David Griffin is gone – WFNY Podcast
June 20, 2017Jabrill Peppers being compared to former Brown Josh Cribbs
June 21, 2017Cleveland sports have had an interesting week. It took the continued dumb managerial move from Terry Francona of letting starting pitcher Josh Tomlin see the opposing lineup a third time to halt the Cleveland Indians winning streak. During the previous six-game streak, the Tribe dominated in all three phases of baseball (pitching, hitting, defense). It was revealed on Tuesday that Cleveland Browns wide receiver Corey Coleman might have been more involved in a New Year Eve assault than we thought as his brother and friend were formally charged. And, the Cleveland Cavaliers both celebrated their one-year championship anniversary and sent the Cleveland sporting fandom into a tizzy on June 19.
The Cavs craziness, of course, was due to the firing (he had a week left on his contract, so I’m going with firing) of current general manager David Griffin. In one fell swoop, the Cavs went from the defending champion team about to make the NBA competitive balance landscape even more laughable by trading for Jimmy Butler or Paul George to being in for certain doom of LeBron James leaving with Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving soon to follow. The truth is somewhere in the middle, but owner Dan Gilbert added undue drama during what happens to be one of the most crucial and busiest portions of the NBA offseason. Should we really be surprised though?
Gilbert does a bunch of good in his life. He has spent more than $2 billion on revitalizing downtown Detroit. He has bought up as many old, decrepit buildings as he could and turned them into attractive living and commercial spaces. Even if one accounts for possible long-term profit being a motivator, the act helps a community who needed such an upfront investment. RocketFiber is also a Gilbert investment that has helped Detroit gain the high-speed internet it needed for many of the corporate investments to even be a consideration.
However, the reports from the days after The Letter was penned in Comic Sans were that of a head-strong, crass individual who refused to allow anyone but himself get their own way. Other incidents have backed up that portrait. He got into a fist fight with a friend at a bar mitzvah.1 He fired a supposed confidant Jeff Cohen, and pushed Nathan Forbes away from influence in basketball operations despite both men continuing to hold minority stakes in the team.2
ESPN’s Brian Windhorst doesn’t paint a much better picture of Gilbert when discussing what Griffin needed to endure from him in order to do his normal functioning job over the years.
Sometimes Gilbert would insert himself into trade talks, calling another owner directly, and derailing Griffin’s plans. Sometimes he’d send scathing emails on subjects within and outside Griffin’s control. And other times he was nowhere to be found, unreachable or distant at key moments.
Gilbert’s issues are also not solely within the structure of the Cavs organization as WFNY commenter nj0 was quick to point out on Tuesday.
DOJ and HUD charge that Quicken Loans encouraged it employs to avoid compliance on FHA-insured loans. The trial is set to begin in April of 2019. By that time, we might be in the midst of a second burst housing bubble, as Quicken Loans is currently the largest participant in the FHA program.
Which makes me realize that Larry Dolan is the only Cleveland sports owner not involved in a federal investigation.
A pretty good article from the New York Times on Mr. Gilbert and Quicken.
A team owner being under federal investigation is nothing new for a fan of a Cleveland sport team. The Browns owner, Jimmy Haslam, has had his Pilot/Flying J franchise under FBI investigation for years. The allegations are that they were bilking truckers and companies out of millions of dollars and many of the claims have been settled with several high ranking officials pleading. Thus far, nothing has been able to connect Haslam himself.
Having an owner being given the blessings by the Rooney family to steer the ship of a division rival should have always been suspect. Even minor things such as uniform alterations and scoreboard changes3 have been handled with the care of a Rottweiler selecting meats from a butcher shop.
Constant turnover on the front office and coaching staff have quickly labeled Haslam as an overbearing owner with an itchy trigger finger. Even as he admits his mistake for firing the Rob Chudzinski coaching staff after a single year; it does not undo the damage of removing all possibility of competing, then firing the staff for not doing so. Haslam has even been steward of the franchise that saw him once again hire Ray Horton Jr. as defensive coordinator only to fire him after a single year.4
Much of the veteran removal and purging payroll is on the front offices under Haslam’s direction. However, poor stability also contributed to Mitchell Schwartz, Alex Mack, T.J. Ward, and others leaving the team in free agency. Not to mention not having a foundation strong enough to deal with problem players such as Josh Gordon, Johnny Manziel, and Justin Gilbert. Oh, did we mention Manziel? Yes, Haslam famously told his staff to “go up and get our guy” on draft day, and he was happy to note that advice from a homeless man and a desperate text from a free-falling Manziel were factors in his decision to do so.
