Koby Altman

[NMCav]

Doesn't this mostly depend on whether or not Sexton and Garland turn out to be good picks? Which we don't know yet?

The Irving trade definitely sucked.

I dunno. I'm not upset and finally showing some stability in the front office, but I also wouldn't have been upset to make him wait a little longer to prove himself.

THat said, the John Beilein hiring looks good, although you get the sense a good deal of that is probably Dan, considering MIchigan and all.

Dan went to Michigan State so I doubt he was pounding the table for Beilein. All reports indicated Beilein and Dan didn't even meet until he got hired by Cavs. Dan did want a big time college coach for years though. Started with getting rejected in the past by Izzo multiple times, Callipari. Also pretty sure someone in the front office played for Beilein and suggested Altman talk to him about the job. This hire seems 100 percent done by the FO.

 

[Cavatt]

Here's my take on Koby and Griff

Griff went all in and pushed all his chips in immediately. We traded 2 firsts for Moz for one thing. We used every 2nd possible. He traded picks to get rid of Jarrett Jack and Zeller. He traded away Joe Harris for nothing. He traded for Korver only protecting top 10 for an already old guy when what we really needed was a defensive wing. His last truly good move was getting Channing. Don't forget, he pushed for Anthony Bennett.

Koby traded Kyrie at the worst time. Nothing was available. The right move would have been to hold onto him to trade for Leonard later(which no one would have liked because he was hurt all year) or one of the other guys who popped up like Butler or Tobias Harris. If Middleton and Brogdan were really available, that was probably the best trade.

Turning over the roster with Hood and others was the right move, but we didn't have the coaching staff to implement that.

Lue's coaching staff was inadequate in several ways. Guys didn't have roles. They were all expected to adapt to LeBron ball with essentially no coaching.

We know because

No role player ever played better under Lue.

Hill - retained by team we traded him to because of playoff performance

Hood - retained by team we traded him to because of playoff performance (should have been 6th man, I would have started JC over JR. Jc played well with Lebron and Hood didn't)

Longabardis defense has been proven not to work over multiple years at this point. JB Bickerstaff is accumulating more and more evidence that while this team may not have elite defensive potential, it can certainly be competent with even a simplistic NBA defense that is realistic about the players on the floor. #15 in defense instead of the worst in NBA history 5 games in after a month of coaching.

I don't want to say Lue is bad and Beilein and Blatt were good, but Lue was able to win it all taking an established team that had gotten into a groove to the championship. He never had a single roleplayers who grew or got better in his role and we saw that same thing from Drew. Lue's strengths were coaching stars and relating to them and exploiting weaknesses in the other team both offensively and defensively. No development, very little practice, and riding horses hard that should have been out out to pasture.

He never integrated those new guys. The only guy he integrated o to the team was Channing and both he and Korver were old vets like Richard who knew their roles before they got here. He also allowed Longabardis to torpedo the defense and implement his stupid system after having early success against Minnesota and the Celtics with a stripped down simple NBA defense.

People can downplay the effect of the horrible defense, but it led to a lack of cohesion, fingerpointing, and guys not trusting each other. Every guy other than LeBron went into those playoffs with career low confidence.

Anyway. I think Koby has done the right things from firing Lue, to drafting well, to asset accumulation. No everything has not worked out, but I do think he has made lemonade out lemons when he has made mistakes and it is good he will be around until a decision on Beilein has to be made. He's going to see the first part of the rebuild through.

 

[inliner311]

Here's my take on Koby and Griff

Griff went all in and pushed all his chips in immediately. We traded 2 firsts for Moz for one thing. We used every 2nd possible. He traded picks to get rid of Jarrett Jack and Zeller. He traded away Joe Harris for nothing. He traded for Korver only protecting top 10 for an already old guy when what we really needed was a defensive wing. His last truly good move was getting Channing. Don't forget, he pushed for Anthony Bennett.

