On Friday, news broke out that the Cleveland Cavaliers had fired head coach David Blatt. Blatt, who was in his second season coaching in the NBA, had amassed a great record in that time. However, it seemed apparent that the Cavaliers believed they were not winning a championship with him at the helm. Nevertheless, the move sparked numerous discussions about whether Blatt was deserving of losing his job and whether star forward LeBron James had any say in the decision.
New reports have now emerged that Blatt’s departure from Cleveland was one that had been coming for a long time. According to Chris Haynes of Cleveland.com, Blatt’s coaching ability and leadership were questioned by players and management alike, as early as last season.
Blatt’s leadership, in particular, was scrutinized by players due to his poor management of personnel. Apparently, the head coach had attempted to gain favor with his stars while routinely criticizing and working against his role players:
During the first portion of the 2014-15 season, film sessions were a topic of discussion among the players. Blatt was reluctant to criticize star players even when they clearly messed up a play. This became routine. It got so bad that I’m told that Lue finally intervened, stood up and demanded that somebody rewind the footage so that he could get on members of The Big 3.
During team scrimmages, players competed aggressively but bit their tongues as Blatt frequently blew his whistle to call ticky-tack or phantom fouls for his go-to players. One player said sometimes Blatt didn’t even have a whistle and would yell at the top of his lungs to stop play and call a foul if one of his stars acted as if he was hit.
It seems apparent that Blatt was attempting to create a positive atmosphere for himself by pandering to his stars. Perhaps he believed he could gain more job security if the likes of LeBron, Kyrie Irving, and Kevin Love expressed to the front office that they liked him. It seems counterproductive, however, to do so by mistreating other players leading to potentially tense environments in practices and in the locker room.
Perhaps more telling, and certainly more surprising, however is that Blatt reportedly had trouble coaching during games. Not only did he struggle with drawing up plays, something that came to light on a LeBron game winner in the playoffs last season, but he struggled with something as simple as which players were and should have been on the floor at any given time:
Word circulated to cleveland.com that Blatt had trouble drawing up plays out of timeouts. He would freeze up and waste precious seconds, one player said. He would even draw up plays for players who weren’t in the game, another player said.
In the closeout game of the Eastern Conference Finals, a game the Cavaliers trounced the Atlanta Hawks by 30 to sweep the series; Blatt had signaled for Tristan Thompson to reenter in the closing minutes with the game already wrapped up. This was when Thompson was the team’s most valuable big man with Kevin Love out of commission with a dislocated shoulder.
The bench couldn’t believe it. They were shocked, as was Thompson, who never questions authority. LeBron James told Blatt to put somebody else in the game, out of concern a key cog might get hurt before The Finals, a league source said. Kendrick Perkins got the nod, and a few minutes later, Brendan Haywood’s number was called to finish it out.
This is perhaps the biggest indictment of Blatt as a head coach. A coach can struggle with personalities and how to treat a team but if he is going to do so, he needs to be nearly perfect at his own job. If these reports are true, it does not appear that Blatt was at that level. This rumor does seem somewhat implausible, however, as Blatt was a highly respected coach in the international game. While coaching in the NBA is a different animal, I sincerely doubt that it could lead to him forgetting which players were on the court. Perhaps the nerves of coaching in a different environment with much pressure led to Blatt’s rumored incompetence. He certainly did not enter an easy situation for his first coaching job in the league.
It is important to note that all of these stories are in fact rumors. We are unaware of the source and it may have been fabricated by an insider in order to justify a somewhat puzzling decision. Blatt did sometimes show some inability, something to be expected of a coach who has only recently moved to the largest and most competitive basketball league in the world. From deferring to LeBron and assistant coach (and now head coach) Tyronn Lue to saying puzzling things in the media, Blatt was far from perfect. But the reports presented here are completely different and are the type of indictments that could prevent someone from being employed by an NBA team ever again. If they are indeed true, Blatt will have an uphill battle to getting a new head coaching job in the NBA.
