As rumored, Cleveland plundered point guard Mo Williams from Milwaukee, losing only 33-year-old Joe Smith and 32-year-old Damon Jones in the process. Jones and OKC alum Luke Ridnour head to the Bucks; Smith and former Sonic Desmond Mason pack for Oklahoma. As I wrote a bit ago, it's a good pull for Cleveland -- Williams shores up a pitiful position and adds some offensive punch to a defensive-minded team.

There's another consideration, though: what's it do to Cleveland's pending cap space? Danny Ferry's public position on all prospective trades has been that the team didn't want to surrender its projected cap space for the summer of 2009. With Smith, Jones, Eric Snow and Wally Szczerbiak definitely off the payroll next offseason, the idea become such that the Cavs would be in good position to either trade for a disgruntled superstar at the deadline or reach out to a top-level free agent in July. (In actuality, once Daniel Gibson was extended, the team still needed to shred one more long contract to be serious players in free agency. The trade avenue would be alive regardless.)

Over the past few days, a rumor which would traditionally drive the world mad has slipped by under the cover of the Olympics. Mo Williams, a dynamic second-tier point guard who signed with Milwaukee for big money last summer, would head to Cleveland to augment LeBron James' single-headed offensive attack while OKC's Luke Ridnour would transfer to Milwaukee and the Cavs would give the Thunder something or other (probably some expiring contracts -- fancy that). BrewHoop sums up the situation flawlessly.

There are two competing questions in such a deal. The first, which we won't address fully in this post: is Ramon Sessions so good he makes Milwaukee's third- or fourth-best player (Williams) expendable? (Because Ridnour sure as spam ain't a sure-fire building block at this point. He'll start, but you'd think the goal would be to promote Sessions soon.) The question which actually matters to the league as a whole: can Williams push Cleveland over the top?

Cleveland was simply awful at the point last year -- 82games.com reports the positional PER was only 13. That includes minutes for Larry Hughes, Daniel Gibson, Delonte West and Damon Jones -- players substantially inferior to Williams. Mo offered a career-high PER of 17 last season, with good scoring, shooting and turnover numbers to go with a decent usage rate. (Usage measures the shot creation ability and offensive role of a player.) Williams would figure to be the second or third option in Cleveland, behind LeBron and perhaps Zydrunas Ilgauskas.

Cleveland won 45 games and took the eventual champs to seven games. Philadelphia and Toronto have improved by some measure, and another summer of seasoning for Dwight Howard might make Orlando better. On the surface, it wouldn't seem Williams' production is the difference between 45 and 50 games. But when you consider what he'd be replacing, I think it'd be as big an acquisition as Jermaine O'Neal for the Raps. If the trade goes through and Cleveland gives up little, it could help snatch a top-4 seed for the Cavs and give LeBron a better shot at getting back to the top of the heap.

A few weeks back, an enterprising Oklahoma City news outfit deduced the moniker for that town's new NBA team would be Thunder. And what do you know, via TrueHoop, the NBA inadvertently leaked out the team name when it released its 2008-09 schedule today. Take a look at this screenshot from OKC blog The Lost Ogle.



The Kings and Mavericks will escape a visit to OKC, however: both team schedules [Sacramento, Dallas] at one point boasted of games "at Seattle." Sweet! The Sonics return for two games this year!