Cleveland Cavaliers forward Cedi Osman is looking to have the best season of his career yet as he looks forward to 2022/23.
The Cavaliers are heading into the upcoming campaign with heightened expectations following their acquisition of Donovan Mitchell, and the NBA GMs have voted them as the league’s best young squad in a survey released this week.
The Cavs are currently 14/1 to win the Eastern Conference and 28/1 to win the NBA Championship. As a result, Ohio sportsbooks are likely to receive a flurry of bets when legal bookies launch services therein in January should things look as exciting as they do now.
Osman, meanwhile, spent lots of his summer overseas but is looking to have a monster season as part of what is expected to be a new golden era in Cleveland. The offseason was a busy one for the swingman as he got married and played at EuroBasket for Turkey.
The 27-year-old, who received visits from Cleveland coach J.B. Bickerstaff and GM Mike Gansey, was aware of all of the trade talk his name was involved in despite being very far away from the city he’s known as home for the past five years. However, he claims to be unbothered and is simply focused on improving.
“I’ve been hearing those things,” he said after a practice session at Cleveland Clinic Courts recently, per Cleveland.com. “But I’m just focused on my basketball because you cannot control that.
“That’s why whenever I stepped on a court, I was just working on my game and trying to get better. It’s been six years since coming over, six years in Cleveland. I’m happy here, and this is my home. You cannot control that, so at one point, if it happens, it happens. But I’m just here right now, and I’m happy being a Cleveland Cavalier.”
The aforenamed source also reports that the Cavs front office considered several deals involving the player over the summer. They add that the team remains keen on upgrading at small forward and will look for an exchange should the right opportunity presents itself. But, given that training camp is now fully underway and the season is set to open in less than three weeks, getting a trade partner has become difficult.
The Phoenix Suns could emerge as a viable option, though. The Suns are thought to be looking to deal Jae Crowder, who is unhappy with the current situation in Phoenix and isn’t taking part in training camp. The forward, who played 53 games with Cleveland in the 2017/18 season, is entering the last year of his deal and is very likely to be wearing another uniform pretty soon.
While things didn’t work out the last time around – it was hard fitting in around LeBron James – the situation seems a lot better for Crowder right now. The veteran’s stock has gone up the last few seasons as he’s helped the Miami Heat and Suns reach the NBA Finals in recent years, though they couldn’t snag the chip.
He seems a great fit several years later, bringing tenacity, aggressive defense, three-point shooting, and experience. Crowder is one of the best 3-and-D players in the league at the moment and does present an attractive option for a Cleveland team looking to return to the pinnacle of pro basketball.
As for Osman, he averaged 10.7 points on 43 percent shooting from the field and 35.7 from three-point range in 22.2 minutes a game. He was one of the key players in the Cavs’ reserve unit and looked to have a great understanding with point guard Ricky Rubio. Cleveland outscored opposition teams by 12.5 points when the two were on the floor together, but the partnership was shattered when Rubio’s season ended with a torn ACL. The Spaniard was eventually traded to the Indiana Pacers.
Osman’s performance took a hit, and he got left off the floor several times toward the end of the season, but he still feels like he had a good personal campaign and wants to have an even better one.
“We are a different team, and we are a more serious team playing for something. Last season for me was pretty good,” Osman remarked. “I would say that it was, in the five years that I’ve been in the league, my best season. I knew my role, and I knew what the coaches were asking from me. It was a great season for me. That’s why I’m pretty excited for this season because I want to add more to it.
The upcoming season will be a very different one for the Cavs, given the arrival of Mitchell, who is expected to at least get them to the second round of the playoffs.
“The way we played last season and the way our system was working, I’m just excited,” he added. “With the new addition of Donovan being with us now, we’re even better. We were disappointed with the way we finished the season because we were right there. But the disappointment made us even hungrier. So that’s why we are really excited for what’s ahead of us.”
