Aside from Luxury tax spending and investing in the team and city, I appreciate Dan primarily for a few specific things.
1. I appreciate the letter post Decision. It rallied the fan base behind Gilbert and the Cavs, it perfectly expressed the way we felt as fans. I know ESPN killed him for it, but the fact he was willing to go bat for us like that is something I'll always appreciate.
2. Doing the mature thing and agreeing to S&T LeBron for all those picks. Would have been easy to say fuck you LeBron, you're not gonna use me to get paid an extra dime! But we got honestly a really great deal for a guy who announced publicly where he was signing. It really fucked Miami over in the long run too, they had trouble adding to that team partially because they sent us a bunch of future picks just to pay Bron a little bit more money. Plus, maybe Bron never comes back if Gilbert decided to be extra petty and screw Bron out of money.
3. Manning up and making things right with LeBron to bring him back. It was a no brainer but doing it properly wasn't easy.
4. Finally, and most importantly....While the Cavs were literally the worst team in the league, fresh off multiple years of big salary/paying the tax...Dan Gilbert basically bought us an unprotected lottery pick, because Baron Davis contract was , at the time , the worst contract in the league . I remember a lot of people even arguing with me on here that Dan overpaid monetarily for the likely #8 pick on the draft because the true cost was like 20 or 30 million dollars or something. But obviously that pick turned into Kyrie, which was awesome and made the Cavs worth watching even in the bad years , and without Kyrie I really don't know if LeBron comes back.....Even if he does...Without Kyrie we probably don't win the title! That's one of the greatest trades of all time still. Made all of this possible.
Thanks Dan.
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