The Cavs ended the 2013–14 season losing four of their last six games to settle at 33–49, missing the playoffs by five games. It was the end of a disastrous six months.
The No. 1 overall pick from the previous year, Anthony Bennett, had a terrible rookie season, and his conditioning and work ethic were as much in question as his talents. Their free agent signings from the previous summer had all flopped to varying degrees. In desperation to make the playoffs, they made two midseason trades, one for forward Luol Deng and the other for center Spencer Hawes, and gave up five draft picks to do so. Both players were free agents at season’s end and were showing little interest in re-signing, meaning they’d turned into failed rentals.
Their first-round pick from two years prior, Dion Waiters, had played alongside franchise player Kyrie Irving for two years, and their chemistry was so poor at times that they’d regularly had to deny there was a personal rift between them. Meanwhile, Irving had failed to establish a relationship with new coach Mike Brown, in part over Brown’s desire for defense and Irving’s lack of consistent interest on that end. That was a problem for two reasons. One was Irving was about to be asked to sign a contract extension, and the organization, attempting to encourage stability, had signed Brown to a five-year, $20 million contract.
The franchise was spinning its wheels and had a leadership void. David Griffin had become the team’s acting general manager two months before the end of the season, following the firing of predecessor Chris Grant. Unsure of whether he’d even keep the job, Griffin held a bold press conference a week after the season ended in May 2014.
With limited power and unsure of his future at the time, Griffin announced the team was moving from “asset accumulation mode” into “target acquisition mode.”
This was welcome news to many in the fan base who’d grown tired of Grant’s slow rebuild the previous four years, which involved trading for six additional first-round picks, ten extra second-round picks, and a build-through-youth approach. Grant’s covert campaign to lure James had become a forgotten measure while the team managed its various problems. The concept of the Cavs aggressively attempting to add talent to make a rapid improvement using their stash of draft picks, young players, and salary-cap space was a needed change, of course. But it remained unclear just how Griffin and the Cavs would realistically be able to go about it.
In a first step, Cavs ownership came to Griffin and offered him the formal general manager title. In a surprising move, he turned the job down and instead asked for some concessions. He’d turned down general manager jobs in the past. In 2010, he got into deep talks with the Denver Nuggets about their GM job and was even consulting on roster moves, starting the first stages of a Carmelo Anthony trade, before talks collapsed and he walked away.
Griffin had a bit of a different outlook than a typical NBA executive. He was not a former player, coach, or son of someone in the NBA, the three most popular routes to get into a front office. He was raised by a single mother in a rough neighborhood in West Phoenix. He worked his way through high school so his family could afford the tuition at Brophy Prep, an all-boys Jesuit school, then ground his way through Arizona State, eventually earning a degree in political science. His first job in the league was as an intern for the Suns when he was just twenty. He did odd jobs on the side, like keeping statistics for the local arena football league team. Slowly he worked his way up the ranks and became a member of the front office.
His life changed forever in 2006, when he was diagnosed with testicular cancer. He went through a grueling chemotherapy. As he and his wife, Meredith, celebrated the end of his successful treatment as they walked on the beach near Kona, Hawaii, he made a promise that many people who face life-threatening situations do. He wasn’t going to sweat the small stuff, which is a difficult proposition when working in the high-pressure world of pro sports.
In 2011, a few months after Griffin came to Cleveland to join the Cavs front office, a doctor informed him his cancer had returned. The moment the doctor told him—to Griffin, it had felt like the physician said it in passing, almost like a waiter telling him the soup of the day—stuck with him for years. He won that battle too. Now he has a habit of knocking his fist against his head whenever he mentions any good fortune that comes his way, his method of “knocking on wood.” He’s a man keenly aware of enjoying what he has but who also knows how fragile it all is. It hasn’t exactly left him with an endless desire to climb the NBA’s executive ladder.
That’s why he hesitated when he was offered the Cavs’ top job when the team’s owners offered to remove his interim label. After days of talks, though, Griffin and owners Dan Gilbert and Nate Forbes did find common ground and Griffin agreed to take the job.
Shortly after he got the interim job the previous February, Griffin’s grandmother passed away. He wasn’t able to get to Phoenix to see her because he had to stay in Cleveland to execute the trade deadline. The last time he’d talked to her was over Skype to tell her he’d made his first trade, for Hawes. He was gutted when he didn’t make it back to say goodbye. The family waited for the funeral until he could get away from trying to handle the mess the Cavs’ season had turned into. Griffin was a survivor in every sense.
