Cavs: 3 reasons Koby Altman should be done as general manager
By Chad Porto
The Cavs may move on from Koby Altman, but here are three reasons why they should.
The Cavs have had four years of Koby Altman’s constant trades, overvaluing of rookie talent, and doing all he can to keep the bad eggs happy and fat during his time in Cleveland. Whether you like the moves he made or not, or think the players he acquired will help, you can’t deny mistakes haven’t been made. Even mistakes that on paper, may look good. Like the signing of Larry Nance Jr., Cedi Osman, and Kevin Love to the deals they have. Those contracts are not great for the team.
You could argue Nance, to a degree, but he’s 28 and only now coming into his own. Oh and he’s going into the last year of his deal. The contracts have been at best ill-advised, at worst, completely cap killing albatrosses.
The Cavs have had four years under Altman and he’s done next to nothing to improve this team beyond four games in three years.
Not vetting players better
Kevin Love is a malcontent. Kevin Porter Jr. has been in trouble wherever he went. Houston’s finding that out. Andre Drummond was never going to re-sign, and for some reason wanted to be a point forward. Isiah Thomas didn’t want to play alongside his old buddy Love and new running mate LeBron James. Derrick Rose went missing. Dewayne Wade was so unhappy being on a team with his best friend, and competing for a championship, that the Cavs released him to go back to lower-tier Heat.
That’s just the most notable ones off the top of the head. There are more, even if we don’t know them all just yet, but there are more. Now, you can make excuses for some of them, like the Cavs didn’t really want Thomas, they wanted the draft pick the Celtics were offering alongside Thomas, but others aren’t. Like Porter Jr.
Trading him away was the right call, he’s only ever going to be a headache. High school, college, and now two pro teams, and all he does is get himself into bad situations. So no, the issue isn’t that he got traded; because he should’ve been. The issue is that he never should’ve been drafted in the first place. Altman is trying to be Bill Belichick, where he’s acquiring all of these players with attitude issues, and trying to turn them into a team like. Only he’s not Belichick and this isn’t a Disney flick.
Sorry, Altman. The Rock isn’t going to come in, raise an eyebrow and get the team fired up to compete against the rich kids. There’s only the mess you’ve made. The waste of talent, the waste of trades, and the waste of draft picks.
The Knicks proved that one good offseason can make the difference, but that can’t happen if Altman is still the one evaluation the talent.