Cleveland Cavaliers general manager David Griffin addressed a number of issues for his team in a wide-ranging interview over the weekend at Summer League in Las Vegas.
Griffin is hopeful that the organization can eventually come to terms with restricted free agent Tristan Thompson; the Cavs continue to negotiate with both Matthew Dellavedova and J.R. Smith on new deals; and the GM says Kevin Love’s role will be expanded next season.
With even greater expectations in 2015-16, Griffin says Love, LeBron James and head coach David Blatt have had frank discussions about running the team’s offense more through the skilled power forward.
Per the Akron Beacon Journal:
Griffin all but confirmed an earlier report the Cavs were offering Thompson around $80 million when he said the Cavs will have three max players on the roster and “one near max player.” Thompson would qualify as the near max player, but the two sides have failed to reach an agreement two weeks into free agency. Griffin said he hopes the two sides can strike a deal. […] “I don’t know about relatively soon, but I hope so,” Griffin said. “He’s restricted, we really like him. I think we’ll wind up getting something done.”
On Love’s quick extension agreement: “All of the media stuff that was out there about him and L.A. and all these other things was just so asinine. There was no truth to any of that. Nothing that was being written about him having eyes for someplace else was ever in conjunction with what he was saying to us. Everything he did was exactly what he was saying all along.”
On using Love differently to take better advantage of his vast skillset: “I think he and Coach have had a lot of conversations about that. He and Bron have had conversations about that. Kevin enables us to have somebody else carry the mail when LeBron sits down once in a while. Kyrie (Irving) was in a situation where he was clearly the one who was taking over when LeBron was out and I think we probably didn’t utilize Kevin enough to make Kyrie’s job easier. I think we have the ability to put him at the elbow and run offense through him a lot more than we did – some of the things he did really well in Minnesota.”