Koby traded Kyrie at the worst time. Nothing was available. The right move would have been to hold onto him to trade for Leonard later(which no one would have liked because he was hurt all year) or one of the other guys who popped up like Butler or Tobias Harris. If Middleton and Brogdan were really available, that was probably the best trade.

Turning over the roster with Hood and others was the right move, but we didn't have the coaching staff to implement that.

Lue's coaching staff was inadequate in several ways. Guys didn't have roles. They were all expected to adapt to LeBron ball with essentially no coaching.

We know because

No role player ever played better under Lue.

Hill - retained by team we traded him to because of playoff performance

Hood - retained by team we traded him to because of playoff performance (should have been 6th man, I would have started JC over JR. Jc played well with Lebron and Hood didn't)

Longabardis defense has been proven not to work over multiple years at this point. JB Bickerstaff is accumulating more and more evidence that while this team may not have elite defensive potential, it can certainly be competent with even a simplistic NBA defense that is realistic about the players on the floor. #15 in defense instead of the worst in NBA history 5 games in after a month of coaching.

I don't want to say Lue is bad and Beilein and Blatt were good, but Lue was able to win it all taking an established team that had gotten into a groove to the championship. He never had a single roleplayers who grew or got better in his role and we saw that same thing from Drew. Lue's strengths were coaching stars and relating to them and exploiting weaknesses in the other team both offensively and defensively. No development, very little practice, and riding horses hard that should have been out out to pasture.

He never integrated those new guys. The only guy he integrated o to the team was Channing and both he and Korver were old vets like Richard who knew their roles before they got here. He also allowed Longabardis to torpedo the defense and implement his stupid system after having early success against Minnesota and the Celtics with a stripped down simple NBA defense.

People can downplay the effect of the horrible defense, but it led to a lack of cohesion, fingerpointing, and guys not trusting each other. Every guy other than LeBron went into those playoffs with career low confidence.

Anyway. I think Koby has done the right things from firing Lue, to drafting well, to asset accumulation. No everything has not worked out, but I do think he has made lemonade out lemons when he has made mistakes and it is good he will be around until a decision on Beilein has to be made. He's going to see the first part of the rebuild through.

I also think Koby knew that he had to turnover the roster to have a chance against the Warriors and to keep LeBron. The roster and style they played in 2017 wasn't going to work. It was a gamble and didn't work but keeping the same roster with a minor adjustment wasn't going to work either. I don't think Griff would have been that bold and I think Griff even said that he could have never thought that outside the box to get that deadline deal done.

It's funny you brought up Tobias Harris. While Channing Frye was the catalyst to help us win in 2016, Tobias Harris was also traded from the magic at the same time for basically nothing. I always felt that Griff missed the opportunity to get Tobias Harris.

 

[cavsfever]

Seems to me like you guys may have forgotten what we saw in the 2017 playoffs.

The team Griffin built around LBJ in 2016 was no longer equal to even 2016 GSW by 2017, and significantly behind GSW with KD. Key cogs acquired (and then overpaid) like JR, Shump, and TT all took steps backwards in 2017, and were not the players they had been in 2016. Yet because of Griff's own decisions, we were still stuck with overpaying them. Notice that even in 2017, Griff himself had so tied his own hands with contracts that he couldn't significantly improve the team at the deadline.

It's like Griff built a team for max speed in 2016. When it then spun out and hit a brick wall in 2017, Griff hopped out of the wreck, tossed the keys to Koby, and said "here, your turn to drive."

The team and assets Griff handed Koby in the summer of 2017 wasn't capable of retooling to beat GSW. If he'd thought it was, Griff might have hung around and done it himself.

Don't really disagree -- my main view of Koby is that he hasn't really demonstrated much as yet, at least so far I haven't seen notable wins from his decisions, but he also came in in a no-win situation. Agree completely that Griffin sat on his hands, didn't respond to the Warriors getting Durant, and just signed the 2016 guys long-term when it was clear that that team could not handle the Warriors with Durant. The one chance we had to get out of that hole was nailing the Kyrie trade -- we did an awful job with that but it's unclear whether that was Koby's fault. Something went horribly wrong there but Gilbert seemed to have a lot to do with it.

