The Blueprint

by Jason Lloyd

  James left the arena and went back to his high school, St. Vincent–St. Mary, to film scenes to use on his website. Then he spent a couple of hours driving around Akron to various spots from his youth, where he shot more footage for his website. It all felt like a going-away party, and soon we knew it was. James eventually left and flew to Connecticut, home of ESPN, for The Decision. At nine P.M. on July 8, James uttered the famous line about taking his talents to South Beach.

  Bars in Cleveland packed with James’s most loyal fans shrieked in disbelief. James’s departure in 2010 hurt worse than anything Stepien had inflicted on the organization during his brief reign of terror. This once-booming steel town that had been crushed by the economy had its spirit crushed by one of its own.

  —

  It had been less of a surprise to the Cavs. In the days after their meeting with him in downtown Cleveland, Cavs executives could feel James slipping away. Communication from his side kept pulling back. His mother, Gloria, was the conduit between LeBron and the Cavs’ ownership throughout the process.

  But by the morning of the television show, Gloria James had stopped taking the Cavs’ calls. The front office went through James’s close friend Maverick Carter and his agent, Leon Rose. Responses from them had slowed to a trickle. As James was walking onto the set of The Decision, Grant’s cell phone rang. It was Rich Paul, another of James’s closest friends. “He’s going. He’s not staying,” Paul said. Grant asked where he was going. “I have to let him announce that,” Paul said. “But he’s leaving.”

  No one was thinking about it in that moment, but in hindsight, the first step toward James’s eventual return to Cleveland may have been that call from Paul to Grant. The two men maintained a mutual respect for each other in the midst of incredibly difficult and awkward times. Paul was working his way up the sports agency business, but he was also a Cleveland kid, born and raised. He supported his close friend, but he hurt for his city. Paul’s personal connection to the Cavs, and to Grant, would be remembered, and nurtured, many times in the next few years.

  But in 2010, at that moment, there was nothing but anger. Gilbert was attending a billionaires’ conference in Sun Valley, Idaho—the same conference to which he’d taken James as his guest the previous summer—but the rest of the Cavs executives and coaches were positioned at Cleveland Clinic Courts to watch The Decision. All the important parties were on an open conference line to communicate with each other throughout the day. As James took his seat on the stage at the Boys & Girls Club in Greenwich, Connecticut, Grant broke the news to his owner and the rest of his staff. “He’s gone,” Grant told them. And Cleveland’s heart didn’t just break. It shattered.

  Fans watching the television special in downtown bars ran into the streets devastated. News cameras captured fans burning James’s jersey on the sidewalk outside Quicken Loans Arena. Police were called in to guard the ten-story LeBron banner that hung on an office building adjacent to the arena. It was pulled down the next day. Sitting in his director’s chair back in Connecticut, James seemed disturbed watching live footage of his jerseys being burned by his hometown fans.

  Less than ninety minutes after The Decision went off the air, Gilbert’s infamous letter was posted on the Cavs’ website and simultaneously reached media outlets across the country. How long Gilbert had been crafting the letter will never be known, but it was edited before it was released. The letter was sent from the e-mail account of Garin Narain, who worked in the Cavs’ media relations office. But Narain couldn’t hit the “send” button. He made his boss, Carper, hit it instead. The fallout was instant.

  Gilbert called James’s departure a “cowardly betrayal” and guaranteed the Cavs would win a championship before he did in Miami. He wrote that James had taken Cleveland’s curse with him to South Beach. “This shocking act of disloyalty from our home grown ‘chosen one’ sends the exact opposite lesson of what we would want our children to learn,” Gilbert wrote. “And ‘who’ we would want them to grow-up to become.” The fact that Gilbert wrote a letter isn’t at all surprising to those who know him best. Gilbert’s screeching e-mails have become legendary within the organization. Gilbert was seething, but he wasn’t done yet. When Associated Press reporter Tom Withers called him in Idaho, Gilbert kept dropping bombs, insisting James gave up during the series against the Celtics.

