ESPN NBA Insider Brian Windhorst went on ‘The Right Time with Bomani Jones’ to talk about David Blatt. What Windy had to say gave fans a great look behind the scenes of the Cleveland Cavaliers.
By now you have most likely heard about David Blatt’s firing. If you’ve been playing the #MaddenChallenge like J.R. Smith or still use a flip phone and haven’t heard about it, you can read up on it on King James Gospel here.
There have been numerous reports from various different sources that feature a ‘behind the scenes’ look into the Cavaliers two year run with Blatt as their head coach. Chris Haynes of cleveland.com wrote his piece that included a look into timeouts with Blatt:
"“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.”"
Brendan Haywood, a former Cavalier who played under Blatt during his first season as head coach, took to SiriusXM NBA Radio’s NBA Today show to share his insight of Blatt’s coaching. Haywood told Sirius XM’s Justin Termine (via Termine’s Twitter):
"“Blatt was very hesitant to challenge Lebron. Players from the team started to lose respect for not holding Lebron accountable, but doing so with the rest of the team. Blatt can’t help a team in a close game, he doesn’t know how to draw up a play”"
When Windhorst went on ‘The Right Time with Bomani Jones’, he didn’t hold anything back when it came to Blatt’s stay in Cleveland.
Here are some important quotes from the interview:
"“For the last month I had people telling me the guys gotta go out of the locker room, but I didn’t say anything because I didn’t think that I would have the political cover to deal with the fall out from it because the guy was in first place. I basically said ‘if one of you guys want him fired, you got to say so. That’s the only way it’s happening when the guy is in first place.’I thought it was going to take something dramatic to happen— whether that was gonna be LeBron James or Kyrie [Irving] or the owner or something to come out and say it.”"
According to Windhorst, this relationship between the Cavaliers and Blatt was never smooth from the start.
"“They haven’t liked him shortly after day one. He went south on those guys in November (of 2014). His first win, they win the second game of his first season (as coach), all the players jump on him in the locker room, give him the game ball, mush his hair and he was angry. He was angry because he said ‘gentleman I’ve won 1,000 games, do not treat me like a rookie’"
"Right from the start he wanted to establish he was the boss and he knew best better than any of them. None of them (players) knew who he was and they didn’t care about him.”"
Blatt lost the locker room and after the Cavaliers Christmas Day matchup with the Golden State Warriors and he “never recovered” from it.
"“Blatt completely changed his gameplan from the way he’s been playing. He took a couple of players who have been getting regular minutes and just benched them. For another coach who has equity in his team it wouldn’t have been a big deal, but players were so upset that he didn’t communicate with them and didn’t give them an opportunity to understand and discuss the decision.Blatt never recovered from that in the locker room. Since that times there’s been just pure salt in there."
The locker room was so bad after Christmas Day, Windhorst said the Cavaliers “basically boycotted the Trail Blazers game the next night.”
Jones brought up a question of respect between the players and Blatt. Windhorst went on to say:
"“David Blatt didn’t really have it but things were going on ok”"
Windhorst later said:
"“Players in the locker room respect him (Tyronn Lue) more than they respected David Blatt.”"
Lastly, Windhorst wanted to make it clear that LeBron James had nothing to do with Blatt’s firing and did his best to show support.
"“LeBron found out through a phone call. As early as Monday this week, when they lost that game to the Warriors, LeBron was pulling reporters aside saying ‘don’t you write a report saying I’m not supporting David Blatt or going against his game plan.’He was trying to take steps to distance himself from that (non support of David Blatt).But it was very clear by his actions, his words and everything over the last two years that LeBron did not have respect for David Blatt and did have respect for Tyronn Lue.”"
Blatt had the best record in the Eastern Conference (30-11) at the time of his firing and had the fourth best record in the NBA (83-40) since he came into the league. On the outside from a fans point of view, you could question the firing, especially at this point during the season. But based on what reporters like Haynes or Windhorst have been able to share with us shows that there was much, much more to this firing than we all first thought.
What do you think of this fiasco?