There are good aspects to Haslam though. Haslam is taking a less visible role in directing the football operations, and there have been no reports indicating he is micro-managing behind the scenes. His wife, Dee Haslam, has been integrated into the business and philanthropic side of the team, and she has offered a level set of trust of the front office anytime she is asked.
The front office itself that Haslam put in place is a radical approach, which a team in the decrepit state of the Browns needs in order to challenge the old world order of the Baltimore Ravens and Pittsburgh Steelers in the division. Football analytics have taken hold. While a frustrating part of the process was a complete deconstruction of the roster with more rookies and second-year players receiving snaps than any other team in the NFL, Haslam has continued to show his support for those efforts and acknowledged it was an accepted part of the plan (though everyone noted they had hoped to win more than one game- at least on the record).
One of the legitimate questions for Haslam going forward will be if he will be willing to spend. Despite being in the big, bad NFL with tons of revenue sharing and a hard cap, the Browns have been able to avoid spending money on players in the Haslam era. He has spent a ton on coaches and front offices members as firing regimes after a year or two puts a lot of dead money on the books, but the player roster has not seen the checkbook open until this past offseason. The Browns have had the most or second-most cap space remaining in each of the past four seasons. The money spent on active players has been pitiful: $81 million in 2016, $104 million in 2015, and $109 million in 2014. The hope is that roster teardown was part of the process and the acquisitions of Brock Osweiler (while gaining a second-round pick), Jamie Collins, Kevin Zeitler, J.C. Tretter, and Kenny Britt have helped boost the Top 51 contracts for 2017 to $145 million.5
Cleveland fans are used to charges of being a cheapskate leveled at owners too. The Dolans have long been destroyed over their inability or reluctance to boost the payroll of the Indians. For years the Tribe was near the bottom of the MLB ranks in money paid out to players (though never so low as the Tampa Bay Rays, Houston Astros, or Miami Marlins when they made a mockery of the process by having a lower payroll than they even received in league revenue sharing checks). The common refrain from the front office and ownership was that the team would spend when they had a contending club. Sadly, from 2008 through 2012 there was not a club anywhere near contention to be had.
Recent seasons have seen a change as the Dolans have lived up to their word: $93 million in 2014, $92 million in 2015, $138 million in 2016, and a projected $130 million for 2017. The Tribe has seen their record stay above .500 during this span and won the American League after adding payroll at the trade deadline for a player who might have been the single biggest reason they got to the World Series, Andrew Miller. The Tribe is still nowhere near the New York Yankees or Los Angeles Dodgers in terms of money spent, but the imbalance of revenue in MLB means they are spending a higher percentage of their money back into the team. Even better, the recent facelifts to Progressive Field utilized no public funding (in a time when the Texas Rangers and Atlanta Braves are building new ballparks of the same age).
The Indians also added a minority investor over the offseason. The arrangement seems a tad different in dynamics compared to how Gilbert treats those with stakes in the Cavs as Paul Dolan told cleveland.com’s Terry Pluto:
For several years, Dolan was looking for a minority investor. “It had to be the right person,” said Dolan.
That person became John Sherman, who joined the Indians on August 19, 2016. Dolan declined to say how much of the team is owned by Sherman, other than it’s “a minority share.”
Did he have an impact? “We now have more resources and that gave us a willingness to risk just a tad more,” he said.
Dolan said Sherman was “absolutely all for” the signings of free agents Boone Logan ($6.5 million) and Encarnacion. “I made John my partner,” said Dolan. “We talk a lot.”
Paul Dolan has been the leader who has emerged as the face and leader of the ownership group. He is not seen often, but Dolan has been quite friendly and amicable in the few interviews when he is seen. He supported the Party At Napoli’s and he shaved his head in team solidarity for Adriana Aviles. He talked about the emotional meaning of the Indians winning the American League.
For his father, Larry Dolan. He is now 86. It was Larry Dolan who brought the family into the baseball business in 1999 and put his son in charge.
“The last time we got a trophy like that together, he was my little league coach,” said Dolan. “It was a special moment.”
