This was predictable. Sort of.
After LeBron James, the prodigal son, announced he was heading home in that heartfelt Sports Illustrated essay in July 2014, it became clear David Blatt’s run as head coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers wasn’t going to last very long. His ouster yesterday wasn’t totally shocking, but rude and reckless nonetheless.
The timing of the move was bizarre to say the least. It did not have to be made at this time. It doesn’t make the Cavs a more serious contender. If James’ being 31 and continuously signing short-term deals haven’t created a sense of urgency amongst his teammates, if it didn’t resonate with the players following their defeat at the hands of the Golden State Warriors in the NBA Finals last June that winning a championship is the goal, why should the dismissal of Blatt do the trick?
The Cavs are panicking, plain and simple. Such is life when James doesn’t have to commit to anything beyond the current season.
Blatt was in a tough position from the beginning. After achieving great success as a head coach in Europe, he signed up to get his feet wet as an NBA play-caller with a young team that seemingly was on the rise. Soon after, LeBron made his triumphant return to Cleveland, and just like that, the Cavs morphed into a team in desperate pursuit of a title. Not exactly the kind of team you’d assign to a rookie coach if the league’s best player gives you advance notice that he’s joining (or in LeBron’s case rejoining) your team.
But Blatt’s first season in Cleveland, all things considered, was very successful. At 30-11, the Cavs are doing just fine so far this season. That is why Blatt deserved better than to be fired halfway through the season, fresh off a convincing win over the fourth-best team in the Western Conference, the Los Angeles Clippers. He earned the right to at least finish out this season.
Blatt had a rough go of it at times during his first season in Cleveland. There was the disappointing 20-20 start, and the blatant defiance by James, sometimes at critical moments of big games. Coaching a team with big-money players and heavy expectations just isn’t as easy as some feel it should be, especially when it’s your first year on the job. Growing pains are to be expected. Issues will inevitably pop up.
But despite losing Kevin Love to a brutal shoulder injury early in the playoffs against Boston, Blatt still managed to lead the Cavs to the NBA Finals and within two wins of a title despite Kyrie Irving going down with a knee injury in Game 1 of that series.
None of that mattered yesterday. The Cavs’ current standing atop the Eastern Conference didn’t count for much either. And it’s a shame.
“I know what something that’s not right looks like, and I believe this was the right decision to make. And it’s very possible that it’s the wrong decision to make. You may hear that from our players [on Saturday], and I’m open-minded to that,” Cavs general manager David Griffin explained yesterday. “They don’t have to like it. They have to respect that this is what we’re trying to do.”
Griffin talked about how the Cavs haven’t been handling expectations well, about how there is a “lack of fit” with the personnel and a “lack of spirit and connectedness” amongst the team overall. And everyone thought the Cavs were on the right track.
Griffin also gave everyone a history lesson yesterday. “There are 50 teams since [the] 2000-01 [NBA season] that on this date had a winning percentage of .700 or better. [Only] eight of them won championships,” he said. “So 42 teams had a similar opportunity to this and did not cash in on it. One of those teams was a Phoenix [Suns] team I was with."
But championship teams usually don’t make a head coaching change midway through the season. No NBA team since the 2005-06 Miami Heat has changed head coaches during the regular season and gone on to win it all. Remember, the Heat got rid of Stan Van Gundy to make way for the legendary Pat Riley, who had previously won four NBA titles as a coach. That Heat team became the first NBA team in 24 years to win a title after an in-season coaching change. The Los Angeles Lakers is the only other franchise to accomplish this rare feat; they did it twice, in the 1979-80 season and again in the 1981-82 season (Riley, coincidentally, took over coaching duties that year, too).
The Cavs are replacing Blatt with another rookie head coach, Tyronn Lue, who won two rings as a player with the Lakers but has no coaching credibility other than the genuine respect of the current Cavs roster, including James. That’s good enough for Griffin.
“I know, and you have all seen, that we have a locker room of guys that really overcome adversity well. I think we’ve shown that over and over again, when we made the trades last year, when you saw us play with injuries last year in the Finals and throughout the playoffs,” Griffin said. “The group was galvanized and they believed in each other.”
And Blatt had nothing to do with any of that? Shouldn't the players also be held accountable for the lack of connectedness? Not according to Griffin. To hear him tell it, the results looked good on paper, but Blatt wasn’t doing a very good job of motivating his players and ingraining a championship culture. Griffin wants everyone to believe Lue, despite having no head coaching success or experience, is more than capable of picking up the slack in those areas. That is a tough sell to the general public.
And as far as the team’s success this season? “We were 30-11 with a schedule that was reasonably easy,” Griffin said.
He might as well had called Blatt a mere clipboard holder. It is understandable that Griffin has to build up Lue, but he didn’t have to discredit Blatt's accomplishments. Whether Griffin wants to admit it or not, Blatt had a hand in the winning, too. Never mind that Blatt coached the Cavs to a 30-11 mark despite Irving not making his season debut until five days before Christmas. Never mind the call for patience in James’ Sports Illustrated essay, “I’m Coming Home” (“I’m not promising a championship. I know how hard that is to deliver. We’re not ready right now. No way. Of course, I want to win next year, but I’m realistic. It will be a long process, much longer than it was in 2010 [with the Heat],” he says in the essay).
The Erik Spoelstra-led Heat crashed and burned in the 2011 NBA Finals before making three more Finals appearances and winning two titles, did they not? Just saying.
Ask most NBA experts, and they’ll tell you the Cavs, the Warriors, the San Antonio Spurs, and maybe the Oklahoma City Thunder are the only teams that have a realistic chance to win a title this season. The Chicago Bulls and the Toronto Raptors, who are 1-1 against the Cavs this season, are probably the biggest roadblocks in the East on Cleveland’s path back to the Finals, but few people believe those teams will pose insurmountable obstacles.
Let’s say all of that is true. Having already lost twice to the Warriors, who completed the season-series sweep with a 132-98 annihilation of Cavs on MLK Day, the Cavs have one more meeting with the Spurs (who beat the Cavs 99-95 in their first meeting on Jan. 14), one more meeting with the Thunder (whom the Cavs defeated 104-100 on Dec. 17), and three more meetings with the Bulls (who defeated the Cavs 97-95 on opening night and will play them again tonight in Cleveland) remaining on their slate. The longest road trip on their remaining schedule is a three-game road swing against divisional opponents in April. And oh, the Cavs have one more date with the Raptors at the end of February.
How much more difficult does Griffin really expect things to get in the regular season?
Blatt’s firing just seems like an overreaction to the Cavs’ blowout loss to the Warriors. It only creates more questions. Is Lue truly ready to sit at the head of the table? Will he be a good fit? What is Lue going to do to make the Cavs more formidable against a Warriors team that has won five in a row over Cleveland dating back to the Finals? Better yet, what is Lue going to do to make the Cavs as dominant as Golden State and San Antonio? Those are big questions facing a team hoping to flip the script this coming June, and Lue doesn’t have a lot of time to provide the answers.
To a degree, it’s unfair to Lue, but this is even more unfair to Blatt. At the very least, Blatt more than earned a second full season. He deserved better than this humiliation.