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.

Cavs’ Woes Rooted in Several Areas

Proof that the Cleveland Cavaliers have become out-and-out dysfunctional is that you can make a case that the problems lie with GM Chris Grant, coach Mike Brown, and the players.

If it were just a matter of not having talent, then you can blame the GM. However, there is talent, but it is duplicated at certain positions. For the Cavs, it seems to be centered at the point guard and power forward spots.

While Grant may have picked the most talented players that were available at the slots they were taken, and you can make that argument at the time of the draft, he didn’t follow through on dealing the excess of talent at one spot to fix a hole at another position.

There is no question that Kyrie Irving, Luol Deng, Anderson Varejao, Dion Waiters, and Tristan Thompson can play in this league. Unfortunately, they clearly do not fit together on the court, and dealing one of them for a shooter would be in the best interests of the wine and gold.

When Byron Scott was fired as Cleveland’s head coach after last season, Grant brought back his friend, Mike Brown to handle the reins.

Brown got the job despite having no real track record of developing young talent. The teams he coached in Cleveland and Los Angeles were veteran laden squads.

He returned to the north coast based on his reputation as a defensive minded coach. His offensive schemes were poor in his first go-round here and there is no evidence that anything has changed.

So, predictably, none of the Cavalier young players, most of the roster is made up of second and third year players, have shown any progress from last season. Even Irving, rookie of the year and an all-star in his second season, has seemed to have plateaued this year.

And remember, the Cavs had the first overall pick in last summer’s draft. Brown has never showed any inclination to play rookies, so Anthony Bennett has been anchored to the bench for much of the season.

Brown’s offensive set is for players to take their man off the dribble and force the opposing defense to help. That worked when the best player on the team is LeBron James or Kobe Bryant, both of whom are significantly bigger than Irving.

There is little screening away from the ball and virtually no movement away from the ball on many possessions.

This morning, The Plain Dealer’s Bud Shaw opined that the front office needs to show Brown is in charge. While that’s true, it would also help if Brown showed he was in charge.

We wrote earlier in the season, that with the coach being fired twice, he should have come in with a “doing it my way” approach. He seems too nice of a man to be the hammer the young Cavs need.

Which brings us to the players. Yes, they are young and inexperienced for the most part, but it doesn’t appear they are all that upset with all of the losing. It has come to light that this upsets newcomer Deng, who must be shaking his head at the lack of interest his teammates show from night-to-night.

The players are feuding in the locker room, and there seems to be an individualistic approach to the game for many of the young players.

Shouldn’t that have been thought of when they were drafted?

That brings us back to Grant, the beginning point of this vicious circle.

There is plenty of blame to go around for this edition of the Cleveland Cavaliers. How it gets fixed will be very important for the future of this franchise.

There will probably be changes in all three phases of the organization.

In Retrospect, Cavs’ Problems Started in Summer

The Cleveland Cavaliers are not only a mess on the court; their front office is now sticking its collective head in the sand.

Yesterday, GM Chris Grant met with the media (a noble thing because it’s easy to meet with them when things are going well) to talk about his basketball team, who came off a 3-2 west coast trip for a five game home stand, and went just 1-4.

However, Grant identified the five game trek away from Quicken Loans Arena as the real Cavaliers, not the 13-27 record they have in all games outside of that trip.

Here’s hoping the GM was just doing media lip service with that comment because right now this season has been a comedy of errors.

First, after firing Byron Scott, presumably because the Cavs blew several huge leads and had a problem defensively, Grant hired his old friend and former Cleveland coach Mike Brown, a guy with a strong defensive reputation.

The fact of the matter is the wine and gold still aren’t playing any better on the defensive end, and Brown’s trouble on the offensive end are once again rearing their ugly head.

Second, Grant used three picks in last summer’s draft on players who aren’t helping the team, including the first overall pick, Anthony Bennett.

Bennett was out of shape in training camp due to off-season shoulder surgery, struggled early, and then fell out of Brown’s rotation.

Sergey Karasev, who has the reputation as a good shooter, is simply too young and inexperienced to play yet at the NBA level, and Carrick Felix, who came with a good reputation as a defender in college, were the other two picks.

