Cavs coach David Blatt is waiting to comment on Cleveland’s acquisition of Kevin Love until the star forward has passed his physical, tweets David Pick of Eurobasket.com. The deal is official, but Blatt is apparently wary of counting on the most recent of his too-good-to-be-true roster additions until it’s cemented. Since being hired for the head coaching job on a 33-49 team, Blatt’s squad has ballooned with incoming talent including Love, LeBron James, Shawn Marion, and Mike Miller. Here’s more from the Eastern Conference:
- While the Cavs have already become a title contender, Jason Lloyd of the Akron Beacon Journal thinks the team is well-positioned to accumulate even more talent in the coming years. Lloyd notes that Cleveland has retained most of its first-round draft picks, and also holds a trade asset in Brendan Haywood‘s contract.
- Tim Leiweke and Masai Ujiri insisted to Ryan Wolstat of the Toronto Sun that the Raptors won’t take a step back when Leiweke steps down as CEO on or before June 30 of next year. “[The next CEO] hopefully will not only be as supportive, but hopefully, better, smarter than I was in getting Masai the support he needs,” said Leiweke. “They should know the future of the Raptors is ultimately about Masai and they should feel extremely comfortable. My job was to find a good leader and I did. I will leave behind that great leader and he’s the guy who will take them to the next heights.”
- Ujiri acknowledged to Wolstat that Leiweke’s departure will affect him, despite his confidence in Toronto’s direction. “It’s unfortunate and it affects me because of my relationship with Tim. It affects me because of chemistry, of how we worked here,” Ujiri said. “It was phenomenal. It was great. We had ways of getting through everything, whether it was good or bad. Tim always figured out how to make it better for us.”