Indulge me for a minute. Let me present you with a hypothetical.
Lebron James leaves in free agency and goes to Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Houston -- you choose. Now the Cavaliers are stuck with $105 million in salaries, the eighth overall pick, a terrible roster and only one tradable asset: Kevin Love.
Love enters the last year of his contract (he has a $25.5 million player option for 2019-20 but he might not want to pick it up if it means staying on a miserable Cavaliers team). If Cleveland -- who is now definitely rebuilding -- doesn’t want to lose an asset for nothing, they’ll have no other option but to trade him.