LeBron, Blatt Lead ESPN’s New Awards
LeBron James and David Blatt were the biggest and most important additions for the Cleveland Cavaliers this season. No offense to Kevin Love, Timofey Mozgov, J.R. Smith, Iman Shumpert and the rest, but LeBron and Blatt lead the pack. LeBron not only brought his basketball talents to Cleveland but, for the first time as a Cav, he also was a recruiter. Blatt, with his years of Euro experience, has done a great job of bringing the team together, even if it took some time.
Marc Stein of ESPN credited both in his Second Trimester awards that he put out today. First he credited LeBron as the East’s MVP:
"Yet it’s likewise true that the second trimester of said campaign is when LeBron started looking like LeBron again. The Cavs are 24-6 since he took a two-week hiatus to recharge himself, both mentally and physically. With a PER of 26.08, he has led Cleveland to the league’s best record in that span.Trouble is, LeBron is merely fourth in terms of favorites heading down the stretch, according to the latest MVP odds from our pals at Bovada (as shown in the accompanying chart). You’ll recall that, coming into the season, 26 of 28 ESPN panelists picked James as their preseason MVP."
Obviously the numbers in this trimester are amazing. The Cavs are 24-6 and his 26.08 PER is ridiculous. Interesting that Stein brought up the unlikely nature that LeBron is even in the conversation for season MVP because of the talent that has been shown by players like Steph Curry, James Harden and Russell Westbrook. With the season James is putting in, 26 points, 7 assists, 6 rebounds, 50% shooting from the field and 1.5 steals a game, most years he would be the front runner for the award, even after missing a few weeks.
While LeBron was expected to dominate, as Stein noted the pre-season votes, David Blatt had far less expectations by many. Yet here he is, bringing a team with 11 new players, two stars who never played on playoff squads in Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love and full of injuries and have them established as the 2 seed in the East. That earned Blatt the Coach of Trimester from Stein:
"But Blatt survived the storms. Not unlike his final season at perennial European power Maccabi Tel Aviv. He was nearly fired after an unfathomable 4-3 start in Israeli League play and then rallied all the way to last May’s Euroleague crown.He has gotten a lot of help from Cavs general manager David Griffin, who showed Blatt an enormous amount of support by first emphatically announcing that the rookie coach’s job was not under threat and then making trades to acquire big man Timofey Mozgov and the guard duo of J.R. Smith and Iman Shumpert. The Cavs have been a different team ever since.Tougher tests for Blatt, of course, are bound to come in the playoffs, when these Cavs get their first taste of adversity — maybe a bad loss or a series deficit or perhaps just a debatable crunch-time decision — and he experiences a new level of NBA scrutiny. Yet you have to say that it’s been somewhat unfair to Blatt that so little has been said over these past few months about how well he rebounded from his early-season duress."
A fair evaluation of Blatt’s year. There is a learning curve with any new coach. He has to learn his players, learn his support staff, learn the community and learn his, likely, new divisional foes. Blatt had to do all of that as well as learn about a whole different league, full of players he rarely or never coached with or against. It is in the tough times that you can grow and get stronger. Blatt obviously did that.
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Blatt will be under intense scrutiny when the NBA Playoffs start. What he does with rotations, timeouts, out of bounds plays and adjustments in game and between games will all be scrutinized. Will his players buy in? Will he lean appropriately on his veteran laden coaching staff? Will LeBron submit to him and show him respect when things get tough? The Playoffs will define Blatt’s first year in the NBA.
What do you think about LeBron James and David Blatt winning ESPN’s awards today?