Report: David Griffin’s contract expiration ruined Cavs-Pacers Irving-George deal

The Cleveland Cavaliers could have gotten a much better return in a Kyrie Irving trade in the summer of 2017, but a potential trade was botched reportedly because of then-Cavs general manager David Griffin’s contract expiration.

By now, you fans of the Cleveland Cavaliers probably know that the Boston Celtics ripped away Kyrie Irving for really, not a whole lot.

Ante Zizic and Collin Sexton, especially (which came as the first-round selection via the Brooklyn Nets in the deal for Irving), are nice young pieces Cleveland can continue to develop now, but losing Irving, then with two years remaining on his contract at the time, still hurts even close to two years later.

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According to a report by The Athletic‘s Joe Vardon (subscription required and h/t NBC Sports’ Dan Feldman) Cleveland then-general manager David Griffin had a good part of a deal nearly in place in June of 2017 that would ultimately send Irving to the Indiana Pacers for Paul George.

Irving had been disgruntled in Cleveland for a while, as Feldman detailed back in July of 2017, and George reportedly told Indiana that he was planning on leaving the next summer in free agency (according to a report from Adrian Wojnarowski, now of ESPN and then of Yahoo! Sports), and as the aforementioned Feldman noted, was leaning towards going to the Los Angeles Lakers.

That being said, it seemed as though Indiana did not care where George wanted to go the next summer, and that’s fair for them to have had that approach, and Cleveland trading Irving to them would be a nice consolation.

Feldman would touch on how Vardon detailed that due to Griffin believing Irving wanted out of Cleveland, Griffin had a good portion of a deal in place to get George and other pieces from another NBA squad (in exchange for other players on Cleveland), but the trade never went down because Griffin wanted to talk to Irving and his agent, Jeff Wechsler, beforehand, but Irving and company would not meet with the former Cleveland Cavaliers general manager before he had a new contract.

Cavs owner Dan Gilbert did not give Griffin a new contract, and the deal was reportedly shot from there, and Cleveland did not get George and/or the other pieces from another squad.

LeBron James had a massive workload during last year’s postseason, and maybe if the Cleveland Cavaliers had gotten George in that potential 2017 trade for Irving, the Cavs would have gotten James to sign back long-term last summer and still be a contender in the Eastern Conference alongside George, who very well could have ended up re-signing in Cleveland like James.

Meanwhile, George is now a key cog on the Oklahoma City Thunder, who he re-signed last summer long-term with after being traded to OKC the previous summer, and last year, averaged 28.0 points on 52.9% effective field goal shooting, to go with 8.2 rebounds, 4.1 assists and 2.2 steals per game (per Basketball Reference).

It was a career year for George, really, across the board.

Now, as Feldman highlighted, Griffin (who was recently named the New Orleans Pelicans Executive Vice President of Basketball Operations, h/t NBA.com’s Jim Eichenhofer), will again have to deal with a disgruntled star’s preference for leaving his current team, with this time being Anthony Davis, but a contract expiration won’t get in the away on his end this go-round, so maybe things can work out much better for Griffin.

Hopefully this sort of thing with Gilbert does not happen again in the future for Cleveland general manager Koby Altman, who should not have to deal with Gilbert meddling in the Cavaliers’ current head coaching search, but one never truly knows with the Cleveland owner.