There’s been plenty of turnover around the Cavaliers as the calendar flips from 2025-26 to 2026-27, and a handful of familiar names are now scattered across the league.
The biggest early move came when Cleveland sent Dennis Schröder to Charlotte. Before that deal, several other players whose contracts had expired already found new homes, leaving the Cavs with a much different look heading into the new season.
Keon Ellis is one of the first names off the list. Cleveland picked him up from the Kings at the deadline last season, and he brought exactly what the Cavs wanted on defense right away.
His minutes faded as the year went on, but the value was obvious. Ellis has since landed with the Brooklyn Nets on a two-year, $18 million contract, a payday that tops what he would have made in his previous spot.
Schröder’s path is a little different, but the result is the same: he’s gone. The German guard arrived in Cleveland with Ellis and made an immediate impact, though his efficiency dipped by the end of the season. He still has two years left on his contract, and now he’s set up as Coby White’s backup in Charlotte.
Dean Wade was one of the first free agents to move on, signing a four-year, $39 million deal with the Sixers. He had been a key part of Cleveland’s success over several seasons, but he chose a new chapter in Philadelphia. There, he’s expected to be one of the first players off the bench, and he said the move was about chasing a championship.
Larry Nance Jr. also found a new landing spot, agreeing to a one-year deal with the Indiana Pacers after returning to Cleveland a season ago. His minutes with the Cavs were limited, and while the reunion was a nice story, both sides made sense moving forward with a fresh start. Indiana is hoping to climb back toward relevance after finishing as cellar dwellers in 2025-26.
Then there’s Max Strus, whose departure was one of the tougher ones to see. Cleveland moved him out to bring in Peyton Watson, ending a strong three-year run that included one of the longest game-winners in league history.
Strus signed with the Los Angeles Clippers and was set to be a starter right away, especially with Brandom Ingram’s injury situation and Bennedict Mathurin choosing New Orleans. That plan hit a snag in his debut, though, when he appeared to suffer a serious non-contact right foot injury.
He’s also being reunited with his former teammate Darius Garland in Los Angeles.
Between them, Strus and Wade figure to see the biggest roles, while Schröder and Ellis should provide meaningful bench minutes for their new teams. Cleveland, meanwhile, moves on with the players still in place.
In Other News...
Evan Mobley Debate Just Got Uncomfortable For The Cavs
A speculative Evan Mobley-for-Matas Buzelis trade idea has surfaced in the kind of offseason chatter that always lands a little harder when it involves a cornerstone player. For Cleveland, the premise is uncomfortable because Mobley remains one of the leagues most valuable young defenders, the sort of player who changes the floor on that end even when the offense is still evolving. For Chicago, Buzelis is the more theoretical piece, a young forward whose appeal rests on the belief that his scoring upside can keep growing into something bigger.
The debate gets interesting because both sides can talk themselves into the basketball fit, even if the idea lives entirely in hypotheticals. Cleveland would be weighing whether to move off a proven defensive anchor for a higher-variance offensive swing, while the Bulls would be asking how much patience they have for Buzelis to reach his ceiling. Nothing about this points to real negotiations, but it is the kind of thought experiment that exposes just how delicate the balance is when a team starts wondering whether its best long-term answer is already in hand. [Read more 🡒]
Three Young Cavs Suddenly Have A Real Shot To Matter
Craig Porter Jr., Tyrese Proctor and reserve forward Jaylon Tyson are all at a stage where the Cavaliers can still reasonably imagine more coming from them. For a team trying to keep building around established pieces, young depth matters, and Cleveland has a few players who fit the kind of long-view conversation coaches and front offices like to have in-season. The appeal here is not just age, but the chance that each can sharpen a specific part of his game enough to stop being a developmental name and start becoming a dependable rotation option.
Proctor has already drawn some attention from Kenny Atkinson, who recently pointed to the guards physical development as part of his progress, and that only adds to the sense that his timeline is moving in the right direction. Porter and Tyson, meanwhile, are still in the category of players whose next step could come from simple but important growth, including greater shooting aggression and more consistency. None of it is finished, but for Cleveland, the possibility that a few young players might meaningfully matter by 2026-27 is the kind of internal upside that can shape a roster more than any outside rumor. [Read more 🡒]
LeBrons Latest Health Concern Changes Clevelands Biggest What-If
LeBron James latest health update has added another layer to the long-running conversation about what might have been in Cleveland. After leaving for Philadelphia for what is expected to be the final two seasons of his career, James is now dealing with chronic arthritis in his left foot and lower-back issues, according to an ESPN report. It is the kind of news that resonates far beyond his current team, because for Cavaliers fans it brings back the familiar mix of admiration and regret that has followed every twist in his late-career arc.
James reportedly monitors the problems daily as part of his training, and last season he missed about a month because of sciatica. For Philadelphia, the concern is obvious: availability always shapes everything around a player at this stage, from rhythm to lineup stability to the larger ceiling of the season. For Cleveland, it only sharpens the old question of how different things might have looked if this version of James, with all the wear and tear that comes with the miles, had been part of the present instead of another teams future. [Read more 🡒]