The Blueprint

by Jason Lloyd

  It was a long, painful path to get there. Gilbert dressed in a charcoal-gray suit, a crisp white shirt, and a navy tie littered with Cavs logos. He wore a Cavs pin on his left lapel. His hair was buzzed, cropped much shorter than it had been in the glory days when James was still around. An easy joke could be made that the nineteen-win season had caused the ultracompetitive owner to tear his hair out. In this new way of thinking, however, losing games and playing the draft lottery odds became more important than winning. Gilbert, Chris Grant, and the Cavs had endured all that pain of losing for this moment, for this day. Lottery day.

  The two men, lifelong friends and business partners, said their good-byes. Cohen, much taller than Gilbert and completely bald, was dressed in a navy blue pinstripe suit and spotted blue tie with a Cavs lapel pin that matched Gilbert’s. He traveled alone up the elevator and into Conference Room 3A.

  As the Cavs surveyed the construction site, they knew simply losing games wasn’t going to be enough. If they were going to expedite this rebuilding process and be in a position to lure James back in 2014, they needed additional draft picks—lottery picks. Those are the toughest to obtain and Grant was going to have to get creative. Luckily, he had an owner willing to spend. Gilbert wasn’t afraid to write checks if it improved the club long-term—remember, the short-term didn’t really matter. No one was concerned with wins. Eventually, it was going to matter. But not now.

  Grant, Griffin, and his assistants were instead searching for ways to create value where none existed. How is that possible? By acquiring bad contracts teams didn’t want in exchange for high draft picks. Under the league’s complicated salary cap system, teams either need enough space below the salary cap to absorb incoming players’ deals or the contracts must come close to matching in order for the trade to be legal. There are some exceptions to this rule, but those are the basic parameters. And it’s what made Delonte West’s contract so appealing to the Minnesota Timberwolves in the weeks after James left for Miami.

  West was battling mental health issues and facing weapons charges in Maryland when the Cavs traded his $4.6 million contract to the Timberwolves in exchange for Ramon Sessions and Ryan Hollins. The Timberwolves had no interest in West; they just wanted out from under Sessions’s contract. West was the vehicle to make that happen. The full value of West’s contract didn’t guarantee for another week after the trade. Under league salary cap rules, the Timberwolves could acquire him before the guarantee date, release him, and only owe him $500,000.

  Sessions had three years left on the four-year, $16 million deal he’d signed with the Timberwolves the year before, but he struggled picking up their offense. By making the deal with the Cavs, the Timberwolves rid themselves of the final three years and $13 million on Sessions’s contract and it only cost them $500,000. Sessions, meanwhile, was a young, serviceable point guard for two years before the Cavs eventually flipped him to the Los Angeles Lakers in a wider deal that netted them a first-round draft pick.

  Grant traded Jon Leuer to the Memphis Grizzlies in 2013 in exchange for Mo Speights, Wayne Ellington, Josh Selby, and, most importantly, a future first-round pick. The Cavs were far enough under the league’s $58 million salary cap that they absorbed the $6 million total the three players were earning. From the Grizzlies’ perspective, dumping that $6 million in unwanted salary allowed them to get under the luxury tax threshold and save millions in fines. The pick was most important to the Cavs because it was another future commodity that had tangible value.

  And when the Cavs studied the financials on their opponents, they came across something curious with the Los Angeles Clippers: Baron Davis had a stretch clause in his contract before those were commonplace in the NBA. Essentially, if the Cavs could acquire Davis, they could eventually release him and stretch the remainder of his contract over the next several years to ease the financial burden.

  Davis had a bloated contract—he was owed nearly $35 million over the next two and a half years—and a bad reputation as a locker room cancer. In other words, he was exactly what the Cavs needed. Davis played for an owner, Donald Sterling, who somehow managed to pass Ted Stepien on the scoundrel scale. Sterling was cheap, miserable, and eventually forced out of the league because of his racist views. At the time, however, the Cavs were most interested in his tight fist. Clippers general manager Neil Olshey was close friends with Griffin, so he and Grant negotiated for weeks to take Davis’s contract off the Clippers’ books—if Olshey and Sterling were willing to attach their first-round pick in the upcoming draft without protections.