For a team who finished in the lottery last season to get nothing out of the draft is a crime, even if it was a weak draft.

Bennett has some ability, but the pressure the coaching staff felt to win right away put him on the bench, or perhaps it is Brown’s inclination to not ever give rookies playing time.

Based on his history, he tends to leave inexperienced players on the bench.

Wasn’t that taken into consideration when he was hired?

The next moves were to bring in some veteran free agents, G Jarrett Jack, F Earl Clark, and C Andrew Bynum. The former’s primary position is point guard, which is manned by the Cavs’ best player, Kyrie Irving.

Jack can play the shooting guard spot too, meaning he does the same things as last year’s first round pick, Dion Waiters.

You can make the conclusion that this acquisition didn’t fill a need it just added a body.

The same is true of Clark, a power forward by trade who plays the same spot as two of the Cavs’ better players: Tristan Thompson and Anderson Varejao.

Bynum did fill a need, a quality NBA center, but he was coming off a knee injury that caused him to miss all of last season. It was a gamble, so it’s difficult to be critical of this move, particularly because Grant moved the big man to get a quality player in Luol Deng.

It’s been a sad, slow trip through the off-season to get to this point in what has been a horrible basketball season.

Pretty much every move Grant made has blown up in his face.

Yes, we agreed with some when they were made (signing Jack) and disagreed with others (hiring Brown).

When you look back, none of them have worked. Now, Grant is faced with fixing the mess he created in order to save his job.

Cavs’ Parts May Not Fit

Since the holiday season is upon on, it seems appropriate to refer to the roster of the Cleveland Cavaliers as the island of misfit toys.

This isn’t to denigrate the talent of some of the players, and really, it is not to rip on GM Chris Grant for his selections in the draft.

Grant’s job is to draft the most talented player available when it is his turn to pick. So, if he thought Anthony Bennett was the best player last summer (and it is way too early to judge otherwise) then you have to take him.

The problem with the roster is it is too heavy in some areas and it needs help in others. Our thought was that Grant could deal from strength to shore up the weaknesses, and he may do that in time, but he can’t wait much longer.

Let’s look at the power forward position. Currently, the wine and gold have four players that are primarily “fours”: Tristan Thompson, Anderson Varejao, Earl Clark, and Bennett.

Mike Brown tries to alleviate the problem by playing Varejao at center and Clark at small forward, but they give up a lot (Varejao—size, Clark-quickness) at those spots.

Most NBA teams use two power forwards on the roster, so right now, there is an overload there.

At the small forward, the Cavs have Alonzo Gee, a defensive specialist, and they can play swingman C. J. Miles there as well, although in limited minutes.

Gee doesn’t shoot well enough to be considered a problem for the player assigned to guard him, and Miles doesn’t have the size to be able to guard the elite small forwards of the league, although he is the one Cleveland player who has knocked down open shots thus far.

In the backcourt, the Cavaliers have the centerpiece of the current roster, point guard Kyrie Irving. Irving can score and set up teammates, and if he has a weakness, it’s that he loves his dribble.

It would be one thing if he were moving with the dribble, but more often than not, he’s at the top of the key bouncing the ball and going nowhere.

That could be because of the simplistic offense the coaching staff runs.

The other players who get time in the backcourt (along with Miles) are Dion Waiters and Jarrett Jack, both combo guards rather than true off guards. This means both are more effective with the ball in their hands.

However, the coaching staff probably wants the ball in Irving’s hands.

You could have plays where the ball starts in Waiters or Jack’s hands and they set up Irving, but you would have to have something set up for that, and right now that doesn’t look to be the case.

So, the three-headed backcourt doesn’t seem to fit well together right now.

So, the pressure is on Grant to convert his superfluous parts into ones that can help this basketball team win and win now, because although there is talent on the roster, it doesn’t fit together.

There are too many players who have similar games, which is fine if they play at different times, but when you have to play Waiters and Jack at the same time or have Thompson and Varejao on the floor at the same time, it’s a problem.

If this team is going to start winning, this roster may have to be fixed. Grant has to make some moves to get this team to start putting games in the win column.