Cavaliers' Lonzo Ball Trade Is Flying Under the Radar

The Cleveland Cavaliers didn't make a ton of shakeups around their roster coming off their 60-win campaign entering this summer, but perhaps their most notable move of the past couple of months has been that of their trade to acquire Lonzo Ball from the Chicago Bulls.

In a one-to-one player swap, the Cavaliers brought in Ball in exchange for Isaac Okoro, effectively adding another contributor to Cleveland's backcourt, while sending out a five-year team vet after being the fifth-overall pick in 2020.

At the time, Ball was an interesting acquisition to bring on board, and even saw some chatter as being a potential opening day starter, depending on how Darius Garland's toe injury pans out to begin next season. However, now only a few weeks removed from the deal, the Cavaliers' trade to bring in the former second-overall pick may reside as one of the more underrated moves of this summer.

CBS Sports' Brad Botkin recently stacked up four of the NBA's most "under-the-radar" moves of this offseason, where atop the list at number one was the Cavaliers' trade to add Ball.

"The Cavs are close," Botkin wrote, "That might seem like an obvious statement regarding a team that won 64 games last year, but lost in all this talk of the East being wide open is the fact that Cavs were arguably the best team in the NBA for large swaths of last season. They weren't healthy in the playoffs."

"In truth, we should be looking at this team like we did when the Thunder had a second-round exit in 2024. A margin move away. And Ball was quite the margin move. Say nothing of the financial victory of replacing Isaac Okoro, who is guaranteed $11 million and change for the next two years with Ball's $10 million expiring contract, the Cavs are finally getting the two-way player they have long sought."