Joe Vardon, cleveland.com
Q and A with Cavs GM Koby Altman
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Koby Altman signed former NBA MVP Derrick Rose on the day Altman was named general manager of the Cavs.
That was July 24.
On Sept. 17, Altman asked Rachel Garson of Orange, Ohio, to marry him. She said yes.
It was a day after Altman’s 35th birthday.
So, yeah, it’s been a whirlwind few months for the new Cavs GM. He’s signed 12-time All-Star Dwyane Wade and watched mentor and predecessor David Griffin walk out the door.
He filled in for Griffin for about a month until owner Dan Gilbert made the promotion official. Altman had already spent five years in the Cavs’ front office, most recently serving as an assistant GM to Griffin.
Altman is a graduate of Middlebury College in Vermont, and has a master’s degree from the University of Massachusetts.
Oh, and his first job out of Middlebury was selling real estate in New York City.
Below is an edited transcript of Altman’s interview with cleveland.com, ahead of his first season general manager for the Cavaliers.
JOE VARDON (cleveland.com): So, you once worked in real estate?
KOBY ALTMAN: I graduated from Middlebury College, a prestigious liberal arts school in New England where you think when you graduate that you have to go make money. All my friends went into finance or banking or whatever the case may be. I had no business background at all, so I said let me try to do something to put some business onto my resume so I started out in commercial real estate. We sold apartment buildings and I did pretty well at the start, so I was like, 'let me stay into that.' It probably was about three years before I really felt like I missed basketball. But that real estate background really prepared me for this job and any walk of life in terms of negotiation, dealing with people, very important people, very wealthy people that are motivated.
(Photo by John Kuntz, cleveland.com)
JV: Can you tell me your biggest sale?
KA: My first ever transaction was a 16-unit building that was in the neighborhood I grew up in (Brooklyn, N.Y.) My boss, Joel Radmin, actually bought the building. I was working for a brokerage, but because you find deals all the time, sometimes your boss buys them if they're a good deal. So my boss actually bought my first deal. It was a $2 million dollar building and that building is probably worth $8 million or $9 million now. So it was pretty good. I also sold a pretty big package uptown that was over 100 units in Harlem, and that was a big deal back then. A huge, huge commission.
(Photo by Lisa DeJong, The Plain Dealer)
JV: You said the experience selling real estate has helped in your current job. How?
KA: I think you're dealing with principals on both sides. Even though you're the general manager, you have to make a deal that both sides want and both sides feel good about. In real estate you're the same way, there's a seller and a buyer and each one has their own motivations and each deal has a different cast of characters. So in each deal, even in sports, it's the same way. There's a deal to be made and there's principals on both sides and the characters are different and you want them all to feel good about the transaction. Obviously you're dealing with human beings here and not buildings or assets. So you have to add that to the mix, the emotion of that.
JV: In politics, we have a goofy expression that goes something like 'this was when President X became president." Do you have a moment like that for you? The day you 'became' general manager?
KA: It's funny, the day that we signed Derrick Rose is the day I sort of got offered the job. I'd say not a bad first day on the job, sign a former MVP.
JV: Much has been made about the 'chaos' surrounding the Cavs over the summer. Was there a point where you felt it, too?
KA: I mean, there was certainly a shock when you come to the office and David Griffin's not there. The leader of the franchise and an incredible mentor to me. But, we've dealt with an incredible scrutiny nationally, locally, the outside narrative of chaos. We don't listen to that. We've gone through that. Actually our most controversial year was when we won the championship. We made a coaching change midseason. And so we deal with that stuff, we just put our head down and go. We sort of ignore the noise. And throughout the offseason we were making positive additions. Again, the outside narrative wasn't that, but every addition we made: from Jose Calderon, re-signing Kyle Korver, bringing Jeff Green in, Derrick Rose. These are really positive incremental steps to getting better, and that's, we thought the team we were going to bring back was championship level. We're going to add to get incrementally better. Obviously the Kyrie happened and sort of gave us a chance to reshuffle the deck and gave us a unique opportunity to (reshuffle the deck), but as this was going on, no, we weren't wavering. We weren't like 'oh my God, what are we going to do?' We knew we had a great team still. We were just incrementally trying to get better.
(Photo by Lisa DeJong, The Plain Dealer)
JV: What's it like to work with Dan Gilbert?
KA: It's been great. Another great part about me being here for five years is we had a relationship before. Now the relationship is a little more intense in that we speak all the time. I give him updates and, you know, my decisions are, we work together, obviously, but a lot of times my decisions are final. So that's different for the relationship. He's been great. This offseason he's been super involved in a really positive way. He has resources and the wherewithal to keep us on a certain level to compete for championships, so I'm very fortunate to have him as an owner.
(Photo by The Associated Press)
JV: How do you communicate with Dan?
KA: Text, email, phone. He obviously has a lot going on. In downtown Detroit, he's going to transform the skyline and do even more unbelievable stuff there so. He has a capacity level where you have to make sure that you're grabbing his attention when you need it, but at the same time he has a lot of responsibilities there.
JV: What is the most difficult part of being Cavs' GM?
KA: The challenge of how overwhelming it can be at times to run an organization in terms of the people you have to reach and making sure everyone is on the same page. When I was an assistant general manager, you maybe had two or three people that reported to you. You had some responsibility. Now you have responsibility over everything. So, just trying to be good in that space, be a leader in that space. Make sure they're visible. Make sure they see you visible. You want to be available to everybody. And so it's just a much, much bigger job that way.
(Photo by Joshua Gunter, cleveland.com)
JV: I hope this is a different question, but, what most surprised you about this job?
KA: It's something where I don't think you're ever ready for it until you've gotten into it. This thing doesn't come with a manual, a how to do. Each one is unique, and each one is incredibly hard. So all 30 jobs are incredibly hard and each one has different principals and different casts of characters. For me, I'm not saying it's easy, but it helped that I've been here for five years. I knew the lay of the land, I knew the personalities. And obviously I'm in a new role and have to ask more from people, but that helped. But no you're never ready until you get thrown into it.
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