A former top-5 NBA Draft pick is getting another chance in the league.<\/p>\n
Mario Hezonja is signing a one-year, $2.8 million contract with the Cleveland Cavaliers<\/a>, according to Shams Charania of ESPN. Hezonja is expected to have a \u201ckey wing role\u201d for Cleveland next season.<\/p>\n Hezonja \u2014 the No. 5 pick in the 2015 draft \u2014 receives an opportunity to revitalize his NBA career entering his 6th season in the league after last playing in 2019-20, and is set to play a key wing role for the Eastern conference finalists. Hezonja received strong interest to\u2026 https:\/\/t.co\/XRfrmR5h7d<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) July 26, 2026<\/a> <\/p>\n Hezonja was regarded as one of the draft\u2019s most exciting prospects when he turned pro in 2015, but he failed to establish himself with the Orlando Magic<\/a>. He re-established himself as a star in Europe and averaged 17.5 points and 4.9 rebounds per game for Real Madrid last season on the way to MVP honors.<\/p>\n Hezonja represents the first major addition the Cavaliers have made this offseason. They seemingly beat out interest from several other teams for his services, even though the 31-year-old has not played an NBA game since 2020.<\/p>\n Interestingly, Hezonja has some history with LeBron James<\/a><\/a>. They will now get the chance to face each other, though it will be Hezonja, not James, playing for the Cavaliers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A former top-5 NBA Draft pick is getting another chance in the league. Mario Hezonja is signing a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":796507,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[7,193,14356,6,12],"class_list":["post-796506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba-draft","tag-basketball","tag-cleveland-cavaliers","tag-mario-hezonja","tag-nba","tag-nba-draft"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116987988766530656","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796506","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=796506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796506\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/796507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=796506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=796506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=796506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}