Dolan also explained to Pluto why he was confident in the organizational structure of the front office even through the lean years. Why he understood that they had the necessary talent and drive there to make the dynamic changes that altered the landscape of the Indians development system that has led to the current extended contention window.
“Yes, there is a temptation when you’re losing to think, ‘I gotta do something,'” said Dolan. “But over the years, other teams were raiding our front office for people. The reputation that Mark and Chris had in baseball was well known to me.
“I knew we had (financial) challenges, but I also felt we had the right plan and right people. We couldn’t abandon it.”
Dolan also was the 2016 Mayo Society Person of the Year for his work in and around the community. He is not perfect by any means though. There are some who disagree with his rebuffs of MLB commissioner Rob Manfred’s attempts to move away from Chief Wahoo as the team logo. Oh, and his younger son, Peter, is going to be a senior at the University of Michigan this fall.
Yes, there is much more stretching to be done in order to find negatives about Dolan than either Gilbert or Haslam. At least one of our professional sport franchises is under the stewardship of someone who does not make one cringe and has set up the organization as one that is being copied across their sport.
146 Comments
Just remember to give 110%.
Republicans run shady businesses. Democrats run shady non-profits.
Haha.
“The richest 10 percent of Americans take a larger slice of the economic pie than they did in 1913, at the peak of the Gilded Age.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/12/business/economy/a-relentless-rise-in-unequal-wealth.html
Good. Now, don’t ever shake me off or I’ll tell the hitter what’s coming.
Note that the article was done for $ through 2010, which was still during the recession. During recessions as businesses are cutting costs in panic for the future (which fuels more recession, but alas) there are usually similar curves.
Not that there isn’t an issue just that it isn’t as quite as steep today as portrayed there.
“60% effort, 4000% of the time”
and what of the working dynamic and tensions? With the Browns, we get nothing but that: Hue v. Sashi, Haslam v. Banner, Pettine v. Farmer v. Jimmy. We used to inspect the Blatt/LeBron body language like archeologists poring over Dead Sea Scrolls. Windy knows stuff. I doubt he just learned it, because we’ve heard snippets before, but only from national guys. My question is more curiosity than criticism: locals are occasionally standing by Griff when he takes a Gilbert call, or see them interact, or are around players who are. Windy less so.
wonder what happened to some of those commenters – is Shamrock still here under a different name? History cat … Some Friday we should ask everyone for aliases.
“In the United States, the income share of the top one per cent is at its
highest level since the eve of the Great Depression, almost nine
decades ago. The top 0.01 per cent, or 14,000 American families, own
22.2 per cent of its wealth, while the bottom 90 per cent, over 133
million families, own a meagre four per cent of the nation’s wealth. The
top five per cent of households increased their share of US wealth,
especially after the 2008 financial crisis. Meanwhile, the richest one
per cent tripled their share of US income within a generation.”
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/05/growing-inequality-global-capitalism.html
Local Chicago reporters getting some info today:
http://chicago.suntimes.com/sports/sources-out-of-cleveland-say-jimmy-butler-will-push-for-trade-to-cavs/
https://media.giphy.com/media/11Qsj9NUHkhpnO/giphy.gif
if true, kind of signals the end of Cavs ability to counter the Warriors and re-engage the trophy hunt. Ownership actions matters, even in an NBA where the stars rule supreme.
yes, that hits on it. what do people do when stocks tumble? many sell & also sell homes & other things as recession hits. what do the truly rich people do? they are buying everything up they can understanding that the economy will rebound and they have the resources for the small blip.
I’ll just leave this here.
http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/19652764/tanking-nfl-advantages-disadvantages-worth-new-york-jets-cleveland-browns-2017
“…Cleveland did make the misstep of allowing Mitchell Schwartz to leave for Kansas City in free agency last offseason.”
AHAHAHAGHFUD#$#&(*S! When the narrative and the phrasing has been chanted for so long, it has become accepted doctrine.
lol!
I think Sham abandoned us. He’s still making comments on Twitter, though.
I’m surprised that I didn’t post on that article. I remember being cool with the letter because I was just as upset. Obviously, in hindsight, it’s pretty dumb.
https://media.giphy.com/media/TDuwKtJGmxcJi/giphy.gif
Uhh…actually….I just got one…should I be ashamed??