All of that made it a little unfair that there was an absence of joy when Griffin accepted the job. Reaching a mountaintop in one’s profession is a moment where there’s usually at least a few celebratory days with friends and family. Griffin practically had to introduce himself, as owner Gilbert did not attend the press conference to announce the decision, which was unusual. The honeymoon period was nil, as Griffin’s hiring came at the same time as Brown was fired, announced in the same press release. The Cavs would be looking for their third coach in three seasons, projecting an aimless organization. More challenging, as he started the coaching search Gilbert was looking to hire him a boss.
The Cavs’ two previous coaches, Byron Scott and Brown, had been hired and fired several times. Gilbert wanted a new face and he wanted someone with a successful résumé. This naturally left him looking to the college ranks, especially in the wake of the early success of Brad Stevens, who’d left a successful program at Butler University and been winning positive reviews after his first season with the Boston Celtics.
When he had a coaching opening in 2010, Gilbert chased several high-profile college coaches and made a $7-million-per-year offer to Tom Izzo, the Michigan State legend, whom Gilbert had come to know and admire as an MSU graduate. Izzo, though, was unable to get an assurance about the future from James, then a free agent. After seriously considering Gilbert’s offer and making a high-profile visit to Cleveland, Izzo passed.
Now, five years later, there’d been a shift in the coaching landscape. Doc Rivers had become the president and coach of the Los Angeles Clippers. Flip Saunders had taken on a similar role in Minnesota. Gregg Popovich had such a job in San Antonio. Two days after the Cavs fired Brown, Stan Van Gundy was given the coveted dual roles in Detroit.
As Gilbert sought another college coach, the stakes had been raised. Highly respected coaches and those secure in what were essentially lifetime jobs wouldn’t just be looking for a huge paycheck but supreme power over the front office too. And with power they wanted assurances in the form of long contracts. Gilbert had parted ways with three GMs in nine years as owner and was paying two coaches he’d recently fired.
But there was also a sudden shift in the Cavs landscape. A week after Griffin was hired, he went to New York for the NBA’s annual draft lottery. The Cavs had the ninth-best chance of winning, an uninspiring 1.7 percent. While in rebuilding phases between 2011 and 2013, Gilbert made the lottery a major event. He brought his son, Nick, to be the team’s onstage representative and rejoiced when winning in 2011 and 2013. He brought a group of supporters in on his private plane in 2013, many of them wearing bow ties as was Nick Gilbert’s tradition. When they won that year, with a 15.6 percent chance, the group exploded in celebration at the normally staid event and was criticized for it. That pick was Bennett, and his flop had significantly contributed to the Cavs being compelled to return to the NBA’s convention of non-playoff teams again.
Because of those circumstances, the Cavs contingent arrived at the ABC studios on May, 20, 2014, like a lamb. There was no traveling party and no Nick or Dan Gilbert, who was not in the studio. As when Griffin was hired, he was thrust out to be on his own. As it came down to the final envelope, he rubbed a pin on his lapel, an angel with a tiny diamond that had been one of his grandmother’s few valuable possessions. When the Cavs won the top pick the only clapping came from him.
The lottery was televised before Game 2 of the Eastern Conference finals between the Miami Heat and Indiana Pacers. There were two televisions in the visitors’ locker room in Indianapolis that night. One showed film of the Heat’s Game 1 loss two nights earlier. The other was on the lottery. As Griffin celebrated and tapped the pin over his heart, James watched as he was being stretched for the game.
The Cavs were already thinking big when it came to their coach. Gilbert was further emboldened to chase a famous name now that the job came with the chance to draft Andrew Wiggins or Jabari Parker, the two options at No. 1. Gilbert’s first target was University of Kentucky coach John Calipari. But Calipari had some huge contract demands, starting with a ten-year deal. It was later reported that the stakes reached as high as $80 million. But Calipari had just agreed to a new seven-year, $53 million deal with Kentucky and had a loaded team coming for the following season, a team that eventually would take an undefeated record into the Final Four and see four of its players drafted in the top 14 picks of the 2015 NBA draft. The Cavs’ prospects were unclear and James at that point wasn’t a legitimate part of them. Calipari passed.
