The Blueprint

by Jason Lloyd

  After the Cavs selected Irving first, the Timberwolves took Williams second and the Utah Jazz selected center Enes Kanter third. The Cavs were back on the clock with a decision to make. Valančiūnas was a true center and considered the better prospect, but Thompson had been rising in the weeks prior to the draft and was widely considered a top ten pick. Grant loved Thompson, his makeup, his heart, his family, and his background. Grant believed Thompson was a winner.

  In a surprise to the rest of the league, the Cavs chose Thompson with the fourth pick. Rivals in high school, he and Irving were NBA teammates drafted seventeen minutes apart. “We were sitting on the bus together,” Thompson said. “It’s almost like it was destined to happen.”

  The Cavs were ripped for passing on Valančiūnas, who went just after Thompson to the Toronto Raptors—Thompson’s hometown team. “It’s only a surprise if you didn’t watch the workouts,” Thompson said. “If you ask ownership and Coach Scott and CG [Chris Grant] and even Griff, if you watched the workouts, there’s some other guys in that workout that probably shouldn’t have went in the pick they went.”

  Even after the Thompson selection, Grant wasn’t done. The Cavs were high on Washington State sharpshooter Klay Thompson (no relation to Tristan), so Grant continued working the phones on draft night, determined to add a third pick in the top ten. Byron Scott was familiar with the Thompson family because he played with Klay’s father, Mychal, while with the Lakers. Klay set the school’s single-season scoring record with 733 points and left after his junior year ranked third on WSU’s all-time scoring list.

  Cavs executives, particularly Griffin, loved Thompson and were dangling young power forward J. J. Hickson to try to move back into the top ten and get him. The Cavs were offering anything they could—except for future picks. They refused to trade future picks. Hickson had one year left on his rookie contract and showed promise, but everyone in the league knew the collective bargaining agreement was expiring and a nasty lockout was looming. The Cavs didn’t want to pay Hickson the type of money he was seeking in his next contract, and they weren’t sure how much of a season there would be in 2011–12, so they were motivated to move Hickson right away.

  The Sacramento Kings made it clear the number seven pick was in play and the Cavs tried getting it. But the Kings instead traded the pick in a three-team deal, dropped down to number ten, and drafted Jimmer Fredette. Thompson went with the next pick to the Golden State Warriors and blossomed into one of the best shooting guards in the league, pairing with Steph Curry to form the Splash Brothers.

  Although they missed out on Klay Thompson, the front office staff celebrated with beers and wine in Grant’s office after the draft. The Cavs believed they had a future star in Irving, if he could stay healthy, and a nice complementary piece in Tristan Thompson. Grant knew Thompson wasn’t going to be a superstar, but he also knew Thompson wasn’t going to get fat and lazy and bust out of the league in four years, either. Grant believed in his character and work ethic.

  It’s unique for one team to hold two picks so high in a draft. Prior to 2011, the last time it had happened was in 1983, when the Houston Rockets took Ralph Sampson first overall and Rodney McCray third. The fourth pick in that draft was Byron Scott.

  Hickson landed in Sacramento anyway. A week after the draft, the Cavs traded him to the Kings for Omri Casspi and a future first-round pick. Grant was more interested in the pick than in Casspi, but he was at least a small forward, something the Cavs had lacked since James left. Casspi was expected to be a placeholder for a few years. Hours after the trade was announced, owners locked out the players and a nasty labor battle ensued for the next 161 days while a new collective bargaining agreement was negotiated.

  A number of owners—with Gilbert at the forefront—took it as an opportunity to ensure the superpower team assembled in Miami couldn’t happen again through free agency. An emphasis was placed on giving small-market teams a chance to retain for the long term players they drafted and developed well. In the new NBA, the revenue pot was more evenly distributed between owners and players, but more important to the product on the court, stars would theoretically have a tougher time forcing their way out of markets. Teams were given steep financial advantages in an effort to retain their own free agents, but it came at a price. Twenty percent of the season was lost to the lockout. As part of the new CBA, teams were allowed to release one player under what became known as the amnesty clause. Those players still received all of their guaranteed money, but it didn’t count against a team’s cap.

