to strike a deal with Detroit for Rip Hamilton, his entire contract and the Pistons’ #8 pick. Cleveland would then trade their #4 and #8 pick to the Minnesota Timberwolves for their #2 pick.
Given the weak draft class, Justin Rogers of Mlive.com doesn’t believe that trading away the #8 pick in order to free up the money from Hamilton’s contract isn’t an unreasonable price. However reports from the Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News say that the Pistons have denied any trade speculation with Minnesota and Cleveland.
Broussard later tweeted that if a deal were to go down with Cleveland the Pistons wouldn’t be interested unless they received a player in return.
Last season it was reported that the Pistons were willing to part with a first round pick in 2012 to ship Hamilton to Cleveland. Hamilton however vetoed that trade.
Source: Mlive.com, Detroit News, Detroit Free Press, Twitter, ESPN.com