The big game hunting did not stop. Griffin called Mike Krzyzewski, Duke’s legendary coach. He’d turned down much better NBA offers in the past than this one. Again, the Cavs had no James to offer. They’d continued to have dialogue with Paul, James’s agent. Paul gave zero assurances other than to indicate Cleveland would be an option if James chose free agency. That was no small thing, but it was far from concrete and the Cavs couldn’t sell it.
Griffin flew to Lawrence, Kansas, to do on-the-ground research with Bill Self, the Jayhawks’ respected coach, who had two high draft pick choices, Wiggins and Joel Embiid. At a meeting with Self, Griffin offered him the coaching job out of the blue. Self was surprised, which was Griffin’s intention, and offered to think about it. He did some research on the job over the next few days but, like Calipari, also passed.
Next was Florida coach Billy Donovan, who’d won two national titles and sent numerous high-profile players to the NBA. Donovan indicated he might be ready for the NBA, and soon he and the Cavs were talking. He eventually flew to Cleveland to formally interview. But as talks progressed, Donovan’s contract demands caused the Cavs to hesitate, and the sides eventually moved on before the negotiations reached a serious stage.
Griffin attempted to recruit Steve Kerr, who had been his former boss in Phoenix and was ready to go into coaching. By the time Griffin got to him, however, Kerr had already been offered the New York Knicks and Golden State Warriors coaching jobs and was soon to choose the Warriors. Griffin talked to Kevin Ollie, who’d just won a championship with the University of Connecticut and was popular among NBA players, but Ollie signed an extension to stay.
As the process unfolded, Griffin ended up focusing on two other candidates with NBA experience, both of whom worked for the L.A. Clippers. Alvin Gentry had known Griffin for years and was once the head coach of the Suns while Griffin was there too. Tyronn Lue, a retired journeyman point guard, had become known for his ability to connect to players and had studied for several years under Rivers in Boston and Los Angeles.
Gentry’s résumé, filled with a few failed head coaching jobs at previous spots, was similar to Scott’s and Brown’s, and that didn’t impress Gilbert. Neither did Gentry’s close relationship with Griffin. Brown was very close to Grant, and that mix hadn’t created success for the recently fired pairing. Gilbert wanted to avoid a repeat.
Lue was intriguing, especially to Griffin, but light on experience, especially when entered into a field with names like Calipari, Self, and Donovan.
As the process played out, another development happened in the league. Kevin Love, the Minnesota Timberwolves All-Star, had been put on the trade market. In the wake of Saunders being hired to run the team, Love was approached about signing an extension as he was heading into the final year of his contract. He declined, saying that he planned to become a free agent in 2015. After years of Love’s teetering on this delicate matter, the Wolves had finally decided to move on from him. They were looking for a high draft pick as the centerpiece of a trade.
After he’d taken the job, Griffin had lunch with Saunders and they had some discussions about doing a deal for Love. Saunders said he’d be interested if the Cavs ended up with a top three pick to offer. When the Cavs won the draft lottery, Griffin called Love’s agent, Jeff Schwartz, who is one of the league’s top power brokers. Griffin asked if Love would be interested in staying in Cleveland long-term, a prerequisite to trading a valuable asset for a player with just one year on his contract. Schwartz was frank with Griffin: No, Love was not interested in Cleveland. Griffin dropped the matter and returned to the coaching search.
Love and Schwartz didn’t foresee James as part of the picture, and, just like during talks in the coaching search, neither did Griffin. As for Gilbert, his thoughts on the short-term outlook of his team revealed themselves in another subtle way.
As the Cavs were going through a disappointing winter and spring, Gilbert was active in helping Cleveland put together a bid to host the 2016 Republican National Convention. As controller of Quicken Loans Arena, Gilbert was an integral part of the process. The RNC was looking to host their convention as early as June, not August as in previous years, to more quickly access general election funding. That meant that the host venue would have to be available from mid-to late May, during the heart of the NBA playoffs. The other finalist for the convention was Dallas. But Mavericks owner Mark Cuban told the Dallas Morning News a June convention would be impossible because it would conflict with possible playoff games and he’d be unwilling to make his arena, the American Airlines Center, available in May. Gilbert, his team out of the playoffs for four consecutive years, was willing to promise his arena could be made free as early as May 2016. Cleveland, for various reasons, including arena availability, won the bid before James made his free agency decision.
