So long, David Griffin

[Cavsfan1985]

I don't think the mistake was letting him walk; it was not re-signing him in the summer of 2015 and offering only the QO.

I agree, but this is only after knowing Delly had a breakout year. I think with both JR and Delly having breakout years, it forced our hand. I am sure we did not expect to have to pay JR as much as we did.

 

[The Red Viper]

Man, gotta give props to Griff! _/\_

I was critical of his moves this season. Especially the lack of a back-up PG to not replace Delly. But both Korver and DWill have been quality. While I wanted a defensive wing like a Tucker or Thabo, I was happy when we got Korver because I knew Korver would make our great offense even more unstoppable.

But DWill has been a sigh to the sore eyes. One thing we lacked this season was energy off the bench. The likes of RJ, Frye etc are good but them being old meant, we usually were slow as a team and played at a meh tempo. With DWill in the rotation, our second unit is playing with the kind of energy it used to last year with Delly and TT etc. A lot of us including me were disappointed with the DWill acquisition because we wanted someone like Chalmers and Lance, and I still do but we needed someone like a DWill as well, which not many except Griff realized. So, major props to him for that.

I still feel we need two players to make our roster complete. A defensive Center/rim-protector and a good back-up PG. Curious to see what Griff has in his hat!

 

[Cavsfan1985]

I say yes we would, only because in a separate trade we dumped Varejao to save tax money, and there is no way in hell LeBron would support dumping a player without getting more talent back in return. Not after what happened with Mike Miller in Miami.

I agree, I think the trade would still happen. But if you had just paid Delly a 4 year 18/20 mill contract, there could have been some uneasy feeling with taking on Frye at a longer deal.

"From a money standpoint, Cleveland is trading short-term savings for longer-term obligations. Taking on Frye ($8.2M) and dumping Varejao ($9.7M) and Cunningham ($981K) lowers Cleveland’s payroll number by roughly $2.5 million and generates an actual savings of more than $10 million because the Cavaliers are significantly over the luxury tax threshold. However, Frye is under contract through 2017–18 ($7.8M in 2016–17 and $7.4M in 2017–18) whereas Varejao’s final guaranteed year was next season. For Cleveland, agreeing to take on the extra year of Frye is simply the price of doing business when the franchise is in title-or-bust mode."

http://www.si.com/nba/2016/02/18/tr...nderson-varejao-three-team-deal-magic-blazers

 

[TheLand1287]

Griffin has done a dozen things right and one thing wrong (Delly), but the same 3-4 people in here just can't let the Delly thing go. If letting Delly go is a "domino effect", it's a minor one that can be cured. Sure, it would've been nice to get him on a cheap deal in the summer of 2015, but they also tied up ALOT of money that summer in resigning Love, Shumpert, Tristan, and then eventually JR last summer. Nothing we can do about that now. You can't keep everybody. But as far as matching the Bucks offer? Stop it. I loved Delly as a backup PG, but that's a bad contract. He's regressed each year since that 2014-15 season.

Granted one has gone up against backups and one against starters, and not that it means everything, but Kay Felder actually has a higher PER than Delly this year.

No, David Griffin does not walk on water, but getting Dunleavy wasn't a bad move either considering it cost them zero assets. Birdman was a vet min deal in which options were few and far between due to the cap jump and assholes like Pachulia/West choosing to go to GS over us. Dunleavy didn't work out but he still miraculously flipped him for a better version in Korver.

Considering the Cavs history of grossly incompetent GM's I think people need to relax a bit on the 1-2 things Griffin could have done differently and just appreciate this golden era we're fortunate enough to be apart of as fans.

 

[Cassity14]

Yeah, I'm not willing to give Griffin a pass on Dunleavy, Mo, and Birdman either. I'm also not a fan of the fact that until now, the idea to backup LeBron has been solely with players older than him.

I get that Birdman was only injury insurance, but there were better options, and what kind of injury insurance is an old guy who's even more likely to get injured?

The decision making on Mo has proven to be downright laughable. This is entirely separate from letting Delly walk. I totally understand not wanting to pay Delly 10 million dollars per season, but the answer to the cheap backup dilemna clearly wasn't Mo, and that seems to have been pretty easy to see with his injury last season and his status of being a locker room issue after getting benched upon Kyrie's return.