  It’s common when teams are trading future draft picks to put a “top ten” or “top five” protection on the pick, meaning if the team trading the pick away (Team A) fails to make the playoffs during that season and is part of the draft lottery, they get to keep the pick if it falls anywhere within that protected top ten or top five range. If that occurs, the team acquiring the pick (Team B) must wait until the following year to acquire it. Depending on the terms of the trade, for example, Team A can make the pick “top ten protected” this season, “top five protected” next year, and “top three” protected in year three before the pick becomes unprotected in year four. Teams are free to negotiate the protections as they see fit, but it’s rare to get an unprotected pick right away.

  When the Detroit Pistons lucked into the second overall pick in 2003, for example, it was because of a trade they made 2,114 days earlier in 1997 with the Vancouver Grizzlies. The Grizzlies had enough protections on the pick that they didn’t have to convey it from 1998 to 2002, but by 2003 the only protection on the pick was if it was number one overall. The Grizzlies were slotted to pick sixth entering the lottery but jumped up to number two. It was a worst-case scenario. They lost the pick, sending it to the Pistons to complete the trade made six years earlier. Such unexpected jumps in the lottery are why it’s nearly impossible to acquire an unprotected pick from a surefire lottery team just four months before the draft without relinquishing a superstar.

  Right about the same time the Cavs and Clippers were negotiating a trade, for example, the Utah Jazz traded away star guard Deron Williams to the New Jersey Nets for what became the third pick in the 2011 draft. Williams, though, was already a two-time All-Star entering his prime when the Nets acquired him. The Cavs were talking about sending spare parts to the Clippers for an unprotected pick.

  Unlike the Pistons, the Cavs waited just eighty-three days to use the Clippers’ pick and needed only Mo Williams and Jamario Moon—and a $21 million check (the difference in money owed between Williams and Davis)—to get it. Yes, Gilbert paid $21 million for a lottery ticket. Byron Scott was beginning his postgame press conference adjacent to the Cavs’ locker room following a home loss to the Houston Rockets on February 23, 2011, when Williams emerged from the locker room, gave a pronounced wave to those watching him, and headed for the parking lot. Williams was nursing an ankle injury and wasn’t even playing. Giving such an animated good-bye to everyone didn’t make sense at the time, but it did about three hours later. Williams had just learned he’d been traded to Los Angeles. The Clippers had the eighth-worst record at the time of the trade, meaning they’d have the eighth-best odds of landing the number one overall pick. The trade all but assured the Cavs of having a pair of top ten picks to launch their rebuild.

  Even more important, it provided the franchise with hope. The trade occurred less than two weeks after the Cavs ended that twenty-six-game losing streak. Morale was still down; the wounds from James were still raw. The Davis trade, despite his reputation, brought some energy, some life, some optimism that better days were ahead because of what the draft pick represented.

  Olshey told reporters in Los Angeles it was important to clear the cap space to ensure they had enough room to re-sign guys like DeAndre Jordan and Eric Gordon rather than “speculating on another kid that’s nineteen years old with one year of college experience,” adding, “And I’m not that high on the draft
to begin with this year.”

  He wasn’t alone. The 2011 draft was dismissed as weak in the months leading up to it. It was going to be a draft heavy on overseas players, and the league’s scouts and talent evaluators were down on its potential. The Cavs viewed it differently, however. Grant and his staff were bullish on the draft and thought there were some potential hidden gems. They were ecstatic to essentially purchase their own lottery ticket.

  Three months later, on May 17, 2011, Cohen emerged from the elevator inside the NBA Entertainment studio, sealed his phone into a manila envelope (all communication devices were seized at the door), and took his seat at the front table inside Conference Room 3A. There was a nervous energy inside, with team officials anxious to see who would win. Security was stringent. The drawing is held about two hours before the results are aired on live television, so secrecy, particularly in the social media age, is of the utmost importance. A representative from each lottery team was invited to watch the drawing, as well as a select few media members. I was one of the few invited to watch.