  “He has gotten a free pass,” Gilbert told Withers. “People have covered up for [James] for way too long. Tonight we saw who he really is. . . . He quit. Not just in Game 5, but in Games 2, 4, and 6. Watch the tape. The Boston series was unlike anything in the history of sports for a superstar.”

  The league fined Gilbert $100,000 for his comments, which inadvertently started a race war when Reverend Jesse Jackson accused Gilbert of viewing James as a runaway slave.

  “These accusations endanger LeBron. His jersey is being burned in effigy, and he is being projected as a betrayer by the owner,” Jackson wrote in a statement, calling Gilbert’s words mean, arrogant, and presumptuous. “He speaks as an owner of LeBron and not the owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers. His feelings of betrayal personify a slave master mentality. He sees LeBron as a runaway slave. This is an owner-employee relationship—between business partners—and LeBron honored his contract. . . . LeBron is not a child, nor is he bound to play on Gilbert’s plantation and be demeaned. He has been a model citizen and has inspired the children of Akron, Cleveland, the State of Ohio, and the United States.”

  The Cavs ultimately worked out a sign-and-trade with the Heat. LeBron technically signed a contract with the Cavs but was traded immediately to Miami in exchange for two future first-round picks. By constructing it that way, James was entitled to make more money under league rules. The Cavs, meanwhile, at least recouped a couple of future assets for the best player in the game. It wasn’t much of a return, but it was something. The Cavs could’ve cost James millions by letting him walk away and forcing him to take a lesser deal from Miami, but Gilbert wisely chose what was best for his franchise. The picks eventually became more important than anyone could’ve imagined at the time.

  A few weeks after James’s departure, Gilbert’s partner, Nate Forbes, was in South Florida on business. He happened to be lunching at the same spot as Heat owner Micky Arison and some of Arison’s colleagues. Whne lunch was over, Forbes walked over to Arison and playfully slammed his check on the table.

  “Here, Micky,” Forbes said. “It’s the least you can do!”

  The days, weeks, and months after The Decision felt like a funeral. Part of the organization died the night James left. A team that had won 143 games the previous two years (including the playoffs) had completely unraveled in a matter of weeks. Ferry was gone. So were Brown and nearly all of his assistant coaches. Front-office executives Lance Blanks and Mike Winger left for other jobs. James’s departure was an asteroid striking the organization and Gilbert’s letter was a gas can that torched the remains. Grant was the only one left holding an ax and a hose.

  Still numb from what he’d just endured, Grant began trying to rebuild immediately. He called the agent for Rockets point guard Kyle Lowry from his car while driving home after The Decision. A few days later, the Cavs signed Lowry, a restricted free agent, to a four-year deal worth upwards of $24 million. Houston quickly matched the offer. Grant tried signing Matt Barnes to replace James, but Barnes took less money to play for championships with the Lakers.

  If the Cavs had struggled to sign free agents with James, they certainly weren’t going to get anyone to come to Cleveland now that he was gone. Hope left with him. The Cavaliers, and by extension the city, were devastated.

  But there was a glimmer of hope—just a flicker, and one that Chris Grant and only a few others could admit to themselves. Do it right this time and maybe, just maybe, they could lure LeBron to come back home. He could be a free agent again in 2014, which gave the Cavs four years to build a nucleus of young talent that could appeal to J
ames again someday. All it would take was several years, a lot of luck, and for a few bitter enemies to rebuild some dramatically burned bridges.

  CHAPTER 3

  Starting Over

  The first season in Cleveland without James produced some of the darkest days in the history of the franchise. Byron Scott’s positive attitude in the roughest of storms was a beacon for the entire organization and helped the Cavs with the first, tentative steps toward rebuilding.

  Scott had championship cachet and L.A. cool after winning titles as a player with the Lakers. He was the head coach of rebuilds in both New Jersey and New Orleans. The Nets won just twenty-six games in his first year in charge. They won the East in his second and third years there. Similarly, the Hornets won only eighteen games in his first season. They steadily improved to thirty-eight, thirty-nine, and fifty-six wins each of the next three years, losing to the Spurs in seven games in the 2008 conference semifinals. Scott was fired eighteen months later, just nine games into the season. He sat on the team’s charter flight on the runway in Phoenix following a loss to the Suns, with his team at 3-6, and told his wife at the time, Anita, he was going to get fired.