  The Cavs moved quickly to waive Davis under the amnesty clause for a couple of reasons. Although he had been a model citizen in Cleveland, they remained concerned he would become a problem in the locker room and negatively influence an impressionable player such as Irving. Beyond that, the stretch clause in Davis’s contract made releasing him and paying him off easier. Most important, releasing him allowed the Cavs to turn the offense over to their promising rookie. With Davis out of the way, Irving started at point guard and played in fifty-one of the sixty-six games, averaging 18.5 points and 5.4 assists to win Rookie of the Year. However, he missed time with a sprained shoulder and a concussion, which did little to dispel the injury concerns that he carried into the league following his toe problems at Duke.

  Thompson split his time as a starter and reserve, averaging 8.2 points and 6.5 rebounds as a rookie. His shooting numbers remained woeful, but he was athletic, durable, and stayed out of trouble. Grant knew the Cavs had something special in Irving, a precocious teenager with the handle, shot, and mind-set of a veteran.

  As rookies, Thompson and Irving helped the Cavs to a 21-45 finish. Two pillars, and the overall first step, of the rebuild were in place. Cleveland finished tied with the New Orleans Pelicans for the fourth-worst record and returned to the lottery looking for more luck. They won a coin flip with the Pelicans in what turned out to be another franchise-altering outcome, but not in a good way. Instead, the Cavs fell to fourth again in the draft and began the process anew of whom to choose.

  But Irving’s emergence as a young superstar added fuel to the idea James might return. That first year he was gone, it was just a dream. But Grant and the rest of the front office knew Irving had the potential to be a superstar and an appealing piece of bait to lure James back. It was after Irving’s first year in the league when the Cavs galvanized the plan to not spend in free agency, preserve cap space, and work hard to succeed in the draft while waiting for 2014 and the Summer of LeBron.

  CHAPTER 5

  Old Memories, New Hopes

  The old, cramped practice court on the fourth floor of Quicken Loans Arena is a relic these days. The Cavs used it as their primary practice gym until 2007, when they unveiled Cleveland Clinic Courts, a state-of-the-art, fifty-thousand-square-foot practice facility and team headquarters in suburban Independence. It cost $25 million to construct and remains one of the league’s finest facilities.

  Opposing teams still occasionally use the abandoned court inside the Q for practices and morning shoot-arounds when they’re in town to play the Cavs and the main floor isn’t available. James stood near the corner of that old practice court wearing his Heat jersey on a chilly February morning in 2012 when he made two franchises and the entire NBA stop and look up.

  “It would be fun to play in front of these fans again,” James said. “I had a lot of fun times in my seven years here. You can’t predict the future. I am here as a Miami Heat player and I am happy where I am now. But I don’t rule that out in no sense. And if I decide to come back, hopefully the fans would accept me.”

  Counting the GQ article in the weeks after he first departed for Miami, this was the second time James volunteered he’d like to come home someday. When he said it to GQ, Cleveland was in too much shock and pain to really notice. Miami was so elated to have him that it didn’t take it seriously. After all, who actually leaves Miami and moves to Cleveland? The comment to GQ was q
uickly dismissed and forgotten. Eighteen months later, when he said it again, everyone noticed. This wasn’t nostalgia talking. Like everything else with James, this was calculated. When Associated Press reporter Tom Withers, who had a good relationship with James after covering him since he was in high school at St. V, asked if he would like to play in Cleveland again someday, James never hesitated. This was his warning shot to both the Cavs and the Heat. Eight miles away, inside his office at Cleveland Clinic Courts, Chris Grant was listening.

  The Cavs had started rebuilding their team, and James was already talking about returning, even though he had two and a half years left in his contract. But there was still a long road ahead, and the public hatred toward James was going to take years to turn. So James got to work early. “The media is going to fuck this up,” one of his closest allies told me that day. “It’s at least two years from happening and it’s still a fragile relationship on both sides. A lot has to happen first and now isn’t the time. He’s not coming back without a championship. He has to win one first.”