With the coaching search extending, the team was pitched a different kind of candidate, one who was an out-of-the-box option like Gilbert was searching for. David Blatt, the American coach of EuroLeague power Maccabi Tel Aviv, quietly hired an American agent and began looking for a chance in the NBA. He interviewed for several jobs over the phone while his season in Europe was still going on. He eventually had a Skype interview with Gilbert that went well. In mid-June, he announced he was resigning to pursue coaching opportunities in the NBA. Blatt—who had coached in Italy, Russia, Turkey, and Greece as well as Israel—had been on the radar for several years, especially after Ettore Messina, regarded as one of Europe’s finest coaches, joined the Lakers as an assistant coach in 2011.
Blatt had just finished a most impressive season, leading underdog Maccabi to several unlikely victories in winning the EuroLeague title. His stock also was high after coaching the Russian national team to a bronze medal at the 2012 Olympics, a surprising result. While Russia’s coach for the 2010 World Championships in Istanbul, he’d gotten into a war of words with Krzyzewski, the Team USA coach, over the 1972 Olympic gold medal game, which the Russians won controversially over the United States. Despite his American citizenship, Blatt backed his employer and said the Russians had won fairly. Krzyzewski was not amused.
Nonetheless, it displayed the type of guile Blatt had become famous for coaching in Europe, even if only far-flung NBA scouts got to see it. During the 2012 Olympics in London, he ejected two of his best players from the bench because they’d talked to each other while he was trying to go over a play in a huddle. There were many of these stories in his past, but this one played out on American television.
Within days of his resignation, Blatt came to the United States after his father passed away. Shortly after the funeral, he met with Kerr, who was filling out his coaching staff with the Warriors. Kerr, who spent much of his childhood in the Middle East, shared an agent and a sensibility with Blatt, who’d been in Israel for most of his adult life after graduating from Princeton. Kerr was prepared to make Blatt his lead assistant, and Blatt verbally accepted the job.
Then the Cavs, running out of options, called asking for Blatt to come for a two-day interview in Cleveland. Gilbert had just met with Lue, who’d become a finalist, and then met Blatt.
Gilbert was intrigued by Blatt because, like the college coaches he’d gone after previously, Blatt had a record of championships. He’d coached under adverse conditions everywhere from Saint Petersburg, Russia, to Treviso, Italy, to Thessaloniki, Greece. He’d won coaching defense-based teams. He’d won using the Princeton offense. He’d won using fast-breaking schemes. And he’d shown guts along the way. Shortly after the meeting ended, Gilbert got in the car for a ride from Cleveland back to Detroit, where he lived, and immediately started making calls, doing a personal vetting. He called coaches he knew, he investigated what the media’s reaction might be to hiring essentially a foreign coach. The Cavs would later reach out to people at USA Basketball to get their impression. Blatt, unsure how’d he done, made plans to fly to San Francisco the next day and get ready to start work with Golden State.
“We talked to like 30 people in Europe. There wasn’t a person who wouldn’t rave about this guy,” Gilbert said. “We talked to four or five American players who played for him over there. Rarely do you call a player and ask about an ex-coach and he is complimentary. But they were.”
Despite the recommendations, there wasn’t universal agreement on Blatt. It was a risk because he’d never coached in the NBA and had lived abroad for thirty years. But he’d performed well in the interview with his mix of confidence and experience. Some in the organization suggested that the adjustment from coaching in Europe to the NBA might be easier than the adjustment from coaching in college to the league might be. This had never been tried before; what if the team had unearthed a formula? He was American, but he was also exotic by NBA standards. He’d be a bit of a unicorn. Gilbert liked the idea that he might have been able to discover the next great NBA coach. And Blatt was Jewish, a factor that helped connect him to Gilbert as well.
Griffin, an NBA lifer who’d spent plenty of time scouting in Europe over the years, wasn’t as sure. With Gentry out of the picture—he’d eventually take the top assistant job with the Warriors that Blatt ended up passing on—Griffin was interested in Lue. Lue had a vast network of allies and bonds with players and teams around the league. Everyone who played with him didn’t just seem to like him, they seemed to admire him. Griffin thought this was perhaps rarer still than Blatt’s résumé.