  “They can’t fire you,” she laughed. “It’s only been nine games.”

  The next morning, Scott was fired. He took time away from coaching and was working as an analyst for ESPN when the Cavs called in June 2010.

  “Byron has already proven he can do the rebuild. He’s not interested in another one,” his agent, Brian McInerney, told me during the Cavs’ coaching search. “Our next job has to be a place where he can win a championship.”

  The Cavs were embarrassed by Izzo’s highly public withdrawal from their coaching search. They were paranoid Scott would back out also, particularly since rumors in Los Angeles swirled that Phil Jackson was going to retire. Scott, who was extremely tight with Lakers owner Jerry Buss, seemed a natural replacement. The Cavs, however, felt another public rejection at a time when they were still courting James would be viewed as a critical blow. Cavs personnel kept asking Scott if he was going to withdraw his name. “Withdraw from what?” a frustrated Scott told them at one point. “You haven’t offered me anything yet.”

  Scott and Anita joined McInerney and his wife, Elizabeth, for a Father’s Day gathering at Nate Forbes’s home in Franklin, Michigan. The entire Cavs ownership team was there, along with Chris Grant. McInerney, lifelong friends with Scott, had purchased a home on Grosse Ile Island, coincidentally about forty miles from Franklin, that was constructed in 1874 near the former naval base airport. McInerney liked the location because he could get a Beechjet 400 (and larger planes) on and off the island in total privacy, which helps when one of your best friends is the shooting guard for the Showtime Lakers who likes to take annual summer trips to the island for walleye fishing. And it also helps when scheduling job interviews for that same man forty miles away.

  The couples shared a casual, suit-and-tie-less Sunday with a focus more on Ping-Pong, pool, bowling, darts, dominoes, and cards than anything about the Cavs. The women spoke of their children and how to make their favorite recipes. The evening didn’t end until well past midnight, when McInerney’s wife was stopped for speeding through a construction zone, but the Michigan officer let her off with a warning. “The California plates with a Balboa Island frame holder, on a foreign car, get us stopped every time,” McInerney joked. The whole evening was an enjoyable social gathering, hardly a job interview. Scott left without being offered the job.

  The Cavs wanted to have a coach in place by the time James’s free agency began on July 1, and as June ticked away, Scott and Lakers assistant Brian Shaw emerged as the top two candidates. Shaw, one of the hottest assistant coaches in the business at the time, was the last to interview. It was an awkward dance for all parties, given Scott’s strong ties to the Lakers and Shaw’s position as Phil Jackson’s top assistant. Then there was the issue of Jackson and whether he’d retire or continue coaching, and if he did retire, whom the Lakers would prefer: Scott or Shaw? There were no easy answers, and with James’s free agency looming, the Cavs could ill afford to make a mistake.

  As Shaw and his agent, Jerome Stanley, were at Cleveland Clinic Courts for his interview, reports started trickling out that the Cavs and Shaw were working on a contract. The Cavs believed Stanley was leaking information to reporters while sitting at the team’s headquarters, which set off a chaotic series of events. McInerney gave me a statement congratulating Shaw on getting the job, and reports about Shaw emerging as the front-runner began to surface. There was only one problem: The Cavs never even offered Shaw the job and certainly weren’t negotiating a contract. The leaks infuriated Grant, who ended the interview and immediately dismissed Shaw as a candidate. The job was Scott’s after all—as soon as someone could get ahold of him to tell him.

  On July 1, the first day of free agency, Scott went off the grid. He was in his car driving south, and no one could reach him so he could sign off on the terms. After the Cavs spent all evening negotiating with his agent, Scott was finally reached around midnight. The team announced him as their new head coach in the early hours of Friday, July 2—about eleven hours before James held his free agent meeting in Cleveland with Pat Riley and the Miami Heat.