  Until that point, the thought of James returning had been more hope than reality, although it was a strong, well-nourished hope. Grant remained in close contact with Rich Paul, who left CAA in the fall of 2012 to start his own agency, Klutch Sports. Among his first clients? LeBron James and Tristan Thompson. James left the reputable and powerful Leon Rose/CAA and trusted his friend since high school with his future. Thompson went, too, which worked out conveniently for the Cavs. Grant and Paul were in constant contact because they shared an interest in Thompson. As for James, the conversation was always open-ended, in the vein of “You never know what can happen.”

  The Cavs—and James—knew early in Irving’s rookie season they had a potential superstar. As they watched him blossom and flourish, coupled with James’s own remarks, the idea of his returning suddenly began to feel real. Yes, the Cavs’ record was a mess and there weren’t many other pieces, but even a young Irving was more talented than any teammate James had during his seven years in Cleveland. He was also better than any point guard James had ever played alongside, and James knew it.

  “This is transforming into a point guard league,” James said during Irving’s rookie season. He went on to name guys like Derrick Rose, Russell Westbrook, Chris Paul, John Wall, and, yes, Irving. “If you have a really, really good point guard, you have a chance to win. It’s like having a really good quarterback in the NFL.”

  By All-Star Weekend in 2013, Irving’s second year in the league, his star was shining bright. There was the “Uncle Drew” character he developed for Pepsi Max commercials that appealed to the younger crowd, but his on-court game was where he was going to make real money and earn respect throughout the league. Since the Cavs were atrocious and never on national television, Irving always viewed All-Star Weekends as his chance to shine.

  He scored thirty-four points and made all eight of his three-point attempts to win the MVP award of the Rising Stars game during the 2012 All-Star Weekend. His eight threes were the second most in the history of the competition, behind only his Cavs teammate Daniel “Booby” Gibson. Suddenly, the tarp was getting pulled back and the rest of the league was beginning to see the type of potential bursting in Cleveland. Irving grinned widely as he was escorted into a makeshift photography studio for the required pictures with his MVP trophy. Irving lowered the crystal trophy a few inches. “Make sure you get the Cleveland,” Irving said, referring to the block CAVALIERS lettering stitched across his home white jersey. It wasn’t so long ago that James had shunned the city Irving was now propping up. The comparisons between them only intensified following his terrific All-Star Weekend.

  “People are making a mistake if they’re looking at him to be the next LeBron,” Shaquille O’Neal told me prior to Irving’s MVP performance. O’Neal, of course, was with James for his final year in Cleveland. “What LeBron did was fabulous and legendary. There will never be another LeBron with how he did it and how he came in and took over. Kyrie is also a leader. I’m not trying to take anything away from his game. But I would urge people not to put too much pressure on him.”

  Irving’s star was red-hot, which only heightened the questions within the organization about James. He wasn’t going to come home if there was no talent on the roster, but who better for him to come play alongside than a twenty-two-year-old point guard who was already an All-Star?

  The Cavs, however, stuck to their plan of building through the draft, collecting lottery picks and future trade assets while preserving cap space. They steadfastly boycotted free agency. The most notable veteran free agent they signed after James left was C. J. Miles. It wasn’t that Gilbert didn’t want to spend; he did. Grant didn’t want to get stuck with a bad contract—or worse, sign a veteran who would actually help them win games. Winning would come later.

  The front office convened in Chicago again for the NBA combine in May of 2012, where the prospective draftees gather to be measured, weighed, and put through drills and five-on-five competitions for league executives to evaluate them. It was also the month Irving won the Rookie of the Year award with 117 of a possible 120 votes. The group of about ten team executives, led by Grant and Griffin, dined at Rosebud Steakhouse while they watched Game 6 of the Eastern Conference finals on the big-screen television in front of them. The Heat, who had lost to the Dallas Mavericks in the NBA finals in six games during James’s first season in Miami, now were facing elimination again. They trailed the series 3–2 and were on the road at Boston, a place that haunted James throughout his career and ended his time in Cleveland. Now James was one more loss away from another embarrassing finish and another lost season without a championship.

