CLEVELAND — Following his first NBA season, former Cleveland Cavaliers center Sasha Kaun has announced his retirement from professional basketball.
After the Cavaliers won the NBA Championship by overcoming a 3-1 deficit to the Golden State Warriors in The Finals, they traded Kaun to the Philadelphia 76ers, along with cash considerations, in exchange for the draft rights to Chukwudiebere Maduabum.
No one played fewer minutes throughout the regular season than Kaun, who was inactive for all of the Cavaliers’ run to their first-ever NBA Championship.
But in the opinion of Cavaliers small forward LeBron James, Kaun not only came to work ready to push and improve those ahead of him on the depth chart to reach their full potential ahead of the games, but did so with little expectation of individual success.
“A good friend of mine texted me the other day, a guy by the name of Mario Chalmers, and he said, ‘You know you can’t win a championship without a Jayhawk on your team,’” James said at the Cavaliers’ Championship Parade and Rally last month. “I said, ‘Damn, you’re kind of right because I won two in Miami with you and I get another one here with Sasha being an ex-Jayhawk from Kansas.’”
Kaun averaged just 3.8 minutes over 25 appearances for the Cavaliers during the regular season. However, despite scoring just 0.9 points and pulling down 1.0 rebounds per game in the regular season, Kaun worked every day in practice and earned the right to be called a champion.
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Article Courtesy of WKYC Channel 3 News Cleveland
Picture Courtesy of Getty Images