Former Cleveland Cavaliers general manager David Griffin lauded Kyrie Irving's courage for going to owner Dan Gilbert and asking to be traded instead of sabotaging the team from within.
Griffin, appearing on ESPN, responded to ex-Cavalier Ron Harper's criticism of Irving Sunday.
Harper, who won five NBA titles in 15 seasons with the Bulls and Lakers, said "youth and ignorance" were behind Irving's request. Those were the only motives Harper could find for Irving, 25, wanting to leave Cleveland, where he has reached three consecutive NBA Finals and won one championship. Irving has two seasons remaining on his contract along with a player option year, but wants to escape the shadow of LeBron James.
"I think Kyrie's going to end up getting traded. But I think what Ron was saying is really unfair to Kyrie," Griffin said. "I don't think this is youth and ignorance. This is a guy who handled the situation exactly like he was supposed to. He went to Dan Gilbert privately, told him he would be happier somewhere else.
"The absolute worst thing this guy could have done was pretend to be all in and sink the ship from within. Most guys don't have the courage to do what he did. That's not youth and ignorance _ that's a little bit more courage than people give him credit for."
Irving signed a five-year, $90 million extension with the Cavs in the summer of 2014, and then 10 days later James announced he was coming home.
"This is a guy who recruited LeBron, Hayward, and a host of other free agents when he decided to stay in Cleveland," Griffin said of Irving. "Then all of a sudden LeBron came back. So he was sold a totally different situation than he's actually in, that he worked very well in, that he won a championship in. I think this is him looking for a fit for himself to take the next step in his career.
"This is a guy who wants to know how good he can be. LeBron casts a very large shadow over an organization and most of it is really, really positive and you know you're expected to win a championship. But what that doesn't always allow is for a player like Kyrie to test his boundaries a little bit and see how good he can really be. 'Can I actually be the frontman of a team like that?'?"
The Cavs went 78-152 in his Irving's first three seasons and are 4-23 when James sat out over the last three. Griffin took the some of the blame for that, but also criticized the game plans of former coach David Blatt and coach Tyronn Lue.
"None of the players on that team had learned how to do it before LeBron got there. That didn't grow organically. They didn't learn how to win together," Griffin said.
"Everything was geared towards (James) to a degree, and not so much that (Irving) couldn't have carried the load. I don't think he had enough expectation of himself to do it. Everybody just assumed 'If we lose this one, it's OK.' That's really my fault. We had to do a better job of calibrating everybody towards 'When LeBron's out of the game, that's opportunity for you and we need to grow and evolve' and we didn't do that well enough.
"What we did was we flipped the switch. It's very difficult to be all about one thing, have him be out of a game in the LeBron situation and then all of a sudden know how to do it without him. You can do those things if when LeBron's sitting out you have a whole 'nother game plan.
"And what that is _ 'We're going to develop X, Y, Z tonight. This is an opportunity to get better at something specific' _ I don't think I drove that very well, and I don't think we did that in a good enough way."