Dunleavy was also a bad move that didn't work out. Lucky for the Cavs, his salary magically lined up with the guy's who became available.

Delly's money would not have increased last season had he been extended (correct me if I'm wrong), so adding Frye wouldn't have been an issue on last year's pay roll. Not to mention, money was no issue when it came to winning a title; it only appears to be a consideration now that the title has been won. If that were the case, you'd still rather have Delly on a long term, super valuable contract. If you had to move him, you could get value back.


I'm not anti-Griffin, but I'm not going to claim he's been 100% right on every move he's made as a GM either.

EDIT: The claim that Dunleavy didn't cost assets isn't one I agree with. He ate up a roster spot and required a TPE to use.

We absolutely cannot judge the Duneleavy transaction more positively because he was moved for Korver. They are entirely separate moves.

 

[InBoobieWeTrust]

The Delly thing is an interesting case study. Of course, hindsight is 20/20. So it's easy to criticise Griff for not signing him, but I don't think he made that bad of a decision.

The summer when we could have had him for 4-5 million a year, he was restricted. He could have signed an offer sheet if he could have gotten one, but he didn't. The cap was going to keep going up as well.

So he ended up getting the one year deal. But the unique thing about this circumstance...Is that Delly was STILL going to be a restricted free agent the next year.

So if you're Griffin...You have Dellavedova, coming off a great finals performance, who can't even get an offer sheet for 3-4 million. You're balls deep into the tax, and you can save your owner 10-15 million dollars, keep Delly for the year, and still have control over him the following year when the luxury tax hit might not be as bad. I feel like almost any GM in Griff's spot would have done the same thing.

What came next was just a lot of things combined. Kyrie was hurt, Mo Williams wasn't bad but could not defend a lick, so Delly ends up getting major minutes and he plays great, the team looks awesome with him playing and national television games see Delly playing well. Then Kyrie comes back and Blatt gets fired, and Lue finds this second unit combination with Bron/Delly/TT that starts running rougshod over everyone else's second unit and up until around the ECF, Delly has made a huge leap as a shooter, defender and distributor. He's now on the league's radar.

Then he gets hurt, and then plays really bad in the finals where it becomes obvious even healthy we can't play him more than 10minutes against GS because Kyrie has to play 40 and them.playing together doesn't work against GSW. Then we use Mo Williams over him in the last 4 games...And we win the title!!

Summer comes, the league has adjusted to the increased cap, there's insane money available, the contracts are insane, the backup PG market is as well.

Delly gets a $9m/year offer sheet. Brutal. Hard to justify matching that. Plus, Mo Williams is telling you he's coming back to finish out his contract. There's minimum level defensive guards out there (Liggins, Chalmers down the road, etc).

Then Mo pulls that bullshit, we suffer some injuries, here we are.

I can't say Griffin made a mistake. Delly is clearly overpaid in Milwaukee. His defense and shooting have fallen off. He got hurt again.

It would have been nice to get him for $3/14 million or whatever it was, but it was very justifiable for Griff to handle it the way he did. I really think it was a long string of bad luck and circumstances that led to the no backup PG thing this year. I think it will finally be rectified shortly.

 

[Nphan]

Reports were that Delly wanted 4, which means we probably could have gotten him for 3-3.5.

That kind of money for a guy who can run an offense, shoot 40% from 3, pester opposing guards with 110% effort, and perhaps most importantly preserve Kyrie for the postseason?

Griffin's great but he isn't infallible.

to think we could have Delly locked up for 4 million a year is mindblowing and support the fact that Griffin and Gilbert fucked up big time that year.

 

[Nphan]

Also, had Mo not punked us, we would not be looking for a backup PG. Mo would have done fine giving us 8-10 mins a night in the back up PG role. I am not saying Griffin is god like or anything. You cant just look at an individual move in a vacuum.

