There's an energy in an urban core that you just don't get anywhere else.
— Dan Gilbert
You have a lot of great teams in the NBA. I watched San Antonio against Dallas, and they're two great teams, and there are great teams in the east, as well. So it takes time to gel, as we've all seen.
If you were blessed with a fortunate position... why wouldn't you want to impact the world around you as much as possible?
There's nothing better than people talking to each other, sharing best practices, and opening up communications.
I just think that everything is symbolic, and who you are determines everything that you do, small moves and big moves.
I'd probably put myself in the top 1% in knowledge of blight in the city of Detroit.
When there were first rumors of us going after LeBron, some fans wondered how we could do that after all that happened. But after the 'Sports Illustrated' letter, every fan is thrilled to have him back. That was so heartfelt.
Some borrowers are pretty damn good at fraud.
Urban renewal always happens as a symphony of events, and part of the symphony is innovative, optimistic developers with the ability and willingness to transform historic properties.
Every loan that we did in the City of Detroit in the 10 years they studied - between 2005 and 2014 - were conventional FHA, VA loans with average interest rates of 6%.
I believe in our players, our coaching staff, and our entire franchise.
We get a lot of emails, a lot of suggestions on the kinds of ideas and things that people would like to do. There's a lot of good ones, but a lot of them are something that the franchise couldn't or wouldn't endorse, just as being not consistent with what the NBA would want or, probably, what we would even want, too.
Fans will express themselves. We will always have the best security possible, as we always do. And I hope that Cleveland and the fans, you would hope that everybody keeps it to a certain level, because anything you do that crosses the line isn't going to look bad for anybody but the franchise and Cleveland.
We never did these kinds of loans that really started this mess, the subprime loans. We just never got into that business. We were enticed a lot of times to do so by a lot of Wall Street-type players, but I, frankly, never understood some of this stuff.
I think it's natural when a team has such high expectations, under .500 halfway through the season, they're going to go after a brand new coach.
When we do an investment, we always ask, 'Can we affect the outcome? When buying a company, can we have an impact?' That's a different style of investing than a passive investor in the stock market. To me, that's how you're taking the risk out of it. You know what your capability is and how you can enhance value.
I think millennials are a generation that's a little bit behind, maybe four or five years behind the previous generation, as far as when they buy a house.
You can not only do great things for an urban core by moving your employee base there, you're also going to be a better business.
People have things that happen between them. I certainly don't keep grudges.
People are more optimistic about Detroit outside of Detroit.
One of our things is that money follows; it does not lead. So we want people that are fired up and passionate about their mission... and people that aren't so married to spreadsheets and thinking that kind of voodoo controls the future. Because it doesn't.
I'm still focused on the flagship businesses: Quicken Loans and RockBridge, the title company, and some of the board stuff in the gaming.
We are driven to win a title. We want to see that day when everyone celebrates because we finally brought a title home to Northeast Ohio. It's what we want, what LeBron wants, what all of us want.
The good news is that the ownership team and the rest of the hard-working, loyal, and driven staff over here at your hometown Cavaliers have not betrayed you nor never will betray you.
Except for a handful of banks that just keep a handful of their loans in portfolio, on their balance sheet, every other loan that's originated in the United States - whether from a bank, mortgage company, mortgage broker - is sold into the secondary market.
People my age, we would hear from our parents and grandparents who were raised in Detroit about how great this city was from 1900 to the '60s.
People would tell us, 'I love your company, but I want to go to Chicago or Boston or New York.'
Above all, the fans of the Cleveland Cavaliers, as well as the entire franchise, deserve and need our players and coaches to dig deep within themselves.
As a franchise, we don't have any different expectations than anyone else.
Now that Sacramento is building an arena downtown, they're the only one not in an urban core. The only one. It's really not good business. It's nothing against Auburn Hills, Oakland County or L. Brooks Patterson. An arena in the middle of a field is not an ideal thing.
I think I've interviewed probably 1,500 people in my 24-year business career.
There's nobody you can point to in the world that doesn't make a mistake. The best players, the best business people, the best coaches. So one thing is not going to make or break a person.
Keep your debt low, and ask, Can your operational expertise make an impact? Then you're taking away a lot of the risk.
I don't think we'd be the business that we are today if we were spread out in the suburban areas.
Regional gaming across the United States has had serious challenges, not just in Cleveland or Cincinnati, but also across the United States.
The team is in great shape, the coaching staff, the front office. Just things feel really good chemistry-wise across the board.
Anybody who dies with money in the bank is a failure.
Detroit's a good investment because, first of all, the entry fee for everything is lower. And, you've got the talent that is here that is ambitious and motivated, so you're going to get in on a much lower cost structure in every way, shape, or form from labor to buildings to whatever.
Blight is like a cancer. This is one of those all-or-nothing things.
Our goal is a title. With LeBron, we are in 'win now' mode.
Some people think they should go to Heaven but not have to die to get there. Sorry, but that's simply not how it works.
You can't fight the fact that Detroit is a de-industrializing market and it isn't facing dramatic, positive transformation.
Kids coming out of college want that urban core excitement more and more.
I was always trying to get people to fix things that are wrong. Now, it was, 'How do I make things that are going good go better?
Our entire franchise has done everything in its power to put all of our players and its coaching staff in the best possible position to execute when it counts. And to deliver to the highly supportive fans of Cleveland a proud, intense, impassioned, all-out drive to achieve a championship.
Danny Ferry did a very good job when he was here and put the franchise up to a certain level, as did Mike Brown, and his contract had ended after five years, and, ultimately, both sides decided they wanted to do other things. No hard feelings at all there.
People want entertainment, a whole night of it, a whole experience.
We want to make the Cleveland Cavaliers a perennial champion and contender. We want people to be part of the franchise for long periods of time if they fit our culture, no matter who they are, whether it's LeBron or anybody that contributes.
In my view, if you want to get ahead and build wealth, you have to get over your delusion that something only has value if you can measure it.
A lot of the problems in the mortgage world, people said, were because our competitors were evil. But a lot of it was a lack of technology - bad processes and systems.
