Cavs Unsettled At Wrong Time

It was just eight days ago that the Cleveland Cavaliers ended their reign as NBA Champions, losing The Finals to Golden State four games to one.

It was the third straight championship series appearance for the wine and gold, all guided by GM David Griffin.

Last night, word came out that Griffin and the team agreed to part ways mutually. This means that the now former GM and owner Dan Gilbert couldn’t come to some sort of agreement in regards to either the future of the franchise or how much power Griffin should have in determining what will happen in the future for the Cavs.

It has been reported that the departure of Griffin was concerning to the team’s resident superstar, LeBron James, who already has trust issues with the owner.

The most troubling thing about the change in the front office is no one knows who is making the decisions at Quicken Loans Arena now in a very critical time of the year for an NBA team.

This Thursday is the NBA Draft, and although the Cavaliers do not have a selection, it is also a period where moves that will effect next year’s roster are made.

The beginning of the free agent period is also dawning, and there is no one around to be making these key decisions, especially for a franchise with championship expectations.

It does not mean however, that Gilbert is planning a massive rebuild following next season. As long as James is here, the Cavs will be a contender. And although there are rumors from every place concerning where The King will play in 2018, if Cleveland wins another title next June, it is difficult to see James leaving.

And if Kyrie Irving is on the roster, it would be difficult to find another NBA roster that could sign James as a free agent, with as dynamic a player as Irving on the team.

This isn’t to say James will definitely not leave when his contract ends after next season, no one knows that except LeBron himself. However, if the Larry O’Brien Trophy comes back to the north coast, it would be odd for a player who wants titles to turn his back on a repeat chance.

Griffin did have an ability to take limited assets to turn them into players who could contribute, such as his deals for Kyle Korver and the signing of Deron Williams.

In the end though, the lack of athleticism on the bench cost the wine and gold against the Warriors.

Maybe Griffin wanted more veterans and Gilbert wanted more youth. Maybe Griffin wanted more offense and Gilbert wanted defense. Who knows? All we know is there will be plenty of speculation.

Before bashing ownership, we want to see who is brought in to run the show, and we will give them a chance before hammering, if merited.

Cleveland fans will always have a warm feeling for David Griffin, who was the architect of the first championship team in the city in 52 years. That doesn’t mean he is the only person with good basketball team building skills.

The new GM could wind up being a genius.

The problem with making the move now is it is difficult to find a good thing in being unsettled right now. And it looks like Gilbert is meddling again in basketball affairs, which is not a good thing.

The pressure regarding this move falls squarely on the owner. If things don’t work out, and James leaves after next year because he’s not happy with the direction of the Cavs, Gilbert will be vilified by the media and fans alike.

On the other hand, Gilbert hired David Griffin, and we know how that worked out.

Let’s see who takes over and how it turns out before pressing the panic button. It’s not the end of this successful run for the Cavaliers…yet.

Griffin’s First Move is the Right Move

You can’t accuse Cavaliers’ owner Dan Gilbert of acting rashly this time.

The season has been over for about a month, and today the wine and gold announced that interim GM David Griffin now has the job permanently, and his first act in that position was to fire Mike Brown as head coach.

If you’ve read this blog over the past few months, you know that we are celebrating that move because Brown was the wrong fit for the job here.

When we heard the Cavs were considering giving Griffin the job full-time, we thought a first and only question he should be asked would be should Brown continue to be the head coach. If he answered no, he would be hired.

Here’s hoping that Gilbert talked to several basketball people since the regular season ended and came to the conclusion that Griffin was the most capable person to run this franchise.

We still would love Gilbert to hire another experienced basketball person (we would still favor George Karl) as a consultant for the new GM to bounce ideas off of.

If former GM Chris Grant was the guy who wanted Brown back and sold Dan Gilbert on the idea, how can anyone blame Griffin for bringing in his own man?

The once and again former Cavs’ coach didn’t pick up any new ideas on offense since he left the first time and has never had a history of developing young players, of which there are plenty on the Cleveland roster.

Just because Brown signed a five-year deal last summer was no reason to keep him. Keeping him would have been a hindrance to what Griffin’s vision of what this basketball team will be. To be succinct, Griffin was just correcting Grant’s mistake.

However, let’s hope Griffin does his due diligence in regards to hiring the next head coach of the Cavaliers.

There are plenty of people making the connection that since Griffin used to work in the Phoenix Suns’ organization, he may look at bringing in recently fired Laker head coach Mike D’Antoni to replace Brown.

That would be a mistake in our opinion.

Just as Brown and his defensive philosophy proved to be a one trick pony, so would D’Antoni’s total offensive approach.

The Cavaliers owe it to themselves and to the fans of this basketball team to find a coach who understands and can teach the entire game, not just one side of the floor. There are coaches who can do just that.

Griffin also needs to find someone who the players will listen to and respect. That appeared to be a problem with Brown. It didn’t appear the players respected him and they didn’t play hard for him.

The new boss needs to find someone who the young Cavalier players can relate to and they will listen to.

The former Golden State coach, Mark Jackson, would seem to be appealing in that regard. He turned around the Warriors, who had won less than 30 games two years ago into a playoff squad.

Plus, he’s a former color analyst for ABC/ESPN, which like it or not, gives him credibility with a young roster like the Cavaliers have.

Forget what happened over the last year with the Cavs. It was the wrong move to bring Brown back and they simply corrected it.

Now, it’s time to move forward for the Cavaliers’ organization. Today’s hiring of Griffin and dismissal of Brown is the first step towards getting back to the playoffs.

