Where are all of David Blatt’s haters now?
The Cavaliers’ coach has silenced his critics with a masterful coaching performance in the NBA Finals.
Ricky O'Donnell has covered basketball at all levels for more than a decade at SB Nation. He’s currently the Associate Director of Programming.
David Blatt didn't have the slightest idea how his words would be interpreted. The Cavaliers had just beaten the Bulls in Game 4 of their second-round series on an incredible buzzer-beater from LeBron James, but all anyone wanted to know was why Blatt did everything in his power to prevent the moment from happening.
After Derrick Rose tied the game with eight seconds left, Blatt rushed the court to call a timeout when Cleveland didn't have one. It should have been a technical foul, but assistant coach Tyronn Lue saved the day by bear hugging Blatt and pulling him back before the officials noticed. If that wasn't bad enough, James admitted after the game that the initial play Blatt had drawn up called for James to inbound the ball, not shoot it.
Blatt tried to rationalize the decision the next day, but only managed to dig a deeper hole. “A basketball coach makes 150 to 200 critical decisions during the course of a game,” he started. “Something that I think is paralleled only by a fighter pilot.”
A thousand Top Gun memes were born minutes later. Blatt, a Princeton graduate and one of the most accomplished coaches in the history of European basketball, had been labeled a buffoon. That was only 30 days ago.
It seems completely ridiculous now. In the present, the Cavaliers hold a 2-1 lead over the Golden State Warriors in a series almost no one thought they could win. They're doing it without Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love. They're doing it with a starting unit that only has one holdover from the lineup Blatt rolled out nearly eight months ago on opening night against the Knicks.
Yes, it helps to have LeBron James. James has used these playoffs to remind the world he's still the best player on Earth, dominating the first three games of the NBA Finals to a degree that we've never seen. It's not like LeBron is all that different from the player the Spurs beat in five games last season, though.
Which is to say: the Cavaliers wouldn’t be in this position without David Blatt. He’s coached a masterful series that should silence his many critics.
Cleveland is playing at the slowest pace of any playoff team, and it’s all by design. Talent wins out in the open floor, and the Warriors have a huge edge in talent with Love and Irving on the sideline. Instead, the Cavaliers have reinvented themselves as a team that grinds out possessions, plays suffocating defense and never wavers from a concrete game plan.
In many ways, Cleveland’s offense is frustrating Golden State’s attack as much as the team’s defense is. The Warriors are a group that uses offensive pace and transition opportunities to throw the opposition off balance. Cleveland has answered by forcing its own pace, one that moves at a glacier’s speed to prevent opposing fast breaks and makes the Warriors execute in tight half-court sets.
Running isolations every possession for James might seem like a game plan a child could put together, but it's brilliant in its simplicity. This is the opposite of how James' Miami teams played, when Erik Spoelstra helped bring "pace-and-space" into the basketball lexicon and emphasized efficiency for LeBron.
Efficiency is out the window this series, and it’s all by design. Efficient looks happen when a team gets up and down the court and spreads the floor. Right now, the Cavaliers are letting James sit on the ball until the shot clock reaches single-digits. At that point, he usually either backs down his defender for a hook shot or kicks the ball out to a teammate.
It’s an inefficient way to play offense, but it’s a big reason why the Cavaliers have been so good at preventing the Warriors from scoring. Golden State can’t get into a rhythm because they’re unable to run in the open floor. Blatt has slowed things down to such a significant degree that the Warriors look like a team playing in sand instead of on hardwood.
It also helps that the refs are letting these teams play. Cleveland fans have complained louder about non-calls, but the physical play of this series is having a greater impact on Golden State. LeBron is 260 pounds and has the strength to finish through contact. Stephen Curry is 190 pounds and has struggled to break free from the tight grip of Matthew Dellavedova.
Dellavedova can’t hang with Curry on talent, so he needs to muck up the game. That means hacking Curry incessantly and hoping the refs don’t call it. So far, they haven’t. It’s thrown Curry off his game for much of this series, and his teammates don’t look the same when the MVP isn’t making life easy for them.
The reason everyone thought the Warriors would run the Cavaliers off the floor this series is because that’s exactly what would happen if Golden State was able to find the tempo it played at throughout the season. After playing at the fastest pace in the NBA during the regular season (100.69, per NBA.com), the Warriors this series are playing at a pace that would have ranked in the bottom five of the NBA (93.74). Blatt has constructed a game plan hell-bent on preventing the Warriors from running, and his team now has a 2-1 lead because of it.
The Finals are far from over, but for the first time, it feels like the Cavaliers’ success isn’t a fluke. Maybe the Cavaliers really can win with LeBron James and a great defense. Maybe they’re in Golden State’s head. Or, maybe Golden State rallies. There’s a lot of basketball left to be played.
Regardless, it turns out David Blatt actually knows a thing or two about what he’s doing.
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