Cleveland Cavaliers Trade Dwyane Wade & Jae Crowder

With the NBA trade deadline coming up at 2pm Central time on Thursday, the Cleveland Cavaliers have elected to remake their roster, according to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, and two former Marquette Golden Eagles are on the move. Jae Crowder has been sent to the Utah Jazz as part of a three team deal, while Dwyane Wade is headed back to the Miami Heat.

The Crowder trade goes like this: Cleveland sends Crowder and Derrick Rose to Utah and Iman Shumpert along with a 2020 second round pick to the Sacramento Kings, Utah sends Rodney Hood to the Cavs and Joe Johnson to the Kings, and the Kings move George Hill to Cleveland. Simple.

The Wade deal is much more simple, as it’s really a move to send Wade back to the franchise where he spent his first 13 seasons in the league. The Cavs are remaking their roster, and that kind of leaves the veteran Wade out in the cold, friendship with LeBron James or not. Cleveland gets back a heavily protected second round pick in the deal, because we now live in a world where teams are protecting their second round picks for some reason.

Cleveland is 31-22 on the season, which gives them the third best record in the Eastern Conference to start the day. It seems that the Kyrie Irving/Isaiah Thomas trade, which is what brought Crowder to the Cavs in the first place, has not worked out for them all that well, and thus they’re changing things up a whole lot. In addition to the three team deal, Cleveland also dealt Thomas, Channing Frye, and their 2018 first round pick to the Los Angeles Lakers in exchange for Jordan Clarkson and Larry Nance.

Crowder is averaging 8.6 points and 3.3 rebounds in 25 minutes per game for Cleveland, well down from his stats with Boston a year ago. This will be the fourth NBA team in six seasons for the 2012 Big East Player of the Year, and he’ll be joining a Jazz team that’s currently two and half games back from the eighth and final playoff spot in the Western Conference. Wade is averaging a career lows in points (11.2) and minutes (23.2) for the Cavaliers this season, but has played in 46 of the team’s 53 games. Miami is currently the #7 team in the East, but that doesn’t tell the whole story. Teams #3 (which is Cleveland, remember) through #9 are only separated by four games in the standings, so this could actually be a savvy move by the Heat to shore up their playoff berth with a veteran presence.

As I write this, there’s still 90 minutes before the deadline, so we’ll have to wait and see if any of Marquette’s other NBA players are on the move today. Keep your ears open, everyone....