Not at all, congrats on the purchase.
We’re looking for someone to let their loan officer know we have Gilbert’s problems solved over here. Crowdsourcing and all that.
“Dan Gilbert added undue drama during what happens to be one of the most crucial and busiest portions of the NBA offseason”
While he certainly has the track record against him, this entire sentence is why I am leaning on the “they had a difference of vision” take for the break up.
People are wondering why would Dan do this now?
Why not let Griff finish up the trades, then let his contract expire on the 30th?
Why swap out a Championship winning GM who has made some wizard moves for a former player with no front office experience?
Why give Chauncey Billups the title of Team President that Griff wanted?
Why pay Billups for his league relationships and maybe a guy like Justin Zanik for his contract ability when you could have just paid Griff?
All these questions lead me back there. Gilbert and Griffin obviously did not see eye to eye on this roster over the next three years plain and simple. Dan felt he had to make the move now to ensure the roster shakes out the way he envisioned it.
We lost him during The Great Scout.com Experience.
Yes. This is pretty awful. If we start dichotomizing and lumping people together like this, the end result is logically terrifying. 48% of the country is [fill in the blank with whatever you want, from righteous social crusader to heartless proponent of infanticide] simply because they voted, or didn’t vote, for “someone.” What utter, destructive garbage. Stop the world, I want to get off.
Leave it all on the field, and take it to the next level.
http://i.imgur.com/IEFkbzD.gif
I’m not an economist, but the conclusion I’ve arrived at from the comfort of my armchair is that conditions increasingly benefit those with existing wealth. If you’ve got wealth, it’s fairly easy to parlay it into more. If you don’t, it’s becoming more and more difficult to create it for yourself. And not to cast blame, but it’s very much a generational issue.
So yeah, for everyone complaining about the top 1% or 10%… the top 20% has 85% of the wealth in the US. The bottom two-fifths have about 4%. Which isn’t even to touch on the distribution of global wealth, where just about all Americans are in the top 10%. But, of course, nobody wants to vilify themselves.
Bullsh!t Man to the rescue!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H23Dsi–o4s
In all fairness, we don’t know if they all LIKE shady businessmen so much as those guys are good salesmen naturally and man, some can sell a lot and overcome a lot of product deficiencies…and did.
In more fairness, some might have other reasons that they believe it’s better to just go with a business person of such, ummm, character, leadership, and experience “issues” that this guy had. I don’t know what in the world would motivate one to ignore all of those flashing lights, but they must have some reasons. There must be some good qualities that I haven’t heard about yet…and I can’t wait to hear them! Really truly.
Man I miss Karl! Did you ever watch the Ricky Gervais animated show? I assume so. It was so simple in its premise but hysterical.
Only clips on YouTube, but it was awesome.
Karl is the best. I don’t know if another human can be your spirit animal, but Karl might be mine.
A few years ago, I had a very painful and long-term, but also pretty minor, medical condition that required surgery. When I walked in the surgeon’s office to meet him for the first time, I immediately started to feel better, despite the pain and nervousness. His name was Dr. Pilkington. I knew everything was going to be just fine.
plausible – w/ leakiness of NBA, I assume we’ll get story sometime this summer
In real fairness, one guy’s character, leadership, and experience “issues” may be more preferable to another guy’s, or gal’s, as the case may be (and was), character, leadership, and experience “issues.”
eh, I don’t think that is true. when things are going really well, there is more opportunity to rise up in social rank (from where-ever you might be). more jobs, more loans, more people spending, more fat, happy people at the top not squeezing quite as tight.
the worse things are economically, the less of all of that and crazy paranoia from many near top that they could lose it & those truly at top taking advantage (generalizations as I’m sure there’s more nuance).
everyone has been so willing to work together in DC and not immediately oppose anything and everything said and…
when there’s a big mess, there’s a lot of mopping up to do and it’s usually not one person (or side) that caused things
That’s very fair. Some people didn’t see faults. Other people saw faults and made the calculus that they value this guy’s faults less than this gal’s faults or what have you. I can’t quite see the good in the decision making (and legitimately want to understand the thinking some day), but it is very fair indeed. I’m glad we as Americans have that right to differ in our views.
