We here at Cavs Nation pride ourselves on bringing you all of the Cavs news, not just the good stuff (such as how the Golden State Warriors blew a 3-1 lead in the NBA Finals, making your Cleveland Cavaliers the NBA Championships). Cleveland, as is tradition, still somehow after a championship makes reporting an interesting time.
According to Chris B. Haynes, formerly of Cleveland.com, Tyronn Lue and his staff have reached what is being referred to as a “point of hostility” regarding Cleveland’s coaching situation. As of now, only Tyronn Lue and Larry Drew hold contracts, the latter being promoted to associate head coach despite his contract being structured as a third of fourth option. The rest of Lue’s staff are currently free agents.
The issue of unemployment started as early as July. During the Las Vegas Summer League, Lue’s staff was working without contracts or salary due to their previous contracts expiring at the start of July. At the time the staff believed that this was simply a semantics problem and that their situation would be solved relatively shortly, however we are now going on early September, and Cleveland officially has two members of its coaching staff.
Lue has repeatedly said that he wishes to keep these individuals on as his coaching staff, lauding their abilities to help him succeed during the post-season, and the professionalism they showed both during games as well as during practices.
Haynes has characterized the attitude towards the front office staff as “unbelievable” and “frustration at its worst” saying that it is beyond reason that a championship team of this calibre is currently facing these sort of issues, and that Lue is just as frustrated with David Griffin and his staff. Griffin has not commented as of the time of writing this article, however he has said in the past that he intends to keep the championship core as intact as possible during the off-season, which one would assume also includes the coaching staff.
Lue recently received an five year 35 Million extension on his contract, however that was considered to be late as he spent the entirety of his coaching tenure as head coach on his previous assistant coach’s contract. The NBA Pre-Season starts on October 1st, with Cleveland’s first preseason game on October 5th. The Formal season opens on October 25th with a prime-time matchup between The Cleveland Cavaliers and the new look New York Knicks.