Cavaliers acting head coach Larry Drew said on Thursday that discussions with the team about restructuring his contract are “moving forward in a positive direction,” writes Tom Withers of The Associated Press. According to Drew, he spoke to agent Andy Miller and feels good about the progress being made in negotiations.
Drew, who appeared poised to take over as the Cavaliers’ interim head coach after Tyronn Lue‘s dismissal, has resisted taking that title to date, pushing for a raise and perhaps an extension from the team. Drew is one of the NBA’s highest-paid assistants, but is still earning less than $1MM, well below the going rate for a head coach.
The fact that Drew is optimistic about the negotiations is an encouraging sign, since it was just three days ago that he said he was “very disappointed” by the lack of progress made in those talks.
As Chris Fedor of Cleveland.com observes, Thursday’s blowout loss to Denver helped illustrate why Drew wants a new deal and possibly a longer-term commitment. If the Cavs go into full-fledged tank mode, that type of loss figures to become more frequent, negatively impacting Drew’s win-loss record and potentially hurting his chances of landing a head coaching job in the future.
“Certainly when you talk about rebuilding, it’s not an easy thing to do,” Drew said recently, per Fedor. “It’s usually something that takes a little time. If it’s going to take some time, I’d like to be part of that. I made the organization pretty aware of that, that this is something that’s not going to happen overnight.”
Asked about the Drew situation on Thursday, Cavs owner Dan Gilbert praised the veteran coach but said he’d be staying out of contract negotiations, letting GM Koby Altman handle those discussions. Fedor has the details in a separate Cleveland.com story.
Why isn’t it part of his contract that they just release him with no pay? When you agree to be an assistant coach, doesn’t that pretty much mean you also agree to take over as interim head coach when said coach gets fired? Getting paid a million dollars to be a coach, no matter what capacity sounds great to me.
I don’t know what the language of Drew’s contract (or assistant coaches’ contracts in general) looks like. But as a general rule for any employee in any business, if your bosses ask you to take on more tasks and responsibilities than you had initially signed on for, it’s not an unreasonable stance to expect a pay increase too.
agreed. especially considering if drew was not going to take the job they would probably pay someone else more.
Then why not just pay someone else? Why be so hung up on a guy that doesn’t have that great of a coaching record that’s not satisfied coaching a team for a million dollars? Luckily, he won’t be in Cleveland long since Gilbert will fire another 2 coaches by the all star game in Cleveland in a few years. I don’t really like his attitude towards the whole thing. But that’s just my opinion. And I thought the PLAYERS were the pre-madonna’s in this sport.
Well as the article states, he’s earning less than a million. Like other commenters said, the Cavs would pay another guy way more for the same job. The organization obviously likes him or else they would have moved on by now. I don’t blame him for wanting a pay raise.
Have you ever had a job before? Not sure where you have worked, but in most circumstances the manager typically invokes the most responsibility. Thus creating a separation in scope of activities, these different activities are usually more essential to the day to day operation of any business. God bless you, you probably make minimum wage and support the 1%.