Dont get me wrong - i think Griffin is one of the top GMs in the league. But his biggest mistake in his career as Cavs GM will always be not locking up Delly for 4 million a year. Delly bring more than just stats : The guy had intangibles that was contagious with his hustle and energy, toughness, fearlessness 100% of the time hes on the court. Then the stuff that he brings statwise like defense, 3 point shooting and running an offense off the bench. Some of these things we are missing big time this year. Mo would never bring some of the stuff Delly brought. Griffin for some reason did not see this.

 

[Nphan]

Again these were reports, and we don't know if money was an issue. We paid Delly 1.1MM last year, had we given him $4-$5 MM that would have cost us another $7.5MM - $10MM in luxury tax. Who knows, had we gave Delly the money last year, do we still make the trade to get Frye?

We had a record payroll and luxury tax last year. You cant act like adding 15MM more to last year salary does not constitute a money decision.

Okay lets say we signed Delly for 4 years 4 million and paid that 15 million dollar luxary tax. Within the 4 years of 4 million and break that luxury tax into 4 years, that 3.75 million extra a year = 7.75 million for Delly for the 4 years. Im looking at the list of NBA PGs making that much and its : Jose Calderon, Cory Joseph, D.J. Augustin, Rodney Stuckey. I'll take Delly over any of these guys so the extra luxury was worth it in my opinion.

 

[InBoobieWeTrust]

Okay lets say we signed Delly for 4 years 4 million and paid that 15 million dollar luxary tax. Within the 4 years of 4 million and break that luxury tax into 4 years, that 3.75 million extra a year = 7.75 million for Delly for the 4 years. Im looking at the list of NBA PGs making that much and its : Jose Calderon, Cory Joseph, D.J. Augustin, Rodney Stuckey. I'll take Delly over any of these guys so the extra luxury was worth it in my opinion.

Even having Delly on the roster at $4m this year would have upped the tax bill by about another $15 million. And next year, etc...Etc... So maybe add another 35 million to your number, lol.

Delly didn't even get a single offer sheet, and was going to be restricted AGAIN the following year.

I think the market exploded more than Griffin expected.(honestly, it exploded more than almost any GM expected).

I still think at $6-7M a year the Cavs may have matched. But then Milwaukee went crazy and overpaid him even above normal market value. I think if you had truth serum, Milwaukee would say that if they could do it again, they would have offered 4/$25m max, not 38 or whatever it is.

I think it was an unfortunate result of some circumstances that would have been hard to predict all happening. Hard to put it completely on Griffin, IMO.

 

[Gus Zing]

Just imagining a bench of

Frye
Williams
JR or Shump?
Korver
Delly

wow.

 

[Cavatt]

The Delly thing is an interesting case study. Of course, hindsight is 20/20. So it's easy to criticise Griff for not signing him, but I don't think he made that bad of a decision.

The summer when we could have had him for 4-5 million a year, he was restricted. He could have signed an offer sheet if he could have gotten one, but he didn't. The cap was going to keep going up as well.

So he ended up getting the one year deal. But the unique thing about this circumstance...Is that Delly was STILL going to be a restricted free agent the next year.

So if you're Griffin...You have Dellavedova, coming off a great finals performance, who can't even get an offer sheet for 3-4 million. You're balls deep into the tax, and you can save your owner 10-15 million dollars, keep Delly for the year, and still have control over him the following year when the luxury tax hit might not be as bad. I feel like almost any GM in Griff's spot would have done the same thing.

What came next was just a lot of things combined. Kyrie was hurt, Mo Williams wasn't bad but could not defend a lick, so Delly ends up getting major minutes and he plays great, the team looks awesome with him playing and national television games see Delly playing well. Then Kyrie comes back and Blatt gets fired, and Lue finds this second unit combination with Bron/Delly/TT that starts running rougshod over everyone else's second unit and up until around the ECF, Delly has made a huge leap as a shooter, defender and distributor. He's now on the league's radar.

Then he gets hurt, and then plays really bad in the finals where it becomes obvious even healthy we can't play him more than 10minutes against GS because Kyrie has to play 40 and them.playing together doesn't work against GSW. Then we use Mo Williams over him in the last 4 games...And we win the title!!

Summer comes, the league has adjusted to the increased cap, there's insane money available, the contracts are insane, the backup PG market is as well.

