David Blatt was fired as head coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers last week. Since then, there have been a gluttony of rumors regarding his departure. While the Cavs have insisted that the move was based solely on team performance, many believe that the premise behind the firing was LeBron James expressing his displeasure with the coach. James has since vehemently denied those rumors, but there is evidence to suggest there may have been truth to it.
According to ESPN’s Brian Windhorst, however, LeBron was not the only Cavaliers’ player who was displeased with David Blatt (h/t Pro Basketball Talk for the transcription):
And on every team and every coach I’ve ever covered, I’ve never seen a coach dynamic with a team like I saw with David Blatt. […]
All I know is what I saw, and I saw a guy who completely was unable to get even a modicum of respect from a majority of his players.
And I also saw star players and veteran players – not just LeBron, OK. We know LeBron had issues with him. But basically any player that had any sort of veteran status in the league, more than Joe Harris and Matthew Dellavedova – all the veterans didn’t like him, either. He wasn’t able to win over about anybody.
This is a pretty crazy story if it’s true. Blatt certainly did not seem like the type of coach who won his players over with his words. Whether it was likening his job to that of a fighter pilot or routinely expressing that he was well-experienced in coaching despite this being his first stop in the NBA, Blatt rubbed many people the wrong way.
It seems apparent that many Cavs players were also turned off by him and did not like him. That begs the question, why did the Cavs choose to keep him during the offseason instead of moving on right away? Did they believe that he could win over the players at some point or did they just think he was too good of a coach to be fired for his relationship with major players.
The fact that LeBron did not really get along with Blatt was already a tough situation, but having the majority of players on the roster feel the same way is really indicative of what went wrong in the marriage between Blatt and the Cavaliers. So far it seems that there are no such problems between Cavaliers players and new head coach Tyronn Lue, but unless the team wins a championship, even that relationship can sour quickly.