Gilbert, though, had reached his choice with Blatt. As they talked about the direction, ownership and Griffin discussed a compromise. Attempt to hire Lue as well. Try to get Lue to be the top assistant, getting both their choices. The experienced veteran would bring in fresh European sensibilities to lead, and he’d have an ultimate insider and former player as a lieutenant.
On its face, the concept was awkward. The runner-up would act as the winner’s forced right-hand man. Many experienced NBA coaches, which Blatt was not, would have rejected such an idea. Griffin also wanted to keep another assistant, veteran Jim Boylan, meaning Blatt wouldn’t have hiring power for much of his key staff.
But the compromises cascaded down the line. In hiring Blatt, Griffin would retain personnel power and still be the head of basketball operations, which wasn’t a possibility with some candidates. Blatt was getting what he’d dreamed of, a head NBA job, and it would come with a three-year contract that guaranteed him more than $10 million and had an option and bonuses that could kick in millions more. That made it easier for him to accept Lue, who was lured away from the Clippers when Gilbert green-lighted the largest contract ever given to an assistant coach, four years and $6.5 million.
After it all came together, Gilbert raved about his new unicorn: “David Blatt is going to bring some of the most innovative approaches found in professional basketball anywhere on the globe. Time and time again, from Russia to Israel and several other prominent head coaching jobs in between, David has done one thing: win. He is not only an innovator, well-trained and focused on both sides of the court, but he is always learning and always teaching.”
Blatt was excited and loose in his big moment as he was introduced as coach. Though he was coming onto the biggest stage of his career, he joked that he was more than ready for the scrutiny of being a head coach. “If you lost one game with Maccabi,” he said, “there was a countrywide investigation.”
The hiring became official just a little more than twenty-four hours before the draft. On the same day, James opted out of his contract with the Heat. The Cavs and the rest of the league certainly noticed, but it did not greatly change their focus.
Blatt and Lue weren’t part of the evaluation process for the draft picks, which Griffin was conducting. The Cavs had favored Wiggins from the start, specifically because he’d shown a commitment to playing defense in his season at Kansas, and Parker, who was a massively talented offensive player, had not during his year at Duke. Then there was Parker’s workout with the team, which was a buzzkill. The Cavs were astounded at what they perceived as a lack of intensity and energy during the visit from Parker, to the point they suspected he’d tanked the workout in an effort to get the Cavs not to draft him. The Milwaukee Bucks, who had the No. 2 pick, were closer to Parker’s hometown of Chicago. Nonetheless, here was another top player who looked like he didn’t want to be in Cleveland, not exactly a jolt of confidence for a team hoping to rebuild itself quickly. On draft night the pick was easy for the Cavs. They took Wiggins No. 1.
What Blatt and Lue were doing that week, however, was talking to Irving. After taking over as interim GM the previous winter, Griffin made creating a bond with Irving a priority. Irving’s first three years in the league had been traumatic, as he’d gone through several coaches and several systems and had to watch the Cavs mishandle draft picks and slow play other improvements around him.
Irving’s father, Drederick, was a huge influence in his life. Dred, as his friends called him, grew up in a housing project in the Bronx as part of a large single-parent family. He quickly became a basketball star in high school and later at Boston University. There he met Elizabeth, who was the daughter of a Lutheran minister, a trained classical pianist, and on the university’s volleyball team. They later married. After college, Dred signed to play for a team in Melbourne, Australia, where Kyrie was born. When Irving was four, Elizabeth passed away from an illness, a moment that shaped his life. Even as an adult, Irving has said filling out paperwork halts him when he has to leave his mother’s information blank.
The family ended up settling in New Jersey. On September 11, 2001, Drederick was walking through the lobby of Tower One at the World Trade Center when the first plane hit the building. He’d worked there for years as a stockbroker for Cantor Fitzgerald, the firm that took a direct hit from the aircraft. He’d recently moved to a nearby building, but he wasn’t sure his children knew and he couldn’t reach them. He ended up walking to the Bronx that day to find a way to get home, his ten-year-old son wondering if he’d lost a second parent.
Irving became a teenage star like his father before him. The two poured in hours working on technique, with his father schooling him on how to practice awkward shots that would trick defenders. On weekends, Drederick would take his son back to the Mitchel projects in the Bronx, letting Irving learn to play on the blacktops as he did.
