Re: David Griffin?
Gee had a team option for this year for 3.25 mil$....looking at that means they literally could have waived Gee and then Hopson (2.5mil) and traded one young player or waived Carrick ( 800k) to have a max slot available...those 3 waived in total is roughly 6.40 mil$
So the more I look at it the more I can see why some people were a tad salty they had to give up assets to get rid of Jack...I'm pretty sure they did it so they could get Haywood's contract to use next off-season if they couldn't get Love this year...
Felix's contract is guaranteed. So they couldn't just cut him. Grant's decision to guarantee the second year of his contract was discussed on RCF last year.
By executing a salary dump of just Jack's contract, the Cavs could have created roughly the same amount of capspace as they ended up creating -- well, about $1.4M instead of somewhere between $1.7M and $1.9M.
We all knew the Cavs would have to sacrifice a young player or a pick in order to dump Jack. We didn't think it would be two young players (Zeller AND Karasev) and a 2016 (protected) pick. Still hard to believe the Cavs had to give up all 3 assets. Makes you wonder whether this was Gilbert's doing? If so, I can cut Griffin some slack here. It may not seem like much, since the salary dump trade in effect landed LeBron, but we need as many assets as possible to build this team. Unlike Miami in 2010, we have only two stars, not three, as things now stand. We don't want to duplicate the Ferry era, when we never had quite enough, despite Gilbert's willingness to spend, to bring in a legitimate second star.
Very interesting that Griffin valued Haywood's contract over Zeller and/or Karasev. I mean, maybe he knew he would have to trade both to dump Jack -- though that price seems excessive -- but once he made the Haywood trade, in order to create the ~$1.9M in space, which presumably will be used to add a veteran, he needed to dump both. I'd prefer to have kept Zeller and not worried about carving out a bit of capspace, but maybe Griffin doesn't agree?? Or maybe it wasn't an option because he couldn't get a Jack deal done otherwise??
Griffin must be confident he can leverage the Haywood contract next summer. It should have some value. It's much more flexible than a TPE too.
I agree. But the facts... He's the GM that signed LeBron, drafted Wiggins. A big part of it has to be team improvement too. Non-playoff team to 1 seed? GM of the year whether he deserves the credit or not...
As Sheridan's reporting and LeBron's letter makes clear, LeBron's return had nothing to do with David Griffin or anyone else.
Long way to go before the start of the season, but a bit premature to predict a #1 seed. I sort of doubt Griffin will get the credit for LeBron's return. Now if he pulls off a Love trade that pundits view favorably, and team is #1 seed in the East and wins upwards of 60 games, well, then I think he will get recognition.
