Dissecting Dan Gilbert, While We’re Waiting

Happy Tuesday everyone!

I know everyone hates hearing about other people’s fantasy teams, and I’m not going to try to bore you with too many details. But three weeks ago my team was in 11th place (out of 12). I had high hopes for my team this year, but it just absolutely sputtered out of the gate. However, after huge wins of 15-3, 13-5, and 14-3 over the last three weeks, my team suddenly finds itself in second place.

In many ways, my team is like the real life Cleveland Indians. On May 19th, the Indians stood at 19-25. They were dead last in the division and 10.5 games behind the Tigers. As of Tuesday morning, the Indians are now 33-31 and just two games back. It’s been a remarkable turnaround, and a welcome one at that. I don’t expect the Indians to catch Detroit, nor do I expect them to make the playoffs again. But summer is just so much more fun when your team is playing good baseball, both in real life and with your fantasy teams. And if the Indians can keep riding this hot streak, who knows, maybe they will even exceed expectations for the second year in a row.

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Are we still with Dan Gilbert?

There’s been a lot of weird news coming out of the world of the Cleveland Cavaliers lately. First we heard from media out of New York that the Cavaliers might be giving second thought about offering Kyrie Irving a max extension next month. Then Terry Pluto reported that not only are the Cavaliers going to offer Kyrie the max, but they never even hesitated for a second. Then we heard about Dan Gilbert offering a monster contract to John Calipari to become both coach and President, despite already hiring David Griffin as full time GM. But then later Monday the Akron Beacon Journal’s Jason Lloyd had a rather confusing report with conflicting information about the timing of Gilbert’s discussion with Calipari. There have been wide-spread reports about Gilbert’s overbearning and heavy-handed approach to this coaching search, yet there are other reports that he didn’t even talk to candidates in the first round of interviews and that he will be meeting with Tyronn Lue and Alvin Gentry this week for second interviews.

Did you get all that? It’s a lot to take in. So what’s going on here? Is the franchise really this dysfunctional that nobody is on the same page? Or is this just some misinformation being spread to protect the secrecy of the team’s plans? I have no idea. I’ve stood with Dan Gilbert since the night of The Decision. As I’ve said on many occasions, while I understand why people took exception to the infamous letter, as a Cavs fan, I loved it. For the most part Gilbert has been exactly what I want an owner of my team to be. He’s passionate, ambitious, willing to spend money on the team, and above all else, is desperate to win. But is that desperation starting to become a problem?

There’s been a lot of talk about Gilbert on Twitter lately. People are losing their patience with him and feel he’s becoming a burden on the franchise. For many, the tipping point was the playoff proclamation last year. On one hand, I totally get it. The last thing we want to see is the team sacrifice long term success for short term meaningless gratification. But I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a small part of me that feels conflicted about killing a guy for wanting to win. The Cavaliers have been atrocious for four straight seasons now. I’m tired of it and I’m ready for playoff basketball again. But what’s the best way to get there?

There’s some talk that the Cavaliers very well could draft Jabari Parker and hire someone like Vinny Del Negro or Lionel Hollins to chase that short term gratification. VDN and Hollins are coaches with playoff experience who have experience turning around long-term losing franchises. Jabari Parker is considered the safest of the top three prospects and the player who can probably help the most in year one.

But on the other hand, VDN and Hollins have their issues and there’s a reason they were let go from moderately successful teams. Nobody think Parker’s ceiling is as high as Joel Embiid or even Andrew Wiggins. Perhaps the better route is to get a young, fresh, hungry coach like Lue and to draft the player with the highest ceiling of all in Embiid, and let everyone develop for a year or two before the franchise can become a perennial playoff threat. And that’s where the consternation with Gilbert comes into play.

We all want to win. That goal is in complete alignment. But most fans don’t want the team to chase a year or two of low seeded early playoff exits. Most of us want to see the team build something that can last several years and have a chance at real contention.

It’s unfortunate to see Gilbert, by default the most popular owner in town, begin to lose the fan base. But even more troubling and unfortunate is the persistent talk of Gilbert’s ever growing influence on basketball decisions. When David Griffin held his press conference after being given the gig full time, he said that Gilbert had given him full control of basketball decisions and that he would be carrying out the coaching search. But if the things Adrian Wojnarowski and Jason Lloyd have written are true (and there’s no reason to think otherwise), then it seems Gilbert is running his own coaching search separate from what Griffin is doing. And that is a huge (HUGE) problem.

