{"id":585889,"date":"2026-02-06T09:02:13","date_gmt":"2026-02-06T09:02:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/585889\/"},"modified":"2026-02-06T09:02:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-06T09:02:13","slug":"koby-altman-clarifies-why-cavs-didnt-get-under-the-second-apron","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/585889\/","title":{"rendered":"Koby Altman clarifies why Cavs didn\u2019t get under the second apron"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Cleveland Cavaliers<\/a> will finish this season above the second apron. They made moves \u2014 like sending away Lonzo Ball and two second-round picks<\/a> \u2014 that helped them get closer to ducking below that threshold. They were just under $3.9 million away from getting under the second apron, but couldn\u2019t make an additional move on Thursday to do so.<\/p>\n

The Cavs should be able to get under the second apron during the summer. Doing so would open up avenues for them to aggregate contracts in possible trades. However, some issues come with not getting out of the second apron now.<\/p>\n

For one, the Cavs aren\u2019t able to trade a first-round pick seven years out now because they will finish the season in the second apron. And, they will need to be out of the second apron for three of the next four seasons to unfreeze what would be the 2032 first-round pick and trade it. Additionally, that pick moves to the back of the first round until it\u2019s unfrozen.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth noting that the Stepien rule essentially froze the \u201832 pick anyway, but that\u2019s a longer discussion that may not be germane to this conversation.<\/p>\n

In the end, dealing Ball and saving money on the De\u2019Andre Hunter trade merely cut luxury tax payments for the ownership group and made things easier to manage next offseason.<\/p>\n

According to Koby Altman, that\u2019s okay. The team didn\u2019t want to make a move to get out of the second apron that hurt this current team.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the end of the day, for us to get under the second apron, we would\u2019ve had to lose a rotational piece right now,\u201d Altman said<\/a>. \u201cThat was hard for us to do. Let\u2019s make this run. \u2026 What gives us the best chance to win? And it\u2019s certainly not trading a rotational player at the deadline. So we\u2019ll address that in the summer. Sure, we got close, but I still think it was a really, really successful trade deadline for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

All of the Cavs\u2019 moves this deadline were to improve the current team. Undercutting those decisions by getting rid of a rotation player just to get under the second apron wouldn\u2019t have made sense. At the same time, there\u2019s repercussions for not being able to shed a little more salary. And they\u2019ll be feeling those effects down the road.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Cleveland Cavaliers will finish this season above the second apron. They made moves \u2014 like sending away…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":585890,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3772],"tags":[7,306,147,305,193,3846,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-585889","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cleveland-cavaliers","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-cavaliers","10":"tag-cavs-news","11":"tag-cleveland","12":"tag-cleveland-cavaliers","13":"tag-clevelandcavaliers","14":"tag-nba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116022879579512838","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=585889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585889\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/585890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=585889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=585889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=585889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}