About a month ago, the Cleveland Cavaliers signed center Larry Sanders after losing newly acquired center Andrew Bogut for the season with a broken leg. During his time with Milwaukee, Sanders was known for his prolific shot blocking ability but had been away from the NBA for two years prior to signing with the Cavaliers.
Unfortunately, Sanders’ time with the Cavaliers was short lived as they opted to waive Sanders and sign Edy Tavares on Wednesday. After Sanders’ release from the Cavaliers, there was a wave of speculations as to why the two sides had parted way. Conversely, general manager David Griffin of the Cavaliers has come out and explained the real reason to Sanders’ release.
Following from Dave McMenamin of ESPN.
“He didn’t have an incident,” Griffin said. “He didn’t have any kind of a setback relative to any of the demons he had or any of those things. He’s an NBA player. He’s kind of flaky. So sometimes you’re late. You’re this. You’re that. None of those things were incidents.
“He was having a hard time from a conditioning standpoint,” Griffin said. “But it was really the fact that they didn’t want to play him more.
“You take a guy whose whole thing is shot-blocking, which is the timing function,” Griffin said. “When he’s right, he’s special good. To not have the timing of that, for not playing for two years, we didn’t have enough time here for him to get enough time to get comfortable.”
