Jarrett Allen helped spark the Cavs in their Game 7 rout of the Pistons, just like owner Dan Gilbert expected.
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DETROIT — Yes, Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert really rented 25 buses, filled them with nearly 1,400 people and sent them on their way to see his team win Game 7.
But before we tell you more about that story …
It was Saturday night at the Cavs’ hotel, and the team was having dinner. A potential last meal, if things didn’t go well the next day.
Away from the rest of the players, coaches, families traveling and team staff — but in the same room — was a table at which coach Kenny Atkinson sat with president of basketball operations Koby Altman and Jon Nichols, one of Altman’s deputies in the front office, and Gilbert, along with his son Grant.
It was an easy trip for Gilbert, who lives in a tony Detroit suburb, to stop by the hotel on the eve of a Game 7. The Cavs had been blown out at home in Game 6, after a string of failures to get out of the second round. And the team payroll of $229 million, before tax penalties, is the most expensive in NBA history.
You might imagine the mood was tense. The stakes for the next evening at Little Caesars Arena were sure to be high.
Yet Atkinson’s description of the sit-down with the boss, was, well, nothing like that.
“It was the coolest thing,†Atkinson said. “It was like a surprise, he just kind of surprised us. And, you know, I am not having dinner with Dan every night. It was kind of special. It was cool that he did that, that he made the effort to come see us. And then, he just had some sage advice. This guy probably knows the team better than me; he knows these guys better than me.â€
Among the advice Gilbert offered Atkinson, the coach said, was that Jarrett Allen would be a key to Game 7.
“He said, ‘You know who the key to this whole thing is,’†Atkinson said. “I’m thinking (James) Harden, (Donovan) Mitchell. He said, ‘The key to this whole thing, the spark for this is Jarrett Allen.’ I said, ‘Really?’ And that sparked me to run the first play for him. … I went to my room like, man, I’ve got to run the first play for him.
“Sometimes you have to be reminded, and that was great by Dan. He hit that one on the head. He was prophetic.â€
As it turned out, Allen was dominant in the Cavs’ 125-94 blowout of the Detroit Pistons, with 23 points and seven rebounds while owning the Pistons’ frontcourt. There is more to THAT story, featuring Gilbert and Allen, too, but we’re trying to deliver these in proper sequence, so have some patience.
While Gilbert was sitting with his basketball brains at dinner Saturday and giving them, as Atkinson said, sage advice, Gilbert’s business-side lieutenants saw there were 4,000 tickets for Game 7 available on the open market. They knew those tickets were being gobbled up by Cavs fans.
The Pistons gave the Cavs “some†extra tickets, to quote a league source, but it was clear Northeast Ohioans were grabbing the tickets for Game 7 and planning to get up north (it’s about 2 1/2 hours from Cleveland to Detroit).
So Gilbert’s aides lined up those 25 buses (rental cost, unknown) and made sure team employees who wanted to go to the game, and some of these fans who were jumping on the tickets, were on them. Gilbert had paid for smaller bus fleets to take fans to games earlier in the series, but not like this.
OK, back to Gilbert and Allen for a second. On game day, Gilbert sent Allen a text message saying how important he thought Allen could be to the game and to the series. Allen would say, “It’s motivating, you know, especially with somebody like that, with that stature, has that confidence in me, and it gives me that extra push.â€
Gilbert’s plans worked to perfection. As previously mentioned, Allen controlled the game. He (and, to be fair, Evan Mobley) set the tone on the interior, and Mitchell was masterful with his 26 points, eight assists, and seven boards. Sam Merrill made five 3s off the bench. The Cavs blew the doors off. And so did their fans.
With the rout fully underway late in the third quarter and Detroit fans not having left quite yet, the Cleveland faithful were chanting “Let’s go, Cavs†loud enough that it could be heard throughout Little Caesars Arena.
“I’ve never seen that in the NBA,†Atkinson said. “Where the visiting team brings that many people, and like, they’re present. We heard them.â€
Gilbert, 64, is worth $22.4 billion, according to Forbes, often wearing his heart on his sleeve when it comes to the Cavs. Sometimes it gets him into a little trouble, like that Comic Sans letter in 2010 when LeBron James left the first time. But he helped recruit LeBron back to Cleveland in 2014, and together they won the city’s only major pro sports championship since 1964. He has never, according to Altman, ordered him to cut salary costs since the team started to get good again a few years ago.
Life has been hard for Gilbert since. He suffered a major stroke that took years from which to recover and still requires him to use a wheelchair. His son Nick died in 2023 of complications related to neurofibromatosis type 1. And he and his former wife, Jennifer, released a joint statement last year announcing their divorce.
The players, and Atkinson, feel like Gilbert has their back. One by one, as they ran off the court after Game 7, with those bused-in Cavs fans going wild in the corner behind Cleveland’s bench, they stopped to greet Gilbert. Some gave him hugs. Others, handshakes or hand slaps.
Over the last five weeks, Mitchell and teammates have raved about the way the Cavs take care of the players and their families, through food options or travel arrangements or other ways to show they care. Merrill echoed those sentiments Sunday night.
“All the little stuff on the margins, he believes in,†Atkinson said. “If he thought (busing in the fans) was going to give us a tiny bit of a boost, which he obviously did, he is going to make the effort.â€
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Joe Vardon is a senior NBA writer for The Athletic, based in Cleveland. Follow Joe on X @joevardon.