When coaches and GMs screw up, they can be replaced. But there’s no replacing an owner¹. For better or worse, Dan Gilbert is the owner of the Cavaliers and he’s free to do whatever he wants to make as many mistakes as he cares to. And I’m not even saying I want Gilbert gone. For the most part, I’m still supportive of him as an owner. I’ve seen what lethargic, disinterested, absentee owners look like. I’ve seen what happens when an owner is hesitant to spend money. Gilbert is the kind of owner I want, I just want him to trust his basketball people to make their own decisions.

And maybe he will. Nothing has been done yet. Perhaps the Cavaliers will allow Griffin to name his own coach and the Cavaliers will pick the best player in the draft who gives the team the best chance at long term greatness. After all, this year’s coaching search is already about a million times better than last year’s. There’s nothing wrong with Gilbert doing his own due diligence. This is his team and that’s his right as an owner. Everything will come down to the degree to which the basketball folks get to make the basketball decisions. That will be Gilbert’s real test.

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Hey Donald Sterling, please just go away

Late last night, word broke that Donald Sterling has changed his mind (for about the 800th time) and now is going to pursue his lawsuit again. Whatever, Have fun suing yourself. When Shelly Sterling took control of the Clippers after two neurologists deemed Donald unfit to conduct his own business affairs, any leverage he had was gone. It was made even worse for him when Shelly indemnified the NBA against any lawsuits, including from Donald. So, if Sterling were to win the lawsuit², it would be the Sterling Family Trust who would pay.

This is all just a lame attempt for Sterling to keep his name in the media and on the front page. He’s clinging to the last bit of relevancy he has left, and it’s both sad and annoying to watch. Even if he somehow succeeded in winning his lawsuit and blocking the sale of the team, he’s still banned for life. This is just a bunch of noise about nothing.

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It’s about time someone put FIFA in its place

Ok, while I may be a pretty big fan of soccer, I’ve always found it hard to get too excited about international soccer. I love watching the various professional leagues throughout Europe, and in my opinion, the Champions League offers some of the best drama, passion, and excitement in sports. But I’ve just never been as big on international cups. Of course, the one exception is the World Cup. Everyone who cares about soccer whatsoever gets excited for the World Cup. But one of the reasons why I have always been less interested in international cups has been because of FIFA, one of the worst sports governing bodies in existence. I knew they were bad, but I didn’t realize just how bad they truly were until this week’s episode of Last Week Tonight.

Now, I promise, I’m not going to post a John Oliver clip every single week. I hesitated posting this one since I just posted a clip last Tuesday, but with the World Cup starting this week and with WFNY’s World Cup coverage this just seemed too topical not to share. Enjoy:

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Forget about new music releases this week

This may be the one and only time that sentence is ever written by yours truly, but this week there is a much more important new release – the first season of HBO’s True Detective on Blu-Ray and DVD. If you missed the show on HBO, or if you don’t have HBO or access to HBO Go, this is your chance to catch up one of the absolute best seasons of a show in TV history. While I have no reason to doubt future seasons of this show, I also cannot fathom any way it will ever be able to top the epic performances of Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson in this first season. The story telling was phenomenal both in method and execution, the acting performances were great all around, and the directing and cinematography were insanely great for a TV show.

And in truth, this show sort of transcends the idea of television. It’s not the first or last to do this, but there are things being done stylistically in TV shows that we never could have imagined even just ten years ago. Calling True Detective a “TV show” somehow seems disingenuous. It’s not really anything. It’s not a TV Show, a miniseries, or a movie. It’s a self contained story, told in the best way possible.

Anyway, that’s all I have for you guys this week. Hope you all have a great Tuesday, and here’s to the Cavaliers hopefully making the right coaching hire and the right draft pick for the right reasons!

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1. well, ok, Donald Sterling probably disagrees….but you know what I mean [↩]
2. which he probably won’t, considering the sale was conducted by the sole trustee of the Sterling family trust [↩]