How Much of the Cavaliers’ Problems Actually Should Fall on David Blatt?

Photo Credit: Mike Lawrie/Getty Images
Photo Credit: Mike Lawrie/Getty Images

Cleveland Cavaliers head coach David Blatt was improbably fired on Friday, despite winning 68% of his games in a year and a half and taking the team to Game 6 of the NBA Finals in his first year on the job. However, General Manager David Griffin made the move on Friday, reportedly not consulting any Cavalier players in the process, and using this reasoning for his decision. These are his words:

I have never seen a locker room not be as connected after wins as they need to be. We’ve only been galvanized when expectations were not high.

This is the General Manager speaking, not any of the players or assistant coaches. And no, despite popular opinion, LeBron James is not the coach or General Manager of the team. So why on this planet would Griffin be making a decision on firing his (very successful) head coach based on things he’s seen in the locker room?

Maybe this is part of the problem, as ESPN’s Brian Windhorst writes. Here, he relays a story from last season about how players really didn’t think all that much of Blatt:

That didn’t stay a secret. James’ and other players’ complaints about Blatt’s style got out quickly. During games, Cavs players complained about the coach to opposing players. Once, while on the road, an injured Cavs player used the home team’s therapy pool and complained about Blatt, with his thoughts literally echoing throughout the home locker room.

First of all, that’s a really low maneuver to resort to; using the home team’s therapy pool just so you could complain about how bad your coach is? Come on, there’s got to be a better way.

But, besides that, the coaching move would seem to make sense. Blatt did not really seem to have the pulse of the locker room, and while it’s easy to look straight to the Cavs’ record and wonder why the organization could make this move, there is more to the decision than wins and losses. Also, the people questioning the change probably did not watch the team play the Warriors and, subsequently, trail by 43 late in the third quarter. Something had to be done, but was this it? If the therapy pool story and the others that Windhorst told in his piece are true, then the right move was made. If the players actually respected Blatt, then maybe the firing is a mistake.

All this being said, we really need to toss locker room dynamics to the side here. This is the problem with the Cavaliers: maybe they just aren’t good enough to win an NBA title. Maybe the issues go far beyond coaching.

Think about it this way: the Cavs are a big fish in a little pond. With all due respect to the Eastern Conference (which has improved mightily from top to bottom this season), the team is easily the best in the East. Realistically, can the Heat, Hawks, or Raptors beat them in a seven-game series if Cleveland is fully healthy? The answer to that question would have to be no.

Remember the analogy about the fish and the pond? Well, the Western Conference is a very big pond, with two enormous fish filling it. The Spurs and Warriors are clearly the two best teams in the NBA right now, and it’s really not close. To make matters worse for Cleveland, they haven’t beaten either team this year; with one more game against San Antonio and having already finished their slate against the Warriors, they are running the serious risk of not getting a win against the two teams they will have to realistically go through to win an NBA championship. That really doesn’t bode well for them if they want to finally bring a title back to the city of Cleveland.

Here is the other problem for the Cavaliers: Kevin Love. If you know what Love accomplished in his early days with the Minnesota Timberwolves and you see what he has been relegated to in Cleveland, you can probably understand why the team may look to move on from him. After the Blatt firing, ESPN’s Cavaliers reporter (yes, really), Dave McMenamin, sent out this cryptic tweet:

So, let’s see who that could be. The player who hasn’t found his way offensively since arriving in Cleveland. The player who was really great on many really bad teams early in his career. The player who is posting the worst numbers of his career since his second season in the NBA. Add everything up, and you get one result: Kevin Love.

Another player that could be out in Cleveland after Blatt’s firing is center Timofey Mozgov. Rumors have circulated around the league that this is a possibility, and my intuition says that a Mozgov deal would be common sense for the team. Think about it: let’s say the Cavaliers play Golden State in the Finals again like they did last year. With Mozgov at center, how can he defend Draymond Green when the Warriors go to their Uh-Oh lineup? This was the Cavaliers’ main problem after Game 3 of the Finals last season when the Warriors started Andre Iguodala and moved Green to center. Cleveland tried to counter by putting Tristan Thompson at center for most of Game 5. It didn’t quite work.

Do I believe going to Tyronn Lue is the right move for the Cavaliers? Yes, I do, because the players respond to and identify with him more than they did with Blatt. The NBA is a players’ league, and while coaching isn’t always the most important thing in the league, the players’ identification with a head coach’s philosophy and personality is. That being said, why did Griffin stay with Blatt last year, with the team at 19-20 in the middle of January? This year, the team was 30-11 at the time of Blatt’s firing and leading the Eastern Conference.

This is not a question about whether or not the Cavs can come out of the East. That question has been answered. However, Cleveland will have serious issues if they are matched up with the Spurs or Warriors in the Finals, and they may get beaten handily by either team.

Which is a fact that neither David Blatt, David Griffin nor Tyronn Lue can do anything about.