Irving loved practicing dribbling, working on moves for hours. He studied star Rod Strickland, a close friend of his father’s, and his ability to use his dribble to score below the rim. He watched Allen Iverson highlights on YouTube. He loved Jason Williams, the slick point guard of the Sacramento Kings, who had the nickname “White Chocolate.”
“I’d watch the highlights on YouTube and I’d go out on my driveway and try it. And then I’d watch more YouTube videos and I’d go back out and try it. It would be an all-night thing,” Irving said. “It was not being afraid to try that move that your coach tells you not to do, like being on a fast break and doing double moves and your coach wants you to do a regular layup. I don’t believe in that. I believe in having creativity in the game and bringing excitement to what everyone kind of is afraid to do.”
Irving attended a private-school power, St. Patrick, where his highlights eventually became YouTube hits. One of his teammates, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, later became the No. 2 overall pick in the draft. They were one of the best high school teams in the nation. Irving would become the No. 1 recruit in the nation and ended up at Duke.
Dred was by his son’s side always. He was very present in Cleveland in Irving’s first years there, and his displeasure over the direction of the franchise was not quiet. The Cavs got sufficiently concerned over Irving’s willingness to sign an extension with the organization that they held internal conversations about trading him. Highlighting the disconnect, Brown was in favor of moving him despite his immense talent. The Cavs ultimately ruled it out, but there were fractures in the relationship.
From the moment Griffin took the job, he worked on managing the Irving relationship. During the coaching search they kept in regular contact. As soon as Blatt and Lue were hired, Griffin put them in touch with Irving. Griffin came from an offensive background in Phoenix, and he made it clear offense would be a part of the team’s future, not as much as the defense-based team under Brown. As with much of the league, Kyrie and Dred had a positive opinion of Lue, a former point guard now in position to be a major part of the organization. All of these were seen as positive signs from Irving’s perspective.
Even with their stated mission of improving the team quickly that summer, and despite having $20 million in cap space, the Cavs’ first free agent move was to approach a player under contract. That was Irving, who was eligible to sign an extension that would kick in the following year. The Cavs had until October 31 to do such a deal, but they wanted to make Irving their number one priority.
So on June 30, Gilbert and minority owners Forbes and Jeff Cohen joined Griffin, Blatt, and Lue on a jet to New York City. There, at midnight on July 1, they had dinner in a private dining room in the basement of a Manhattan restaurant with the Irvings and Kyrie’s agent, Jeff Wechsler. They formally presented a five-year, $90 million extension offer. While the promises and conversations in the room were important, the groundwork laid by Griffin, Blatt, and Lue prior to the meeting had already convinced Irving things would be different. The prospect of James joining the team was not a major topic of conversation, but other free agents the Cavs were going to chase were discussed. Around 1:30 a.m. the parties shook hands; the deal was done.
As the Irving deal was being closed, other members of the Cavs front office were calling free agents. They had several on their radar. They called Gordon Hayward, who’d had a promising start to his career in four years with the Utah Jazz. The Cavs envisioned Wiggins starting at shooting guard and Hayward, who was from nearby Indianapolis, at small forward with the newly committed Irving running the point.
The Cavs also called Chandler Parsons, another young small forward who surprisingly became a free agent when the Houston Rockets didn’t pick up an option in his contract. The Cavs were also interested in veterans like Trevor Ariza and Channing Frye.
At about 2 a.m., as Griffin headed back to his hotel, he called Paul and let him know the Cavs were interested in James too. Paul thanked him for the interest and told him they would be in touch. No promises, no hints. The Cavs moved on with their business.
On July 2, the Cavs set up a visit with Hayward, who was a restricted free agent, for the next day. If the visit went well there was an understanding that the Cavs might be ready to offer him a four-year maximum-level contract that started at $15 million for the next season, the bulk of the Cavs’ available cap space. Gilbert’s jet flew to Indianapolis and picked Hayward up.
But on that day, July 3, something happened. Even as the Cavs prepared to show Hayward around their practice facility and have him meet with Blatt, Griffin’s phone rang. It was Paul. He told Griffin he’d be meeting with teams regarding James’s free agency over the next few days at his office in downtown Cleveland.
James was not a lock to return to the Heat. He was indeed on the market. Was this the moment the Cavs had been dreaming of? They weren’t sure. But they had to call Hayward’s agent. There would be no contract offer right then. The Cavs had just slammed on the brakes.
On everything.