This is basically a free year for us where we get to see how good our young guys really are, it makes sense to give Koby another year or two, although not sure you want a really long term extension. I think Koby is probably more of a yes-man than the other GMs which Gilbert likes.

 

[cavsfever]

Here's my take on Koby and Griff

Griff went all in and pushed all his chips in immediately. We traded 2 firsts for Moz for one thing. We used every 2nd possible. He traded picks to get rid of Jarrett Jack and Zeller. He traded away Joe Harris for nothing. He traded for Korver only protecting top 10 for an already old guy when what we really needed was a defensive wing. His last truly good move was getting Channing. Don't forget, he pushed for Anthony Bennett.

Koby traded Kyrie at the worst time. Nothing was available. The right move would have been to hold onto him to trade for Leonard later(which no one would have liked because he was hurt all year) or one of the other guys who popped up like Butler or Tobias Harris. If Middleton and Brogdan were really available, that was probably the best trade.

Turning over the roster with Hood and others was the right move, but we didn't have the coaching staff to implement that.

Great post, all true. IMO the one unforgivable thing management did was the Kyrie trade. Just a huge own goal that gave away our last possible chance at rebuilding on the fly. As I said though I don't know that Koby had much choice there, he was probably under orders to get the trade done. But I feel like he was learning on the job that first year.

Regarding coaching, it's early yet but it's interesting to watch how Frank Vogel so far has the role players operating better around Lebron. That lineup is pretty limited outside of Lebron and AD but so far at least they are getting more out of them than you might predict.

 

[inliner311]

Don't really disagree -- my main view of Koby is that he hasn't really demonstrated much as yet, at least so far I haven't seen notable wins from his decisions, but he also came in in a no-win situation. Agree completely that Griffin sat on his hands, didn't respond to the Warriors getting Durant, and just signed the 2016 guys long-term when it was clear that that team could not handle the Warriors with Durant. The one chance we had to get out of that hole was nailing the Kyrie trade -- we did an awful job with that but it's unclear whether that was Koby's fault. Something went horribly wrong there but Gilbert seemed to have a lot to do with it.

This is basically a free year for us where we get to see how good our young guys really are, it makes sense to give Koby another year or two, although not sure you want a really long term extension. I think Koby is probably more of a yes-man than the other GMs which Gilbert likes.

It also could be that Gilbert wants to make sure the GM leaves on the organizations terms and not on the GM's terms like Griff did. They have a good relationship now and maybe Gilbert learn not to run it down to the wire to give his GM a new contract. Griff left at the absolute worse time and maybe if he was around the Kyrie situation would have turned out differently.

 

[cabs]

Give him another 2 years, wouldnt wanna lose him anytime soon

 

[Cavatt]

Give him another 2 years, wouldnt wanna lose him anytime soon

It is really hard to judge what has happened so far. People want to go the Philly route, but they drafted busts before they drafted Simmons and Embiid. Okafor, Noel, and others. They traded Iguadala for Bynum before that. They traded up for Fultz. I mean they made a ton of mistakes, and they still ended up with a good team.

We are seeing what a single player with a bunch of role guys can do in Dallas. Why didn't we trade for Porzingus?

This is the most brutal stretch of the season, and the Cavs have lost all momentum. This is the adversity. I don't like how the team is responding to it right now, especially Love, but they are going to have a chance to grow when the schedule gets easier.

 

[NMCav]

It is really hard to judge what has happened so far. People want to go the Philly route, but they drafted busts before they drafted Simmons and Embiid. Okafor, Noel, and others. They traded Iguadala for Bynum before that. They traded up for Fultz. I mean they made a ton of mistakes, and they still ended up with a good team.

We are seeing what a single player with a bunch of role guys can do in Dallas. Why didn't we trade for Porzingus?

This is the most brutal stretch of the season, and the Cavs have lost all momentum. This is the adversity. I don't like how the team is responding to it right now, especially Love, but they are going to have a chance to grow when the schedule gets easier.

