So, the Cavaliers’ Dan Gilbert and David Griffin have agreed to disagree.
They apparently had differing views on the course the team needed to take going forward. They also disagreed on what Griffin, the club’s general manager, is worth – what his salary should be.
Because Gilbert is the owner, he has the final say. With that, then, he won the spat between the two and Griffin resigned.
That’s a stunning move for a team, that, with Griffin’s imprint all over it, has made it to the NBA Finals in each of the last three seasons, winning the Cavaliers’ first league title in 2016. In fact, it was a year ago Monday that 3.5 million people packed Downtown Cleveland to honor the champions in the victory parade of all victory parades.
Nobody that day would have imagined – could have imagined — that, just a year later, the owner and the GM would have tersely, defiantly and proudly parted ways after yet another great season when it is looked at overall.
But there were all kinds of signs in the final half of this season that Griffin and Gilbert were on collision course. The teamwork they had used to put the club together, and then re-work it again and again and again to keep it growing, improving and gelling, over these last three seasons was nowhere to be seen.
And when that’s the case, the owner wins. He always wins. He signs everyone’s paycheck. He pays the bills. That gives him the right to do whatever he wants, however he wants, wherever he wants and whomever he wants.
That’s all well and good, but Gilbert had better be right with this bold move. For if in sticking a monkey wrench into the works of a well-oiled machine he ends up bringing to a screeching halt all the success the Cavaliers have had since the 2014-15 season, it will be you-know-what to pay, even for an owner as respected and revered in this region as Gilbert.
Perhaps you recall that the Browns went through the same thing nearly 30 years ago, when, just days following the 1988 season, owner Art Modell and head coach Marty Schottenheimer agreed to disagree on a number of issues and parted ways.
The Browns had just made it to the playoffs for the fourth straight year despite being ravaged by injuries at quarterback. Although the Browns saw their string of Central Division titles end at three, and their streak of AFC Championship Game appearances halted at two, it was still Schottenheimer’s best coaching job in Cleveland with the way he carefully kept all the health issues from sinking the team.
But Modell was frustrated that the Browns hadn’t gotten to the Super Bowl. As such, he was only too glad to see Schottenheimer go so he could replace him with Bud Carson. Perhaps Carson, a defensive genius, could come up with a scheme to beat John Elway and the Denver Broncos, the club that had bedeviled and beaten Cleveland in both of the AFC Championship Games.
It didn’t work. Although Carson returned the Browns to the AFC title game in 1989, they once again lost go the Broncos. And midway through the 1990 season, with the team at 2-7 after the players seemingly all got old at once in the previous offseason, Modell fired Carson.
Even without the ultimate prize of a Super Bowl, those were great, great times, the likes of which the Browns haven’t come close to enjoying since then.
So Gilbert has to be oh, so careful here. He and the Cavs can only hope that what happened to the Browns doesn’t happen to them as they try to retool and get another shot at the Golden State Warriors, their version of the Broncos.