  Upon entering the room, each of us was given a booklet containing all 1,000 number combinations and which four-digit sequences were assigned to each team. The Cavs had two sets of numbers: 199 combinations tied to their own pick and an additional 28 combinations from the Clippers’ pick. Add it up and they had a 22.7 percent chance at winning the lottery. The only team with better odds was the Timberwolves, who received 250 number combinations for ending the season with the league’s worst record. That gave them a 25 percent chance to win the lottery.

  The fourteen teams that fail to make the playoffs every season are included in the lottery. The worse a team is, the more chances they have to win. Fourteen Ping-Pong balls, numbered sequentially from one to fourteen, are dropped into a hopper and a four-digit number is pulled. The team with the winning numbers wins the first overall pick in the draft; then the balls are returned to the hopper and the process is repeated to determine the second and third picks. The rest of the teams are slotted based on the inverse order of their records. The lottery is designed to prevent teams from tanking, although plenty of them still do it—the Cavs were there because they were clearly tanking.

  Cohen was studying the number assignments when I walked in. Since the Cavs had made the playoffs in each of the five full years under this ownership group, they were relative strangers to the lottery procedures. Cohen hoped he would be able to watch as the number combinations were assigned to each lottery team, but the NBA uses the same template every year.

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  By the time the actual drawing began, Cohen had realized that each of the 199 number combinations assigned to the Cavs’ pick contained either a 1 or a 2. Yet Lou DiSabatino, the NBA executive presiding over the lottery machine, pulled the numbers 14-13-7-8 for the number one pick. Cohen panicked as he scanned the combinations because the first two numbers were so high. Jamin Dershowitz, the assistant general counsel to the NBA, quickly discovered the winning team. “The Cleveland Cavaliers,” he announced. “From the Los Angeles Clippers’ pick.” Cohen raised both fists in victory as a soft, collective gasp filled the room. Gilbert’s wish was granted (“Don’t come back with anything less than number one”) and his $21 million lottery ticket hit the jackpot.

  The Clippers’ pick had a 2.8 percent chance of coming up number one—roughly the same odds as walking into a casino and picking one number to win on the roulette wheel. Cohen walked out of Conference Room 3A with the first and fourth picks in the draft. After such a miserable first season without James, the Cavs’ luck was finally changing. Cohen, however, couldn’t tell anyone. Everyone who knew the lottery’s outcome had to remain sequestered in the room for more than an hour until the live television show aired. Gilbert had brought along past and present Browns players such as Kosar, Josh Cribbs, and Joe Haden for good luck. When Deputy Commissioner Adam Silver finally revealed the Cavs as lottery winners, Cleveland’s contingent in the studio erupted in cheers. Back in Cleveland, Grant and Scott screamed and embraced at the team’s official watch party downtown. No one could believe the stroke of good fortune, but now came the hard part: Who to pick?

  Kyrie Irving, the sensational freshman point guard from Duke, grew up a short drive from the NBA Entertainment studios and attended the lottery. He even posed for a picture before the drawing with Nick Gilbert, one of Dan’s sons, who’d also made the trip. Irving was coming off a serious toe injury but remained a strong candidate to go number one overall just eight years after James went first overall to Cleveland. That marked the only other time the Cavs won the draft lottery, and immediately Irving was asked about the LeBron comparisons. The Cavs had lost their king; now they were getting a prince. Irving didn’t appreciate all the questions about following James and quickly grew tired of them.

  “I don’t believe I’m following LeBron,” Irving said in the moments after the Cavs won the lottery. “If I am blessed enough to go to the Cleveland Cavaliers, I just want to start a new legacy there.”