Because he didn't want to be in Cleveland. He wanted out of NY who is a rebuilding team just like ours. He wanted to go to Dallas and play with Doncic. Also what would we have given up for Porzingis? It makes zero sense to even ask why we didn't get Porzingis.

 

[Cavatt]

Because he didn't want to be in Cleveland. He wanted out of NY who is a rebuilding team just like ours. He wanted to go to Dallas and play with Doncic. Also what would we have given up for Porzingis? It makes zero sense to even ask why we didn't get Porzingis.

I didn't do that effectively, I was actually trying to make your point. People are criticizing Koby really hard for these choices like there were an infinite number of great alternatives. Such as why didn't we take SGA, even though he explicitly stated he didn't want to come here.

Everyone is talking shit on the culture, and that is exactly what he is trying to address right now.

He's hit the reset button multiple times and now people want to hit it again already. We need a little patience.

 

[cabs]

It is really hard to judge what has happened so far. People want to go the Philly route, but they drafted busts before they drafted Simmons and Embiid. Okafor, Noel, and others. They traded Iguadala for Bynum before that. They traded up for Fultz. I mean they made a ton of mistakes, and they still ended up with a good team.

We are seeing what a single player with a bunch of role guys can do in Dallas. Why didn't we trade for Porzingus?

This is the most brutal stretch of the season, and the Cavs have lost all momentum. This is the adversity. I don't like how the team is responding to it right now, especially Love, but they are going to have a chance to grow when the schedule gets easier.

We are on track for less wins than last season and our +/- per game is a lot worse... despite not being intentional we are already on the Philly route due to our roster being so undersized

 

[Cavatt]

We are on track for less wins than last season and our +/- per game is a lot worse... despite not being intentional we are already on the Philly route due to our roster being so undersized

The entire league is stronger now though and we have had the hardest schedule I have ever seen. Which year had a harder start do you think? I think this is the best the league has ever been top to bottom.

People said Pelicans and Atlanta would compete for a playoffs spot. They aren't. Knicks already fired their coach.

 

[Pioneer10]

It is really hard to judge what has happened so far. People want to go the Philly route, but they drafted busts before they drafted Simmons and Embiid. Okafor, Noel, and others. They traded Iguadala for Bynum before that. They traded up for Fultz. I mean they made a ton of mistakes, and they still ended up with a good team.

We are seeing what a single player with a bunch of role guys can do in Dallas. Why didn't we trade for Porzingus?

This is the most brutal stretch of the season, and the Cavs have lost all momentum. This is the adversity. I don't like how the team is responding to it right now, especially Love, but they are going to have a chance to grow when the schedule gets easier.

Philly was quick to move on from mistakes: they let of MCW, Okafor, Fultz pretty quickly to get more assets. They also were willing to take risks on injuried players such as Noel and Embiid. Wonder if we're willing to the do the same: because I doubt the Sixers would keep Sexton or Garland for awhile

 

[Cavatt]

Philly was quick to move on from mistakes: they let of MCW, Okafor, Fultz pretty quickly to get more assets. They also were willing to take risks on injuried players such as Noel and Embiid. Wonder if we're willing to the do the same: because I doubt the Sixers would keep Sexton or Garland for awhile

2 months or they gave them all a min of 2 years? MCW was 22 years old his rookie year too. That would be like getting rid of Cedi now which makes more sense than giving up on Garland already.

I don't feel comfortable giving up on guys that early, especially with a new coach. 2 other guys we gave up after 1 year spring to mind. Joe Harris and Danny Green.

 

[cabs]

2 months or they gave them all a min of 2 years? MCW was 22 years old his rookie year too. That would be like getting rid of Cedi now which makes more sense than giving up on Garland already.

I don't feel comfortable giving up on guys that early, especially with a new coach. 2 other guys we gave up after 1 year spring to mind. Joe Harris and Danny Green.

Those were dumb give ups as we got nothing in return for them, we’d obviously get something half decent for Sexton. Garland it is too early especially with his lack of basketball in the past year