No Emotion Needed From Gilbert Now

There was good news from the Cleveland Cavaliers yesterday as the players cleaned out their lockers and the front office had meetings.

No one got fired.

Yes, we’ve advocated that changes have to come for the organization, which has gone from 19 wins in the first season after LeBron James left for free agency, to 21 in year two (strike shortened), and then 24 in year three, to this year’s disappointing 33-49 record.

However, here’s hoping yesterday’s inactivity was due to everyone in the front office, including owner Dan Gilbert, taking a deep breath and not making any rash decisions.

In Cleveland, and probably Detroit, we all know that Gilbert is an emotional creature. His famous rant after James made his decision is derided throughout the NBA, but was applauded by his fan base. That could be a reason attendance hasn’t dropped off drastically despite four straight seasons of mediocre basketball.

It was reported this past week that Gilbert is irate about the lack of a playoff spot this season, and insiders think major changes are in the work this summer. But as of right now, nothing was announced.

It was just last off-season that former GM Chris Grant, with the owner’s approval, hired back former coach Mike Brown, and didn’t even interview anyone else. That’s the type of emotional decision that needs to be avoided this time.

Now, there have been rumors that the wine and gold want to bring in a president of basketball operations to oversee the front office and decided the fates of interim GM David Griffin and Brown. That’s a solid decision.

However, two frontrunners for the post that have been mentioned are former Pistons Isiah Thomas and Joe Dumars. The Pistons happen to be Gilbert’s boyhood team, so hiring either of them despite questionable records as coaches/executives would be thinking more with your heart than your head.

The owner is the Board of Governors meeting this weekend and should be picking the brains of the other basketball minds there to decide what would be the best course of action for his team. George Karl is another name that has been bandied about for the lead hoops position, and in our opinion would be a tremendous hire, even if he never played for Detroit.

We think Karl is one of the country’s best basketball minds.

Even so, this is a decision that has to be well thought out and not rushed into. There is a long time between now and the NBA draft, when free agency and trades are consummated. It’s a two month window.

As for the coach, Gilbert shouldn’t let the big contract he and Grant gave Brown be any consideration.

While the team did gain nine games in the win column, there is no question it was a disjointed season, filled with many streaks.

Brown thinks the team seemed to improve in the second half of the season, but January had a six game losing streak, followed by a six game winning streak, which was following by a 15 game stretch in which Cleveland won just four games.

Whenever, it appeared the team was “getting it”, playing team basketball, it was followed by a period in which they executed like they just met each other that very afternoon.

We aren’t going to speculate what that means, but it doesn’t show the players were buying in.

If this summer’s decisions are made with a cool, calm, calculated mind, then the future of the Cavaliers may indeed be brighter. Emotional decisions have gotten them to where they are now.

Grant’s Flaw Was Not Building A Team

Over the past few weeks, we have been critical of the roster mix for the Cleveland Cavaliers, calling them and their roster of point guards and power forwards the “island of misfit toys”.

Today, GM Chris Grant paid for that roster construction with his job, being fired by owner Dan Gilbert after another disgusting loss to an undermanned Los Angeles Laker squad last night.

The question now is who is running the show going into the trade deadline, which figured to be the first step into reshaping this roster. It looks like assistant GM David Griffin gets the gig for now.

You also have to wonder what Grant’s firing means for Mike Brown, because you would have to imagine the new GM would want to hire his own coach, unless someone is promoted internally.

Grant made some solid trades in his tenure, getting a first round choice from the Lakers for Ramon Sessions, trading Jon Leuer to Memphis for three players and another first rounder, and getting Luol Deng from Chicago for Andrew Bynum, a player the team had suspended.

However, it will be questionable draft picks that sealed Grant’s fate.

He operated out of the box on his picks, taking Tristan Thompson at #4 three years ago, which was surprising, and he selected Dion Waiters in the same spot the following year when it appeared he would be picked later.

This year’s use of the first overall pick on Anthony Bennett didn’t help his cause.

The issue isn’t the talent level of Thompson and Waiters, both have shown they can play in the NBA, the problem is the Cavs have become a puzzle whose pieces do not fit together.

Thompson is the same type of player as Anderson Varejao, and Bennett is a power forward, the same position Thompson primarily plays.

Waiters is a player who likes to have the ball in his hands. Unfortunately, so does one of the team’s best players: Kyrie Irving.

So, those two have a problem playing together.

We get that Grant took who he felt were the most talented players at that spot, and really that is the purpose of the draft.

However, a good general manager needs to see that he has duplicated talent and use the excess assets to get people who can play positions where they have needs.

Grant tried by getting Deng, but he didn’t seem to value shooting the basketball as a skill set needed to win basketball games.

Looking at the roster, the closest the wine and gold have to a pure shooter is swingman C.J. Miles, who Grant signed as a free agent.

His coaching hire doesn’t seem to have worked out either, although there didn’t seem to be an exhausting search. Whether that was Dan Gilbert’s decision or Grant’s, we just don’t know.

Mike Brown was a curious choice, not only because he used to coach here, but because he seems to favor veteran players, and the current Cavaliers are a very young basketball team.

Now, where does this franchise go?

The obvious answer is the dreaded “tank” word, but unless the new GM is predisposed to deal a high draft choice, all that will do is bring another “project” onto a team replete with them.

Does the reformation of this basketball team start with another deal before the NBA trading deadline? It’s pretty clear a change needs to be made because they can’t go through another 30 games playing like they have the last two weeks.

However, the new GM will have to act quickly to start getting the Cavaliers on the correct path. He also has to make a decision on who will be the coach.

Firing Grant was a tough move to make, but the direction of this team had to be changed. The guess here is this was just the first shot fired.