  A month later, Tristan Thompson exited the Times Square Westin and boarded a bus bound for Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey, the site of the NBA draft. He was about to become a millionaire. Thompson was six foot nine with boyish good looks, a charming smile, and dimples. He had the type of carefree personality that made everyone like him. More importantly, he also had a motor that never stopped. Thompson left the University of Texas after his freshman year raw and unpolished. He could hardly shoot at all, but he was athletic and a tenacious rebounder. He was one of the first to board the bus headed to the NBA draft and he quickly grabbed a window seat. Irving climbed on a few minutes later, spotted the familiar face, and sat down next to him.

  Irving was four when his mother, Elizabeth, died from sepsis. He was raised by his single father, Drederick, who was playing basketball professionally in Australia when Kyrie was born—giving Kyrie dual citizenship. Elizabeth was a classically trained pianist and the daughter of a Lutheran minister. She rocked Kyrie to sleep at night singing old church hymns. Kyrie inherited his mother’s musical talents and his father’s basketball skill. When he wasn’t performing in high school musicals, he was playing one-on-one with Drederick, who taught him the angles of the backboard and how to use them to his advantage. At sixteen, Kyrie began to blossom as a player and beat his father in a game of one-on-one for the first time. He dropped all other sports and worked on the finer points of basketball: hanging in the air a little longer, making floaters with both hands, shooting off the dribble, learning a head fake, and even tinkering with moves in the post.

  Thompson grew up near Toronto but moved to Newark prior to his sophomore year to attend St. Benedict’s Prep and play basketball. During his junior year, Thompson’s team was 19-0 when they faced Irving’s St. Patrick High School in nearby Elizabeth, New Jersey. Irving’s team smashed Thompson’s team, 88–62, ending the perfect season. The bus ride from Times Square to Newark can take anywhere from thirty to seventy-five minutes depending on traffic. They spent the bus ride chatting about their past clashes on the court and the postdraft parties they were scheduled to attend later that night. They never considered they’d arrive at those parties as teammates.

  Irving was viewed as the best of a flawed group of prospects—and even he came with enormous risk. Irving had dazzled at Duke with thirty-one points in a win against sixth-ranked Michigan State in early December. He vaulted up draft boards after becoming the fourth freshman in Duke history to score at least thirty points in a game, but his regular season ended prematurely after a toe injury forced him to miss nearly four months. He returned for the NCAA tournament and even scored twenty-eight points in the Blue Devils’ final game of the season, a loss to sophomore Derrick Williams and Arizona in the Sweet Sixteen.

  Irving wasn’t the top recruit of his high school class. Harrison Barnes, Jared Sullinger, and Brandon Knight were all considered better players entering college. By the end of his freshman season, how
ever, Irving had surpassed them all. His teasing freshman season—11 games, 303 minutes, and a wealth of potential—left the Cavs in an agonizing position. Their research revealed that no player had ever been drafted number one overall in any sport after playing so little the year before. With holes up and down the roster, there was a compelling thought to draft the explosive Williams first overall and take Knight with the fourth pick.

  Williams’s draft stock vaulted with a sensational NCAA tournament run, while Knight was one of the youngest players in the draft after a promising but inconsistent freshman season with the Wildcats. Grant did his best to direct smokescreens, insisting Williams was sensational during his private workout and that the Cavs weren’t sure who they would take with the first pick. Since they held two high picks, Grant was trying to leverage the situation any way he could by being secretive. Inside the walls of Cleveland Clinic Courts, however, he was adamant: Irving was the choice. He told no one outside the organization—not even Irving or his agent. Irving learned he was the top pick when NBA commissioner David Stern announced it from the podium to begin the draft.

  The fourth pick remained murky. They liked bruising Lithuanian center Jonas Valančiūnas, but he remained under contract to a European team and the Cavs wanted to be assured of the terms of his buyout. He was also represented by Leon Rose and Creative Artists Agency—the same agent and firm who represented James during the Decision. Animosity remained between the Cavs and Rose. Thompson was also affiliated with CAA, but he was more represented by Rich Paul, James’s close friend and the one who called the Cavs to tell them that James was leaving for Miami.