Cavs: Letting David Griffin walk still haunts the team

The worst ran sports team in  Cleveland is none other than the Cavs, and letting a GM of the year walk like David Griffin haunts the team to this day.

David Griffin is most known to fans of the Cavs as the man who built the 2015-2016 NBA Championship winning team. He was on the team starting in 2010 but his fingerprints weren’t seen until 2014 when he took over as acting GM. From there he re-signed LeBron James, traded for Kevin Love, and made all sorts of moves that made it possible to win the NBA Championship. During his time in Cleveland, however, things were apparently miserable. It came to a head in 2017 when neither he nor the team could agree on a new contract. That meant that Griffin was out and Koby Altman was in.

He has since joined the New Orleans Pelicans and has already turned them into a team to watch. In fact, early this morning Griffin fleeced the Milwaukee Bucks for three first-round picks and two more first-round pick swaps. Meaning that for the next few years the Bucks will be left with table scraps. All so the Bucks could get their hands on Jrue Holiday; at best a fringe All-Star player.

He also secured three picks from the Los Angeles Lakers, as well as Lonzo Ball, Josh Hart, and Brandon Ingram in his deal with the Lakes in 2019 for Anthony Davis.

That means in just two trades, the Pelicans got six draft picks and three future building blocks. They also took on George Hill and Eric Bledsoe’s contracts as well. They might be helpful in helping the Pelicans get back to the playoffs, but they’re not important in the grand scheme of things.

Griffin has re-set the Pelican’s future. Something his predecessor in Cleveland, Altman, has failed to do. Altman has had his job since 2017 and has yet to do anything meaningful. Griffen has had his for about a year and a half and has already achieved the proper steps in a rebuild.

While the details of Griffin’s time in Cleveland is shrouded in mystery and the actual reasons why it was a nightmare remain anyone’s guess, the fact that he’s gone down to another team and has acquired two new stars (Ingram and Zion Williamson), six future draft picks, and a whole heap of useful, if unspectacular secondary players show you what kind of tactician he is.

The Cavs could use someone who knows what he’s doing because it’s beyond time to question if Altman does.