The pursuit of Chauncey Billups as the Cleveland Cavaliers‘ replacement for former general manager David Griffin has come to to an end, according to a tweet from ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski:
Chauncey Billups has withdrawn from consideration for Cleveland's President of Basketball Operations job, league sources tell ESPN.
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) July 3, 2017
Earlier Monday morning, ESPN’s Brian Windhorst had hinted that news while appearing on a Cleveland radio sports talk show:
Windy on Billups: "It's pretty clear he's moving on…"
— Aaron Goldhammer (@HammerNation19) July 3, 2017
A number of factors offer clear evidence as to why Billups wouldn’t accept the five-year contract that Cavs owner Dan Gilbert had reportedly offered on June 22, with the decision has taken nearly two weeks and Billups’ decision to play in the new Big3 league on Sunday particularly standing out.
A USA Today report on Sunday had indicated that Billups was still reportedly considering the job, though his comments seemed to indicate the opposite:
“I’m still in the process of thinking it over,” Billups said. “That will probably be done at some point in the next few days, but nothing to report.”
“I love my job at ESPN It’s so much fun, man, to talk the game and try to share the game, try to teach the viewers. That’s been great. I’ve always said me running a team at some point was another one of my desires. So, if this thing with Cleveland goes down, great. If it doesn’t, great. At some point, I’m going to do that. We’ll see what happens after that.”
The Big3, which features 3-on-3 basketball between retired NBA players, debuted on June 25, with Billups not playing in that opening game.
“The whole Cleveland thing just kind of jumped off,” Billups said. “I didn’t really want to take away from the first game, the first-ever professional Big3 3-on-3 game, and (have) everybody want to talk just about Cleveland. I, of course, wanted to play. But I didn’t want to take away from the event.”
Until a new executive is hired, the job of acquiring players for the Cavs’ 2017-18 season continues to be the responsibility of assistant general manager Koby Altman — with Gilbert also being involved.
