Cleveland just has so much money tied up right now between Mitchell, the Allen deal, and the Garland extension. (Not to mention the necessary Mobley extension coming next year.) So you have to feel good about these four players being The Guys that will win you a title. Because Love and Levert will be gone next year, and they'll almost certainly have to start filling gaps with MLE deals and vet minimum dudes once Mobley's extension comes into play.

So they have, like, a 3-4 year window where they need to win a title. And with Garland and Mobley still so young, and with two bigs, two small guards, and no wings worth calling home about, I think there are some questions as to whether the window lines up with the opportunity. If that makes sense. They'll be really fucking good, wouldn't be surprised by ECF or what have you... you just have to believe they'll be better than Boston and Milwaukee in the next 3-4 years. And I'm not necessarily convinced!

Utah, meanwhile, is proving that they have a fantastic coach, and they have *very* little money tied up long term (Lauri and Sexton are the only guys on the books after next year). They could absolutely make a big splash in the FA market to lure away a star or two and say "hey, look what we did when we had *nobody* of note on the roster." While I still suspect that there's a world in which *not* tanking this year will prove to be a big mistake... the complete salary freedom and the impression they're making on the league this year leads me to believe good things could be coming.

Not to mention, Utah has Cleveland's draft picks until, like, 2029. It just takes one bad year from Cleveland, one year of Evan Mobley injury, for Utah to potentially pick up a *major* asset as a result of this deal.

I don't think Utah will sustain this level of winning this year-- imagine they'll be in play-in contention though, which is a *massive* win given the roster-- but there's a lot of long-term upside in what Utah's got going right now, whereas Cleveland is absolutely in Win Now mode. If Cleveland wins a title, then they did the right thing. If they don't... maybe it was still the right thing, but it'll come at a pretty substantial price.