Either way, the result at the end of the day is nobody seems happy in this country now and that’s legitimately sad (ok in fairness, the lowest approval in US history so I suppose some “approve” which is frankly curious to me but that’s also another story for another day)
Yep. Robert Muller has a lot of mopping up to do indeed. I don’t envy him. I suspect it’ll take the good part of the summer before we have our answers and even begin to start planning on how to mop things up.
I don’t know. You see a disaster, many saw the same 8 years ago to the day, and many, including yours truly (who is not a huge fan of the present guy), simply don’t see one now. I don’t understand the present “sky is falling” belief anymore than I understood how anyone could find the other candidate to have been a better choice, though I get that people did (also choosing to not see faults in many cases). Maybe we’re just not meant to understand how other people think; but I do hope that we will be able to accept those other folks, despite their perceptions and thoughts. I grow more and more despondent every day that this will be so.
This is why we really need Karl swooping in on all of the politics conversations, pointing us all in the right direction (and right now, the only right direction is “away from the bull$#it”).
As for “approval ratings,” I give them as much time of day, for any President, as I do thoughts about the price of pipe cleaners in lower Saskatchewan. People are freaking fickle, and no people are more freaking fickle than Americans; and polls today are undeniably, irrefutably, and absolutely unreliable. And besides, plenty of awful Presidents (depending on one’s perspective) have had high approval ratings.
Answers? I can’t wait until we have the questions!
Agreed, but I’m of the opinion that things haven’t been going well for a while now. The federal fund rate has been damn near zero for almost a decade. Which means you’re basically as close to free money as you can get, as long as a bank will lend to you. Which is a lot easier if you already have wealth to borrow against.
The bigger issue is the broken system that gave us those two options, and those alone, for the position of President of the United States of America.
Jeez….I know my sarcasm radar is off today, but you can’t be serious? There are millions of questions, counselor!
Why the Russians hacked our election?
How they did it?
Who was involved?
Who knew?
Did someone conspire?
Are the Russians still involved?
Are there conflicts of interest?
Are people compromised?
Who?
Are there cover ups?
Was there obstruction of justice?
Is there obstruction?
Why some Americans and our President aren’t deeply concerned with asking these questions or knowing answers?
etc
right, with that tongue-in-cheek “what Sham is cooking” stuff. He didn’t fade out, just disappeared. I thought maybe he drunk-commented and was blocked.
Research suggests that our politics are greatly influenced by our genes.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9221.2012.00915.x/abstract
If I’m worried about anything right now, it’s the escalation that has gone on in Syria as of late. While the past administration might not have had a coherent solution for that conflict, at least it did its best to avoid starting an even larger war. What’s odd to me is that all of that, basically bucking up to Russia over Syria, completely contradicts the domestic narrative of Trump as Moscow’s Manchurian candidate.
Hoo boy. I really hesitate to get into this because I can see that you’re charged, but . . .
The narrative states that the Russians HACKED our election, yet not a single vote was changed, anywhere. How about we start there. What does HACKING mean? Then let’s go with the question, did the Russians HACK our election? If they didn’t HACK an election, then we have other questions – but we definitely need to know what the right questions are.
Well, I would argue, and do argue, that not only did the prior administration not do its best to avoid starting an even larger war, the prior administration got us into the Syrian war to begin with, and actually made it what it is (as well as the Libyan mess, and the present Iraqi mess). But, this Syria/Iraq thing is also my biggest worry, as well as my biggest source of frustration with the present administration. Seems to be foolish, failed, feckless, and flawed foreign and military policy as usual. The more things change . . .
Maybe I’ve fallen for fake news, but I still haven’t seen compelling evidence that the Russians hacked the DNC servers or anything else. The proof has basically been, “trust us!”. Which is hard to do for a long laundry list of reasons.
Well ok “hacked our election” may not be rightly fashioned…I just rattled off a few questions off the cuff so you’ll have to forgive. I suppose we could criticize and dissect them as lawyers and find they are flawed.
But the point is that you’re dismissive from the very start that there’s anything there or at least insinuating it’s all nothing to it (not a single vote changed, etc). I know we’re smart people–but man, we know there’s nothing to it already?! Wow. I guess we should take the Pres at his word that’s there’s nothing there too. Smarter people than us are looking into it. I may not know the “right questions” but asking questions and raising issues is important here–if we care at all about Russians hacking and interfering. A total lack of concern in delving deeper at least is telling of partisanship.