Cavaliers acting general manager David Griffin promises, "We will find a way, and this team will succeed.''
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- After acknowledging that the Cavaliers are facing a great deal of adversity right now, new acting general manager David Griffin said he's up for the challenge.
"I'm very much looking forward to tackling this opportunity,'' said Griffin, who was promoted from vice president of basketball operations when owner Dan Gilbert fired Chris Grant on Thursday. "We will find a way, and this team will succeed.''
Griffin, 44, spent 17 years with the Phoenix Suns organization before joining the Cavs in 2010, and saw the Suns make the conference finals three times. The team he takes over here is much different.
"No one in this organization is comfortable with the place we find ourselves in, nor satisfied,'' Griffin said. "Our focus moving forward is a heightened sense of urgency, obviously. But our focus is to spend every moment we can on the work of what we do, relative to the practice court to the game floor to the scouting trail to all of the people who work on our training staff.
"We have an amazing group of people here and my charge now is to get us all moving in the right direction. We've been given an incredible ownership group. Everybody should be incredibly grateful to get to work with this group of people because they will invest tirelessly both in effort and in funding in this process. We've got an absolutely unbelievable fan base. The passion is tremendous. I can't tell you what is has been like just to get to interact for the first time and to see it full blown. It's exciting, and they deserve a product that's better than what we've delivered on, quite frankly.''
In a remarkably upbeat press conference for a man whose team went into Sunday's game against Memphis with a 17-33 record, Griffin thanked Gilbert and Grant, and said he was not worried about whether he has this job on a temporary or permanent basis.
"If I'm going to be successful in this position, it's because we as a group have results,'' he said. "And if we have those results, then you tend to get to stay. If you don't, you go away. That's the nature of this beast.
"I think this move being made is an effort to find the right fit. It's absolutely not an indictment of an individual because none of this is about an individual, not individual lack of execution, not individual failures as a player. None of it. It's a total product and we've lost our way somewhere. We've lost it in terms of our faith in one another, not our talent, not our coaching. That's not failing. We've lost our ability to believe that the next guy has my back. We've lost it relative to the front office. We've lost a little bit of our mojo everywhere. We came into the year with very high expectations and I think nationally people had them, too, because we have a really compelling group of talent. So as we move forward what we're going to look for is to make those pieces fit together better. That's all. No more, no less than that.''
Griffin echoed Gilbert's comments from Thursday, saying he thought the team had enough to turn things around and still make the playoffs this year -- as was the stated goal coming into the season.
"I think we have an awful lot of assets,'' Griffin said. "I think we have an opportunity to do a lot of different things. I think the group as it’s constructed can be radically more successful than it’s already been.
"You have to look at the opportunities we’re given up until now and the trade deadline and judge all of them for whether they advance us significantly forward. Our charge is to win and win at a high level and we’re going to -- as Dan likes to say -- turn over every stone to achieve that. But I’m not looking at this as ‘Get to that point.’ I’m looking at this as ‘We’re going to make this team as good as it can possibly be for as long as it can possibly be that and I don’t want to limit the scope of what that could be.'''
Asked if he felt compelled to do something at or before the Feb. 20 trading deadline, Griffin said, "I don’t feel we have to do anything. I want to do that which puts us in the best position to be successful. We’ll analyze every opportunity and we’ll look for every opportunity that does that for us.''
He shot down the notion that the Cavs would be holding a fire sale at the deadline.
"I don’t see how you get better and win more games selling,'' Griffin said. "We’re going to buy to the extent that it makes us better for the long haul. I don’t think we’re going to do anything that’s an act of desperation. I think we’re going to be willing to buy the right asset at the right price. We are dedicated 100 percent from top to bottom to getting better and that’s what we’re going to do.
"Now it's time to move on. It's time to capitalize on all of the benefits we have and, more than anything else, I think it's time to really bring this to a place where everybody wants to be, bring it to an environment and have the sort of symbiotic relationship with each other, where we believe in each other enough and trust each other enough to tell each other what they need to here and to do it on the court. I think we have a group of kids that want to do that. I know we have a coaching staff that comes to work each day with the spirit of finding a way.
Zeller bobble head: It was Tyler Zeller bobble head giveaway on Sunday, and the dolls -- unlike many previous versions of different players -- actually bore quite a likeness to the young center.
Zeller liked one trait in particular.
"They gave me a sweet tan,'' he said.