Delly gets a $9m/year offer sheet. Brutal. Hard to justify matching that. Plus, Mo Williams is telling you he's coming back to finish out his contract. There's minimum level defensive guards out there (Liggins, Chalmers down the road, etc).

Then Mo pulls that bullshit, we suffer some injuries, here we are.

I can't say Griffin made a mistake. Delly is clearly overpaid in Milwaukee. His defense and shooting have fallen off. He got hurt again.

It would have been nice to get him for $3/14 million or whatever it was, but it was very justifiable for Griff to handle it the way he did. I really think it was a long string of bad luck and circumstances that led to the no backup PG thing this year. I think it will finally be rectified shortly.

Just as devil's advocate. Delly made every lineup he played on better, and he was a defensive anchor and leader on the team. People think this is controversial, but I think he makes Lebron and Kyrie better too just as they make him better.

He was our only "Diamond in the rough" find, and he could have been locked up long term at a very affordable number. They cheaped out on him, and that almost guaranteed that he would have to leave if he got a big offer. 4M a year gets him in 2015 and it would have been worth it and good depth and injury insurance for years. He showed he could fill in for Kyrie even when he was hurt. I understand there are tax implications, but Shump got 10M and I still think that Delly had a greater impact overall.

Delly isn't without his warts, but a lot like Derrick Williams, he was really useful and could be really successful on our team long term. Yeah he is hurt now, but you can't tell what would happen if he had stayed.

 

[TheLand1287]

Yeah, I'm not willing to give Griffin a pass on Dunleavy, Mo, and Birdman either. I'm also not a fan of the fact that until now, the idea to backup LeBron has been solely with players older than him.

I get that Birdman was only injury insurance, but there were better options, and what kind of injury insurance is an old guy who's even more likely to get injured?

The decision making on Mo has proven to be downright laughable. This is entirely separate from letting Delly walk. I totally understand not wanting to pay Delly 10 million dollars per season, but the answer to the cheap backup dilemna clearly wasn't Mo, and that seems to have been pretty easy to see with his injury last season and his status of being a locker room issue after getting benched upon Kyrie's return.

Dunleavy was also a bad move that didn't work out. Lucky for the Cavs, his salary magically lined up with the guy's who became available.

Delly's money would not have increased last season had he been extended (correct me if I'm wrong), so adding Frye wouldn't have been an issue on last year's pay roll. Not to mention, money was no issue when it came to winning a title; it only appears to be a consideration now that the title has been won. If that were the case, you'd still rather have Delly on a long term, super valuable contract. If you had to move him, you could get value back.


I'm not anti-Griffin, but I'm not going to claim he's been 100% right on every move he's made as a GM either.

EDIT: The claim that Dunleavy didn't cost assets isn't one I agree with. He ate up a roster spot and required a TPE to use.

We absolutely cannot judge the Duneleavy transaction more positively because he was moved for Korver. They are entirely separate moves.

Wait, who is saying Griff is 100% right on every move? I don't see anyone saying that. But he HAS hit more than he's missed. Being critical over adding Dunleavy is ridiculous. He ate up a roster spot... From whom? The Cavs had an open spot going into the season, and Dunleavy back in July was better than pretty much anyone the Cavs could have gotten in FA for the vet minimum. And really, he used up a TPE? The majority of the time those go unused anyway, so the fact he was acquired for just the TPE was perfectly fine.

Please, since you have all of the answers, tell us what should've been done differently given the cap rise, lack of trade assets, and the type of players who were signing vet minimum deals.

 

[AllforOne]

But his biggest mistake in his career as Cavs GM will always be not locking up Delly for 4 million a year.

God, we should all hope that's his biggest mistake ever! Delly is a backup PG, and barely played in the Finals against Golden State (including sitting on the bench for all of Game Seven). It would have been nice to keep him, but let's not pretend that Griff let a star get away.

Fans who complain about Griff should be forced to be fans of a Jim Paxson-GM'd team for the next hundred years. [insert image of Carlos Boozer walking away for nothing]

 

[RichieRichPaul]

Im glad we have griff as gm instead of windhorst.

The trades he proposes are always horrible for the cavs.

Every one on today's show was much better for the other team.