In our ongoing NBA Front Office series, Tom Penn (general manager), George Karl (coach), Amin Elhassan (scouting director) and Kevin Pelton (analytics director) are joined by NBA Front Office's senior consultant, David Thorpe. Today, the group weighs in on the Cleveland Cavaliers and how they deal with some early season problems that have cropped up.
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Tom Penn: OK, so today what we are going to discuss is the No. 1 thing you should never do as a front office: Stick your nose into the coaching side of things. What has happened with the Cavaliers having by some accounts a slow start is 100 percent a coach's issue -- a team issue -- to be sorted out by the team and coach together. Certainly there will be discussion among front-office members, but in my opinion management should not try to interject itself as it is happening. I'm wondering if anyone else has a different opinion on that point.
David Thorpe: I don't think it's wrong for management to say to the team: "You're our team, this is our coach, and we will figure it out together. But understand that we're going to do this together as a group." You're just supporting your coach, who is an elite coach globally, but no one knows who the hell he is locally. So, I don't know if David Blatt needs it or not, but it's probably not a bad thing to say something supportive as opposed to doing nothing. But again, I don't disagree that fixing things has got to be done in the locker room. We realize it needs to be fixed, but you can't ignore it.