  Grant, David Griffin, and the rest of the front office chewed on some of Chicago’s finest steaks while LeBron swallowed up the Celtics that night with forty-five points, fifteen rebounds, and five assists in one of the greatest performances of his storied career. Now, because of James’s decision to leave, the Cavs were at the draft lottery watching on television as the Heat staved off elimination with a 98–79 win. And, for more than one reason, that was exactly the result they all wanted. Miami also won Game 7 to eliminate the Celtics, then beat the Oklahoma City Thunder in five games in the NBA Finals. In his ninth season in the NBA, LeBron James finally had his first championship ring, clearing perhaps the highest hurdle for his return to Cleveland.

  LeBron still was locked into his contract for two more years, however, and the Cavs were still a mess. They needed more elite young talent with bright futures. When New Orleans won the draft lottery, Grant made a long-shot pitch to GM Dell Demps, dangling the number four pick while offering to take every bad contract off the Hornets’ hands in exchange for the number one pick and the draft rights to Anthony Davis, the consensus top player available in the draft. The contracts totaled more than $100 million. Demps wisely declined. He wanted Davis for New Orleans, which was under new ownership and looked at Davis as a future superstar around which they could build something. The Cavs stayed at number four.

  Throughout the rebuild, the Cavs made several assumptions. One of them was that if James returned to Cleveland, their draft picks held significant value as either the pick or the player. Either the player they drafted would bloom into a talent they could use in Cleveland, or if whoever they drafted didn’t, he could be dealt for someone who did fit with James. They were going to have to move some pieces around. Not all of them would fit with James, and he wasn’t going to return to play with a bunch of kids. Some of the young players with high ceilings would have to be traded for veterans. Unless the player blossomed into a superstar, such as Irving, Grant and the front office knew some of these pieces could be bundled and moved for more established, veteran pieces.

  With Irving and Thompson in place, the Cavs entered the 2012 draft looking for another playmaker to take some of the pressure off the reigning Rookie of the Year. Davis was the clear choice to go number one, but after that the l
ens was blurry. Michael Kidd-Gilchrist—another Rich Paul client and a high school teammate of Irving’s—went second to the Charlotte Bobcats and Bradley Beal went third to the Washington Wizards. The Cavs liked both players. They loved Kidd-Gilchrist’s makeup and competitiveness, but they were scared off by his unorthodox jump shot and inability to make open shots. They really liked Beal but refused to trade future picks to move up one spot.

  The obvious and safe bet at number four was Harrison Barnes, the freshman small forward out of North Carolina. Barnes was widely considered the top freshman entering college, and he shared Irving’s agent in Jeff Wechsler. And he happened to play the same position as James, but that’s not why the Cavs soured on him. They viewed Barnes as a spot-up shooter who didn’t do much else well. They thought he’d struggle to get to the basket in the NBA and they didn’t think he made players around him better. Barnes’s poor performance against Ohio University in the NCAA tournament stuck in their heads. He’d managed just twelve points and shot three of sixteen against the Bobcats. If he struggled to get good looks against weaker college players, they reasoned, how was he going to do it in the NBA?

  The guard they liked the most was senior Damian Lillard from little-known Weber State. When the Cavs were in Portland during a West Coast trip during the 2011–12 season, Grant scouted Lillard’s game against Portland State. Lillard made eight three-pointers and scored thirty-eight points in front of a plethora of NBA personnel. I met Grant for a drink after the Cavs-Blazers game the following night, and he was raving about Lillard. That’s also the night I told him that the rumors about LeBron perhaps coming back to Cleveland were only growing louder. Grant gave an uncomfortable chuckle and sipped on a glass of wine. “Did you see that letter?” he asked, referencing Gilbert’s now-famous scorched-earth response to James’s leaving for Miami. Grant didn’t want to spend much time talking about the possibility, but it was clear the Cavs had heard it and wondered themselves if they could actually pull it off.