Hezonja limbo drags into a second week, and Cleveland's forward problem isn't getting younger

The roadblock that surfaced July 28 is still there. Mario Hezonja remains unsigned, the one-year, $2.8 million deal that was supposed to close Cleveland's most glaring roster gap is still theoretical, and training camp is no longer an abstraction on the horizon.

Dean Wade was the starting forward on a team that reached the second round of the playoffs. He averaged 5.7 points a game. That number tells you everything about how badly this position needs help, and Hezonja — a former fifth overall pick who rebuilt his game into a reliable scoring option in the EuroLeague — was the answer Cleveland settled on after the marquee free-agent market closed without them. He was never a glamorous fix. He was a workable one. Right now he is neither.

The depth chart behind Wade is Nae'Qwan Tomlin and Riley Minix, who logged essentially no meaningful minutes last season. That is the fallback if this deal collapses. My read is that Cleveland will get this done eventually, but every day it doesn't is a day of camp preparation built around a hole that was supposed to be filled two weeks ago. At some point "eventually" and "in time" stop being the same thing.