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Cavs to give championship rings to janitors, ushers, many other staffers

dan devine
Senior writer
A lot of hands helped lift the Cavs to their first NBA championship. Now, they'll all be wearing rings. (Getty Images)
A lot of hands helped lift the Cavs to their first NBA championship. Now, they’ll all be wearing rings. (Getty Images)

When we think about professional sports teams, we tend to focus primarily on the players in uniform and the head coach on the sideline. Maybe, if we’re thinking hard and taking a global view, we’ll consider the general manager who runs the front office and the owner who signs the checks, but for the most part, we train on the field of play. That’s understandable — that’s where the game happens — but the successful operation and maintenance of an organization also requires an awful lot of work from many, many people to whom we almost never pay attention.

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To cap their celebration of coming back from a 3-1 deficit to upset the Golden State Warriors and win the 2016 NBA championship, the Cleveland Cavaliers have decided to recognize those often-overlooked staffers in a pretty big way, according to Joe Vardon of Cleveland.com:

From LeBron James down to the guy who sold you a hot dog on a Wednesday night at The Q, the entire Cavaliers’ family is getting a 2016 NBA championship ring.

Majority owner Dan Gilbert and his partners decided to present rings to more than 1,000 full and part-time employees throughout the Cavaliers and Quicken Loans Arena organization, employees who’ve been fitted for rings told cleveland.com.

A spokesman for the Cavs confirmed the information but declined to comment. […]

A conservative cost for distributing rings to employees is more than $1 million.

For my money, the distribution of championship rings is at least as good a token of staff appreciation as Casual Friday, Bagel Wednesday or Cast Off The Yoke Of Bondage And Recover Liberty Happy Hour Thursday. Maybe even two times as good!

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As you probably guessed after looking at the numbers at work here — more than 1,000 employees, more than $1,000,000 — the rings given to staffers won’t be quite as the ginormous, diamond-encrusted baubles previewed by Richard Jefferson this summer. Even so, the complimentary jewelry — which Gilbert also presented to employees of his AHL club, the Lake Erie Monsters, after they won the Calder Cup this summer — is a pretty great gesture toward the ticket takers, janitors, seat ushers, security guards, Cleveland police officers, food vendors and cashiers who worked at Quicken Loans Arena during the 2015-16 season.

The total cost might just be a drop in the bucket for Gilbert, whose net worth is reportedly estimated at $4.7 billion, and it might not make everybody the biggest fan of the Cavs owner. In the micro view, though, it’s a move that matters to the people who are there every game day, but whom we rarely notice:

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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at devine@yahoo-inc.com or follow him on Twitter!

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