  Scott came to Cleveland hoping to coach LeBron and instead got Samardo Samuels, Semih Erden, and Christian Eyenga. He inherited one of the worst teams since the Stepien era, but he never publicly complained about it once.

  Nearly everyone who had helped the Cavs ascend to the top of the Eastern Conference either quit or was fired. As is standard protocol, Scott did not retain most of Brown’s assistants. Ferry walked off the job when his contract expired, and when two other executives—Lance Blanks and Mike Winger—left for front-office jobs in other markets, Grant’s front office was as depleted as his coaching staff. He needed another veteran front-office assistant, so he hired David Griffin, who had resigned from his hometown Phoenix Suns a few months earlier and passed on an offer as general manager of the Denver Nuggets.

  As an outsider looking in, Griffin believed throughout the summer of 2010, before he started working for the Cavs, that James was leaving Cleveland. A couple of months later, he was sitting at dinner in a Cleveland restaurant with Grant and Scott. The next day he was sitting in Grant’s office talking about moving ahead and how to proceed. The assistant’s job was soon his and the path ahead was clear: Blow it up, blow it all up. Without James, the Cavs were left with a roster of complementary pieces and misfit parts. It was going to take years to rebuild and it would be painful, but there was no other choice. That rebuilding job Scott’s agent said he didn’t want, he now had.

  “When I came here, it was like jumping into a burning building,” Griffin said. “The emotions of this place were so raw.”

  —

  James had taken so long to make his decision that all of the other top free agents had already agreed to new deals. With no picks in that summer’s draft (they had previously traded the picks away in a frenetic attempt to get more talent around James), no marquee free agents, and no hope of a championship, the Cavs were caught in NBA purgatory. The big-name players were gone, soon to be replaced by fringe NBA youngsters and older veterans playing out the final days of their careers. Fans blamed James for not only leaving but wrecking the franchise.

  “I know there’s a lot of anger in the city, but I know Mr. LeBron James and I do not consider this personally,” Cleveland mayor Frank Jackson said in a news conference at city hall the day after James left. “It was not personal against the city. His decision is not going to make or break Cleveland. The city is resilient and has a lot of assets that have sustained us in the past and will do so in the future.”

  Losing a superstar in the NBA is devastating. History indicates that it often takes a decade to return to contention. The Bulls missed the playoffs each of the first seven years after Michael Jordan retired and didn’t win their first postseason s
eries until nine years after he left. The Magic didn’t win a playoff series for twelve years after losing Shaquille O’Neal in free agency, and the Celtics needed a decade to win a series after Larry Bird’s retirement. If the Cavs couldn’t win a championship and end the city’s title drought with James, they weren’t going to do it without him. And now history predicted a long road just to get back to respectability.

  Grant had a belief that it was less risky to build through the draft than it was in free agency. If a team swings and misses on a free agent, they’re locked into a hefty contract that potentially spans three or four years and that eats away a significant portion of the salary cap. But if a team misses on a draft pick, the financial consequences are far less severe, and in the extreme case where it’s necessary, teams can get out of rookie contracts after just two years.

  What were the tools? That was the first question Grant and the front office asked. Their sharpest tools were trades and the draft. The organization started to refine itself through that lens. Troubled Delonte West, with all of his baggage, was going to be released before his contract became guaranteed, but Grant instead dumped him on the Minnesota Timberwolves for Ryan Hollins and Ramon Sessions. A couple of years later, he would spin Sessions into a first-round pick. Those were the types of subtle but creative trades that highlighted the four seasons James spent in Miami.

  Enough of those types of trades, enough high lottery picks and successful drafting, and who knows? Stay flexible under the salary cap, keep the books clean, hit on a couple of draft picks that play better than their rookie contracts, and suddenly anything is possible. Even luring LeBron back in 2014. After all, Phil Jackson and Kobe Bryant had reunited. Why couldn’t Gilbert, the city of Cleveland, and LeBron James? As the Cavs tore the engine to their team apart and slowly put it back together one spark plug and crankshaft at a time, the thought loomed in the background: If we do this right and things break a certain way, we have an opportunity to do something special.