Coming off two atrocious years of Byron Scott and one awful throwback campaign with Mike Brown, the Cavaliers went outside the box to hire David Blatt. The coach had no NBA experience whatsoever, but had been deemed a master motivator and an offense-first genius. He’d have Kyrie Irving, Andrew Wiggins and a bunch of young athletes with whom to paint the town red wine and gold.
David Blatt was doomed from the start, like every other NBA head coach
In this new era of impatience, no NBA head coach’s dismissal can ever truly be a surprise, not even if they’re in first place.
The Cavaliers also poached Blatt’s main competition, Tyronn Lue, as the associate head coach. Lue had been tagged as a top head coaching prospect, but perhaps he was also an insurance policy ahead of 2014 free agency. Lue was a young ex-player who had deep relationships in the league. Cleveland had a path to obtaining the cap space to lure LeBron James back, if he turned sour on Miami’s future after a Finals drubbing. Perhaps GM David Griffin and owner Dan Gilbert wanted an easy answer if the Cavs somehow landed LeBron and Blatt didn’t work out.
Does this count as a conspiracy theory?
Whatever the case, Lue is the head coach now despite Cleveland’s 30-11 start and active reign as the East champs. You may remember the stories from last season about Lue calling timeouts over Blatt, about LeBron discounting Blatt’s play calls and direction, about Blatt’s problem helping Kevin Love fit in and feel wanted. In the wake of Blatt’s dismissal, reports suggest Blatt refused to call out LeBron in the film room or anywhere. Brendan Haywood, who was on the Cavs’ roster last season, claimed players were put off by Blatt’s unwillingness to hold LeBron accountable.
Blatt really couldn’t win. That doesn’t mean he deserved to keep his job.
What anyone may or may not “deserve” has no relevance in the NBA. This is not a “deserve” business. It’s a results business, an unreasonable expectations business. It’s not a secret that becoming a basketball coach at the pro level is unstable work. Blatt replaced a guy who survived 82 games of a five-year deal. You want to coach in the NBA? Enjoy your permanent hot seat. It’s part of the bargain.
Blatt is smart and had to know this when he took the job. When LeBron surprisingly arrived, both the risk and the reward ballooned for Blatt. The coach wouldn’t be a domestic mystery much longer, would he? He instantly found himself in position to join the relatively short list of NBA head coaches with rings. He became an instant household name among even casual basketball fans, just as Erik Spoelstra (who’d been more established than Blatt in the United States) had in 2010. Blatt simultaneously found himself under unexpected, immense and extremely public pressure to be perfect. He isn’t. Few are. C’est la vie.
There will be a next job for Blatt. Hell, wouldn’t it be something if he replaced Randy Wittman in D.C. in June, only to see Kevin Durant pick the Wizards in July? I’m rooting for that outcome just for the pure WTFness of it all. (Sorry, OKC.) Otherwise, Blatt’s next job is highly unlikely to feature a player as dominant (in every sense) as LeBron. Perhaps we’ll be able to see some of that genius offense after all.
Blatt’s ejection is Lue’s opportunity.
This is something coaches who bemoan the lack of job security in the modern NBA gloss over in their moralist squawks against impatience. Rick Carlisle, who has one of the longest tenures in the league, called Blatt’s firing “embarrassing for the league,” owing to the coach’s success in Cleveland.
Like successful coaches getting fired is something new. Less than three years ago, George Karl won Coach of the Year and got fired a month later! Carlisle owes his own job to the Mavericks firing a coach (Avery Johnson) who, in his three seasons in Dallas, went to the Finals, had a 67-win season and amassed a 194-70 record. If coaches didn’t get fired so frequently, far fewer coaches would get chances.
Hell, the frequent coach firings contribute a ton of aggregate salary to the coaching profession. For the rest of this season and all of next season, Cleveland will be paying for three NBA head coaches, and only one of them actually has to work. You could argue Gilbert is helping buoy the NBA head coach economy more than anyone in the country.
Blatt knew the stakes in the NBA the second he decided to jump from Israel to the States, and he knew how high those stakes rose once LeBron made his announcement a few weeks later. As coaches far and wide are fond of saying, numbers aren’t everything. A 30-11 record doesn’t mean a thing if the decision-makers don’t believe you have what it takes to help the team meet its goals, just as a nice box score line doesn’t guarantee a player a spot in a coach’s rotation. There’s more to the numbers in this game, and Cleveland’s power structure -- which, yes, absolutely does and should include LeBron implicitly -- didn’t think Blatt was the right dude.
Good luck to you, Ty Lue. In this business, you’ll need it.
