Things aren’t going well for the Cavaliers right now. The team is 6-12 in the last 18 games, dropping into a tie for third in the East with the Wizards. With the trade deadline looming less than 48 hours away, there doesn’t appear to be an easy way to fix things even if they make some moves.
As things get worse in Cleveland, more and more details of the ugly relationship between LeBron James, Dan Gilbert and the rest of the Cavs’ front office have emerged. There have been numerous reports about James and Gilbert growing more and more distant from each other in what has never been a particularly happy relationship between owner and star.
Frustrations on both sides appear to be boiling over in the form of organizational dysfunction, with James frustrated with the Cavs’ uneven roster while Gilbert apparently is tiring of bending the knee to LeBron’s wishes. That has led to a dramatic shift over the past nine months in Cleveland, with James’ desires for how the team should be constructed falling on deaf ears and, at times, the Cavs doing the opposite of what James wants.
The latest scathing report out of Cleveland comes courtesy of Jason Lloyd and The Athletic, as Lloyd peels back the curtain on what has become one of the most dysfunctional relationships in sports. Lloyd’s excellent piece details a myriad of ways their relationship has deteriorated, including more, to this point unheard of, details from the now infamous team meeting.
While we had known about the Isaiah Thomas-Kevin Love spat and how nearly every player saw a finger pointed at them during the meeting, we hadn’t heard about LeBron allegedly snapping on some of the Cavs executives in the room, which Lloyd detailed (via SLAM).
James doesn’t trust this front office, and there is no communication now between management and star player. It perhaps played a role in James yelling and cursing at multiple front office executives during the now-famous team meeting a couple of weeks ago that began with players questioning Kevin Love’s absence from a recent practice. Multiple sources confirmed James cursed toward at least two team executives during the heated meeting.
Lloyd goes on to note that James, when asked about that, said he couldn’t remember everything said in the meeting. It’s been fascinating watching the Cavaliers seemingly implode in real time, and that will apparently continue through whenever their season ends as James won’t be waiving his no-trade clause in an effort to ride things out.
If LeBron is able to will this team to the Finals, no matter what the Cavs do at the trade deadline, it might be his most impressive feat yet, but at this point, that seems far less likely than all of this leading to an unceremonious end to the second LeBron era in Cleveland.
